Car crashes, escaped buffalo, the case of the stolen sex doll, the Pond of Death, Jesus-scented candles, and how a joke can turn really sour

Artist to live in nest

Ananova

A Chinese performance artist is to live in a 10-metre high steel nest for a month in Beijing.

Ye Fu, who is also a poet, will cut himself off from the outside world for the month, reports the Beijing Times.

He won't talk or communicate to anybody - except for sending text messages to say he's alright.



Every day, people will bring him two vegetarian meals, as much water as he needs to drink, and collect his waste.

His 'nest' is a steel ball decorated with tree branches and supported by three steel poles.

Ye Fu, who has already published more than 40 poetry books, will have only basic necessities with him, such as blanket, flashlight and cup.

During the month, he plans to write a new collection of poems, Nest Diary, to record his thoughts.

Organised by the China Arts Research Institute, the stunt is intended to make people think about the loneliness of an individual in modern society. (:/)

Makes David Blane look like the pussy he is.

Colorado Woman Wins at Whistlers' Convention

AP

Dateline: Louisburg - The Seven Dwarfs did it at work. Some people do it in the shower. But it takes a special kind of person to whistle competitively.

At the 32nd annual International Whistlers' Convention, the best of the best gathered Saturday to whistle their hearts out.

Sandra Henzler of Fort Collins, Colo., took first place among women for songs that included "Poor Wandering One" and "Queen of the Night Revenge Aria." Geert Chatrou of Mierlo, The Netherlands, took first place among men for songs that included "Fete de la Belle" and "Concerto in C Major."

Todd Dickerson of Hickory, N.C., whistled "Air des Bijoux" to win teenage champion honors. The children's grand champion was Emily Edwards of Louisburg for her rendition of "Battle Hymn of the Republic."

Two people won Entertainer of the Year awards: Steve Herbst of New York City, who has won the award for the past two years, and Phyllis Heil of Hickory.

The Hall of Fame Award, the convention's highest honor, went to Barry Rector of Coquitlam, British Columbia.

The whistler who traveled the farthest to compete was Tang Cheng-Dong from Dalian, China.

People from 33 states and 12 foreign countries attended the convention, which is sponsored by the Franklin County Arts Council. (:/)

I loved that - it's like the world of Garrison Keillor really does exist...

Now, just to prove that the Germans don't have a monopoly on mad crime:

Britons arrested over plans to jet-ski drugs across Channel

AFP

Dateline: Lille, France - Three Britons face charges of drug trafficking after preparing to cross the English Channel on a jet-ski with 46 kilogrammes (100 pounds) of cannabis, police said.

Three men, aged from 30 to 47, were arrested Sunday at a camping ground near Sangatte on France's north coast where they were waiting for good weather before attempting the crossing on a "high powered" jet-ski, police said.

The men were allegedly carrying three large sacks containing 46 kilogrammes of cannabis when they were arrested.

"It's fairly unusual that drug traffickers risk a channel crossing on a jet-ski. It's dangerous, especially at this time of year," a policemen said.

Two other men, suspected of waiting to pick up the drugs, were arrested by police at Dover on the British side of the Channel.

A total of 15,000 pounds (29,000 dollars, 23,000 euros) was seized after police searched the British home of the suspected head of the drug trafficking network. (:/)

Dunno if I was reading that right, but they were all going on the one jetski??

Next, like I've said before, TAR gets to cover stories from beginning to end, which I like. Here is the full (disgusting, frankly) story of The Exploding Amphibians...

Exploding toads baffle German experts

AFP

Dateline: Berlin - Hundreds of toads have met a bizarre and sinister end in Germany in recent days, it was reported: they exploded.

According to reports from animal welfare workers and veterinarians as many as a thousand of the amphibians have perished after their bodies swelled to bursting point and their entrails were propelled for up to a metre (three feet).

It is like "a science fiction film", according to Werner Smolnik of a nature protection society in the northern city of Hamburg, where the phenomenon of the exploding toad has been observed.

"You see the animals crawling on the ground, swelling and then exploding."

