Random Citations

This funny sport is invented by the Evento Company of the country ! Link

To attract more children to visit the zoo during the May Day Golden Week Holiday, various animal taming shows are currently staged to entertain tourists at the Haicang Zoo in Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province. The wrestling 'match' between trainer and lion ended up with the beast lying on the ground. Isn't it a little cruel? Link to Xinhua

The Tianning Pagoda (天宁宝塔), which is 13 storeys, or 153.79 m (504.56 ft) high, is the tallest pagoda in the world. The pagoda located in Tianning Temple in Changzhou, China's eastern province of Jiangsu. On April 30, 2007, it opens to the public after a grand opening ceremony held on April 30. " It is not only the description of Changzhou’s tradition, belief and culture, but also the fruit of Changzhou’s history, economy and culture accumulating during the past 2500 years!" Link to Xinhua

An aerial view of freeway interchange that funnels traffic off the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge collapsed onto another highway ramp between I-80 and I-580 in Oakland, California, after a tanker truck carrying 8,600 gallon gasoline overturned and caught fire. The fireball started on the lower deck, and the rising heat of the 2000+ degree fire melted parts of the deck above, causing it to collapse. See more photos

Update: Oakland freeway fire was also caught on tape by some a road user:

The "White hair" covers a stone on display at an odd stone exposition held in Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan Province, April 28, 2007. The stone has an estimated price of 10 million yuan, or equivalent to US$1.3 million. link

Update: From the People Daily, the "white hair" growing is a kind of halobios that has been attached to the stone for hundreds of millions of years. It gradually extends upright and evolves as hollow-pipe-shaped invertebrate fossil.

Stuntmen are performing at the first "Folk Stunt Carnival" in the Liuguanghe Canyon (六广河峡谷) in Guizhou Province of China on April 28, 2007. A five-year-old boy wows the audience when giving a barehanded high-wire act performance on the wire 200 meters above the ground. link

Mulatibieke, is a 24-year-old painter from Altay of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China. He was born arm-less, deaf and mute. With years of hard work, he has overcome all the difficulties and fulfilled his dream to be a painter. link

Previously, RC posted two moved stories of limbless Hirotada Ototake and armless Ji Hong, if interested, do check them out.

How ridiculous！

Iranian police have warned barbers not to give men western hair styles or use make up on them.

The move is part of an unusually fierce crackdown on what is known locally as bad hijab, or un-Islamic clothing, that this year is also targeting men.

Hair stylists have been warned that they could lose their licenses if they do not comply.

Police say that as well as avoiding western hairstyles and make up, barbers should not pluck customers' eyebrows.

Link to BBC

What do you know about math? Here is a funny video you may find some answers. Lol!

Gold-mine-turned-tourist-attraction Gold Cave is a limestone cave full of spectacular stalactites and stalagmites in Qinhuangdao, north China's Hebei Province. Link

Israeli hairdresser Oren Orkabi (bottom left) cuts Sharon Har Noi's hair while skydiving at 14,000 feet above northern Israel, near Haifa April 25, 2007. The haircut was an attempt to enter the Guinness Book of World Records. Helping Orkobi is Ido Holtz, a skydiving instructor. Link

Accompanying Samara on the piano, Buddy is so dedicated to his singings, but apparently his howls is not as melodious as the melody by a piano-playing cat Nora. via Arbroath

The work by sculptor Daniel Edwards, who also authored "Presidential Bust of Hillary Rodham Clinton", is to be unveiled in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood in May. A tiara-wearing, autopsied Paris Hilton with removable innards is designed to warn New York teenagers of the hazards of underage drinking. link
Update: The sculptures is finally seen at the Capla Kesting Fine Art studio in the Brooklyn borough of New York May 9, 2007. And they will be on exhibit to the public May 11 through May 30 at the gallery in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Babies, held by amateur sumo wrestlers, cry loudly during a baby-crying contest in Tokyo April 28, 2007. The event is held to pray for the babies' health and growth. The winner of the contest is the baby who cries the loudest. Link

The dog named Xiaohuang watches his owner surnamed Zhou who is too drunken to walk and sleeps at roadside bush in Hualian, Taiwan. Xiaohuang, an abandoned dog, was adopted five years ago by Zhou who is a bachelor addicting the alcohol. The dog protected the man each time he was drunken and barked at anyone who tried to approach him. Link

Shocking! Such things happened to a dean of the world's most prestigious university.

Marilee Jones, a prominent crusader against the pressure on students to build their resumes for elite colleges, resigned Thursday as dean of admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after acknowledging she had misrepresented her own academic credentials.

Jones has been a popular speaker on the college admissions circuit, where she urged parents not to press their kids too hard, and told students there are more important things than getting into the most prestigious colleges. She rewrote MIT’s application, trying to get students to reveal more about their personalities and passions, and de-emphasizing lists of their accomplishments.

But Jones, dean since 1997, issued a statement saying she had misrepresented her credentials when she first came to work at MIT 28 years ago and “did not have the courage to correct my resume when I applied for my current job or at any time since.

:--))))

Tags: google, funny video, youtube, google earth

Barbie Girls, a doll-shaped MP3 player which targets at 10-13 year old girls was unveiled by Mattel Inc. The new toy brings together Web surfing, shopping and music downloads.

The world's largest toy maker is taking aim at MGA Entertainment's sassy Bratz dolls, Apple Inc.'s iPod music players and Ganz's Webkinz. Link

Boarding on a specially modified Boeing 727 jet , astrophysicist Stephen Hawking who paralyzed by Lou Gehrig's disease became the first person with a disability to experience the Zero Gravity flight. Congrat! Link to WP & Youtube

Nola Ochs, 95, is going to graduate with a major of histroy from Fort Hays State University on May 12. She'll be what is believed to be the world's oldest person to be awarded a college degree. The previous record, according to Guinness World Records, belongs to Mozelle Richardson, who at age 90 in 2004 received a journalism degree from the University of Oklahoma.

When replying to the media recently, she said, "I'm going to seek employment on a cruise ship as a storyteller." Link

Update: Grandma Ochs has graduated and now she is considering a master's degree!

You can learn what he talked from the subtitle shown in the video.via Arbroath

The poor boy diagnosed with hydrocephalus is named Liu Jing (刘京) from Shan County of Hezhe, Shangdong Province. The extraordinarily big head has severely affected his development. He is now 9 years old but weighs only at 15kg. Without other's help, he even can't walk smoothly by himself and is very easy to fall down. His family has spent all of their belongings (house also sold) and owed 100, 000 Yuan to get him treated in the hospital. Now together with his parents, the boy is begging at the street of Xiamen. Link

Update: The boy may suffer from a rare condition called Proteus syndrome that involves atypical growth of the bones, skin, head and a variety of other symptoms.

Those novel street lamps wearing bamboo hats have been found in the scenic Huangshan Mountain region, Anhui Province of China. Link

Permalink

I am overwhelmed by his story!

Hirotada Ototake, a best-selling author known for his book "No One's Perfect," speaks with school children after he was appointed full-time teacher at Suginami Dai-Yon Elementary School in Suginami-ku of Tokyo, 05 April 2007. Ototake [a sport reporter] is taking on a new challenge by becoming a schoolteacher in a bid to teach the next generation to accept differences in a society that has traditionally frowned on individuality.

Hirotada Ototake born with no arms or legs

Link to Xinhua & Mywire

Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Torch together with Beijing 2008 Olympic Torch Relay Plan was unveiled by BOCOG today in Beijing, China. Below are the key facts of the Olympic torch designed by Chinese computer maker Lenovo :

The torch is 72 centimetres high, weighs 985 grams and is made of aluminium. The torch is of a curved surface form, with etching and anodizing being used during its production. A torch can usually keep burning for approximately 15 minutes in conditions where the flame is 25 to 30 centimetres high in a windless environment.

