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woman who said her breast implants were damaged in an on-the-job car accident should be compensated for the replacement of only one implant, state appellate judges ruled Tuesday. The North Carolina Court of Appeals issued the decision in a workers' compensation claim filed by Penny M. Rumple Richardson, who said the 2001 accident caused rippling and a decrease in size of her implants.

HIDDENITE -- A teller was robbed at gunpoint at a Hiddenite bank Tuesday afternoon. The suspect was dressed from head to toe. The robbery happened around 3:40 p.m. at People’s Bank on N.C. 90 East, five miles outside of Taylorsville. No one was injured. No one has been arrested. Alexander County sheriff’s deputies and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents are investigating the robbery. Deputies say the robber entered the bank, approached the teller and demanded money. The robber pointed a small handgun at the teller. The suspect (deputies have not released the gender) gave the teller a black plastic bag...

Sadhus, or Hindu holy men perform Yoga after taking a dip in Sangam, the confluence of three rivers, the Ganges, the Yamuna and the Saraswati, in the northern Indian city of Allahabad July 21, 2007. REUTERS/Jitendra Prakash (INDIA)

A bizarre world of scorching hot ice shrouded in a steamy atmosphere may have been found, according to new observations. Characterising the Neptune-size planet is an important milestone on the way to detecting and characterising Earth-like planets that could harbour life. Astronomers have discovered more than 200 planets orbiting other stars, called extrasolar planets or exoplanets. Almost all of these were detected by the way their gravity makes their parent stars wobble. But this technique, called the radial velocity method, reveals very little about the planet except for the size of its orbit and an estimate of its mass. Transits...

May 11 - The South Korean prosecutor has sought an arrest warrant for Kim Seung-youn, one of the country's richest businessman, on suspicion of kidnapping and beating karaoke bar waiters. Kim Seung-youn, chairman of the Hanwha Group, a South Korean business conglomerate, appeared at a Seoul courthouse on Friday to face assault charges. Police suspect that Kim went to the bar with his bodyguards in early March, seized six workers and shuttled them off to a remote mountain area where he beat them with a 150-cm steel pipe. They also suspect that he punched and kicked one waiter "dozens of...

A Presidential Medal of Freedom that was prepared for award to Apollo 13 astronaut Captain James Lovell, Jr., and which was missing since 1970, was recently recovered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the bureau's Chicago office announced on Tuesday. A slight defect in the medal resulted in its replacement being manufactured and presented in its place to Lovell. The damaged medal was intended to be destroyed but instead it found its way out of the White House and into the hands of a private collector in Pennsylvania. On January 5, 2007, that same collector listed the medal for...

Prehistoric women: Not so simple, not so strange 18:00 28 March 2007 Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Germaine Greer Prehistoric women: Not so simple, not so strange This is a review of The Invisible Sex: Uncovering the true roles of women in prehistory by J. Adovasio, Olga Soffer & Jake Page, Collins, $27/£13.72, ISBN 9780061170911 Jim Adovasio is the leading expert in the perishable artefacts of the Palaeolithic – baskets, cordage, woven fabric – all associated, if somewhat arbitrarily, with women. To correct the astigmatism that has hitherto seen prehistory as the story of early man, Adovasio – director...

Communist Coke Kvass, a soft drink made from fermented bread, is seen as a quintessentially Russian item. But now Coca-Cola, the ultimate symbol of Western capitalism, is to start producing a version of the drink that is often called "the Coke of Communism". The soft drinks giant is in talks with beverage companies in Moscow over bottling the drink, a murky concoction which can also contain berries, fruit or birch sap. Nikita Volkov, the marketing director of Deka, one of the country's biggest producers of kvass, said that he was unfazed by the new competition. "If their kvass is sold...

One thousand one hundred and four years ago a criminal trial took place in Italy, a trial so macabre, so gruesome, so frightful that it easily qualifies as the strangest and most terrible trial in human history. At this trial, called the Cadaver Synod, a dead pope wrenched from the grave was brought into a Rome courtroom, tried in the presence of a successor pope, found guilty, and then, in the words of Horace K. Mann's The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages (1925), "subjected to the most barbarous violence." For the past several centuries the papacy...

A 29-year-old sex offender from Oklahoma duped two Arizona men into thinking he was a 12-year-old boy and lived with them for two years in a sexual relationship before the truth finally emerged Wednesday, officials said. Neil Havens Rodreick II, who had been living under the alias of Casey Price, was arrested this week along with the men he’d fooled and a possible former cellmate, who is also an Oklahoma sex offender, officials said. “This is extremely strange,” said Susan Quayle, spokeswoman for the Yavapai County sheriff’s office in Prescott, Ariz. “I can’t get over how bizarre this whole situation...