He said the bodies of the toads expanded to three and a half times their normal size.

"I have never seen such a thing," said veterinarian Otto Horst. So bad has the death toll been that the lake in the Altona district of Hamburg has been dubbed "the pond of death."

Access to it has been sealed off and every night a biologist visits it between 2:00 and 3:00 am, which appears to be peak time for batrachians to go bang.

Explanations include an unknown virus, a fungus that has infected the water, or crows, which in an echo of the Alfred Hitchcock movie "The Birds", attack the toads, literally scaring them to death.

[two days later:]

Now a veterinary surgeon, Frank Mutschmann, who has examined the remains of the toads, said they had been pierced with a single peck by crows trying to eat their livers. This in turn caused the toads to explode.

"The toads swell up as a form of self-defence. But when their livers are taken away and their stomachs are punctured, their blood vessels explode, their lungs collapse and the other organs come out," Mutschmann said.

"Crows are intelligent animals. They learn very quickly how to eat the toads' livers," he said, adding that between three and five crows could kill around 100 toads.

So many toads have died in a lake in the Altona district of Hamburg that it has been dubbed "the pond of death." (:/)

Ick.

Man Pleads Guilty in French Fries Rage

AP

Dateline: DuBois, Pa. - A Burger King customer who berated the employees when a drive-thru clerk told him the restaurant was out of french fries has been convicted of multiple charges and sentenced to 45 days in jail.

Authorities said Gregg Luttman made an obscene gesture at the clerk, cursed staffers and nearly hit an employee with his truck. When police tried to arrest him, Luttman allegedly scuffled with an officer and kicked out the back window of a cruiser.

Luttman pleaded guilty to assault, resisting arrest, institutional vandalism and other charges stemming from the confrontation on New Year's Day.

Besides jail time, Luttman last week was fined $150 and ordered to serve two years' probation. (:/)

I said f**king supersize me m*therf*cker!!!!

Declaring cars as scrap? Dhaka customs makes it true

Reuters

Dateline: Dhaka - Bangladeshi customs officials found luxury cars, large-screen television sets and refrigerators in a container declared to be carrying metal scrap -- so they made it just that at a public ceremony on Monday.

Hundreds of people watched as officials from the National Board of Revenue (NBR) used bulldozers to crush a Mercedes Benz and a Toyota car and other luxury goods at a railway container terminal in Dhaka.

NBR chairman Khairuzzaman Chowdhury said a trading firm had sought to evade customs duties by falsely declaring that the container carried iron scrap.

"They wanted to befool us by saying they brought in scrapped metals...so we are giving them the same. They, or anyone like them, will not forget this," he told reporters at the site.

Cash-strapped Bangladesh is trying hard to increase domestic revenue ahead of announcing the budget for the 2005-06 fiscal year, beginning next July.

Officials say tax revenues were 9 percent short of target in the first nine month of the current 2004-05 fiscal year, partly owing to lower-than-expected import taxes. (:/)

"They wanted to befool us..." I looked it up. I didn't find it either.

Whiff of messiah, anyone?

Jesus scented candles

Ananova

An American couple have created a scented candle based on biblical accounts of what Jesus smells like.

Bob and Karen Tosterud, from South Dakota, were inspired by a verse that says when Jesus returns to Earth his robes will perfumed with myrrh, aloe and cassia.

Karen sourced the fragrances on the internet and had a family friend manufacture the 'His Essence' candle, reports WCCO TV.

"I thought: "I wonder what that would smell like". It would have to be wonderful because of who they are representing. If you're not religious at all, it's just a subtle scent. I think it can be shared by all," she said.

The candles have proved to be a huge success with Christians and the His Essence range is being sold by Interior Plus, an American version of IKEA.

Interior Plus owner, Kim Foels, said she is a fan of the candles: "When I burn it in my home, it just gives me a feeling of when I was a little girl growing up."