The torch has been produced to withstand winds of up to 65 kilometres per hour and to stay alight in rain up to 50mm an hour. The flame can be identified and photographed in sunshine and areas of extreme brightness. The fuel is propane which is in accordance with environmental guidelines. The material of its form is recyclable.

Mr. President's awkward expression when dancing with a group of African performers for a Malaria Aware event at the White House makes me chuckle again and again. Link

Here is a lesson!

A large section of Shunwai Road (顺外路) in Nanchang, capital of East China's Jiangxi Province, collapses on Wednesday, April 25, 2007. No one was hurt in the incident. Link

Eelko Moorer's footwear can latch on to hand strap rails inside Tube trains. The bat-style boots allow travelers to hang upside down in the carriage. Do you want to try? Link

david huckabee mugshot

David Huckabee arrested! The 26-year-old son of Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, was arrested at Little Rock's Airport on a Thursday last April after a federal X-ray technician detected a loaded .40-caliber Glock pistol in his carry-on luggage.

Huckabee pleaded guilty in Little Rock District Court after being charged with a misdemeanor count of possessing a weapon in a prohibited place.

District Judge Lee Munson gave Huckabee a one-year suspended jail sentence and ordered him into 10 days of community service which Huckabee can avoid by paying $100. Source: ABC

Manjit Singh, 57, pulled a Jetstream passenger plane weighing approximately 7.4 tonnes 12ft along the apron at East Midlands Airport, at Castle Donington in Leicestershire, U.K.. When responding to the medias after the record attempt, he said he did have a little bit of pain around the ears. :-)

The strong man also attempted to raise money for his charity Manjit Fitness, which aims to get children living in his native Mahilpur, India involved in sport.Link

Zookeepers at a bird zoo in Fuzhou, southeastern China's Fujian province decorated a "bridal house" for a pair of two spotted-billed pelicans. The female pelican was found in Hainan, south China, and brought to Fuzhou to mate with the male pelican, who lost his spouse three years ago. Link

I am yet to find one chance to visit one of them .

No. 1. Ushiku Amida Buddha, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan

The staute is 100 meter tall, standing on a 10m lotus base and a 10m platform, total 120 meters. It weighs 4000 tons and is the tallest statue in the world. The monument is three times taller and thirty times larger in volume than the Statue of Liberty. link

No. 2. The Statue of Emperors Yan and Huang, Zhengzhou, Hunan Province, China

The statue is 106 meters high, with the eye three meters wide and the nose eight meters long. Emperors Yan and Huang, two emperors in ancient Chinese legends, are said to be the earliest ancestors of the Chinese nation. link

No. 3. Kiev's statue of the Motherland, Kiev, Ukraine

The memorial of the Great Patriotic War (World War II) itself is 62 meters tall, the overall height is 102 meters. link
No. 4 Peter the Great Statue, Moscow, Russia

The 94 meter high bronze sculpture of Peter the Great standing in the Moscow River was designed by Zurab Tsereteli. link
No. 5. Statue of Liberty, New York, USA
A colossal statue given to the United States by France in 1886, is standing at Liberty Island in the mouth of the Hudson River in New York Harbor. The overall height is 93 meters. The statute is 46 meters tall, with the foundation adding another 46.9 meters. link
No. 6. The Motherland, Volgograd, Russia
The statue has another name called Mother Motherland Is Calling. Measured from the tip of her sword to the top of the plinth, the distance is 85 meters (279 feet). It is can be found at 48°44′32.5″N, 44°32′13″E on Google Maps. link

No. 7. Leshan Giant Buddha, Sichuan Province, China
Standing 71 metres tall, the statue is the tallest stone Buddha statue in the world. link
No. 8.Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The statue stands 38 m tall and is located at the peak of the 710-m (2330-foot) Corcovado mountain in the Tijuca Forest National Park, overlooking the Rio de Janeiro city. link

Nepalese artists perform Dev Nach (God Dance) during a parade marking "Democracy Day" in Kathmandu. Link

The owner of a bar in Shengzhen of south China's Guangdong Province had his bartender girls dress in modified nurse suit and serve wine with syringes and test tubes. The boss thought of such unique idea to attract customers, and was planning another theme of female pirates. Link

An extraordinarily large sweet potato weighing 15 kilograms were recently harvested by farmer Carrion in the northwest Peru's Lambayeque province. The owner planned to cook his super large potato after the completion of a display and share it with others. Link

Design firm AndrewAndrew comes up with a novel idea to show nutrition facts of snacks -- printe them right on the icing using edible ink. Oh, yeah, as sold $25 for a set of two, the cookies must be a bit more pricey than many other cookies. Link to BB & Sci Fi

An 80-year-old man from Quanzhou City of Fujian Province repeatedly smacks a rock with his palms for 10 years and literally leaves two of his palm mark on the stone.

Octogenarian Hong Qing-gen, who lives near Jinbang Park, began hitting the rock as an exercise to keep fit a decade ago.

He would hit it some 1,000 times each day for two hours. After 10 years of this daily exercise, the imprints of his palms are now clearly visible on the rock.

Link to Kooky Photos: hxkjw

80-year-old Leaves His Palm Marks On A Rock.

Check out Snope's Flight School to know the story behind this cool picutre!

From Metro

Wolfgang Heinrich, 40, from the German town Wiesenburg, had been riding with his Haflinger horse Sammy when he stopped to have a drink with friends.

But when he left the pub he realised he was too drunk to ride all the way home - and because it was cold, he decided to use his bank card to open up a nearby bank foyer and take himself and Sammy inside to sleep it off.

Two men of Zhuang ethnic minority were wrestling in a tomato pool to celebrate the Buluotuo Cultural Festival (布洛陀文化节) of the Zhuang people on April 24, 2007 in Tianyang County of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China.

Using the European Southern Observatory's 3.6-meter telescope in Chile, astronomer Stephane Udry and his colleagues discovered that a planet about five times as massive as Earth is the smallest and potentially most Earth-like planet outside the solar system. It orbits a small, dim "red dwarf" star called Gliese 581 which lies 20.5 light years away every 13 days. The planet is believed to be habitable because the astronomers calculated that it has a pleasant right-for-liquid-water-existence surface temperature of about 0 to 40° C. Link

A citizen of Sichuan Province added a final touch on one of five 40kg-heavy and 68cm-high huge spinning-tops on April 24, 2007. The spinning-tops were painted with 5 colors featuring Olympic rings and symbolizing 5 continents. They are expected to be presented to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Link

A new study has debunked the notion that Li (李) is China's most popular surname.
A 2006 survey of 296 million people in 1,100 counties and cities by the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that Li led the ranks of family names with about 7.4 per cent of the population.

However, state media reports a recent analysis of household registration data covering nearly all of China's population revealed that Wang [which literally could be translated as King] is, in fact, the most common name in the country.

It says data shows almost 93 million mainland Chinese are called Wang, or about 7.25 per cent of the total population.

Link via Uniquedaily

The interesting tortoise sport was held in the Donghai Ocean World on April 21, 2007 in Wuhan, Hubei Province of China.

The antics of Nora, the piano-playing puss, is amazing! Link

What misery story from a pregnant soldier who lose her husband recently! From Craigist

...I'm a Marine and I served my tour in Iraq. My husband, also a Marine, served several. I left the service six months ago because I got pregnant while he was home on leave and three days ago I get a visit from two men in uniform who hand me a letter and tell me my husband died in that fucking festering sand-pit. He should have been home a month ago but they extended his tour and now he's coming home in a box. [...]

And you know what the most f*ked up thing about this Iraq sh*t is? They don't want us there. They're not happy we came and they want us out NOW. We f*ked up their lives even worse than they already were and they're pissed off. We didn't help them and we're not helping them now. That's what our soldiers are dying for. [...]

