`Everyone knows to keep their curtains closed, drink lots of water and wear sunscreen on a hot day.
But there are other dangers hidden in garages most people would not even think about in the heat.
An Alfredton family learned this the hard way on Tuesday when Ballarat’s maximum temperature topped 38C.
Jan Cornish said she was shocked on that night to discover a can of paint remover stored in the garage had exploded.
Unfortunately the liquid did exactly what it was made to do on two cars – stripped paint.’
`Invoking Thomas Jefferson and Mr. Hankey from the television series “South Park,” the lawyer for an ex-professor accused of leaving dog feces at a congresswoman’s office said her client’s actions qualify as protected speech under the First Amendment.
Kathleen Ensz faces a misdemeanor charge of “use of a noxious substance.” She is accused of taking dog feces from her backyard, wrapping it in a political mailer from Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, and leaving it at the Republican’s office, according to court documents.
Ensz, a Democrat, was angered by repeatedly receiving mailings from Musgrave, the documents said.’
This woman is driving through a gate, but doesn’t do a particularly good job. I bet she was surprised. 🙂
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‘Reversing itself, the Defense Department says an espionage report it produced that warned about Canadian coins with tiny radio-frequency transmitters was not true.
The Defense Security Service said it never could substantiate its own published claims about the mysterious coins. It has begun an internal review to determine how the false information was included in a 29-page report about espionage concerns.’
Follow up to: Canadian coins bugged, U.S. security agency says
`It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their "immortality". The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe.
It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs.
Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and his colleagues tested DCA on human cells cultured outside the body and found that it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells, but not healthy cells. Tumours in rats deliberately infected with human cancer also shrank drastically when they were fed DCA-laced water for several weeks.’
`New Zealand policeman, constable Jonathon “Jono” Erwood has been discharged without conviction by a judge at the New Plymouth District Court and has been allowed to keep his job after he arrived to a car crash scene drunk. [..]
When constable Erwood arrived at the double fatality July 9, 2006 crash scene on his day off he was taken aside by another police officer and breathalysed and then charged with drunk driving.
The judge who discharged him, Louis Erwood, said that constable Erwood risked his life by responding to the accident. “There was nothing personal in this for you and it reflects a commitment to your job which you should be proud of.”‘
Surprised the baby is even alive, really.
(16.4meg mpeg)
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`Rebels in eastern Congo have killed and eaten two silverback mountain gorillas, conservationists said Wednesday, warning they fear more of the endangered animals may have been slaughtered in the lawless region.
Only about 700 mountain gorillas remain in the world, 380 of them spread across a range of volcanic mountains straddling the borders of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda in Central Africa.
One dismembered gorilla corpse was found Tuesday in a pit latrine in Congo’s Virunga National Park, a few hundred yards from a park patrol post that was abandoned because of rebel attacks, according to the London-based Africa Conservation Fund. Another was killed in the same area on Jan. 5, said the group, which based its report on conservationists in the field.’
This looks like fun. Terrifying fun. 🙂
(1.9meg Windows media)
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`Six workers in Honduras were crushed to death by sacks of coffee beans unleashed when a wall in a warehouse gave way, rescue officials said.
The men were young seasonal workers at a coffee farm in Villanueva in the north of the Central American nation.
Officials said the wall collapse caused an overhead storeroom to come down, burying the men under around 10 tons of coffee beans.’
`A determined 9-year-old runaway who managed to board flights from Seattle to Texas in efforts to rejoin his grandfather in Dallas was seeking a father figure, his mother said.
Sakinah Booker said her son dislikes his new neighborhood, is afraid of a sex offender who lives nearby and has been impatient with her efforts to move back to Dallas.
She said her son, Semaj Booker, misses having a father.
“He needs a male role model and he’s really seeking it,” she said Thursday morning in a report aired on CNN. [..]
Meanwhile, authorities scrambled to determine how Semaj, an 80-pound, 4-foot-9 fourth grader, managed to slip through airline and airport security.’
Kinda strange and kinda cool at the same time.
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`Venezuela’s National Assembly has given initial approval to a bill granting President Hugo Chavez the power to rule by decree for 18 months.
Mr Chavez said he wants to approve “revolutionary laws” to enact sweeping political, economic and social changes.
He has said he wants to nationalise key sectors of the economy and scrap limits on the terms a president can serve.’
`North Dakota’s Legislature is encouraging disrespect for the law by making it illegal for a man and woman to live together without being married, a legislator says.
If North Dakota prosecutors began enforcing the anti-cohabitation law, which provides a 30-day jail term and a $1,000 fine, the state would need a “$10 billion prison,” Sen. Tracy Potter, D-Bismarck, said Wednesday.
“We’re saying that we have optional laws, laws that we don’t really mean,” Potter said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the repeal measure. “We shouldn’t have laws like that.”‘
It’s not the best idea to take your dog to a funeral, but you’ve still gotta be pretty unlucky to have something like this happen. 🙂
(866kB Windows media)
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`For the month of November, I’m only spending $30 on food. The only exception will be things that are freely available to the average person (salt taken from restaurants, sauce packets from Taco Bell, free coffee from an office). Buying in advance is fine, but at the end of the month, it all has to add up to $30 or less.’