It smells like a mixture of overripe Gorgonzola and putrefying mushrooms. Its texture is that of slugs stuffed with mozzarella. It is natto, or rotten soya beans, and is one of the world’s most challenging foods, as loved and loathed in Japan as black puddings are in Britain or rotten herrings in Sweden. And in the past few days it has become a cult, as natto-mania has swept Japan, emptying supermarket shelves and leaving soya bean fermenters scrambling to catch up with the unprecedented surge in demand. Earlier this month the television programme Revealed! Encyclopaedia of Living recommended two portions...

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A peek inside the trunk of a car belonging to a wanted man turned up something police didn't expect -- a Nobel Peace Prize medal. State parole officers looking for a handgun yesterday found the medal, which was stolen in October. The car belongs to a 24-year-old man wanted by police in connection with a series of crimes, including domestic violence, assault and impersonating an officer. The medal belongs to Kay Miller. She was awarded the honor in 1985 for her work with the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Last fall, Miller...

Woman in Water Drinking Contest Dies Sacramento, Calif. (AP) A woman who competed in a radio station's contest to see how much water she could drink without going to the bathroom died of water intoxication, the coroner's office said Saturday. Jennifer Strange, 28, was found dead Friday in her suburban Rancho Cordova home hours after taking part in the "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest in which KDND 107.9 promised a Nintendo Wii video game system for the winner. "She said to one of our supervisors that she was on her way home and her head was hurting her...

Saadam Hussein Meershaum Pipe - Never Used! Item number: 140070667795 View larger picture Starting bid: US $500.00  End time: 20 hours 12 mins ( Jan-07-07 18:12:39 PST) Shipping costs: FREEStandard Flat Rate Shipping Service Service to United States Ships to: United States Item location: Pepperell, MA, United States History: 0 bids You can also: Get alerts via Text message, IM or Cell phoneSell one like this Listing and payment details:   HideShow Starting time: Jan-02-07 18:12:39 PST Starting bid: US $500.00 Duration: 5-day listing Payment methods: PayPal See details Meet the seller Seller: deluca9130 ( 0 ) Member: since Nov-13-05 in United...

CINCINNATI - A 13-foot boa constrictor wrapped itself around its owner's neck and killed the man in his home, authorities said. An acquaintance found Ted Dres, 48, inside the snake's cage Saturday and called police, the Hamilton County Sheriff's office said. The snake was still strangling Dres when deputies arrived, and the officers had to work with members of an animal protection group to remove the reptile, the sheriff's office said. Dres' snake will be kept at an animal shelter awaiting instructions from police or Dres' family, said Andy Mahlman, spokesman for the Cincinnati Society for the Prevention of Cruelty...

See for example this thread first. Again, adult topics. These seem to make the best puns. Please scroll down for this. (Yes, this is stalling.) A blatant attempt to take up room. This regulation makes me squirm-- The Brits ban the sale of fresh sperm! To keep it the best It's subject to test It's the end of the Wanker-based firm!

Beware of sheep droppings BY DAVE BARRY (This classic Dave Barry column was originally published on June 16, 1996.) Call me paranoid, but my first reaction, upon learning about the dead sheep being found in treetops in New Zealand, was that something unusual was going on. I found out about this thanks to alert reader Steven Moe, who sent me an article from The Press of Christchurch, concerning ''the discovery of several dead sheep high in the trees of Tunnicliffe Forest.'' Right away, I said to myself, ''Hmm.'' I base this statement on the well-known fact that sheep are not...

See for example this thread first. Someone must have been smoking dope When they invented the (why?) "cuke-a-loupe" "Melon" for the men and "cuke" for the girls, then Hermaphrodite fruit--let's elope!

MOSCOW, Russia (Reuters) -- Vladimir Putin's decision to stop a small boy as he walked through the Kremlin and kiss his stomach was prompted by a desire to "touch him like a kitten," the Russian president said on Thursday. The five-year-old boy, identified as Nikita Konkin by the press, was clearly stunned by the kiss and speculation over Putin's motivation has run wild in the week since it happened. Curious Internet users propelled the issue to the top of a list of questions put to Putin in an interactive Web cast. "People came up and I began talking to them,...

I am not certain what the legal ramifications would be in changing Free Republic from donations to a subscription service. It seems to me the switch may be detrimental to legal issues such as copyrights. If that is true I'd appreciate if someone could briefly explain that to me. However if that is not the case here is my suggestion: I have been wondering about this for some time now and have not seen any discussions about it. So I would like to ask: Is it time for Free Republic to become an online subscription service? Currently, the site is...