‘A Chinese man due to be deported to face serious criminal charges at home is in a Sydney hospital after swallowing razor blades.
The man, known as Mr Qi, has been held in detention since his visa was revoked in February 2004, when Chinese authorities issued a warrant for his arrest.
He had been due to be deported to China today to face charges of kidnap and murder, after the Federal Government was given an undertaking from Beijing that he would not face the death penalty if convicted. [..]
“He would rather die here than go back,” Mr Rintoul said.’
‘1. Flower-Flavored PEZ®
No, that’s not a typo. Although it would be equally disgusting, we’re talking about flower, not flour.
Introduced in the late 1960’s, flower-flavored PEZ was designed to appeal to the hippie generation — complete with a groovy, psychedelic dispenser. But even in the decade of free love, no love could be found for the flavor power of flower.
Floral scents make for great perfume, but nobody eats perfume, and apparently, there’s a reason why. The flower version flopped, and became the next addition to PEZ’s long and disturbing list of flavor failures.’
This fellow jumps off a balcony into a pile of sticks and leaves. Surely there’s nothing in that pile that can penetrate his face? 🙂
‘I’ve had worse before.’
(1.9meg Flash video)
see it here »
‘Authorities in Wilkinson County say a seventh-grader armed with two steak knives held six fellow students hostage Thursday morning but was disarmed and arrested 45 minutes later.
Officials say the boy brought the knives into Wilkinson County Middle School at about 7:50 a.m. and trapped six students in a classroom with him. But a female student was able to escape and notified a teacher.
Principal Aaron Geter says teachers cleared the hallways of students while he negotiated with the boy, who was using his body to block the door.
The principal said Irwinton and Wilkinson County law officers arrived within minutes. The officers, prinicpal and teachers tried to persuade the boy to surrender.’
‘A woman who was being mauled by a pit bull terrier stashed her 4-month-old son in a garbage can to protect him from the animal, which remained on the loose Wednesday, authorities said.
Angela Silva, 32, suffered severe injuries to her arms, receiving 50 staples and countless stitches as a result of Tuesday’s attack in her garage. [..]
“He just kept biting … and biting … and biting,” Silva, a special-education teacher, said Wednesday, after an operation at Regional Medical Center in San Jose.
Two men across the street heard Silva’s screams and shooed the dog away using power tools. The baby suffered only a few scratches.’
‘A man who police earlier said had a machete at Sir Goony’s Family Fun Center on Brainerd Road was back in his familiar haunts – General Sessions Court – on Tuesday.
Paul Ralph Vandiver earlier said he was just out looking for his pet racoons who had gotten out at the time he had the machete.
On Tuesday, he was found on Lee Highway with bags of half-empty paint spray cans in each hand that he said he uses to spray cardboard boxes.
An officer said Vandiver had gold spray paint on his hands and his mouth. Police say he has been continually arrested for huffing paint.’
‘For most of his life the Shetland pony, who has both male and female genitalia, was thought to be a mare and went by the name of Amy.
And to add to his confusion he has been taken into care, undergone a sex change operation and been re-homed – only to be shunned by his peers.
But now Tootsie – named after Dustin Hoffman’s cross-dressing character in the film of the same name – finally appears to be settling in at the Bransby Home of Rest for Horses, near Lincoln.
And he has found an unlikely friend – in stablemate Derek the donkey.’
‘A national animal-rights organization is calling for the end of a Licking County community-service program after a prisoner was charged with sexually assaulting a dog at a local animal shelter.
Clifford Hook, 19, of Zanesville, is accused of inappropriately touching a female dog while walking it Aug. 18 at the Licking County Animal Shelter. Hook admitted to the act during an interview with police, according to court documents.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said the longtime program, which provides community-service opportunities to inmates at the Licking-Muskingum Community Correction Center, puts animals at risk. [..]
“It’s a very unfortunate incident,” Glover said. “Everyone on my staff wishes it never happened.”‘
‘A 10-year-old boy who died after contracting amoebic encephalitis while swimming in a Central Florida lake is the second reported case in the area since August.
The Orange County Health Department did not identify the child or the lake where he contracted the amoeba.
However, the owner of the Orlando Water Sports Complex said he was contacted by the Orange County Health Department and told to post signs warning of the deadly amoeba. The victim was believed to have visited the popular park.
“It now has happened twice in Central Florida this year,” a health official said. “And therefore, we need to ramp up the precautions for using nose plugs and taking all precautions when swimming in the lakes and doing water sports.”‘
Followup to Apparent Amoeba-Related Death Prompts Central Fla. Water Warning.
‘A bus driver has described the harrowing seconds when he had to fight off a man who allegedly tried to steer his bus into oncoming traffic during this morning’s peak hour, and then allegedly said he had a bomb on board.
Greyhound bus driver Con Jansen, 47, from Chatswood, was four hours into his shift driving a Brisbane to Sydney charter bus with 26 people on board when a man suddenly tried to grab the large bus’s steering from him.
“I was driving along, the next minute I’ve got a guy grabbing the steering wheel,” said Mr Jansen, who had been driving the bus on Pennant Hills Road, near the corner of Beecroft Road, in Sydney’s north-west about 8.25am when the attack occurred.
