‘Mellon Park in Point Breeze is meant to be an oasis from the stresses of city life, but when two rival ice cream vendors met there recently, it was anything but peaceful and calm. [..]
The woman told investigators Didiano started screaming and cursing at her in front of children, saying she was hurting his business.
Then, she said, he went back to his truck and pulled out a knife and threatened her before slashing her truck’s tires.
Didiano has been accused of a meltdown before. A couple of years ago, he was in a scuffle with a 13-year-old boy. At the time, Didiano told police the boy cursed at him and his prices.
The boy claimed Didiano wouldn’t sell him ice cream because he said he was fat.’
‘A seagull has turned shoplifter by wandering into a shop and helping itself to crisps.
The bird walks into the RS McColl newsagents in Aberdeen when the door is open and makes off with cheese Doritos.
The seagull, nicknamed Sam, has now become so popular that locals have started paying for his crisps.
Shop assistant Sriaram Nagarajan said: “Everyone is amazed by the seagull. For some reason he only takes that one particular kind of crisps.”
The bird first swooped in Aberdeen’s Castlegate earlier this month and made off with the 55p crisps, and is now a regular.
Once outside, the crisps are ripped open and the seagull is joined by other birds.’
‘Traffic police in Switzerland have been handing out sweet rewards during a 24-hour “thank you” to safe drivers.
Motorists in the western region of Fribourg can expect a traditional gift of Swiss chocolate – but only if they pass roadside checks.
The aim is to reward good drivers, many of whom may have been pulled over more than once during a six-month campaign in the wake of a number of accidents.
The 100g chocolate bars are embossed with the police force coat of arms.’
‘Shoppers often choose meat out of the grocery case based on how fresh it looks, but meatpackers have started packaging fresh meat in a “modified atmosphere” that masks telltale discoloration and decomposition of days-old meat. The process involves pumping oxygen out of and carbon monoxide into an airtight container. The deception has occasioned numerous protests from consumer groups.
A U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulation specifically bans using carbon monoxide for packaging fresh meat. But meatpacking companies won exemptions from the rule when they petitioned the FDA in 2001, 2004, and 2005 to declare the gas itself “generally recognized as safe,” and the practice continues to spread. Democratic members of Congress pressed FDA Commissioner Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach last year to establish whether masking “the degradation of meat” is a “danger to public health,” but the agency stonewalled. [..]’
‘A mayor in eastern Germany has filed charges against workers at his local zoo for shooting animals and selling them as meat.
A spokeswoman for the mayor’s office said deer were among the animals killed and sold by workers at Erfurt Zoo without permission over a number of years. [..]
“We are worried this is only the tip of the iceberg,” said Wolfgang Apel, president of the League, who also said the case raised serious questions about the zoo’s management.
Die Zeit newspaper quoted an anonymous zoo employee as saying the number of animals had been declining and: “It is high time something is done about it.”‘
‘A TV report earlier this month that purportedly showed a Beijing seller using softened chopped cardboard as the main ingredient in steamed buns has been dismissed as false news.
The Beijing municipal government said last night that investigations had found an employee surnamed Zi with Beijing Television fabricated and directed the sensational program for higher audience ratings. Zi is being held under criminal custody. [..]
The report said 60 percent of the bun’s ingredients were chopped cardboard that had been soaked in caustic soda. Pork flavor and fatty meat were added to the cardboard, it claimed. [..]
However, the government announcement said that Zi had provided all the cardboard and asked the vendor to soak it. “It’s all cheating,” it said.’
Followup to Chinese food ‘made from cardboard’.
‘A mother who planned to eat her placenta will have it returned to her by a hospital following a court order.
Sunrise Hospital and Medical Centre had refused to give Ms Swanson her placenta following the caesarian birth of her daughter because it was classified as contaminated biohazardous waste, Associated Press reported.
Ms Swanson initially wanted to have her placenta dried, ground into a power and packed into capsules she believes the theory that placental hormones can help control postnatal depression.
Instead of eating it, she now plans to store and eventually bury it.
“I hope this brings about a better awareness about the benefits of placenta,” Ms Swanon said. ‘
‘A 55-year-old Port Orange woman who said she killed her neighbors because their “green mothball cookies” made her sick was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity, according to a judge. [..]
A short time after the shooting, Anderson was taken into custody and charged with first-degree murder.
During questioning, Anderson told police, “I didn’t see any blood or bullet holes in their clothing. …They are over there watching TV aren’t they? I was shooting blanks.”
Anderson also said, “They make me cookies with green mothballs in them and I get sick.’
‘Live rats are being trucked from central China, suffering a plague of a reported two billion rodents displaced by a flooded lake, to the south of the of country to end up in restaurant dishes, Chinese media reported.
