board77

Iavas_Saar wrote:

This struck me as a pretty unusual headline:

Cheney Accidentally Shoots Fellow Hunter

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The Cape Times (Cape Town)

"I have promised to keep his identity confidential,' said Jack Maxim, a spokeswoman for the Sandton Sun Hotel, Johannesburg, "but I can confirm that he is no longer in our employment".

"We asked him to clean the lifts and he spent four days on the job. When I asked him why, he replied: 'Well, there are forty of them, two on each floor, and sometimes some of them aren't there'. Eventually, we realised that he thought each floor had a different lift, and he'd cleaned the same two twelve times. "We had to let him go. It seemed best all round. I understand he is now working for GE Lighting."

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The Star (Johannesburg)

"The situation is absolutely under control," Transport Minister Ephraem Magagula told the Swaziland parliament in Mbabane. "Our nation's merchant navy is perfectly safe. We just don't know where it is, that's all."

Replying to an MP's question, Minister Magagula admitted that the landlocked country had completely lost track of its only ship, the Swazimar: "We believe it is in a sea somewhere. At one time, we sent a team of men to look for it, but there was a problem with drink and they failed to find it, and so, technically, yes, we've lost it a bit. But I categorically reject all suggestions of incompetence on the part of this government. The Swazimar is a big ship painted in the sort of nice bright colours you can see at night. Mark my words, it will turn up. The right honourable gentleman opposite is a very naughty man, and he will laugh on the other side of his face when my ship comes in."

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The Standard (Kenya)

What is all the fuss about?" Weseka Sambu asked a hastily convened news conference at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.

"A technical hitch like this could have happened anywhere in the world. You people are not patriots. You just want to cause trouble." Sambu, a spokesman for Kenya Airways, was speaking after the cancellation of a through flight from Kisumu, via Jomo Kenyatta, to Berlin:

"The forty-two passengers had boarded the plane ready for take-off, when the pilot noticed one of the tyres was flat. Kenya Airways did not possess a spare tyre, and unfortunately the airport nitrogen canister was empty. A passenger suggested taking the tyre to a petrol station for inflation, but unluckily the jack had gone missing so we couldn't get the wheel off. Our engineers tried heroically to reinflate the tyre with a bicycle pump, but had no luck, and the pilot even blew into the valve with his mouth, but he passed out.

"When I announced that the flight had to be abandoned, one of the passengers, Mr Mutu, suddenly struck me about the face with a life-jacket whistle and said we were a national disgrace. I told him he was being ridiculous, and that there was to be another flight in a fortnight. And, in the meantime, he would be able to enjoy the scenery around Kisumu, albeit at his own expense."

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From a Zimbabwean newspaper

While transporting mental patients from Harare to Bulawayo, the bus driver stopped at a roadside shebeen (beerhall) for a few beers. When he got back to his vehicle, he found it empty, with the 20 patients nowhere to be seen. Realizing the trouble he was in if the truth were uncovered, he halted his bus at the next bus stop and offered lifts to those in the queue. Letting 20 people board, he then shut the doors and drove straight to the Bulawayo mental hospital, where he hastily handed over his 'charges', warning the nurses that they were particularly excitable.

Staff removed the furious passengers; it was three days later that suspicions were roused by the consistency of stories from the 20. As for the real patients: nothing more has been heard of them and they have apparently blended comfortably back into Zimbabwean society.

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Feb. 11, 2006, 1:23AM
Woman arrested after human head found in luggage

Associated Press

FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. - Airport screeners found a human head with teeth, hair and skin in the luggage of a woman who said she intended to ward off evil spirits with it, authorities said Friday.

Myrlene Severe, 30, a Haitian-born permanent U.S. resident, was arrested and charged Friday with smuggling a human head into the U.S. without proper documentation.

Customs and Border Protection officials found the head Thursday, after Severe arrived at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on a lynx International Airlines flight from Haiti, said a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Miami.

Severe faces a maximum of 15 years in prison if convicted of all charges, prosecutors said.

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Myrlene Severe, 30, a Haitian-born permanent U.S. resident, was arrested and charged Friday with smuggling a human head into the U.S. without proper documentation.

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From the Churchdown Parish Magazine:

"Would the Congregation please note that the bowl at the back of the Church, labelled "For The Sick", is for monetary donations only.'

From The Guardian concerning a sign seen in a Police canteen in
Christchurch, New Zealand:

'Will the person who took a slice of cake from the Commissioner's Office return it immediately. It is needed as evidence in a poisoning case.'

