It was published on Fri May 4, 2007 10:07am EDT…

PATNA, India (Reuters) – Hundreds of people are flocking to a remote village in eastern India to catch a glimpse of an old man who has spent six years lying inside his own grave waiting to die as he mourns for his wife, officials said.

Basanta Roy claims he is 103 and spends his day clearing weeds from the grave and lying in it. Belonging to a Hindu caste who bury their dead, Roy dug his grave close to his wife’s after she died in the late 1990s.

“He cleans his grave every day and waits for his death, which seems to be eluding him,” said Shyam Narayan Ram, a senior government official from Jharkhand state.

from “Mourning man lies in own grave, and waits to die“

I was so moved by this modern day Romeo & Juliet story.  If you can provide any details or links regarding this gentleman, please post it.

Thank you.

A young mother has become the first in the world to get a new part of her body made from her own stem cells.  The woman in Spain received a new windpipe — grown in a lab.  British doctors who were involved in the revolutionary transplant say it heralds a new era in medicine…Health Correspondent Thomas Moore explains.

“Police forces in the US are piloting a new kind of police car. Not only does it make a sound and flash its lights when speeding to an emergency it also rumbles, shaking the ground up to 200 feet away giving pedestrians and other drivers advance notice to MOVE!!! The technology is currently being tested in New York.”

A bottle of beer found in the wreckage of the Hindenburg sold for $16,680 (USD) at auction, shattering the world record.

The brown bottle of Lowenbrau lager was discovered in the wreckage by Leroy Smith, a fire chief on the scene.  Smith discovered a total of six bottles and a pitcher at the scene of the disaster.  He distributed four of the bottles as souvenirs to colleagues and one to the Lowenbrau brewery in 1977, where it still remains.  The final price was much higher than expected.  Early reports suggested that the beer was expected to fetch $4,000-$8,000.  According to the Gazette & Herald, bidders from all over the world battled over the bottle, the majority of which were from the US.  With the addition of the buyer’s premium, the total cost of the bottle was L10,810.  The label on the bottle remains intact and legible, and though the brew survived the disaster, the auctioneer cautioned against quaffing the beverage, saying that the 62-year-old suds would “taste putrid.”

Source

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WACO, Texas * Authorities say a Texas woman lied about having breast cancer and spent $10,000 raised at a benefit on having her breasts enlarged.

McLennan County sheriff’s investigator James Pack says in court records that 24-year-old Trista Joy Lathern shaved her head to look like a cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy.

Pack says Lathern wanted breast implants to try and save her seven-month marriage.

The Waco Tribune-Herald reports that Lathern is charged with theft by deception.

The Associated Press

Video

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Visitors to a New Zealand oceanarium watched in astonishment when one shark tore a chunk out of another’s stomach.  But they were even more astonished when four baby sharks tumbled out of the gaping wound.

Staff at Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater World, in Auckland, had no idea the shark was pregnant until visitors came running to tell them about the impromptu caesarean section.  Initially skeptical, they found the mother with a large cut and four little sharks swimming around.

The oceanarium’s aquarist, Fiona Davies, said it was not uncommon for sharks to chomp on each other, even in the wild.  But she had never heard of an incident like this.

The relationship of the other shark to the mother was unknown, but Davies praised its actions, saying the unusual deliver had probably saved the babies’ lives.

Four more babies were found inside the female when mother and young were removed to a nursery tank.  The eight young sharks are now on show and will eventually be released into the wild.

The Independent

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Man sues over lack of ‘Lynx effect’

A luckless Indian romeo is suing Lynx after he failed to land a single girlfriend during seven years of using their products.

Vaibhav Bedi, 26, is seeking £26,000 from parent company Unilever for the “depression and psychological damage” caused by the lack of any Lynx effect.

Court officials in New Delhi have agreed to order forensic laboratory tests on dozens of his half-used Lynx body washes, shampoos, anti-perspirants and hair gels.

Lynx – marketed as Axe in India – is famous for its saucy ads showing barely clothed women throwing themselves at men.

But Bedi says in his court petition: “The company cheated me because in its advertisements, it says women will be attracted to you if you use Axe.

“I used it for seven years but no girl came to me.”

When contacted Unilever declined to comment on the case.

But India’s leading compensation litigator Ram Jethmalani warned: “There is no data to substantiate the supposition that unattractive and unintelligent men don’t attract women.

“In fact some of the best looking women have been known to marry and date absolutely ghoulish guys. I’d suggest that the company settles this issue out of court.”

