Weird News Thread ....

[Widgetsx3]

TOKYO (Reuters) - A man rammed his car into the gates of Japan's ruling party headquarters on Friday afternoon, shouting abuse at Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi before being apprehended by police.
Nobody was injured in the incident at the central Tokyo headquarters of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), according to media reports, which described the perpetrator as a right-wing extremist in his 40s.

After crashing into the steel gate and toppling part of it, the man leapt from his car, scattering leaflets and shouting "Koizumi is a fool," Kyodo news agency said.

A police spokesman said the man was quickly caught, but declined to give further information.

[Advertisement]

[Widgetsx3]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Birds do it, bees do it -- well perhaps bees don't do it quite like birds and people do and scientists have found one piece of the puzzle.

The international team of researchers has discovered the gene that allows male bees to have no father.

"We found the section of honeybee genome responsible for the differentiation between female and male," Kim Fondrk of the University of California Davis, who worked on the study, said in a telephone interview.

The discovery helps explain a lot of things that are strange about bees and may help experts preserve endangered bee populations so they can keep the busy insects pollinating crops and wild flora.

Writing in the latest issue of the journal Cell, Fondrk and colleagues in Germany and Norway said the responsible gene is called complementary sex determiner, or csd.

Csd has in 19 alternative versions, called alleles. Female bees have two copies of csd which are always different alleles. Males have only one copy.

About one-fifth of animal species including all ants, bees and wasps use a similar system of sex determination, but the actual genes and mechanisms involved are not well understood.

It helps explain their complex social systems, said Fondrk.

"There are three castes -- the queen, who is the egg layer and mother of all the bees in the hive," Fondrk said. In the wild she mates only once with a male to get the two sets of genes that go to all of her female offspring.

"Then the workers are females and they do all the work. They are the ones that sting. They are the ones that bring the honey in too."

Then there are the males -- the drones. "Drones just have a sexual function," said Fondrk. And they do not inherit a second set of genes from a father bee. They are half-clones of the queen.

Understanding why this happens genetically can help bee breeders, said Fondrk.

When bees are inbred to select desired traits, eggs can accidentally be fertilized with two copies of the same version of csd. These eggs develop into sterile males.

Worker bees find and kill these sterile male larvae and inbred honeybee colonies can die out.

"This problem has haunted bee breeding since the 1940s," Fondrk's colleague at UC Davis, Robert Page, said in a statement.

"As we understand more, there will be ways to get around this problem."

[the fugative]

News of The Weird
Chuck Shepherd

Published August 28, 2003

Wired magazine reported in August that an order screen at the big e-mail spammer, Amazing Internet Products, was left unsecured and was hacked into recently, revealing not only an inexplicably large sales volume (6,000 orders in four weeks for $50 Pinacle cream that promised to increase penis size by up to 3 inches) but some prominent, should-know-better customers, such as the manager of a $6 billion mutual fund in New York City. Wired (and earlier, Salon magazine) reported that AIP's two principals are a 19-year-old high-school dropout and chess vagabond and a 20-something former head of a neo-Nazi outfit.

• The Lawrence (Mass.) Eagle-Tribune reported in August that the local superintendent of schools, Wilfredo Laboy, had recently failed (for the third time) the basic English proficiency test required of all teachers in the state. (English is Laboy's second language.) The state education commissioner said that Laboy was doing "an excellent job" but that he was still going to have to pass the test (a test that Laboy called "stupid").

• Reuters reported in June that would-be painter Rainer Herpel, 51, of Bad Ems, Germany, was speaking again, after having remained silent for the past 29 years as a reaction to his father's disapproval of art as a career. Herpel lived with his mother, spent most of the time alone in his room concentrating on his paintings, only occasionally ventured outdoors, and came out of his shell only when his father passed away. Said Herpel, "All great artists were outsiders before they had success."

Our civilization in decline

• CBS News reported in June that few states have complied with the Brady Bill requirement to list all people involuntarily hospitalized for mental illness on the FBI computer database used for gun purchases, with the result that 2.7 million people should be barred from buying guns for that reason but only 90,000 are. In Hawera, New Zealand, a 25-year-old sex worker ("Brooke") at a massage parlor set the town abuzz in July by advertising that she (who recently gave birth) would (presumably for an additional fee) allow her customers to consume her nutritious breast milk; the director of the local breastfeeding advocates, La Leche League, said she was concerned that Brooke's baby was getting shortchanged.

