News Orleans Appeal, Piano Woman, newswriters all Thai'd up, Animal Magic, German anarchists, Nippon news roundup, sautéed squirrel and much more crap

New Orleans Appeal

New Orleans residents demand help, beer

Headline TAR/story AFP

Dateline: New Orleans (Well, duh) - Many stubborn New Orleans residents are refusing to leave their homes, and some are making their determination to stay in a style that could only come from the hard-drinking, good-time city.

Curt Belton, a Department of Wildlife and Fisheries agent in charge of boats touring the city, told Tuesday of a message found in a wine bottle drifting in floodwaters along Canal Street in the entertainment district.

"To whom it may concern: Please send with immediately, (one) ice cold chest of Coors Light. I'm out at this time. Down to wine. Some shrimp and oysters would also be appreciated. Thank you," said the note, which was signed and gave an address.

Belton said the patrol went to the home and found the author sitting on his front porch.

Between sips of wine, he told them he was staying and had enough wine to last "quite a few days." Belton said he was going to frame the note because it was "pure New Orleans".

The emergency official said that of the 15 to 20 people his patrol encountered in homes on Monday, only one agreed to leave.

"There's just a ton of people still out there," Belton said. "They don't want to come, and the main reason they're giving us is their pets," he said. "It's crazy." (:/)

Quote Of The Week

When you enjoy loving your neighbor it ceases to be a virtue.
Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931)

HISOAS

Massive shout out to JW and DQ for their restless Headlines In Search Of A Story energy:

Some day my prints will come
Inspector coarse
Cheeses of Nazareth (or Edam and Eve)
Shake your honey maker (or Bee home before midnight)
Formula Juan
(JW)
>

Queen Elizabeth the thirst
Singing in the reign
Queen Kong
(DQ)
>

And this week's special was headlines for the England/NI game for which all the papers thought there was only one headline. There were, however, many more, for example:

SVEN DID IT ALL GO WRONG?

SVEN-D HIM OFF!
(BG)

And, of course,

SVEN WILL IT END?

(:/)

World Wide Weird

Style-conscious China city flags down bald cabbies

Reuters

Dateline: Beijing - In a bid to spruce up the city's image, authorities in China's Nanjing are banning taxi drivers who are bald, wear their hair too long, have moustaches or wear too much make-up, media said on Tuesday.


(photo AFP)

The new rules are part of a 10-point plan to smarten up Nanjing, capital of eastern Jiangsu province, ahead of October's 10th National Games which will draw viewers from across the country, the Chinese news Web site www.sina.com.cn said on Tuesday, citing the Nanjing Morning Post.

"Male taxi drivers cannot have long hair or strange hairstyles, cannot be bald and cannot grow moustaches or goatees," the report said.

"Women drivers must not use too much make-up and should wear appropriate clothes."

The report did not mention penalties for drivers that break the rules, but did say that cabbies who refused to pick up passengers could be kept off the streets for up to 15 days.

The strict code comes at a time when middle-class Chinese are embracing all kinds of fashion thanks to two decades of market reforms that have rendered the Mao suit a relic of the past. (:/)

Education at Hogwarts costs 1,700 pounds

ANI spotter David Quainton

Dateline: London - Currency experts have revealed that they have calculated the value of galleons, magic money, in JK Rowling's Harry Potter books.

Travelex reckon each gold galleon is worth 5.01 pounds, or 7.39 euros, making Hogwarts an expensive option.

Churning out young witches and wizards for their first year at the school would cost parents about 1,700 pounds, just for the basics.

That means a magic wand would be 35.08 pounds and a superior broomstick, like Harry Potter's Nimbus 2000, would set you back 1,503 pounds.

Saskia van Opijnen, director of Travelex, said they had based their calculations on J K Rowling's books and on interviews with the author.

"This is the first time that we have dealt with a currency from another world. Magic money is a very sturdy currency that could assert itself on the international money market," Opijnen said. (:/)

Mystery woman washed up on Hong
Kong shore, or, But does she play the piano?

AFP

Dateline: Hong Kong - She appeared from nowhere on a rain-sodden morning, sitting naked on a Hong Kong shoreline, unable to speak.

Now she sits in a hospital bed, staring into space, mute and expressionless, her charts naming her simply as "Unknown."

The mysterious appearance of the Western woman last week beside the runway of a disused harbourside airport has put Hong Kong authorities in a bind, the police chief handling the unusual case said Wednesday.

"We've tried interpreters in many different languages and sign-language experts but none of them appear to get though to her," chief inspector Victor Ng told AFP.

