Thieves ditch Corvette carjacking after not being able to figure out how to drive it -

Thieves ditch Corvette carjacking after not being able to figure out how to drive it - 


A Florida Corvette owner said he was almost carjacked at gunpoint, but the would-be thieves ran away because they couldn't figure out how to drive his car.
Randolph Bean was sitting in his bright yellow Corvette when two men took him by surprise, MyFoxOrlando.com reports. It was parked outside Orlando Regional Medical Center in downtown Orlando.
Bean said the two came from behind, and he "barely caught them in the mirror."
According to the police report, one of the men had a gun. 
"He started yanking on the door and made me open the door. He kind of flung it open and dragged me out and demanded that I get on the ground... face down, so I couldn't look at him, of course," Bean told MyFoxOrlando.com.
Bean, 51, said one of the thieves pointed a gun at him while asking how to use the car.
"They apparently couldn't start it," Bean said. "I had to tell him four different times to push in the clutch, because it's a standard transmission."
The suspects reportedly gave up and ran away, leaving Bean on the ground. Police tried searching for the suspects, but they took off.
"My first thought was I guess we don't have driver's ed in school anymore because no one knows how to drive a stick," Bean said. "And my second thing was, don't shoot me because you can't start the car. I'm trying to help you out here."
Though the thieves left the Corvette, they still made off with Bean's phone, keys and wallet.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/01/29/stick-shift-baffles-would-be-car-thieves-in-florida/?test=latestnews

That Cuddly Kitty Is Deadlier Than You Think -

That Cuddly Kitty Is Deadlier Than You Think - 


For all the adorable images of cats that play the piano, flush the toilet, mew melodiously and find their way back home over hundreds of miles, scientists have identified a shocking new truth: cats are far deadlier than anyone realized.

In a report that scaled up local surveys and pilot studies to national dimensions, scientists from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that domestic cats in the United States — both the pet Fluffies that spend part of the day outdoors and the unnamed strays and ferals that never leave it — kill a median of 2.4 billion birds and 12.3 billion mammals a year, most of them native mammals like shrews, chipmunks and voles rather than introduced pests like the Norway rat.

The estimated kill rates are two to four times higher than mortality figures previously bandied about, and position the domestic cat as one of the single greatest human-linked threats to wildlife in the nation. More birds and mammals die at the mouths of cats, the report said, than from automobile strikes, pesticides and poisons, collisions with skyscrapers and windmills and other so-called anthropogenic causes.

Peter Marra of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and an author of the report, said the mortality figures that emerge from the new model “are shockingly high.”

“When we ran the model, we didn’t know what to expect,” said Dr. Marra, who performed the analysis with his colleague, Scott R. Loss, and Tom Will of the Fish and Wildlife Service. “We were absolutely stunned by the results.” The study appeared Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

The findings are the first serious estimate of just how much wildlife America’s vast population of free-roaming domestic cats manages to kill each year.

Read more - 

Nursing home defends prostitutes’ visits -

Nursing home defends prostitutes’ visits - 


Helena Barrow, the former manager of the Chaseley Nursing Home in Eastbourne, England has been forced to defend the unusual “holistic care” offered to her residents by prostitutes.

Care workers would take the prostitutes to a resident’s room, put a special red sock on the door and check on them every 15 minutes, reports The London Times.

The nursing home, which cares for disabled ex-servicemen, has long had a policy of allowing sex workers.

However, a spokesman for the East Sussex city council said that it was unaware of the practice and was investigating.

Barrow said: “Sex workers are allowed by law to sexually enable people, but care workers are not."

On one occasion, strippers even made a visit to the nursing home.

Tuppy Owens, of the Sexual Health and Disability Alliance, said: “Many disabled people are living in perpetual frustration. What’s illegal is for disabled people to be denied their human rights.”

Read more - 
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/health/health-care/nursing-home-allows-prostitutes-visit-residents

Decline In Printed Newspaper Leads To Puppy Poop Problems... -

Decline In Printed Newspaper Leads To Puppy Poop Problems... - 


San Francisco’s animal control agency is relying on donated newspapers to solve pooping puppies problem.

