Weird News Thread ....

[Jolie Rouge]

Muslim Soccer Fans Told to Watch Their Mouths


ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey's religious leaders urged Muslims on Friday to refrain from using foul language when supporting their teams at soccer stadiums.

Imams nationwide called on the devout instead to use phrases like "Maasallah" ("May Allah preserve you") and "Barek Allah" ("Blessed Allah") to cheer on their favorite clubs, the private NTV television station said.

Turkey's passion for soccer has been marred by outbreaks of violence, and police search fans entering stadiums to seize weapons ranging from pocket change to kebab cleavers.

In August, one man was killed and 50 wounded when supporters clashed during a local derby in the western city of Izmir.


"It's certainly nice for fans and spectators at sporting matches to express their excitement, but it needs to be done in a legitimate way. Applause and praising Allah are suitable," NTV quoted Istanbul's top cleric Bayram Erdogan as saying.


He was speaking ahead of the Friday sermon, which contained the call for moderate language.


In Turkey the weekly sermon is drawn up by the Department of Religious Affairs and delivered at tens of thousands of mosques around the country.



09/05/03 10:38

[Jolie Rouge]

Anti-War Marine Convicted
Reservist Found Guilty of Leaving Unit
By DOUG SIMPSON

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/sto...05.htm&sc=1110

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - A Marine reservist convicted of leaving his unit for 47 days without permission before the war in Iraq will formally request that his six-month prison sentence be reduced, his lawyer said Sunday.

A jury of four Marines on Saturday found Lance Cpl. Stephen Funk, 21, guilty of unauthorized absence but innocent of a more serious charge, desertion with intent to shirk important duty.

The jury recommended that Funk, who argued he was a conscientious objector, be demoted to private, the Marines' lowest rank, and that his pay be docked by two-thirds during his incarceration. It also recommended a bad conduct discharge, which means Funk would lose his military benefits, a punishment his attorney Steve Collier said is too severe.

Collier said he will request that Funk receive a normal discharge and a prison term of 47 days instead. Lt. Gen. Dennis M. McCarthy, commander of the Marine reserves, has authority to accept or reduce the sentence.


``It would not be unheard of for that to be the punishment,'' Collier said Sunday.


Funk was held in the New Orleans jail Sunday and would likely be transported to an undetermined military prison on Monday, Collier said. He would receive his discharge after his release from prison.


Marine prosecutors accused Funk, 21, of being absent while his San Jose, Calif.-based unit was mobilized Feb. 13 to load ships and cargo planes in San Diego bound for the Middle East.


Funk said he became a conscientious objector after several months of being trained to kill. Funk, who attended anti-war rallies while absent and later announced he was gay, has said that the Marines were trying to make an example of him.


There were 27 other Marines who declared themselves conscientious objectors to the Iraq war. Like Funk, all were transferred to New Orleans for processing but none of the others was prosecuted because they reported for duty on time, the Marines said.


Of the 27, 16 were granted conscientious objector status, said Capt. Jeffrey Pool, a Marine spokesman. Five were denied and the other cases are pending.



09/07/03 15:44

[Jolie Rouge]

It's Good to Be the King


LUDZIDZINI ROYAL VILLAGE, Swaziland (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of bare-breasted young maidens danced in front of King Mswati on Friday -- many hoping to catch his eye and become his next wife.

A record 50,000 young women staged Swaziland's annual "Reed Dance," taking part in a traditional ceremony now seen as an audition to join King Mswati's many wives.

The 35-year-old king, sub-Saharan Africa's last absolute monarch, now has 10 wives and one fiancee -- a royal luxury that has drawn criticism as his small southern African kingdom battles poverty and a raging AIDS epidemic.

Lined up in rows, the maidens danced topless before the king for three hours, undeterred by blustery winds or last year's controversy surrounding Mswati's choice of three teenage reed dancers as his latest queens.


"I am tired of being poor. I want to be a queen. I hope the king sees me," said 17-year-old Nomsa Gama, wearing the traditional dance costume of a small piece of beaded fabric around her waist.


"There have never been this many girls before. They all want to catch the king's eye," Thulani Dlamini, a traditional warrior assigned to chaperone the maidens, told Reuters.


Mswati usually reviews videotapes of dancing girls recorded by the government-owned television station to select new brides, according to palace sources.


Controversy swirled after last year's reed dance, when the mother of one dancer charged that her daughter was later abducted from a schoolyard by palace aides and forced to join the royal household.


The mother brought suit in the High Court seeking the girl's return but eventually dropped the complaint.


