‘Banned from honking their horns, drivers in China’s commercial hub Shanghai are switching to music or voice recordings to make themselves heard, a local newspaper reported Wednesday.
Shanghai banned honking in the downtown area beginning this month, threatening fines for those leaning on the horn. Not even police cars are exempt, with the use of sirens banned in all but emergencies, the rules say.
Yet some drivers who still feel the need to express themselves are spending the equivalent of about C$100 for customized horns, the Shanghai Daily newspaper said.
It said at least one taxi driver has converted his to a recording of a woman’s voice saying: “Please mind the car, we are making a turn.”‘
‘A young man was admitted from prison to a psychiatric facility after reports that he had been acting in a bizarre manner. He had been arrested for stealing motor vehicles and assaults with weapons. At interview he was found to be experiencing the delusion that he was a player inside a computer game (adult-certificate game, widely available) in which points are scored for stealing cars, killing assailants and avoiding police vehicles. Psychotic symptoms had emerged slowly over two years. His family had noticed him becoming increasingly withdrawn and isolated from social activities. He developed delusions that strangers were planning to kill him and also experienced auditory hallucinations, constantly hearing an abusive and derogatory voice. Previously a computer enthusiast, he began to play computer games incessantly. He felt that the games were communicating with him via the headphones. In a complex delusional system he came to believe he was inside one of these games and had to steal a car to start scoring points. He broke into a car and drove off at speed, believing he had `invulnerable’ fuel and so could not run out of petrol. To gain points he chose to steal increasingly powerful vehicles, threatening and assaulting the owners with weapons. Later he said he would have had no regrets if he had killed someone, since this would have increased his score.’
‘Not everybody in military-ruled Myanmar is cursing the blackouts.
Thieves in the former Burma’s main city, Yangon, are taking advantage of outages often lasting for more than 20 hours a day to steal the copper power cables, police said on Friday.
Sometimes, of course, they get unlucky.
“The thieves are risking their lives as it is impossible to know exactly when the power is going to be restored. It’s just like playing Russian roulette,” said one Yangon police officer who did not want to be named.
“I’ve seen a few cases in which thieves were electrocuted. In April, a 16-year-old boy was found dead, holding a broken cable from a lamppost. Only God knows for sure whether he was a thief or not.”‘
‘Sushi made with deer meat, anyone? How about a slice of raw horse on that rice?
These are some of the most extreme alternatives being considered by Japanese chefs as shortages of tuna threaten to remove it from Japan’s sushi menus — something as unthinkable here as baseball without hot dogs or Texas without barbecue.
In this seafood-crazed country, tuna is king. From maguro to otoro, the Japanese seem to have almost as many words for tuna and its edible parts as the French have names for cheese. So when global fishing bodies recently began lowering the limits on catches in the world’s rapidly depleting tuna fisheries, Japan fell into a national panic.’
‘So much for US justice: juries get the verdict wrong in one out of six criminal cases and judges don’t do much better, a new study has found.
And when they make those mistakes, both judges and juries are far more likely to send an innocent person to jail than to let a guilty person go free, according to an upcoming study out of Northwestern University.
“Those are really shocking numbers,” said Jack Heinz, a law professor at Northwestern who reviewed the research of his colleague Bruce Spencer, a professor in the statistics department.
Recent high-profile exonerations of scores of death row inmates have undermined faith in the infallibility of the justice system, Heinz said.’
‘A synthetic version of a molecule found in the egg cells of the Northern Leopard frog (Rana pipiens) could provide the world with the first drug treatment for brain tumours.
Known as Amphinase, the molecule recognises the sugary coating found on a tumour cell and binds to its surface before invading the cell and inactivating the RNA it contains, causing the tumour to die.
In new research published in the Journal of Molecular Biology, scientists from the University of Bath (UK) and Alfacell Corporation (USA) describe the first complete analysis of the structural and chemical properties of the molecule.
Although it could potentially be used as a treatment for many forms of cancer, Amphinase offers greatest hope in the treatment of brain tumours, for which complex surgery and chemotherapy are the only current treatments.’