Source

________________________

Have you purchased a product that promised to deliver but didn’t?  What was it?

KENORA, Ontario

Even military men get the muchies.

A Canadian military helicopter touched down in Kenora in the parking lot across from the A&W for a food run on Thursday evening.

Restaurant owner Randy Nickle said he was surprised to see the chopper touch down.

“They were hungry, they were looking for food.  They flew from Edmonton…and were trying to get to Thunder Bay and, of course, they needed fuel so they stopped to get gas at the airport.  But because there’s no food there they decided, “Hey, let’s go to A&W for supper.”

Nickle said crew members picked up an order of burgers, fries and drinks before lifting off.

The Canadian Press

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Wow–what a story.  A baby fell on to a train track in Melbourne, Australia and survived with a scratch on its head!  The engineer is being treated for shock.

See the gut-wrenching video here as broadcast by CNN!

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____________________

News reporter can’t stop laughing over a model who falls

____________________

And one for the road…Laura Ingraham has a hard time transitioning from radio to TV…

Michelle Childers and her husband, Daniel, were taking a recreational drive on a rural road in Idaho on Sept 5 when a spruce tree crashed through the passenger side window of the vehicle.

The twenty-two-year-old said she then felt a “strange” pressure on her neck and shoulder.

“I asked (my husband) ‘what where is it?’ “she told Fox News.

Her husband, twenty-two- year-old Daniel Childers, told her that the tree limb had impaled her.

The branch was more than an inch in diameter and 18 inches long.

However, Mrs Childers said she felt no pain.

The couple drove to the Lochsa Lodge near the Idaho-Montana border to call for help and was flown by helicopter to St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula, Mont.

Childers said the 13-inch tree limb was removed from her neck during a six-hour surgery.

Doctors discovered that the branch had somehow missed her jugular vein and her windpipe. The branch penetrated its way to the back of her left shoulder.

Source

Have you had a similar experience?

TORONTO — George Clooney was left speechless by a fan who stripped off his clothes and asked him for sex.  The 48-year-old actor–who is widely considered one of Hollywood’s sexiest actors–was promoting the new movie ‘The Men Who Stare at Goats‘ yesterday when the infatuated admirer declared his feelings.

The unidentified male stood up in the press conference and said, “I am gay, George, and I think I am in love with you…Please take me.”  He then proceeded to strip to his underwear, leaving his tie in place, and added: “May I kiss you, please.  Just one kiss?”

Taking it all in stride, Clooney calmly replied: “It’s hard when you take a big chance and it doesn’t really work.  It’s always embarrassing when you take one real big swing for the fences and it just falls flat.  It was a good try, though.  You know, the tie looks good, and it’s just long enough.”

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Joe Horn witnessed his neighbor’s house being robbed and notified the authorities.  I guess he figured they were taking too long so he took the law into his own hands–while remaining on the phone!

Read the news story here.

Note: I realize this incident took place November 14, 2007.  I’m not interested in the date so much as the content.

__________

Apparently he was acquitted by a Grand Jury…

__________

Was this crime justified?

Amazing story:

Gerrit Blank, 14, was on his way to school when he saw a “ball of light” heading straight towards him from the sky.  A red hot, pea-sized piece of rock then hit his hand before bouncing off and causing a foot-wide crater in the ground.  The teenager survived the strike–the chances of which are just 1 in a million–but with a nasty three-inch long scar on his hand.

He said: “At first I just saw a large ball of light, and then I suddenly felt a pain in my hand.  Then a split second after that there was an enormous bang like a crash of thunder.  The noise that came after the flash of light was so loud that my ears were ringing for hours afterwards.

“When it hit me it knocked me flying and then was still going fast enough to bury itself into the road,” he explained.

Scientists are now studying the pea-sized meteorite which crashed to Earth in Essen, Germany.

“I am really keen on science and my teachers discovered that the fragment is really magnetic,” said Gerrit.  Chemical tests on the rock have proved it had fallen from space.

Ansgar Kortem, director of Germany’s Walter Hohmann Observatory, said: “It’s a real meteorite, therefore it is very valuable to collectors and scientists.

“Most don’t actually make it to ground level because they evaporate in the atmosphere. Of those that do get through, about six out of every seven of them land in water,” he added.

The only other known example of a human being surviving a meteor strike happened in Alabama, USA, in November 1954 when a grapefruit-sized fragment crashed through the roof of a house, bounced off furniture and landed on a sleeping woman.