Her discovery comes just weeks after the identity was revealed of a mystery man who appeared wandering along a beach in England in April.

The tall, thin man, who refused to speak or respond to written communications in four months under hospital observation, became known as the "Piano Man" after he he reportedly demonstrated a talent for the grand piano.

He was later revealed to be 20-year old German Andreas Grassl after he suddenly spoke for the first time last month. He reportedly admitted pulling the stunt for attention.

So far interpreters have been called in to speak to Hong Kong's mysterious woman in English, French and Portuguese as well as Indian and Pakistani languages.

The woman, believed to be aged between 35 and 45, and who is described as slightly built at 1.6 metres tall and with light brown shoulder-length hair, was discovered Friday.

A government statement said she had been seen earlier wandering nearby streets, but Ng said police were still probing those reports.

"She was found near a golf course and if she had been wandering, someone on that gold course would have seen her. But no one has come forward yet," he said, adding that police were considering the possibility she was an illegal immigrant brought in by boat.

Ng said that for five days now, medical experts and police have been trying to prise from her any indication of her identity. Instead she just stares at the wall and wanders the ward in the hospital where she is under observation.

"She has not said a word, she has shown absolutely no emotion whatsoever," added Ng.

Hong Kong police have appealed to law enforcement agencies all over the world to see if the woman is on any nation's missing person's list.

Ng said she showed no sign of having been assaulted and there was no indication she was under the influence of drugs.

"I would describe her as mentally disturbed, not retarded, but mentally confused by something," he said.

Hong Kong University professor of clinical psychology Sam Ho said it was common in such cases for the subject to have been the victim of a trauma that had sent them into a trance-like state.

"It could be a split of conciousness. The part associated with the trauma is supressed, giving the subject the appearance of disorientation," Ho said. "This is different to schizophrenia because in this case the subject is not completely concious of him or herself."

Alternatively, Ho suggested, she could be suffering from severe psychiatric breakdown or the results of long-term drug abuse.

Ng said police were waiting on immigration officials to see if they could identify her.

He was also expecting medical and psychological tests before deciding what to do next.

"No crime has been committed, so there's nothing to go on. We sent out the tracker dogs to see if they could find her clothes but they turned up nothing.

"It really is a difficult one," he said. (:/)

Truth stranger than fiction on Taiwan TV news

Reuters

Taipei - When the tsunami hit the Indian Ocean region last year, Taiwan's television news channels, like networks around the world, scrambled for the most dramatic footage.

One station was so desperate it showed the soaring tide of China's famous Qiantang River instead. When viewers found out and complained, the station apologised saying it had made a mistake.

Even for Taiwan, where news channels are notorious for sensationalist and exaggerated stories, either poorly sourced or just blatantly faked, this was considered too much.

With eight around-the-clock cable news stations and a dozen others offering regular news programmes on an island of 23 million people, competition is fierce. And this results in irresponsible journalism, industry experts say.

"It's a vicious circle," said Wei Ti from the Campaign for Media Reform, a private body, who teaches mass communication at the Tamkang University.

"There is no genuine competition. Everyone is going after what they see as the most sensational story of the day and broadcasting it over and over again." (:/)

Bloody hell. Thank GOD that doesn't happen here, eh?

Italian rail firm under fire over creepy-crawly trains

AFP

Dateline: Rome - A senior official of Italy's national rail operator was summoned to the transport ministry after several incidents in which passengers complained of being infected or bitten by ticks, fleas and lice on trains, some of them serving Paris.

Trenitalia's Roberto Testore was called to a meeting with a junior minister as officials began an inquiry into Sunday's incident on a regional train from Turin, northern Italy, when passengers in one compartment complained about being attacked by ticks, fleas and other bugs.

A few hours later, passengers on a Paris-bound service from Vintimiglia, near the border with France, halted their train for four hours at Marseille protesting that they, too, had been attacked.

French medical personnel inspected the train and one of the carriages was removed, but some 80 of the travellers refused to get back on board. (:/)

Russian man survives snooze under moving train

Reuters/Interfax

Dateline: Moscow - Even a goods train rumbling over a Russian man's head failed to spoil his peaceful slumber between the tracks, Interfax news agency reported on Monday.

The train driver saw somebody on the line and braked sharply. Rescuers tried to pull the drunken sleeper from underneath the carriages, but failed, and the train had to carry on driving to free him.