The candles costs £9.50 and burn for 80 hours. (:/)

Restaurant fined for throwing out kissing lesbians

Reuters

Dateline: Stockholm - A Swedish lesbian couple who were thrown out of a Stockholm restaurant in 2003 for kissing won an appeal on Monday against an earlier court ruling that cleared the restaurant owner of sexual discrimination.

The Court of Appeals in Stockholm ordered restaurant owner Aziz Cakir to pay 50,000 crowns (3,700 pounds) in damages and to cover the legal costs of Sweden's ombudsman against sexual discrimination, HomO, which filed the appeal.

Cakir asked Anna Fernstrom and Susanne Gustafsson to leave his restaurant after they kissed and later told police he did not let anyone engage in such behaviour on his premises regardless of their sexual orientation.

Stockholm District Court cleared him of discrimination, a charge that can result in a year in jail, in the country's first test of legislation against sexual discrimination in the provision of goods and services.

But HomO director Hans Ytterberg said the appeals court found the restaurant failed to prove "these two girls behaved in a way that would justify telling them to stop or telling them to leave the premises".

"The Court of Appeals has made it clear that discriminating on grounds of sexual orientation is a serious violation of people's rights and can cost you dearly," he told Reuters. "This will hopefully function as an effective deterrent." (:/)

It's odd because it's Stockholm. Ok?

Man woke to find knife in his face

Ananova

A Russian man who woke up with a splitting headache after a heavy drinking session found a kitchen knife stuck in his face.

Artur Dzhavanyan had invited a pal round for a drink but went to bed early after telling his friend he was fed up with hearing him moan.

He woke up in the night with a splitting headache and went to the bathroom to get a glass of water, when he noticed the knife sticking out of his face, just below his eye.

In a panic he ran to a neighbour's house and called an ambulance. His friend had already left the flat.

He was taken to a hospital near his home in the Voronezh region in Central Russia where the knife was removed in a 40 minute operation.

Surgeon Viktor Tolstenko said Dzhavanyan was lucky: "If the knife had hit his eye and his facial nerves, the consequences would have been tragic. Artur got off lightly with a small scar on his face."

The knife was embedded 10cm under the eye and had pierced the cheek bone.

Police say they found his pal's fingerprints on the knife, but Dzhavanyan refused to press charges, saying he was just happy to be alive. (:/)

You all know I love those. But not as much as love hearing ever more about:

Woman arrested in Wendy's chilli finger case

Reuters/by Michael Kahn

Dateline: San Jose - A woman who said she found a severed finger in a bowl of Wendy's chilli has been arrested, capping an investigation into a horrifying claim that made headlines and hurt sales at the No. 3 U.S. burger chain.



Anna Ayala, 39, was arrested on Thursday night at her home in Las Vegas and was being held at the Clark County Detention Centre there, police said.

Ayala said she bit down on the finger after spooning up a mouthful of chilli at a Wendy's restaurant in San Jose, California, on March 22. The charge drew intense publicity and tarnished the image of the Dublin, Ohio-based burger chain.

An analysis of the finger tissue by both local health agencies and outside experts disproved some statements made by Ayala about the chilli incident, police said in a statement.

She was charged with attempted grand theft over the finger but the origin of the finger was still unknown, said San Jose police department spokesman Nick Muyo.

The investigation prompted a second, unrelated, criminal charge against Ayala, who authorities said received $11,000 (5,700 pounds) for the sale of a mobile home in San Jose she did not own. Ayala is charged with grand theft in that case.

The arrest was welcomed by Wendy's International, which has said sales at its fast-food restaurants fell significantly in the San Jose area after the incident.

"We're thrilled that an arrest has been made," Tom Mueller, president of the company's North American business, said in a statement.

In the weeks since the incident, Wendy's has insisted that its own investigation found no evidence of any finger or hand accidents among its workers or suppliers. The chain initially offered a $50,000 reward for information about the origin of the finger but doubled the amount last week to $100,000.

Wendy's officials could not immediately be reached on Friday to say if anyone would receive the reward.

Images of the finger tip, released by the Santa Clara County Department of Environmental Health, showed it in two pieces. Health officials said it was probably a woman's finger because it had part of a long, manicured nail.