From The Times :

'A young girl, who was blown out to sea on a set of inflatable teeth, was rescued by a man on an inflatable lobster. A coast-guard spokesman commented, "This sort of thing is all too common these days."'

From The Gloucester Citizen:

'A sex line caller complained to Trading Standards. After dialling an 0891 number from an advertisement entitled "Hear Me Moan" the caller was played a tape of a woman nagging her husband for failing to do jobs around the house. Consumer Watchdogs in Dorset refused to look into the complaint, saying, "He got what he deserved."'

From The Barnsley Chronicle:

'Police arrived quickly, to find Mr Melchett hanging by his fingertips from the back wall. He had run out of the house when the owner, Paul Finch, returned home unexpectedly, and, spotting an intruder in the garden, had dialled 999. What Mr Finch did not know was that Mr Melchett had been visiting Mrs Finch and, hearing the front door open, had climbed out of the rear window. But the back wall was 8 feet high and Mr Melchett had been unable to get his leg over.'

From The Daily Telegraph in a piece headed "Brussels Pays 200,000 Pounds to Save Prostitutes":

"... the money will not be going directly into the prostitutes' pocket, but will be used to encourage them to lead a better life. We will be training them for new positions in hotels."

From The Derby Abbey Community News:

"We apologise for the error in the last edition, in which we stated that 'Mr Fred Nicolme is a Defective in the Police Force'. This was a typographical error. We meant of course that Mr Nicolme is a Detective in the Police Farce."

From The Guardian:

"After being charged 20 pounds for a 10 pounds overdraft, 30 year old Michael Howard of Leeds changed his name by deed poll to "Yorkshire Bank Plc are Fascist Bastards". The Bank has now asked him to close his account, and Mr Bastards has asked them to repay the 69p balance by cheque, made out in his new name."
From The Manchester Evening News:

"Police called to arrest a naked man on the platform at Piccadilly Station released their suspect after he produced a valid rail ticket."

From the New York Times:

"Bosses of a publishing firm are trying to work out why no one noticed that one of their employees had been sitting dead at his desk for FIVE DAYS before anyone asked if he was feeling okay. George Turklebaum, 51, who had been employed as a proof-reader at a New York firm for 30 years, had a heart attack in the open-plan office he shared with 23 other workers. He quietly passed away on Monday, but nobody noticed until Saturday morning when an office cleaner asked why he was still working during the weekend. His boss Elliot Wachiaski said: "George was always the first guy in each morning and the last to leave at night, so no one found it unusual that he was in the same position all that time and didn't say anything. He was always absorbed in his work and kept much to himself." A post mortem examination revealed that he had been dead for five days after suffering a coronary. Ironically, George was proofreading manuscripts of medical textbooks when he died. You may want to give your co-workers a nudge occasionally."

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Wednesday, February 15, 2006
WELLINGTON, New Zealand - A misbehaving man may get a second chance at romance after showing his ex-girlfriend that he knows he was a rat.

The man sent his ex a plastic toy rodent with a real red rose in its mouth on Valentine's Day, the Dominion Post reported Wednesday.

A courier delivered the rodent-and-rose bouquet in a plain white box without a note, a florist said.

The man, who did not want to be named, had acknowledged "being a naughty boy" during his relationship with the woman and wanted to surprise her, said Jacque Holbrook, the owner of Juliette Florist.

The woman laughed when she opened the box and realized who sent it, Holbrook said.

"She said it tickled her fancy so much that she might give him a second chance," she was quoted as saying. "It could have backfired ... but she liked it."

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Friday, February 17, 2006
SPOKANE, Wash. - Law enforcement officers harvested a dubious record last year - enough marijuana plants to rank the illegal weed as Washington state's No. 8 agricultural commodity, edging out sweet cherries in value.

The 135,323 marijuana plants seized in 2005 were estimated to be worth $270 million - a record amount that places the crop among the state's top 10 agricultural commodities, based on the most recent statistics available.

"We're struck by the amount of work they put into it," said Rich Wiley, who heads the Washington State Patrol narcotics program. "It's very labor intensive. They often run individual drip lines to each plant, and are out there fertilizing them."

The net results have a tremendous payoff to illegal growers, said Wiley, who coordinates pot busts with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and local law enforcement agencies. A single plant can produce as much as a pound of processed marijuana, worth an estimated $2,000, he said.

The estimated $270 million value of the plants seized in 2005 ranked just above sweet cherries, which were valued at $242 million in 2004, and just below the $329 million the state's nurseries and greenhouses produced. Apples are the state's No. 1 agricultural commodity, bringing $962.5 million in 2004.