The case threw a spotlight on the reed dance as a place where young women might find royal favor, and on Friday tens of thousands showed up with their own Cinderella dreams.


LIMOUSINES AND HOUSES


The dancers paraded around in military-style divisions before lining up shoulder-to-shoulder, swaying, singing songs and raising toy spoons and kitchen knives blunted with oranges on their ends.


Mswati, who came to the throne in 1986, observed the dance from a reviewing platform with his mother, coming down several times to greet the dancers.


Last month the palace announced that Mswati would marry the last of three girls chosen during last year's reed dance -- a move seen as clearing the decks for more selections to be made this year.


While women's rights activists have slammed Mswati's marriage habits as feudalistic and health care workers have raised concerns they send the wrong message about AIDS, the prospect of joining royalty has a strong allure for many young Swazi women.


"I want a limousine, and a house like they give the queens. I want my children to school in England," said 14 year-old Phindile Thwala, one of this year's dancers.



09/05/03 14:38

[Jolie Rouge]

Family Maintains Chain Letter 87 Years
By RUSS BYNUM

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/sto...73.htm&sc=1110

SAVANNAH, Georgia (AP) - The fat manila envelope arrives in Doug Pletcher's mailbox every year, stuffed with letters and photographs from uncles and cousins of some 24 branches of his family tree scattered from Florida to California.

Pletcher, of Riverside, Illinois, reads through the pile, removes his old letter and writes a new one to bring his relatives up to speed on his marketing work, his two grown children and his softball league.

Then he mails the whole package to the next person in the chain - a tradition three generations of Pletchers have maintained for 87 years.

``It is a kick to get it,'' Pletcher says. ``Lots of the letters aren't all that riveting - how the garden's growing and all that. But it's very warm and nice. We're all over the country, and you don't see them very often.''


But last month, members of the Pletcher clan got together for a reunion in Savannah, where family members got to tour the city's oak-shaded squares, take in a Minor League baseball game and some in the youngest generation got to meet for the first time.


The jaunt was Doug Pletcher's prize for winning a $25,000 reunion trip, sponsored by hot dog maker Hebrew National, by writing an essay about his family's long-lived chain letter swapping.


The tradition started in 1916 when Erno Pletcher, his four brothers and three sisters began leaving the family dairy farm in Goshen, Indiana, to attend college and start families of their own. The siblings would send letters home to their parents, who bundled them for mailing to each of their grown children in turn.


``They were a close-knit family and they wanted to keep in touch, so they started this letter that had a regular pattern,'' said 83-year-old Jim Pletcher, of Green Valley, Arizona, one of Erno Pletcher's sons and Doug Pletcher's uncle. ``As the families grew, that meant the offspring started to get into the act.''


The original eight have all since died. The last of the siblings, their sister Opha Pickett, wrote letters for the chain until 1988, when she died at age 100.


For their children, picking up the correspondence habit came easily. The letters were a constant in their lives, said Jim Pletcher, who can recall the bundles arriving as early as 1925, when he was 5.


His cousin, David Pletcher, of Bloomington, Indiana, also remembers his parents discussing the letters at an early age.


``My mother said she knew the contents of the closets of all her sisters-in-law because that's all they had to write about - cleaning the house and all the family doings,'' he said.


But as the family grew the letters began to form a larger chronicle of the Pletchers' family history through most of the 20th century - births, graduations and deaths as well as travels, careers and household pets.


Unfortunately, nobody kept the early letters, said David Pletcher, a retired history professor.


``We should have saved them, of course, if we had any historical idea of the value of a family history,'' he said. ``You would have to sift through a great deal of material to winnow out all the interesting parts. But it would be something a social historian would take great pleasure in.''


Doug Pletcher won the contest, which he entered earlier this year after seeing a newspaper advertisement.


He said the prize money covered travel, lodging and other expenses for 22 people. His two children, aged 22 and 23, were able to meet his uncles Jim Pletcher and Richard Pletcher and their families.


Though none of the family lives in Georgia, he picked Savannah because his daughter became enchanted with the city's Victorian homes and oak-shaded squares while visiting one St. Patrick's Day.


``There have been family reunions,'' the last being in 1997, Doug Pletcher said. ``But not this exotic and in such a cool place.''



09/07/03 13:09

[Jolie Rouge]

Web Site to Help Find Art Stolen by Nazis
By CARL HARTMAN

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/sto...36.htm&sc=1110

WASHINGTON (AP) - People searching for art that was stolen by the Nazis have a new tool: a Web site that allows U.S. museum collections to be checked for long-lost pieces.

The Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal - http://www.nepip.org - is a searchable registry for people looking for items that disappeared in Europe between 1932 and 1946. It goes online Monday.

So far 66 museums have signed up to participate in the program overseen by the American Association of Museums. They include the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Chicago Institute of Art. The Web site has indexed 5,761 of their objects and an additional 1,663 are in process.

Similar sites in Europe will be reachable through a link with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.


The Nazis and their allies may have stolen as many as 1.5 million objects by the end of World War II.


Estimates of the number still missing run as high as 100,000 works of museum quality. Some have found their way to the United States.


The association's president, Edward H. Able Jr., counted 17 claims settled for paintings, sculptures, textiles and pieces of armor found in American museums since 1997. Among them are a pastel by Edgar Degas, the French Impressionist painter, that had been bought by a trustee for the Art Institute of Chicago, and a painting by Henri Matisse that had been at the Seattle Art Museum.


The Nazis not only confiscated property but also forced dealers and agents to sell, at artificially low prices, art owned by Jews and the Nazis' political enemies. Confiscations and forced sales included books, religious objects, stamp and coin collections, furniture and other antiques and rarities.


Able said for that reason the Web site initiative includes more than just art museums. ``We have museums of all kinds - an item could have seeped into a history museum, for example,'' he said.


On the Net:


U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: www.ushmm.org


American Association of Museums: www.aam-us.org



09/07/03 11:42

[Jolie Rouge]

Telepathy Gets Academic Seal of Approval

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/sto...6.htm&sc=reodd

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden's Lund University, one of the oldest seats of learning in Scandinavia, will take a leap into the unknown by appointing northern Europe's first professor of parapsychology, hypnology and clairvoyance.

Almost 30 candidates, including a self-professed Indian medium and an American named Heaven Lord, applied for the post, financed by a donation, whose holder the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet has joked will be a "Ghost Professor."

The first professor, to be appointed by Lund University Dean Goran Bexell, is expected to start work in 2004, faculty secretary Kerstin Johansson told Reuters.

Hypnology is the science of the phenomena of sleep and hypnosis.


Despite decades of experimental research and television performances by people such as spoonbending psychic Uri Geller, there is still no proof that gifts such as telepathy and the ability to see the future exist, mainstream scientists say.


"Verifying the existence of paranormal phenomena does not seem to be a promising field of science," said Sven Ove Hansson, professor of philosophy at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.


Utrecht University in the Netherlands and Scotland's Edinburgh University also have chairs in parapsychology.



09/08/03 10:36

[Jolie Rouge]

Feel a ghost? Perhaps it's "infrasound"
Monday, September 8, 2003 Posted: 11:35 AM EDT

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science...eut/index.html


MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) -- Mysteriously snuffed out candles, weird sensations and shivers down the spine may not be due to the presence of ghosts in haunted houses but to very low frequency sound that is inaudible to humans.

British scientists have shown in a controlled experiment that the extreme bass sound known as infrasound produces a range of bizarre effects in people including anxiety, extreme sorrow and chills -- supporting popular suggestions of a link between infrasound and strange sensations.

"Normally you can't hear it," Dr Richard Lord, an acoustic scientist at the National Physical Laboratory in England who worked on the project, said on Monday.

Lord and his colleagues, who produced infrasound with a seven meter (yard) pipe and tested its impact on 750 people at a concert, said infrasound is also generated by natural phenomena.

"Some scientists have suggested that this level of sound may be present at some allegedly haunted sites and so cause people to have odd sensations that they attribute to a ghost -- our findings support these ideas," said Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire in southern England.

In the first controlled experiment of infrasound, Lord and Wiseman played four contemporary pieces of live music, including some laced with infrasound, at a London concert hall and asked the audience to describe their reactions to the music.

The audience did not know which pieces included infrasound but 22 percent reported more unusual experiences when it was present in the music.

Their unusual experiences included feeling uneasy or sorrowful, getting chills down the spine or nervous feelings of revulsion or fear.

"These results suggest that low frequency sound can cause people to have unusual experiences even though they cannot consciously detect infrasound," said Wiseman, who presented his findings to the British Association science conference.

Infrasound is also produced by storms, seasonal winds and weather patterns and some types of earthquakes. Animals such as elephants also use infrasound to communicate over long distances or as weapons to repel foes.

"So much has been said about infrasound -- it's been associated with just about everything from beam weapons to bad driving. It's wonderful to be able to examine the evidence," said Sarah Angliss, a composer and engineer who worked on the project.

