`A six-metre snake and its 3m mate have turned the roof of a north Queensland residence into their own home. [..]
Mr Kinniburgh said he was told by wildlife officers there was little they could do to remove the snakes due to the small ceiling space and no manhole in the roof.
“That night I heard it on the roof, then on the back verandah, then I saw it trying to poke its head through a hole in the flyscreen,” Mr Kinniburgh told the Cairns Post.
“I sat there shitting myself. [..]’
`A woman trying to conquer her fear of heights by skydiving has died after the plane she was to jump from crashed.
Victoria Delacroix, 22, from Beckenham, London, was killed with five others on Saturday in Dittmer, Missouri, US.
The twin-engine light aircraft carrying the skydiving group nose dived and crashed soon after take-off.’
`For two months, from mid-November 2004 to mid-January 2005, Odd languished in the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility, trying to figure out why he was there, and desperately trying to convince somebody – anybody – to set him free.
Odd, 42, was jailed at the request of a Philadelphia assistant district attorney – not as punishment for a crime, but to ensure his testimony as a witness in a murder case.
Yet, even after the murder charges were dismissed, no one bothered to release Odd from prison.’
`A 73-year-old man was looking at his .25 caliber handgun Tuesday night when it went off, shooting him in the forehead, Pasco County Sheriff’s Deputies said.
Investigating officers said the injuries were not life-threatening.’
`A guard dog has ripped apart a collection of rare teddy bears, including one once owned by Elvis Presley, during a rampage at a children’s museum.
“He just went berserk,” said Daniel Medley, general manager of the Wookey Hole Caves near Wells, England, where hundreds of bears were chewed up Tuesday night by the 6-year-old Doberman pinscher named Barney.’
`Victims of the disastrous “Elephant Man” drugs trial have been told they face contracting cancer and other fatal diseases as a result of being poisoned in the bungled tests.
One of the six victims was told last week he is already showing “definite early signs” of lymphatic cancer.
He and three others have also been warned that they are “highly likely” to develop incurable auto-immune diseases.’
followup to Two drug trial men critically ill.
`Nicole Richie has been rocked by a nude photo scandal, with X-rated photographs of the socialite and her celebrity friends set to be leaked on to the Web.
According to sources, the skinny star, 24, is scared stiff raunchy shots of her will be circulated after she lost her camera at nightspot Guy’s in LA recently.
“Nicole had been experimenting and had a memory card full of sexy nude photos of her and a lot of friends,” says a source. “They’d be embarrassed if they got out.” [..]
“Immediately, she’s demanding the bar staff shut off the karaoke, turn on the lights and get everyone to search for the camera,” says one source.
“It was pretty funny,” adds another. “Here are all these A-listers – and their bags are getting searched. Nicole was in the corner going totally nuts and losing it.”
However, despite a massive hunt forthe camera, it was never found.’
`When most parents have a baby, they spend months dreaming about what their bundle of joy will look like. Will she look like mom? Will he have dad’s eyes? But for one Navy family, the birth of their daughter didn’t give them the answers to those questions. Their daughter was born without a face.’
`Pigeons falling from the sky prompted a hospital in Schenectady, N.Y., to close its emergency room and call in a hazardous materials team.
The birds had been poisoned by an exterminator.
Fire and police personnel noticed the dead and dying birds on the ground when they arrived at Ellis Hospital’s emergency room on an unrelated matter.
They closed off the ER for several hours out of fear that one of the falling birds would hit someone. A hazmat official said, “Birds were coming down like divebombers.”‘
‘Awesome clip of wrestler David Schultz a.k.a. Dr.D. This video is from 1984 when he slugged John Stossel from 20/20 two times after John asked him if wrestling was fake. John received between $280-450k in an undisclosed lawsuit from the WWF and David was kicked out of wrestling by Vince McMahon for life.’
(2.4meg Windows media)
see it here »
‘Gotta give Japanese game show producers credit they are single handedly the most sadistic and hilarious people ever. On this game show contestants have to recite a tongue twister under a certain amount of time or they get slapped in the balls. Brilliant!’
(10.8meg Windows media)
see it here »
`A man has died after accidentally shooting himself in the groin while driving his car, causing him to smash into a power pole in Melbourne.
Police say it appears the 38-year-old man was carrying a loaded firearm, which accidentally discharged.’
Microsoft demonstrating the voice recognition software in Windows Vista, or trying to atleast. 🙂
(3.8meg Flash video)
see it here »
`A student who threw a cake at Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen last October has been charged with committing a crime against the Norwegian Constitution.
The cake attack occurred outside of the Finance Ministry on Halvorsen’s first day in office, and the new minister was hit squarely in the back of the head.
Afterwards the student came forward in newspaper VG and said he had thrown the pastry in order to stimulate debate about whether Norway was well served by having a minister of finance from the Socialist Left Party.
The question of what the 24-year-old student would be charged with has been left up to the Director of Public Prosecutions, and the final decision carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.’
`Police in this Seattle suburb didn’t have to go far to arrest a man for investigation of car prowling. He was found sleeping in a special weapons and tactics van.
Officer Greg Grannis said a municipal worker reported someone breaking into cars, including his own, shortly before midnight Monday.
Officers quickly found burglarized cars, but couldn’t determine who might be responsible — until about 4:50 a.m., when two SWAT team members came to the police vehicle maintenance yard to get their van and found a 25-year-old transient asleep in the back, Grannis said.’
`A Czech man drove a armoured personnel carrier through a historic town centre to buy his kids an ice cream.
Miroslav Tucek, 34, now faces a £300 fine after driving the 12-tonne military vehicle through Hradec Kralove.
He told police it was too far to walk from his home and he had promised his kids an ice cream.’