And I'm going to go to my husband funeral and recieve that flag and hang it up on the wall for my baby to see when he's older. But I'm not going to tell him that his father died for the stupidty of the American government. I'm going to tell him that his father was a hero and the best man I ever met and that he loved his country enough to die for it, because that's all true and nothing will be solved by telling my son that his father was sent to die by people who didn't care about him at all.

F*k you, war supporters, George W. B*h, and all the god damn mother f*kers who made the war possible. I hope you burn in hell.

Picture from Tagworld

A video grab released by Malaysian WWF on April 24, 2007 shows a rare two-horned Borneo rhino in the Malaysian jungle of Sabah, Borneo. One of the world's rarest rhinos has been caught on film for the first time on Borneo island, wildlife officials said on Tuesday as they showed footage of the animal eating, walking about and sniffing the camera.

Malaysian officials of global conservation organisation WWF said the two-minute video, recorded in February by a camera hidden in the jungle, was the first to capture the behaviour of the elusive two-horned Borneo rhino in the wild.

There are only between 25 and 50 of the rhinos left alive in the dense jungles deep in the heart of the Malaysian state of Sabah on Borneo, and the animals are so secretive that the first still picture of one was only taken last year, the WWF said.

Borneo Rhino, Dicerorhinus sumatrensis harrissoni, is a subspecies of the Sumatran rhino and the smallest and hairiest of all the rhinos. It can weigh from 600 to 800kg (1,300 to 1,800 lb).

Scientists found a new mineral matching nothing known previously to science but the unique chemistry of kryptonite that robs the superhero of his powers in the film Superman Returns. It will be officially named as Jadarite.

The large green crystals of kryptonite have a devasting affect on the superhero. However, unlike its famous counterpart, the new mineral is white, powdery and not radioactive. And, rather than coming from outer space, the real kryptonite was found in Serbia.

'Towards the end of my research,' says Dr Stanley [at the Natural History Museum], 'I searched the web using the mineral's chemical formula, sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide, and was amazed to discover that same scientific name written on a case of rock containing kryptonite stolen by Lex Luther from a museum in the film Superman Returns'.

'The new mineral does not contain fluorine and is white rather than green, but in all other respects the chemistry matches that for the rock containing kryptonite. We will have to be careful with it - we wouldn't want to deprive Earth of its most famous superhero!'

The mineral could be used as a source of lithium , which has many uses including in batteries, or as a source of borate, which is used for cleaning, also known as borax.

Link

Alf and Kath Overy, of the Old Parsonage near Goole, East Yorkshire, put their home on the market last year.

But after it failed to sell for the £650,000 asking price, they decided to offer the 300-year-old Grade II listed building as a competition prize [for £60].

Entrants have been challenged to look at a doctored photograph of the house and guess where a missing shadow should fall.

The couple say they have limited the number of entries to 25,000 and plan to donate some of the money raised by the competition to the International League for the Protection of Horses.

"We thought we'd give everyone a chance and the response has been that it's an unusual, good idea", Mr Overy said， "Whoever gets it for £60, it could change their lives completely."

Ryan Fitzgerald is unemployed, lives with his father and has a little bit of time on his hands.

So, he decided to offer his ear, to anyone who wants to call. After posting a video with his cell phone number on YouTube on Friday, the 20-year-old told The Boston Globe he has received more than 5,000 calls and text messages.

Fitzgerald said he wanted to "be there," for anyone who needed to talk. "I never met you, but I do care," a spiky-haired Fitzgerald said into the camera on his YouTube posting.

Fitzgerald, who said people consider him "easy to talk to," was inspired by Juan Mann. YouTube video clips of Mann offering "Free Hugs" to strangers became wildly popular on the user-controlled Internet site.

A supplement collection of RC's previous Claude Presbyterian Church Google Billboard. Apparently, numerous churches believe that Google is not omniscient but God does.

by Carpolena

by David Cancel

by Mark Blevis

by Rob Partington

via Googlified

Morgan Pozgar , a 13-year-old girl from Claysburg of Pennsylvania, was crowned the US Texting Champion together with a top prize of $25,000 at an message typing contest in New York after beating 250 competitors from across the country.

She clinched the title with a quickfire error-free rendition of 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious. If you say it loud enough you'll always sound precocious'.

In the final, Morgan at first seemed to have been beaten by Eli Tirosh, a 21-year-old law student from Los Angels, who put down her mobile phone first, only for the judges to rule that she had made a typing error.

She trained by sending on average 8,000 text messages a month to her friends - that rate equates one every five and a half minutes. She pays $US10 a month for an unlimited text package on her mobile phone.

The girl plans to do some shopping with her prize money in Manhaton, while her mother has already eyed it for her college fund.

Link Ananova & the Age

Ji Hong, 24, who lost both arms in an electrical accident when she was six years old, answered and submitted the paper sheet by feet during the college entrance exam in Lianyungang, east China's Jiangsu Province, on April 21, 2007. Ji taught herself all high-school courses, and has acquired a junior college certificate. Link

The stone carving of lychee fruits is made of thousand-year-old natural shoushan stone (yes, this rare Chinese agalmatolite once was carved to a braised chicken). Link

Didn't he feel painful?

A "scissors" dancer hummers a nail into fellow dancer Gavilan's tongue during the national scissors dance competition in Villa Maria, southern Lima, April 22, 2007. The Peruvian Scissors Dance (Danza de las Tijeras), continuing a tradition inherited from their Inca ancestors, is characterized by two metal poles which take the shape of a pair of scissors. Dancers compete by dancing as well as by taking part in trials such as glass-eating, walking on fire or sticking wires into their body.

Just can't wait!

A heart failure might be blamed for death of the first President of the Russian Federation. From CNN

Kremlin spokesman Alexander Smirnov confirmed Yeltsin's death, but gave no cause or further information. The Interfax news agency cited an unidentified medical source as saying he had died of heart failure.

He was a contradictory figure, rocketing to popularity in the Communist era on pledges to fight corruption -- but proving unable, or unwilling, to prevent the looting of state industry as it moved into private hands during his nine years as Russia's first freely elected president.

He steadfastly defended freedom of the press, but was a master at manipulating the media.

He amassed as much power as possible in his office -- then gave it all up [to Putin] in a dramatic New Year's address at the end of 1999.

Yeltsin's greatest moments came in bursts. He stood atop a tank to resist an attempted coup in August 1991, and spearheaded the peaceful end of the Soviet state on Dec. 25 of that year.

An Arab guy wearing the traditional white thawb is running on a treadmill, and trying to keep up the pace when its speed was increased. The hilarious footage can't prevent me from laughing loudly while in an office stuffed so many colleagues. via Cool Stuff

During a visit to this northern city known as Italy's shoe capital, a local consortium gave one pair for himself and 15,000 more pairs for the needy around the world.

The Pope was given burgundy-colored loafers designed and manufactured by the Moreschi firm and made from kangaroo hide.

Those destined for the poor include boots and other types of footwear. Local industrialists are due to send them directly to charities chosen by the Vatican.

Police in China's Guangxi Autonomous Region shot to kill a crocodile which was blamed for attacking and eating a pupil. The alligator measures two metres in length and 150 kilograms in weight.

The tragedy occurred at about 6 p.m. on Friday, when a pupil surnamed Liu and three other children from Xiantian Primary School climbed over the fence of a crocodile pool which had been temporarily closed [for aution].

The children shot the animals with catapults and beat them with wooden sticks. One of the irritated alligators bit Liu's clothes and dragged him into water, where he was eaten by a swarm of alligators.

The sinpers lured the crocodiles with pork and shoot one that crawled ashore to death with seven bullets.

Legal medical experts anatomized body of the creature and found remains of a human being, therefore confirmed the missing child was eaten by the crocodiles.

