Weird News Thread ....

[Jolie Rouge]

Would-Be Rescuer Feared Killed by Whale Tail Blow

http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news...8.htm&sc=reodd

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A New Zealand man trying to free a 50 foot humpback whale ensnared in lobster pot ropes is missing and presumed dead after being hit by the whale's tail, police said Monday.

The 38-year-old, who has not yet been named, had gone to the aid of a whale in waters near the popular whale-watching town of Kaikoura, 90 miles south of Wellington.

"He was trying to cut the rope free from the whale's tail and the whale lifted its tail and struck him," Kaikoura police Sergeant Tony Yardley told Reuters.

A four-hour search by boats and a helicopter found no sign of the man and he was presumed dead, Yardley added.


Several species of whale are attracted to the deep, food-rich waters off the coast of Kaikoura, which in turn attract large numbers of tourists to the region.



06/16/03 08:24

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[Jolie Rouge]

Witch to Loch Ness Monster: 'Don't Be Shy'

http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news...2.htm&sc=reodd

LONDON (Reuters) - Sorcerer Kevin Carlyon performed an incantation on the shores of Loch Ness on Friday, trying to lure Britain's favorite monster into the open.

Carlyon, High Priest of British White Witches, said he had cast a spell two years ago to scare off the monster so it would not be caught by a visiting Swedish scientist Jan Sundberg.

But Sundberg is no longer a threat, he said, and now the time has come to reverse the hex on "Nessie."

"I feel this one went quite well," he told Reuters afterwards. "There have been very few sightings over the last couple of years and the aim is to slightly reverse the spell so Nessie starts to pop up again."


Reports of a "horrible great beastie" have been emerging from the 200-meter deep Scottish loch for many centuries, often describing a black creature with a fat body and serpentine neck.


But it was not until a road was built along the shoreline in the 1930s that Nessie-watching really took off. These days, there are numerous web-cams beaming 24-hour footage of the dark waters around the world via the Internet.


"I personally believe what is up here is more a spirit or a ghost than anything," said Carlyon, who discovered his own paranormal powers aged five when he correctly predicted a school mate would fall out of a tree and break his arm.


During Friday's ceremony, Carlyon said he cast a talisman into the loch -- a flat stone inscribed with ancient Nordic runes and witchcraft symbols -- while chanting the incantation: "Let Nessie be free, may her spirit be free, so may it be."



06/13/03 12:20

[Jolie Rouge]

Naked Man Scares Shark to Death?

http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news...7.htm&sc=reodd

LONDON (Reuters) - A British comedian could face criminal charges over the death of a "sensitive" shark after he jumped into a tank at an aquarium in the nude, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported Friday.

The 12-year old smooth hound shark, which measured three feet, died suddenly two days after Guy Venables jumped into its tank as a publicity stunt at the Brighton Sea Life Center, southern England.

"This variety of shark is susceptible to stress. We are very concerned he died as a result of seeing Mr Venables jumping into the tank," Sea Life Center's Lisa Handscomb told the newspaper.

"The shark is being examined by our biological services team and if it is found that he died from stress, we will prosecute Mr Venables for criminal damage."



06/13/03 11:11

[Jolie Rouge]

Dude! Look What I Caught in My, Uh, Uh, Net...

http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news...4.htm&sc=reodd

PARIS (Reuters) - A French fisherman netted a surprise catch this week -- 66 pounds of cannabis. The man was fishing on the river Yvette, on the southern edge of Paris, when he spotted something strange in the water, French media reported Friday.

Taking a closer look, he discovered 28 bags, each containing a little over a kilogram of cannabis resin and immediately alerted the police.
"Perhaps it was the usual hiding place for a drug trafficker," a local policeman was quoted as saying in the Liberation daily.


"With the heat, the (water) level had fallen. There was only about 50 cm of water," he said. "It's very rare that people bring in this sort of commodity in such quantities."



06/13/03 11:10



{{gives a whole new meaning to the term
"Fish Fry"....}}

[Jolie Rouge]

False Rape Accuser Gets Three Years in Jail

http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news...5.htm&sc=reodd

LONDON (Reuters) - A mother of four who falsely accused disgraced former Conservative Party cabinet minister Neil Hamilton and his wife of raping her was sentenced Friday to three years in prison.

