Reuters
PHOENIX (Reuters) Thu Jan 27, 2011 - In a brazen attempt reminiscent of a medieval siege, Mexican smugglers tried to use a hefty catapult to hurl drugs north over the U.S. Border, authorities said..
The Mexican military seized 45 pounds of marijuana, a sports utility vehicle and a metal-framed catapult just south of the Arizona border near the small town of Naco last Friday, following a tip-off from the U.S. Border Patrol.
Surveillance video taken by National Guard troops deployed to support the Border Patrol caught a group of men apparently attempting to pull down a metal beam and load or test the catapult, which was powered by powerful elastic and mounted on a trailer close to the metal border fence.
"It looks like a medieval catapult that was used back in the day," Tucson sector Border Patrol spokesman David Jimarez told Reuters.
Arizona straddles a furiously trafficked corridor for human and drug smugglers from Mexico.
The U.S. Border Patrol seize hundreds of tons of marijuana and other drugs each year, smuggled over or under the line using a variety of means, including trucks, clandestine tunnels, horseback and even micro-light aircraft -- although the catapult was new, Jimarez said.
"I have not seen anything like that in my time before as a Border Patrol agent ... although we are trained to handle any kind of a threat that comes over that border," he added.
(Reporting by Tim Gaynor, editing by Peter Bohan)
Friday, January 28, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
SPLATNAV! UK pensioners drive into German church...
Reuters
BERLIN (Reuters) Mon Jan 24, 2011. - Two British pensioners landed in hospital in southern Germany after their car's global positioning system directed them to drive into a church.
While driving their Renault in the evening on a back road near the Austrian border, the navigation system instructed the couple to turn right where there was no road.
"They were confused and didn't notice that the navigation system was faulty," a police spokeswoman said.
The 76-year-old driver then plowed into the side of the village church, writing off the car, knocking a picture off the wall and damaging the building's foundations. Total damages were some 25,000 euros, police in the nearby town of Immenstadt said.
The couple, who were traveling to France, spent the evening in hospital recuperating from minor injuries.
(Reporting by Eric Kelsey, editing by Paul Casciato)
BERLIN (Reuters) Mon Jan 24, 2011. - Two British pensioners landed in hospital in southern Germany after their car's global positioning system directed them to drive into a church.
While driving their Renault in the evening on a back road near the Austrian border, the navigation system instructed the couple to turn right where there was no road.
"They were confused and didn't notice that the navigation system was faulty," a police spokeswoman said.
The 76-year-old driver then plowed into the side of the village church, writing off the car, knocking a picture off the wall and damaging the building's foundations. Total damages were some 25,000 euros, police in the nearby town of Immenstadt said.
The couple, who were traveling to France, spent the evening in hospital recuperating from minor injuries.
(Reporting by Eric Kelsey, editing by Paul Casciato)
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Burglars snort man's ashes, thought it was cocaine | Reuters
Reuters
MIAMI (Reuters) Wed Jan 19, 2011. Burglars snorted the cremated remains of a man and two dogs in the mistaken belief that they had stolen illegal drugs, Florida sheriff's deputies said on Wednesday.
The ashes were taken from a woman's home in the central Florida town of Silver Springs Shores on December 15. The thieves took an urn containing the ashes of her father and another container with the ashes of her two Great Danes, along with electronic equipment and jewelry, the Marion County Sheriff's Office said.
Investigators learned what happened to the ashes after they arrested five teens in connection with another burglary attempt at a nearby home last week.
"The suspects mistook the ashes for either cocaine or heroin. It was soon discovered that the suspects snorted some of the ashes believing they were snorting cocaine," the sheriff's report said.
Once they realized their error, the suspects discussed returning the remaining ashes but threw them in a lake instead because they thought their fingerprints were on the containers, sheriff's spokesman Judge Cochran said.
Police divers were trying to recover the ashes. The suspects were jailed on numerous burglary and other charges.
(Reporting by Jane Sutton; Editing by Sandra Maler)
MIAMI (Reuters) Wed Jan 19, 2011. Burglars snorted the cremated remains of a man and two dogs in the mistaken belief that they had stolen illegal drugs, Florida sheriff's deputies said on Wednesday.
The ashes were taken from a woman's home in the central Florida town of Silver Springs Shores on December 15. The thieves took an urn containing the ashes of her father and another container with the ashes of her two Great Danes, along with electronic equipment and jewelry, the Marion County Sheriff's Office said.
Investigators learned what happened to the ashes after they arrested five teens in connection with another burglary attempt at a nearby home last week.
"The suspects mistook the ashes for either cocaine or heroin. It was soon discovered that the suspects snorted some of the ashes believing they were snorting cocaine," the sheriff's report said.
Once they realized their error, the suspects discussed returning the remaining ashes but threw them in a lake instead because they thought their fingerprints were on the containers, sheriff's spokesman Judge Cochran said.
Police divers were trying to recover the ashes. The suspects were jailed on numerous burglary and other charges.
(Reporting by Jane Sutton; Editing by Sandra Maler)
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Semen allergy suspected in rare post-orgasm illness...
Reuters By Kate Kelland, Health and Science Correspondent
LONDON (Reuters) Mon Jan 17, 2011 - A mysterious syndrome in which men come down with a flu-like illness after an orgasm may be caused by an allergy to semen, Dutch scientists said on Monday.
Men with the condition, known as post orgasmic illness syndrome or POIS and documented in medical journals since 2002, get flu-like symptoms such as feverishness, runny nose, extreme fatigue and burning eyes immediately after they ejaculate. Symptoms can last for up to week.
Marcel Waldinger, a professor of sexual psychopharmacology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, published two studies in the Journal of Sexual Medicine which suggest that men with POIS have an allergy to their own semen, and that a treatment known as hyposensitization therapy can help reduce its impact.
"These results are a very important breakthrough in the research of this syndrome," Waldinger said in a telephone interview. He said the findings "contradict the idea that the complaints have a psychological cause" and show that an auto-allergic reaction to semen is the most likely cause.
Although it has been documented in scientific papers since 2002, post orgasmic illness syndrome is largely unknown among family doctors and experts say many men who suffer the condition feel ashamed about it and confused about what is wrong.
Waldinger said while the syndrome is probably rare, it is likely that many men who suffer with it do not know it is a recognized condition and so do not come forward to doctors.
For these studies, Waldinger and colleagues analyzed 45 Dutch men who were diagnosed with the illness.
"They didn't feel ill when they masturbated without ejaculating, but as soon as the semen came from the testes...after that they became ill, sometimes within just a few minutes," Waldinger said.
Thirty-three of them agreed to undergo a standard skin-prick allergy test using a diluted form of their own semen. Of those, 29, or 88 percent, had a positive skin reaction indicating an auto-immune response, or allergic reaction.
In a second study in the same journal, Waldinger's team decided to try treating two of the volunteers with hyposensitization therapy -- a well-known technique for treating allergies, also called allergen immunotherapy, which repeatedly exposes the body to small but gradually increasing amounts of the allergen over several years.
In the POIS therapy, the men were given skin injections containing their own semen, at first in an extremely dilute form, and then in gradually less diluted forms. The study's results showed that after one and three years respectively, the men showed a significant reduction in their POIS symptoms.
"It's a very slow process. It is used for all sorts of allergies and can sometimes take up to 5 years," Waldinger said. In the light of the first results, his team have now started several more POIS patients on hyposensitization therapy.
(Editing by Ben Hirschler and Peter Graff)
LONDON (Reuters) Mon Jan 17, 2011 - A mysterious syndrome in which men come down with a flu-like illness after an orgasm may be caused by an allergy to semen, Dutch scientists said on Monday.
Men with the condition, known as post orgasmic illness syndrome or POIS and documented in medical journals since 2002, get flu-like symptoms such as feverishness, runny nose, extreme fatigue and burning eyes immediately after they ejaculate. Symptoms can last for up to week.
Marcel Waldinger, a professor of sexual psychopharmacology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, published two studies in the Journal of Sexual Medicine which suggest that men with POIS have an allergy to their own semen, and that a treatment known as hyposensitization therapy can help reduce its impact.
"These results are a very important breakthrough in the research of this syndrome," Waldinger said in a telephone interview. He said the findings "contradict the idea that the complaints have a psychological cause" and show that an auto-allergic reaction to semen is the most likely cause.
Although it has been documented in scientific papers since 2002, post orgasmic illness syndrome is largely unknown among family doctors and experts say many men who suffer the condition feel ashamed about it and confused about what is wrong.
Waldinger said while the syndrome is probably rare, it is likely that many men who suffer with it do not know it is a recognized condition and so do not come forward to doctors.
For these studies, Waldinger and colleagues analyzed 45 Dutch men who were diagnosed with the illness.
"They didn't feel ill when they masturbated without ejaculating, but as soon as the semen came from the testes...after that they became ill, sometimes within just a few minutes," Waldinger said.
Thirty-three of them agreed to undergo a standard skin-prick allergy test using a diluted form of their own semen. Of those, 29, or 88 percent, had a positive skin reaction indicating an auto-immune response, or allergic reaction.
In a second study in the same journal, Waldinger's team decided to try treating two of the volunteers with hyposensitization therapy -- a well-known technique for treating allergies, also called allergen immunotherapy, which repeatedly exposes the body to small but gradually increasing amounts of the allergen over several years.
In the POIS therapy, the men were given skin injections containing their own semen, at first in an extremely dilute form, and then in gradually less diluted forms. The study's results showed that after one and three years respectively, the men showed a significant reduction in their POIS symptoms.
"It's a very slow process. It is used for all sorts of allergies and can sometimes take up to 5 years," Waldinger said. In the light of the first results, his team have now started several more POIS patients on hyposensitization therapy.
(Editing by Ben Hirschler and Peter Graff)
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Thieves make BMW hottest car at auto show...
Reuters
DETROIT (Reuters) Fri Jan 14, 2011 - When carmakers like BMW say they hope people find their next car at auto shows like the one in Detroit this week, this wasn't exactly what they meant.
Two thieves drove away in a brand new $94,000 BMW 750i xDrive Sedan on Wednesday night that was left idling outside the Westin Book Cadillac, one of Detroit's major hotels.
The car was one of more than a dozen BMW sedans used to ferry executives and guests around town during the show.
On Thursday morning, police said they were still looking for the gray four-door BMW.
Police said the car was dropped off by a valet to be loaded onto a transport truck to take it back to BMW's North American headquarters in New Jersey when two men jumped into the car and drove away.
BMW, which featured its glitzy 650i convertible at the Detroit auto show, said it remains committed to the event.
"It's just an unfortunate incident," BMW spokeswoman Stacy Morris said.
(Reporting by Bernie Woodall. Editing by Peter Bohan)
DETROIT (Reuters) Fri Jan 14, 2011 - When carmakers like BMW say they hope people find their next car at auto shows like the one in Detroit this week, this wasn't exactly what they meant.
Two thieves drove away in a brand new $94,000 BMW 750i xDrive Sedan on Wednesday night that was left idling outside the Westin Book Cadillac, one of Detroit's major hotels.
The car was one of more than a dozen BMW sedans used to ferry executives and guests around town during the show.
On Thursday morning, police said they were still looking for the gray four-door BMW.
Police said the car was dropped off by a valet to be loaded onto a transport truck to take it back to BMW's North American headquarters in New Jersey when two men jumped into the car and drove away.
BMW, which featured its glitzy 650i convertible at the Detroit auto show, said it remains committed to the event.
"It's just an unfortunate incident," BMW spokeswoman Stacy Morris said.
(Reporting by Bernie Woodall. Editing by Peter Bohan)
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Trapped burglars call police for help...
Reuters
BERLIN (Reuters) Thu Jan 13, 2011. Two would-be thieves called in their own crime to police in Germany after they could not escape from a broken-down elevator over the weekend, police said in a statement.
"This sounds really dumb," one of the thieves told police in Cologne over the elevator's emergency phone, "But I'm afraid that we wanted to break in and the elevator has gotten stuck."
When police arrived they found the two thieves aged 31 and 37 stuck in the elevator of an office building.
The thieves allegedly broke into the building and were attempting to reach a higher floor when the elevator became stuck, the police said.
They decided to phone for help when one thief injured his hand attempting to pry open the door.
Firemen eventually freed the men and they were arrested.
(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; editing by Paul Casciato)
BERLIN (Reuters) Thu Jan 13, 2011. Two would-be thieves called in their own crime to police in Germany after they could not escape from a broken-down elevator over the weekend, police said in a statement.
"This sounds really dumb," one of the thieves told police in Cologne over the elevator's emergency phone, "But I'm afraid that we wanted to break in and the elevator has gotten stuck."
When police arrived they found the two thieves aged 31 and 37 stuck in the elevator of an office building.
The thieves allegedly broke into the building and were attempting to reach a higher floor when the elevator became stuck, the police said.
They decided to phone for help when one thief injured his hand attempting to pry open the door.
Firemen eventually freed the men and they were arrested.
(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; editing by Paul Casciato)
Friday, January 07, 2011
Penguin in zoo strolls into lions' den...
Reuters
A foraging Emperor penguin preens on snow-covered sea ice around the base of the active volcano Mount Erebus, near McMurdo Station, the largest U.S. Science base in Antarctica, December 9, 2006. Credit: Reuters/Deborah Zabarenko
BERLIN (Reuters) Thu Jan 6, 2011. A resourceful baby penguin took advantage of Germany's wintry weather to give her minders the slip and embark on a tour of the zoo before waddling into the lions' den.
A visitor spotted the African penguin, born in September, taking a stroll in the lion enclosure but the animal was lucky as the lions were asleep inside rather than braving the icy weather outside, Muenster zoo said on its website.
It took keepers a day to get the penguin out of the den, luring her out with a trail of herrings, the statement said.
The escape gave the penguin, up to then only known as number 459, a name. Her minder now calls her Leona, the zoo said.
(Reporting by Annika Breidthardt, editing by Paul Casciato)
A foraging Emperor penguin preens on snow-covered sea ice around the base of the active volcano Mount Erebus, near McMurdo Station, the largest U.S. Science base in Antarctica, December 9, 2006. Credit: Reuters/Deborah ZabarenkoBERLIN (Reuters) Thu Jan 6, 2011. A resourceful baby penguin took advantage of Germany's wintry weather to give her minders the slip and embark on a tour of the zoo before waddling into the lions' den.
A visitor spotted the African penguin, born in September, taking a stroll in the lion enclosure but the animal was lucky as the lions were asleep inside rather than braving the icy weather outside, Muenster zoo said on its website.
It took keepers a day to get the penguin out of the den, luring her out with a trail of herrings, the statement said.
The escape gave the penguin, up to then only known as number 459, a name. Her minder now calls her Leona, the zoo said.
(Reporting by Annika Breidthardt, editing by Paul Casciato)
Saturday, January 01, 2011
Skype could be designated illegal in China...
Reuters By Terril Yue Jones and Jennifer Saba
BEIJING/NEW YORK (Reuters) Fri Dec 31, 2010 - The popular Internet telephone service Skype could be dealt a major setback in one of the world's largest markets as the Chinese government cracks down on what it called illegal Internet telephone providers.
A Chinese government circular from the powerful Ministry of Information and Industry Technology called for a crackdown "on illegal VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) telephone services" and said it was collecting evidence for legal cases against them. It did not name any phone companies.
Skype was still available in China on Friday evening through its joint venture partner TOM Online.
Skype had not yet been contacted by Chinese government officials, a Skype spokesman said on Friday in the United States.
