Reuters By James Nelson
SALT LAKE CITY (Reuters) Tue Oct 25, 2011. A flatbed truck carrying hundreds of beehives overturned near a construction zone on a Utah highway, freeing millions of bees and forcing authorities to temporarily close Interstate 15, officials said on Monday."
The driver lost control, hit the concrete barrier and rolled over. Of course, we then had bees everywhere," said Corporal Todd Johnson with the Utah Highway Patrol.
The highway in southern Utah was shut down for several hours on Sunday evening and Monday morning, officials said.
Local beekeepers worked through the night to gather the escaped bees. Officials said there was a net over the beehives but bees still managed to escape after the truck overturned.
The truck driver and two law enforcement officers responding to the accident were stung by bees but the stings were not life-threatening, Johnson said.
"There were about 450 colonies on the load and probably about 45,000 bees to the colony," said Richard Adee with Adee Honey Farms in Bruce, South Dakota.
That would translate to more than 20 million bees.
Adee said the bees were headed to Bakersfield, California for almond pollination next spring.
"We stacked the equipment back together, put them back on trucks and trailers and whatever we could find to move them out of there," said beekeeper Melvin Taylor of Santa Clara, Utah.
"Then we tried to move them as far out of the metropolitan area as we could. Because when those bees come alive today they are going to be mad that their house is all (broken) apart," Taylor added.
Taylor said bees not gathered and removed likely perished in the accident and cleanup.
(Editing by Will Dunham)
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Monday, October 24, 2011
Gaddafi family demands body; NATO ends Libya war...
Reuters By Rania El Gamal
MISRATA,Libya (Reuters)Fri Oct 21, 2011.
NATO called an end to its air war in Libya, and the clan of Muammar Gaddafi demanded a chance to bury the body that lay on display in a meat locker after a death as brutal and chaotic as his 42-year rule.
In a statement on a Syria-based pro-Gaddafi television station, the ousted dictator's family asked for the bodies of Gaddafi, his son Mo'tassim, and others who were killed on Thursday by fighters who overran his hometown Sirte.
"We call on the UN, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and Amnesty International to force the Transitional Council to hand over the martyrs' bodies to our tribe in Sirte and to allow them to perform their burial ceremony in accordance with Islamic customs and rules," the statement said.
At an understated and sparsely-attended news conference late on Friday, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the Western alliance had taken a preliminary decision to call a halt to Operation Unified Protector on October 31.
Like other Western officials, Rasmussen expressed no regrets in public about the gruesome death of the deposed Libyan dictator, who was captured alive by the forces of the National Transitional Council but was brought dead to a hospital.
"We mounted a complex operation with unprecedented speed and conducted it with the greatest of care," Rasmussen said. "I'm very proud of what we have achieved."
The NATO operation, officially intended to protect civilians, effectively ended on Thursday with French warplanes blasting Gaddafi's convoy as he and others tried to escape a final stand in Sirte.
Gaddafi was captured wounded but alive hiding in a drain under a road. The world has since seen grainy film of him being roughed up by his captors while he pleads with them to respect his rights.
NTC officials have said Gaddafi later died of wounds in the ambulance, but the ambulance driver, Ali Jaghdoun, told Reuters that Gaddafi was already dead when he picked up the body.
"I didn't try to revive him because he was already dead," Jaghdoun said, in testimony that adds greater weight to the widespread assumption that Gaddafi was lynched.
The U.N. human rights arm said an investigation was needed to into whether he was summarily executed. The interim leaders have yet to decide what to do with the corpse.
BURIAL DISPUTE
In Misrata, a local commander, Addul-Salam Eleiwa, showed off the body, torso bare, on a mattress inside a metal-lined cold-store by a market on Friday. There was a bullet hole in his head.
"He will get his rights, like any Muslim. His body will be washed and treated with dignity. I expect he will be buried in a Muslim cemetery within 24 hours," he said.
Dozens of people, many with cellphone cameras, filed in to see that he was dead.
"There's something in our hearts we want to get out," said Abdullah al-Suweisi, 30, as he waited. "It is the injustice of 40 years. There is hatred inside. We want to see him."
In Tripoli, Gaddafi's death prompted a carnival-like celebration, with fireworks, a bouncy castle and candy floss for the children. "Muammar, bad," one small girl said to foreign journalists in English. "Boom boom."
"For some people from outside Libya it could look wrong that we are celebrating a death with our children," said one man with a child on his shoulders. "But it was 42 years with the devil."
RISKS OF DIVISION
Saif al-Islam, Gaddafi's son and heir-apparent remains at large, believed by NTC officials to have escaped from besieged Sirte and headed for a southern border.
Without the glue of hatred for Gaddafi and his tribe to unite the factions, some fear a descent into the kind of strife that bedevils Iraq after Saddam Hussein. Optimists say that so far Libya's new rulers have quarreled but not fought.
"Can an inclusive, effective national government be formed? Yes, if factions can avoid fighting," Jon Marks, chairman of Britain's Cross Border Information consultancy said.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the NTC had promised to explain how Gaddafi was killed.
"They're dealing with the death itself as well as the aftermath in as transparent a way as I think they can," he said. "They've fought bravely to liberate their country from this dictator. And, you know, he met an ignominious end yesterday."
(Additional reporting by Taha Zargoun and Tim Gaynor in Sirte, Barry Malone, Yasmine Saleh and Jessica Donati in Tripoli, Brian Rohan in Benghazi, Jon Hemming and Andrew Hammond in Tunis, Samia Nakhoul in Amman, Christian Lowe in Algiers, Shaimaa Fayed in Cairo, Sami Aboudi in Dubai, Andrew Quinn in Islamabad, Paul Eckert in Washington and David Brunnstrom in Brussels; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Matthew Jones)
MISRATA,Libya (Reuters)Fri Oct 21, 2011.NATO called an end to its air war in Libya, and the clan of Muammar Gaddafi demanded a chance to bury the body that lay on display in a meat locker after a death as brutal and chaotic as his 42-year rule.
In a statement on a Syria-based pro-Gaddafi television station, the ousted dictator's family asked for the bodies of Gaddafi, his son Mo'tassim, and others who were killed on Thursday by fighters who overran his hometown Sirte.
"We call on the UN, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and Amnesty International to force the Transitional Council to hand over the martyrs' bodies to our tribe in Sirte and to allow them to perform their burial ceremony in accordance with Islamic customs and rules," the statement said.
