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The following story was told to me by the woman who rented my parents their first home in California when they moved to Sacramento in 1939. A devout Catholic (so much so that although she had been divorced by her husband, she did not consider the divorce valid and did not remarry until her husband died many years later) the landlady swore on her Bible, in front of my sister and me after she told us the story, that it was absolutely true. She was quite serious about it. In the 1970s, I personally confirmed some of the more mundane...

A 10-day manhunt ended when police arrested an Iraqi immigrant accused of running over his 20-year-old daughter to punish her for becoming "too Westernized" and rebuffing the conservative ways he valued. Share A woman's friends say her Iraqi father injured her for being too Westernized.Faleh Hassan Almaleki, 48, fled from Peoria, Ariz., on Oct. 20. He was arrested by U.S. marshalls in Atlanta when he arrived at the airport there, according to the Associated Press. His daugher Noor Faleh Almaleki, 20, remains hospitalized in critical condition after her father hit the young woman and her boyfriend's mother with his Jeep...

A German man reportedly dumped by a Brazilian woman he met on the Internet camped out in an airport for 13 days before being taken Thursday to a hospital for a psychological evaluation. The man, identified by authorities as Heinz Muller, was out of money and wouldn't say when he planned to leave, according to airport workers, some of whom brought him meals from the food court. The 46-year-old former pilot spent his time wandering the airport in Campinas, an industrial city about an hour's drive from Sao Paulo, and using his laptop perched on a luggage cart. Occasionally he...

Battle of the South Florida billboards heats up The billboard catches the attention of drivers and truckers traveling on the highways. "YOUR WIFE IS HOT" -- BETTER GET YOUR A/C FIXED," it reads, in big bold letters. A clever and sexy slogan developed in January by Air Around the Clock, an A/C and appliance service based in Broward County. But now the slogan is generating a lot of heat after its competitor, All Year Cooling, flipped the phrase this summer. "YOUR WIFE IS NOT HOT! Because you called All Year Cooling to replace your A/C rather than the other guys,"...

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FISHERMEN are asking if this is the massive great white shark that has been stealing their catch, breaching repeatedly within metres of one terrified man's surf ski. These photographs of the 4.3m monster have been circulating on the internet, but reports from the South African fishing town of Mossel Bay confirm they are no hoax. Frighteningly, scientists who dissected the female shark say it was adolescent and not yet fully grown

. TV preacher Pat Robertson’s Web site has just issued a bulletin warning Americans of the real threat we face this season: Demons may be lurking in our Halloween candy. In a column on the Christian Broadcasting Network’s Web site, writer Kimberly Daniels asserts that “demons” sneak into bags of Halloween candy at grocery stores. “[M]ost of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches,” Daniels wrote. “I do not buy candy during the Halloween season. Curses are sent through the tricks and treats of the innocent whether they get it by going door...

A robber who smuggled a bag of his own excrement into a courtroom and threw it at the jury has been sentenced to 31 years in jail, for both his robbery and his poo-flinging. 38-year-old Weusi McGowan was on trial in San Diego, California for a 2007 robbery in which he broke into a man's home, demanded money and hit him with a rock in a sock. He reportedly became upset when his request for a mistrial - on the grounds that some of the jury had seen him in restraints - was denied by the judge. Three days later,...

A woman obsessed with swallowing spoons and forks was forced to have an operation after she ate an entire canteen of cutlery. Surgeons in Rotterdam, Holland, removed 78 different items of cutlery from Margaret Daalmans's stomach after she came to hospital complaining of stomach pains. An astonishing X-ray taken before the operation showed dozens of forks and spoons trapped inside the 52-year-old patient. "She seems to have been suffering from some sort of obsession and every time she sat down for a meal she would ignore the food and eat the cutlery," said one medic. The cutlery removed from the...

LAUDERHILL, Fla. (AP) -- Look, over there. Under that blue tarp in a suburban driveway. That thing that's the size of a Smart car? It's Joel Waul's rubber band ball. Waul has spent the last six years carefully wrapping and linking and stretching rubber bands of various sizes into the ball shape. The Guinness Book of World Records declared it the world's largest rubber band ball in 2008. On Thursday, Waul said goodbye to his creation. A team from Ripley's Believe it or Not came to his house with a crane and hauled the 6-foot, 7-inch tall, 9,032-pound behemoth away...