“Recently there have been a lot of rats … Guangzhou people are rich and like to eat exotic things, so business is very good,” the China News Service quoted a vendor as saying, referring to the capital of Guangdong province.
Some vendors had asked people from a village in Hunan province, near Dongting Lake, to sell them live rats, the Beijing News said today.
“The buyers offered 6 yuan for a kilo, but as to where they will sell the rats, they would not say,” the newspaper quoted a local resident as saying, adding that villagers had to catch the rats live.’
‘Volcanic activity on the ‘bald mountain’ towering over St Pierre, Martinique, was usually so inconsequential that no one took seriously the fresh steaming vent-holes and earth tremors during April, 1902. By early May, however, ash began to rain down continuously, and the nauseating stench of sulphur filled the air. Their homes on the mountainside made uninhabitable, more than 100 fer-de-lance snakes slithered down and invaded the mulatto quarter of St Pierre. The 6-ft long serpents killed 50 people and innumerable animals before they were finally destroyed by the town’s giant street cats. But the annihilation had only begun. On May 5, a landslide of boiling mud spilled into the sea, followed by a tsunami that killed hundreds and, three days later, May 8, Mt Pelee finally exploded, sending a murderous avalanche of white-hot lava straight toward the town. Within three minutes St Pierre was completely obliterated. Of its 30,000 population, there were only two survivors.’
‘A couple who authorities say were so obsessed with the Internet and video games that they left their babies starving and suffering other health problems have pleaded guilty to child neglect.
The children of Michael and Iana Straw, a boy age 22 months and a girl age 11 months, were severely malnourished and near death last month when doctors saw them after social workers took them to a hospital, authorities said. Both children are doing well and gaining weight in foster care, prosecutor Kelli Ann Viloria told the Reno Gazette-Journal. [..]
Viloria said the Reno couple were too distracted by online video games, mainly the fantasy role-playing “Dungeons & Dragons” series, to give their children proper care.
“They had food; they just chose not to give it to their kids because they were too busy playing video games,” Viloria told the Reno Gazette-Journal.’
‘A 24-year-old Texas mother is in jail after she treated her 2-year-old son’s head injury with a Popsicle instead of calling 9-1-1.
Ebony Thorne’s son Joshua later died of the injury.
Arlington police said the boy fell eight feet down a U-shaped stairwell in Thorne’s apartment Wednesday morning. Investigators said instead of calling for an ambulance, Thorne placed a Popsicle on her son’s head and put him to bed.
When the boy’s father arrived later, he found Joshua unresponsive. Police said he called Thorne’s mother, who drove to the apartment from Fort Worth and called 911.’
‘Police are investigating a city councilwoman and her husband are under investigation for performing an exorcism on their 18 year old daughter.
Police have recommended the State Attorney’s Office file charges of battery and false imprisonment against Edgewater city councilwoman Debra Rogers and her husband, Daniel Rogers.
Investigators said the couple admitted they tried to exorcise the demons out of their daughter by pouring olive oil on her while they held her hands behind her back on June 27. [..]
Detective Brady said police believe this wasn’t the first time this happened. “This is bizarre, but this apparently was a normal occurrence.”
This time police found the teen’s clothes torn off in the struggle and she had bruises on her arm and knees.’
‘This gum has no flavor. It is as pointless as life itself. As unsatisfying as your empty shell of an existence. Like everything else on this wretched planet, it is a dead end. A black hole. A bottomless pit of missed opportunity and shattered dreams.
If you agree with any of the above statements, then Nihilist gum is for you. (If you agree with ALL of the statements, then stop reading this page and seek professional help immediately.)’
‘[..] I had recently read a few articles on submersion cooling, where you take your computer and dump it into a tub of non-electrically-conductive oil. It seemed to work really well, and was cheap. So I saw it as a type of poor man’s water-cooling.
I bought a large aluminium oven tray and 9 litres of canola oil.’
‘Chopped cardboard, softened with an industrial chemical and flavored with fatty pork and powdered seasoning, is a main ingredient in batches of steamed buns sold in one Beijing neighborhood, state television said.
The report, aired late Wednesday on China Central Television, highlights the country’s problems with food safety despite government efforts to improve the situation.
Countless small, often illegally run operations exist across China and make money cutting corners by using inexpensive ingredients or unsavory substitutes. They are almost impossible to regulate.’
‘Whats more disgusting and shocking than a dead decaying bird in your favorite morning cereal??’
(4.0meg Flash video)
see it here »
‘A father took his life in a courtroom moments after being found guilty of assaulting his baby daughter.