Source

UPDATE: According to the information on MeteoriteAustralia site, this story is a hoax.

Myth 2: Meteors are still very hot when they hit the ground.

You’d expect that something heated up so much that it glows would still be hot a couple of minutes later. Actually, the situation is a bit more complicated.

The super-hot air in front of the meteoroid is not actually in contact with the particle. (A particle can still be referred to as a meteoroid as it races through the atmosphere, while “meteor” is meant to describe the whole glowing phenomenon.)

The meteoroid’s quick motion sets up a shock wave in the air, like from a supersonic airplane. The shocked air sits in front of the meteoroid, a few centimeters away (depending on the meteoroid’s size) in what’s called a standoff shock. Between the shocked air and the surface of the meteoroid is a relatively slow-moving pocket of air.

The surface of the meteoroid melts from the heat of the compressed gas in front of it, and the air flowing over it blows off the melted portion in a process called ablation. The meteoroid’s high velocity provides the energy for all this heat and light, which rob it of speed. When it falls below the speed of sound, the shock wave vanishes, the heating and ablation stop, and the meteoroid then falls rather slowly, perhaps at a couple of hundred mph (or a few hundred kilometers per hour).

It’s still pretty high up in the atmosphere at this point, and takes several minutes to fall to the ground. Remember, this tiny bit of rock spent a long time in space, and the core is pretty cold. Also, the hottest parts were melted and blown off. Even more, the air up there is cold, which chills the rock as well.

All of these things together mean that not only is the rock not hot when it hits the ground, it can actually be very cold. Some meteorites (what a meteoroid is called after it impacts) have actually been found covered in frost!

See commenter below.

Here’s an interesting spin on the media and how they retouch photos to increase clarity:

“Many news photographs are Photoshopped here and there to increase clarity or to optimize for print or online display. But there have been several instances with where retouching has been pushed too far, changing the original intent or accuracy of the photo.”

Samples:

You will find retouched images from the following magazines:

1. National Geographic, February 1982
2. TIME Magazine, June 1994 [OJ Simpson]
3. Los Angeles Times, March 2003 [Soldier in Basra]
4. USA Today, October 2005 [Condoleeza Rice]
5. Liu Weigiang, 2006 [Tibetan railroad]
6. The Charlotte Observer, July 2006
7. Reuters, August 2006 [Beirut fires]
8. The Toledo Blade, April 2007
9. Liberty Times, December 2007 [Papal delegation]
10. Klavs Bo Christensen, April 2009

Source

Related Links

How extensively are professional magazine photos retouched? | Ask …

Celebrity Retouching: 10 Reasons to Revise Your Reality

Joss Stone Not Happy Over Retouched Magazine Photos – Starpulse …

Australian Teen Magazine Goes Retouch-Free For An Issue from The Frisky

Mayor Ed Charrier is considering a novel way of dealing with disorderly locals: anyone breaking the law three times a year is banished.  The only thing standing in his way is the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The proposed bylaw, Charrier says, is an attempt to deal with “never-ending crime and violence” in the town, which has been plagued by unemployment since the Ruttan Mine closed in 2002. The local RCMP detachment insists crime there is no worse than in any comparable town in northern Manitoba, but Charrier is unapologetic. “If you’ve been in my drunk tank three times in one year—you have to go for rehab or incarceration,” he says. And “you’re not coming back here till you do.”

Leaf Rapids other bylaws:

• In 2007, it put itself on the map by becoming the first Canadian municipality to ban plastic bags.
• Next up? Canada’s first bylaw allowing golf carts on city streets. “You couldn’t use them in winter,” Charrier admits. Other than that, though, “they’re just so practical.”

Source

What do you think of this proposed bylaw?

A bull escapes from the local mart and runs through Cummins SuperValu supermarket in Ballinrobe Co. Mayo Ireland. Watch and see how it is led out…

Watch this video interview with ABC News.  It reveals more about Susan’s personality and attitude about her life.  I love the message she gives to her deceased parents.

[Video]

A woman jumped into a moat (reason unknown) while polar bears were feeding.

After the female landed in the moat, the adult polar bear ran up and bit her several times.   According to police, several zoo workers then tossed rescue rings to the woman in an attempt to hoist her up and distract the other bears. The stoopid lady struggled, fell back into the water and another bear grabbed her before she was finally pulled to safety. It’s still not clear why she jumped into the polar bear habitat yet, but we’re guessing insanity had a bit to do with it. The woman was severely injured and taken to a local hospital for treatment.  Source

CNN video of rescue

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Do you remember the TV show Fact or Fiction (I think that was the name of it)?  Well I think this story should have been included in it.