The father of Colorado's so-called Balloon Boy may not have gotten his reality TV scheme off the ground, but Richard Heene is at least getting his own action figure. Connecticut-based toymaker Herobuilders.com is adding Heene to a quirky collection that includes the Sarah Palin Super Hero and the Obama Joker doll. There's also a Bernie Madoff Action Figure with a fistfull of hundred-dollar bills and a Dick Cheney doll hoisting a shotgun. Heene's mini-me wears an "I'm with Stupid" t-shirt with the arrow pointing upwards. It sells for 34.95. Heene and his wife, Mayumi, called 911 earlier this month to...

The captain and the first lady shared a warm moment at Yankee Stadium last night. Derek Jeter gave Michelle Obama a peck on the cheek before last night's Game 1 during a moving tribute to veterans. The first lady and Jill Biden, wife of the vice president, accompanied Hall of Fame catcher Yogi Berra to the mound where they were joined by Jeter and retired Army Capt. Tony Odierno (right). The West Point grad, who lost his left arm serving in Iraq, threw out the ceremonial first pitch. The heartthrob Jeter also gave Mrs. Biden a peck. And the first...

Does anyone recall seeing a thread here a few days after Hurrican Katrina, that linked to a website created by someone who lived in N.O., was a photojournalism student and was here on a student visa? His photos and detailed captions were awesome! They were the quality one would see in Time Life books or NatGeo. The most important part of it all, however, was that he told of out right lies the media were showing to the American public. He was disgusted because he was watching members of the news media who he had idolized up until that point,...

China’s infatuation with UFOs and UFO sightings really does match that of the US. A week rarely goes past without the media whipping up frenzy over a UFO event somewhere in the country. Many suspect that China’s government is hiding extensive knowledge of extraterrestrial visitors to earth and it is known that the Chinese authorities do collect UFO footage and photographs for the purpose of identification. This video hit the Internet earlier this year but was largely ignored outside of China. Allegedly this UFO sighting occurred in Beijing in 1995 and was held by the Chinese government for top-secret study...

OSLO (Reuters) – A man was caught by Norwegian customs carrying a tarantula in his bag, and a further 14 royal pythons and 10 albino leopard geckos taped to his body, media reported Monday. The 22-year-old Norwegian was stopped in a routine check by Kristiansand customs after arriving on a ferry from Denmark, newspaper Faedrelandsvennen reported. Customs found the tarantula, before deciding to give him a full body search that revealed 14 stockings -- one for each snake -- taped around his torso, top selling tabloid VG said. Reptile smuggling is not uncommon in Norway, which prohibits people holding many...

A SATANIST obsessed with teenage schoolgirls invented a fake gothic society online to groom them for sex in the grounds of Sydney's Rookwood Cemetery. Daniel William Peckham, 24, lured at least three girls, aged from 13 to 17, into the cemetery on his MySpace blog, "Rookwood Gothic Society". A message on the site read: "If you have hang-ups about getting naked ... you are not welcome." Peckham pleaded guilty yesterday to the aggravated sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl and to using the internet to solicit and transmit naked pictures of young girls between 2005 and 2007. The opening day...

Los Angeles, CA (CNS) - Octomom Nadya Suleman has found a way to turn the spotlight back on her this Halloween. The controversial unemployed single mother dressed up as a pregnant nun and had her octuplets don red devil costumes earlier this week.She was all smiles for the camera while her 9-month-old octuplets were visibly restless, with some even photographed crying. Their trick or treat parade was completed by two big strollers draped in spider webs. Suleman, who has six other older kids, created a public uproar in January when she gave birth to her octuplets via in-vitro fertilization, while...

