Scrap workers find $128,000 in safe ...

Reuters

Fri Jan 30, 2009 BERLIN (Reuters) - Workers at a steel plant near Berlin found 100,000 euros ($128,500) in a safe that a bank had sent to be scrapped -- but they did the decent thing and gave it back.

An employee at Germany's Postbank had failed to take out the cash before sending the safe to the scrapyard. Spokesman Ralf Palm blamed "the carelessness of an employee when a branch office moved in December."

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

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Thief caught out giving policeman's address...

Reuters

Wed Jan 21, 2009 BERLIN (Reuters) - A German teen-ager caught shoplifting tried to dupe police by lying about where he lived -- but ended up in even more trouble when the address he gave turned out to be the home of an investigating officer.

The 18-year-old from Achim, a town of 30,000 in northern Germany, admitted he had lied when the officer explained that the address belonged to him, said police in nearby Verden.

"It was complete coincidence," said a police spokesman. "The thief gave that address because he'd once lived in the house. The policeman was the guy who moved in afterwards."

(Reporting by Dave Graham; editing by Elizabeth Piper)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

What’s really new in Windows 7? ...

ZDNet.com Posted by Ed Bott

January 19th, 2009 In the past few months, I’ve written extensively about Windows 7, often focusing on a specific set of features or technologies. Inevitably, someone in the Talkback section says I’m dodging the most important question: Is there a single killer feature in Windows 7 that justifies an upgrade, especially for someone who is happy with Windows XP and has chosen to avoid Windows Vista?

For another perspective on this topic, see Adrian Kingsley-Hughes’ post, Windows 7: revolutionary or evolutionary?

The obvious, if oversimplified answer, is “No.” For most mainstream business and home uses, there’s no killer feature in Windows 7. You can rip an MP3 file, edit a Word document, browse the web, read a PDF file, and probably do just about any other common task, especially those involved with basic business functions, with any hardware and any OS from the 21st Century.

But who needs a killer feature? After using several builds of Windows 7 for roughly three months, I can see enormous potential for greater productivity. But before I dive into the list of why I think that’s true, a few caveats:

Bring an open mind. One refrain I hear regularly from Win7 skeptics is that Microsoft is indulging in “change for the sake of change.” But every time I look at a feature that’s been redesigned, I see a reason for it. If you’re willing to try to adapt your behavior, you’ll be more successful.

There’s a learning curve. If you’re bound and determined to do things the way they’re done in Windows XP, then stick with Windows XP. If you’re deploying Windows 7 in an organization, you’ll need to budget for training. To Microsoft’s credit, they’ve resisted the urge to stuff their new OS with wizards and pop-ups bragging about the new features. The flip side of that bargain is that you’ll need to invest a little effort to find the new stuff.

One size does not fit all. Microsoft’s Raymond Chen neatly summarized the dilemma of developing for the Windows interface: “No matter what you do, somebody will tell you that you’re an idiot.” If they fail, they create an annoyance, of which Windows 7 still has its share. But hopefully those are fewer and less annoying than they were before.

With that as prologue, here are the five places where I think most users will benefit from Windows 7.

The Small Stuff

Can a hundred small improvements add up to a killer feature? Recently I wrote about six Vista annoyances that are fixed in Windows 7. I could probably find two dozen additional examples of tasks that are greatly streamlined and simplified in Windows 7 compared to XP or Vista. Individually, none of these little things would merit more than an offhand reference, but collectively they add up to a smoother, more productive experience across the board.

Want to change your screen resolution? In XP or Vista, you have to right-click the desktop and choose Properties (or Personalize, in Vista), then open another dialog box. In Windows 7, right-click on the desktop and the Screen Resolution menu is right there. One click saved.

Another example is backing up your system to an external hard drive. In XP, you need a third-party program. In Vista, you need to plug in the drive and then hunt down and configure the Backup program. In Windows 7, you plug in an external hard drive and one of the options prominently featured on the AutoPlay menu is Use This Drive for Backup. If you choose that option, it walks you through the process of setting up an automated backup.

