‘An Italian woman died when she was struck in the head by a helicopter’s rotor blades following a joyride in outback Northern Territory, a report has found. [..]
A preliminary report released today said the pilot was asked by the station owner to take four adults and two children, all relatives of his from Italy, for a scenic tour of the station.
Afterwards the pilot – a station manager who had worked there for 12 years – lost control as he took off because of a gust of wind.
“The pilot reported that, just as he regained control of the aircraft, he heard and felt the main rotor blade strike something, and saw the woman fall forward,” the report said.’
‘A blind judo expert astounded a mugger by pinning him to the ground after he tried to steal his cigarettes, police said on Monday.
The assailant, a 17-year-old man of Asian origin, spotted the 33-year-old, who police identified only as Emil E., at a train station in the southwestern town of Giessen and thought he would be easy prey, police spokesman Rolf Wellershausen said.
But what the attacker did not know, the spokesman said, was that his victim was a world-class blind judo wrestler.
The 17-year-old threatened the blind man, then punched him in the face, at which point the martial artist flipped him and held him down until police arrived.’
‘if you’re expecting filth you’ll be disappointed’
YQVzZ Xta t wvmtqSFfgN WvZ‘A kilogram just isn’t what it used to be.
A 118-year-old cylinder that has been the international prototype for the metric mass, and kept tightly under lock and key outside Paris, is mysteriously losing its weight – if ever so slightly.
Physicist Richard Davis of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sevres, southwest of Paris, says the reference kilo appears to have lost 50 micrograms compared with the average of dozens of copies.
“The mystery is that they were all made of the same material, and many were made at the same time and kept under the same conditions, and yet the masses among them are slowly drifting apart,” he said.
“We don’t really have a good hypothesis for it,” Davis said in a phone interview Wednesday.’
It’s kinda cruel I think, but amusing none the less.
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‘Vickie Hatter is furious and wants someone to explain why her son was humiliated last week during football practice.
The Cincinnati mother said her 10-year-old son’s coach sent the boy home from practice Friday in his underwear.
“He walks in with his T-shirt and his underwear and his cleats,” Hatter said. “He said, ‘Mom, you’ll never believe what Coach Curt made me do.'” [..]
“‘You’re too slow for the team, you’re no good for the team,'” Aucherae said the coach told him. “He told me to take off my stuff and give it back to him, and he said, ‘While you’re at it, take off my pants.'” [..]
“He wanted a pair of pants,” said neighbor Yvonne Workman. “He was upset, and he seemed like he was nervous and he didn’t know what to do.”‘
k oicsM Q RmGCJkTYsMo m W ‘A U.S. citizen has confessed to using an axe to kill a Dutch student after failing to find a soldier to attack, his lawyer said Tuesday.
The suspect, Carlos Hartmann, 41, of Tecumseh, Mich., has confessed to the Sept. 8 killing on a train platform in the southern city of Roosendaal, defence lawyer Peter Gremmen said.
Gremmen said Hartmann wanted to punish the Netherlands for its support of the war in Iraq. [..]
“He hates soldiers, and says that the army kills people, so it would be legitimate if he were also to kill someone . . . from the American military – or from its NATO allies,” Gremmen said in a telephone interview.
When he failed to find a soldier at the Roosendaal train station, “he got such a crazy, disturbed idea that he killed a civilian,” Gremmen said.
Hartmann did not attempt to escape and was arrested shortly after the killing.’
‘Madonna and Britney Spears have been targeted as the spreaders of “Satanic culture”.
The aggressive comments were launched by spokesman and senior leader of Palestinian terror group The Popular Resistance Committees, a group based in the Gaza Strip and responsible for the increase in shootings and bombings in the region.
Muhammad Abdel-Al is quoted in new book ‘Schmoozing With Terrorists: From Hollywood to the Holy Land Jihadists Reveal their Global Plans – to a Jew!’ attacks the two pop stars, labelling them “prostitutes”.
Abdel-Al rants, “If I meet these whores I will have the honour – I repeat, I will have the honour – to be the first one to cut the heads off Madonna and Britney Spears if they will keep spreading their satanic culture against Islam.”‘
bTO ZdZoAgtESiP ‘Web search leader Google Inc. will sponsor a $30 million competition for an unmanned lunar landing, following up on the $10 million Ansari X Prize that spurred a private sector race to space.
Like the Ansari X Prize, which was claimed in 2004 by aircraft designer Burt Rutan and financier Paul Allen for a pair of flights by SpaceShipOne, the Google Lunar X Prize is open to private industry and non-government entities worldwide, organizers said on Thursday.