A 22-year-old man was jailed early Tuesday morning on charges he shot another man after the two strangers exchanged a series of hostile text messages. Scott Allen Elder faces an aggravated assault charge in the 2:30 a.m. shooting of Brian Matison, 24, at a CVS parking lot on Edgewater Street, near Montgomery Crossroad, said Veda Lamar Nichols, Savannah-Chatham police spokeswoman. Matison was in serious condition at Memorial University Medical Center by midday Tuesday, Nichols said. Elder and Matison had argued through phone calls and text messages after a misdialed number, Nichols said. The pair arranged to meet at the CVS...

SNIPPET - quote: Doing a Google search today for "al Qaeda", I accidentally hit "map" instead of "news". And you know what? Al Qaeda is on the map.

When it comes to beauty products, sometimes ignorance is bliss. Snake venom, bird droppings, snail serum, cow dung and whale vomit are but a few of the industry's extreme and off-putting ingredients that one might be shocked to know can be slathered about your body. Hair products are no exception to this somewhat creepy phenomenon. Consumers hoping for a hair miracle are willing to pay extra for deep conditioners and conditioning "treatments" that promise an enviable crowning glory -- even when they contain rather odd-seeming ingredients such as placenta, caviar and hemp. Pushing the limits, Hari's, a well-known "celebrity" salon...

A Mesa woman has filed suit in Maricopa County Superior Court accusing a local sports bar of violating city codes by not applying for a building permit for a stripper pole that she toppled from, cutting her ring finger. ReAnna M. Hedrick, 28, claims in the October 16 suit that on September 3, 2008, she was at Famous Sam's Sports Bar in Mesa, now under a different name, for "Ladies Night" when she thought it would be a good idea to try her hand at the makeshift stripper pole set up in the bar. As she was spinning and sliding,...

A BOY has become a walking monument to Muslim faith after passages from the Koran started appearing on his skin. Text in Arabic from the religious book started showing on the boy’s back, arms, legs and stomach, leaving doctors baffled. They first started appearing shortly the baby was born, with “Allah” appearing on his chin, The Sun reports. Doctors say the markings are a medical mystery, but deny the condition is a result of someone writing on the child’s skin. The parents of the child initially hid the mysterious writings, but eventually took the boy to the doctor. They say...

SKIES around the far west Queensland town of Boulia are teeming with budgerigars. This year's floods along river systems such as the Diamantina and Georgina sparked prolific breeding by the budgies which have been feasting on an abundance of grass seeds, the Courier-Mail reported. "I have been here since 1983 and never seen anything like it," Boulia grazier Ann Britton said. "The skies are thick with budgies - how they do not collide with each other is a miracle in itself. "My father, who has travelled extensively in the Outback, was with me when we saw a massive flock and...

A PROMISING young Canadian musician has been attacked and killed by coyotes while on a tour promoting her new album. Taylor Mitchell, 19, was considered a rising star of the folk music scene, having just earned a Canadian Folk Music Awards nomination. She was hiking alone on the Syline Trail in Cape Breton Highlands National Park when a pair of coyotes attacked her. Tourists rushed to her aid when they heard her screams and found Mitchell bleeding heavily from mulitple wounds "all over her body", according to The Canadian Press. "She was losing a considerable amount of blood from her...

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Love Can Mess You Up: Before Arthur David Horn met his future bride Lynette (a "metaphysical healer") in 1988, he was a tenured professor at Colorado State, with a Ph.D. in anthropology from Yale, teaching a mainstream course in human evolution. With Lynette's guidance (after a revelatory week with her in California's Trinity Mountains, searching for Bigfoot), Horn evolved, himself, resigning from Colorado State and seeking to remedy his inadequate Ivy League education. At a conference in Denver in September, Horn said he now realizes that humans come from an alien race of shape-shifting reptilians that continue to control civilization...

History shows the Yankees can't lose with Obama in White HouseThe Yankees are in the World Series and there's a Democrat in the White House. There can only be one outcome. You might think that the Bronx Bombers and the GOP go together like hot dogs and mustard. With their enormous payroll and glittering new stadium, money is never an object. They woo superstars with huge salaries and the luxury tax they pay for doing so helps subsidize the poorer teams. If ever there was a sports team that behaved like a stereotypical rich Republican, it's the Yankees. But that...