Suspicion surrounding Ayala arose earlier this month after San Jose police served a search warrant related to the case in a private home in Las Vegas, where she lives. Media reports said Ayala's home was searched.

Publicity surrounding Ayala's history of suing large corporations has also raised questions about her. According to media reports, she has pursued legal claims against restaurant chain El Pollo Loco, General Motors and Goodyear Tire. (:/)

Boo! Shame! I wanted it to be real!

Saucy biscuit tin goes on sale

PA

A saucy Edwardian-style biscuit tin decorated with disguised sex scenes by its disgruntled designer, is expected fetch upwards of £150 when it appears at auction.


(Picture: Bonhams)

On first glance the Huntley and Palmer biscuit tin appears to be celebrating an idyllic lunchtime scene. But on closer inspection the illusion of tranquillity is shattered by drawings in the background of a naked couples locked in an amorous embraces.

The crude designs were added by a designer furious that he had been fired by the company. (:/)

On Bonhams' website, Patrick Toynbee of Bonhams is quoted as saying:

"There is a well known story passed on amongst collectors that when one of their employees received notice of being fired, he decided to decorate some of the tins in a manner which would make his displeasure with his employers very clear, not just to them but also to their customers.

“If you look very closely you will notice a pair of naked lovers cavorting in a flower bed on the far left while two dogs are romping in the flower bed to the right of the tin. There are also reports of an obscene jam jar label as well but none of these are clearly visible.

Obviously, the company wasn't even aware of them and the first they heard of it was when a grocer apparently took an extremely good look at the picture and alerted them. Since then the tins have become widely known as the ‘Disgruntled Employee Biscuit Tin’, a very apt name for them indeed.” (:/)

Fat's in the fire after tubby Australian bus drivers are sacked

AFP

Dateline: Sydney - A group of Australian bus drivers who say they were sacked for being too fat are to appeal to an arbitration panel, a report said.

Seventeen drivers were refused a chance to renew work contracts when a new bus company took over in the southern city of Adelaide, the Australian Associated Press quoted Transport Workers Union official Alex Gallacher as saying.

The new employers deem it an occupational health and safety issue, Gallacher said.

"They say the seat (limit) is 130 kilograms (286 pounds) -- why don't they just get a bigger seat? You can make seats for 150kg."

The union believes the tubby drivers were not re-employed because the company considers them a greater insurance risk.

"The reality is, if you get 600 bus drivers together, see if you can find a skinny one," Gallacher said. "It's the sort of job that lends itself to people being a bit overweight."

Gallacher said some of the 17 had already complained to the Equal Opportunities Commission and the rest would follow suit. (:/)

Woman finishes anthem on morning news show

AP

Dateline: New York — By the dawn's early light, Caroline Marcil finally finished on national TV what she started at a hockey game a flawless rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner."

The Montreal singer was to perform the national anthems of two countries before the United States' 5-4 exhibition victory over Canada on Friday in Quebec City.

Despite two tries, she forgot the words to the U.S. anthem and then left to get the lyrics. When she returned to the rink, she slipped on the carpet covering the ice and plopped on her back before a Quebec Coliseum crowd of 7,166.

After lying motionless for a few seconds, the 24-year-old Canadian left on her own and the game began without either anthem sung.

Marcil regrouped over the weekend, when she was invited to appear on ABC's "Good Morning America," where she sang the entire U.S. anthem without a hitch. Marcil said the pressure before the game got to her.

"It was a lot of things together, the emotion, the stress," she said, adding that the crowd's booing made things worse.

"That made me completely blank," she said.

On Monday, she was on the ABC show again, and explained why she needed to return to the ice.

"I wanted to do it," she said in accented English. "And to show I was able to do it. I go get my words and I'm going to do this song. (:/)

Ah, I've felt like that soo many times.

Unhappy customer robs hairstylist

AP

Dateline: Richland, Washington - A woman apparently dissatisfied with a haircut robbed a hair salon at gunpoint, shot at her stylist's car, then used part of the money to pay for a trim at another shop, police said.

