‘It was a device worthy of Rube Goldberg, or perhaps Wile E. Coyote. A remote-controlled mechanism with a dozen launching tubes was found buried in the turf at Hong Kong’s most famous horse racing track last week; it was rigged with compressed air to fire tiny, liquid-filled darts into the bellies of horses at the starting gate.
No horses were injured because the supervisor at the Happy Valley Racecourse, where horses have been racing since 1846, noticed something on the turf before racing started Wednesday. He discovered the mechanism concealed by grass-colored tape and called in a police bomb squad to remove it.
The discovery of the device, which was equipped with elaborate electronic controls, has raised concerns about security for the six Olympic equestrian events to be held in Hong Kong next year.’
‘What exactly went on between gorillas and early humans? No one knows for sure, but scientists say one thing, at least, seems certain: The big apes gave us pubic lice.
Researchers made the uncomfortable discovery during a DNA study reconstructing the evolutionary history of lice in humans and our primate relatives.
The transfer occurred about 3.3 million years ago, said study leader David Reed, of the University of Florida in Gainesville. That’s when the gorilla louse and the human pubic louse separated into distinct species, the research revealed. [..]
Pubic lice are spread most commonly through sexual contact, but that’s not necessarily how our ancestors acquired the parasite from gorillas.
“Unfortunately, we’ll never know for sure,” Reed said. [..]’
‘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 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.”‘
‘A massive, mysterious whirlpool of cold water has developed off the coast of Sydney, forcing the sea surface to fall almost 1m and ocean currents to change course.
Dubbed a sea “monster” by CSIRO oceanographers, the huge body of water stretches almost 200km across and plunges 1000m towards the ocean floor. Its centre sits just 100km off the coast of Sydney and could stay there for months.
Scientists are baffled by the powerful cold-water eddy, which is invisible to the human eye but can be tracked through satellite images.
At its centre the sea level has dropped by 70cm, while the water 400m below the surface is 6C colder than normal at that depth.’
‘A 17-year-old girl who spent weeks looking for her missing dog unwrapped a box left on her doorstep and found the pet’s severed head inside, authorities said.
Homicide investigators were looking into the case because of the “implied” terroristic threat, St. Paul Police Sgt. Jim Gray said. The Humane Society of the United States said Wednesday it was offering a reward of up to $2,500 for information leading to an arrest and conviction.
“This was extraordinarily heinous,” said Dale Bartlett, the Humane Society’s deputy manager for animal cruelty issues. “I deal with hundreds and hundreds of cruelty cases each year. When I read about this case, it took my breath away. It’s horrible.”‘
‘Six graves were disturbed by vandals who toppled headstones and placed candles, an animal heart, a gourd and a picture of a man among them, police said. [..]
The items left among the headstones included more than a dozen unlit black candles, black handkerchiefs and a photograph of an unidentified man wearing a suit and smiling. The animal heart had pins in it.
Nearby, police found a partially buried statue of a rooster, wrapped in a bandanna with a pair of underwear around its neck.’
‘Killer frogs have taken over Golden Gate Park’s otherwise peaceful Lily Pond in San Francisco, causing a big problem.
According to CBS 5 contributor and San Francisco Chronicle columnist Phil Mattier, the city is preparing to do something to stop the African clawed frogs. While they are just 5 inches in length, the frogs are eating everything in sight — including turtles, fish and other frogs.
“They’ve eaten everything they can get their mouths around, and now they’re eating each other,” Eric Mills of the animal rights group Action for Animals, told Matier for his column.
No one knows for sure when this frog species got into the pond or who put them there, but now city officials fear the killer frogs will spread throughout the Bay Area.’
see it here »
‘A new survey revealing more than a thousand supermassive black holes in one region of the sky calls into question a popular model of how the gravity monsters behave. [..]
Typically, a black hole is surrounded by a doughnut-shaped region, or torus, of gas. The view of the black hole’s immediate surroundings is blocked by this torus by different amounts, depending on the orientation whether we’re looking through it edge-on or looking down on the setup from above, the thinking goes. [..]
“Instead of finding a whole range, we found nearly all of the black holes are either naked or covered by a dense veil of gas,” said Ryan Hickox of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “Very few are in between, which makes us question how well we know the environment around these black holes.”‘
‘Halliburton, the big energy services company, said today that it would open a corporate headquarters in the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai and move its chairman and chief executive, David J. Lesar, there.
The company will maintain its existing corporate office here as well as its incorporation in the United States. [..]
The announcement about the Dubai move, which Halliburton made at a regional energy conference in Bahrain, comes at a time when the company is being investigated by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegations of improper dealings in Iraq, Kuwait and Nigeria. Halliburton has also paid out billions in settlements in asbestos litigation.’