There are undoubtedly a few examples of actions that are more complex in Windows 7 than they used to be, but on balance, my experience with Windows 7 is that it gets most common tasks done faster, with fewer menus and a dramatic decrease in annoying pop-ups and unnecessary wizards. That’s the kind of productivity enhancer that pays off for users at any level of skill and experience, once they’ve gotten over the learning curve.

Performance and Reliability

With one or two noteworthy exceptions, every review I’ve read of Windows 7 has remarked on its performance. When my colleague Adrian Kingsley-Hughes took a stopwatch to the new OS, it trounced XP and Vista on just about every measure. That’s been my experience as well.

Even more important than raw speed, though, is reliability. I’ve been carrying around an assortment of Windows 7-powered notebooks recently and have been impressed with its ability to sleep and resume reliably. The Windows 7 power management tools are easy to get to, and I’ve found that its estimates of remaining battery life are generally quite accurate, which certainly wasn’t the case with Windows XP.

Desktop Search

The more I use the refined Desktop Search feature in Windows 7, the more I love it. From the standpoint of raw functionality, you could accomplish the same thing with Windows 2000 or XP and a variety of free utilities such as X1 or Copernic. The precursors of Windows 7 Search originally appeared in 2004 as part of the MSN toolbar, then as an add-in service for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, and finally as a standalone Windows Search 4.0 update that shared code with its Windows Vista sibling.

Integrated search is one of those features that rewards a little bit of training. Learning a few key operators from the Windows Search Advanced Query Syntax, for example, makes it much easier to narrow a search. Probably the biggest advance in Windows 7, though, is the way that the Start menu search works. In Vista, you can type a term (or an advanced query) into the Search box, and you get a subset of the total results. If the thing you’re looking for isn’t in that list, you have to click Search Everywhere and fuss with an extra set of options in Windows Explorer. In Windows 7, each heading is a live, clickable link:

Clicking any of those headings opens an Explorer window restricted to just that type of search result and with a much friendlier set of options that makes it easy to scan results quickly. I’ll have a more in-depth look at search in an upcoming post.

Window Management

After a few months with Windows 7, I find myself taking its new window management capabilities for granted. But when I sit down in front of a PC running XP or Vista, I’m reminded of what I’m missing. I regularly drag windows to the edge of the screen to snap them into position using that half of the display so I can compare the contents of two folders or arrange two apps side by side on a large widescreen monitor.

I also use the Show Desktop shortcut (drag the mouse to the lower right corner of the window), AKA Aero Peek regularly. I’ve heard people call it “eye candy” and wonder what it’s good for. For me, it’s a way to quickly see what’s happening on desktop gadgets. I use Twadget (terrible name, great app) to keep track of Twitter, and a weather gadget to keep track of conditions in the outside world. With one mouse motion and zero clicks, I can check those and other gadgets without disturbing any windows I’m currently working on.

Troubleshooting and Monitoring

The new Windows 7 Resource Monitor is awesome, a huge improvement over its Vista predecessor. It has no counterpart in XP at all. If you’ve installed a third-party program that’s hogging CPU, disk, memory, or network resources, you can usually track it down here.

In the past, I used Process Explorer to dig in and find out technical details about a particular process. The Windows 7 Resource Monitor offers a subset of that functionality that should be good enough for all but the most trick of troubleshooting tasks. I especially like the ability to filter a list of processes so you can see which files they’re accessing and how much network bandwidth they’re using, without the clutter of other running processes.

There are other features in Windows 7 that deserve recognition as well. For home users, the combination of Homegroups and Media Center is particularly powerful. But trying to describe that combination in a paragraph or two is a nearly impossible task, so I’ll save that topic for a later post.

Ed Bott is an award-winning technology writer with more than two decades' experience writing for mainstream media outlets and online publications. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

Police recover human skulls...