At an understated and sparsely-attended news conference late on Friday, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the Western alliance had taken a preliminary decision to call a halt to Operation Unified Protector on October 31.
Like other Western officials, Rasmussen expressed no regrets in public about the gruesome death of the deposed Libyan dictator, who was captured alive by the forces of the National Transitional Council but was brought dead to a hospital.
"We mounted a complex operation with unprecedented speed and conducted it with the greatest of care," Rasmussen said. "I'm very proud of what we have achieved."
The NATO operation, officially intended to protect civilians, effectively ended on Thursday with French warplanes blasting Gaddafi's convoy as he and others tried to escape a final stand in Sirte.
Gaddafi was captured wounded but alive hiding in a drain under a road. The world has since seen grainy film of him being roughed up by his captors while he pleads with them to respect his rights.
NTC officials have said Gaddafi later died of wounds in the ambulance, but the ambulance driver, Ali Jaghdoun, told Reuters that Gaddafi was already dead when he picked up the body.
"I didn't try to revive him because he was already dead," Jaghdoun said, in testimony that adds greater weight to the widespread assumption that Gaddafi was lynched.
The U.N. human rights arm said an investigation was needed to into whether he was summarily executed. The interim leaders have yet to decide what to do with the corpse.
BURIAL DISPUTE
In Misrata, a local commander, Addul-Salam Eleiwa, showed off the body, torso bare, on a mattress inside a metal-lined cold-store by a market on Friday. There was a bullet hole in his head.
"He will get his rights, like any Muslim. His body will be washed and treated with dignity. I expect he will be buried in a Muslim cemetery within 24 hours," he said.
Dozens of people, many with cellphone cameras, filed in to see that he was dead.
"There's something in our hearts we want to get out," said Abdullah al-Suweisi, 30, as he waited. "It is the injustice of 40 years. There is hatred inside. We want to see him."
In Tripoli, Gaddafi's death prompted a carnival-like celebration, with fireworks, a bouncy castle and candy floss for the children. "Muammar, bad," one small girl said to foreign journalists in English. "Boom boom."
"For some people from outside Libya it could look wrong that we are celebrating a death with our children," said one man with a child on his shoulders. "But it was 42 years with the devil."
RISKS OF DIVISION
Saif al-Islam, Gaddafi's son and heir-apparent remains at large, believed by NTC officials to have escaped from besieged Sirte and headed for a southern border.
Without the glue of hatred for Gaddafi and his tribe to unite the factions, some fear a descent into the kind of strife that bedevils Iraq after Saddam Hussein. Optimists say that so far Libya's new rulers have quarreled but not fought.
"Can an inclusive, effective national government be formed? Yes, if factions can avoid fighting," Jon Marks, chairman of Britain's Cross Border Information consultancy said.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the NTC had promised to explain how Gaddafi was killed.
"They're dealing with the death itself as well as the aftermath in as transparent a way as I think they can," he said. "They've fought bravely to liberate their country from this dictator. And, you know, he met an ignominious end yesterday."
(Additional reporting by Taha Zargoun and Tim Gaynor in Sirte, Barry Malone, Yasmine Saleh and Jessica Donati in Tripoli, Brian Rohan in Benghazi, Jon Hemming and Andrew Hammond in Tunis, Samia Nakhoul in Amman, Christian Lowe in Algiers, Shaimaa Fayed in Cairo, Sami Aboudi in Dubai, Andrew Quinn in Islamabad, Paul Eckert in Washington and David Brunnstrom in Brussels; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Matthew Jones)
Friday, October 21, 2011
Gaddafi killed in hometown, Libya eyes future ...
Reuters By Rania El Gamal and Tim Gaynor
<--Gaddafi captured, covered in blood
SIRTE, Libya (REUTERS Thu Oct 20, 2011. Muammar Gaddafi was killed after being captured by the Libyan fighters he once scorned as "rats," cornered and shot in the head after they overrun his last bastion of resistance in his hometown of Sirte.
His body, bloodied, half naked, Gaddafi's trademark long curls hanging limp around a rarely seen bald spot, was delivered, a prize of war, to Misrata, the city west of Sirte whose siege and months of suffering at the hands of Gaddafi's artillery and sniper made it a symbol of the rebel cause.
A quick and secret burial was due later on Friday.
"It's time to start a new Libya, a united Libya," Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril declared. "One people, one future."
A formal announcement of Libya's liberation, which will set the clock ticking on a timeline to elections, would be made on Saturday, Libyan officials said.
Two months after Western-backed rebels ended 42 years of eccentric one-man rule by capturing the capital Tripoli, his death ended a nervous hiatus for the new interim government.
U.S. President Barack Obama, in a veiled dig at the Syrian and other leaders resisting the democrats of the Arab Spring, declared "the rule of an iron fist inevitably comes to an end."
But Gaddafi's death is a setback to campaigners seeking the full truth about the 1988 bombing over Lockerbie in Scotland of Pan Am flight 103 which claimed 270 lives, mainly Americans, and for which one of Gaddafi's agents was convicted.
Jim Swire, the father of one of the Lockerbie victims, said: "There is much still to be resolved and we may now have lost an opportunity for getting nearer the truth."
"That's for Lockerbie," said the front-page headline in The Sun, Britain's best selling daily newspaper.
Confusion over Gaddafi's death was a reminder of the challenge for Libyans to now summon order out of the armed chaos that is the legacy of eight months of grinding conflict.
The killing or capture of senior aides, including possibly two sons, as an armored convoy braved NATO air strikes in a desperate bid to break out of Sirte, may ease fears of diehards regrouping elsewhere - though cellphone video, apparently of Gaddafi alive and being beaten, may inflame his sympathizers.
As news of Gaddafi's demise spread, people poured into the streets in jubilation. Joyous fighters fired their weapons in the air, shouting "Allahu Akbar."
Others wrote graffiti on the parapets of the highway outside Sirte. One said simply: "Gaddafi was captured here."
Jibril, reading what he said was a post-mortem report, said Gaddafi was hauled unresisting from a "sewage pipe." He was then shot in the arm and put in a truck which was "caught in crossfire" as it ferried the 69-year-old to hospital.