“You’re just sitting down driving, you don’t expect anyone to jump on top of you.”‘
‘When British couple David and Jean Davidson checked into a modest hotel room, the prospect of not having to cook or clean for themselves was so appealing, they decided to stay – for 22 years.
The pair first stayed at a roadside Travelodge in 1985 while visiting an elderly aunt who was ill in Staffordshire, England.
When the aunt died four months later, the Davidsons moved out of their flat in Sheffield and moved into the Travelodge in Newark, Nottinghamshire.
In 1997, they made their home in another of the chain’s hotels in Grantham, Lincolnshire, where they are still living.
Mr Davidson, 79, said the hotel’s staff were “like family now”.’
‘To their high society owners, a pair of haute couture shoes can be a precious thing.
But to guard a $152,300 pair of ruby- sapphire- and diamond-encrusted Rene Caovilla sandals at their London launch, retailer Harrods went to extreme lengths: bringing in a live Egyptian cobra to patrol the shoe counter.
Whether hiring a poisonous snake is, strictly speaking, the most effective means of guarding precious footwear might be a moot point with security experts.
But it makes for a pretty effective photo opportunity.’
‘A Wyoming teenager is dead after being caught in machinery at a car wash. Ricardo Martinez, 18, was an employee at the “Goo Goo 3-minute Car Wash” on 28th street.
Martinez was cleaning the brushes, preparing to close for the night, when he let one more customer go through Friday night. Somehow he got tangled in hoses, crushed in the machinery, and was found by another customer who saw the lights on, and came in for a car wash.
Police aren’t discussing the graphic details of how it happened, but they’re sure it was a terrible accident, because it was captured on tape from a security camera.
Lt. Scott Gardner, with the Wyoming Police Department said, “Had it not been for the video there would certainly have been a lot more questions about how this actually happened because it’s so different and unusual.”‘
‘A man stole a bulldozer from a construction site and slammed into the Troy police station early Friday morning, police said.
Police said Stanley Burt, 34, stole a bulldozer, drove it up a road in Troy, maneuvered behind Town Hall and crashed it into the police department.
“Mr. Burt drove the bulldozer into the police station, backed up, drove it in again, backed up and hit it a final time,” Sgt. David Griffin said.
The entranceway and front wall of the building were destroyed, the power was out and some computers were damaged, police said. No one was in the building, and an officer patrolling the area saw him in the act, police said.
“Mr. Burt had a number of contacts with the Troy Police Department,” Griffin said. “We believe he’s venting his anger.”‘
‘Managers have apologised after maggots from a dead seagull fell through the ceiling of the maternity unit at Scarborough Hospital.
Medical director Dr Ian Holland said the bird had died on the roof, which was not an area covered by regular maintenance checks.
He stressed there was no health risk to patients or babies at any time.
“Living at the seaside, seagulls are a part of our lives, but this was entirely unforeseeable,” he added.’
‘A Washington County woman is accused of paying two prostitutes to have sex with her 12-year-old nephew, WTAE Channel 4’s Sheldon Ingram reported Thursday.
“My anger is out of control,” said the boy’s mother, whose name is not being released in order to protect the child’s identity.
Donora police said Linda Van Pool, 36, is charged with endangering the welfare of a child, soliciting prostitution and corruption of a minor. [..]
Police said Van Pool brought her nephew to separate locations — one on Fifth Street and one on Linden Way — for the sexual activity.
“I didn’t know that she would take him to those type of women. I didn’t think they existed in this area. I thought you had to go to Pittsburgh for that,” she said.’
‘A naked man driving along the Indiana Toll Road was arrested and charged because his lewd conduct distracted other motorists, police said.
The 37-year-old Chicago man was traveling east to Ohio to visit his mother, police said. He was nude and had petroleum jelly on his hands when a state trooper pulled him over about 10 miles from the Ohio line Wednesday, police said.
The man, who told police he was comfortable driving in the nude, was charged with misdemeanor indecent exposure, punishable by up to a year in jail.’
‘Quentin Tarantino wants to make a 3D porn film.
The ‘Pulp Fiction’ director admits he has been toying with the unusual idea for some time, and thinks it would be the perfect next step for the adult genre.
He told Total Film magazine: “Right now it’s still in my mind. But I’ve been musing at what I would do if I could make a 3D porn film! It hasn’t been green-lit yet, as I still have a few things to work out on it!”
It seems Tarantino has been thinking about X-rated films a lot recently.
Earlier this week, he claimed Gwyneth Paltrow would be a terrible porn actress and insisted he would never cast her in an adult movie.
Tarantino said: “I could do an erotic film, I wouldn’t mind doing a women-in-prison or a cheerleader movie. But I wouldn’t cast someone like Gwyneth Paltrow. It would have to be a cool, trampy actress who says, ‘OK, let’s get the cameras rolling – here we go!'”‘
‘An 8-year-old Chinese girl has just finished a run of truly epic proportions. In 55 days, she covered 2,212 miles, in celebration of next year’s Olympics in Beijing. But her feat has sparked accusations of child abuse against her father, who is also her trainer.