Reuters

Thu Jan 15, 2009 KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Nepali police have recovered a mysterious consignment of parts of human skulls packed in bags in southeast Nepal near the border with India, police said on Wednesday.

The seizure of 168 pieces of skulls carved like bowls was made late on Tuesday at Kakarvitta, 275 km (172 miles) southeast of Kathmandu, on the border with India.

"During our regular border patrol we found three abandoned bags. They were full of human skulls," police official Yadav Dhakal said.

Dhakal said the motive for collecting the human skulls was not clear.

In the past police have said skulls were sometimes made into decorative and curiosity items which fetched high prices.

(Reporting by Gopal Sharma; Editing by Alistair Scrutton and Sugita Katyal)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

More peanut products recalled, U.S. probe continues...

Health Reuters By Andrea Shalal-Esa

Mon Jan 19, 2009 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. food companies recalled more products containing peanut butter as the U.S. government continued its investigation into an outbreak of salmonella food poisoning that have may have contributed to six deaths.

General Mills Inc voluntarily recalled two varieties of peanut butter-flavored snack bars, saying peanut butter in the products was sourced from Peanut Corp of America (PCA) and may be contaminated with salmonella.

Illinois-based Ralcorp Frozen Bakery Products recalled all Wal-Mart Bakery brands of peanut butter cookies sold in the in-store bakery sections of Wal-Mart Stores, as well as its Lofthouse brand and Food Lion brand peanut butter cookies.

Tennessee-based McKee Foods Corp said it was recalling two varieties of "Little Debbie" peanut butter sandwich crackers that could potentially be contaminated.

Michigan-based grocer and retailer Meijer recalled two types of its Meijer Brand sandwich crackers and two types of Meijer Brand ice cream sold in its stores and gas stations in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it had traced a source of the contamination to a Blakely, Georgia processing plant owned by Peanut Corp.

The company produces peanut butter for use in nursing homes and cafeterias, as well as a concentrated product used in many commercially produced products, including cakes, cookies, crackers, candies, cereal and ice cream.

The FDA urged consumers to stop eating any commercially-prepared products made with peanut butter, or peanut butter served in institutional settings, saying it was still identifying products that should be recalled.

It said there was no indication that any national name brand jars of peanut butter sold in retail stores were linked to the recall, but said it would keep consumers updated.

General Mills, which also makes Cheerios cereal and Yoplait yogurt, said it was recalling Larabar Peanut Butter Cookie flavor snack bars and JamFrakas Peanut Butter Blisscrisp flavor snack bars. A combined 15,000 cases of product were involved, but no illnesses have been reported in connection with either product, the company said in a statement.

Kellogg Co said the FDA discovered salmonella in one package of Austin Quality Foods Toasty Crackers with Peanut Butter that were recalled earlier, and said the contamination resulted from an apparent problem with its supplier.

The company at the center of the case, Peanut Corporation of America, on Sunday widened its recall of products to include peanut butter and peanut paste distributed to institutions, food service industries and private label food companies in 24 states, South Korea, Haiti and Canada's Saskatchewan province.

Other products distributed in other states might also have been affected, the company said.

As of Friday evening, 474 people had been reported infected by a salmonella outbreak linked to peanut butter by public health authorities in 43 of the 50 U.S. states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

Twenty-three percent of the known cases had resulted in hospitalizations and the infections may have contributed to six deaths, said Dr. Robert Tauxe, deputy director of the Centers' division of Foodborne, Bacterial and Mycotic Diseases.

The very young, elderly and immuno-compromised were the most severely affected, he said in the teleconference.

Salmonella can cause abdominal cramping, diarrhea and fever and it can kill the very young and very old.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa; Editing by Diane Craft)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Outrage at busty Virgin Mary models...

Reuters

Fri Jan 16, 2009 SANTIAGO (Reuters) - A prominent fashion designer has sparked outrage in Chile by dressing up models like the Virgin Mary -- in some cases with ample, near-naked breasts.

The Roman Catholic Church condemned Ricardo Oyarzun's plans for a show featuring the models, and a conservative group tried unsuccessfully to block it in court.