"He was hit by a bullet in the head," Jibril said, adding it was unclear which side had fired the fatal shot.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who spearheaded a Franco-British move in NATO to back the revolt against Gaddafi hailed a turn of events that few had expected so soon, since there had been little evidence that Gaddafi himself was in Sirte.
But he also alluded to fears that, without the glue of hatred for Gaddafi, the new Libya could descend, like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, into bloody factionalism: "The liberation of Sirte must signal ... the start of a process ... to establish a democratic system in which all groups in the country have their place and where fundamental freedoms are guaranteed," he said.
NATO, keen to portray the victory as that of the Libyans themselves, said it would wind down its military mission.
"KEEP HIM ALIVE"
The circumstances of the death of Gaddafi, who had vowed to go down fighting, remained obscure. Jerky video showed a man with Gaddafi's distinctive long, curly hair, bloodied and staggering under blows from armed men, apparently NTC fighters.
The brief footage showed him being hauled by his hair from the hood of a truck. To the shouts of someone saying "Keep him alive," he disappears from view and gunshots are heard.
"While he was being taken away, they beat him and then they killed him," a senior source in the NTC told Reuters before Jibril spoke of crossfire. "He might have been resisting."
Officials said Gaddafi's son Mo'tassim, also seen bleeding but alive in a video, had also died. Another son, heir-apparent Saif al-Islam, was variously reported to be surrounded, captured or killed as conflicting accounts of the day's events crackled around networks of NTC fighters rejoicing in Sirte.
In Benghazi, where in February Gaddafi disdainfully said he would hunt down the "rats" who had emulated their Tunisian and Egyptian neighbors by rising up against an unloved autocrat, thousands took to the streets, loosing off weapons and dancing under the old tricolor flag revived by Gaddafi's opponents.
Mansour el Ferjani, 49, a Benghazi bank clerk and father of five posed his 9-year-old son for a photograph holding a Kalashnikov rifle: "Don't think I will give this gun to my son," he said. "Now that the war is over we must give up our weapons and the children must go to school.
Accounts were hazy of his final hours, as befitted a man who retained an aura of mystery in the desert down the decades as he first tormented "colonial" Western powers by sponsoring militant bomb-makers from the IRA to the PLO and then embraced the likes of Tony Blair and Silvio Berlusconi in return for investment in Libya's extensive oil and gas fields.
There was no shortage of fighters willing to claim they saw Gaddafi, who long vowed to die in battle, cringing below ground, like Saddam eight years ago, and pleading for his life.
One description, pieced together from various sources, suggests Gaddafi tried to break out of his final redoubt at dawn in a convoy of vehicles after weeks of dogged resistance.
However, he was stopped by a French air strike and captured, possibly some hours later, after gun battles with NTC fighters who found him hiding in a drainage culvert.
NATO said its warplanes fired on a convoy near Sirte about 8:30 a.m. (2:30 a.m. ET), striking two military vehicles in the group, but could not confirm that Gaddafi had been a passenger. France later said its jets had halted the convoy.
(Additional reporting by Taha Zargoun in Sirte, Barry Malone, Yasmine Saleh and Jessica Donati in Tripoli, Brian Rohan in Benghazi, Jon Hemming in Tunis, Edmund Blair and Yasmine Saleh in Cairo, Samia Nakhoul in Amman, Christian Lowe in Algiers, Tim Castle, Peter Apps and William Maclean in London, David Brunnstrom in Brussels, Alister Bull, Jeff Mason and Laura MacInnis in Washington and Vicky Buffery in Paris; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Giles Elgood)
<--Gaddafi captured, covered in bloodSIRTE, Libya (REUTERS Thu Oct 20, 2011. Muammar Gaddafi was killed after being captured by the Libyan fighters he once scorned as "rats," cornered and shot in the head after they overrun his last bastion of resistance in his hometown of Sirte.
His body, bloodied, half naked, Gaddafi's trademark long curls hanging limp around a rarely seen bald spot, was delivered, a prize of war, to Misrata, the city west of Sirte whose siege and months of suffering at the hands of Gaddafi's artillery and sniper made it a symbol of the rebel cause.
A quick and secret burial was due later on Friday.
"It's time to start a new Libya, a united Libya," Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril declared. "One people, one future."
A formal announcement of Libya's liberation, which will set the clock ticking on a timeline to elections, would be made on Saturday, Libyan officials said.
Two months after Western-backed rebels ended 42 years of eccentric one-man rule by capturing the capital Tripoli, his death ended a nervous hiatus for the new interim government.
U.S. President Barack Obama, in a veiled dig at the Syrian and other leaders resisting the democrats of the Arab Spring, declared "the rule of an iron fist inevitably comes to an end."
But Gaddafi's death is a setback to campaigners seeking the full truth about the 1988 bombing over Lockerbie in Scotland of Pan Am flight 103 which claimed 270 lives, mainly Americans, and for which one of Gaddafi's agents was convicted.
Jim Swire, the father of one of the Lockerbie victims, said: "There is much still to be resolved and we may now have lost an opportunity for getting nearer the truth."
"That's for Lockerbie," said the front-page headline in The Sun, Britain's best selling daily newspaper.
Confusion over Gaddafi's death was a reminder of the challenge for Libyans to now summon order out of the armed chaos that is the legacy of eight months of grinding conflict.
The killing or capture of senior aides, including possibly two sons, as an armored convoy braved NATO air strikes in a desperate bid to break out of Sirte, may ease fears of diehards regrouping elsewhere - though cellphone video, apparently of Gaddafi alive and being beaten, may inflame his sympathizers.
As news of Gaddafi's demise spread, people poured into the streets in jubilation. Joyous fighters fired their weapons in the air, shouting "Allahu Akbar."
Others wrote graffiti on the parapets of the highway outside Sirte. One said simply: "Gaddafi was captured here."
Jibril, reading what he said was a post-mortem report, said Gaddafi was hauled unresisting from a "sewage pipe." He was then shot in the arm and put in a truck which was "caught in crossfire" as it ferried the 69-year-old to hospital.
"He was hit by a bullet in the head," Jibril said, adding it was unclear which side had fired the fatal shot.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who spearheaded a Franco-British move in NATO to back the revolt against Gaddafi hailed a turn of events that few had expected so soon, since there had been little evidence that Gaddafi himself was in Sirte.