This is the seventh year in a row that record numbers of marijuana plants have been seized and destroyed statewide, the State Patrol said. The state's known pot harvest, based on seizures, went from 66,521 plants in 2003 to 132,941 in 2004, then to 135,323 last year.

Most of the growing operations were in eastern Washington, principally outdoors on federal or state land in remote locations near a source of water, the State Patrol said.

In recent years, marijuana crops have been larger and more sophisticated than in the past, law enforcement spokesmen said.

Douglas County sheriff's Chief Criminal Deputy Robbin Wagg said while some "mom and pop" crops of 500 or fewer plants are still being found, most are larger and more sophisticated, with as many as 10,000 plants being irrigated and tended.

Marijuana eradication efforts have been hampered by cutbacks in Air National Guard budgets and personnel have been assigned to tasks related to the Iraq war, Wagg said. National Guard helicopters are the most productive way to spot marijuana patches in the county's remote fields and draws, he said.

"We used to get three or four days of flying time. Now, it's one to 1 1/2 days," he said. "They do a great job for us."

Wiley said last year, three National Guard helicopters and three provided by the DEA flew for a month during the marijuana harvest season in late summer, before they were assigned to Hurricane Katrina duties. About 80 percent of the finds are made from the air, he said.

Facing their own budget restrictions, law enforcement agencies in north-central Washington estimate they find perhaps half of the pot being grown illegally.

"We get half if we're lucky and good," Wagg said.

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"We get half if we're lucky and good," Wagg said.

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Napoleon's letter of despair to Josephine

John Follain
February 20, 2006

A NEWLY discovered letter from an anguished young Napoleon in which he both praises and attacks his wife Josephine shortly after their marriage, accusing her of infidelity and of tearing his heart apart "with a thousand knives", is to be auctioned next month.

Dated June 8, 1796, the letter was sent from Milan to Paris at the beginning of Napoleon's Italian campaign. It was found by a Moscow woman who approached the Russian national history museum last year. She said her father had brought it to Moscow from Europe after World WarII.

The two-page letter begins with Napoleon reproaching his wife -- whom he had married on March 9 -- for not joining him in Milan despite repeated appeals and for not writing to him. "My soul had been ready for joy but now it is filled with pain," Napoleon writes.

"It seems to me that you have made your choice and you know who to turn to to replace me ... I am not using the word treachery because you have never loved."

Josephine's love for him, Napoleon writes, had been nothing more than a whim whereas his soul had been dreaming of her even before she was born.

He has adored everything in her -- "including the escapades that took place 15 days before our wedding", he notes archly.

But then he reproaches her again: "And you, you haven't held my portrait in your hand for six months and that has not gone unnoticed by me."

Later he writes: "Cruel. Why have you forced me to believe in a feeling you did not have?"

Napoleon concludes by wishing Josephine farewell, telling her to stay in Paris and not to write to him any more.

"A thousand knives are tearing my heart apart, do not sink them any deeper. Goodbye my happiness, you have been everything to me that existed on earth," the letter ends.

Experts consulted by the state history museum estimated its value at $33,800. The museum offered to buy the letter for that amount, but the owner turned to an auction house which will sell it in Moscow on March 4, with bids starting at $67,000.

Vladimir Voronkov, the expert handling the sale, said the letter was one of the first examples of trouble brewing between the newlyweds.

"Napoleon wants Josephine to come to him in Milan and he doesn't understand why she doesn't obey," he said.

A month before the letter was written, Josephine began an affair with Hippolyte Charles, a soldier. Napoleon divorced her 13 years later.

The Sunday Times

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Chip litterbug faces double fine

"Chip after chip" was tossed from the car by Mathew Bruer
An Essex man who threw chips out of his car window has received fines for littering from two councils because they fell across both districts.
Mathew Buer, 21, of Clacton, was fined £50 by Colchester Borough Council after he was spotted littering on the A133.

Mr Buer had paid the fine and thought the matter was settled until a second demand for payment was posted to him from neighbouring Tendring District.

A council employee who was driving behind him notified both authorities.

Chip after chip

Mike Page, a spokesman for Tendring District Council, said on Wednesday that one of its employees had been driving behind Mr Buer and had reported him after taking offence at seeing him throwing the chips.

"It wasn't just a few chips - this was chip after chip and the wrapping as well," he said.

"It covered a fair distance and the employee who was following him obviously took exception and notified both authorities."

Mr Buer was unavailable for comment.