Julie Anderson, 48, was booked for investigation of first-degree robbery and second-degree malicious mischief. Employees told police the woman showed up Wednesday at Stage 1, a salon she had patronized for years, and asked to speak with her regular stylist, who was not in, police Capt. Mike Cobb said.

The woman waited in the parking lot and pulled a gun on the stylist when she arrived. She then walked back into the salon and demanded $100.

Employees gave her the money, then locked the door after she left and called police.

The woman got into her car and started to drive away but stopped, got out and fired at least one round into the back window of the stylist's car, Cobb said. She then threw the gun through the shattered glass and fled, he said.

She was arrested about 45 minutes later as she left another hair salon nearby.

The woman paid with a $20 bill, apparently from Stage 1, and then walked out to her car, where she was arrested, Cobb said. The woman told stylists she had received a bad hair cut some time ago.

"She said she was a dissatisfied customer," Cobb said. (:/)

Damn! I'm like f*cking right behind her man. Cos she's got a gun, like...

Schwarzenegger wants to axe moon

Ananova

Arnold Schwarzenegger says he wants to get rid of the moon to prevent women getting PMT.

The Californian governor was accused of sexism after making the comment to shock jock Howard Stern.

He said: "If we get rid of the moon, women, whose menstrual cycles are governed by the moon, will not get PMT. They will stop bitching and whining."

The Republican politician is currently embroiled in a scandal over comments he made about closing the Californian border to immigrants.

However, the Austrian born actor and native German speaker insisted it was language mix-up.

"I'm sorry if I offended anyone but it was a language problem because I meant securing our borders rather than closing them.

"I still have to go back to school and study a little bit," he said. (:/)

No, Arnold, a lot. Study, a lot.

Tiberius Crowned King of Wrinkles, Drool

AP

Dateline: Des Moines - He's a mutt with a mug only a mother could love. No matter. Tiberius, a 2 1/2-year-old English bulldog, was crowned "Most Beautiful Bulldog" on Monday and will reign as the canine king at this year's Drake Relays, Iowa's premier sporting event.


(AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Tiberius bested about 50 other eye-catching examples of the breed from throughout the Midwest in capturing the annual contest.

"What they look for is the ugliest bulldog you can find ... droopy eyes, protruding teeth, slobbering," said Dolph Pulliam, director of Drake's community outreach and development. "He rides in a golf cart around the track as the announcer announces him as the 2005 most beautiful. ... It is a coveted thing."

Tiberius is owned by Karen and Phil Swift and their three children. The family lives in suburban Des Moines.

"He's very gentle. He loves to be played with and petted," Karen Swift said. "He's a typical bulldog."

Tiberius, tagged with the middle name of Star Trek's Capt. James T. Kirk, has entered the contest twice before and lost.

What made the difference this time?

"Just maturity, I guess," Swift said. (:/)

Man Says He Found Skin on Sandwich

AP

Dateline: Dayton, Ohio - A man is suing a fast-food restaurant operator for more than $50,000, claiming he found a slice of skin on his chicken sandwich.

David Scheiding filed the lawsuit in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court on April 1 after rejecting a settlement offer from GZK Inc., his lawyer said. GZK owns the Arby's restaurant in Tipp City where he bought the sandwich.

Scheiding said he realized something wasn't right when he bit into the sandwich on June 18 and found a piece of flesh about three-fourths of an inch long.

"It looked like I was seeing fingerprints on it," he said. "I got sick and went to the bathroom."

Miami County health investigators talked to the restaurant manager, who had a bandage on his right thumb and wore a latex glove, according to a health district report. The manager said he sliced skin from the thumb while shredding lettuce, and sanitized the area but didn't throw away the bin of lettuce, the report said. Scheiding's sandwich contained lettuce.

"Why wasn't the food searched, and why wasn't it thrown away?" said Scheiding's lawyer, Hank Hyde.

Christine Koeller, vice president of marketing and communications with GZK, said what happened was unintentional.