"The young man lying between the rails did not wake up ... which apparently saved his life," said railway policeman Vladimir Slaby. (:/)

That is DRUNK. Oh no, hold on, THIS is:

Inebriated Belgian woman dies in cemetery accident

Reuters

Dateline: Brussels - An inebriated Belgian woman died in a freak accident when she ended up beneath a heavy grave stone at a cemetery, local news agency Belga said on Wednesday.

The 33-year-old was on her way home from a bar in the Belgian town of Pulle in the early hours of Saturday when she took a short cut through the cemetery.

But she urgently needed to relieve herself and crouched down between two gravestones. As she lost her balance, she grabbed one of the stones which gave way and landed on top of her.

The public prosecutor's office said she died of suffocation as she was unable to lift the heavy stone. (:/)

Criminal Negligence

Two Men Allegedly Break Into McDonald's

AP

Dateline: Casper, Wyo. - Did they want fries with that? Two men were charged with burglary after they allegedly broke into a McDonald's restaurant and tried to steal food.

Michael Eugene Croley and Christopher Carl Walker, both 18, walked up to the restaurant's drive-through window early Saturday morning and asked for any unsold food the restaurant planned to throw away, Casper police Sgt. Brad Wnuk said Tuesday.

When McDonald's employees told them the restaurant was closed, one of the men allegedly pried open the window and climbed at least part of the way into the restaurant, where workers called 911 and fled into the kitchen.

"The employees were afraid they would be robbed," Wnuk said.

The two were arrested shortly after the incident, and denied any involvement, according to court documents. (:/)

German thief caught after online sale to victim

Reuters

A German thief stole a man's in-car navigation system and unwittingly auctioned it online back to his victim, who had police arrest him, authorities say.

Police in Berlin say the 26-year-old victim spotted the device on an Internet auction site and quickly reacquired what he had reported stolen from his car some two weeks previously.

He informed police, who went to the thief's house posing as the buyers and then arrested the 21-year-old.

"I think the thief got a bit of a surprise," a Berlin police spokesman said, adding the man confessed to the theft. (:/)

Cops say thief dropped his name tag

AP

Dateline: Albuquerque, -- What's in a name? A lot of trouble if you leave it at the scene of a crime.

Police are investigating a recent burglary at a portable school building in Albuquerque where a computer monitor, two printers and other equipment was stolen.

What they found was a restaurant employee name tag near the building at Bandelier Elementary School, according to court documents.

The tag, bearing the name ''Sam,'' was used to help authorities track down Samuel Wilson, 19.

Wilson was being held on burglary charges. (:/)

Police Blow Up Cannonball, Owner Objects

AP

Dateline: Anchorage, Alaska - Yale Metzger wants the Anchorage Police Department to replace his cannonball. Police officers say they blew it up to protect the public.

Metzger said he called police last week to have them examine the cannonball he found in Cordova. Instead, he said, the bomb squad showed up at his home last week with a remote-controlled robot, hauled away the cast iron ball and blew it up.

The police are calling Metzger "an idiot" for carrying the incendiary device around in his truck, then bringing it into downtown Anchorage, where they say it could have sent shrapnel flying for blocks had it exploded.

Metzger, 45, an attorney, found the 4-inch, 8-pound, cast iron ball last summer while excavating property he had purchased. It was unearthed in what most recently was a snow dump.

Metzger put the ball in the back of his pickup, where it rolled around for a year, he said. Over time he began to investigate how a cannonball, a projectile that stopped being used more than a century ago, could have ended up in Cordova.

Once the ball was in Anchorage, Metzger was concerned the ball could be still active. He wanted to know if his cannonball was solid or hollow, and if it was hollow, if it had volatile black powder.

The bomb squad took one look at it in Metzger's garage and treated it like a bomb seconds away from blowing.

"Could it have exploded?" Metzger asked. "Sure. So could a meteor fall out of the sky and hit your truck."

The bomb squad exploded the cannonball at the Anchorage Landfill. Sgt. Jeff Morton said a secondary explosion occurred and a different color of smoke blew out, making it certain that the cannonball had volatile black powder.

Police have not second-guessed their decision to destroy what might have been an artifact.

"We're not going to put a bomb technician's life in jeopardy over a cannonball or anything else," Jennings said. He called Metzger "an idiot" for bringing the bomb into town and for questioning the bomb squad's decision to destroy it. (:/)

Soap opera in court

(Ormskirk) Midweek Advertiser

A pair of washing machine thieves failed to get clean away after they were caught on CCTV wheeling their haul to the train station through the streets of Ormskirk.