The timing of a ban in one of the world's fastest growing markets could dampen investor enthusiasm for Skype as it prepares a 2011 initial public offering. The Luxembourg-based company, which has about 124 million users worldwide, is expected to be valued at about $1 billion in the IPO.
The Chinese move appeared to be aimed at protecting three government-controlled phone carriers -- China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile -- that provide the bulk of China's telephone services.
The South China Morning Post quoted an unidentified ministry official on Thursday as saying VoIP services could only be provided by the big three Chinese operators.
China has been known to play hardball with foreign businesses. After a months-long stand-off over censorship, China finally gave Google approval in July to keep operating its Chinese search page.
Skype has 20 million users in Asia Pacific, or 16 percent of the company's total users as of the end of June, according to a U.S. regulatory filing. The filing did not break out China's user numbers and a Skype spokesman in the United States said he did not know how many Chinese users it had.
No single country other than the United States represented more than 7 percent of Skype's average monthly user, according to the filing.
The latest news is another setback after Skype's global service outage last week, which cast doubts on the reliability of the service.
In 2005, Skype was blocked in parts of China as the government sought to ban phone calls made over the Internet.
Skype, partly owned by Web retailer eBay Inc, has been growing in popularity among Chinese users and businesses to make cheap or free international phone calls over the Internet.
"Nearly 1 in 6 people in the world live in China, and a great many of them rely on Skype to connect with families and friends, run businesses, and call people around the world," wrote Skype's Josh Silverman in an October blog post about Chinese privacy.
The Chinese circular, dated December 10, did not say what amounted to illegal services and did not name any VoIP providers it considered to be breaking the law.
Continue with this article by clicking: Reuters (By Terril Yue Jones and Jennifer Saba)
BEIJING/NEW YORK (Reuters) Fri Dec 31, 2010 - The popular Internet telephone service Skype could be dealt a major setback in one of the world's largest markets as the Chinese government cracks down on what it called illegal Internet telephone providers.A Chinese government circular from the powerful Ministry of Information and Industry Technology called for a crackdown "on illegal VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) telephone services" and said it was collecting evidence for legal cases against them. It did not name any phone companies.
Skype was still available in China on Friday evening through its joint venture partner TOM Online.
Skype had not yet been contacted by Chinese government officials, a Skype spokesman said on Friday in the United States.
The timing of a ban in one of the world's fastest growing markets could dampen investor enthusiasm for Skype as it prepares a 2011 initial public offering. The Luxembourg-based company, which has about 124 million users worldwide, is expected to be valued at about $1 billion in the IPO.
The Chinese move appeared to be aimed at protecting three government-controlled phone carriers -- China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile -- that provide the bulk of China's telephone services.
The South China Morning Post quoted an unidentified ministry official on Thursday as saying VoIP services could only be provided by the big three Chinese operators.
China has been known to play hardball with foreign businesses. After a months-long stand-off over censorship, China finally gave Google approval in July to keep operating its Chinese search page.
Skype has 20 million users in Asia Pacific, or 16 percent of the company's total users as of the end of June, according to a U.S. regulatory filing. The filing did not break out China's user numbers and a Skype spokesman in the United States said he did not know how many Chinese users it had.
No single country other than the United States represented more than 7 percent of Skype's average monthly user, according to the filing.
The latest news is another setback after Skype's global service outage last week, which cast doubts on the reliability of the service.
In 2005, Skype was blocked in parts of China as the government sought to ban phone calls made over the Internet.
Skype, partly owned by Web retailer eBay Inc, has been growing in popularity among Chinese users and businesses to make cheap or free international phone calls over the Internet.
"Nearly 1 in 6 people in the world live in China, and a great many of them rely on Skype to connect with families and friends, run businesses, and call people around the world," wrote Skype's Josh Silverman in an October blog post about Chinese privacy.
The Chinese circular, dated December 10, did not say what amounted to illegal services and did not name any VoIP providers it considered to be breaking the law.
Continue with this article by clicking: Reuters (By Terril Yue Jones and Jennifer Saba)
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