‘At the only hospital in the capital of this tiny West African nation, a 3-year-old AIDS patient named Suleiman receives his daily dose of medication — a murky brown concoction of seven herbs and spices served out of a bottle that once contained pancake syrup.
The boy is told a spoonful a day will make him better. His mother, Fatuma, takes the same concoction, as do several dozen other AIDS and HIV patients here. Adults take two spoonfuls.
“It’s amazing,” Fatuma says. “Two weeks ago, I was very ill, weak and couldn’t eat without vomiting.”
This has become the treatment for HIV/AIDS patients here since early January, when Gambian President Yahya Jammeh announced he had discovered a cure for the disease that has wreaked havoc across Africa. He made that announcement in front of a group of foreign diplomats, telling them the treatment was revealed to him by his ancestors in a dream.’
‘Beryl Dsouza was late and in no mood for delays when she stopped at a Target store after work two weeks ago for milk, bread and bacon.
So Dsouza was taken aback when the cashier — who had on the traditional headscarf, or hijab, worn by many Muslim women — refused to swipe the bacon through the checkout scanner.
“She made me scan the bacon. Then she opened the bag and made me put it in the bag,” said Dsouza, 53, of Minneapolis. “It made me wonder why this person took a job as a cashier.”‘
Using air from a scuba tank and everything. Crazy. :)
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‘A man who spent 18 years in prison for a rape he didn’t commit was convicted Sunday of murdering a photographer, whose charred bones were found in a burn pit outside his home.
Steven Avery, 44, shook his head when the verdict was read. He faces a mandatory life prison term for killing Teresa Halbach, 25, on Halloween 2005 near his family’s salvage yard.
Halbach disappeared Oct. 31, 2005, after going to the yard in rural Manitowoc County to photograph a minivan that Avery’s sister had for sale through Auto Trader Magazine. Avery had called that morning to request the photo, testimony showed.’
‘Pet owners were worried Saturday that the pet food in their cupboards could be deadly after millions of containers of dog and cat food sold at major retailers across North America were recalled.
Menu Foods — a major manufacturer of dog and cat food sold under Wal-Mart, Safeway, Kroger and other store brands — recalled 60 million containers of wet pet food Friday after reports of kidney failure and deaths.
An unknown number of cats and dogs suffered kidney failure and about 10 died after eating the affected pet food, the company said in announcing the North American recall.’
‘A British Airways passenger was refused compensation and told by the airline to “get over it” after a corpse was placed in the row where he was sitting last week.
Paul Trinder, 54, a businessman from Brackley, Northamptonshire, spent more than £3,000 for a first-class ticket from Delhi. He awoke during the flight to find that cabin staff were propping up a dead woman almost next to him. “The stewards just plonked down this body without saying a thing,” he said. “I remember looking at this thin, sparrow-like woman and thinking she was very ill.”
The woman had been in economy class when she died soon after the plane left Delhi. “She kept slipping under the seat belt and moving about with the motion of the plane,” Mr Trinder said. “When I asked what was going on, I was shocked to hear she was dead.”‘
‘In January 1992, while at a formal dinner in Japan, then president George Bush became ill, vomiting on the Prime Minister of Japan, Kiichi Miyazawa, then fainting. Earlier in the evening, Bush had told his physician he was feeling unwell. This all happened at a presidential news conference and dinner in Tokyo. It was later famously parodied by Dana Carvey on Saturday Night Live.’
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An illustration of the evolution of man.
‘Hearing about AJAX constantly, but never have found time to read a lengthy, frustrating, complex tutorial? In the following post, I’m going to explain how to add AJAX functionality to your website in three easy steps. It’s actually quite simple, and I’m going to try and be clear and to the point, but not over or under-explain anything like most tutorials have a tendency to do.’
I believe this is another Balls of Steel segment.