Carl T. Bosanquet, 41, of Hollingworth Close, Walton, and Stanley Alan Kellie, 34, of Roughdale Close, Liverpool, pleaded guilty to theft at Ormskirk Magistrates Court.

The soap opera began on Tuesday, August 23, when the two discovered a washing machine outside Ireland's electrical appliance shop in Church Street, Ormskirk, which, they told police, they thought was abandoned.

They took the washing machine and wheeled it through the town in broad daylight to Ormskirk train station, 500m away.

The duo were spotted immediately by town centre CCTV operators and arrested by police as they struggled to load the £250 washing machine onto the Liverpool train.

Mike Flynn, defending, said: "It's something of a sad and sorry story.

"Both gentlemen admit they were looking in bins to see if there was anything of use they could take.

" They saw a washing machine they thought was abandoned and took it."

He asked the Bench to deal with both men immediately as Bosanquet was due to go into the Kevin White detox clinic and any outstanding court matters would jeopardise that placement.

He said: "Once a person has been on the scheme he is effectively cleaned up."

Sentencing the pair to £75 fines and no court costs, the chairman of the Bench, Mrs Susan Watkinson, said: "It's an unusual offence. It's caused quite a bit of local interest."

She agreed that Bosanquet needed to dry out and told him: "I hope you take advantage of the opportunity we have given you today. Hopefully, we will not see you in this court again." (:/)

Nippon In The News

Japanese geeks go gaga as 'maids' clean them up

AFP

Dateline: Tokyo - Japanese geeks too pent-up to flirt with women or refine their style can now do both at once -- getting their hair cut and cleaned by "maids" in frilly aprons and bonnets.



Seizing on a lucrative fetish market, Tokyo's latest salon features hairdressers in black miniskirts ready to attend to the fashion needs of the metropolis's geeks.

The hair salon, Moesham, is in Akihabara, Tokyo's electronics district haunted by drab computer buffs and fanatic hobbyists known as "otaku", which literally means "your home", as in to stay at home.

Maid themes have already proved a huge success among Tokyo's plentiful otaku, with at least 50 cafes, bars, restaurants and massage parlors around the capital staffed by girls in the classic frills.

Hiroshi Asaeda, spokesman for Tokyo-based company DON which operates the first otaku hair salon, admits he himself had been a computer nerd.

"I used to be an otaku but I began to get interested in clothes and then hairstyles," the 22-year-old says. "I want other otakus snubbed by women to experience what I went through.

"There is nothing wrong with being an otaku. But the sight of them make people sick because of their fashion," he says.

"Take a look at the men walking down the street here. Many of them are in worn-out T-shirts and jeans that aren't their size and carry tattered daypacks."

Asaeda argues that his salon serves the greater public interest. Cleaner looking otaku, he says, would help people accept comics, video games and other objects of otakus' adoration which by one study form a 2.6 billion dollar market.

"I want to bring fashion into Akihabara, to clean it up," Asaeda declares in his salon decorated with white lacy curtains and fake flowers.

The main reason the otaku are drawn to maids is their obedience and cuteness, Asaeda says.

"Women say men in business suits look 30 percent better. Girls in maid costumes may look cuter," he says.

There is no sexual contact between the "maids" and the customers who come for a trim, but the hint of it is certainly present.

"Obviously getting shampooed makes you feel good. But it also makes your heart throb as a maid leans over you -- very close but not pressed onto your body," he explains.

For the otaku too shy for a peak at what's before him, he can watch the scene on the mirrors on the ceiling above him.

The operative word at the hair salon is "moe", which literally means "to sprout" but in slang translates as a meeker, Japanese version of "to go gaga".

"You would think 'it's cute' when you see a hamster. 'Moe' is that feeling but mingled with the bit of love you feel towards somebody out of reach," Asaeda explains.

The salon, which employs six hairdressers and 10 apprentices, targets men in their 40s or younger but also expects some customers to be women who like to play dress-up.

One of Moesham's hairdressers, Yuki Harada, in her 20s, laments pursuing her profession for people so unconcerned about hairstyles. "I want them to look cooler," she says.

Harada says she was a bit ashamed to wear the maid clothes but is now accustomed to them. "My language has also become more polite," she says. (:/)

We Love Germans

German anarchist party's TV advert offends viewers

Reuters

Dateline: Berlin - A fringe German anarchist party has outraged national television audiences with its election campaign television spot -- a video montage of booze-fuelled chaos, syringes and men cavorting with topless women.