First prize is $20 million for the group that can land a lunar rover – an unmanned robotic probe – on the Moon, take it on a 500-metre trek and broadcast video back to Earth by 31 December 2012.’
‘According to several sources backstage at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards — and a report published late Sunday night by The Associated Press — West lost it again, this time because his performance of “Stronger” took place in the Palms’ Hugh Hefner Sky Villa and not on the main stage [..]
“Kanye was watching the closing performance [a medley featuring Justin Timberlake, Timbaland and Nelly Furtado] on a closed-circuit monitor, and he started getting upset,” a source who was backstage told MTV News. “He started asking anyone who’d listen why he wasn’t allowed to perform on the main stage. ‘Why did I perform in just a suite?’ he was saying. ‘Justin’s my boy, but even he gets to perform in both a suite and on the main stage? Something’s wrong here.’ “‘
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‘In a small district in southern Afghanistan, U.S.-backed Afghan drug forces opened fire on farmers who were blocking roads and throwing rocks to protest the destruction of their poppy fields earlier this year. Scores were injured in the firefight.
Poppy farmer
Undeterred by the violence, a group of angry farmers gathered around Masood Azizi, the Afghan official supervising the eradication. They maintained that cultivating poppy for opium is the only way they can survive. “We are hungry, thirsty, and we don’t have any money. We are in debt,” one said.
It’s a message that reverberates throughout this impoverished, war-torn country. [..]
Eradicating opium poppies has been a key pillar of U.S. policy in Afghanistan since 2004, said Doug Wankel, director of the U.S. Counter-Narcotics Task Force in Afghanistan.
Yet today, Afghanistan produces roughly 93 percent of the world’s illicit opium, according to the UNODC report, and the Taliban are making inroads in remote areas of the country thanks, in part, to proceeds from the drug trade.’
‘Israeli police say they have broken up a gang of neo-Nazis who are accused of carrying out attacks on foreigners, gay people and religious Jews.
The eight suspects, aged 16-21, are all Israeli citizens from the former Soviet Union. They were arrested a month ago, but the news only emerged on Saturday.
Police say searches of their homes yielded Nazi uniforms, portraits of Adolf Hitler, knives, guns and TNT.’
‘Consumers’ associations in Italy have asked people to refrain from buying or eating pasta for the day, in protest against recent price increases.
The groups are requesting the government intervene to reduce pasta prices.
An increase in the price of wheat in recent months has forced pasta manufacturers to pass on the cost.
Pasta is a national dish in Italy, with each Italian eating on average 28 kg (62 lb) of pasta every year.’
‘Our story begins with the sales call. It was a door-to-door salesman, and after going through everything I was satisfied with what was being offered. I made sure that everything (except one thing, and that would come back to haunt me) was written down. All the fees being waived? In writing, each listed separately. Cost? In writing. I filed away the paperwork and waited for the installation. Having read about installation horror stories (on the Consumerist), I decided to stay home and supervise the installation that Comcast was going to be doing. It’s a good thing I did.’
‘Behold! The work is now complete.
Once started, the machine opens the each page of the book and scans the content. The whole process is automatic.
The lesson of this story is that LEGO is great.’
‘A McDonald’s worker in Union City, Ga., was arrested and jailed Thursday night for putting too much salt and pepper on a police officer’s hamburger, MyFoxAtlanta reported Friday.
Kendra Bull was mixing hamburger meat when, she said, too much salt and pepper accidentally spilled into the bowl. Bull said her manager was working with her, and continued to make patties out of the meat. Bull grilled and ate one of the over-seasoned burgers for her dinner break and grilled the remaining burgers from the batch. [..]
Bull, who spent Thursday night in jail until she was released on a $1,000 signature bond Friday morning, admitted the burgers were too salty, but said she ate one from the batch and did not get sick. She also said that security cameras trained on the work area and grill will prove that the salt was spilled accidentally.
Bull’s attorney, a public defender, asked the judge to dismiss the charges, but the judge refused.’
‘Alcoholics Anonymous, the renowned 12-step program that directs problem drinkers to seek help from a higher power, says it’s not a religion and is open to nonbelievers. But it has enough religious overtones that a parolee can’t be ordered to attend its meetings as a condition of staying out of prison, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.
In fact, said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, the constitutional dividing line between church and state in such cases is so clear that a parole officer can be sued for damages for ordering a parolee to go through rehabilitation at Alcoholics Anonymous or an affiliated program for drug addicts.’
‘A Cambodian man was arrested after injecting a woman with his own blood in a bizarre scheme to win her affections, police said Wednesday. [..]
The man allegedly injected a syringe of his blood into the woman’s rib cage and waist as she walked home from school, Tan Sophal said.