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The Colons ended up with some pretty explosive toilet bowl problems.

After a sewer line blew up inside the family's Charlotte, N.C., home — damaging almost everything inside — Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities (CMUD) said it's not responsible for mopping up the mess, according to WCNC-TV News.

The utility and local mom Marilyn Colon are having a spat over who should clean up the smelly mess.

Colon's neighbors poured grease down the drain, which built up over time and led to the bathroom blast, CMUD said.

"We heard a thump," Colon told WCNC-TV.

Her toilet then suddenly blew up.

"Feces, urine, oil ... it went all through the house," Colon told WCNC-TV.

"You can see where the pressure from the water lifted the toilet bowl," Colon explained to the network.

She described the horrible odor caused by the bidet blast.

"You couldn't breathe, your eyes would tear," she told WCNC-TV, adding that the explosion destroyed almost everything in her house.

"I lost everything," Colon said.

WCNC-TV posted pics of the exploding toilet on their Web site.

The smelly situation turned into a row when Colon and her landlord phoned CMUD for aid.

The utility said it doesn't legally have to offer cleaning help but they do anyway. CMUD called their insurance adjustor and a cleaning company arrived and a restoration company promised to fix the floors.

Colon said she and her landlord won't sign on to a contract CMUD gave them to install a valve to protect again a second restroom eruption.

Colon and her 6-year-old daughter stayed at a neighbor's house trying to plan where to go next as crews swabbed the line last Monday.

"My home is contaminated," she told WCNC-TV.

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Family Walks on All Fours

Family walks on all fours
Sam Lister
March 08, 2006

FIVE brothers and sisters who can walk naturally only on all fours are being hailed as a unique insight into human evolution after being found in a remote corner of rural Turkey.

Scientists believe the family may provide information on how man evolved from afour-legged hominid to develop the ability to walk on two feet more than three million years ago.

A genetic abnormality that may prevent the siblings, aged from 18 to 34, from walking upright, has been identified.

The discovery of the Kurdish family in southern Turkey last July has triggered a fierce debate.

Two daughters and a son have only ever walked on two palms and two feet, with their legs extended, while another daughter and son occasionally manage a form of two-footed walking.

The five can stand up, but only for a short time, with both knees and head flexed.

Some researchers claim that genetic faults have caused the siblings to regress in a form of "backward evolution".

Other scientists argue more strongly that their genes have triggered brain damage that has allowed them to develop the unique form of movement.

But all agree that the family's walk, described as a "bear crawl", may offer invaluable information on how our apelike ancestors moved.

Rather than walking on their knuckles like gorillas and chimpanzees, the family are "wrist walkers", using their palms like heels with their fingers angled up from the ground.

Scientists believe this may be the way hominids moved, allowing them to protect their fingers for the more delicate and dextrous manoeuvres so critical in the evolution of man.

Nicholas Humphrey, evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, who has visited the family, said the siblings appeared to have reverted to an instinctive form of behaviour encoded deep in the brain, but abandoned in the course of evolution.

"It has produced an extraordinary window on our past," he said. "It is physically possible, which no one would have guessed from the (modern) human skeleton."

Professor Humphrey, who has been contributing to a BBC program, The Family that Walks on All Fours, to be broadcast on March 17, said that weeks of study, and factors such as the shape of their hands and the callouses on them, showed this was a long-term pattern of behaviour and not a hoax.

The siblings, who live with their parents and 13 other brothers and sisters, are mentally retarded as a result of a form of cerebellar ataxia - an underdevelopment of the brain similar to that in cystic fibrosis.

Their mother and father, who are themselves closely related, are believed to have passed down a unique combination of genes resulting in the behaviour.

Professor Humphrey said cultural influences in their upbringing might have played a crucial role, with parental tolerance allowing the children to keep to quadrupedal walking.

But others believe the cause is more purely genetic.

Uner Tan, a professor of physiology at Cukurova University in Adana, Turkey, who first brought the family to the attention of scientists, argues that the gene mutations have made them regress to a "missing link" primate state.

Researchers said that while the women affected - Safiye, 34, Senem, 22, and Amosh, 18 - tended to spend their time sitting outside the family's very basic rural home, one brother, Huseyin, 28, went into the local village on all fours, where he could engage in the most basic interactions.

Jemima Harrison, of Passionate Productions, which produced the documentary, said the family's identity and location were not being disclosed.

"They walk like animals and that's very disturbing at first," she said. "But we were also very moved by this family's tremendous warmth and humanity."

The Times

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