‘US President George W Bush put his wristwatch in his pocket while greeting a crowd during his visit to Albania, the White House said Tuesday in an effort to end a two-day long mystery over the disappearance of the timepiece.
Bush was mingling with a very enthusiastic crowd – to put it mildly – in the small Albanian town of Fushe Kruja on Sunday when the saga began. Cameras captured the watch on his arm, but moments later images showed the leader of the free world’s wrist was bare.
Since, various media in Albania and other countries have speculated that someone might have snatched the First Watch, or the president may have lost it. The White House, however, offered a rather boring conclusion to the tale.
“The president put it in his pocket and it returned safely home,” spokesman Tony Snow said.’
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‘An Australian man who didn’t notice he lost part of a finger in a bar fight has had the missing digit re-attached.
A Sydney police spokesman said the man left the pub after being involved in a fight and was walking down the street before realizing the top knuckle of his ring finger was missing.
Inspector Mark Kellert told The Sydney Morning Herald the 42-year-old man went to a nearby hospital while the missing finger was located in the pub’s bathroom. The body part taken to the hospital where doctors later re-attached it.
Kellert said no arrests had been made although “police are continuing their inquiries.”‘
‘New research shows that Australian children are becoming more anxious about themselves and the future of the planet.
The Australian Childhood Foundation survey of 600 children shows that more than half are scared there will not be enough water in the future.
The report also showed that more than a third of children were anxious about terrorism, were worried that one day they will have to fight in a war, and one in four believed the world will end before they reached adulthood.
The head of the foundation, Dr Joe Tucci, says this insecurity could have consequences for society.’
‘Surgery was performed on Sunday to remove a coconut from the body of a man who was sodomised with the fruit during an attack by a gang of men.
Ste Madeleine police are now investigating the case, in which the 27-year-old victim was found at the side of a canefield road at Golconda Village, near San Fernando.
Police were told that the man was seen drinking alcohol in the hours before he was found, and a group of men who picked him up are being sought.’
‘Middle School student Kyleray Katherman had a hunch something was amiss with the school’s drinking fountain water. And right he was.
For an English assignment, he tested the bacteria content at four water fountains and one toilet to challenge a ban on students from bringing bottled water to class. It seems some were using it to sneak in alcohol.
Guess which was cleaner? It wasn’t the water fountains.
He then asked students where they would prefer to get their water. That wasn’t the fountains, either.
Classmates, teachers, administrators and board members said they had no idea.’
The driver explains the injury. It’s unfortunate. Unfortunately funny.
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‘Officials began investigating after a train was stopped between stations in Berlin on May 31, as an electronic signal from its cabin alerted railway controllers that the train had no driver.
Drivers have to press a safety button – a ‘dead man’s switch’ – at regular intervals, otherwise a computer on the train stops it automatically, and alerts authorities that there is a problem.
The driver was found dead with his trousers open by the side of tracks several hundred metres away from the train, and police now say that it appears he fell out of the locomotive after he opened a door to relieve himself from the train.
The train was travelling at 70 mph at the time.’
‘An Army Corps of Engineers report found mechanical and contracting problems with drainage pumps installed by the corps before the start of the 2006 hurricane season, prompting a Louisiana senator to call for a Justice Department investigation.
Although the pumps have been extensively overhauled, critical flaws remain a year later, according to the report, which was released Friday.
The review by three corps engineers from outside the New Orleand district office backed up findings of a May 2006 memo by a corps mechanical engineer working on the $32 million pump project. The memo warned the pumps were faulty and would not work during a hurricane.’
‘Three words on a cardboard sign outside a luxury downtown high rise have senior citizens outraged. One senior was so upset she took a picture outside The Vue at Lake Eola, on the corner of Rosalind and Robinson streets.
Some senior citizens were across the street in a small rally when they noticed the construction workers laughing at them. Then they looked by the fence and saw a sign they consider very offensive. The words were scrawled in bold white paint on cardboard.
Sandra Taylor, 64, stood across the street and could feel the sign shouting at her.
“The next thing we knew, we looked over and he had made a sign, holding it, said ‘Old People Suck,'” Taylor said.’
‘She was taken handcuffed and crying from her home. She was escorted into court disheveled, without makeup, hair askew and face red with tears.
Crying out for her mother when she was ordered back to jail, Paris Hilton’s cool, glamorous image evaporated Friday as she gave the impression of a little girl lost in a merciless legal system.
“It’s not right!” shouted the weeping Hilton. “Mom!” she called out to Kathy Hilton, who also was in tears.