An estimated one million viewers watched the German Anarchist Pogo Party's already heavily censored political broadcast (http://www.appd.de/wahlspot/wahlspot.php) when it was shown for the first time on Monday.

Rather than offer any presentation of policies, the party's campaign spot spliced together scenes of debauched revellers smashing furniture, pouring beer down each other's throats and groups of couples kissing and groping each other, all set to a frantic heavy metal soundtrack.

As an officially registered political party, the Hamburg-based APPD, which sells t-shirts on its Web site that proclaim "Arbeit ist Scheisse" ("work is shit"), is entitled to free television air time for its advertisements.

Karl Nagl, campaign manager of the APPD, told Reuters on Wednesday the party would continue to run the ad.

"The next broadcast is scheduled for Monday night," he said.

But he said the broadcasting authorities might insist the party remove scenes featuring needles, which he said depicted people taking blood samples and not intravenous drug abuse.

German newspapers say the party's roughly 750 members would have no discernible impact on the September 18 parliamentary elections. (:/)

The video is insane, by the way. Gotta say, though, that an anarchist video offending Germans is hardly man bites dog, is it?

Cops On The Rocks

Police Recruit Has Hand in His Own Arrest

AP

Dateline: Wellington, New Zealand - A New Zealand police recruit has had a hand in his own arrest for an unsolved assault. As part of a training exercise in fingerprinting at the Royal New Zealand Police College, the recruit gave his prints — and they matched him to an arrest warrant for a serious assault, Wellington's Dominion Post newspaper reported Wednesday.

He was arrested late last week and will appear in court later this week, the paper reported.

Training commander, Superintendent Alistair Beckett, said the recruit, whose name was not reported, had managed to slip through rigorous screening of potential recruits.

"By and large, the people we get are top of the line, top drawer. They normally don't have things from the past they want to hide," he was quoted saying.

But the police are not taking any chances that others might try to fool the system. Starting from October, all recruit applicants will be fingerprinted before they are given training, Beckett said. (:/)

Sport

Hrbaty's peek-a-boo look gets shirty response

AFP

Dateline: New York - Dominik Hrbaty exited the US Open and none too soon for tennis fashion mavens.



You could say they were glad to see the back of him, except that's exactly the view of his strangely ventilated shirt critics wanted to avoid.

"It made it a lot easier for me to beat him today," quipped Australian Lleyton Hewitt. "I just couldn't lose to a bloke wearing a shirt like that."

Hrbaty, a 27-year-old journeyman from Slovakia, fielded questions all week about the odd apparel, pink trimmed in navy blue with two oval cut-outs displaying his bare shoulder blades in the back.

"I don't really know what the design means," he said. "If it's only an idea, or if it had any purpose in the beginning or if somebody just was trying to make a smiley face in the back."

Whatever prompted the design, Hrbaty said, it had the advantage of being cooler than a regular shirt. The downside was it required applications of sunscreen to the exposed skin.

The peek-a-boo effect had everyone from tennis great turned TV commentator John McEnroe to rivals in the draw weighing in with an opinion - uniformly negative.

Finland's Jarkko Nieminen, waiting to see if he'd face Hrbaty or Hewitt in the quarter-finals, was already formulating his sartorial strategic response.

"It's only on the back side, so I can't see it," he pointed out, adding that if Hrbaty had to run down a lob, "I'll try to watch just the ball." (:/)

Tough backsides needed for 'dive-bombing' contest in Germany

AFP

Dateline: Heilbronn, Germany - You need a tough backside and points are awarded for hiding your pain when you flop into the water -- welcome to the weird world of 'dive-bombing' which held its world championships.

The event in a swimming pool in the western German town of Heilbronn on Sunday actually only attracted competitors from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands, although organisers are convinced the 'sport' is spreading fast.

Unlike Olympic diving, in which medals are awarded for slicing through the surface without so much as a ripple, the name of the game in dive-bombing is to make as much noise and spray as possible when you hit the water.

"The kids here are freaks. Dive-bombing is an extreme sport," said the man who dreamed up the world championships, 36-year-old Oliver Schill.

Competitors had three attempts from the 10-metre (32-foot) board, including one classic backside-first dive and two 'freestyle' attempts.

It looked painful -- and it was.

The winner was Simon Gfeller from the Swiss town of Muensingen who produced a dive comprising four turns and then a spectacular landing on his face -- he won extra points from the judges for hiding his discomfort.

A German dive-bombing coach, Helmut Huenerfauth, is convinced the new sport is here to stay.