Paul Briscoe, a retiree now lives in the peaceful Suffolk countryside. He once had a shocking childhood, as Hitler's Little Helper. Check out this detailed report on Dailymail.

After his owner called Fire and Rescue Service for help, the six-month-old husk Keano who had earlier become trapped by his jaw in a garden in Whitchurch, Hampshire was rescued by firefighters . They used bolster to chisel off the part of the wall that had trapped the dog's head. Link

A scientific experiment shows ropelike peaks (slush) immediately formed when the supercooled water (-21C/-6F) was pour into a bowl. Link to Youtube via Digg

Waterfalls in Plitvicka Jezera National Park of Croatia are believed as one of the most beautiful waterfalls in the world. This amazing photo was taken by the landscape photographer Jack Brauer. To get to this vantagepoint directly facing these waterfalls, he had to bushwack down a slope and downclimb a sketchy cliff. With lucky timing, clouds covered the sun and the photographer was able to take some longer exposures to get the soft waterfall effect. Link to TrekEarth via Digg

A super large chicken egg was recently found in Jiangyou City, China's Sichuan Province. It weighs 235 grams, 87 grams heavier than a Ukrainian egg officially recognized as the world's largest egg by Guiness World Record in 2004. Link via Uniquedaily

On April 18， Lionel Messi scored a great goal during a Spanish League match against Gatefa . Talented Messi beat one defender and nutmegged a second before destroying two more with speed and dribbling ability and rounding the keeper. The goal was stunningly similar to the one that Maradona made against England in Mexico 1986 World Cup.

Link to Smh or Youtube

Yeah, really unique! Anyone knows why the Czech authorities put on so weird traffic lights? Link

Two ladies sit on specially designed human-bottom-shaped stools at a park in southwest China's Chongqing municipality April 20, 2007.Children were playing around women-back sculptures outside a public toilet on Nanbing Road in southwest China's Chongqing municipality.

Rong Rong, a 10-year-old girl, fell from a 12th-storey balcony while watering flowers.

She wound up with only minor injuries after she plunged through the open sunroof of a Honda Civic and landed on a padded seat in Changsha, Hunan.

The incident took place in the city's Mingdu Garden housing estate in the evening. She was immediately sent to a nearby hospital for emergency treatment.

She was not in danger but did have fractured a bone in her left hand and bruised some soft tissues on the other parts of her body

Link

French dog handler at Chateau Chevernay feeds a large, well disciplined group of hunting dogs.

I like them!

Dylan Hargreaves , 4, has a vocabulary of only 10, one-syllable words after being diagnosed with severe learning difficulties since three years ago. But the autistic boy is now being helped to talk by a pet macaw his mother received as a gift from her partner last year. From Lancashire Telegraph

His parents have been amazed by his progress after he began listening to his mother teaching the family's pet bird, Barney.
For as Michelle, 33, of Broughton Close, Blackburn, tells the bird a new word, Dylan has started to say it too.

He has already learned how to say ta' and bye' through listening to the macaw in the last few months.

And now his parents believe he is just days away from saying his first two-syllable word - Barney!

She said: "Every time I gave the bird something to say Dylan started trying to say the same thing.

"I think it's because the bird says it slower than me, which helps Dylan to understand it better.

"He has changed my life and Dylan's because before he would not even have attempted words with two syllables."

If interested, here is a touched video compilation named A World Where Autisc Children Live

A man holding up a sign which reads "Free Software. Open Source." rushed to the stage where Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates was posing with some award winners for a photo session after finishing delivering a themed speech --"Imagination, China, Future"--at Peking University in Beijing April 20, 2007. Gates and most of the group appeared shocked at the sudden intrusion, which ended when the man ran off the stage and was tackled by security officials.

It is learned that that man is named Yang Wang (王洋), and he is a representative of LPI (Linux Professional Institute). He has another name called Wang Kai-yuan (王开源, literally translated as Wang Open-source).

Possibably you have heard of the mystery of Mary Celeste. Yes, it was an abandoned "ghost ship" found off the coast of Portugal in 1872. None of the Mary Celeste's crew or passengers were ever found. Now the almost same scene happened in Australia. From the Australian

Food and cutlery sit on the table undisturbed.
A newspaper lies open nearby and a laptop computer is switched on. Wallets and mobile phones belonging to the vessel's crew are still lying on the table, while their beds have recently been slept in.

The boat's motor is running and its safety equipment, including life vests and an emergency EPIRB beacon, is stowed on board, while an inflatable dinghy is securely tethered to the stern.

Everything appeared to be normal on board the luxury catamaran Kaz II on Wednesday when Corrie Benson, from Emergency Management Queensland, was winched from a helicopter on to the abandoned vessel, drifting in the outer Great Barrier Reef, 160km off the coast of Townsville.

The only sign of something amiss was a torn sail.
But to all intents and purposes, the three Perth mates [Derek Batten, 56; Peter Tunstead, 69; James Tunstead, 63] who set out on the six-week trip of a lifetime on Sunday to sail north from idyllic Airlie Beach, in north Queensland, to their homes in Western Australia had vanished into thin air.

The giant teapot made from fresh flowers was recently put at the Guan Qian Jie -- a famous walking and shopping street in Suzhou, China. Link

The thinner-than-a-human-hair noodles made by Li En-hai (历恩海), a chef with 26 years' experience of making noodles from Xinjiang Ugyur Autonomous Region, has been recognized as world's thinnest noodles by Guinness World Records. The noodles can be threaded 39 strands through the head of a needle. If just one kilo of flour was made into a single extra long noodle, it would stretch over two-thousand kilometers. LinkUpdate: "The Noodle King" or "Prince of Hand-pulled Noodles" recently displayed his superb skill stretching out dough by hand in Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia in northern China. With just 1 kilogram of flour he can pull out 2 million strands of noodle with a combined length of 2,650 kilometers. He is looking for an apprentice from Inner Mongolia to pass his skills on to. 20/April

Attorney Gregory Shamoun was in a dispute with oilman John Cantrell, who had complained to the city about a storage shed Shamoun was building in his backyard in Dallas.

Faced with complaints that his donkey was too loud, Shamoun decided to bring his case directly to the court: He had the donkey testify [at the Justice of the Peace Precinct 3 courtroom in Fort Worth, Texas].

Buddy the donkey appeared in court Wednesday [April 18]. He was led to the bench and stared at the jury, the picture of a gentle, well-mannered creature and not the loud, aggressive animal he had been accused of being.

Cantrell complained of donkey noise and manure piles, testifying that Shamoun retaliated by bringing the donkey from his ranch and putting him in the backyard.

In the end, however, despite the donkey's appearance, neither jurors nor Buddy had the last say - the neighbors settled their dispute while jurors deliberated.

Swiss makers Tammock Trading invented this solar-powered Barbecue,which is very environmentally friendly, as it needs no open fire (resulting in no smoke and no pollution). From Dailymail

The Solar-Grill catches sunlight with mirrors and beams it into its oven to cook food in a matter of minutes without smoke or flames.
To get grilling all a householder has to do is lift the lid on the shiny silver barbie, aim it at the sun and place the food inside.
You can then roast everything from steaks to vegetables and seafood without electricity, gas or coals and with no impact on the environment.
Food is cooked in the self contained barbecue oven and heated evenly from all sides.

It is sold online with a price at £125.

Dresden Green diamond is a 41 carat (8.2 g) natural green diamond that has a historical record dating to 1722. It is named after the capital of Saxony, Germany where it has been on display for most of the last two centuries. The stone's unique green color is due to natural exposure to radioactive materials. Its valued is estimated to be around 2,00 million US dollars.