SAN DIEGO — A man who sneaked a bag of his feces into a San Diego courtroom during his home-invasion robbery trial, smeared it on his lawyer and threw it at jurors has been sentenced to 31 years in prison. -snip- Several days after his request was denied, McGowan pulled out a bag of excrement he had hidden in his clothing, rubbed it on his lawyer and tossed it at the jury, hitting one juror’s computer case.

Reader Wayne sent us this photograph and explains, "I was walking along and texting. Not really paying that much attention. Then something caught my eye. I thought I was about to step in dog shit, but quickly realized it was a rat stuck in the sidewalk. A big rat. It had tried to squeeze through a crack in the sidewalk and failed." Update: Another reader created the second photograph in the gallery, adding, "hopefully this makes it a little better!" We are still awaiting a reply from Wayne to ask if he tried to help the little guy (or gal)...

Female soccer match bet. Jordan and Palestine at al-Ram A Jordanian player(fully covered one in the air) clearing the ball out of goal area

Some fans will do anything to go to the World Series. Bensalem police said they arrested a Philadelphia woman Tuesday after she offered to perform various sex acts to an undercover officer in exchange for tickets. According to police, Susan Finkelstein, 43, posted an ad on Craigslist that read: "DESPERATE BLONDE NEEDS WS TIX (Philadelphia) "Diehard Phillies fan—gorgeous tall buxom blonde— in desperate need of two World Series Tickets. Price negotiable--- I'm the creative type! Maybe we can help each other!" An undercover officer responded to the ad, police said, and arrested Finkelstein after she made her offer. Finkelstein, of...

Do you see this sign? I fished this sign out of a garbage can outside FedEx Field. It was in the garbage can because there's a new policy that says no signs of any sort are permitted inside the stadium. Even signs sending best wishes to husbands in Afghanistan.

An official announcement by the Obama administration disclosing the reality of extraterrestrial life is imminent. For several months, senior administration officials have been quietly deliberating behind closed doors how much to disclose to the world about extraterrestrial life. Dissatisfaction among powerful institutions such as the U.S. Navy over the decades-long secrecy policy has given a boost to efforts to disclose the reality of extraterrestrial life and technology. The impending disclosure announcement follows upon the secret implementation of a year long openness policy on UFOs and extraterrestrial life. Over the period February 12-14, 2008, the United Nations held closed doors discussions...

A premiership footballer groped a woman in a nightclub before breaking her nose when she rejected his advances, a court has heard. Marlon King, 29, allegedly shouted: 'Don't you know who I am? I'm a millionaire - you're not even in my league', before hitting the petite student in the face. The £25,000-a-week Wigan Athletic striker is said to have approached the woman while she was with friends in the Soho Revue Bar in London last December. She had never met

There are things more important than winning a race...(I know, hard to believe)... These guys could have scared the pup off the back and kept racing but instead made a commendable choice. From Randy Smith A very heartwarming story from Campbell Cup this weekend. A baby seal stricken with a horrible fishing net around its neck jumped aboard the Andrews 70 Alchemy, seemingly reaching out for help for its pain. The crew took the seal into Alamitos Bay ...and handed it over to a Marine Animal Rescue team. The latest report is that the seal will survive. This is what...

ANGELINA Jolie's brother has turned on her after she reportedly told him about having sex with her mother's boyfriend, according to a new biography. author Andrew Morton alleges Jolie slept with Marcheline Bertrand’s live-in lover when she was just 16. the two women struggled to rebuild their relationship after Jolie confessed to the alleged night of passion. "When Ange admitted the story to her brother James just a few weeks ago, even he turned on her. "She has hardly anyone left in life who likes or trusts her."

Modern man and Neanderthals had sex across the species barrier, according to leading geneticist Professor Svante Paabo.Professor Paabo, who is director of genetics at the renowned Max Planck Institution for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, made the claim at a conference in the Cold Springs Laboratory in New York. But Prof Paabo said he was unclear if the couplings had led to children, of if they were capable of producing offspring. "What I'm really interested in is, did we have children back then and did those children contribute to our variation today?" he said in an article in The Sunday Times....