• Omorotu Francis Ayovuare, 55, a professional surveyor from Nigeria, has filed 72 employment discrimination complaints against British companies in the past five years, with only two minor victories to show. According to a report in London's Daily Telegraph in June, Ayovuare has cost responding employers and the government the equivalent of nearly $1 million to deal with him before employment tribunals. One panel ruled in 2001 that Ayovuare, who is "impressive on paper," keeps applying for jobs beyond his level of practical experience.

• A longstanding rumor on the inner-city "street" held that the federal government actually created AIDS for the purpose of keeping blacks' population down and the community weak, but now a man of impressive credentials has made the accusation in court. Boyd Graves, 50, a black AIDS activist who is also a Naval Academy and law school graduate, sued in San Diego in July, accusing the government of illegally withholding documents that Graves claims will prove the government engineered the whole thing and is suppressing the cure.

• The family of teenager Amy Woods, who was left brain-damaged when hit by a car seven years ago in Springfield, Mass., will get to trial in their suit, which names not only the driver who hit her but also a driver who didn't. Roger O'Neil, a repairman for the NYNEX telephone company, had just stopped on a residential street and courteously motioned Woods and a friend to cross in front of him, but as soon as Woods cleared O'Neil's van, a less courteous driver smashed into her. Woods' family said that if a driver wants to be courteous, he must be responsible for knowing that crossing the street would be safe.

Courtroom follies

• Juries of their peers: In June, a judge in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, rejected the request of a 15-year-old boy, on trial for beating another teenager to death, for a jury composed entirely of teenagers. At the other end of the spectrum, a 13-year-old boy, on trial in April in Inverness, Fla., for fondling a classmate, demanded that he be tried as an adult in front of an adult jury. (He was quickly convicted.) In Santa Ana, Calif., in June, Antonio Nunez, 16, convicted for violent crimes (kidnapping, shooting at police) that he committed at age 14, was sentenced as an adult to five life terms (one of them without possibility of parole) plus 121 years.

• Rap as a second language: In a June copyright infringement case, British High Court Judge Kim Lewison ruled against the composer of the 2001 song "Burnin' " and explaining that he could not help Lewison because he did not know what certain lyrics meant (such as "shizzle my nizzle"). The lyrics, said the judge, although written in a form of English, were "for practical purposes a foreign language" and therefore he could not be sure whether the borrowed use of the lyrics impugned them.

• Several times since 1999 News of the Weird has run stories of incidents in which someone phones the manager of a fast-food restaurant claiming to be a police officer and asks the manager to strip-search one of the employees while the caller listens to the episode on the phone. (Police later concluded that the calls were hoaxes for sexual gratification.) In July, police in Panama City, Fla., arrested supermarket supervisor James Marvin Pate, 36, on the complaint of a local woman who reported a similar situation. At least one of the calls in the previous incidents (in Wisconsin, North Dakota, Montana, Indiana and West Virginia) had been traced to a phone in Panama City, but there were no suspects in those cases until Pate's arrest.

District of Calamity (continued)

• The District of Columbia government's inspector general reported in April that D.C.'s child-support office had been sitting on nearly $3 million in long-overdue, already-collected distributions to custodial parents and that several ranking officials in the office had long known about the delay (a problem apparently caused by incomplete records in "thousands" of cases). (Roscoe Grant, the deputy director of child-support enforcement in the District, himself resisted supporting two out-of-wedlock children until ordered by courts in 1998 and, regarding a 20-year-old son, 2002.)

• In July, New York City's deputy police commissioner, Frederick J. Patrick, was arrested and charged with taking $113,000 from an office charity fund and using it to pay jailed inmates to make calls to sex hotlines, which Patrick then allegedly listened in on for his own gratification.

Least justifiable homicides

• Recent provocations leading to murder: (1) Wouldn't give him back his New York Yankees cap (Kenneth Ware, 45, allegedly stabbed his brother to death, Brooklyn, July). (2) Parked his truck on top of a man's septic tank and wouldn't move it (Chad Landreth allegedly shot the driver to death, Samsula, Fla., June). (3) Argued over who should feed the couple's goats (Pearl Lynne Smith, 47, allegedly shot her husband to death, Eldon, Okla., June).

• Also, in the past month: Norway repealed its law that barred intoxicated people from voting in elections. Justice Barrington Black had to recuse himself from a "dangerous dog" case when he learned that his own dog appears in the background in a video for the defense, frolicking in a park with the defendant-dog (London, England). Cambodian police detained (on a charge unrelated to hygiene) a prominent 81-year-old Buddhist guru who has preached for 60 years that religious purity requires that no water ever touch his skin or hair (Phnom Penh).