"All over the place there are groups of people getting together who just want to get their backsides flayed," he said. (:/)

Vinnie de Milo

The Sun

THE moment soccer’s Vinnie Jones squeezed Paul Gascoigne’s privates is being immortalised in a bronze statue.

The £40,000 sculpture — 11⁄2 times life size — will have pride of place outside a new stadium. (:/)

Animal Magic

Girl Captures Gator After Watching TV Show

AP

Dateline: Tarentum, Pa. - Crocus, a 2-foot pet alligator escaped from his backyard enclosure, but was captured by a girl who used what she learned on a nature TV program.

Nicki Hilliard and several friends saw the animal swimming in the Allegheny River.

Hilliard said she learned how to catch the animals safely by watching the television show "Crocodile Hunter." The secret is to grab the animal's snout and hold its mouth closed.

The kids put the animal in a beverage cooler and took it to the police station, where it was locked inside a cell until owner Belinda Thomson arrived to claim it.

Thompson said neighborhood cats opened the fence in her back yard, enabling Crocus to escape. (:/)

Unique L.A. School Offers Mule Training

AP

Dateline: Los Angeles - Sugar the mule was anything but sweet. She bit her owner, kicked him and dragged him around his corral. "At first I could do things with her, but she slowly turned on me," said Will Green, a 43-year-old warehouseman, who bought Sugar and a two-acre Mojave desert spread to lead a life of packing and hunting.

"It's these animals; they're very smart. When you don't know, it gives them a window of opportunity to take over."

This summer, Green hauled the cranky creature to what is believed to be the nation's only mule school at Pierce College in Woodland Hills, a Los Angeles suburb.

Within a few hours, mule charmer Steve Edwards had Sugar behaving like a lamb, obediently waltzing around a dusty corral on a length of rope.

"The biggest problem with mules is that most people aren't smart enough to be around them," said Edwards, 56, an old-time cowboy who calls people "pardner" and wears a big-brimmed hat. "People say they're stubborn, but they're just very smart. You have to be able to outthink them." (:/)

Hmm. Outthinking a mule. Tough call.

Duck Club Uses Pigs to Keep Seagulls Away

AP

Dateline: Salt Lake City - With an oink oink here and an oink oink there, four weaner pigs seemed to have scared seagulls away from a duck hunting club.

The Rudy Duck Club, which borders the Salt Lake International Airport in the marshland of the Great Salt Lake, has been using the young pigs for the past five years. Members put the pigs up in shelters on the four islands — two per island so they have company — in the 1,900-acre club, and the animals do what comes naturally.

"The seagulls were taking over the islands," said Lane Jensen, a member of the duck club board. Their nesting habits were "messing up the airport, it was killing off the island for any other nesting."

Hunters who couldn't shoot the gulls had to come up with a backup plan.

"It's the state bird," Jensen said.

After other methods failed to be anything more than a temporary fix, a rancher near the club suggested the pigs would root in the gull nests for eggs and disrupt the breeding cycle. The pigs were turned loose every April and roamed the islands until mid-June.

The pigs stay away from geese, which are twice as big as the weaners and have a frightening hiss.

This year, gulls didn't try to nest on the islands, Jensen said.

"So it worked," he said. (:/)

Ick!

Thai Artist Bakes Edible 'Body Parts'

AP

Dateline: Potharam, Thailand - Inside a dark room, realistic-looking "human body parts" are stacked on shelves and hanging on meat hooks. The place looks like a mortuary or the lair of a serial killer, but in fact, it's a bakery. What appears to be putrefying body parts are the bread sculptures of 28-year-old art student Kittiwat Unarrom.



"Of course, people were shocked and thought that I was mad when they saw the works. But once they knew the idea behind it, they understood and became interested in the work itself, instead of thinking that I am crazy," said the fine arts masters degree student.

He hopes his realistic artwork will make people ponder whether they are consuming food, or food is consuming them.

"Everyone's life is rushed nowadays, even when it comes to eating," he said. "When we eat, we don't think about our health or safety, we only think of our taste buds."

As an undergraduate art student, Kittiwat started painting portraits. He then moved to mixed media and finally dough — a natural medium for him since his family runs a bakery.

Along with edible human heads crafted from dough, chocolate, raisins and cashews, Kittiwat makes human arms, feet, and chicken and pig parts. He uses anatomy books and his vivid memories of visiting a forensics museum to create the human parts.

He now is receiving regular orders from the curious and from pranksters who want to surprise their friends or colleagues, but that's a minor sideline.