CUSTOMS officials in Norway say they had arrested a man who tried to illegally import 14 snakes and 10 lizards into the country by taping the reptiles to his body. The snakes, king pythons that are large in size but not venomous, were rolled up in socks and taped to the man's torso, while the geckos were found in small boxes taped to his legs. The unusual load was discovered during a body search after customs officials found a tarantula in the man's luggage.

HUGO, Minn.- Four Minnesota friends fashioned a medieval catapult to fling a variety of objects -- such as wheelchairs and obsolete appliances -- into the sky, they said. The men, all in their 30s, built a trebuchet -- a catapult originally designed in the Middle Ages to hurl objects at castle walls -- the St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press reported Sunday. The trebuchet was built by Kurt Modert, of Hugo; Roger Bacon, of White Bear Lake; Ryan Krueger, of Maple Grove; and David Proehl, of New Hope -- all municipalities in Minnesota -- the newspaper said. They're catapulting items like...

Measuring a tiny eighth of an inch by quarter of an inch, this carefully crafted piece of engineering is the world's smallest working train model. The five-carriage train, which is 35,200 times smaller than a real train, nips around an oval route even taking in a ride through a tunnel on its three-quarter inch track. Created by New Jersey train enthusiast David Smith, the miniscule model was built using nothing more fancy than a craft knife and a steady hand...

Iowa City police are investigating an early morning assault in which a man accused another of being a zombie, then punched him twice. Police said the assault occurred at 1:17 a.m. Sunday at an Iowa City restaurant south of the University of Iowa campus. A man was ordering food when he was approached by another man who called him a zombie, then hit him in the eye. When the victim tried to call police on his cell phone, the man punched him again, breaking his nose. The man then ran out a back door. The victim was taken by ambulance...

She went out with a bang, and it's left her Bronx family fuming. Glatha Byrd's final send-off was "apocalyptic" -- as the hearse carrying her body exploded and caught fire on the Major Deegan Expressway, says family lawyer James Franzetti. The family has filed suit in Bronx Supreme Court over the May 13, 2008, incident, accusing the Griffin Peters Funeral Home of causing some of Byrd's relatives "severe and serious" injuries. Valerie Davis, wife of the Harlem funeral home's owner, Keith Davis, called the suit "ridiculous." She said she had heard the relatives, who are also related to her...

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I think the saying goes that those that don’t learn from history are destined to repeat it. This is likely to point with Apple this month as they sit stunned that Windows 7 is doing so well and they are left looking foolish with products priced out of the segment. Their big news this week was a couple of PCs, a new keyboard and a multi-touch mouse. This last will likely go down in history as one of the lamest devices yet as they should know, given the iPhone, that touch is connected to the screen and not anything else....

NORTH HILLS, Calif. (AP) ― Officials said a worker was found dead after he apparently got trapped in a trash compactor in a North Hills factory Friday. Emergency personnel were called to the factory at 3:44 p.m. at 8201 N. Woodley Avenue Friday afternoon, City Fire Department spokesman Devin Gales said. When they arrived, they found the man dead at the scene. Gales said the victim was inside the trash compactor when it somehow turned on.

Yes, Windows 7 didn't even hit the market until Thursday. But that hasn't stopped a fog of myths from enveloping the newest version of the much loved--and much hated--PC operating system from Microsoft. [Slide Show: The Best of What's New in Windows 7.] The software giant hoped that wide exposure to Windows 7 would help smooth its entry. Microsoft let millions of consumers and professionals download test versions of the operating system. And by a wide margin, testers have found the new system to be the best yet from Microsoft. Version 7 is leaner, more useful, and prettier than past...

Oh how the mighty have fallen LOL

The mean-spirited would call it Darwinism at work. A suspected thief got the shock of his life after apparently trying to steal copper. The man is in a Northern California burn unit after his alleged robbery attempt when horribly wrong. Police were tipped to the crime by a power outage. Soon after the power went out someone called the Rodeo Fire Department to report a telephone pole fire. As crews responded to the fire, they noticed a man walking down the street suffering from visible burns. Investigators with the East Bay Regional Parks District say they think the man was...