Early Tuesday morning, Zhang Huimin entered Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the end of an arduous run from China’s southernmost tip in Hainan island to the nation’s capital. She covered about 40 miles a day — and wore out 20 pairs of running shoes — in pursuit of a dream.
“I want to be an Olympic champion — the champion of long-distance running,” Zhang, who is nicknamed Little Monkey, told NPR.
“I’m happy, I’m healthy, I’m a little Olympic athlete,” she said.’
‘A new hi-tech toothbrush has been launched with built-in “satnav”.
Maker Oral B claim that as you clean your teeth it transmits information by radio to a separate miniature display screen, telling you where you should clean.
It also tells you how long you should brush for and if you’re brushing too hard or not hard enough, reports the Daily Mail.
The manufacturers are hoping their new gizmo – called Triumph with SmartGuide – is going to be this year’s Christmas must-have in the bathroom.
It comes with a wireless LCD display which can be stuck on to the shaving mirror.’
‘China’s Shaolin Temple, the cradle of Chinese kung fu, is demanding an apology from an internet user who said its monks had once been beaten in unarmed combat by a Japanese ninja, Chinese media reported today. [..]
The internet user, calling themselves “Five Minutes Every Day”, said on an online forum last week that a Japanese ninja came to Shaolin, asked for a fight and many monks failed to beat him, the newspaper said.
“The facts that the monks could not defeat a Japanese ninja showed that they were named as kung fu masters in vain,” the internet user was quoted as saying in the post.
The Shaolin temple “strongly condemned the horrible deeds” of the user, the newspaper said.’
‘Internet cafes and “manga” comic cafes are omnipresent in urban Japan, offering couches, computers, soft drinks and comic books to stressed businessmen or commuters who missed their trains home.
But a government survey found that an estimated 5400 people have virtually moved in to the 24-hour cafes.
It said some 80 per cent of Japan’s “net cafe refugees” are men and that 52.7 per cent said they decided to live in the lounges because they lost their jobs.
Another 13.8 per cent said they moved into the net cafes because of deteriorating relationships with their families, according to the survey by the health and welfare ministry.’
‘A Double Bay man got more than he bargained for when he took his highly agitated kitten to a veterinary clinic after it had been accidentally locked in a cupboard overnight – only to discover it was high on cocaine and benzodiazepines from a wild weekend dinner party. [..]
The eight-month-old Himalayan cat arrived at the Double Bay clinic on a Monday morning with dilated pupils and a racing heart. The owner said it had trouble walking and was easily startled, said a report in this month’s edition of the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery. [..]
The vets rang the owner’s wife, who admitted the cat could have licked “plates of cocaine”, which had been served at a dinner party two days earlier. A drug screen then revealed the cat also had benzodiazepines in its system.’
‘These guys test the durability of a Magnum condom at highway speeds.’
(2.9meg Flash video)
see it here »
‘If you live in the small village of Nachu in Kenya, watch out, because a group of approximately 300 marauding monkeys is out to steal your food, sexually harass your women and attack and kill your livestock! In a truly amazing incidence of interspecies communication, a group of vervet monkeys, Chlorocebus pygerythrus, is using sexual harassment to intimidate women and children, who are responsible for growing maize, potatoes, beans and other crops for their farming community, causing them to lose their main food supply so they now are dependent upon famine relief to survive.
The monkeys are more afraid of young men than women and children, with the bolder individuals throwing stones and chasing the women from their farms. In an attempt to scare the monkeys away, the women are now wearing their husband’s clothing, but the wily monkeys are not fooled.’
‘Whatever the reason for the experiment, it almost immediately went awry. Tusko reacted to the shot as if a bee had stung him. He trumpeted around his pen for a few minutes, and then keeled over on his side. Horrified, the researchers tried to revive him, but about an hour later he was dead. The three scientists sheepishly concluded that, “It appears that the elephant is highly sensitive to the effects of LSD.”‘
‘The Meng brothers felt pretty good about their chances of making it out of the collapsed coal mine, until the sound of digging from outside stopped.
With no food or water, they were forced to eat coal and drink their own urine from discarded bottles. When they were too exhausted to try to dig themselves out, they slept huddled together in the cold and dark.
Meng Xianchen and Meng Xianyou finally clawed their way to the surface after nearly six days underground – a rare tale of survival in China’s coal mines, the world’s deadliest, where an average of 13 workers are killed every day.
The two even managed to crack jokes about their wives remarrying once they were dead after they emerged Friday from the illegal mine – which had no oxygen, ventilation or emergency exits – in Beijing’s Fangshan district.’
‘The good news for this mystery blonde is that the digital camera she mislaid on holiday has been found.
The bad news is that the revealing pictures of herself stored on its memory card have been posted on the internet.
And since then she has attracted over 23,000 admirers, all professing their desperation to track her down so that she can get back her lost property. [..]
The Facebook group description reads: “We are trying to track down the lovely lass in these photos so she can be reunited with her lost digital camera. She certainly knows how to use it!’
Update: Also the NSW pictures and her MySpace page.