[Jolie Rouge]

No. 1 Complaint of Most Moms and Dads

The No. 1 complaint of parents? They don't have enough time--good, quality time--to spend with their children. The demands of long work hours, housework, and other responsibilities have encroached on the time they have to spend with their kids, The Associated Press reports of a new study of 1,000 parents and caregivers with children under 18 who are living at home. What's more, fully 94 percent of those surveyed are aware that there is a relationship between the amount of meaningful time parents spend with their kids and the way those kids deal with major issues, such as substance abuse and discipline. Knowing this doesn't make it any easier to carve out a few extra hours in the day to spend on the swings in the park or reading books together at bedtime.

The study, which was released by the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and the Pennsylvania-based nonprofit group KidsPeace, was overseen by Harvard University psychiatrist Dr. Alvin Poussaint.

Here are some of the findings, which may resonate with your household:

--54 percent said they had little or no time to spend in physical activities with their children, such as taking a walk or playing catch in the backyard.

--Parents in about 3.5 million U.S. households spend an hour or less a week in some type of physical activity with their children.

--50 percent of all parents either don't have enough time or wished they had more time to read to their kids or help with their homework or other educational activities.

--Although some 56 percent of parents acknowledged that their kids are worried about war and terrorism, fully 33 percent admitted they had not yet talked to their little ones about these big issues.

--50 percent of parents and caregivers confessed they haven't talked to their children in the past year about sexual pressures or sexual activity.


The primary obstacle to all this: busy work schedules.

What's a parent to do? First, be aware of the situation. Second, recognize your child's need for your presence in his or her life. Third, figure out a way to make it happen. "They can listen to their children. They can talk, not to their children, they can talk with their children," C.T. O'Donnell, the president and CEO of KidsPeace told AP. "They can take walks in park. They can spend meaningful, interactive reading time with their kids."

[Jolie Rouge]

Where You Live Could Make You Fat

And you thought you were fat because you ate too many cookies.

Maybe you're fat because of where you live.

People who live in the sprawled-out suburbs who must drive to work, school, and the store, are likely to weigh 6 pounds more than their friends who live in the city, reports The Associated Press.

Most European cities are designed for walking and biking, and it's no coincidence that people who live there are typically skinnier and live longer than the average American. "How you build things influences health in a much more pervasive way than I think most health professionals realize," Dr. Richard Jackson of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told AP. Jackson assisted with the research, which was published in the American Journal of Public Health and the American Journal of Health Promotion. "Sprawl" is the hot buzzword for communities built far from the main city.


The study: Urban planner Reid Ewing rated the amount of sprawl in 448 counties that surround metropolitan areas--counties that are home to two-thirds of the U.S. population--and then tracked CDC data on the health of 200,000 area residents.

The results: When we live in such communities, we are heavier, walk less, and have higher blood pressure, compared to residents of cities who walk more frequently than they drive.


If you want to lose weight move here:

The four boroughs of New York City: Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens

San Francisco County, California

Hudson County, New Jersey (Jersey City)

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Suffolk County, Massachusetts (Boston)

Folks who live here weigh more:

Geauga County, Ohio (near Cleveland)

Goochland County, Virginia (near Richmond)

Clinton County, Michigan (near Lansing)

[Jolie Rouge]

Have you seen that bright red dot up in the evening sky over the past several nights?

To many, it's just the simple observance of Mars' closest passing of Earth in over 60,000 years. For others, it's a sign of the end of all things to come.

Over the past week, thousands of concerned believers have stocked up on tin foil and night vision goggles to prepare themselves for an alien invasion. Those with deep faith in an intelligent Martian race are viewing the extreme proximity of Mars to Earth as a sign of an ensuing apocalypse. They say it's only a matter of time before the human race succumbs to alien rule.

However, the Martian takeover won't appear in the form of a traditional battle of violence and war. Instead, many believe that mankind will be eliminated through an alternative process: breeding.

According to several alien experts, the Mars approach is going to lead to a record baby boom of half-Martian, half-human offspring. It is believed that within a year's time, nearly five to seven percent of all births on our planet will be extra-terrestrial/human hybrids.

How soon can we expect the first birth of an alien/human baby?