Link Xinhua │Wikipedia│The Dresden Green

Russia plans to build the world’s longest tunnel, a transport and pipeline link under the Bering Strait to Alaska, as part of a $65 billion project to supply the U.S. with oil, natural gas and electricity from Siberia.

The project, which Russia is coordinating with the U.S. and Canada, would take 10 to 15 years to complete, Viktor Razbegin, deputy head of industrial research at the Russian Economy Ministry, said. State organizations and private companies in partnership would build and control the route, known as TKM-World Link, he added.

A 6,000-kilometer (3,700-mile) transport corridor from Siberia into the U.S. will feed into the tunnel, which at 64 miles will be more than twice as long as the underwater section of the Channel Tunnel between the U.K. and France, according to the plan. The tunnel would run in three sections to link the two islands in the Bering Strait between Russia and the U.S.

The planned undersea tunnel would contain a high-speed railway, highway and pipelines, as well as power and fiber-optic cables.

Link

Scientists revealed that Earth's oldest known tree, Wattieza, which lived during the Middle Devonian period and preceded dinosaurs by 140 million years, was nearly 30 feet tall and looked like a modern palm.

Workers uncovered hundreds of upright stumps of the 385 million-year-old tree more than a century ago, after a flash flood in Gilboa, New York uncovered them, but little else was known about the tree’s appearance.
Then, in 2004, scientists unearthed a 400-pound fossilized top — or crown — of the same genus a few miles away. The following summer, the same team discovered fragments of a 28-foot trunk. Piecing together stump, trunk and crown now reveals what the full tree looked like for the first time.
“These were very big trees,” said study team member William Stein, a paleobotanist at the State University of New York at Binghamton.
“Our reconstruction shows them to be a lot longer and much more treelike than any of the reconstructions before,” Stein told LiveScience. “I don’t think any of us dared think of them being quite that big.”
The tree belonged to a group of early fern-like plants called Wattieza. Unlike flowering plants, which use seeds to reproduce, Wattieza used spores, the reproductive method of choice for algae, ferns and fungi.

From BBC

Cho Seung-hui [wiki]was a deeply disturbed young man - as the shocking and horrifying video he left behind reveals.

It appears that the 23-year-old's actions and intentions fell into a pattern of previous school and college shootings.

Robin Kowalski, a psychologist at Clemson University in South Carolina, has co-written a comprehensive study on school shootings. She told the BBC News website that Cho's actions bore strong similarities with other killings.

Like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold - perpetrators of the Columbine massacre - and Kimveer Gill, who went on a killing spree at a Canadian school last year, the foundation for Cho's violent act was laid out long before it took place.

And, like those killers, he left behind rage-filled testaments - Harris, Klebold and Kimveer via the internet, Cho via his video.

The invention by Czech scientist Vojtech Misut from the Technological University in Brno can return voice to those who have lost it in the surgery. However, in spite of the success, the development of artificial chords is yet at the beginning. A suitable material, dimensions, shape as well as placement are yet to be found.

Misut first created a computer model of the vocal chords according to his own theory, and now he has successfully tested his physical model as well.

Since the vocal chords differ by length, Misut had to create special models for men, women and children that can be shaped so that people even recognise their lost voice.

Misut is not yet able to implant the artificial vocal chord in its original place in the patient's throat.

That is why air is conducted from the lungs through a tiny tube to the artificial vocal chord fixed for instance to the chest. The created source voice is led by the tube back to the voice tract where it is fine-tuned.

Misut is considering placing the artificial vocal chord in the nasal cavity.

From Praque Daily│Photo

After years of expert analysis and public internet polls, the Red-crowned Crane (Grus japonensis), whose snow white body has only a patch of red skin on its head, has won out as the only appropriate candidate for China's national bird.

The Red-crowned Crane, listed as Class I State Protected Wildlife Animal in China, that Chinese used to connect with beautiful myth and represents longevity in greetings, won an overwhelming 64.92% of the vote held on more than twenty websites across China from May to June 2004 attracting around 5 million netizens.

The selection conducted by the State Forestry Administration and China Wildlife Protection Association, was launched in 2003. Now State Forestry Administration has now submitted the results to the State Council for final approval. Link Photo

Update: The bird's other English name--Japanese crane-- sparks anti-Japanese sentiments among Chinese netizens.

Three newly-born leopards were refused to be milked by their mother Yuan Yuan at Fuzhou Zoo in southern China's Fujian province, but they were still lucky enough, because the authorities had found a surrogate mother of dog for them. The dog named Dian Dian will breastfeed triplet leopards together with her own baby for about one month.

The good-tempered three-year-old Dian Dian provided by a local female resident was believed to be the most suitable "mother" to take care of the leopards. Dian Dian has passed all the strict health check and other forms of interviews. She had just given birth to two puppies, but one failed to survive. She has enough to feed the cub. As told by one animal doctor in the zoo, living with her puppy dog is also quite good for the growth of the leopards.

Link

Villager Liu Ju-feng in Taihe County of central China's Jiangxi dug out a unique Chinese yam (山药) in her own field. The 6 "fingers" growing on the 0.5-kilogram-weighing tuber make it look like a human hand. Link to Ebud

In Yongjing County, in northwestern Gansu Province, more than two kilometres of walls were built flanking one side of a major road. Unlike sound insulation boards in cities, these walls are not used to reduce traffic noise in roadside village homes, but to hide them from sight of drivers and passersby.

The brick and cement wall, painted into purplish blue and red, emerges even more conspicuous among the khaki-coloured loess hills. Behind the two-metre-tall wall, is a sprawl of villagers' houses and yards, which are roughly built with mud. In some areas of this impoverished county, 70 per cent of residents or more are living under the national poverty line.

The wall, dubbed an "official loincloth" by villagers, has made their lives more inconvenient. Villager Zhang Tianzhi has had to close his roadside shop after the wall was finished, and he even had trouble entering his own home.

It happens in Turkey.

Agakhan Sharief, whose moniker is Osama bin Laden, is currently vigorously running for an up-coming local legislative council election in Southern Philippine.

Unlike the world's most-wanted terror suspect, Sharief is known by many in Lanao del Sur province as a peacemaker who has helped broker truces when sporadic clashes have erupted between government troops and Muslim insurgents.

Sporting an 18-inch long beard, turban and a neck scarf similar to that worn by bin Laden in TV images, the 35-year-old Sharief has been campaigning frenziedly for a seat in Lanao's legislative council in May 14 elections.
Sharief, a father of nine and husband of a school teacher, has mixed feelings about bin Laden.
While condemning the killing of innocent people in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S., Sharief said he still is not convinced of bin Laden's involvement. Muslims have the right to struggle for living conditions, he said.

Austrian officials fed up with motorists stopping to urinate by the roadside have put up fake snake warnings to scare them into using toilets.

Franz Perder, manager of a motorway restaurant in Guntramsdorf where some of the signs have been placed, said: "The idea is that people stop to relieve themselves, see the warning about snakes and get back in the car instead of going to the bushes to take a leak."

"Of course there are no snakes but they don't know that. The warnings have worked really well."

"We tried other signs but they were useless. These signs though have really worked. You see men coming up to bushes, getting ready to have a pee and then quickly zipping up their trousers again when they see the signs."

Officials say the worst culprits are East Europeans. The signs read 'Beware, mortal danger. Snakes' in Polish and Czech alongside a picture of a cobra. It also has the sign in English and German.

An 8-meter-high, 6-meter-wide, and 30-ton-heavy huge concrete teapot was finished in the Xu Fu Bo Chuan Mountain scenic spot (徐福泊船山景区) of Lianyungang, Jiangsu Province, April 17, 2007. It took more than 10 constructors twenty days to build the pot. Link

Oh...via

Tags: turtle, animal sex, funny video

Cho Seung Hui, a last year student of English major, was identified as the killer of Virginia Tech Massacre, the worst campus shooting in American's history.