Looks like a slow moving flying-fox to me. They’ve got a rope and they’ve got a pulley.
And the police are just idiots. 🙂
(13.8meg Windows media)
see it here »
‘A Los Angeles hospital confirmed on Friday that two U.S. women who became ill during a trip to their native Russia, prompting investigations by both countries, were suffering from thallium poisoning.
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center said Marina Kovalevsky and her daughter, Yana, were receiving “appropriate treatment” for thallium poisoning. They have been listed in fair but stable condition. [..]
There has been no official explanation of how or why the two women, who according to family members do not work for either government and have no known political or business ties to Russia, were poisoned.’
‘Since October 2006, 35 per cent or more of the United States’ population of the Western honey bee (Apis mellifera) – billions of individual bees – simply flew from their hive homes and disappeared.
[..] Across the 24 U.S. states affected by the mysterious phenomenon, losses have ranged up to 90 per cent. “I’ve had a couple of yards where I’ve had 200 hives and they’re down to 10 hives that are alive,” says David Bradshaw of Visalia, about 180 kilometres southeast of Los Banos along California’s Route 99.
What’s causing the carnage, however, is a total mystery; all that scientists have come up with so far is a new name for the phenomenon – Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) – and a list of symptoms.’
‘An Iraqi national was detained and questioned at a passenger-screening area at Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday morning after a suspicious item was found in the man’s rectum during a body cavity search.
The item, which is still being examined, poses no apparent threat, an FBI official said. [..]
Ethel McGuire, assistant special agent in charge of the Los Angeles FBI office, said this afternoon that al-Maliki had “a magnet, wires and I don’t know what the other item was. It’s being evaluated as we speak.” After al-Maliki was searched, the Los Angeles Police Department bomb squad was called to the airport to examine the suspicious item.’
‘Saleh Talib Saleh used to dream that he would grow horns on his head. He dismissed them as mere fancy at first, but then, at the ripe old age of 78, a horn did indeed begin to grow on the left side of his head, astonishing his fellow villagers. Saleh, a resident of A’dban district of the Shabwa governorate, claims that the horn started growing over 25 years ago. He has no explanation as to how the horn developed or why. However, a large medical team at the Aden Specialized Hospital believe that the horn was caused by multiplying layers of hardened, dried skin on Saleh’s head.
Eventually these layers piled up enough to become a horn. Saleh, 102, spoke to the Yemen Observer about the astonishing experience of growing horns on his head, beginning at the age of 77. The first, he said, began growing some 25 years ago, and kept growing until it reached a length of half a meter. But that horn broke off one day last year. Eight days later, another horn started growing in the same spot as the first one. This horn is currently still growing on the left side of his head.’
‘It wasn’t exactly a Bigfoot sighting, but motorists reported seeing someone wearing a gorilla suit in the center divide of Interstate 280 on the Peninsula at the start of this evening’s rush hour, the California Highway Patrol said.
The first call came in at 4:39 p.m., reporting the costumed primate near the Highway 92 interchange, Officer Marc Johnston said.
“This is a real person in a gorilla suit,” said a CHP log entry on traffic incidents.
One caller reported there were two other people off to the side of the freeway in the same area, Johnston said.
An officer dispatched to the scene at 4:50 p.m. found no one.
“We were unable to locate it,” Johnston said. “They didn’t find anything.”
The mystery continues.’
‘Workers at a downtown boutique called police after unexpectedly receiving two buckets of marijuana worth $90,000. Police were called to Fusion on Saturday after employees received the two packages of marijuana totaling about 20 pounds.
“Officers received a call that the manager of the store had received a package from FedEx and when he opened it there was a five-gallon bucket inside,” said Capt. Chris Werner. Inside that bucket was 10 pounds of marijuana. The second package arrived about an hour later, this one from a different delivery service but with similar contents.
Both packages were from California and addressed to the store, but there were no names on the address labels.’
‘The homicide squad is investigating the discovery of a dead baby in a cupboard of a family home at Geelong, south-west of Melbourne.
Police were called to a house in Peter Street, Grovedale at 6.15pm (AEDT) yesterday, when the newborn was found in a laundry cupboard.
A police spokesman said the circumstances of the baby’s death were unknown.
“The baby was born on the 24th of February, it was only one day old,” he said.
“(It was) located in the laundry cupboard of the house.”
The baby’s 37-year-old mother was taken to Geelong Hospital in shock.’
‘A 37-year-old woman who died in a crash at Dilston yesterday morning had three stab wounds to the chest.
The woman’s Hyundai was found about 70 metres from the East Tamar Highway about 5.50 am.