But he also alluded to fears that, without the glue of hatred for Gaddafi, the new Libya could descend, like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, into bloody factionalism: "The liberation of Sirte must signal ... the start of a process ... to establish a democratic system in which all groups in the country have their place and where fundamental freedoms are guaranteed," he said.
NATO, keen to portray the victory as that of the Libyans themselves, said it would wind down its military mission.
"KEEP HIM ALIVE"
The circumstances of the death of Gaddafi, who had vowed to go down fighting, remained obscure. Jerky video showed a man with Gaddafi's distinctive long, curly hair, bloodied and staggering under blows from armed men, apparently NTC fighters.
The brief footage showed him being hauled by his hair from the hood of a truck. To the shouts of someone saying "Keep him alive," he disappears from view and gunshots are heard.
"While he was being taken away, they beat him and then they killed him," a senior source in the NTC told Reuters before Jibril spoke of crossfire. "He might have been resisting."
Officials said Gaddafi's son Mo'tassim, also seen bleeding but alive in a video, had also died. Another son, heir-apparent Saif al-Islam, was variously reported to be surrounded, captured or killed as conflicting accounts of the day's events crackled around networks of NTC fighters rejoicing in Sirte.
In Benghazi, where in February Gaddafi disdainfully said he would hunt down the "rats" who had emulated their Tunisian and Egyptian neighbors by rising up against an unloved autocrat, thousands took to the streets, loosing off weapons and dancing under the old tricolor flag revived by Gaddafi's opponents.
Mansour el Ferjani, 49, a Benghazi bank clerk and father of five posed his 9-year-old son for a photograph holding a Kalashnikov rifle: "Don't think I will give this gun to my son," he said. "Now that the war is over we must give up our weapons and the children must go to school.
Accounts were hazy of his final hours, as befitted a man who retained an aura of mystery in the desert down the decades as he first tormented "colonial" Western powers by sponsoring militant bomb-makers from the IRA to the PLO and then embraced the likes of Tony Blair and Silvio Berlusconi in return for investment in Libya's extensive oil and gas fields.
There was no shortage of fighters willing to claim they saw Gaddafi, who long vowed to die in battle, cringing below ground, like Saddam eight years ago, and pleading for his life.
One description, pieced together from various sources, suggests Gaddafi tried to break out of his final redoubt at dawn in a convoy of vehicles after weeks of dogged resistance.
However, he was stopped by a French air strike and captured, possibly some hours later, after gun battles with NTC fighters who found him hiding in a drainage culvert.
NATO said its warplanes fired on a convoy near Sirte about 8:30 a.m. (2:30 a.m. ET), striking two military vehicles in the group, but could not confirm that Gaddafi had been a passenger. France later said its jets had halted the convoy.
(Additional reporting by Taha Zargoun in Sirte, Barry Malone, Yasmine Saleh and Jessica Donati in Tripoli, Brian Rohan in Benghazi, Jon Hemming in Tunis, Edmund Blair and Yasmine Saleh in Cairo, Samia Nakhoul in Amman, Christian Lowe in Algiers, Tim Castle, Peter Apps and William Maclean in London, David Brunnstrom in Brussels, Alister Bull, Jeff Mason and Laura MacInnis in Washington and Vicky Buffery in Paris; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Giles Elgood)
Man-flu is real to a fifth of British women...
Reuters
LONDON (Reuters) Thu Oct 20, 2011. One in five British women believe that the debilitating "man-flu" disease which temporarily leaves sufferers prostrate on the sofa watching televised sports is real, according to a new study.
The survey, which questioned 2,000 British adults about health and wellbeing, showed that misconceptions and old wives' tales, including the myth that eating carrots improves night vision, prevail among the population when it comes to beliefs about common illnesses.
"Unbelievably, there are still a lot of misconceptions around how minor illnesses and conditions are caused or prevented," study leader Mike Smith, said in a statement.
The top 10 health myths ranged from the theory that eating carrots will aid night vision to the belief that too much stress will turn your hair grey, both subscribed to by one in 10 of the population.
More than a third of people said that sugar makes children hyper, and 37 percent said they believed we lose most of our body heat through our heads -- the most popular misconception of the survey.
While the face, head and chest are more sensitive to temperature change than the rest of the body, covering one part of the body has as much effect as covering any other, researchers said.
"The Contagion study suggests that a large majority of the population are still under the illusion that they can, for example, get square eyes from watching too much television, or get better night vision from eating more carrots," Smith said.
"These are just not true, but do go to show that no matter how many millions are spent on health and education, some medical myths still prevail," he said.
When illness strikes, almost half of people agreed that men exaggerate their symptoms to get attention, with 38 percent also believing that men take longer to recover from illness than women.
Over half of respondents admitted to self-diagnosis, using the internet to research their symptoms.
"Old wives' tales are just that -- tales that should not be listened to or abided by. If the public are in any real doubt as to how to treat a condition, they should always refer to their GP (family doctor) or professional medical adviser," Smith said.
The study was specially commissioned to mark the release of Hollywood thriller "Contagion" starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law.
(Editing by Paul Casciato)
LONDON (Reuters) Thu Oct 20, 2011. One in five British women believe that the debilitating "man-flu" disease which temporarily leaves sufferers prostrate on the sofa watching televised sports is real, according to a new study.
The survey, which questioned 2,000 British adults about health and wellbeing, showed that misconceptions and old wives' tales, including the myth that eating carrots improves night vision, prevail among the population when it comes to beliefs about common illnesses.
"Unbelievably, there are still a lot of misconceptions around how minor illnesses and conditions are caused or prevented," study leader Mike Smith, said in a statement.
The top 10 health myths ranged from the theory that eating carrots will aid night vision to the belief that too much stress will turn your hair grey, both subscribed to by one in 10 of the population.
More than a third of people said that sugar makes children hyper, and 37 percent said they believed we lose most of our body heat through our heads -- the most popular misconception of the survey.
While the face, head and chest are more sensitive to temperature change than the rest of the body, covering one part of the body has as much effect as covering any other, researchers said.
"The Contagion study suggests that a large majority of the population are still under the illusion that they can, for example, get square eyes from watching too much television, or get better night vision from eating more carrots," Smith said.
"These are just not true, but do go to show that no matter how many millions are spent on health and education, some medical myths still prevail," he said.
When illness strikes, almost half of people agreed that men exaggerate their symptoms to get attention, with 38 percent also believing that men take longer to recover from illness than women.