Virginia Tech officials today identified the Virginia Tech student who killed 32 people and then himself on the Blacksburg campus yesterday as 23-year-old Cho Seung Hui of Centreville.
Cho was a South Korean native who immigrated to this country as a child, officials said. He was a senior majoring in English, and lived in a dorm on campus, officials said.
Cho's body was found among those of several other slain students in a classroom in Norris Hall, Virginia state police superintendent Col. Steve Flaherty said. He had apparently taken his own life.
Cho lived in Harper Hall, which according to a campus map is one building away from West Ambler Johnston.

Tetsuya Shiroo, 59, a senior member of gang affiliated with the Yamaguchi Gumi crime syndicate, was arrested for the cold blooding shooting.

The mayor of the southwestern Japanese city of Nagasaki was shot outside a train station Tuesday and is in critical condition.

Mayor Iccho Ito suffered two shots from behind as he campaigned for local elections on a street near his office, just in front of Nagasaki train station, according to local police official Isao Teramoto.

Ito did not appear to respond to efforts by office staff to resuscitate him before he was rushed to hospital, according to public broadcaster NHK.

Public broadcaster NHK reported that Ito's lungs and heart had stopped functioning.

Because no Indonesian air carrier was found to meet minimum civil aviation safety standards! From U.S. Embassy Jakarta

On April 16, 2007, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced that it had revised Indonesia’s safety oversight category from Category 1 to Category 2 due to serious concerns about the safety oversight and operational control systems of Indonesian Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). Category 2 indicates that the FAA has assessed the Government of Indonesia’s Civil Aviation Authority as not being in compliance with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) aviation safety standards for the oversight of Indonesia’s air carrier operations.

Whenever possible, Americans traveling to and from Indonesia should fly directly to their destinations on international carriers from countries whose civil aviation authorities meet international aviation safety standards for the oversight of their air carrier operations under the FAA’s International Aviation Safety Assessment (IASA) program.

The U.S. Embassy reminds Americans in Indonesia of the continued serious security threat to Americans and other westerners in Indonesia. The Embassy urges Americans to remain vigilant about security at all times. Terrorist attacks could occur at any time and could be directed against any location, including those frequented by foreigners and identifiably American or other western facilities or businesses in Indonesia.

Photo source Whyfiles

Five thousand rabbits blocked a Hungarian highway Monday after the truck that was carrying them crashed.

The animals came free after the truck collided with another vehicle and overturned, police officials said.

The M1 highway- the main road connection between the capitals of Hungary and Austria -was expected to be closed for several hours while authorities tried to gather the loose animals, Highway Patrol Spokeswoman Viktoria Galik said.

Some 500 rabbits were killed in the accident and the recaptured were that were recaptured. They were expected to complete the trip to a slaughterhouse.

Astronaut Sunita Williams has become the first astronaut who officially participated in a marathon in space.

She started her version of the Boston Marathon on Monday, running on a treadmill 210 miles above Earth undeterred by the wind and rain facing her Massachusetts counterparts.

Already traveling at 17,500 mph, Williams started the race on time at 10 a.m. EDT with race No. 14,000 taped to the front of the treadmill. Two lap top computers were on either side of the treadmill so she could watch a live feed of the race from Boston and keep track of where the space station was flying.

Restrained to the treadmill in a harness so she wouldn't float away, Williams ran at a brisk pace at the start of the 26.2-mile race.

"Marathons are hard on the body," she said. "It's hard on the machine. I hope both of us survive."

Women have always known about the sensual effects of chocolate but it has now been proved that it is an aphrodisiac for men too.

Researchers who monitored the heads and hearts of romantically involved [6] couples [all in their 20's] found they responded more to chocolate melting in their mouths than kissing.

The findings showed that even the most passionate kisses fail to equal the 'buzz' of chocolate. 'These results really surprised and intrigued us,' said psychologist Dr David Lewis, who led the study.

'While we fully expected chocolate – especially dark chocolate – to increase heart rates due to the fact it contains some highly stimulating substances, both the length of this increase together with the powerful effects it had on the mind were something none of us had anticipated.'

'There is no doubt that chocolate beats kissing hands down when it comes to providing a long-lasting body and brain buzz. A buzz that, in many cases, lasted four times as long as the most passionate kiss.'

Photo source: Gluten-free Girl

This is a car that was modified to be an aquarium holding fish! It's located at the Busan Aquarium in Haeundae Beach, in Busan South Korea! And the sign specifically says PLEASE Do NOT Touch, yet there were kids bouncing on top of it!

Link via Uniquedaily

It is one of the most beautiful objects in the universe and ranks among the most symmetrical objects ever observed by scientists.

Seen in the infrared, the nebula resembles a giant, glowing red box in the sky, with a bright white inner core. A dying star called MWC 922 is located at the system's center and spewing its innards from opposite poles into space.

'This spectacular event is the death of a star,' said study team member James Lloyd of Cornell University.

After MWC 922 ejects most of its material into space, it will contract into a dense stellar corpse known as a white dwarf, shrouded by clouds of its own remains.

What is particularly astonishing about the Red Square, the researchers say, is the degree of symmetry seen in lines, or 'rungs,' that bisect its surface.

'If you fold things across the principle diagonal axis, you get an almost perfect reflection symmetry,' said study leader Peter Tuthill from the University of Sydney in Australia. 'This makes the Red Square nebula the most symmetrical object of comparable complexity ever imaged.'

College graduates learn foot massage as they apply for vacancies in a Beijing company. The company offered higher salaries to cleaners, receptionists and other service posts than its office workers, attracting more than 200 applicants who are from some prestigious universities in China like Beijing University of Aeronautics & Astronautics ang Nankai University. Link

To boost the city's security, police officers at some police stations in Chongqing are equipped with portable "electronic eye" on the hat while patrolling the street. Not a bad idea! Link Police Wear Portable Cameras to Patrol the Street

If you are boring with the routine round pen holder on your desktop and want to change a new one, this analogic femoral bone pen holder can be your consideration. The half-kilogram 1:1 scale model of human femoral bone measures 45cm long and is being sold at 1470 yen (~12USD). Link via GeekVision

A yellow line put to simply separate two parking bays at a street in North London is deemed as the shortest one in the U.K..

The 18-inch parking restriction in Highbury Crescent in Highbury is just about long enough to fit one wheel.

"I was amazed to see the yellow line," said Elly Lishman, 36, who lives nearby. "It must be the smallest yellow line in the UK."

Islington Council said no ticket has ever been issued on the line, which was put there "to help drivers" [not book a ticket].

Link via A Welsh View

An image compilation with nice background music of autistic children!

An amazing video shows a parrot who knows English and can play golf!

Scientists have proved that the 'geodetic' effect of Einstein's Theory of Relativity is correct. They need another eight months to testify if the remaining 'frame-dragging' effect of the theory, that is, as the world spins it drags the fabric of the universe behind it, or not.

Under his name in the Oxford English Dictionary is the simple definition: genius. Yet for decades physicists have been asking the question: did Albert Einstein get it wrong? After half a century, seven cancellations and $700m, a mission to test his theory about the universe has finally confirmed that the man was a mastermind - or at least half proved it.
The early results from Gravity Probe B, one of Nasa's most complicated satellites, confirmed yesterday 'to a precision of better than 1 per cent' the assertion Einstein made 90 years ago - that an object such as the Earth does indeed distort the fabric of space and time.
Francis Everitt, the Stanford University professor who has devoted his life to investigating Einstein's theory of relativity, told scientists at the American Physical Society it would be another eight months before he could measure the 'frame-dragging' effect precisely.

Link

The possible very very bad side effect of handsets we are using nowadays!

The alarm [of mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees] was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.
[Colony Collapse Disorder] CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London's biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.

Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted: "There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK."

The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left".

World's Most Pierced Woman, Elaine Davidson

From Wikipedia:

Since having her first body piercing in January 1997, Brazilian born Elaine Davidson has had 2,500 [now >4200] piercings over and inside her body, as of 13 October 2004 . She is the "Most Pierced Woman" according to the Guinness World Records. During her last examination, she was found to have 192 piercings on her facial area alone, including her ears, forehead, eyebrows, chin, nose and tongue. Davidson has more than 500 piercings alone through her genitalia. Total weight of her piercings is estimated to be about 3 kilograms. A holder of a black belt in Judo, she is currently living in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she offers fortune telling services, hair braiding, and runs the 'Tropical Rainbow Paradise Shop'.

Photo by Pedro Melim

Update (Feb. 25, 2009): As of February 2009,World's most pierced woman Elaine Davidson has 6,500 piercings and still has no desire to stop piercing.

Fox News warns that excessive piercings may cause some health issues, such as infection in and around the area of the piercings, blood-borne diseases like hepatitis and HIV if the needles were re-used.

An ancient characters with a history of over 1000 years is now still used by a group of Naxi ethnic people mostly concentrated in the Naxi Ethnic Autonomous County, in Lijiang city of southwest China's Yunnan Province. The drawing pictograph is now nearly on the verge of being lost. Link

Huang Xiaohu (黄孝虎), a 32-year-old farmer-turned-worker from central China's Anhui province, is able to write 10 Arabic numerals simultaneously with 10 fingers. He has been invited by CCTV to appear on a TV show.

According to himself, Huang acquires the special ability through countless practices while not due to any special talents, with an intention to prove himself by doing something that others can't do.

Some people owed his larruping skill to an extraordinary function, but a series of brain examinations from various institutes in Beijing have verified he is just an ordinary person. Experts say his fingers might be more flexible than others. Link

For the first time ninety-five years after the luxury ocean liner sank on its maiden voyage on 12 April, 1912, the names, ages and professions of passengers listed on the Titanic's fateful journey have gone online. The image version of the list is available for free for only one week, while transcripts will be always free to view at findmypast.com. Link

A international team of more than 170 scientists from 35 institutions have decoded the genetic make-up of the rhesus macaque, an Old World monkey. The research indicates macaques diverged from our ancestors 25 million years ago.

It is the third primate (after humans and chimps) to have the secrets of its DNA laid bare.

The work, led by the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, is reported in the journal Science.

Researchers say the information will help them understand better the evolutionary relationships between humans and their closest relatives.

They say in their analysis that the rhesus macaque, chimp and humans share about 97.5% of the same genes.

The research done by scientists at Bristol University suggested the traditional belief that the cause of hypertension lay with the heart may not be true anymore.

Scientists isolated a protein (JAM-1) located in the brain. They discovered the protein trapped white blood cells.

Once trapped the blood cells could cause inflammation, obstructing blood flow leading to poor oxygen supply to the brain which, in turn,trigger the condition that raise blood pressure.

Anyway, eating low fat foods, reducing salt intake and undertaking regular exercise are always beneficial to you who wish to reduce the risk of high blood pressure. Link to BBC and Sky

The man is named Huang Li-qian (黄礼前), 58, a farmer from Liangping County in Chongqing Municipality of China. Luckily, now docters have removed his huge adipoma which developed from a small soft bump 17 years ago and made him look like a Laughing Buddha . He first discovered a bizarre growth on the back of his neck in 1990, but didn't pay attention to it too much. As the years elapsed, it continued to increase in size at a rapid pace, with the growth ballooning to 15kg. After suffering from severe pain and restricted movement two years ago, he had to go to see doctors. But because he was very poor, he didn't have a surgery until recently. Link

A creative jeans advertisement is seen on the front window of Beams in Harajuku, Japan.

Mice accidently introduced to the Gough Island of South Atlantic by passing ships in the 19th century now poses a big threats to a lot of rare seabirds there.

On Gough Island, part of the Tristan da Cunha islands, about 1,000 endangered Tristan Albatross chicks - about 70 per cent of all those born - are being taken by the mice. The island, a British territory 1,700 miles off the coast of South Africa, is the breeding ground for almost the entire world population of these rare birds.
"The scale is sufficient to drive extinctions," said Ross Wanless, an ornithologist at the University of Cape Town, who has been researching the killer mice. "We had no idea that mice could do this sort of thing."
Mr Wanless has captured the first film footage of the mice - which are the only foreign mammals on Gough Island - attacking the defenceless chicks in their nests.
Swarms of 10 mice at a time can be seen gnawing at the chicks' bodies until they eventually die through blood loss or destruction of vital organs. Chick carcasses found later are reduced to little more than skin and bones.
An albatross chick weighs more than 20lb, about the size of a goose, while a mouse weighs just two ounces
However, the researchers say the chicks make no attempt to fight back and seem not to know how to respond, perhaps because the mice are not native to the islands, and so the birds have not evolved ways of protecting themselves.

Link to Telegragh and NG

I can't figure out what's the logic between body paintings and safe drivings.

Chinese writer Wang Yaowen startled his readers with two behavior artists by drawing transportation signs on two models wearing bikinis at the fifth China Hunan Auto Exposition on Saturday.

With support from two behavior artists, Zeng Zhaozuo and Hu Wei, the writer finished his painting in one hour. The art became the highlight of the whole exhibition hall.

Link

Transgender star Harisu and her fiance Micky Jung,a rapper six years her junior, took wedding photos at a studio in Nonhyun-dong, Seoul, on Thursday. Their wedding ceremony is scheduled to be held on May 19. Harisu who financed a Chinese man to do transexual surgery just days ago looked radiant and smiled brightly in her white wedding dress. Link to Xinhua & Chosunilbo

On 14 April, a large number of families' houses, rice fields, mosques, factories and roads were seen being buried by mudflow in Sidoarjo of Indonesia's East Java. Since last May, an awry natural gas drilling project of Lapindo Brantas Inc. has brought endless thick muck to the district and affected 15,000 victims from 2500 families. Link to Xinhua & the Age

On May 5, 2004, Robert Wechsler, an art student from University of California in Santa Barbara, created this artwork named Applied Geometry--a circle made by following the natural curve in a line of shopping carts-- at Costco parking lot Goleta, CA. Darn cool! via Digg

Luxury 'Titanic DNA' wristwatches were produced by Swiss watchmaker Romain Jerome using the parts recovered from the debris of ill-fated Titanic and showcased at Baselworld, the watch and jewellery industry's largest annual trade fair. From Yahoo! News:

Romain Jerome purchased a piece of the hull weighing about 1.5 kg (3 pounds) that was retrieved in 1991, but declined to identify the seller. The metal has been certified as authentic by the Titanic's builders Harland and Wolff.

To make the watches, which were offered for sale for the first time in Basel for between $7,800 and $173,100, the Swiss company created an alloy using the slab from the Titanic with steel being used in a Harland and Wolff replica of the vessel.

The gold, platinum and steel time pieces have black dial faces made of lacquer paint that includes coal recovered from the debris field of the Titanic wrecksite, offered for sale by the U.S. company RMS Titanic Inc.

Japan's toy manufacturer Tomy employee displays an educational gadget called "Talking Globe" in Tokyo 12 April 2007. The 20cm-in-diameter globe with LED pointer can speak the country's name, local time, and other information relating to the country. Tomy will only put it on the market from October with a price of 12,800 yen, or equivalent to 110 USD.

