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BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- A worm a day keeps the doctor away - at least for a firefighter in central Thailand. Paisit Chanta, 39, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he has been eating a live worm every day for nearly three decades, and that it's been the secret of his health. His story was featured Tuesday in a major newspaper, Thai Rath. Paisit's unusual habit started when he was fishing in his native village in Nakhon Nayok province, 60 miles northeast of Bangkok. "One day, I was sitting there waiting for a fish to eat my bait for...

THE charred body of a 22-year-old man who died while trying to get a photo of an erupting volcano on France's Indian Ocean island of Reunion was recovered today after a difficult high-altitude operation, police said. Alexandre Thiault, a student from the island's capital of Saint-Denis, was killed late yesterday after the cooled lava he was standing on crumbled away and he fell into a crack on the side of the Piton de la Fournaise volcano. Firemen who extracted his body today said the Frenchman probably died of asphyxiation from the poisonous gases inside. His body was burnt beyond recognition...

A man accused of stabbing two people and decapitating one of the victims at a group home in Taylor was ordered Wednesday to undergo a competency hearing before the case can resume. Brandon Lee Taylor, 22, is charged with first-degree murder, felony murder and assault with a deadly weapon, Local 4 reported. Prosecutors said Taylor killed the 48-year-old caretaker of the home and then sawed off her head. Taylor is also accused of attacking a 50-year-old resident at the home. The attacks occurred in the early hours of Aug. 18. Police received a call to the home on the 26000...

PAINESVILLE, Ohio (AP) -- Of all the challenges the homeless face, Michael Padula may be in for his biggest to date. The 50-year-old homeless man living out of a van in a city park wants to run for city council. "I am not showboating. I am not doing this for the publicity," said Padula, a self-employed carpenter. "I would not wish my circumstances on anyone." However, Padula's opponent in Ward 2, eight-year council veteran William Horvath, says Padula should be removed from the November ballot. Padula has not established residency for one year, thus rendering him ineligible, Horvath said. Elections...

ZURICH (Reuters) - A man who tried to fight bothersome wasps with insect spray and a cigarette lighter burned down his apartment and two neighboring flats, Swiss police say. A police spokesman said Tuesday the man used a whole can of insect spray on a wasp nest underneath an overhanging roof outside his apartment. When he tried to fend off the angry wasps with his lighter, the fumes ignited and set the flats ablaze. No one in the apartment block was hurt, but the blaze caused more than $350,000 in damage.

PANAMA CITY, Fla. (AP) -- A man who mooned jurors before his conviction on armed burglary and aggravated battery charges has been sentenced to 20 years in prison. Cornell Jackson, 29, swore and yelled at Circuit Judge Michael Overstreet before bailiffs escorted him from the courtroom. The outburst followed his trial in July when he punctuated his insanity defense by loudly hooting "cuckoo-cuckoo" and dropping his pants to moon the jury. Circuit Judge Michael Overstreet said Tuesday that Jackson would have to serve a previously imposed 13-year sentence before he begins his 20-year penalty. Jackson told the judge at the...

MONTREAL - Quebec police say a drunk driver hit a group of three men and continued driving for an hour with the body of an 18-year-old man stuck in the windshield of his car. Nicholas Fortin and two friends were struck by a car as they were leaving a bar in Ste-Adele, north of Montreal, early Saturday morning. People outside the bar rushed to help the two injured men at the side of the road, unaware that a third person had been carried away by the fleeing car. Police arrested a driver 50 minutes later, with the victim still lodged...

REPORTED BRIDGE JUMPER: A naked man reportedly jumped from Interstate 75 into the Caloosahatchee River on Saturday night, but so far authorities have found only a pile of clothes, the Florida Highway Patrol reported. At 10:49 p.m. Saturday, an unknown caller advised authorities a man had jumped off the southbound span of I-75 into the river, Trooper Jeffrey Benoit said. A search failed to find the man Saturday night, but troopers discovered a pile of discarded clothes near where the man reportedly jumped. They found black combat boots, a green T-shirt, light blue jean shorts, white socks, underwear and black...

National Organization for Women will be proud. Their advertisement for males being dumb, drunk and depressing appeared on TV as THE MAN SHOW. They’re lewd, loose and loony. They act out flatulence and then spark fun (?) at the exercise. One of their favorite pastimes is asking viewers whose butt crack is showing center stage. Is it that of a construction worker or a Hollywood celeb? Inquiring minds wanna know. THE JERRY SPRINGER SHOW is old hat to THE MAN SHOW. But with the two of them gagging nationwide week after week, terrorists won’t have much to do in taking...