The assailant fell in love with the woman when the two were classmates in 2004, Tan Sophal said. After the woman refused his advances, he came up with the scheme to inject her with his blood, he said.
“He thought that if he could not marry her, at least his blood can stay inside her body,” Tan Sophal said. “That’s why he injected her with his blood.”‘
‘An unidentified naked white man wearing a gas mask and standing outside was reported by two witnesses Thursday around 9:40 p.m. According to police, officers were called to 505 Centre St. for a report of a naked white man wearing a gas mask attempting to get into an apartment building.
A witness said that while driving on Centre Street, they saw a naked white man, approximately 30-years-old, around 6-feet-tall, weighing about 200 lbs., wearing a gas mask and standing in the common entrance of a building. The witness pulled his truck up and the man fled down an alleyway.
Another witness stated her doorbell rang and when she looked through the viewing hole of her front door, she also saw a white man with no clothes on wearing a gas mask. She told police she had no idea who the man was and did not open the door to her apartment.’
‘A karate club team have been crowned the world’s first gravy wrestling champions.
The eight teams competing for the title slopped about in a converted swimming pool filled with lukewarm gravy as part of the inaugural World Gravy-Wrestling Championships. [..]
Winning team leader Ian Marsden said: “It took great skill just to keep your feet. The gravy soon got cold and started to solidify.
“I think we got the better of the opposition because they were reduced to throwing lumpy gravy at us.”‘
‘She waited on her porch for a car made of bones to come and take her to hell.
Instead, when sheriff’s deputies arrived, she calmly went to jail, expecting the floor there to open up and deliver her to her fiery fate.
Were Jennifer Kukla’s visions, as described to police and psychiatrists, fantasies fueled by psychotic delusions? Or were they proof she knew right from wrong when she slit the throats of her two young daughters?’
‘In the last 15 years, the average bust size has increased from 34B to 36C. Whether the lift is due to breast augmentation surgeries or a side-effect of expanding waistlines is not known.
Either way, from slinky to full-coverage undergarments, bras have graced the bodies of women since the 1800s. But modern bra sizing didn’t come into fashion until 1928. [..]
Bras must support a pair of breasts that can weigh just over a half pound (0.3 kilograms) to a whopping 20 pounds (9 kilograms).’
I wonder what the caterpillar spit is for.
‘A police operation to covertly follow a Central Otago man came to an abrupt halt this week when the man found tracking devices planted in his car, ripped them out and listed them for sale on Trade Me. [..]
Williams said a cellphone sim card in one of the devices appeared to transmit messages to the mobile phone of Detective Sergeant Derek Shaw, of the Central Otago CIB.
Williams provided The Press with emails from Shaw saying: “If you have got something of ours it would be good to get it back. You can call me and I can come meet you.” [..]
Williams said he did not know why police were interested in him. He spent two years in jail “20 years ago” for selling marijuana to an undercover policeman, but had no convictions since then.
Williams said the devices were not hard to find and he described the operation as “a bumbling attempt” by “weirdos”.’
XG cBaN‘A Noble boy’s parents were pleased charges were filed over their son being killed by a police bullet intended for a snake. But the charges don’t ease the pain of their loss, they said. [..]
Officer Paul Bradley Rogers, 34, and Sgt. Robert Shawn Richardson, 29, are accused of causing the death of Austin Haley, 5, by negligently firing at a snake. A bullet ricocheted and hit the child while he was outside fishing with his grandfather, investigators said.
Rogers, an officer in training, fired the shot that killed Austin. Rogers only had been on the Noble police force about a month, District Attorney Greg Mashburn said Friday. Richardson, Rogers’ supervisor, gave the order to shoot, officials said.
Mashburn said the decision to charge the officers is one of the most difficult he’s made.
“I conclude that these officers failed to do something that a reasonably careful person would do by firing a weapon at a nonpoisonous snake that was stuck in a birdhouse without knowing what laid behind their location,” he said.’
‘A 30-year-old man is lucky to be alive after he and his wife were assaulted by up to six occupants of a Hummer vehicle as they stood admiring it in inner-Melbourne early today.
Police said the man and his 32-year-old wife were admiring a silver-coloured Hummer – a large, US-style four-wheel drive – outside Kings car park on Flinders Lane, between Spencer and King streets, about 5.30am (AEST) when they were set upon.
The man said “I love your car” before he was attacked by up to six people, with at least one brandishing a metal bar.
“The victim was severely beaten and left unconscious,” Detective Senior Constable Brett Hampson said.
He was taken to the Royal Melbourne Hospital with sever head injuries and blood loss.’
Exactly what the title says. I could write something more, but really, what is there to write?
‘This adorably cute little baby switches from really happy to bawling in an instant.’
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