Morning Glory Pool is the most beautiful springl in Yellowstone National Park. But, maybe some more years later, we can't see such a beautiful pool any more. Phillip Colla introduces on his website:

Morning Glory Pool, one of the most popular and beautiful pools in Yellowstone National Park, earned its name in the 1880's due to its deep blue coloration and likeness to the Morning Glory flower. Over the years visitors tossed coins, trash, sticks and rocks into the pool, causing its vent to clog and the flow of water to decrease. This prompted the temperature in the pool to lessen, causing the pool's deep blue color to fade and allowing the red and yellow algae that formerly only survived at the fringe of the pool to grow toward the center.

Morning Glory Pool-- in Yellowstone National Park

A female cat who was initially brought into a children's clothing store in Shijiazhuang City to catch mice is now doing something oppsosite. After she gave birth to five kittens, she has surprisingly adopted a mouse, letting it join her family of newborns.

"She stays in the box all day long, taking care of her babies, but three days ago, my colleague found a small mouse playing with the kittens," said a spokesperson for the store in Shijiazhuang city.

"The cat was protecting the mouse, and would become alert if anyone came too close."

The store staff threw the mouse out once, but immediately the cat ran to bring it back and let it play with her kittens.

Link to Ananova & More pictures on Jschina

The accident happened occurred around 6 p.m. Friday while Gov. Jon. S. Corzine was en route from Atlantic City to the governor's mansion in Princeton to moderate a meeting between the Rutgers women's basketball team and radio personality Don Imus, who was fired from his CBS radio program one day earlier for his nappy-head-hos comments.

Mr. Corzine's vehicle was hit and crashed into a guardrail, breaking his leg and collarbone, 12 ribs, his sternum and fracturing a vertebrae while not any brain damage.

The 70cm-long Fresh Salmon Pillow wrapped on a tray using cellophane looks so lifelike that everyone possibly would have believed it as a true salmon at the first sight. Wanna one? The actually non-fishy cushion is sold for 2500 Yen at Japanese online sale site Rakuten. via TFTS

Linux washing powder, and micro&soft (not microsoft!) fabric softener are two legitimate products manufactured by the Swiss company Rösch. It seems the washing detergents have been sold to as far as Argentina. Jopejope has his/her experience:

I have mixed feelings about the Linux washing powder. At first, it seems really great, because it comes with a free washer and dryer. But, although it washed my shirts and pants with no problems, it didn't know what to do with my socks and underwear. Eventually, I managed to figure out that I needed a couple of extra parts, which were also free, but I had to install them into the washer and dryer myself! After that, it seemed to wash everything ok, and I now know a lot more than I ever thought I would about how clothing gets cleaned, let me tell you! However, I have this one exotic tie that I bought off a street vendor in Argentina, and it still doesn't know how to wash that. I tried adding the micro&soft fabric softener, but for some reason it didn't soften any of my clothing except for the articles that I had spilled WINE on earlier.

Link via Reddit

HUMAN sperm cells have been artificially created for the first time, offering hope to thousands of men with low sperm counts or who have been left infertile by cancer treatment.

German scientists said fully-functioning sperm cells could be manufactured within five years to use in in-vitro fertilisation.

Scientists took samples from the bone marrow of volunteers and isolated stem cells known as mesenchymal cells, which were then treated with vitamin A to transform them into primordial germ cells - the first stage in sperm production. Some were then further developed into advanced spermatagonial stem cells.

Prof Karim Nayernia, who carried out the research and is now studying how to make spermatagonial cells enter the final stage of development, said: "We are very excited about this discovery, particularly as our earlier work in mice suggests we could develop the work even further.

Marine scientists recently published a research paper in the science journal, biology letters, that found humpback whales migrate over 5,100 miles from Central America to their feeding grounds off Antarctica; a record distance undertaken by any mammal.

Kristin Rasmussen, a biologist with Cascadia Research Collective, and lead author in the study, finds the record-breaking migration interesting, but is most pleased that the study validates a long held assumption that humpback whales travel to warm water areas during the winter.

"It was very exciting because for years everyone said humpback whales could be found in warmer waters during the winter months, but this was the first time we were actually able to quantify this on a global scale, and relate it to these long distance migrations" said Rasmussen.

This gorgeous Jiang'an Temple Seal (静安寺宝印) whose design was based on Jing'an Temple in downtown Shanghai is displayed on Jewelry Shanghai 2007. Three craftsmen spent 1,056 hours making this gold piece which is said to be priceless due to its high-quality manufacturing process.

Kurt Vonnegut, one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century, passed away, suffering irresversible brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago. The author is survived by his wife, photographer Jill Krementz, their daughter and his six other children. Snips from NYT:

Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle” and “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died last night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island.

Mr. Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and ’70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses throughout the United States.

Shen Xiaojing (沈小晶), 21, lives in Nong'an County [of China's Jilin Province]. When she was born, her feet were unusually large. Her right foot is 32 centimetres long and 12 centimetres wide; her left foot is 30 centimetres long and 11 centimetres wide. The big toe of her right foot is as large as a baby's foot [with] 7.5 centimetres long and 4.5 centimetres; her second toe is 9 centimetres long and 3.5 centimetres wide. What is intriguing is that the big toe of her left foot is completely normal, while the other toes are unusually large. For 21 years, all her shoes were made by her mother. Shen Xiaojing is now 170 centimetres tall and has reached the age to marry. However, most young men have been frightened away by her giant feet. Shen has two wishes: to see the world and to get into the Guinness Book of Records.

A rare stone that looks like a piece of huge lifelike meat appeared at a stone market in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. The 80,000-Yuan-valued stone is 60 cm in length, 40 cm in width, and over 60 kg in weight. If interested, more "meat" stones here and here.

Previously, RC posted a "braised chicken" carved from stone.

It sounds so horrific! From Taipei Times

The incident occurred when [Kaohsiung Shoushan] zoo vet Chang Po-yu (张博宇) was giving the [sick] crocodile anesthetic shots.

Chang, thinking the animal was adequately sedated, tried to pull a syringe from the alligator, when it suddenly turned around and bit off his left hand and forearm.

Chang was rushed to hospital. Police arrived at the scene one hour later and fired two shots at the crocodile, killing it and freeing Chang's forearm from its mouth.

Paramedics rushed the limb to the hospital, where doctors were performing microsurgery in a bid to reconnect it to Chang's arm.

Update: Vet Chang's arm was successfully reattached ollowing seven hours of surgery..

Since her graduation from the high school 15 years ago, Xia Ai-feng (夏爱风), an employee of an estate agency from Shangrao City of east China's Jiangxi Province, has never cut her hair that now measures 2.42 meters in length. The hair is so long that the 1.6-metre-tall woman has to stand on a bench to comb them. Some years ago when she was working at Shengzhen, she refused to sell her super long hair to a collector who wanna buy it by offering 10, 000 Yuan (1 yuan=7.8US$). She believes that to grow the long hair is not as easy as to cultivate flowers, in fact, the former needs much more determination and preservation. So, the-36-year-old decides to continue to keep her hair at least until 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Links to Chinadaily & Jxcn & Tlhw

After historians' recent discovery that Mona Lisa, known as Lisa Gherardini in Italy, the mystery woman with enigmatic smile in Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece Mona Lisa was actually the wife of a silk merchant named Francesco del Giocondo, an Italian genealogist has since identified two living descendants of Lisa Gherardini. They are Natalia Guicciardini Strozzi, 30, and her sister, Irina, 24, of Cusano, both of the two women also with the enchanting smile.

[Natalia and her sister, Irina] have been told since they were little girls that they are descendants of the Mona Lisa.

Natalia said: “My mother and grandmother had already talked about this. We were touched the way the family stories were handed down the generations. We are very happy, but we also feel it is a real sense of responsibility.”

Natalia, who is an actress and former ballerina, and Irina, an economist and a concert pianist, both have a dark, enigmatic beauty like their illustrious predecessor. Natalia added: “It’s wonderful to be able to say that we are modern women but we are preserving the extraordinary memories of the past.”

Link to DailyExpress & Netease

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