Oyarzun said he had received telephone threats and had excrement smeared on his doorstep.

"There is no pornography here, there's no sex, there are no virgins menstruating or feeling each other up," Oyarzun said ahead of the catwalk show set to be held at a Santiago nightclub later on Thursday. "This is artistic expression."

He said his designs -- which include halos, look as though they come from a nativity scene and include religious icons -- were inspired by the Virgin Mary but not intended to represent her.

"We look on with special pain and deplore those acts which seek to tarnish manifestations of sincere love toward the Virgin Mary, which end up striking at the dignity of womankind by presenting her as an object of consumption," Chile's Episcopal Conference, which includes Catholic bishops, said in a statement.

The show is more evidence that Chile, heavily influenced by the church for decades, is shaking off its reputation as one of the most socially conservative countries in Latin America.

(Reporting by Monica Vargas; Writing by Simon Gardner; Editing by Xavier Briand)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

U.S. arrests pilot accused of faking death...

Reuters

Wed Jan 14, 2009 MIAMI (Reuters) - U.S. marshals have arrested a pilot accused of parachuting out of his plane and letting it crash in an apparent attempt to avoid financial fraud prosecution by faking his death, an investigator said late on Tuesday.

The pilot, Marcus Schrenker, 38, was arrested late on Tuesday at a campsite in the north Florida town of Quincy, Santa Rosa County Sheriff's Sgt. Scott Haines said by e-mail.

Details of the arrest were sketchy and Haines could not confirm local media reports that Schrenker was hospitalized after cutting his wrists in an apparent suicide attempt.

Schrenker was the only person aboard the small plane that took off for Florida on Sunday from Anderson, Indiana.

Investigators said that as the plane flew over Alabama the pilot made a fake emergency call, then put the plane on autopilot and parachuted out.

The empty plane crashed in a swampy area a few hundred yards (meters) from several homes near the northwest Florida city of Milton. No one was injured and no structures were damaged, investigators said.

Schrenker parachuted safely to the ground near the Alabama city of Harpersville on Sunday night, got a police officer to give him a ride to a hotel and then fled, investigators said.

He had previously stashed a motorcycle near that hotel and got away before local police learned of the plane crash, police and local media reported.

Schrenker was wanted in Indiana on financial fraud charges alleging he misled consumers who invested money in his wealth management companies and misappropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars of their money.

(Reporting by Jane Sutton, editing by Philip Barbara)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Would-be bride, 107, seeks first husband...

Reuters

Mon Jan 12, 2009 BEIJING (Reuters) - A 107-year-old Chinese woman who was afraid to marry when she was young has decided to look for her first husband and hopes to find a fellow centenarian so they will have something to talk about, a Chinese paper reported.

Wang Guiying is worried she is becoming a burden to her aging nieces and nephews since breaking her leg when she was 102 and had to stop doing chores like washing her clothes.

"I'm already 107 and I still haven't got married," the Chongqing Commercial Times quoted her saying. "What will happen if I don't hurry up and find a husband?"

Born in southern Guizhou province the child of a salt merchant, Wang grew up watching her uncles and other men scold and beat their wives and often found her aunt crying in the woodshed after an attack, the paper said.

"All the married people around there lived like that. Getting married was too frightening," she said of an era when Chinese women had few rights and low social standing.

Many also had their feet bound in an excruciating process aimed at making them look more dainty and marriageable.

After Wang's father, mother and older sister died, she still shied away from marriage. Instead she moved to the countryside and survived as a farmer until she was 74 years old and no longer strong enough to work in the fields, the report said.

Her nephew in the booming city of Chongqing then took Wang in, but she is worried he and her other nephews and nieces are too old to take care of her now even the youngest is 60.

"My nephews and nieces are getting older and their children are already tied up with their own families and I am becoming more and more of a burden," she said.

Local officials have said they are happy to help Wang search for a 100-year old groom, and suggested her family get in touch with old people's homes to find candidates, the paper said.

