`A girl is to become Britain’s youngest mother after becoming pregnant at 11.
The girl smokes 20 cigarettes a day despite being eight months’ pregnant. She conceived aged 11 when she lost her virginity to a boy of 15 on a drunken night out with friends.
The 15-year-old has since been charged with rape by police, and is due to appear again at Edinburgh sheriff court on July 10.
Her 34-year-old mother, who gave birth to her youngest child eight months ago, said she was ‘proud’ of her daughter.’
`Some 200,000 guns the US sent to Iraqi security forces may have been smuggled to terrorists, it was feared yesterday.
The 99-tonne cache of AK47s was to have been secretly flown out from a US base in Bosnia. But the four planeloads of arms have vanished.
Orders for the deal to go ahead were given by the US Department of Defense. But the work was contracted out via a complex web of private arms traders.
And the Moldovan airline used to transport the shipment was blasted by the UN in 2003 for smuggling arms to Liberia, human rights group Amnesty has discovered.’
Images of some tiny machines.
‘I still dont know what happened in this clip. A plane does a full flip and while it is flying level suddenly loses both of its wings obviously causing it to crash.’
(2meg Windows media)
see it here »
`More than 150 people have been killed in an explosion at a petrol pipeline near Nigeria’s largest city, Lagos.
Police and Red Cross officials at the scene of the blast, on Atlas Creek Island, said many of the bodies had been burnt beyond recognition.
Reports suggest the blast may have been caused by an attempt to tap illegally into the high pressure pipeline.
Almost 2,000 people have died in a number of similar incidents in the country in recent years.’
`Lesbians’ brains react differently to sex hormones than those of heterosexual women, new research indicates.
That’s in line with an earlier study that had indicated gay men’s brain responses were different from straight men — though the difference for men was more pronounced than has now been found in women.’
`If diseases like AIDS and bird flu scare you, wait until you hear what’s next. Doctors are trying to find out what is causing a bizarre and mysterious infection that’s surfaced in South Texas.
Morgellons disease is not yet known to kill, but if you were to get it, you might wish you were dead, as the symptoms are horrible.
“These people will have like beads of sweat but it’s black, black and tarry,” said Ginger Savely, a nurse practioner in Austin who treats a majority of these patients.
Patients get lesions that never heal.
“Sometimes little black specks that come out of the lesions and sometimes little fibers,” said Stephanie Bailey, Morgellons patient.
Patients say that’s the worst symptom — strange fibers that pop out of your skin in different colors.’
`A girl in the eighth grade has been suspended from school as authorities investigate allegations that she fondled and bit the penis of a 6-year-old boy while on a school bus.
The incident occurred about 4 p.m. Tuesday on a bus returning children home from school, according to the boy’s mother, of Caseyville.
She said in an interview Thursday that she will now take her son and his 9-year-old sister to and from their school, Edgemont Elementary School.
“When you send your kid to school or put them on a school bus, you don’t expect to hear this,” the mother said. “He doesn’t want to take a bath or pull his clothes off now.”‘
Do you have an opinion on bilingualism in Canada? This woman does.
(1.7meg Windows media)
`New Zealand is not for sale, despite somebody in neighboring Australia trying to offload the nation of 4 million to the highest online bidder.
With a starting offer of just one cent, brisk bidding for the prime chunk of South Pacific real estate quickly boosted the price to 3,000 Australian dollars (US$2,330) before eBay pulled the plug on the auction this week.
“Clearly New Zealand is not for sale,” eBay Australia spokesman Daniel Feiler told the New Zealand Press Association, adding that 22 bids had been made before the company acted.’
`Ageing and unreliable office computers are making workers unhappy and more likely to claim sick leave, a new survey shows.
A poll conducted by Tickbox.net of more 2,700 European office workers from Britain, France and Germany found that workplace dissatisfaction increased significantly with the age of computer equipment.
British and French respondents said working on outdated computers was the most irritating aspect of office life.’
`Chesterton Police say a 17-year-old boy suffered a broken leg after he asked a friend to hit him with his car “for fun.”
Michael Morris of Chesterton is hospitalized in fair condition Tuesday, three days after the incident Saturday night. His friend, 18-year-old Stephen dDomonkos, told police Morris asked him to hit him with his car and that they had done it on previous occasions.
He told police Morris was “an adrenaline junkie.”‘
`A small company in Madison, WI has developed a novel way to generate hydrogen cheaply and cleanly from biomass.
In the next couple of weeks, the technology, developed by Virent Energy Systems, will be used for the first time to continuously produce electricity from a small 10-kilowatt generator at the company’s facility in Madison. The unit is fueled by corn syrup, similar to the kind used by soft drinks manufacturers, says CEO Eric Apfelbach.
The company is also about to begin work on a $1 million U.S. Navy project to build portable fuel-cell generators. The goal is to make self-contained units capable of producing their own hydrogen from a biomass-derived glycerol solution or even antifreeze.’
`Chloe who plays one of the wifes in HBO’s new show ‘Big Love’ appeared in this nude photoshoot.’
`A supermodel fell out of a coach travelling at 50mph after mistaking an exit door for a toilet door.
It happened as Tatyana Simanava was returning to her seat from the WC.
Instead of opening the door to the passenger area she pulled open the emergency exit.
The 21-year-old blonde was pitched out onto a busy road in the middle of New York.
The driver reportedly spotted her falling out and pulled over.’
‘A Philippine judge who claimed he could see into the future and admitted consulting imaginary mystic dwarfs has asked for his job back after being fired by the country’s Supreme Court.