EVANSVILLE, Ind. - A man who put a replica of Michelangelo's nude "David" sculpture in his yard responded to neighbors' objections by engaging in a cover-up. Christopher Schapker last week used a strategically placed sheet to counteract concerns about the male nude in the side yard of his home. Parents of students who attend a neighboring center that provides services for disabled people had expressed concern over the statue's nudity. Schapker and his housemate, Kerry Niehaus, spent $2,000 for the sculpture to enhance the early 20th century style of their home. At first, none of the children at the center...

<p>NAPLES, Fla. - A homeless man received 12 years in prison for spitting on a Collier County sheriff's deputy during an arrest.</p> <p>David Michael Hird, 41, was convicted in June of battery on a law enforcement officer.</p> <p>Hird was arrested on a trespassing charge Feb. 18 and put into a patrol car by Cpl. Paul Boliek. Prosecutors said when Hird was in the back of the patrol car, he coughed up phlegm on the deputy. When Boliek asked what he was doing, Hird replied: "I'm trying to make you sick, man."</p>

RENO, Nev. (AP) - Police pulled over a man on a bar stool - after a slow speed pursuit on one of Reno's busier streets. It started Monday when an officer saw a man riding the motorized bar stool at 35 mph. He was being followed closely by a woman in a Mustang. Both driver and rider were pulled over. The woman told police she had been on the phone with a dispatcher reporting the bar stool stolen. The owner of the bar stool confirmed that the stool, powered by a small engine, had been taken three weeks earlier. Jarrett...

Feminism's Thousand Year Reich August 12, 2003 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- by Carey Roberts -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When persons call for the decimation of half the world's population, that grabs my attention. This is what I'm talking about: "The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10% of the human race." -- Sally Miller Gearhart, in The Future - If There Is One - Is Female. "If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the...

WEST POINT, Miss. (AP) -- Another man stole his wife's heart, so Albert Edwin Holcombe Jr. sued. A jury says his broken heart is worth $175,000. Harry Stevens was ordered by a jury to pay $175,000 for breaking up a marriage. Holcombe claimed Stevens had an affair with and destroyed his marriage to his now ex-wife, Andrea Holcombe. Stevens argued in county court documents that there was no love lost between the couple. According to court records, the couple were married in 1980 and had three children. They separated in 1998 and were divorced in 1999. Andrea Holcombe said in...

<p>WELLSVILLE, N.Y. -- A man who took a cab more than 200 miles from New York City to western New York didn't get very far after he tried to stiff the driver for $916.50 fare.</p> <p>Police say 23-year-old Jeremy Hartman got out of the cab in the village of Wellsville, where he has relatives, and fled. Police say they found him holed up in a nearby apartment.</p>

<p>An Episcopalian friend of mine, reacting to the elevation of an openly homosexual priest to the office of bishop, said to me: "If you're a heterosexual clergyman and you're having sex outside marriage, you can be expelled. But if you're a homosexual clergyman having sex outside marriage, they rejoice."</p> <p>Most denominations that call themselves Christian take the Bible as their text for spiritual and relational instruction. Some in the Episcopal Church take a liberal view of the Bible, just as some do of the U.S. Constitution -- it must be constantly updated to suit cultural trends. This view lends itself to constant misinterpretation and confusion. Eventually, it leads to religious or political heresy.</p>

A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld a Minnesota law that required a man to register as a sex offender even though he has not been convicted of a sex crime. Minnesota's sex offender registration law and the Minnesota Supreme Court's interpretation of it "turn reason and fairness on its head," wrote Judge C. Arlen Beam, who nonetheless concurred in the unanimous decision of a three-judge panel of the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis. Brian Gunderson was charged in 1998 in St. Louis County with first-degree criminal sexual conduct after a woman he met in a...

A New York City man became annoyed with a theme park worker dressed as Telly from "Sesame Street" and shoved an umbrella into the worker's stomach, police said. Hiram Cruz, of the Bronx, was cited for disorderly conduct for poking the 17-year-old employee Friday during a visit to Sesame Place outside Philadelphia, police said. The teen complained of minor stomach pain and was taken to a hospital as a precaution, Middletown Sgt. Ken Mellus said. "He felt that Telly was bothering him in some way," Mellus said. "I don't think he was trying to hurt the kid. He thought the...

<p>Should marriage be legally defined as only a union between a man and a woman?</p>

<p>Palo Alto police were trying to determine why a 32-year-old man apparently set himself ablaze early Sunday in a pre-dawn fire that he extinguished himself in the front yard of his house, with his own garden hose.</p> <p>The man, whom police would not identify, was being treated for severe burns at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose. He also was undergoing psychological evaluation, said Palo Alto police Lt. Jon Hernandez.</p>