(Reporting by Emma Graham-Harrison; Editing by Nick Macfie and Sugita Katyal)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Microsoft resumes Windows 7 test downloads | Technology | Reuters

Technology Reuters

Mon Jan 12, 2009 NEW YORK (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp launched downloads of the public test version of its new version of Windows on Saturday, after a one-day delay due to overwhelming demand.

<--- Steve Ballmer, Microsoft Corp CEO announces the release of the Windows 7 operating system as he delivers the pre-show keynote address at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada January 7, 2009.

The "beta" launch of the highly anticipated update to Microsoft's Windows franchise was to began on Friday, but the company had to halt downloads to add more servers.

A Microsoft spokesman said on Monday that the company did not yet have a tally of how many copies of the program have been downloaded.

However, it has eliminated its limit of 2.5 million copies for the first two weeks of availability, to allow more people to get a copy.

Microsoft, the world's biggest maker of software, has said Windows 7 would incorporate touch-screen technology and allow users to more easily personalize the system. It promised more user-friendly features, such as a new taskbar that previews all open windows from a single application by hovering over the program's icon.

(Reporting by Franklin Paul; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Driver warned of jail's sexual gorillas...

Reuters By Michael Perry

Tue Jan 6, 2009 SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian court has issued a blunt warning about the sexual predators a young driver faces in jail if he does not stop speeding, as authorities struggle to stop teenagers street racing.

"You'll find big, ugly, hairy strong men (in jail) who've got faces only a mother could love that will pay a lot of attention to you -- and your anatomy," said Magistrate Brian Maloney.

The 19-year-old male appeared in Sydney's Downing Center Court on Monday charged with driving without a license, failing to stop at a police alcohol check point and driving dangerously.

It was his third time before the courts for driving offences, prompting the magistrate's warning he would be jailed next time.

Maloney barred the teenager from driving until 2013, placed him on a 12-month good behavior bond and ordered him to do 150 hours of community work.

Breaching any of these conditions would see the teenager jailed where he would "shower with the gorillas in the mist down at Long Bay jail," said Maloney, his comments confirmed by the court on Tuesday.

"Out of control" was the frontpage headline in Sydney's The Daily Telegraph newspaper on Tuesday for a story on four teenagers either booked for street racing, speeding, driving without a license or crashing their car and killing a passenger.

The newspaper's editorial backed the magistrate's warning of life behind bars, saying his comments were "a vision in clarity" and gave the teenager "a reality check of his future."

"We can only hope this strategy helps. Hope it ends the slaughter of young innocents on the roads through stupidity...," said the Telegraph. "Road safety has become a war zone and any tactics are permissible..."

Police in the southern state of Victoria impounded 42 cars in the past six days after drivers were caught speeding.

One driver, aged 78, was clocked in Melbourne on New Year's Day at 170 kph (105 mph) -- 70 kph (44 mph) over the limit.

The 78-year-old was the "oldest hoon" in Victoria to have his car confiscated for speeding, local media said on Tuesday.

"It is disappointing to see a senior member of our community being so irresponsible," Acting Police Sergeant Carlo Visser told Melbourne's Herald-Sun newspaper.

"What example does this set for younger drivers?" said Visser.

(Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Oh Grandmother, what a rubbery face you have...

Reuters

Thu Jan 8, 2009 SANTIAGO (Reuters) - A Chilean man tried to steal $80,000 from his 82-year-old grandmother by disguising his 21-year-old girlfriend as the elderly woman and having her withdraw money from the bank, but the plot was foiled.

The man falsified his grandmother's identity card and his girlfriend wore a latex mask. They might have gotten away with it if it weren't for a bank worker who called the grandmother's home and learned she was visiting relatives in Venezuela.

"She acted like an elderly woman, was dressed as elderly woman and moved like one. It was a good impersonation," Victor Mellado, head of client service at the Banco de Chile in the port city of Talcahuano in southern Chile told local television.