"(The manager) did destroy product that was in and around the slicer immediately, and did everything that he thought was appropriate to do," Koeller said. (:/)

I'm squirming, and I've read that several times. Ugh. Now for how massively expensive scitech still can't quite hit the mark...

DART Hits Target, Misses Goal

Wired

An experimental spacecraft designed to show off new autopilot technologies ran into the satellite it was supposed to rendezvous with, NASA confirmed Monday.

The space agency's Demonstration for Autonomous Rendezvous Technology, or DART, spacecraft was to have performed a series of test maneuvers within five meters of a retired military satellite on April 15. Insteiad, DART's primary fuel supply ran out prematurely, baffling mission controllers and prompting the spacecraft's onboard computer to end the mission early.



Tracking data later showed that the MUBLCOM military satellite had been boosted into a slightly higher orbit -- almost undoubtedly due to a collision with DART, NASA concluded. MUBLCOM stands for "Multiple Path Beyond Line of Sight Communications."

Neither spacecraft appears to be damaged by the accident, said Kim Newton, a spokeswoman for NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
"They're still communicating with MUBLCOM -- it's fully functional -- and DART is in its planned retirement phase," said Newton.

The retirement phase will keep DART in low-Earth orbit for at least 10 years. Eventually, gravity will pull the spacecraft into the atmosphere, where it will burn up.

Newton said it's unclear whether DART bumped into MUBLCOM before or after its fuel ran out, but that both problems were likely due to a glitch in DART's guidance system. The system had made extra corrections to DART's trajectory earlier in the day, which could have depleted the fuel.

On Friday, NASA assigned a panel of seven investigators to research the glitch and determine the cause of the accident.

The space agency had hoped to use DART to show off technologies that would allow spacecraft to rendezvous and eventually dock with each other without human intervention.

If perfected, the technologies could one day lead to space stations that assemble themselves rather than requiring expensive and dangerous human missions to guide the process.
They could also prevent disasters, like the 1997 docking accident in which a Russian cosmonaut steered a Progress cargo ship into the Mir space station, knocking a hole in the station and jeopardizing the lives of the three crew members onboard. (:/)

Man allegedly kills co-worker over joke told 7 years ago

AP

Dateline: Philadelphia - A man shot a former co-worker to death on Easter because he was offended by a joke told seven years ago, authorities said Monday.

Stanford Douglas Jr., 29, was arrested on murder charges Sunday after a two-hour standoff with police. He allegedly shot William Berkeyheiser, 62, three times in the chest and shoulder on March 27 at Berkeyheiser's suburban home.

Prosecutor Diane Gibbons said that Douglas told police he had been thinking about killing Berkeyheiser since 1998, when the two men worked at a Philadelphia nursing home and Berkeyheiser told a joke that offended Douglas.

The prosecutor would not say what the joke was.

Douglas hired a private investigator to find Berkeyheiser's house, Gibbons said. It was not immediately clear if Douglas had an attorney. (:/)

Wonderful.

Product of the week

PainStation2

Years ago, back in the day, in our salads as Cleo might have put it, Young Mark Watson (for it is he) and I waffled drunkenly on for a few weeks about what a superb idea it would be to make a computer game system that inflicted pain on the players whenever they got shot/beaten/pulped/crashed/etc. Mark, being Mark, took the idea to the enth degree, but never actually got around to making it or patenting it.

For years, the idea lay in the back of our heads, untouched, gathering that cerebral dust that all Great Drunken Ideas gather. Then, this week, I came across the PainStation. And I realised that we had been gipped, pipped, and shown up.

This, however, as Punch might intone, is how you do it:



Check out the real injuries and and the machine here.

They really said it:
notable quotes from the news

Reuters

"Absolutely not."
-- Microsoft chief Bill Gates, asked if would buy a special U2 edition of the iPod, made by rival Apple, now that he's friends with Bono.