A kitchen-type knife was found embedded in the woman’s chest.
She died at the scene after police arrived without speaking to them.
Detective-Inspector Mike Otley said police were investigating whether the wounds were self-inflicted.
“We are treating it as a sudden death,” he said.
It is believed there are no suspicious circumstances.’
‘Two circus clowns have been shot dead during a performance in the eastern Colombian city of Cucuta, police say.
The attacker jumped into the arena and fired before fleeing, police chief Jose Humberto Henao told Efe news agency.
Local reports say the audience of about 20 people, mostly children, thought the shooting was part of the show before realising both men had been killed.’
‘Actor Sylvester Stallone says the seizure of several items of his luggage at Sydney Airport on Friday night was the result of a misunderstanding.
Customs officers are investigating the prohibited items, which were confiscated from Stallone and five others in his entourage when he arrived during a routine luggage check.
The actor and his party were held for several hours after X-rays showed up the banned items.
Customs are yet to confirm what the seized items are.’
‘Police announced they uncovered a plastic bag stuffed with the skeletal remains of at least six newborns Sunday after searching the grounds of a Christian missionary hospital in the central Indian town of Ratlam.
Director General of Police A.R. Pavar said they found the remains hidden in a drainage ditch on the hospital’s property in Ratlam after scouring the grounds following a tip off from a local.
All 390 bone fragments are thought to be from newly born babies and fetuses, but Pavar said an investigation will offer more information. [..]
Bishop L. Maida, the senior official who represents the church that runs the hospital, told CNN the hospital is more than a century old and nothing like this has happened before.’
‘A hole in a frozen pond in northern Latvia achieved unexpected notoriety on Wednesday as rumours began circulating that it was created by an object falling from outer space.
“We’ve been collecting information on the story all day, and we’ll definitely report it in the morning,” Inguna Plume, editor of local newspaper Ziemellatvija, told reporters.
The “unusually large hole” appeared in the ice of a frozen pond near the northern Latvian village of Karki in early February, the Leta news agency wrote. Despite sub-zero temperatures, the hole reportedly did not freeze over for two days.
Locals initially reported seeing “strange things” in the area.’
‘Russian emergency workers have flown to a Siberian region where smelly, orange-, yellow- and green-colored snow fell earlier this week covering about a 40 square miles, officials said Friday.
The Emergency Situations Ministry said that officials in the Omsk region, about 1,400 miles east of Moscow, had warned local residents not use the snow for drinking or other purposes, and to keep domestic animals from it.
The ministry said the snow, which fell Wednesday afternoon, was yellow, green and orange and had an oily texture and unpleasant smell.’
`Paris-based satellite company Eutelsat is investigating “unidentified interference” with its satellite broadcast services that temporarily knocked out several television and radio stations. The company declined to say whether it thought the interference was accidental or deliberate.
The problem began Tuesday afternoon, blocking several European, Middle East and northeast African radio and television stations, as well as Agence France-Presse’s news service. All transferred their satellite transmissions to another frequency to resume operations.’
‘The body of a 3-year-old boy was found in a septic tank less than 10 feet from the house where he was reported missing, Flathead County Sheriff Mike Meehan said Saturday.
The body of Loic J.M. Rogers was found late Friday, and an autopsy showed that he drowned, Meehan said.
“This is a tragedy,” Meehan said.
It was unclear how the boy got into the septic tank, and the manhole-sized lid was closed. Meehan did not classify the death as a homicide, but said investigators do not believe he could have climbed into the tank and put the lid back on himself. An investigation is continuing.’
‘One of the strangest wildlife sightings in the Cupertino-Saratoga foothills has yet to be identified: a naked jogger, wearing only shoes, glasses and a black tam hat.
He’s cordial and polite, not threatening. He doesn’t do anything obscene. He avoids confrontations. A white middle-aged man with a paunch, he isn’t much to look at. [..]
“He passed me and said ‘Good evening,'” said equestrian Sue Bowdoin, while riding her horse Randy last summer on the Wedding Tree Trail in the south end of the park. “I thought: Ugh!” [..]
Park rangers have never seen him and his identity is still unknown, although efforts are under way to identify and apprehend him, said Gordon Baillie, a management analyst with the district.’
`Paris Hilton is an ugly man with a half-assed glass eye. But, you cannot beat listening to her talk about taking it up the odor-twist for a bag of coke.
Witness that classy discussion and a bunch of other career exploding material in the brand new 7 part video series taken from her storage unit [..]’
I don’t actually know what this is about. Recordings of Paris Hilton doing or saying something. I haven’t looked at them myself, but who knows. I might see if they’re funny or not another day. 🙂