[Jolie Rouge]

Turning Off Smokers with Rotting Lung Pictures

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/sto...2.htm&sc=reodd

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission has started the hunt for images of rotting lungs and dying cancer patients to be printed on cigarette packets across the European Union, a spokesman said on Monday.

Next month cigarettes sold in the EU must show even larger health warnings than now, and from mid-2004 member states will have the option of adding pictures to the packs showing the hazards of smoking, the EU's executive body said.

The European Commission announced a tender on Monday for organizations to come up with images and test their impact on different European audiences.

"Research and experience in countries which have introduced health warnings illustrated with color pictures have proven that they speak more than a thousand words," Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner David Byrne said in a statement.


Brazil and Canada compel tobacco companies to print pictures of premature babies and brain hemorrhages on their products.


Commission health spokesman Thorsten Muench said Europe would follow their lead but there would also be a lighter touch.


"We will have rotten lungs and we will also have more humorous images. It's not just dead bodies lying around," he said at a news conference.


For each of the current 14 health warnings, there will be a choice of five or six pictures so that member states can choose the ones that best fit local tastes.


"There will be research into how every image works in every country," Muench said.


He accepted the images might not put off hard-core smokers but said he hoped they would stop people starting smoking.



09/08/03 10:34

[Jolie Rouge]

Live TV Political Debate Ends in Brawl


BAKU (Reuters) - A live television debate in the run-up to Azerbaijan's October presidential election ended in a brawl, and police in the oil-producing country opened a criminal case on Sunday against an opposition politician.

The opposition Popular Front accused the government in the former Soviet republic of trying to discredit it over the incident.

The debate on Saturday became so heated it was taken off the air.

Fuad Mustafayev, speaking for the Popular Front's presidential candidate, called pro-government contender Hafiz Hadjiyev dishonest. Hadjiyev responded by describing Mustafayev as a "puppy."


The brawl began after the two hurled water at each other.


"We have received a complaint from Hadjiyev concerning yesterday's incident and consider it necessary to open a criminal case," said a police spokesman, adding Mustafayev had not been arrested.


A Popular Front spokesman said: "The government is using illegal methods in its election campaign."


President Haydar Aliyev is overwhelming favorite to win the election, but the 80-year-old strongman who has dominated Azerbaijan for three decades is in a U.S. hospital receiving treatment for heart and kidney problems.


A dozen candidates are standing for president. Six are pro-government, while six are campaigning on behalf of opposition parties.


Aliyev's opponents accuse the government of trying to oversee a dynastic succession. The president became KGB chief and Communist Party leader in the 1960s in Soviet times.


His son Ilham, 41, who serves as prime minister and is being groomed as successor, is also standing -- although he has said he supports his father's re-election bid.


Washington views Azerbaijan, which became independent with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, as a potential alternative to the Gulf for oil supplies.



09/08/03 10:29

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BERLIN (Reuters) - More than 3,000 dogs were paraded through central Berlin on Saturday in a demonstration by owners for more rights and public tolerance.
A number of the dogs in the parade that snarled traffic throughout the center of the German capital were wearing costumes. One German shepherd was wearing a bumblebee outfit and two others were dressed as nuns.

Accompanied by police escort, the dogs and their owners marched some three miles from the Victory Column to the posh west Berlin shopping district through the Schoeneberg district before returning to the starting point for a rally.

Speakers at the second annual "Fiffi Parade" called on the local government to set aside larger areas where dogs can roam free without leashes. "We need pro-dog rules and not anti-dog laws," said Gisela Duellberg, one of the organizers.

[Widgetsx3]

CLEWISTON, Fla. (AP) - Turning 90 made Guy Glinski want to jump out of a plane. So he took the plunge.

The nonagenarian gave himself a memorable birthday present Saturday, getting into a propeller plane and jumping out at 13,000 feet, tethered to an instructor.

"I've always wanted to do this," said Glinski, a retired carpenter and widower of three years. "I'll be back next year."

Glinski's daughter, Elizabeth Biersdorfer, 61, hugged him and wished him luck moments before the jump. She didn't seem surprised - or bothered - by her father's decision to pick up a new hobby.

"He's pretty sound of mind and he's in good shape," she said.

Glinski says he was inspired after reading a newspaper article about an 86-year-old woman who made a tandem skydive.

After a minute in free-fall and six minutes gliding under the open chute, Glinski could only muster a few words as he sat on the ground Saturday.

"Pretty cool, pretty cool," he said.