The 26-year-old hotel heiress tried to move toward her parents but was firmly steered away by two sheriff’s deputies, who held her by each arm and hustled her from the courtroom. [..]
The sheriff later hinted at a news conference that Hilton had psychological problems, and said she would be watched in jail “so that there isn’t anything that is harmfully done to herself by herself.”‘
Followup to Paris Hilton ordered to return to court.
‘The singer in the Police jumps like a “petulant pansy,” the drummer is making a “complete hash,” and who knows what the guitarist is doing?
Notes from a bitter critic? Actually, it’s a disarmingly frank concert review from the aforementioned drummer of the newly reunited rock trio.
A philosophical Stewart Copeland unleashed his vitriol in a posting on his Web site on Thursday, a day after the band played its second show in Vancouver, the Canadian city where it began its first world tour in more than 20 years on Monday.
“This is unbelievably lame,” Copeland wrote of Wednesday’s show at the GM Place arena. “We are the mighty Police and we are totally at sea.” [..]
“The mighty Sting momentarily looks like a petulant pansy instead of the god of rock,” Copeland reported.’
This apparently happened somewhere in Germany, as people were protesting the G8 summit.
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‘Poland’s 1,200 troops assigned to NATO forces in Afghanistan will not achieve full combat readiness for up to several weeks due to stolen vehicle keys, the defense ministry said Thursday.
“We had been told a 10 percent theft rate was likely in convoys brought in from Pakistan, but we had not expected the spare car keys to go missing,” defense ministry spokesman Jaroslaw Rybak told news channel TVN24.
“We shall have to send away for spares, so it may take from several days to several weeks for our contingent to become combat ready.”‘
‘Annapolis police raided the wrong apartment Wednesday night, using flash grenades and kicking a resident in the groin before they realized their mistake, police and the family said.
Police spokesman Hal Dalton said something must have gone amiss in the briefing beforehand. “We don’t know how the mistake was made,” Dalton said.
Silvia Bernal, 30, told The (Annapolis) Capital that about 15 officers burst through the front door of her apartment while she was cooking dinner about 8:20 p.m. She said the officers kicked her husband in the groin while she fled into a bedroom and barred the door with her body.
Then she said both of them were taken to the ground and handcuffed. The Capital said a police officer went outside and realized they had raided the wrong residence.’
‘Fears are mounting that the grounded bulk carrier Pasha Bulker could break up as traces of fuel begin washing up on a Newcastle beach.
Two creases on each side of the ship can be seen as engineers begin efforts to assess the damage.
The Newcastle Port Corporation said there is a possibility of the ship breaking up, ABC radio reported.
Meanwhile, at least two more ships are expected to run aground in Newcastle as raging winds and monster waves batter the coast.’
‘Ten years in prison for receiving oral sex. That is Genarlow Wilson’s sentence.
When he was 17 years old and a high school senior, he received consensual oral sex from a 15-year-old, 10th-grade girl.
Everyone agreed, including the prosecutor and the girl herself, that she initiated the act.
It was all captured on video — the evidence used to convict him at trial. On the tape, police saw a 15-year-old perform oral sex on one partygoer, and after finishing with him, she turned and did the same to Wilson. Under Georgia law at the time, this was considered aggravated child molestation, a felony for teens less than three years apart to have oral sex. It carried with it a 10-year sentence, even though it was only a misdemeanor for those same teens to have sexual intercourse.’
‘A woman who dumped her fiance’s work van into a harbour in an act of revenge has been told she could go to prison. [..]
Thomason, a kitchen assistant, had asked her fiance to come home to help look after their two children, but he insisted on staying out drinking with his friends, the court was told.
She then drove his work van to Whitehaven Harbour where she parked it on a slipway, let the handbrake off and watched it roll into the sea. [..]
Police were forced to partially drain the harbour to recover the Ford Transit.
Just 24 hours before the argument, the couple, who had been together for seven years, booked a £2,000 honeymoon.
Mr Wilson has since called off the wedding and moved out of the home he shared with Thomason and their children, the hearing heard.’
‘A German thief got nabbed after he tore off his finger during a bungled break-in – then went back to retrieve it.
After setting off the alarm at Berlin’s Technical Museum late on Tuesday, the 35-year-old man escaped from two security guards, clambered up a three-metre fence, but got snagged by a ring on the middle finger of his right hand.
The man managed to free himself, but only after tearing off the finger.
The security guards arrested him when he went back to recover the severed digit and ask for medical aid.
“His comment afterwards was ‘Breaking and entering doesn’t pay,'” said a spokeswoman for local police.