According to Sarah Knocke, in about seven months. The 24-year-old Wal-Mart employee is due in mid-May of 2004, expecting to give birth to her alien-fathered child.

[Jolie Rouge]

Bizarre Love STORIES

Peter the Great had his wife's lover executed and his head put into a jar of alcohol. She had to keep it in her bedroom.

After having a two year affair with Catherine the Great, Gregory Aleksandrovich Potemkin remained a valued advisor to Catherine. He even helped her pick out future lovers.

Cleopatra married two of her brothers and was the mistress of both Caesar and Mark Antony.

Fernade Olivier lived with Picasso for seven years. They wanted to marry but Olivier couldn't find her estranged husband to divorce him. In the 1940's she found out he had died right after she met Picasso - 40 years earlier.



An Animated Sex Life

Latin lovers who are bored with the same old sexual positions can now receive a helping hand. A Brazilian telephone company is sending animations of sexual positions based on the Kama Sutra directly to customers' mobile phones. For only 99 Brazilian centavos (21 pence), customers of Tele Norte Leste Participacoes' wireless arm Oi are able to down-load one of 40 different animations along with a brief
explanation and level of difficulty. If demand warranted, Oi believes it could double the number of animated positions available. Each graphic comes with the warning that the content is for adults over the age of 18. Not surprisingly, The Rio de Janeiro-based company is one of Brazil's fastest growing cellular phone operators.


What A Tease

SHARON, PA - When you're planning a kid's birthday party to ride go-carts, make sure the go-carts aren't rented out. However, if they are, you can always buy the kids beer and do a strip tease for them, such as one Pennsylvania woman did. When she took her son and three friends to a go-cart track to celebrate her son's birthday, they discovered all the go-carts were rented out. To make up for the disappointment, she took the kids to a hotel and bought them beer.
Handing them $1 bills, she told the boys she wanted to be a stripper, and asked them to put the money in her bra and panties. She then exposed herself and asked them to spank her. The woman's son said that he was embarrassed by her actions. She was free on bail and has since been barred from seeing the boys, since they have seen enough of her already.



No More Alcohol - You're Cut Off

MEXICO CITY - Construction worker Ernesto Rodriguez Hernandez was taken to the hospital after he got drunk and paid two young boys to castrate him. He was intoxicated at a building site in Aguascalientes city on Sunday when he met two 11-year-old boys who had gone there to play. After telling the boys he wished to be "castrated to live more calmly" and because he wasn't married, he then offered them money. He gave the boys 200 pesos (US$20) after they sliced off one testicle with a razor he provided. The boys' par-
ents called police after the boys told them how they obtained the money. Rodriguez was taken to the hospital and the children were put under court jurisdiction while officials investigate the case.




A Derailed Escape

MONROE, Wash. - An Evergreen State Fair employee led police on a crazy chase through the fair after he tried to steal money from another carnival worker and then went into a women's restroom and exposed himself. When deputies arrived, he put on his pants, took off his shirt, and went through a window in one of the bathroom's stalls. He groped women as he ran, and then scaled a chain-link fence to U.S. 2, where he attempted to steal a car from a woman. When that didn't work, he fled across the highway to a train and tried to jump aboard, despite the fact it was traveling about 45 miles per hour. After being knocked out from his close encounter with the train, he was taken to a medical center in Seattle with multiple fractures.

[Widgetsx3]

ERIE, Pa. (AP) - A pizza delivery man told police he had been forced to rob a bank and asked authorities to help him minutes before a bomb strapped to his chest exploded and killed him.

On Saturday, federal agents and police in northwestern Pennsylvania were trying to solve the bizarre case of 46-year-old Brian Douglas Wells, who left to deliver a pizza to a mysterious address in a remote area about an hour before he turned up at the bank with a bomb strapped to his body.

No one else was hurt in Thursday's explosion, which happened in front of law enforcement officers as they waited for a bomb squad to arrive.

WJET-TV of Erie captured audio and video from Wells as he sat handcuffed in front of a state police cruiser. "Why is nobody trying to come get this thing off me?" he asked.

A state police spokesman confirmed Friday night that Wells had made a number of statements, including that he had been forced to rob the bank.

The tape shows Wells telling authorities someone had started a timer on his bomb under his T-shirt, and that there was little time left.

"It's going to go off," Wells said. "I'm not lying."

Erie Chief Deputy Coroner Korac Timon said Saturday the bomb appeared to have hung from Wells' neck, and that he had been told it was of a "very sophisticated construction."