“They should not have dismissed me for what I believed,” Florentino Floro, a trial judge in the capital’s Malabon northern suburb, told reporters after filing his appeal.
Floro was sacked last month and fined 40,000 pesos ($780) after a three-year investigation found he was incompetent, had shown bias in a case he was trying and had criticized court procedure, a ruling showed.’
follow-up to Judge’s psychic leanings too over the top.
aka How To Explode Bathtubs
(24.2meg avi)
see it here »
`The Wartsila-Sulzer RTA96-C turbocharged two-stroke diesel engine is the most powerful and most efficient prime-mover in the world today. The Aioi Works of Japan’s Diesel United, Ltd built the first engines and is where some of these pictures were taken.
It is available in 6 through 14 cylinder versions, all are inline engines. These engines were designed primarily for very large container ships. Ship owners like a single engine/single propeller design and the new generation of larger container ships needed a bigger engine to propel them.
The cylinder bore is just under 38″ and the stroke is just over 98″. Each cylinder displaces 111,143 cubic inches (1820 liters) and produces 7780 horsepower. Total displacement comes out to 1,556,002 cubic inches (25,480 liters) for the fourteen cylinder version.’
`Dance Dance Revolution. With Flamethrowers. Pointed at you.’
`A German man who unsuccessfully tried to kill himself by jumping in front of a train must pay compensation for the damage he caused, a court in the southern city of Munich ruled on Tuesday.
A spokesman for the court said the 47-year-old man leapt too late to land under the train and instead crashed through the side window of the driver’s cabin. He suffered head wounds but no other lasting physical injuries, the court said.
The driver of the metro train suffered shock and was unable to work for several weeks.’
Not in a language I can read, but the pictures speak for themselves, I suppose.
`A “cowardly” Edmonton man who “scalped” his sleeping girlfriend while using a power drill to style her hair avoided being sent to the slammer yesterday.
Shee Theng, 30, was handed a nine-month conditional sentence to be served in the community and eight months of probation on his assault with a weapon conviction.
“You’re like a shadow on the wall,” said provincial court Judge Shelagh Creagh, referring to his detailed evasiveness in a pre-sentence report and psychiatric assessment. [..]
Court heard the attachment caught in Rose’s hair and pulled out a clump, leaving her bleeding, screaming and terrified while Theng took off. Court also heard Theng knew it was a dangerous idea because he had earlier scalped himself the same way.’
`The cave had it all, everything Fred Strunk and his work crews needed to grow 100 pounds of marijuana every two months.
Row after row of white-bright grow lights were powered by “free” electricity via an illegal splice into utility lines. An indoor irrigation system was nearly an engineering marvel. A ventilation system controlled humidity, while a security system featured a bank-vault-like entrance, with security cameras placed everywhere.
And there was the cave itself, a rock fortress shielding the illegal activity.
Strunk’s pot harvests, without a doubt, replaced tobacco and vegetables as Trousdale County’s biggest cash crop, investigators said.’
follow up to Men Grew Pot Inside Cave.
`The gate at the entrance to this tiny Sicilian village has come off its hinges and swings in the wind as cats wander into homes abandoned after a series of mystery fires.
Spontaneous fires started in mid-January in the town of Canneto di Caronia, in about 20 houses. After a brief respite last month, the almost daily fires have flared up again – even though electricity to the village was cut off.
An endless flow of scientists, engineers, police and even a few self-styled “ghostbusters” have descended on the town, searching for clues to the recent spontaneous combustion of everything from fuse boxes to microwave ovens to a car.
The blazes, originally blamed on the devil, have not hurt anyone.’
`Seven RMIT staff working just metres underneath two mobile phone towers in a Melbourne CBD building have been diagnosed with brain tumours.
The cases have forced the university to evacuate the two top floors of the Tivoli building and begin immediate health and safety testing.
The seven business faculty staff work on the top two floors of the Bourke St building and have developed tumours in the past seven years.
Two of the cases are cancerous. The remaining five are benign, or non-cancerous, brain tumours.’
`Two maniacs waited in a car on a level crossing until a train smashed into it — just for the thrill.
The Vauxhall Vectra was hurled to the side of the track but miraculously the two idiots climbed out of the mangled wreckage unharmed.
They then jumped into a waiting BMW and sped off as the train driver and his passengers looked on in amazement. No one on the train was hurt.
Cops fear the mindless stunt may have been filmed to be shown off like the clips on the cult MTV show Jackass.’
`Japanese police are trying to identify cremated human remains that were mailed to the headquarters of a TV station by a viewer who was incensed at missing a cartoon.
A plastic bag containing ashes and shards of bone was delivered to TV Tokyo along with a note protesting TV Tokyo’s decision to extend live coverage of the world table-tennis championships.
The viewer wrote that he had set his video to record the popular “Inu Kami” cartoon.’
`The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.
The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren’t suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.
“It’s the largest database ever assembled in the world,” said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA’s activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency’s goal is “to create a database of every call ever made” within the nation’s borders, this person added.’
I’m continually updating the code and layout of the site at the moment, so new posts are still a bit sparse. It will probably be another few weeks before I get back to more regular postings. In the meantime, there’s now a page of random posts to keep you entertained, and I’m going through tagging posts to make navigation by category a lot easier.
So, lots of cool things happening behind the scenes. I’m sure no one but me cares, but oh well. :)
The tagging of posts will take weeks or months, because I’m slowly working through the archives when I can be bothered. All the other major changes and new functionality should be done in the next few weeks. Fun. :)