Doctors were unable to reattach the man’s finger.’
‘A British father thwarted from flying the Jolly Roger for his son’s pirate-themed birthday party said he would like to make local officials walk the plank.
Richard and Sharon Smith, who usually fly the British Union Jack or the English St. George’s Cross from their 18-foot flagpole in Stone, Staffordshire, thought that the skull and crossbones would be a festive touch for the party Saturday. But a neighbor complained to the local council.
Officials told the Smiths that they would have to apply for a permit, paying a $150 fee for an assessment of the flag’s impact, The Daily Mail reported.
Richard Smith told the newspaper that his son, Morgan, who is turning 6, doesn’t see the point of the party without the flag. He said they plan now to delay the party to see if they can get permission.’
‘A video clip promoting the 2012 London Olympic Games logo was removed from the organisers’ website overnight after reports it had triggered epileptic fits.
The video clip showed a diver plunging into a pool as part of a campaign to promote the jagged Olympic logo, a graffiti-like blow-up of the number 2012 in a range of colours including hot pink and electric blue.
A London 2012 spokeswoman said the concerns surrounded a four-second piece of animation shown at the logo’s launch yesterday and recorded by broadcasters.
“This concerns a short piece of animation which we used as part of the logo launch event and not the actual logo,” she said.
“It was a diver diving into a pool which had multi-colour ripple effects.”
Critics of the emblem have described it as “hideous”, while organisers called it powerful and modern.’
Followup to London unveils logo of 2012 Games.
‘A New York man has sued the makers of a health drink, saying it has given him a permanent erection for the last two years.
Christopher Woods said he drank the vitamin-enriched Boost Plus, made by the Swiss-based Novartis pharmaceutical company, on June 5, 2004.
He woke up the next morning “with an erection that would not subside” and sought treatment of the condition, called severe priapism, court papers say.
Mr Woods, 29, had a penile implant to move blood from one area to another, acccording to the Associated Press.’
‘It was a sight that would make any flagrant parking meter flouter smile. Police were pulling over parking meter attendants to warn them that their $9,600 miniature Mitsubishi and Subaru were not street legal and did not have proper tags.
The state Division of Motor Vehicles told the Huntington Municipal Parking Board last week that the two golf-cart-like trucks it bought were manufactured for off-road use only. They also don’t qualify as low-speed vehicles and can’t be registered, according to Glenn Pauley, DMV director of vehicle services.
The trucks sit at the city garage while the Huntington Municipal Parking Board decides what to do with them.’
‘If President Bush and Vice President Cheney can blurt out vulgar language, then the government cannot punish broadcast television stations for broadcasting the same words in similarly fleeting contexts.
That, in essence, was the decision on Monday, when a federal appeals panel struck down the government policy that allows stations and networks to be fined if they broadcast shows containing obscene language.
Reversing decades of a more lenient policy, the commission had found that the mere utterance of certain words implied that sexual or excretory acts were carried out and therefore violated the indecency rules.
But the judges said vulgar words are just as often used out of frustration or excitement, and not to convey any broader obscene meaning. “In recent times even the top leaders of our government have used variants of these expletives in a manner that no reasonable person would believe referenced sexual or excretory organs or activities.”‘
‘An old guy tries to take a close up picture with a baby elephant. The elephant seems pretty friendly until the guy grabs his trunk.’
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‘A Victorian Muslim schoolgirl had her headscarf airbrushed out of a class photograph in just one example of the discrimination Muslim students face, a parliamentary inquiry has heard.
While the majority of Victorian schools support students who wear hijab, some teachers needed more understanding of Islam, the Inquiry into Dress Codes and School Uniforms heard yesterday.
The Islamic Council of Victoria is urging the inquiry to support a “fundamental right” to freedom of religious observance as it applies to dress.’
Well, a model 747 anyways. A large model. 🙂
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This is what happens when you pass out drunk in a house near a lake.
It’s good to have friends who can help you. 🙂
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‘A blind athlete was killed by a hit-and-run driver in Florida shortly after his team lost the championship game in a national “goalball” tournament. [..]
John Mulhern, one of Green’s teammates on the Delaware County Blind Sports Organization’s Venom team, said Green had been hanging out with other athletes from the tournament when he went back to his hotel to use the bathroom.
Green apparently made a wrong turn while returning to the party and got lost, Mulhern said. He was on his cell phone with a teammate, who was trying to guide him back, when he was killed.
“The way the highway was there, there was no step-off,” Mulhern said. “The last thing they heard was the drop of his phone.”‘