Nadine Milroy-Sloan, found guilty last month of perverting the course of justice, burst into tears as Judge Simon Smith pronounced sentence. The 29-year-old sparked a media frenzy in August 2001 when she accused the Hamiltons of raping her at a flat in Essex, east of London, a year earlier.

The Hamiltons vehemently -- and in Christine's case tearfully -- rejected the allegations and even had a cast-iron alibi for the night in question.


It later emerged in court that Milroy-Sloan had approached publicist Max Clifford before she made the allegations to see how much money she could make out of them.


Furthermore, the court had heard, she had never met the Hamiltons, had a lengthy criminal record and was known as a fantasist.


"It's becoming too easy for people to sell fake allegations about well-known people to the press, and the courts have to deal with it firmly," Judge Smith said as he passed sentence. "It was a cynical attempt to get money and fame by dragging the Hamiltons into this...when, as the jury found, you knew perfectly well they were not there," he added.


Christine Hamilton welcomed the sentence. "It sends out a very strong signal. Other women must not be allowed to try to cash in," she told Sky News. "Genuine rape victims are harmed by it. It is always a relief to us when justice is done, because it is not always done."


Neil Hamilton resigned as trade minister in 1994 after the "cash for questions" affair in which a newspaper accused him of accepting money from Harrods boss Mohamed Al Fayed in return for asking questions in parliament. He lost his seat in the 1997 election when former BBC reporter Martin Bell ran against him on an anti-sleaze ticket.


Christine Hamilton, 53, has reinvented herself as a television personality.



06/13/03 11:02

[Jolie Rouge]

Police Rescue Pre-School
..... from Rubber Spider

http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news...1.htm&sc=reodd



BERLIN (Reuters) - Trembling teachers at a German pre-school called in police to confront a giant spider crawling in a sandbox but it turned out to be a rubber toy, police in the western town of Heilbronn said Sunday.

"They were all highly agitated and trembling with fear," a police spokesman said. Two officers closed off the sandbox and surrounded the "spider" before discovering it was just an imitation toy.



06/09/03 09:37

[jaybird]

Deadly crash during sex nets man 10 years
Associated Press
Jun. 17, 2003 02:50 PM


MONMOUTH, Ill. - A man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for a crash that killed his girlfriend while they were having sex behind the wheel.

Sonny Morris El, 32, was convicted last month of aggravated driving under the influence of drugs but acquitted of reckless homicide in the January 2002 crash that killed Kristina Valerio, 25, who was on Morris El's lap as he drove.

Tests showed that Morris El had marijuana in his system when his car crossed the center line of U.S. 34 near Monmouth while the couple had sex. The vehicle collided with a tractor trailer.

The crash left Sonny Morris El, 32, with the mental capacity of an 11-year-old, according to his attorney. Before his sentencing Monday, Morris El called his actions "foolish" and said the accident "opened my eyes not to take life for granted."

State's Attorney Chip Algren asked for the maximum 12-year prison term, arguing that Morris El lived a life of "total irresponsibility" before the collision.

Public Defender Scott Shipplett sought probation, saying that Morris El did not intend to harm Valerio.

[jaybird]

Miami DJs dupe Fidel Castro with call
Associated Press
Jun. 18, 2003 04:20 PM


MIAMI - Two radio show hosts who duped Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez into believing he was speaking by phone with Cuban President Fidel Castro now claim to have similarly tricked Castro.

A recording provided by the Cuban-American radio announcers has a man they say is Castro responding for about four minutes Tuesday to snippets of a tape recording of Chavez, a Castro friend.

He catches on to the prank after he is called an assassin and the conversation disintegrates into him denouncing the caller with a stream of obscenities.

The call was played on Miami's WXDJ-FM on Tuesday; disc jockeys Joe Ferrero and Enrique Santos tricked Chavez in January.

"This was a big, big fish that we were trying to get," Ferrero said. "Castro really has his people well-trained to avoid these kind of situations, but we were able to persuade all these people."

In Havana, Cuban officials who did not want to be identified said Wednesday they did not know about the prank and could not comment.

Venezuelan Embassy spokesman Andres Izarra said he hadn't heard the recording and couldn't confirm whether the DJs actually got through to Castro.

Regardless, "it's another prank by these people who are very irresponsible and unethical," he said. "We totally reject these types of jokes."

[jaybird]

Many types of feces featured in exhibit
Canadian Press
Jun. 18, 2003 01:10 PM


OTTAWA - The final frontier in contemporary art, so it would appear, has been behind us all along.