The pair have been arrested by the police for attempted fraud and falsification of documents and face a maximum of up to three years in jail if convicted, prosecutor Jose Orella said.

(Reporting by Monica Vargas; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Microsoft Windows 7: Review of reviews ...

Telegraph.co.uk By Ben Leach Last Updated: 12:15PM GMT 25 Nov 2008

The curtain has been raised (slightly) on the next installment of Microsoft's Windows operating system - Windows 7.

Microsoft hope it will bring the internet, mobile phone and PC closer together. But reviews have so far been mixed, although reviewers have been limited to trying the (pre-beta version).

The full version is expected to be capable of working with a touchscreen screen, navigating documents and the Web similar to Apple's iPhone. It is officially released at the end of 2009.

InfoWorld

"I have seen the future, and it is bleak. Windows 7, the next big version, the one that was supposed to fix everything that was wrong with Vista, is here (at least in pre-beta form), and I can now say - with some confidence - that Microsoft has once again dropped the ball.

"Overall, I'm extremely disappointed with Windows 7. Far from atoning for Vista's sins, Windows 7 simply carries them forward, visiting them upon yet another generation. Windows 7 is no panacea. Rather, it's just more of the same: slow, bloated, and frustrating as hell."

The Register

"When it comes to Windows 7, Microsoft hasn't just learned from the mistakes of Windows Vista. It has picked up a thing or two from Apple's OS X, judging by first impressions.

Techradar

"It's not clear how big the changes are so far. If you put the beta-build of Windows 7 side-by-side with Windows Vista, you'd be hard-pressed to spot the differences. Yes, some of the icons look slightly different and there's no sidebar, but it's essentially still the Vista look and feel. But that changes when you start to use Windows 7.

"For a start the OS won't nag you as much; many notifications are banished to a control panel, you get to approve icons before they show up in the system tray and Microsoft has reined in Vista's useful but annoying UAC prompts; you can choose which ones you want to see or turn them off altogether."

ZDNet

"Initially Windows 7 looks similar to Vista, but there a lot of new features that have been added. Under the skin, Microsoft has been working hard. Boot times have been reduced, and certainly the review laptop Microsoft provided has a fairly snappy boot time.

"Microsoft has been working with OEMs to improve battery life - simple things such as reducing the timer frequency can improve battery life by up to 10 per cent. The networking stack has had new diagnostics added to help users figure out exactly where the problem lies.

PC Magazine

"So, is this all a big deal? It's not a change to the fundamental core of Windows, and most of the improvements sound relatively small. But taken together, they seem to address many of the issues people have had for Windows. I'm looking forward to trying it out, starting this afternoon."

Study shows how sleep apnea may cause stroke...

Health Reuters By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

Tue Jan 6, 2009.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A dangerous type of snoring known as sleep apnea can cause stroke by decreasing blood flow, raising blood pressure and harming the brain's ability to modulate these changes, researchers reported on Tuesday.

The study may help explain why people with sleep apnea are more likely to have strokes and to die in their sleep, the team led by Vahid Mohsenin of Yale University in Connecticut said.

An estimated 18 million Americans have sleep apnea, which is characterized by repeated episodes in which someone who is sleeping stops breathing.

"Three years ago we showed that patients with sleep apnea ... they die or have strokes three times more than people with a comparable age or risk factors without sleep apnea," Mohsenin said in a telephone interview.

"We asked the question of why they have a higher risk for stroke."

Writing in the Journal of Applied Physiology, Mohsenin and colleagues said they tested 48 middle-aged men and women, 22 of whom had sleep apnea but who were otherwise healthy. They checked blood pressure and used ultrasound to monitor blood flow in the brain.

They had the volunteers do a blood pressure test in which they squatted and then stood suddenly.

"We found that patients with sleep apnea had difficulty compensating for the change in blood pressure," Mohsenin said. "They actually had decreased blood flow to brain."

He said this showed the damage caused by sleep apnea continues throughout the day.