‘It’s not the first time the Polish weekly Wprost has gotten in trouble in Germany. This week, the cover depicts Chancellor Angela Merkel breast-feeding the Kaczynski twins. But it could have been worse, the editor-in-chief points out. At least they used a 21-year-old model.
“Europe’s Step-Mother:” Polish magazine Wprostdoes it again.
It’s not exactly how one expects to see German Chancellor Angela Merkel: The broad, friendly smile seems completely at odds with her open blouse, two bare breasts spilling out. On each breast, one of Poland’s governing Kaczynski twins is affixed — Prime Minister Jaroslaw is suckling on the left, President Lech has attached himself to the right. One of them is holding up the “victory” sign right in Merkel’s cleavage.’
‘Illegal networks selling nuclear technology to the highest bidder on the black market are posing a greater threat than ever, an expert has warned.
A speaker at non-proliferation talks in Washington said technology essential for enriching uranium was now freely available on the black market.
Others said that efforts to tackle the problem were tepid and in disarray.
The conference also raised concerns that the issue has receded from the non-proliferation agenda.’
‘German politicians have slammed role playing games being taught to school children on how to pick up a gay partner.
The Regional Institute for School and Media LISUM in Berlin has introduced the controversial exercises for school kids from 14 upwards as part of a way of reducing prejudice against homosexuals.
But the role-playing has outraged politicians.’
‘Just four per cent of US adults are virgins, but a fifth have tried hard drugs such as cocaine and crack, a new study shows.
What most alarms researchers is how young they start.
“We still have a public health problem in that we still see a lot of adults reporting their sexual debut at a pretty young age,” said Dr Kathryn Porter of the United States’ National Centre for Health Statistics, who led the survey of more than 6,000 people. [..]
Ninety-six per cent of US adults have engaged in some kind of sex – including oral and anal sex – by the age of 20, according to the study published today.’
‘Firefighters who spent half an hour fighting a blaze in which 2,000 pounds of marijuana went up in smoke breathed so much of it that they would have failed a drug test, a fire chief said.
It took more than 35 firefighters, 1,000 gallons of water and five gallons of chemical suppressant to extinguish the warehouse blaze on Wednesday, Fire Chief Shawn Snider said. [..]
Snider said Thursday the firefighters were exposed to so much marijuana smoke that they would not be able to pass a drug test, despite wearing air packs to prevent them from inhaling toxic or hazardous fumes.’
‘John Stamos showed up drunk two days in a row while down in Australia promoting ER. After this interview with Kerri-Ann Kennerly Australia cancelled the rest of his interviews and sent him home.’
(7.6meg Windows media)
see it here »
‘Four Asians who murdered another Asian and then ate his body were caught when one of their victim’s finger was found in the stomach of one during treatment for acute food poisoning, the daily Al-Sharq newspaper said today.
The Qatari newspaper said the four men had to seek emergency hospital treatment after eating part of the corpse, various bits of which, including a finger, showed up on hospital X-rays.’
‘Toronto photographer Ed Burtynsky has photographed industrial landscapes for more than 25 years. From 2003 to 2005, he traveled to China several times to capture images of the country’s industrial growth.
A film crew followed Burtynsky on his fifth trip in 2005 to shoot the documentary Manufactured Landscapes, which opened this month in New York. A TED prize winner, Burtynsky manages to convey the scope of China’s growth through images where raw statistics have failed.’
‘Before voice overs on Deadliest Catch and before Dirty Jobs, Mike Rowe worked for QVC. And he was exactly the same. These are his a few of his greater moments, sorted by awesomeness.’
‘Gutsy Barry Bradley stunned hotel staff and fellow guests by wolfing down 15 fried breakfasts.
The businessman gobbled 30 sausages, 20 rashers of bacon, 15 fried eggs, three tins of beans, eight tomatoes and an entire punnet of mushrooms in an amazing three-hour sitting.
He also had six bowls of cereal plus one and a half croissants.
And the early morning feast cost him just £7.50 through an all-you-can-eat brekkie deal.
Barry, 47, who runs a building firm, said: “I had a hangover and wanted a way of feeling better.”
A waitress at the Premier Travel Inn in Kent said: “We couldn’t believe it – he looked like he was never going to stop.”‘
‘What the hell was that?’