Artyom Sidorkin was complaining of strong chest pains along with coughing up blood.  Doctors found a tumor in one of his lungs and took a biopsy to see if it was cancerous.  They were amazed to find a 5-cm fir tree!  The needles were poking the capillaries.  Physicians suggested the bud was inhaled, which started to grow in his body.

Probably won’t see this one again anytime soon! When they took the plane out of the Hudson they ended up having to detour through East Rutherford NJ.  These roads were not made for planes.

TrackThisNow search engine is SO COOL!

STEP 1
Enter a keyword and select the country or country group that you want to track

STEP 2
Watch the map

STEP 3
Click on the placemarks on the map to read news from that country

TIP:
Just click on a country to track news from it

For the same search phrase, it tracks news, flickr, youtube videos, and twitter.   Try TrackThisNow for yourself!

What an inspiring young lady!  Qian Hongyan, forced to use half a basketball as her prosthetic body because of a car accident at the age of 3, has inspired millions.  Her dream is to compete in the 2012 London Paralympics.  The story first appeared in the “Metro” on March 11, 2005 (see the link below for an update).

[Video and photos]

[Update on Qian Hongyan]

This might make a good episode.  It would be a mix of CSI and Jurassic Park:

HELSINKI (AFP) – Police in Finland believe they have caught a car-thief thanks to a DNA sample taken from a sample of his blood found inside a mosquito.

<Snip>

“A police patrol carried out an inspection of the car and they noticed a mosquito that had sucked blood. It was sent to the laboratory for testing, which showed the blood belonged to a man who was in the police registers,” inspector Sakari Palomaeki told AFP.

<Snip>

“It is not easy to find a small mosquito in a car, this just shows how thorough the crime scene investigation was,” he added.

Read the full story here.

Claudia Castillo is given a laboratory-engineered trachea produced from her own stem cells.  Her left lung had collapsed after a tuberculosis infection.  She’s had no sign of organ rejection.

[Full story w video]

I always knew proofreading was important–more now than ever after I saw this story reported by CNN.

On August 7, [1999] [Joseph] Beahm paid $100 for the tattoo, which was done by artist James Kastel at a Boardwalk tattoo parlor called Body Art World. But what was supposed to read, “Why Not, Everyone Else Does,” turned out, “Why Not, Everyone Elese Does.”

Beahm wanted the tattoo parlor to pay $2,100 for laser surgery to remove the offending word, but Kastel offered only to cover it up. He contends that Beahm was shown a rendering of the tattoo — including the mistake — before it was applied.

Beahm still plans to sue the tattoo parlor for $20,000, alleging pain and suffering and breach of contract.

Here’s more pics of tattoo typos [Link]:

And this one from flickr:

Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator. A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous amount of information gathered by the aggregator. Treemaps are traditionally space-constrained visualizations of information. Newsmap’s objective takes that goal a step further and provides a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe.

This is a great way to see the news!  Check it out here.

BANGKOK – A crowd of thousands waiting to buy purported magical amulets erupted into a stampede that killed one woman and injured dozens. More than 10,000 people had camped overnight outside a school to buy the Jatukam Ramathep amulets, which have gained a huge following in recent months for what are believed to be their magical qualities.

The 50-year-old woman was trampled when the crowd rushed the school gates Monday morning, said police Lieutenant Suriyon Kaemthong, in Si Thammarat province, 580 kilometres south of Bangkok.

Many Thais carry or wear amulets for good luck. The amulets usually show images associated with Buddhism–the religion of most Thais–though amulets are not formally part of its doctrine.

There is a large collectors’ market and rare amulets command prices of more than $35,000.
The Jatukam Ramathep amulets are round, ranging in size from a penny to a silver dollar and come in a variety of colors, including bronze, silver, and clay. People believe the amulet can bring good luck and protect them from evil and violent attacks, including gunshots and knife wounds.

The phenomenon of the Jakukam amulet started spreading when its creator, a highly respected police official, died at 104 last year. Police Major General Khunphantarak Rajadej was believed to possess knowledge of the occult and more than 200,000 people attended his funeral two months ago. Police ordered a halt to distribution of the amulets after the woman died, said Suriyon.