"When you are up and around and experience changes in your blood pressure, or during the night when you have fluctuations in blood pressure due to apnea, they have a hard time compensating for that," Mohsenin said.

"It is a carryover effect."

Now, Mohsenin said, his team will test whether statin drugs, known to reduce inflammation, can restore the lost brain function in sleep apnea sufferers.

The patients will also later be treated using airway pressurization masks, or CPAP.

"The important thing is to recognize sleep apnea early on so there won't be any significant damage to the brain," he said.

During sleep apnea episodes, the upper airway becomes blocked, hindering or stopping breathing and causing blood oxygen levels to drop and blood pressure to rise. The person eventually awakens and begins breathing, restoring normal blood oxygen and blood flow to the brain.

Symptoms of sleep apnea include feeling tired and needing a nap even after eight hours of sleep, loud snoring that disturbs others and snorting that indicates breathing has stopped.

Using an airway pressurization mask can help the brain restore normal function, Mohsenin said, although no study has shown it lowers the rate of strokes.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox; Editing by Julie Steenhuysen)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Police seek blow-up doll sex bandit...

Reuters

Wed Jan 7, 2009. SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian man broke into three adult shops, had sex with blow up dolls named "Jungle Jane" and then dumped his plastic conquests in a nearby alley, local media reported Wednesday.

"It's totally bizarre. It's a real concern that someone like that is out on the street," said one of the owners of the adult sex shops in Cairns in northern Queensland state.

"He has been taking the dolls out the back and blowing them up and using the dolls and leaving them in the alley," the owner, who gave the name of Vogue, told the Cairns Post newspaper.

Police told the Cairns Post that scientific officers had taken DNA samples, fingerprints and pictures of the crime scene.

(Reporting by Pauline Askin, Editing by Dean Yates)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Woman gives birth at London Tube station...

Reuters

LONDON (Reuters)Fri Jan 2, 2009 - A Polish woman has become only the second person to give birth on London's underground rail network since it opened 146 years ago, the transport authority confirmed on Friday.

Julia Kowalska was traveling with her sister on the network's Jubilee line on December 19 when her contractions started.

She got off at a station in northwest London, and gave birth to a healthy baby girl in the supervisor's office, assisted by an ambulance crew.

The only other birth recorded on the 275-station underground network happened in 1924 when Marie Cordery was born at Elephant & Castle, operator Transport for London said.

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

When to buy? When to sell? When to divorce? .

Reuters

Tue Dec 30, 2008. BEIJING (Reuters) - Fears of a prolonged recession in China have triggered a sharp increase in divorce inquiries addressed to lawyers and financial advisers, state media reported on Monday, with timing a key issue.

Wealthy spouses were keen to strike a deal while asset values were low, the China Daily quoted the director of the China Divorce Service Center, Shu Xin, as saying.

"While facing tough financial times is not usually the main reason couples split, it can serve as the last straw for already strained marriages or add new concerns to divorces under way," the newspaper said, quoting "marriage advisers."

Ming Li, who works for China's first marriage and finance firm, Shanghai Weiqing, said: "Many questions are about how to avoid paying off debts after the divorce and the number of such telephone inquiries has increased from 200 to 300 in recent months."

But China University of Political Science and Law professor Wu Changzhen said it may be too early to know the impact of the financial crisis on divorce rates.

"It seems the rates may have dropped since the downturn, because divorces are expensive," he was quoted as saying.

"It has become extremely difficult for couples wanting to divorce to sell their homes at a reasonable price and to maintain two separate households."

According to a separate story carried on the China News Service website (www.chinanews.com), the number of people seeking divorce advice increased by 30 percent in the second half of this year.

Most of the inquiries were about how to protect property, it said.

There were 2.1 million divorces in China in 2007, nearly seven times the figure of 1980 when nationwide economic reforms were launched, the China Daily quoted the Ministry of Civil Affairs as saying.

(Reporting by Beijing newsroom; Editing by Nick Macfie)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved