Weird But True

[NJFFSA16]

Tug-Of-Whale Suspended for Now
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - Efforts to capture
and relocate a lost killer whale on Canada's Pacific Coast were
suspended temporarily on Friday following objections from
Native Indians who say the animal may be the spirit of a dead
chief and who want it to stay where it is.
The tug-of-love between scientists and a native group over
the whale created a circus-like scene this week in Nootka
Sound, a ocean inlet on western Vancouver Island, where the
animal has lived alone since 2001 after it became separated
from its family pod.
The Mowachaht-Muchalaht Indians thwarted efforts to capture
the whale, nicknamed Luna by scientists and called Tsu 'Xiit
(sook-eat) by the natives. They used canoes and traditional
singers to lure the curious animal away from the boat officials
were using to try to lure it into a capture pen.
Marilyn Joyce of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans
said after meeting with the band's leaders that the capture
effort had been put on hold until at least early next week to
allow the Indians to spend more time with the animal.
"What our operational team would like to do today is
respect that the First Nations are practicing their cultural
traditions on the water and give them some space to do that,"
Joyce said in Gold River, British Columbia, where the capture
effort is headquartered.

[NJFFSA16]

School Foils Cheats by Blocking Phone Signals
ROME (Reuters) - Mobile phone-savvy teenagers tempted to
cheat their way through exams by sending text messages or
scanning pictures of tests could be thwarted by a device that
jams signals inside the school walls.
The Enrico Tosi Technical Institute school in northern
Italy has found a way to foil the next generation of would-be
tricksters with the help of military technology.
"Most schools try and confiscate phones before exams, but
this way we can be sure nobody slips through," said Benedetto
Di Rienzo, the head of the school in Busto Arsizio which is
testing the devices for the Education Ministry during exams
this week.
The box-like units, called C-Guard, were developed by
experts from the military and defense industries for Netline
Communications Technologies. They jam signals in an 80-meter
(262-foot) radius in enclosed spaces.
They could eventually be installed across Italy to prevent
cheating during university exams.

[NJFFSA16]

Close Call for Toddler as Elk Crushes Bed
HELSINKI (Reuters) - An elk jumped through a townhouse
window and crashed into a toddler's bed, scratching the cheek
of a sleeping two-year-old and wreaking havoc in a Finnish
family's home at the weekend, police said.
The toddler's mother was shocked to find the beast in her
bed and ran to a neighbor for help.
"(We) were sitting in the living room and all of a sudden
we heard a terrible clamor and clatter, as if an earthquake had
begun," Mari Lahti told Finnish tabloid Ilta-Sanomat. "We
opened the door and saw an elk in our bed."
The elk then jumped on to her son's bed, crushing it but
only scratching the boy's cheek with its hoof. It rampaged
through the house and fled through another window.
A spokesman for the Kokkola police in western Finland told
Reuters that young elks had been wandering in the residential
area, which is close to forests.

[NJFFSA16]

Call Mr. Methane!

Scientists Develop Antidote for Burping Sheep
BERLIN (Reuters) - Scientists have developed a serum to
reduce methane gas in burping sheep, cows and other ruminants
to combat global warming, a German magazine reported on Monday.
The Hanover-based monthly Technology Review will report in
its July issue that Andre-Denis Wright, a molecular biologist
at Australia's CSIRO Institute, has found a vaccine that
reduced the methane emissions of sheep by eight percent.
The magazine said that scientists believe the amounts can
be reduced even further and more testing is planned.
Sheep produce 20 grams of methane each day, or seven kg per
year, the magazine with 80,000 subscribers reported. Cows
produce about 114 kg per year of methane (CH4) -- a gas 21
times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide,
the main gas blamed for driving up temperatures.
Much of the methane gas comes from agriculture, such as
livestock emissions from cows and sheep, and waste dumps.

Reut01:01 06-22-04

[NJFFSA16]

MADRID, Spain (AP) - Two worlds collided as a raft carrying 42
destitute Africans - bundled up for a chilly, wind-swept crossing
of the Strait of Gibraltar - washed up on a nudist beach in
southern Spain, officials said Monday.
Spanish television broadcast amateur video footage of bathers
agape over Sunday's landing at sun-splashed Canos de Meca beach in
Cadiz province.
The foreigners included four babies, including one just 11 days
old, TV station CNN+ said. A group of bathers was shown gathered
around one of the infants, gently counting the fingers on one of
its hands and coming up with six.
Bathers helped emergency medical crews carry some of the
undocumented foreigners on stretchers to ambulances for treatment
for dehydration, hypothermia and malnutrition.
One African screamed wildly into a cell phone and ran around as
colleagues tried to restrain him. It was not immediately clear
where the foreigners were from, only that it was somewhere in
sub-Saharan Africa.
Such arrivals are common in Spain, especially in summer, but
usually take place under cover of night, not on a beach packed with
weekend sunbathers.
Each year tens of thousands of Africans seeking to escape
poverty attempt treacherous trips in flimsy, overcrowded boats,
hoping to reach Spanish soil by crossing the Strait of Gibraltar
from Morocco or heading west to the Canary Islands.
Many are caught and repatriated, though thousands manage to slip
through.
A Moroccan immigrant workers' association known as ATIME says
some 4,000 people have drowned in the past five years while trying
to make such trips.

(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

[NJFFSA16]

Here hair

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) - A Vietnamese man who hasn't been to a
barber in 31 years is vying to get in the Guinness World Records
for having the longest hair, state-controlled media reported
Monday.
Tran Van Hay's hair is 6.2 meters (20 feet) long, Thanh Nien
(Young People) newspaper said.
Normally tied up and covered by a scarf, his hair has grown 1.2
meters (four feet) in the past seven years. He last had it washed
six years ago, the paper said.
Hay, 67, is a traditional medicine practitioner from southern
Kien Giang province, some 350 kilometers (220 miles) southwest of
Ho Chi Minh City. He provides free treatment to villagers in the
region.
The Guinness Web site says the current record for long hair, set
in 1997, is held by Hoo Sateow of Chiang Mai, Thailand, at 5.15
meters (16 feet 11 inches).

(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

[E40FDNYL35]

June 22, 2004 -- A New Orleans zoo — impressed that a shy female panda mated successfully after being shown panda porn in China (you saw it first reported here on FH Forums last week) — hopes to use the same trick to turn their bashful male gorilla into a super-stud. Casey, 21, hasn't impregnated any of the Audubon Zoo's three female primates — Binti and Fanya, both 28, and Binti's 8-year-old daughter, Praline — so he's now being treated to explicit tapes of other gorillas mating. "Hopefully, he'll get some inspiration," said curator Dan Maloney.

[E40FDNYL35]

Plan's on table to get rid of pesky jail birds

City and Port Authority officials announced their plan yesterday to rid Rikers Island of Canada geese: Off the birds and feed them to the homeless.The Port Authority said geese - 495 by last count - likely will be rounded up this weekend "to be used to feed needy families in the area."The geese pose a threat to planes taking off and landing at nearby LaGuardia Airport, making the extermination necessary, PA officials said.Gary Kaskel of United Action for Animals disagreed, saying: "This a missed opportunity to create a long-term solution."He and other animal advocates favor nonlethal control methods, such as using Border collies to chase geese away.

[MalahatTwo7]

E40, your last post suggests the use of Border Collies to do the chasing. Here on the base, we have the same problem, but one of the locals has "donated" his Jack Russel terrier for the same reasons. The dog comes out something like once per day, has a good run around the sport field and suddenly.... No more birds

[E40FDNYL35]

June 23, 2004 -- Fear and paranoia have struck the horticulturists of Burlington, Vt., where a cat burglar is making off with prize flowers from the city's best gardens. In one recent heist, a popular flower bed with dozens of marigolds, geraniums and pansies vanished overnight."It's such a low theft. What kind of person would do that? It's like stealing your pet," said angry resident Gayel Favali.

[MalahatTwo7]

Copulating Teens Surprise Movie Theater Manager
Teens Face Charges After Trying To Dodge Authorities

POSTED: 4:26 pm EDT June 22, 2004

MERRIAM, Kan. -- Two Kansas teenagers are in trouble with the law after they were caught having sex in a movie theater over the weekend, television station KMBC reported.

The Cinemark in Merriam typically draws a big crowd over the summer, and Friday night was no exception. But a teenage boy and girl didn't let the crowd stop them from getting a little more intimate than the theater's management expected.

Police say a manager stumbled upon a 17-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl naked in a hallway at the back of the theater.

"The two individuals had their clothes partially down, and were engaging in sexual relations," said police Lt. Tim Burnett. "(The manager) told them to put their clothes back on and stay and wait for security, and he wanted to see their movie tickets."

The kids had just watched "Dodgeball," the station reported. And as security approached their wrecked post-show rendezvous, they took the film's title to heart and tried to elude authorities. Burnett said the kids dashed outside, north of the theater, and hid in the lot of the Corvette Village, a car dealership about a block away.

Police arrested the teens in the car lot. They were charged in juvenile court with lewd and lascivious behavior, and were banned from the theater.
Distributed by Internet Broadcasting Systems, Inc

[MalahatTwo7]

YYYYYYUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMMMM

Stinky flower that emits corpse-like smell ready to bloom after 60 years

Canadian Press Wednesday, June 23, 2004

STORRS, Conn. (AP) - Wait until the neighbours get a whiff of this.

A giant exotic plant that has not bloomed in the Northeast in more than 60 years is ready to flower at the University of Connecticut's greenhouses. The "corpse flower" has the odour of three-day-old road kill, and UConn botanists couldn't be more excited. Once open, the spiked, bright red bloom even resembles rotting meat, a veritable welcome mat for the insects that pollinate it - flies and carrion beetles.

"It looks like something has died. It smells like something has died. It has some of the same chemicals that dead bodies produce," UConn research assistant Matthew Opel said Tuesday.

The corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanum) at UConn was planted 10 years ago and was part of a group of seeds brought to the United States from its native Sumatra by botanical explorer James Symon.

The plant is expected to blossom in the next five to six days. Until it blooms, it's almost odourless. Already at just over a metre high, the flower could reach more than two metres high and at least that wide when it opens up.

The stinky botanical curiosity is expected to attract visitors like . . . well, flies.

The blossom lasts just two days before it begins to disintegrate, and UConn plans to extend visiting hours at the research greenhouse to accommodate the nosy. For the weak-stomached, a webcam on the UConn Internet site was expected to provide odourless footage of the flower.

The UConn flower will be the seventh to bloom in the U.S. since 1999, although it's the first in New England and the second in the Northeast since 1937.

On the Net:

University of Connecticut: uconn.edu/

© The Canadian Press 2004

[E40FDNYL35]

June 24, 2004 -- Raymond Barber gives a damn — about curse words. The World War II vet was charged yesterday with criminal mischief for crossing out expletives in hundreds of books at the Crandall Public Library in upstate Glens Falls The 79-year-old Barber defaced the books over a three-year period, police said. In place of the curses, he allegedly scribbled, "God is enough."

[NJFFSA16]

Getting off in court??!!

Judge Suspected of Masturbating in Court
OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - An Oklahoma state judge
frequently masturbated and used a device for enhancing
erections while his court was in session, charges a petition by
the state's attorney general seeking his removal.
Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson filed the petition
on Wednesday with state judicial authorities seeking the ouster
of Sapulpa District Judge Donald Thompson, 57, for "conduct
constituting an offense involving moral turpitude in violation
of the Oklahoma Constitution," Edmondson's spokesman said on
Thursday.
The judge flatly denies the charges made in the petition,
his lawyer, Clark Brewster, said on Thursday. He said the judge
received a penis pump for his 50th birthday as a gag gift,
which became a source of a running joke in the courthouse.
"The allegations are bizarre and preposterous," Brewster
said. "Recently, some members of local law enforcement that are
upset with a number of his rulings, used this situation to
embarrass and attack him."
The judge, who was first elected to the bench more than 20
years ago in the state's nonpartisan judicial elections, is
based about 80 miles northeast of Oklahoma City.

[NJFFSA16]

Muslims Flock to See Messiah After Web Hoax
BERLIN (Reuters) - Hundreds of Muslims flocked to a German
hospital where an Internet site said the Messiah was being
breast-fed by its resurrected mother, a hospital spokesman said
Thursday.
Spokesman Burkhard Buescher said large groups of women with
children were among those who had traveled across Germany and
from the nearby Netherlands in the last two weeks asking
porters at the Essen university clinic to let them visit the
"Messiah."
"The story ended up being that there was a woman in the
clinic who had given birth to the Messiah and who had died. She
was later dug up and was still alive but her whole body was
burned -- just her two breasts were unharmed," said Buescher.
"Allah ordered the woman to feed the child for 40 days and
then die again. This crazy story was seen by people on a
Turkish Internet site," he said.
On the Internet portal Turkdunya.de, chatterers discussed
the story and one contributor claimed to have seen the woman.