moonbuggy

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‘A chewbacca impersonator was arrested after being accused of head-butting a Hollywood tour guide who warned the furry brown Wookiee about harassing two Japanese tourists.

“Nobody tells this Wookiee what to do,” “Chewie” from the Star Wars movies said before slamming his head into the guide’s forehead, the Los Angeles Times newspaper reported today.

The two metre tall 44-year-old man was charged yesterday with misdemeanour battery and later released on $25,880 bail, the Los Angeles Police Department said.’

‘Russian prosecutors are investigating allegations that hospital staff in Yekaterinburg gagged babies because they did not want to hear them crying.

The patient at the hospital in the southern Urals who reported the case heard the children’s muffled cries.

She used her mobile phone to film a baby lying in a cot with his mouth taped, while others had dummies taped to their mouths. They are all orphans.’

This woman really likes the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. She also eats a lot of pizza.

‘Some people keep pets. I have a little sister.’

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‘Parents of several students who watched police handcuff and arrest their second-grade teacher said Thursday they think the teacher was mistreated by West Contra Costa school district officials, and they plan to file formal complaints.

Sheldon Elementary teacher Jennie Mo, 57, is being held on suspicion of 18 counts of false imprisonment after police say she held her students hostage and used a child to shield herself from an officer after school officials placed her on leave Wednesday.’

‘Russian emergency workers have flown to a Siberian region where smelly, orange-, yellow- and green-colored snow fell earlier this week covering about a 40 square miles, officials said Friday.

The Emergency Situations Ministry said that officials in the Omsk region, about 1,400 miles east of Moscow, had warned local residents not use the snow for drinking or other purposes, and to keep domestic animals from it.

The ministry said the snow, which fell Wednesday afternoon, was yellow, green and orange and had an oily texture and unpleasant smell.’

‘The intimate medical history of hundreds of people has been provided by one of the country’s largest private health funds to a company that uses it to sell its services to vulnerable patients.

HCF has handed over to McKesson Asia Pacific the contact details, gender, age, the broad type of mental illness, and the recent number of hospital admissions for 370 people without their consent. [..]

HCF also rejected the claim that it was in breach of privacy laws, although it admitted that it was providing McKesson Asia Pacific with patients’ contact details, sex, age, a broad mental health category, and the number of recent admissions.’

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‘A New Zealand postal worker who is in trouble for scrawling abusive comments on school exam results says it was all supposed to be a joke.

The arrival of final year exam results can be fraught enough without free and frank character analysis scrawled by a mischievous postie.

Daniel Zeigler recognised the names of students at his former Christchurch secondary school while he was sorting their exam results.

The 18-year-old offered a somewhat blunt critique of their leaving certificate efforts in blue marker pen.

New Zealand Post, embarrassed by the incident, is promising to review its procedures but apparently cannot charge the temporary worker because under the law, sorting and stuffing exam results in envelopes is not regarded as tampering with the mail.

Mr Zeigler says everyone should lighten up – it was just a joke.’

‘Village of Kewaskum Police Chief Richard Knoebel said he was driving to work when he became distracted by a truck stopping on one side of the street.

He said he didn’t see a school bus with its lights flashing and a stop sign out on the other side of the four-lane road.

The chief said he didn’t know he had passed the stopped bus until it was too late.

When he realized what he had done, he issued himself a $235 ticket.

“When we get someone for not stopping for a flashing school bus we give them a citation. So I shouldn’t be any different so I did,” Knoebel said.

Not only did the chief have to pay a hefty fine, he gave himself a four-point penalty on his license.’

‘Elementary School Teacher allows two kids to fight class in Syria as he captures it on camera.’

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‘A woman who lost her premature baby a day after she was thrown in jail is suing the police department and two arresting officers who repeatedly ignored her pleas for medical help.

A police videotape released Tuesday shows Sofia Salva telling officers numerous times last Feb. 5 that she was pregnant, bleeding and needed to go to a hospital.

After the ninth request, the tape shows, a female officer asked: “How is that my problem?”�’

Update: now with the video.

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‘Joined by his dog Yoda, Paul Woods travels by day and sleeps in a tent at night. His vehicle: a riding mower. “You’ve got to be pretty strange and pretty weird to be driving a tractor mower across country,” Woods, 44, said. [..]

Woods’ ultimate destination is Virginia, where he claims his late mother left him a house. He said he took care of her in Alaska until her death.

Woods said he left Alaska in 2005 and has been riding his mower or getting rides from sympathetic pickup drivers who hoist his vehicle in the back of the truck.

The mower’s maximum speed is 15 mph, but it’s weighted down by tools, snacks and the dog. [..]

“This is not cold,” he told the Herald Journal. “Alaska can be cold. … You have to wear goggles or your eyeballs will freeze.”‘

‘A college student who told police she had been raped was jailed for two days after officers found an old warrant accusing her of failing to pay restitution for a 2003 theft arrest.

While she was behind bars, a jail worker refused to give her a second dose of the morning-after contraceptive pill because of the worker’s religious convictions, the college student’s attorney said.

The 21-year-old woman was released Monday only after attorney Vic Moore reported her plight to the local media.’