Over half of respondents admitted to self-diagnosis, using the internet to research their symptoms.
"Old wives' tales are just that -- tales that should not be listened to or abided by. If the public are in any real doubt as to how to treat a condition, they should always refer to their GP (family doctor) or professional medical adviser," Smith said.
The study was specially commissioned to mark the release of Hollywood thriller "Contagion" starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law.
(Editing by Paul Casciato)
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
After the iPhone 4S, Android just feels wrong....!!
ZDNet
Summary By James Kendrick October 18, 2011.
As a long-time happy Android phone user, it surprises me that it only took using the iPhone 4S for a few days to point out that using Android just feels wrong.
Like I usually do when new gadgets hit the tool kit, I have been using only the iPhone 4S for the past few days. I still have my Nexus S 4G Android phone running the current version of Gingerbread, but it remained on the charger while I carried the new iPhone everywhere. Last night I decided it was time to pick up the Nexus and get reacquainted with the phone that has served me well. It didn’t take me long to realize that after using the smooth, polished iPhone 4S that Android just feels wrong.
This realization hit me hard, as I found that as I used the Nexus, a phone I absolutely love, the user experience was jangling my nerves. The inconsistencies in the interface between apps and the occasional lag doing simple things like scrolling in windows just screamed at me. I hadn’t really noticed it before, but after using the iPhone these things jump out at me.
Don’t get me wrong, the Android Gingerbread interface isn’t bad, it’s just not always smooth. In just a few days with the iPhone 4S and iOS 5 I had come to expect operation to be fluid and consistent system-wide. That’s just not the case with Android, and every little interruption in smooth operation now accumulates into a feeling of frustration as I use the phone.
The biggest area of discontent is in web browsing, one of the primary things I do with a smartphone. I have long found stock Android browsers to be lacking, not in a major way but in fluid operation. That never bothered me as the strength of Android is the number of apps available, and third party browsers stepped in and served my needs just fine. Or so I thought.
After the totally flawless operation of Mobile Safari on the iPhone 4S, I realize that the browsing experience in Android just falls short. Sometimes pages stutter while loading, other times a page doesn’t load at all. Hitting the X to stop a stalled page and then refreshing the page to get the browser to load the page was something I had gotten used to doing to make it work. Now that seems like a jarring interruption to what I now know can be a fluid experience. And don’t get me started on pinching to zoom in or out on web pages and how terrible that is on Android compared to iOS.
The lack of fluid operation in Android may be due to the OS, or perhaps it is hardware related. It might be due to better apps on the iPhone, or tighter control by Apple over them. I really don’t care as a user, I want the best user experience I can get. The good one delivered by the iPhone 4S makes it clear to me how wanting the Android experience actually is. It just feels wrong.
Summary By James Kendrick October 18, 2011.As a long-time happy Android phone user, it surprises me that it only took using the iPhone 4S for a few days to point out that using Android just feels wrong.
Like I usually do when new gadgets hit the tool kit, I have been using only the iPhone 4S for the past few days. I still have my Nexus S 4G Android phone running the current version of Gingerbread, but it remained on the charger while I carried the new iPhone everywhere. Last night I decided it was time to pick up the Nexus and get reacquainted with the phone that has served me well. It didn’t take me long to realize that after using the smooth, polished iPhone 4S that Android just feels wrong.
This realization hit me hard, as I found that as I used the Nexus, a phone I absolutely love, the user experience was jangling my nerves. The inconsistencies in the interface between apps and the occasional lag doing simple things like scrolling in windows just screamed at me. I hadn’t really noticed it before, but after using the iPhone these things jump out at me.
Don’t get me wrong, the Android Gingerbread interface isn’t bad, it’s just not always smooth. In just a few days with the iPhone 4S and iOS 5 I had come to expect operation to be fluid and consistent system-wide. That’s just not the case with Android, and every little interruption in smooth operation now accumulates into a feeling of frustration as I use the phone.
The biggest area of discontent is in web browsing, one of the primary things I do with a smartphone. I have long found stock Android browsers to be lacking, not in a major way but in fluid operation. That never bothered me as the strength of Android is the number of apps available, and third party browsers stepped in and served my needs just fine. Or so I thought.
After the totally flawless operation of Mobile Safari on the iPhone 4S, I realize that the browsing experience in Android just falls short. Sometimes pages stutter while loading, other times a page doesn’t load at all. Hitting the X to stop a stalled page and then refreshing the page to get the browser to load the page was something I had gotten used to doing to make it work. Now that seems like a jarring interruption to what I now know can be a fluid experience. And don’t get me started on pinching to zoom in or out on web pages and how terrible that is on Android compared to iOS.
The lack of fluid operation in Android may be due to the OS, or perhaps it is hardware related. It might be due to better apps on the iPhone, or tighter control by Apple over them. I really don’t care as a user, I want the best user experience I can get. The good one delivered by the iPhone 4S makes it clear to me how wanting the Android experience actually is. It just feels wrong.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Pastor accused of cashing dead teacher's pension checks...
Reuters
NEW YORK (Reuters) Fri Oct 14, 2011. A New York pastor has been arrested and accused of fraudulently cashing pension checks worth nearly a quarter-million dollars sent to a school teacher who died more than a decade ago, authorities said on Thursday.
Rev. Victor Rosa was accused of deceiving New York City's Teacher Retirement System into thinking that teacher Maria Sicardo was still alive and had her checks sent to a building he owns in the Bronx, investigators said.
He would cash the checks, which amounted to about $241,000, often at a local bank, investigators said. Investigators said they interviewed bank staff, who recalled Rosa often preached about God to other customers while waiting in line.
Sicardo died in April 2000 at age 75.
A report by the New York City's Department of Investigation said in the years after her death, someone sent fraudulently notarized documents to the Teacher Retirement System, purportedly signed by Sicardo, affirming that she was still alive.
In 2010, Rosa received a call from the Teacher Retirement System and told the caller that Sicardo had died three months earlier, in June 2010, in Puerto Rico, the report said.
He said he would return the checks for July, August and September, it said.
Investigators said they caught Rosa cashing the checks at a bank in the city's Bronx borough on security camera footage.