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‘The International Ginger Kids Foundation, or IGKF ,is a not-for-profit organization founded in 2002. The goal of the IGKF is to achieve equality, understanding, tolerance, and acceptance for Ginger Kids all over the world. Gingervitis is a serious disease affecting millions of people. Every day 1337 children are born with gingervitis in the United States alone. Not only do these special people have to struggle with a life long disease in which there is no known cure, they are often the target of ridicule and jokes. The only way we will ever find a cure is if we work together.’
‘Our obesity crisis has forced the ambulance service to introduce super-sized vehicles to squeeze in overweight patients.
The workload for these heavy-duty ambulances has more than doubled in the past three years.
And specially designed air ambulances are also soon to be introduced.
NSW Ambulance was the first in Australia to introduce the ambulances, which cost nearly $100,000 more than a regular vehicle, in 1999.
Now two more multi-purpose vehicles (MPVs) have been added and the weight-carrying capacity of stretchers increased from 180kg to 220kg.’
‘Cannabis extracts may shrink brain tumours and other cancers by blocking the growth of the blood vessels which feed them, suggests a new study.
An active component of the street drug has previously been shown to improve brain tumours in rats. But now Manuel Guzmán at Complutense University, Spain, and colleagues have demonstrated how the cannabis extracts block a key chemical needed for tumours to sprout blood vessels – a process called angiogenesis.
And for the first time, the team has shown the cannabinoids impede this chemical in people with the most aggressive form of brain cancer – glioblastoma multiforme.’
‘A Houston mother told police that the family Dachshund bit off her 5-week-old son’s genitals while she was sleeping, but investigators said they are skeptical of the mother’s claims. [..]
“She said she woke up to hear the baby’s cries and found the family pet standing over the boy,” Estella Olguin, Child Protective Services, told KPRC. “She said the dog had been the one to bite the child’s genitals off.”
“The injury that the child has is really not consistent with that of a dog bite or mauling,” Olguin said. “We’ve never seen a case like this, when an animal is being blamed for mutilating a child’s genitals.”‘
‘Australian researchers have combined art and science to make dresses from fermented fabric, using bacteria to ‘grow’ slimy dresses from wine and beer. [..]
To ferment fabrics, Cass and his colleagues deliberately let vats of wine go off to produce cellulose.
And to get the shape of a dress, they lifted the layers of slimy cellulose off and laid them over a deflatable doll. [..]
The dresses are made from pieces of cellulose joined together. But Cass hopes one day the team can make the bacteria ferment seamless garments.’
‘Observe, if you will, the milk jug in question. Good to know our favourite eBay seller isn’t lactose intolerant — and really, milk and pizza go well together. Besides, why not have more bacteria protection on the *other* side of the G4?
I was completely overwhelmed by the situation. How on God’s green earth could anyone think that I’d do the Mypos Dance of Joy over the arrival of a computer, packed with someone’s garbage?’
‘Suspected members of extremist groups have signed up as school bus drivers in the United States, counterterror officials said Friday, in a cautionary bulletin to police. An
FBI spokesman said, “Parents and children have nothing to fear.”
Asked about the alert notice, the FBI’s Rich Kolko said, “There are no threats, no plots and no history leading us to believe there is any reason for concern,” although law enforcement agencies around the country were asked to watch out for kids’ safety.’
Hooray for contradicting yourself four times in two paragraphs, and trying to scare people in the process.
‘In 1998, just after he won a share of the Nobel prize for physics, Robert Laughlin of Stanford University in California was asked how his discovery of “particles” with fractional charge, now called quasi-particles, would affect the lives of ordinary people. “It probably won’t,” he said, “unless people are concerned about how the universe works.”
Well, people were. [..]
Helton was aware of Wen’s work and decided to look for such materials. Trawling through geology journals, his team spotted a candidate – a dark green crystal that geologists stumbled across in the mountains of Chile in 1972. “The geologists named it after a mineralogist they really admired, Herbert Smith, labelled it and put it to one side,” says team member Young Lee. “They didn’t realise the potential herbertsmithite would have for physicists years later.”‘
‘SkyWest Airlines apologized to a passenger who said he wasn’t allowed to use the restroom during a one-hour flight and ended up urinating in an air-sickness bag.