‘It was supposed to be college day for the students of Ware Shoals High School in South Carolina, a chance to learn about educational prospects at a local institution. But according to police, two of the school’s cheerleaders ditched the event (the exact date hasn’t been made public) and instead headed to a motel with Jill Moore, their coach. There, they met up for a tryst with two National Guardsmen who recruited at their school. Moore loosened things up by allegedly providing the girls with vodka. Then, the cops say, she repaired to a room with one of the soldiers and set up a different room for the two cheerleaders and the other soldier to “hook up.” According to authorities, the second Guardsman and one of the girls later admitted that they had a sexual relationship.’

‘mmigrants wishing to live in the small Canadian town of Herouxville, Quebec, must not stone women to death in public, burn them alive or throw acid on them, according to an extraordinary set of rules released by the local council. [..]

“We wish to inform these new arrivals that the way of life which they abandoned when they left their countries of origin cannot be recreated here,” said the declaration, which makes clear women are allowed to drive, vote, dance, write checks, dress how they want, work and own property.

“Therefore we consider it completely outside these norms to … kill women by stoning them in public, burning them alive, burning them with acid, circumcising them etc.”‘

‘The family of 50s songwriter, Julius Dixson, has filed suit against a Manhattan Hospital charging the elderly man died of neglect after routine surgery.

Julius Dixson, Jr., 53, says there is no way his father should have starved to death in a hospital. “I’m outraged. I’m hurt by it,” he said. [..]

The son said his father’s health deteriorated, and he didn’t go on a feeding tube until January 29, 2004 — the day before he died. The younger Dixson said his father, nine days after the surgery, told him, “If I die in here, you go after them.”‘

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‘Northern Territory police are on the trail of a serial cat killer after the tenth victim in less than three months was found horribly butchered in Darwin’s satellite city of Palmerston.

Since November, ten cats in the area have been killed and mutilated, with three found dead in the last two weeks. Police believe the same person is responsible for all ten deaths.

The way in which the animals have been killed is chilling. Each cat is skinned, disembowelled and then been put on show for the public to find. Often meat is cut from the bodies and found nearby. Other times it is removed and taken away altogether for an unknown purpose.’

‘The US wants the world’s scientists to develop technology to block sunlight as a last-ditch way to halt global warming.

It says research into techniques such as giant mirrors in space or reflective dust pumped into the atmosphere would be “important insurance” against rising emissions, and has lobbied for such a strategy to be recommended by a UN report on climate change, the first part of which is due out on Friday.’

‘Five students from Whitman-Hanson Regional High School were suspended this week after a freshman student was taped to a bench and punched in the groin during a bizarre hazing incident, school officials said yesterday.

School Superintendent John F. McEwan said four sophomores and a junior decided Jan. 17 to pull a prank on a freshman after school in the boys’ locker room. [..]

The students first grabbed a freshman, held him down, and started teasing him, McEwan said.

“That student got away,” he said.

The group then went after another freshman, who, at first, was laughing as well, McEwan said.’

‘Six girls at a rural high school were charged with homicide conspiracy after their principal found a list of 300 names and officials discovered online postings suggesting they kill people, authorities said Thursday.

School officials said the list, discovered in a classroom trash can, mostly named students and faculty members but also included Tom Cruise, Oprah Winfrey and the Energizer Bunny.

Sequatchie County High School Principal Tommy Layne said that he initially considered it a joke, but that authorities then found the ninth-graders’ online MySpace pages and postings that included the word “kill.”‘

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`Iran has begun installing 3,000 centrifuges to increase its uranium enrichment program, a senior Iranian legislator said Saturday — but the claim was later denied by the country’s nuclear body.

Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the head of the Iranian parliament’s foreign policy and national security committee, said the installation of the centrifuges — which spin uranium gas into enriched material — was underway at a plant in Natanz.

The installation “stabilizes Iran’s capability in the field of nuclear technology,” Boroujerdi said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency. [..]

“No new centrifuge machine has been installed in Natanz facility,” Simorgh was quoted as saying by Iran’s IRNA news agency.’

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`A motorist made homophobic remarks toward three men on a Hillcrest roadside, then assaulted one of them, biting off a piece of his ear, 10News reported.

A 43-year-old man and his two companions were in a parked car in the 500 block of Redwood Street last night when a man in another vehicle drove up at about 11:10 p.m. Friday, told them to get out of the way and called them “faggots,” according to San Diego police.

When the 43-year-old man got out of the car to confront the suspect, the assailant punched him, knocking him to the ground, and bit off a piece of his ear, San Diego police Sgt. Alan Hayward said.

The victim got back into his vehicle and drove away, he said.’

‘Promise her anything, but give her Synth Coke.’

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‘Just hours before this chick is about to get married she freaks out in the bathroom and with her bridesmaids watching starts cutting off huge chunks of her hair.’

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`Police in northern China have detained three men for the deaths of two women whose corpses were to be sold as “ghost brides” to accompany dead men in the afterlife, state media said.

Authorities indicated that the killings last year were not isolated cases, the Legal Daily newspaper said on its Web site, but it did not give any details.

Yang Dongyan, 35, a farmer from Shaanxi province, said he had bought a young woman for $1,600 and planned to sell her as a bride, according to the paper.

But then he met Liu Shenghai, who told him that the woman could command a higher price as a “ghost bride,” it said. The tradition, called “minghun” or afterlife marriage, is common in the Loess Plateau region of northern China, where a recently deceased woman is buried with a bachelor to keep him company after his death.’