He was arrested last week in Orlando, Florida, where he now lives, and is slated to face prosecution by the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen, editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Cynthia Johnston)
NEW YORK (Reuters) Fri Oct 14, 2011. A New York pastor has been arrested and accused of fraudulently cashing pension checks worth nearly a quarter-million dollars sent to a school teacher who died more than a decade ago, authorities said on Thursday.
Rev. Victor Rosa was accused of deceiving New York City's Teacher Retirement System into thinking that teacher Maria Sicardo was still alive and had her checks sent to a building he owns in the Bronx, investigators said.
He would cash the checks, which amounted to about $241,000, often at a local bank, investigators said. Investigators said they interviewed bank staff, who recalled Rosa often preached about God to other customers while waiting in line.
Sicardo died in April 2000 at age 75.
A report by the New York City's Department of Investigation said in the years after her death, someone sent fraudulently notarized documents to the Teacher Retirement System, purportedly signed by Sicardo, affirming that she was still alive.
In 2010, Rosa received a call from the Teacher Retirement System and told the caller that Sicardo had died three months earlier, in June 2010, in Puerto Rico, the report said.
He said he would return the checks for July, August and September, it said.
Investigators said they caught Rosa cashing the checks at a bank in the city's Bronx borough on security camera footage.
He was arrested last week in Orlando, Florida, where he now lives, and is slated to face prosecution by the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen, editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Cynthia Johnston)
Artist can paint nude models only after dark...
Reuters
NEW YORK (Reuters) Fri Oct 14, 2011. An artist arrested for applying body paint to a nude model in New York's Times Square will have charges against him dropped if his models strip naked only after dark, according to a court agreement reached on Thursday.
Police arrested Andy Golub, 45, in July and charged him with violating public exposure and lewdness laws. He has been painting nude models for about three years.
Golub's lawyer, Ronald Kuby, argued that New York laws do not prohibit public nudity in the name of art, and a compromise was reached that was the basis of the court ruling.
Under the agreement, "he is permitted to paint bare breasts any time, anywhere, but the G-strings have to stay on until daylight goes out," Kuby said after a hearing in Manhattan criminal court.
State laws against public exposure exempt "any person entertaining or performing in a play, exhibition, show or entertainment," Kuby said. Municipalities are allowed to devise their own restrictions, but New York City generally does not do so, Kuby said.
Golub, of Nyack, New York, said he likes to paint nude models because their bodies have energy and dynamism that he finds lacking in canvas.
"I feel that when I do live body painting it's a good thing, a positive thing," he said.
Charges against Golub will be dropped in six months if he abides by the terms of the agreement and is not arrested again. Charges against Karla Storie, a model from Texas arrested with him, will be dismissed if she too is not arrested again in the next six months.
Golub said he was planning to return to criminal court on Friday and paint a nude model in a park near the courthouse.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Jerry Norton)
NEW YORK (Reuters) Fri Oct 14, 2011. An artist arrested for applying body paint to a nude model in New York's Times Square will have charges against him dropped if his models strip naked only after dark, according to a court agreement reached on Thursday.
Police arrested Andy Golub, 45, in July and charged him with violating public exposure and lewdness laws. He has been painting nude models for about three years.
Golub's lawyer, Ronald Kuby, argued that New York laws do not prohibit public nudity in the name of art, and a compromise was reached that was the basis of the court ruling.
Under the agreement, "he is permitted to paint bare breasts any time, anywhere, but the G-strings have to stay on until daylight goes out," Kuby said after a hearing in Manhattan criminal court.
State laws against public exposure exempt "any person entertaining or performing in a play, exhibition, show or entertainment," Kuby said. Municipalities are allowed to devise their own restrictions, but New York City generally does not do so, Kuby said.
Golub, of Nyack, New York, said he likes to paint nude models because their bodies have energy and dynamism that he finds lacking in canvas.
"I feel that when I do live body painting it's a good thing, a positive thing," he said.
Charges against Golub will be dropped in six months if he abides by the terms of the agreement and is not arrested again. Charges against Karla Storie, a model from Texas arrested with him, will be dismissed if she too is not arrested again in the next six months.
Golub said he was planning to return to criminal court on Friday and paint a nude model in a park near the courthouse.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Jerry Norton)
Saturday, October 08, 2011
Senators ditch pen and paper for iPads...
Reuters By Roberta Cowan
AMSTERDAM (Reuters)- Fri Oct 7, 2011 10:01am EDT. Members of the Dutch Senate, or upper house of parliament, won't strain their backs or weigh down their bike panniers by carrying stacks of printed documents from work anymore, since they are all now expected to work on their Apple iPads.
When members of the Senate returned from the summer recess two weeks ago, they were told they had one week left of working with printed files: After that they must stop printing out documents and wasting paper, and learn how to use a new Senate app especially designed for their new iPads.
The Dutch Senate is the first in Europe to distribute digital documents through a tablet computer. Two weeks into the project the 75 senators are generally "delighted" with managing the reams of documents using their iPads, according to Secretary General of the Senate, Geert Jan Hamilton.
"We have had enormous piles of paper couriered to our houses every week, thick envelopes with planning and committee meeting documents, but now from 6 pm every Friday you just open the Senate app and find all the documents for the next week," Hamilton told Reuters on Thursday, a day after the man credited with inspiring the iPad's creation died.
Although printing the occasional document is permitted, it is expected that most of the senators will use the iPad exclusively once they are accustomed to using the tablet computer.
They can use their iPads to consult and manage information, including calendars, legislative bills, parliamentary correspondence, and meeting documents through an app developed especially for the Dutch Senate.
Creating the Senate app and buying the iPads, a plan which has been in the works for about a year, cost about 150,000 euros ($201,053) and according to Hamilton will save the Senate around 140,000 euros in printing and courier costs in the first year.
"I am very optimistic that this will reduce costs," said Hamilton, adding that after the first year, he expects the annual costs for the upkeep and occasional printing of some documents will be in the 35,000 euro range.
The iPads, considered an office tool and equipped only with various news-related approved apps, won't have any connectivity problems in the historic Dutch parliamentary buildings, since an extra 21 wifi transmitters were kitted out in the senate building in early September.
Security concerning the information stored on the app isn't a big concern, according to Hamilton who said that unlike other Dutch parliamentarians and government employees, senators normally handle documents which are already publicly available.
"I am very pleased with the reception, and many say they consider it a very well-organized way of providing all the necessary information they have to deal with as well as reducing the enormous amount of paper involved."