"I was in Home Depot the other day and I was looking at samples of something for redoing my house and I heard somebody in another aisle say, 'I've spotted Marwan! I've spotted Marwan! Call Jack Bauer!'"
-- Arnold Vosloo, who plays terrorist mastermind Habib Marwan on "24," in the New York Post. (:/)

This one below had me laughing and I couldn't not laugh, though I knew I shouldn't be. It is, however, sad, so be warned.

Professor killed by falling car

The Guardian

The daughter of a professor told an inquest yesterday of her "dreadful shock" as she saw a car launch off a road and fall on to her father as he lay reading on a beach.

Professor Harvey Flower, who was head of the department of metals at Imperial College, London and was a world authority on aerospace metals, was on a family holiday at Shanklin, Isle of Wight, in August 2003.

The inquest heard that he was relaxing on the beach when a car reversing at high speed crossed the road above the beach, collided with a parked car and a beach hut, and then hurtled off a two-metre (6ft) wall and landed on him.

Prof Flower, from Beckenham, Kent, was rushed to hospital but died from his injuries.

Recording a verdict of death by misadventure, the coroner at Newport coroners' court said Prof Flower's death was "a devastating loss, and ... a loss to the country".

Elanor Flower, 23, the professor's daughter, told the inquest she was at the water's edge with her mother, Gladys, and a family friend when she saw the accident.

"The car seemed to be travelling at very high speed," she said.

"The parked car was shunted backwards and I saw the deckchair hut explode. A man lying near to my father rolled away, my father jumped away but he couldn't get away in time. It was a dreadful shock. I could see his legs sticking out from under the car."

The driver of the car, Eileen Smith, 61, from Shanklin, pleaded guilty to dangerous driving last November. She was given a one-year suspended sentence and was banned from driving for three years. (:/)

Dear god. However, before you judge me (too late, I'm hearing), I've got a balancing story, to prove that life really is just, well...

Chapin woman survives car crash, train collision

WIS 10

Dateline: Columbia - Lana Hudspeth, 37, of Chapin lost control of her car on Highway 76 in Ballentine around 2:30am Sunday morning.

The Highway Patrol says the vehicle left the roadway, struck a tree and then fell down a 30-foot embankment and landed on railroad tracks. Hudspeth stayed there for a couple hours until a train came along at 4:45am, hitting and pushing her car 300 yards down the track.

Highway Patrol LCPL Bryan McDougal says the site of the initial crash was difficult to see from the road, "Evidently no one witnessed the first crash and the vehicle was not visible from the roadway or passersby."

McDougal says emergency crews had to extract Hudspeth from her vehicle and then airlift her to Palmetto health Richland, "The amount of the force from that crash is unbelievable and for someone to survive is miraculous, I would say because it was a violent collision."

The woman's family says Hudspeth is in serious condition. She is said to have been talking with her rescuers after the twin crashes. (:/)

Man robs store, steals sex doll

AFP

Dateline: Moscow - A man in his 40s armed with a knife burst into a Moscow sex shop and threatened a clerk before making off with an life-size inflatable doll and some sexy lingerie.

The owner of the shop, located opposite Gorky park, estimated the value of the stolen goods at 300 euros (387 dollars).

A composite sketch was distributed to police and a search for the suspect was under way, RIA Novosti news agency said Thursday. (:/)

I didn't realise the police would need a sketch of a sex doll.

And finally

Herd of Buffalo Corralled on Tennis Court

AP

(AP Photo/Steve Ruark)
Dateline: Pikesville, Maryland - A herd of buffalo somehow got loose and wandered around an upscale neighborhood Tuesday, disrupting traffic and alarming homeowners before officers managed to corral them in a tennis court.

More than a dozen police cars and a police helicopter were used to herd the roughly 10 beasts, authorities said.



"Somehow they figured it out; I've got to give a lot of credit to the creativity of our officers," police spokesman Shawn Vinson said.



The officers used lounge chairs beside the tennis court as shields and formed a human chain to corral the wayward buffalo. One buffalo was seen leaping over one of the tennis nets in an effort to evade capture.


The animals came from a farm in Stevenson, nearly three miles away, Vinson said. They were returned to the farm later in the day. (:/)

Mooooooo! Until next time...