`Three escapees from a western NSW correctional centre managed to effect their own recapture yesterday, when they inadvertently flagged down an undercover police car for a ride.
They also aided in their own recapture by still wearing parts of their green prison uniforms, which helped the officer in the undercover car, already alerted to their presence in the area, to identify them.’
‘Paris Hilton gets an unwelcome surprise when she takes a bath with a baby.’
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`Singer Bob Geldof had to cancel concerts in Milan and Rome when only a handful of people bought tickets to the events.
Geldof is widely known in Italy for his African Poverty campaign to and his campaign to eliminate Third World debt, but still, only 45 people bought tickets to his concert in Milan, held at a venue built to hold 12,000, The Times of London reported Monday.
He also canceled a concert in Rome because of similar slow ticket sales.’
`A man who is legally blind accidentally shot and killed his wife while trying to balance a plate of fried chicken and a pistol, authorities said.
Kelly Honeycutt, of Morganton, was moving into a new home with his wife, Norita, on Monday night.
Honeycutt, who found the .38-caliber pistol in a box, shot his wife in the head after she handed him the food, Burke County Sheriff’s Sgt. Robert Beall said.’
`A customer at a city grocery tackled an armed robber and beat him with a can of applesauce when he refused to drop his gun, police said.
The suspect shot himself in the head during the struggle, and passed out after the 66-year-old customer administered four blows to the head with the Mott’s applesauce.’
`An anonymous Merseyside man who had an implant to “help with erection problems” has found he becomes uncontrollably aroused every time his neighbour pulls up in his 4X4, the Scottish Daily Record reports.
The spontaneous hardening is due not to a Liverpudlian all-terrain fetish, but rather to the car owner’s garage door remote which, well, here’s a transcript of the conversation the poor chap had with BBC Radio Merseyside host Roger Phillips when he rather splendidly chose to share his woes with the world: [..]’
`In a move reminiscent of U.S. efforts to drive former Panama strongman Manuel Noriega from the Vatican Embassy where he took refuge in 1989, the local council in Rockdale, in Sydney’s southern suburbs, started a six-month trial of high-volume hits by Manilow and Doris Day to chase away car enthusiasts who were gathering on weekend nights at Cook Park Reserve. [..]
But some people living near the park are less than enthralled. They say the barrage of “Copacabana,” “Could It Be Magic” and “Que Sera Sera,” blasting from 9 p.m. to midnight every Friday, Saturday and Sunday is driving them crazy.’
` A 14-year-old Pen Argyl boy accidentally plunged a steak knife five inches into his leg Wednesday after becoming angry with his mother when she asked him to put away the clean dishes, Pen Argyl police said.
The knife was still imbedded in the boy’s leg at 2 p.m. when police arrived at the home in the 700 block of William Street, police said.
The boy told police he accidentally stabbed himself when he grabbed a steak knife and tried to throw it into the floor so it would stick.’
‘US President George W Bush has been caught on microphone using an expletive to show frustration with Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel.
Mr Bush was heard telling UK Prime Minister Tony Blair privately that Syria should press the Lebanese militants to “stop doing this shit”.
The remarks were picked up by closed-circuit TV at the G8 summit which both leaders are attending.’
Update: now with video of George Bush swearing.
(1.5meg Windows media)
see it here »
‘Poisonous mud and gas is erupting from kilometres below the earth and 8,000 people are displaced and hundreds hospitalised on the Indonesian island of Java.
The calamity has been caused by a gas exploration project near Surabaya in East Java that has gone horribly wrong, and for the past six weeks, has unleashed hundreds of tonnes of hot toxic mud. [..]
An area of 12 square kilometres has now been covered and four entire villages have been affected, displacing almost 8,000 people.’
`They can sniff out drugs, find lost people and track down suspects, but K-9s are not trained to drive.
So people in Ogden are wondering how one police dog slipped a truck into gear Tuesday and ran over a woman, seriously injuring her.
“I’ve been here for almost 30 years and this is the first time I’ve heard it happening,” said Ogden police Lt. Loring Draper, who was a K-9 officer for nine years.’
`Someone seems to have gone out of their way to cause people genuine harm by placing six footballs on the capital’s streets and a sign asking people to kick them. The catch? The balls were filled with concrete.
“Can u kick it?” was written on a poster near the innocuous looking footballs. So, probably without thinking too long about it, two young guys, aged 21 and 23, took up the challenge and gave the balls a good kick. Unfortunately the leather balls had been filled with concrete and weighed around 10kg each. The men sustained foot injuries so severe that they had to go to hospital.’
`The day Michael Jackson was acquitted of child molestation charges, his teenage accuser, a cancer survivor, thought life couldn’t get any worse.
“Why didn’t they believe me? I told the truth. Why didn’t they believe me?” the anguished boy cried when prosecutors broke the news to him by telephone.
But in the year since the verdict June 13, 2005, the 16-year-old’s existence has sunk to an even lonelier hell. His mom has turned her back on him, blaming him for the courtroom loss, for the alleged abuse by the pop idol, even for welfare fraud charges filed against her, the Daily News has learned.’
`See, this is why mobs aren’t really a good idea. They’re just too quick to judge. For example, yesterday afternoon in East Flatbush a livery driver seemingly lost control of his vehicle and swerved into an 8-year-old riding a bike. When the hack finally stopped crashed his cab into a wall a “group of dozens of bystanders confronted and attacked him.”
And then it gets crazier.
The cabby, as he was being beaten, finally managed to explain his side of the story to his assailants. It wasn’t that he was a bad driver, he explained, no, it turns out he lost control of his car after “his passenger had struck him in the head with a metal bar” in an attempt to rob him. Upon hearing this news the crowd left the driver and “turned to his passenger, beat him, and tightened a belt around his neck.”‘