And there’s a daily blog for the month.
`With studies showing that U.S. jails can’t enforce bans on sex between inmates, lawmakers and AIDS-prevention advocates say it’s time to start distributing condoms in Washington prisons.
Legislators are pushing a bill calling for a five-year plan to reduce the number of sexually transmitted infections among inmates.
Though the bill does not specify condom distribution, its prime sponsor, Rep. Jeannie Darneille, D-Tacoma, said she hoped it would rekindle stalled discussions about providing inmates with protection. “We have to start somewhere,” she said.’
Attaching yourself to the coil from a TV cathode tube probably isn’t the safest thing in the world. Looks cool though. 🙂
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`Charles Littleton, 22, was defiant, even after being Tasered by police, when he resisted efforts to remove him from a Saginaw, Mich., City Council meeting. He said he had to stand up for his right to wear his Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap, despite a rule banning hats for men inside. “It means more than just a hat,” he said. “It’s like my crown. It’s like asking a king to remove his crown.”’
`A dentist who pulled out an elderly woman’s teeth without anaesthetic “to teach her a lesson” has been thrown out of the profession.
David Quelch left the 87-year-old with blood pouring from her mouth after she made a complaint about previous treatment at his hands, a discipline hearing was told yesterday. [..]
“I told him I had pain and he told me he was going to extract my teeth. I objected, I didn’t think it was necessary. He ignored my remarks and pulled out the tooth. I was bleeding profusely.”
She added: “I said I didn’t want my tooth removed, he pushed me back, pushing me hard across my chest and extracted the second tooth. All I wanted was a filling.”‘
This waterfall works kinda like a bubblejet printer. It drops water in a precisely controlled fashion that allows them to spell words and draw pictures in space.
It’s pretty cool. 🙂
(8.5meg Flash video)
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`A woman who disappeared in the jungles of northeastern Cambodia as a child has apparently been found after living in the wild for 19 years, police said Thursday.
The woman — believed to be Rochom P’ngieng, now 27 years old — cannot speak any intelligible language, so details of her saga have been difficult to confirm.
“She is like half-human and half-animal,” said Mao San, police chief of Oyadao district in Rattanakiri province. “She’s weird. She sleeps during the day and stays up at night.”‘
`Sex offenders could be forced to have hormone injections under radical plans to tackle crime being considered by Downing Street.
Strategists think the injections – effectively the “chemical castration” of sexual predators to suppress their urges – would help prevent attacks.
The controversial proposal is one of a number being looked at by Tony Blair’s strategy unit as part of the Prime Minister’s policy review.
Other ideas include installing microchips in the mentally ill to monitor their behaviour and sending text messages to parents to warn them a paedophile is at large in their area.’
‘Put a thing of firecrackers in a tin and toss them at your mother lounging on the couch….See what happens.’
(3.0meg Windows media)
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`The owner of a dog that attacked two men, biting one on the penis, has been jailed for seven months.
Brisbane District Court was told today that Anthony Scott Huttley, then 21, suffered four deep cuts to his penis after Shaun Anthony Bell, 40, deliberately ordered Leeroy, his bulldog mastiff-cross, to “get him”.
Mr Huttley, who was also mauled on other parts of his body, eventually recovered from the incident but only after the “extreme discomfort” of wearing a catheter and having surgery and antibiotics.’
`Gordon Brown has spoken out over the ‘offensive’ bullying of Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty on Big Brother during his trip to India following an official complaint from the country’s junior foreign minister and protesters took to the streets.
Security has stepped up around TV’s Celebrity Big Brother house after threats were made against the housemates at the centre of a bitter race storm. [..]
The controversy has now sparked comment from Tony Blair who has not seen the programme but highlighted the Government’s condemnation of racism.’
First step in making squirrel melts is shooting a squirrel, obviously.
Looks delicious. 🙂
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‘The US Defence Department has drafted a manual for trying detainees at the Guantanamo Bay jail that would allow terror suspects to be imprisoned, convicted and executed on the basis of hearsay evidence or coerced testimony. [..]
According to a copy of the manual obtained by The Associated Press, a terror suspect’s defence lawyer cannot reveal classified evidence in their defence until the government has had a chance to review it.’
Also – Hicks faces flawed system:
`Australian terrorist suspect David Hicks faces trial by a fundamentally flawed and unfair system, the Law Council of Australia says.’
`This is a diary of my tonsils – charting their infection, growth and removal. I don’t see any point in writing a lot about it, as I’m sure the pictures say enough. It goes without saying that I was on a lot of varying medication during this period.
WARNING – This picture diary is not for the faint hearted, and probably NSFW’
‘This is a first person perspective of a couple guys riding down one a very cool off road track they built. This must of taken months to build.’
(7.5meg Windows media)
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