It seems digital newspaper subscriptions and smartphones have cut the once abundant supplies of old newspapers.

Animal Care & Control has been relying on public contributions and San Francisco Chronicle (http://bit.ly/XLirUN ) donations to line the cages of shelter puppies needing potty training.

Now, the San Francisco Public Library is donating old newspapers to make sure the shelter has a consistent paper stream.

Animal control will pick up the newspapers twice a month.

Agency supervisor Eric Zuercher says the arrangement with the library has solved a big problem, noting puppies are poop machines.

Read more - 
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/01/28/decline-in-printed-newspaper-leads-to-puppy-poop-problems-for-san-francisco-animal-control/

School forces boys to check out toilet paper for use -

School forces boys to check out toilet paper for use - 


An eastern Pennsylvania high school says vandalism forced it to create a policy in which toilet paper has been taken out of the boys' bathrooms.
Boys at Mahanoy Area High School now must go to the school office to request toilet paper and sign it out. Principal Thomas Smith says that's helped solve a major problem of intentionally clogging toilets that's been going on for two years.
Smith says boys must sign out the toilet paper and then sign it back in. But the Republican-Herald of Pottsville reports some parents are protesting the policy.
Parent Karen Yedsena says some students are too embarrassed to go to the office to get toilet paper and are going home sick instead. School officials say they aren't aware of any such problems.


Read more: - http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/01/28/after-vandalism-pa-school-removes-toilet-paper-from-boys-bathrooms-must-request/?test=latestnews

Geneticists Discover a Way to Extend Lifespans to 800 Years -

Geneticists Discover a Way to Extend Lifespans to 800 Years - 

There is now a way to extend the lifespan of organisms so that humans could conceivably live to be 800 years old. In an amazing development, scientists at the University of Southern California have announced that they've extended the lifespan of yeast bacteria tenfold — and the recipe they used to do it might easily translate into humans. It involves tinkering with two genes, and cutting down your calorie intake. Tests have already started on people in Ecuador.

According to an announcement from PLoS Genetics:

Researchers have created baker's yeast capable of living to 800 in yeast years without apparent side effects. The basic but important discovery, achieved through a combination of dietary and genetic changes, brings scientists closer to controlling the survival and health of the unit of all living systems: the cell. "We're setting the foundation for reprogramming healthy life," says study leader Valter Longo of the University of Southern California.

Longo's group put baker's yeast on a calorie-restricted diet and knocked out two genes - RAS2 and SCH9 - that promote aging in yeast and cancer in humans.

"We got a 10-fold life span extension that is, I think, the longest one that has ever been achieved in any organism," Longo says. Normal yeast organisms live about a week.

Read more - 

http://io9.com/345728/geneticists-discover-a-way-to-extend-lifespans-to-800-years

GOOGLE Earth exposes NKorea's secret prison camps... -

GOOGLE Earth exposes NKorea's secret prison camps... - 


Human rights activists are turning to Google Earth to identify the vast network of prison camps that dot the North Korean countryside and hold as many as 200,000 people deemed hostile to the regime.

Rights groups are pushing the United Nations high commissioner for human rights to open an international investigation into Pyongyang's "deplorable" record on its citizens' rights, including a system of political prisons that has operated for more than 50 years.
Pyongyang insists that the camps do not exist and are merely foreign propaganda, but the advent of high-resolution, free images from outer space has disproved that claim.
On January 18, the North Korean Economy Watch website announced that a new camp had been identified alongside an existing detention facility in Kaechon, South Pyongan Province.
Using newly provided Google Earth images, analyst Curtis Melvin was able to conclude that the new camp sits alongside Camp 14 and has a perimeter fence that stretches nearly 13 miles.
The facility was built since the last images of the site were released, in December 2006.

The fence has two checkpoints and six guard posts, while a number of accommodation units and office buildings are also clearly visible. A coal mine within the fence does not appear to be operational, Melvin concluded.
Very few North Koreans have managed to escape from prison camps and to freedom outside the country's borders, but those who have tell of terrible suffering.
Inmates - who can be imprisoned for life, along with three generations of their families, for anything deemed to be critical of the regime - are forced to survive by eating rats and picking corn kernels out of animal waste.