(4.1meg Windows media)
see it here »
‘The explosion at Demag Riggers and Cranes in Williston on Tuesday that killed a worker was caused by powerful fireworks stored in a safe, Williston police said.
Anthony Boisvert, 20, was using a cutting torch Tuesday to open the industrial safe when it exploded. [..]
The safe had been in an abandoned shed in Winooski since at least the mid-1990s. The safe was locked, the owner of the safe didn’t know the combination and didn’t know what was in it, Dimmick said.’
‘Britain is proposing to remove the term “prostitute” from the criminal statutes because it carries too much stigma.
Instead, a new bill that the Justice Ministry has drafted refers simply to persons who sell sex persistently — defined as twice or more in three months.
“We just wanted to remove the stigma of the label ‘common prostitute’,” said a spokeswoman for the Justice Ministry.
“It’s been around since 1824, so it was a bit outdated. It just wasn’t really helpful to label people.”‘
‘The psychologists, who studied yawning in college students, concluded that people do not yawn because they need oxygen, since experiments show that raising or lowering oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood fails to produce the reaction. Rather, yawning acts as a brain-cooling mechanism. The brain burns up to a third of the calories we consume, and as a consequence generates heat.
According to Gallup and Gallup, our brains, not unlike computers, operate more efficiently when cool, and yawning enhances the brain’s functioning by increasing blood flow and drawing in cooler air.’
‘So truely devote Buddhist priests are not afraid of death; but they don’t normally seek it either, as this too would be an abnormal obsession with the physical world. The priests that chose to practice self-mummification were usually all older men, who knew they had limited time left to their lives anyway… and since the practice takes years to lead to a sucessful death and mummification, it cannot be characterized as an attempt to reach enlightenment quickly as a normal suicide might be. Rather, the intended purpose of this practice for these priests is to both push their ability to disregard their physical selves to the limit of their ability, and to try and leave an artifact of this struggle that will stand as a symbol of their beliefs to those that are priests after them.’
‘Who would’ve guessed that towing a guy face first on a skateboard would not out as well as they planned? These kids need to take a Physics class.’
(2.2meg Windows media)
see it here »
‘A teacher who forced a pupil to write ‘I am a retard’ 100 times has been acquitted of abuse charges by an Italian court.
The teacher, whose identity was withheld to protect her privacy, forced the punishment on the 12-year-old boy after he blocked a fellow pupil from going to the toilet and called him “gay” and “girly”.
The parents had sought 25,000 euros ($40,107) in damages and a public prosecutor had called for a two-month prison sentence, but the court cleared the teacher, a court source said.’
‘A driver who was high on cocaine destroyed an entire cornfield in an attempt to escape from the police.
Four police cars were destroyed before the 35-year-old crashed into a ditch and was arrested, near the village of Dussen in the south of the Netherlands.’
‘The Spice Girls, who burst on to the music scene with “girl power” and attitude in the 1990s, have reunited for a world tour, their Web site said on Thursday.
Spice Girls
“Hey everybody!! We’re back!! Can you believe it!!” Ginger, Sporty, Posh, Scary and Baby Spice announced on their Web site.’
‘Italian scientists have developed a pill that expands in the stomach to make dieters feel full.
They liken the effect to eating a bowl of spaghetti and say the pill can stop hunger for a few hours.
It is made from a hydrogel, which the team developed when trying to make more absorbent nappy linings, and may help in the battle against obesity.
So far it has been tested on 20 people but experts warned bigger trials would be needed to test safety.’
How do you get your boat out of a war zone? Kinda like Knight Rider.
(3.3meg Windows media)
see it here »
‘A sex worker hurt when she and her client plunged 100m down a Canterbury hillside in his car may be eligible for compensation for a work-related injury.
The woman is believed to have been in the car with a man driving on Christchurch’s Port Hills when the vehicle went off the Summit Rd in icy weather and fell into a gully early on Friday morning.
It is understood the man had hired the woman for sexual services before the accident. [..]
An Accident Compensation Corporation spokesman told the Herald he did not know details of the case, but if the woman was registered as a sex worker and paid taxes, she could make a claim for a work-related injury based on that.’