James Whipple said he had two “really big beers” at the Boise, Idaho airport. While on a flight to Salt Lake City on March 7 he wanted to use the cabin restroom.
The captain had declared it off-limits during the short flight because a light wasn’t working.’
How far do you think a car would fly if you stuck a couple of rockets on the back of it and launched it from a ramp?
Fair enough, I reckon. :)
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‘A man stabbed his 11-month-old son in the back, threw the boy out the car window with the kitchen knife stuck in his back and then drove away, police said Thursday.
“He was conscious, but the knife was buried all the way to the handle,” said Speedway Detective Jim Thiele. The boy, Devon Chandler, was in stable condition at a hospital Thursday.
“To the amazement of the doctors and everyone else involved, (the knife) somehow managed to just miss the vital organs,” Thiele said.’
‘A mentally troubled woman accused of drowning her 6-year-old daughter, cutting off her head and throwing the remains off a bridge has pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. [..]
Spann told investigators she was using drugs heavily at the time of the killing, officials have said.
Spann’s father, Gary Spann, told The Sacramento Bee in 2005 his daughter routinely called the girl a “devil child,” and she belonged to a cult that worshipped the late rapper Tupac Shakur as the reincarnation of the 16th century political philosopher Machiavelli.’
‘”My, that’s an impressive weapon – it puts me in mind of your penis. Would you care for sexual intercourse?”
Due to budget cutbacks, the writers of the Carry On series were forced to pare their jokes down to single entendres. Carry On Up My Arse was a commercial and critical failure.’
‘Be careful what you ask, because you may get just the opposite. New research shows that if a parent nags a son about cleaning up his room, the kid will probably dig in his heels and live in a pig pen even if he doesn’t realize mom is still on his case.
The same holds true for a spouse. Or some other significant other. And the more controlling that person seems to be, the more likely the individual will “automatically do the opposite of that which the significant other wishes,” the scientists report in the current issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
Psychologist Tanya Chartrand of Duke University, lead author of the report, says she conducted the study because she couldn’t get her husband to do what she wanted him to do.’
‘Soothing rose or tangy lemon? If all goes according to plan, people in the western Indian city of Ahmadabad should find themselves confronted by those two scents by the end of the year when they are stopped by police.
The city’s police department is working with a team of designers to provide 8,000 officers with new uniforms that will be made with specially scented, lightweight fabric designed to keep the police officers sweet smelling and sweat free.
“We think that by end of the year, you will notice a new fresh look when you are intercepted by one of our men,” said J. Mahapatra, the city’s police commissioner.’
‘Mars’s southern polar ice cap contains enough water to cover the entire planet approximately 36 feet (11 meters) deep if melted, according to a new radar study.
It’s the most precise calculation yet for the thickness of the red planet’s ice, according to the international team of researchers responsible for the discovery.
Using an ice-penetrating radar to map the south pole’s underlying terrain, the scientists calculated that the ice is up to 2.2 miles (3,500 meters) thick in places, said the study’s leader, Jeffrey Plaut of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
The radar, from the Mars Express orbiter, also revealed the surprising purity of the ice, Plaut added.’
‘Every guy has been in a position where he is asked a question and he doesn’t respond completely honestly. What if guys stopped lying and started saying what they were really thinking?’
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‘Malaysian police detained an eight-member gang of small-sized robbers dubbed the “midget gang,” who allegedly confessed to committing 14 break-ins over the past three months, a news report said Thursday.
All the gang members, aged between 14 and 23 years, were diminutive, The Star newspaper said without saying whether they were dwarfs or just small.
Some of them who were less than 5 feet tall would be picked to squeeze through small openings into the houses they robbed in central Malaysia, The Star said.
Gang members confessed to their crimes when they were detained, according to the report.’