FBI Special Agent Bob Rudge called the case unusual, noting that while bank robbers sometimes claim to have a bomb, few actually do.

While no one has been arrested or identified as a suspect, Rudge said the investigation was "going extremely well." Wells' death was being investigated as a homicide and investigators were looking into Wells' background.

Linda Payne, who owns the property where Wells lived, described him as a private, trustworthy person who liked music and cared for three cats. He was a friend of Payne's husband, who also had been a pizza delivery man, she said.

"I couldn't believe that he would rob a bank. He doesn't care that much about money," Payne said. "I think somebody lured him into that place delivering a pizza, dropped a bomb on him and sent him into the bank ... He would not have decided to do that on his own."

Wells' boss and one of the owners of Mama Mia's Pizza-Ria outside Erie, who asked that his name not be published, said Saturday he took a call Thursday for a pizza delivery but didn't recognize the address given.

He put Wells on the phone to get directions. Wells left to make the delivery and never returned, the pizzeria owner said.

The address of the delivery was a rural spot along a main drag that runs south of the city, where a gravel road leads to a television transmission tower.

According to police, Wells entered the PNC Bank branch outside Erie on Thursday afternoon and producing an "extensive note" demanding money and saying he had a bomb. Rudge would not provide any details about the note.

Wells left with an undisclosed amount of money and got into his car. Police surrounded him a short time later in a nearby parking lot, pulled him out of his car and handcuffed him, authorities said.

The bomb exploded about 40 minutes after he entered the bank.

Authorities obtained a search warrant and took evidence from Wells' home, but a state police spokesman refused to say what was taken. The evidence arrived at FBI laboratories in Washington, D.C., but Rudge could not say how long testing would take.

State police forensics teams also searched near the spot of Wells' last pizza delivery. It was not know what, if anything, they found.

[Jolie Rouge]

Dayum !

[Jolie Rouge]

10,000 Harleys Mark Centennial in Wis.
By MELISSA McCORD

MILWAUKEE (AP) - Ten thousand Harley-Davidsons, their riders wearing anything from Hog masks and feather boas to black leather, roared through the city Saturday on an 8-mile parade celebrating the company's 100th anniversary.

The event was as much a tapestry of red, white and blue as the motorcycle icon's signature orange and black. One Harley rider festooned his bike with two dozen American flags.

Willie G. Davidson, a grandson of Harley-Davidson's co-founder, and his wife, Nancy, led the parade, followed by riders on bikes toting large Harley flags representing riders' clubs from all over the world.

``It just shows the diversity of people, how they can get together for a celebration like the Harley-Davidson anniversary,'' said Bob Boyd, 67, who rode his 2003 Dyna Wide Glide Harley from his farm in London, Ontario.


``This Canadian feels part of the American spirit. We're family.''


Some of the motorcyclists were picked to participate in the parade because they had raised at least $5,300 for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Harley has a 23-year history with the association and hoped to raise more than $5 million for the group during the Labor Day weekend.


The parade was one of the highlights of Harley's four-day anniversary celebration, which also includes motorcycle exhibits, memorabilia sales and live entertainment centered along Lake Michigan's shoreline.


As spectators in T-shirts and shorts mingled with those in denim and leather, at least one neighbor worried about the noise Saturday. The Milwaukee County Zoo took precautions to protect its more than 2,000 animals from the roar in the parking lot just outside, where the parade began, keeping many of the animals inside until the riders were gone.


The celebration, expected to draw 200,000 to 300,000 people, concludes Sunday with a birthday party featuring music and fireworks beside Lake Michigan.


On the Net:

Harley-Davidson: www.harley-davidson.com



08/30/03 13:44

[Jolie Rouge]

Al Franken makes victory lap

NEW YORK, -- In a sort of victory lap, Al Franken co-hosted on CNN's "Crossfire" and appeared on CNN's "Live From the Headlines" Monday. Franken's appearances followed the decision by Fox News not to appeal a court ruling dismissing its lawsuit against Franken and publisher Penguin. Fox News had filed a lawsuit over its trademark phrase "fair and balanced," which appears on the cover of Franken's upcoming book, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right."

U.S. District Judge Denny Chin ruled Franken's book was a clear example of parody, Daily Variety reported. The book tops the list of best-sellers at Amazon.com, most likely as a result of the publicity generated by the Fox News lawsuit, Variety reported. "It's time to return Al Franken to the obscurity that he's normally accustomed to," a Fox News spokeswoman said.