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs -- who inspired the Macintosh computer, iPod, iPhone and iPad -- died on Wednesday at age 56. ($1 = 0.746 Euros)
(Reporting By Roberta B. Cowan, editing by Paul Casciato).
AMSTERDAM (Reuters)- Fri Oct 7, 2011 10:01am EDT. Members of the Dutch Senate, or upper house of parliament, won't strain their backs or weigh down their bike panniers by carrying stacks of printed documents from work anymore, since they are all now expected to work on their Apple iPads.When members of the Senate returned from the summer recess two weeks ago, they were told they had one week left of working with printed files: After that they must stop printing out documents and wasting paper, and learn how to use a new Senate app especially designed for their new iPads.
The Dutch Senate is the first in Europe to distribute digital documents through a tablet computer. Two weeks into the project the 75 senators are generally "delighted" with managing the reams of documents using their iPads, according to Secretary General of the Senate, Geert Jan Hamilton.
"We have had enormous piles of paper couriered to our houses every week, thick envelopes with planning and committee meeting documents, but now from 6 pm every Friday you just open the Senate app and find all the documents for the next week," Hamilton told Reuters on Thursday, a day after the man credited with inspiring the iPad's creation died.
Although printing the occasional document is permitted, it is expected that most of the senators will use the iPad exclusively once they are accustomed to using the tablet computer.
They can use their iPads to consult and manage information, including calendars, legislative bills, parliamentary correspondence, and meeting documents through an app developed especially for the Dutch Senate.
Creating the Senate app and buying the iPads, a plan which has been in the works for about a year, cost about 150,000 euros ($201,053) and according to Hamilton will save the Senate around 140,000 euros in printing and courier costs in the first year.
"I am very optimistic that this will reduce costs," said Hamilton, adding that after the first year, he expects the annual costs for the upkeep and occasional printing of some documents will be in the 35,000 euro range.
The iPads, considered an office tool and equipped only with various news-related approved apps, won't have any connectivity problems in the historic Dutch parliamentary buildings, since an extra 21 wifi transmitters were kitted out in the senate building in early September.
Security concerning the information stored on the app isn't a big concern, according to Hamilton who said that unlike other Dutch parliamentarians and government employees, senators normally handle documents which are already publicly available.
"I am very pleased with the reception, and many say they consider it a very well-organized way of providing all the necessary information they have to deal with as well as reducing the enormous amount of paper involved."
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs -- who inspired the Macintosh computer, iPod, iPhone and iPad -- died on Wednesday at age 56. ($1 = 0.746 Euros)
(Reporting By Roberta B. Cowan, editing by Paul Casciato).
Thursday, October 06, 2011
Higher testosterone may equal lower heart risks...
Reuters
Wed Oct 5, 2011 (Reuters) - Elderly men with naturally higher levels of testosterone may be less likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke than those men with lower levels of the hormone, according to a study.
Findings published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology showed that of 2,400 Swedish men in their 70s and 80s, those with the highest testosterone levels were less likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke over the next several years than men with the lowest levels.
But the results do not prove that testosterone itself deserves the credit, and it's too soon to recommend testosterone replacement to try to lower heart risks.
"What we can say is that elderly men with high testosterone levels are relatively protected against cardiovascular events, and therefore lower testosterone is a marker for increased cardiovascular risk," said Asa Tivesten, at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Goteborg, Sweden, who led the study.
It's known that any serious health condition can lower testosterone levels, as can obesity. But in the study, the researchers accounted for a number of health factors -- including the men's weight, blood pressure and any diagnoses of diabetes, heart disease or stroke at the outset.
Of 604 men in the bottom quarter for levels of the "male" hormone at the study's start, 21 percent had a heart attack, severe chest pain or stroke over roughly five years.
That compared with roughly 16 percent of the 606 men who started out with the highest testosterone levels.
Even accounting for health factors, men in the highest-testosterone group still showed a 30 percent lower risk of heart disease or stroke compared with the other three-quarters of the study group.
But that doesn't rule out the possibility that something other than testosterone may be at work, said JoAnn Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who was not involved in the study.
"Low testosterone may be a marker of other health conditions that put men at higher risk of cardiovascular disease," she said.
Potential reasons for why higher natural testosterone levels may be good for the heart include the fact that higher testosterone generally means less body fat and more lean muscle.
What's needed, she added, is evidence from clinical trials that actually test whether testosterone replacement in older men cuts the risk of heart disease and stroke.
Those trials are ongoing and so far, she noted, the results are mixed on whether testosterone replacement improves "intermediate" outcomes like cholesterol or blood sugar levels.
No one yet knows if it affects the ultimate outcomes of cardiovascular disease and lifespan.
"There are many unanswered questions, and I don't think this means that men should be trying to boost their testosterone with testosterone replacement therapy," she said.
The experience with hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in women offers a cautionary tale.
Before 2002, many women used HRT in the hopes of warding off heart disease and osteoporosis. Then a large U.S. clinical trial found that women given pills containing estrogen and progesterone actually had higher risks of blood clots, heart attack, stroke and breast cancer than women given placebo pills.
Now HRT is largely used only for treating severe hot flashes -- and then, only at the lowest dose and for the shortest time possible.
"So there are concerns about the risks in men," Manson said.
Among those are the potential for testosterone to contribute to blood clots, liver damage or prostate cancer.
"This is a study of endogenous (natural) hormone production. It does not provide information about what is happening when hormones are given as a therapy," Tiveston said. SOURCE: bit.ly/oDvZxv
(Reporting from New York by Amy Norton at Reuters Health; editing by Elaine Lies)
Health
Wed Oct 5, 2011 (Reuters) - Elderly men with naturally higher levels of testosterone may be less likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke than those men with lower levels of the hormone, according to a study.
Findings published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology showed that of 2,400 Swedish men in their 70s and 80s, those with the highest testosterone levels were less likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke over the next several years than men with the lowest levels.
But the results do not prove that testosterone itself deserves the credit, and it's too soon to recommend testosterone replacement to try to lower heart risks.
"What we can say is that elderly men with high testosterone levels are relatively protected against cardiovascular events, and therefore lower testosterone is a marker for increased cardiovascular risk," said Asa Tivesten, at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Goteborg, Sweden, who led the study.