By the end of the year, Kittiwat's confectionary slaughterhouse will go on display at Bangkok's Silpakorn University. It's his final dissertation, and he hopes it will secure him a master of arts degree.

"When people see the bread, they don't want to eat it. But when they taste it, it's just normal bread," he said. "The lesson is 'don't judge just by outer appearances.'" (:/)

That story was by Watcharaporn Taithongchai. That is some name. I think it's actually IwatchaThaPorn...

Loony Leaders

In Ashkhabad did Niyazov a penguin's ice palace decree...

Headline TAR story AFP

Turkmenistan's president-for-life, Saparmurat Niyazov, has ordered a zoo be built for 300 species of birds and animals, including penguins, in the Central Asian republic's Kara Kum desert, state television has announced.
The decision comes a year after the 65-year-old strongman announced construction of an ice palace capable of holding 1000 people.

A Turkish firm was expected to complete construction of the 40-hectare park within a year, the TV said.

"The zoo will be situated north of Ashkhabad where the Kara Kum desert begins. The animals will live there in conditions close to those of their natural habitat and the zoo will cost several million dollars," said an official at the Turkmen environment ministry, which will select the animals.

"We are examining the possibility of acquiring animals from the four corners of the planet, such as penguins from the north," the source said.

The zoo is the latest in a series of grandiose projects ordered by the man who styles himself "Turkmenbashi," the leader of all Turkmen, whose gas-rich country of five million is dotted with statues of himself and his mother.

In August 2004, he ordered that a giant ice palace be built in mountains north of the capital, but doubts were raised about whether it could be sustained in a desert country that receives just 100-250 millimetres of rain a year.

Temperatures average minus one degree Celsius in winter and range up to 30 degrees celsius in summer.

Last month, state-run media reported Niyazov's spiritual guide book Rukhnama was blasted into space with two Japanese satellites from the Russian launch station in Kazakhstan as proof that Turkmenistan had joined the space-powers club.

The president, whose poetry and philosophical writings dominate radio and television programmes, last month banned recorded music at public events and on television in a bid to protect Turkmen culture from foreign influences.

Opera and ballet have long been outlawed as "unnecessary".

Turkmenistan's national anthem is titled "Turkmenbasyn guran beyik binasy" - "The Country that Turkmenbashi has built". (:/)

Star Trek

Europe plans laser-fusion facility

PhysicsWeb

Laser physicists in Europe have put forward plans to build a £500m facility to study a new approach to laser fusion. A panel of scientists from seven European Union countries believes that a "fast ignition" laser facility could make a significant contribution to fusion research, as well as supporting experiments in other areas of physics. The facility could be up and running by the middle of the next decade.

The laser would be used to compress and heat a small capsule of deuterium and tritium until the nuclei are hot enough to undergo nuclear fusion and produce helium and neutrons. In a reactor the energy of the neutrons would be used to generate electricity without the emission of greenhouse gases or the generation of long-lived nuclear waste.

The most advanced approach to fusion involves using magnetic fields to confine the deuterium–tritium plasma. This is the route to be taken by ITER, which will cost $10bn to build and run. The alternative "inertial confinement" technique, which uses lasers or ion beams rather than magnets to confine the plasma, will be investigated by the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in the US and the Laser Mégajoule (LMJ) in France. However, both these billion-dollar lasers will primarily be used for nuclear-weapons research, with only 15% of their time being available for other areas of physics. (:/)

Be very, very scared.

Nippon In The News

Schoolgirl faces arrest for spraying fire extinguisher at schoolmates

Mainichi Daily News

Dateline: Fujisawa, Kanagawa -- A 15-year-old junior high school girl faces arrest for spraying a fire extinguisher at about 70 schoolmates on their way to school on Wednesday morning, sickening 66 of them, police said Thursday.


(Investigators examine the scene where a junior high school girl allegedly sprayed a fire extinguisher at her schoolmates)

Kanagawa Prefectural Police decided to arrest the 15-year-old girl for inflicting bodily injury after an 18-year-old boy under arrest for stealing cars told investigators that the girl sprayed the fire extinguisher from the vehicle he was driving.

The girl also admitted to the allegations during questioning. "I stole the fire extinguisher shortly before the incident. I intended to play with the fire extinguisher, and sprayed it after spotting children on their way to school," she was quoted as telling investigators.

Police suspect that two others were also involved in the attack.

The girl, a third-year student at Fujisawa Municipal Takakura Junior High School, has been absent from school for nearly two years.