Read more - 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/9826125/Google-Earth-exposes-North-Koreas-secret-prison-camps.html

Rabbits Wreaking Havoc On Cars At Denver International Airport (DIA) -

Rabbits Wreaking Havoc On Cars At Denver International Airport (DIA) - 


Travelers have a warning for drivers who park their cars near Denver International Airport (DIA). Rabbits are chewing the wires under many cars costing owners a lot of money. The rabbits get in and chew the brake lines, the clutch lines and other wiring. Local car repair shops estimates they can do thousands of dollars in damage.

“When I had the trouble with the oil light coming on, the dealer told me the wires that controlled the air conditioning were chewed,” said Ken Blum, one car owner who knows all about the not so funny bunny business at DIA.

Blum has had to have repairs done on his car twice due to rabbit damage and he estimates the cost at approximately $700.

“I saw no signs…nothing to tell me, ‘Hey, beware’,” Blum told CBS4. “My insurance didn’t cover it, the manufacturer didn’t cover it.”

This isn’t a new problem at the airport. CBS4 first started covering hungry hares in 1999. They were munching on the wires of de-icing equipment. Now it seems they’ve moved to the outlying parking lots.

CBS4 contacted airport officials about the problem. They said that only a small percentage of the people who park out there ever complain of rabbit caused car problems. They also told CBS4 that United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services agents patrol the parking lots and remove rabbits when they see them.

Read more - 

http://denver.cbslocal.com/2013/01/25/rabbits-wreaking-havoc-on-cars-at-dia/

The DNA gun that can invisibly tag criminals for weeks after a riot -

The DNA gun that can invisibly tag criminals for weeks after a riot - 


British firm behind the gun in talks with several UK police forces
DNA pellets can tag clothes and penetrate through to skin - staying there for weeks
Allows police can tag troublemakers during riots 
Officers can then use the trace to place suspects at the scene of a crime using UV readers or sniffer dogs to find those tagged

It may look more like a high tech water pistol or something out of a sci-fi film than the latest weapon in the fight against crime.
But an innovative new tagging system using a gun and DNA pellets could make it easier for police to mark the cards of even the most volatile criminal.
Unlike a taser or gun that fires real bullets, the weapon won't hurt a suspect or render them incapacitated so that officers can pounce.

Instead, it will enable police to stay at a safe distance during trouble and identify criminals and arrest criminals days or even weeks after an incident. 
The High Velocity DNA Tagging System, designed for use by police forces and the military by Kent-based firm Selectamark, fires small soft green pellets containing the transparent material at a target from as far away as 40 metres.
Each pellet, which weighs less than a gram and is effectively like a paintball, contains a unique DNA code which could remain on the target for weeks.


Read more: 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2268038/DNA-gun-invisibly-tag-criminals-weeks-riot.html

Gatorade pulls ingredient linked to reproductive and behavioral problems -

Gatorade pulls ingredient linked to reproductive and behavioral problems - 

Brominated vegetable oil, a synthetic chemical that has been patented in Europe as a flame retardant, will no longer double as an ingredient in Gatorade sports drinks.

Molly Carter, a spokeswoman for Gatorade owner PepsiCo Inc., said the company has been considering the move for more than a year, working on a way to take out the ingredient without affecting the flavor of the drink.

A recent petition on Change.org to drop the chemical – which has more than 200,000 supporters – did not inspire the decision, Carter said, though she acknowledged that consumer feedback was the main impetus.

In the petition, posted by Sarah Kavanagh of Hattiesburg, Miss., “BVO” is described as banned in Japan and the European Union.

The effort quotes a Scientific American article suggesting that “BVO could be building up in human tissues” and that studies on mice have shown “reproductive and behavioral problems” linked to large doses of the chemical.

Read more - 

http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-gatorade-flame-retardant-20130125,0,2176497.story