It's known that any serious health condition can lower testosterone levels, as can obesity. But in the study, the researchers accounted for a number of health factors -- including the men's weight, blood pressure and any diagnoses of diabetes, heart disease or stroke at the outset.
Of 604 men in the bottom quarter for levels of the "male" hormone at the study's start, 21 percent had a heart attack, severe chest pain or stroke over roughly five years.
That compared with roughly 16 percent of the 606 men who started out with the highest testosterone levels.
Even accounting for health factors, men in the highest-testosterone group still showed a 30 percent lower risk of heart disease or stroke compared with the other three-quarters of the study group.
But that doesn't rule out the possibility that something other than testosterone may be at work, said JoAnn Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who was not involved in the study.
"Low testosterone may be a marker of other health conditions that put men at higher risk of cardiovascular disease," she said.
Potential reasons for why higher natural testosterone levels may be good for the heart include the fact that higher testosterone generally means less body fat and more lean muscle.
What's needed, she added, is evidence from clinical trials that actually test whether testosterone replacement in older men cuts the risk of heart disease and stroke.
Those trials are ongoing and so far, she noted, the results are mixed on whether testosterone replacement improves "intermediate" outcomes like cholesterol or blood sugar levels.
No one yet knows if it affects the ultimate outcomes of cardiovascular disease and lifespan.
"There are many unanswered questions, and I don't think this means that men should be trying to boost their testosterone with testosterone replacement therapy," she said.
The experience with hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in women offers a cautionary tale.
Before 2002, many women used HRT in the hopes of warding off heart disease and osteoporosis. Then a large U.S. clinical trial found that women given pills containing estrogen and progesterone actually had higher risks of blood clots, heart attack, stroke and breast cancer than women given placebo pills.
Now HRT is largely used only for treating severe hot flashes -- and then, only at the lowest dose and for the shortest time possible.
"So there are concerns about the risks in men," Manson said.
Among those are the potential for testosterone to contribute to blood clots, liver damage or prostate cancer.
"This is a study of endogenous (natural) hormone production. It does not provide information about what is happening when hormones are given as a therapy," Tiveston said. SOURCE: bit.ly/oDvZxv
(Reporting from New York by Amy Norton at Reuters Health; editing by Elaine Lies)
Health
Drunk Dutch drivers must fit alcolocks to cars...
Reuters
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Wed Oct 5, 2011. Dutch drivers caught operating a car while massively over the legal alcohol limit will be forced to fit their cars with "alcolocks" which automatically lock the engine if the driver is over the limit.
Convicted drunk drivers found in control of with blood alcohol levels over 1.3 mg/dl -- more than six times the legal limit of 0.2 mg/dl -- will be ordered to install alcolocks in their cars, the transport ministry said on Wednesday.
The new rules will come into effect on December 1, in time for the Christmas and New Year holidays.
The way the alcolock works is that the driver must first breathe into it to unlock the engine, and will have to repeat the same process at regular intervals during the journey.
If the mini-breathalyzer, which is fitted to the dashboard, indicates a blood alcohol level above the legal limit, the engine will not turn on.
The alcolocks will be installed for two years with a possible six-year extension if the driver continues to drink and drive. In the worst cases, the driver's license will be revoked, and the driver will have to wait five years before he or she can take a new test.
About 200 people die every year because of drink-driving, Dutch media reported.
The Netherlands, home to global beer brand Heineken, is famous for its beer industry, and ranks 14th among Europe's top beer consumers, lagging the Czech Republic, Germany, Luxemburg and Belgium.
Annual consumption of beer in the Netherlands is more than 1 billion liters.
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Wed Oct 5, 2011. Dutch drivers caught operating a car while massively over the legal alcohol limit will be forced to fit their cars with "alcolocks" which automatically lock the engine if the driver is over the limit.
Convicted drunk drivers found in control of with blood alcohol levels over 1.3 mg/dl -- more than six times the legal limit of 0.2 mg/dl -- will be ordered to install alcolocks in their cars, the transport ministry said on Wednesday.
The new rules will come into effect on December 1, in time for the Christmas and New Year holidays.
The way the alcolock works is that the driver must first breathe into it to unlock the engine, and will have to repeat the same process at regular intervals during the journey.
If the mini-breathalyzer, which is fitted to the dashboard, indicates a blood alcohol level above the legal limit, the engine will not turn on.
The alcolocks will be installed for two years with a possible six-year extension if the driver continues to drink and drive. In the worst cases, the driver's license will be revoked, and the driver will have to wait five years before he or she can take a new test.
About 200 people die every year because of drink-driving, Dutch media reported.
The Netherlands, home to global beer brand Heineken, is famous for its beer industry, and ranks 14th among Europe's top beer consumers, lagging the Czech Republic, Germany, Luxemburg and Belgium.
Annual consumption of beer in the Netherlands is more than 1 billion liters.
Swiss speedster trapped by his own mobile phone...
Reuters
GENEVA (Reuters) - Wed Oct 5, 2011. A Swiss motorist used his mobile phone to record himself driving on an autoroute near Geneva at 320 km an hour, nearly three times the speed limit, police said Wednesday.
But the offence was only uncovered six months later when the 28-year-old was questioned in another case and investigators found the images still on the phone.
Some shots were focused on the speedometer of his car, a Bentley Continental, according to a police spokesman.
Others showed the road, revealing where he was, and the phone's timer recorded the date and the time -- just before 3:30 in the morning local time last April.
Police said the driver, whom they declined to name, probably took the shots to impress his friends. His license was confiscated and he is free on bail awaiting trial.
(Reported by Robert Evans, editing by Paul Casciato)
GENEVA (Reuters) - Wed Oct 5, 2011. A Swiss motorist used his mobile phone to record himself driving on an autoroute near Geneva at 320 km an hour, nearly three times the speed limit, police said Wednesday.
But the offence was only uncovered six months later when the 28-year-old was questioned in another case and investigators found the images still on the phone.
Some shots were focused on the speedometer of his car, a Bentley Continental, according to a police spokesman.
Others showed the road, revealing where he was, and the phone's timer recorded the date and the time -- just before 3:30 in the morning local time last April.
Police said the driver, whom they declined to name, probably took the shots to impress his friends. His license was confiscated and he is free on bail awaiting trial.
(Reported by Robert Evans, editing by Paul Casciato)
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