From a wooden Brian Mulroney statue holding a turd in his outstretched hand, through performance video of actors frozen over public toilets, genuine soiled trousers, freeze-dried dung and cow pie clocks from Utah, an exhibition of all things excremental tackles art's "last remaining taboo," according to curator Stefan St-Laurent.

Scatalogue: 30 Years of Crap in Contemporary Art, opens Thursday at Ottawa's SAW Gallery and St-Laurent hopes the five-week show shakes Canada's art community to its very bowels.

"It's certainly a unique show in Canada," said the Moncton-born performance artist, who came up with the idea along with his twin brother Jason to celebrate the gallery's 30th anniversary.

The only other art exhibition focusing on the fecal that St-Laurent knows of was staged in San Francisco in the late 1980s.

"We started talking about how conservative even artist-run centers were becoming today," the 29-year-old said Wednesday at the basement gallery in an old downtown Ottawa jailhouse.

"In most cases, if you go to an artist-run centre, go to a public museum or go to a commercial gallery, you can come into contact with the same artists. We came up with this idea because we were thinking: what's the last remaining taboo in contemporary art?"

Even before it opened, the show attracted controversy.

The gallery receives 75 percent of its funding from the Ottawa city, Ontario and federal governments and Canadian Alliance MP Chuck Strahl called it a waste of taxpayers' money. He later, however, responded to St-Laurent's invitation to the opening with a kindly note saying he was just having some sport.

Nonetheless, said the curator, "it's always nerve-wracking to have a wide national debate on the validity of art and state funding."

And while he clearly courts controversy, St-Laurent said it has more to do with feces than finances.

"I think it's about certain people who live in this western society who can't really deal with their own excrement."

The exhibits range from the overtly political to the simply gross.

The Mulroney piece, carved by aboriginal artist Ron Noganosh of Ottawa in 1990, is entitled The Same Old **** and needs little explanation.

More challenging is the pop art of Gilbert and George of London, whose 1983 poster features giant, bright yellow poops floating above the two gay artists - whose open mouths are also bright yellow.

More obscure yet is David Diviney's Moon Floss, a two-legged chair wearing a pair of white men's briefs that are filled to overflowing with brown material. The Lethbridge, Alta., artist's work is supposed to say something about alcohol abuse.

Then there are the actual khaki pants worn by Calgary's Mikiki and Don Simmons, a pair of performance artists who thought they'd make a statement by visiting the staid Glenbow Museum after eating a mess of laxatives. Things quickly got out of control and the ensuing debacle, St-Laurent recounts with post-modern irony, was deeply humiliating for the artists.

In fact, there's a comical quality to the exhibition, with art imitating life imitating art imitating life.

One of the stated themes of the show is to expose the "commodification of contemporary art."

Yet among the three rooms in the gallery is the Scatalogue Boutique, where patrons can buy T-shirts, cow pie clocks ($30), monogrammed toilet paper ($10 a roll), and postcards - including one called Alberta Flame, showing a Mountie on horseback beside a giant dungpile in the Centennial Flame with the Parliament buildings and Peace Tower in the background.

"We were curious to see if we could build this exhibition that would draw in a larger public through this controversy, have them come in and discover this work for themselves and, finally, see how this really controversial exhibition is really about the human condition," said St-Laurent.

"I think that will knock people over."

[jaybird]

City casts fish nets to catch used condoms
Associated Press
Jun. 17, 2003 08:40 AM


MILWAUKEE - It's not the sort of catch a fisherman likes to boast about - hundreds of used condoms floating in the harbor.

Officials at the Jones Island Wastewater Treatment Plant say an angler made the rather disgusting discovery.

Some suspect a new $8.5 million filtration system isn't up to the task. But officials say there's no proof of just where the condoms came from.

The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District says it will install additional filters. Workers will also be used to scoop condoms out of the wastewater stream with fish nets.

[jaybird]

Danes find lollipops too offensive, phallic
Associated Press
Jun. 17, 2003 08:35 AM


COPENHAGEN, Denmark - "Tasteless." That's how one Danish amusement park official describes a lollipop shaped like a male organ.

The Bakken amusement park north of Copenhagen has banned the sale of the sweets, which went for about $3.

Danes are known for their liberal attitude about sex and Denmark was the first country in the world to legalize pornography. But the male pops went too far and sparked public outrage.

The chairman of the Danish Family Planning Association warns they're not suitable for children.