Ratnasabapathy Anandakumar, 40, smuggled poison in a Coca-Cola bottle into the dock in his bag, drinking it after being convicted of brutally attacking his daughter when she was three months old.
As judge, lawyers and jurors looked on, he drank the liquid before a security guard could intervene.
He died later in hospital. It is thought to be the first time a suspect has apparently committed suicide in court.’
‘People living in communities surrounding a large shallow lake have been overrun by field mice after floodwaters drove the rodents out of islands on the lake, state media reported Monday.
The mouse invasion began on June 23 when the Yangtze River flooded, raising the water level in central China’s Dongting Lake and submerging mouse holes on lake islands, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Now, an estimated 2 billion mice are ravaging crops in 22 counties around the lake, and authorities were rushing to construct walls and ditches to keep the rodents out. Residents have killed more than 2.3 million field mice — or 90 tons of the rodents, Xinhua said.’
‘I have always loved to cook. I remember being in the kitchen with my grandmother when I was young and begging to do anything I could to help make dinner. I purchased an Italian restaurant in Three Rivers, Michigan in 1999 in hopes of getting the opportunity to bring in some my own recipes. However, the restaurant was so popular before I purchased it, that I was afraid of making any great changes to the menu. We basically continued using the previous owners recipes. So I will express my cooking creativity here on the internet, where there is no danger of going out of business.
I have also always loved beer. [..]’
‘The delivery man told officers he was taking pizza and sodas to an apartment in the area about 8:30 p.m. when two men approached him and demanded the food and beverages. As one of the men grabbed them, the delivery man felt a shock and pain in his back that officers later determined was from a Taser, according to a police statement recounting the episode.
The delivery man was not seriously injured, according to the statement.’
‘Continued leaps in agricultural technology ensured more production per acre. The result was likewise predictable: the same old food surpluses and low prices. My late parents, who owned the farm I now live on in central California, used to sigh that the planet was reaching 6 billion mouths and so things someday “would have to turn around for farmers.”
Now they apparently have. Food prices are climbing at rates approaching 10 percent per year. But why the sudden change?
There have been a number of relatively recent radical changes in the United States and the world that, taken together, provide the answer [..]’
‘Police detained a man in eastern Belgium after a dinner guest found the bodies of the host’s wife and stepson in a freezer, authorities said Thursday.
The female guest opened the freezer while helping to clear up after a dinner with a group of friends Tuesday at the man’s home in the city of Verviers, 78 miles east of Brussels, said Christine Wilwerth of the city prosecutor’s office.
“It was a lady who at the end of the meal at a friend’s house, and after washing the dishes … decided to take the leftovers of the meal down to the basement to store in the deep freeze,” Wilwerth said. “Once she opened the deep freeze, she discovered the bodies.”‘
‘Authorities tracked down a 4-year-old girl who called 911 nearly 300 times last month by offering to deliver McDonald’s to her suburban Chicago apartment.
Unbeknownst to her mother, the girl used a deactivated cell phone to call dispatchers 287 times in June–sometimes as often as 20 times a shift.
Dispatchers heard the child’s voice but could only track the phone’s signal to the apartment complex.
So authorities used a ruse to pinpoint her.
“We asked (the caller) what she wanted. She said she wanted McDonald’s,” said Steve Cordes, executive director of QuadCom’s emergency center, which covers Carpentersville.
“We talked with her and we convinced her if she told us where she lives, we would bring her McDonald’s,” he said. “She finally gave us her address. So we sent the police over–with no McDonald’s.”‘
‘A 300-pound black bear raided a family’s campsite, and the father saved his sons from harm by throwing a log at the beast, killing it with a single blow.
Chris Everhart and his three sons were camping in the Chattahoochee National Forest in northern Georgia when the encounter happened Saturday. The bear took the family’s cooler and was heading back to the woods when the youngest son, 6-year-old Logan, hurled a shovel at it.
The bear then dropped the cooler and started coming at the boy, said his father. Fearing what might happen next, Everhart, an ex-Marine, grabbed the closest thing he could find — a log from their stash of firewood.
“(I) threw it at it and it happened to hit the bear in the head,” Everhart said. “I thought it just knocked it out but it actually ended up killing the bear.”‘
‘Local entrepreneur Corey Wildeman has launched Porno Pizza, a delivery-only pizza business that places pornography where you would usually find only cardboard — under the pizza. [..]
Although customers can’t pick which saucy image they will receive, the owner would like to offer more specific choices in the future.
“It runs the full gamut. There are some that are very Playboy-esque and others which Larry Flynt would blush at,” he said, describing the photos sent out with orders.
What has surprised Wildeman the most since opening is his clientele.
“It’s about 75 to 80% female that are placing the orders and are taking orders at the door,” he said.’