The boy, a painter and graduate of the school, is under arrest for stealing three cars, worth 900,000 yen, from the compounds of a used car shop in Fujisawa between the night of Sept. 1 and the following morning. (:/)

The girlfriend I should have had.

Police officer set to resign after driving into river while drunk

Mainichi Daily News

Dateline: Sapporo -- A police investigator is set to resign after being suspended for drunk driving in August, police officials said.

The 31-year-old senior officer, whose name was not immediately released, drove his car into a river in Ono, southern Hokkaido, late on the night of Aug. 27 while intoxicated, the prefectural police's inspection bureau said.

Officers on patrol spotted the accident and detected a massive amount of alcohol on his breath.

Local police sent an investigation report to prosecutors on Wednesday, accusing the officer of violating the Road Traffic Law. The force's inspection bureau punished him on Thursday by suspending him from duty for three months. (:/)

Getting drunk in Sapporo... geddit? Oh never mind.

More Ick!

Crouching tiger, hidden donkey

Reuters

Dateline: Beijing - The cat is out of the bag at a restaurant in northeast China that had been serving donkey meat spiked with tiger urine in pricey dishes advertised as endangered Siberian tigers.

Local media in Heilongjiang province got wind that the restaurant was offering stir-fried dishes and medicinal liquor made from tiger meat and bones, sparking local police and health inspectors to pounce, the China Daily said on Thursday.

"After inspection, the owner confessed that the so-called tiger meat was donkey meat that had been dressed with tiger urine to give the dish a 'special' flavour," the newspaper said.

The restaurant had been charging as much as 800 yuan (53.80 pounds) a dish for the illegal, "rare" fare, tapping into traditional Chinese belief that tiger meat has aphrodisiacal properties.

The restaurant was shut down and fined and the director of the nearby Hengdaohezi Siberian Tiger Park, China's largest centre for breeding the highly endangered animals, reassured the public there was no way meat from its big cats had made its way to the dinner table, the newspaper said.

Only a few hundred Siberian tigers are believed to be alive in the wild in their native habitats of northern China, southern Russia and parts of North Korea.

The report did not explain where the tiger urine had come from or how it was collected. (:/)

Curious Squirrel Knocks Out Power in Kansas

AP

Dateline: Topeka, Kan. - A squirrel too curious for its own good caused an outage that left the Statehouse and other downtown Topeka buildings briefly without power Thursday, according to Westar Energy Inc.

Company spokeswoman Gina Penzig said the squirrel got into a power substation and was touching different parts of a circuit, causing electricity to flow through its body and overload the circuit.

The power went out about 8:30 a.m. and returned about a half-hour later. Besides the Statehouse, two state government office buildings were affected. (:/)

Sauteed squirrel, anyone?

And finally

Thai PM To Pesky Reporters: Buzzzz

AP

Dateline: Bangkok, Thailand - Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has long complained of press criticism. But he sought to turn the tables Thursday with a new tactic — sounding a buzzer every time reporters ask questions he deems "not constructive."


Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra shows "No" sign to a journalist after being asked questions during a press conference at Government House in Bangkok Thursday, Aug. 25, 2005.

To the surprise of journalists and colleagues alike, Thaksin raised a handheld buzzer — which displayed an "X" sign — from behind the podium to indicate his disapproval of some questions asked at the first in a new series of weekly news conferences.

The button-pushing Thaksin sounded the alarm when a Thai newspaperman asked why the government had failed to seek parliamentary consent before introducing an emergency decree in the volatile southern provinces, where a Muslim insurgency has taken hold.

"Not constructive!" he exclaimed, referring to the reporter's question and a related one about whether foreign terrorists might be linked to the rebellion.

But other questions elicited a sweeter response: when a female reporter asked about government plans to offset rising oil prices, Thaksin's gadget emitted a pleasant tone and displayed an "O," signaling his approval.

Thaksin joked about the buzzer to puzzled reporters: "My son brought it from Japan for his sister, and I just borrowed it to use with the media to make the atmosphere more relaxing."

But some journalists failed to see the humor.

"I think it's a little overboard for a prime minister to do anything like that because in this forum, I think, reporters have the right to ask any questions that concern the Thai people, the public interest," said Tulsathit Taptin, editor of The Nation, an English-language daily.

"They have the right to ask those kinds of questions," he said.

The new series of news conferences was organized by the government to give reporters better access to Thaksin and to information about government activities.

It wasn't clear whether Thaksin planned to keep using the buzzer. (:/)

Indeed. Until next time...

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