Giant Lego man found in Dutch sea 2 hours, 4 minutes ago

Giant Lego man found in Dutch sea 2 hours, 4 minutes ago



AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A giant, smiling Lego man was fished out of the sea in the Dutch resort of Zandvoort on Tuesday.

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Workers at a drinks stall rescued the 2.5-meter (8-foot) tall model with a yellow head and blue torso.

"We saw something bobbing about in the sea and we decided to take it out of the water," said a stall worker. "It was a life-sized Lego toy."

A woman nearby added: "I saw the Lego toy floating toward the beach from the direction of England."

The toy was later placed in front of the drinks stall.

Crocodile falls 12 floors in escape bid Wed Aug 8, 9:24 AM ET

Crocodile falls 12 floors in escape bid Wed Aug 8, 9:24 AM ET



MOSCOW (Reuters) - A crocodile survived a fall from the 12th floor of a Russian apartment block after making an escape bid through a window, emergency services said on Wednesday.

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Diving out of the window has become a habit for the crocodile, called Khenar, with concerned neighbors saying it was the third time he had used that method to flee, Moskovsky Komsomolets daily reported.

The crocodile lost one tooth in the latest fall but was otherwise unscathed, said a spokeswoman for the emergencies ministry in the Nizhny Novgorod region of central Russia.

"It seems the owner was not at home when the crocodile came out of the window," she said.

Emergency services put the crocodile in a local aquarium to recover from his fall. Within a few hours his concerned owner came to pick him up and the crocodile was last seen lying on the back seat of his owner's car.

Farmer attacks police with muck spreader Wed Aug 8, 9:25 AM ET

Farmer attacks police with muck spreader Wed Aug 8, 9:25 AM ET



BERLIN (Reuters) - A German farmer angry with police for trying to confiscate his tractor wrecked three patrol cars and evaded capture for seven hours before an elite unit managed to arrest him, a police spokesman said Wednesday.

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The farmer, 53, was pulled over by police for driving his tractor without a license, despite several previous warnings.

The officers called in three patrol cars for help before asking the farmer to get out of his vehicle.

He refused, and proceeded to ram the cars with his tractor, making full use of its attached muck spreader and hydraulic fork. Officers were only just able to scramble out of harm's way.

The farmer then drove into a forest, where he eluded a manhunt involving two helicopters and an armored car for seven hours.

He was finally found by an elite police team in a barn on his farm in Lauterbach, in central Germany.

"In the countryside we're used to people going at police with muck spreaders, but this was something else," a police spokesman said.

The farmer faces charges of assault and resisting police.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a baby.. Wed Aug 8, 9:23 AM ET

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a baby.. Wed Aug 8, 9:23 AM ET



WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A New Zealand couple is looking to call their newborn son Superman -- but only because their chosen name of 4Real has been rejected by the government registry.

Pat and Sheena Wheaton say they will get around the decision by the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages by officially naming their son Superman but referring to him as 4Real, the New Zealand Herald newspaper has reported.

The Wheatons decided on the name after seeing the baby for the first time in an ultrasound scan and realizing their baby was "for real."

They decided 4Real was the best way to write it, but the name was rejected because the registrar said a name had to be a sequence of characters.

Pat Wheaton said he was considering appealing against the decision through the courts, but whatever happens he won't be budged on his choice.

"No matter what its going to stay 4Real," Wheaton told the Herald, "I'm certainly not a quitter."

A spokesman for the Department of Internal Affairs, which operates the registry told the Herald discussions with the Wheatons about their son's name were continuing.

The baby is now two months old, after the Wheatons first applied to register his name in later June.

Female mice just a sniff away from male sex drive By Ishani Ganguli

Female mice just a sniff away from male sex drive By Ishani Ganguli
1 hour, 55 minutes ago



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Female mice became sexually voracious and tried to mate like males after scientists disabled a small sensory organ, casting fresh light on how gender-specific behavior develops in animals.

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The difference seems to lie in how male and female mice use the vomeronasal organ to process pheromones, said Catherine Dulac, the Harvard biologist who led the research published in the journal Nature Sunday.

Pheromones are chemical signals that many animals, including humans, use to communicate socially and sexually.

The vomeronasal organ, found in the noses of some animals but not in people or higher primates, is a key processing center for pheromones.

Scientists had long attributed aggressive male mating tactics to a testosterone-induced hard-wiring of male brains.

"Here you have females that never had male hormones but have perfectly male behavior," Dulac said in a telephone interview.

In female mice, pheromones normally suppress male sex behaviors and activate female ones, the research suggests.

"This comes as a surprise to think that the neural circuitry for male behavior had been sitting in the female brain all this time," said Mark Breedlove, a neuroscientist at Michigan State University not involved in the study.

The researchers said they bred female mice without a gene critical to the vomeronasal organ's function. They also sliced the organ from otherwise normal adult females.

In both cases, the females pursued cage mates aggressively, sniffing their rears and mounting them. They turned to other male mating behaviors, such as pelvic thrusts, while eschewing typically female roles like nesting and nursing.

"You feel sorry for the males. You imagine they're confused," Breedlove said in a telephone interview.

The females did not limit themselves to males, with some trying to mate with other females. It turns out female mice need the vomeronasal organ to tell the sexes apart, just as males have in earlier studies, the researchers said.

The role of pheromones in humans is more controversial.

"We're not so olfactory or pheromonal as mice or rats," Breedlove said.

"On the other hand, it does make you wonder if humans also contain both sets of neural circuitry in the brain, and if something other than odors is responsible for determining which set we'll use as we grow up."

Nine in 10 Americans say ban texting while driving 1 hour, 59 minutes ago

Nine in 10 Americans say ban texting while driving 1 hour, 59 minutes ago



NEW YORK (Reuters) - Ninety-one percent of Americans believe sending text messages while driving is as dangerous as driving after having a couple of drinks, but 57 percent admit to doing it, a poll released Tuesday said.

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The Harris Interactive survey commissioned by mobile messaging service Pinger Inc. found 89 percent of respondents believe texting while driving is dangerous and should be outlawed.

Even so, 66 percent of the adults surveyed who drive and use text messaging told pollsters they had read text messages or e-mails while driving. Fifty-seven percent admitted to sending them.

The state of Washington in May passed the first ban in the United States on texting while driving and at least six other states including New York, California and Florida are considering similar legislation, Pinger said in a statement releasing the survey results.

The survey found that men and women sent text messages while driving at equal rates but that the young did so more frequently. Sixty-four percent of those who admitted to sending text messages while driving were aged 18 to 34 while 6 percent were 55 or older.

The poll surveyed 2,049 U.S. adults from June 29 to July 3, giving the survey a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Do I have to draw a map for you? 1 hour, 59 minutes ago

Do I have to draw a map for you? 1 hour, 59 minutes ago



London (Reuters) - As many as 11 million British motorists are unable to read a basic road map, according to a survey released Monday.

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The poll revealed over three quarters of British drivers were unable to identify the motorway map symbol, while only one percent of motorists would pass the Cub Scout Map Reader badge test.

"It's pretty embarrassing the majority of Cub Scouts have better map-reading skills than the majority of the adult population," said Colin Batabyal, head of underwriting and business development at eSure, which carried out the survey.

Sixteen percent of British drivers have become so heavily reliant on satellite navigation systems that they have given up keeping a map in their car.

"It's time for motorists to take a refresher in map-reading skills," said Scott Sinclair of national mapping agency Ordnance Survey. "Technology is great but the batteries won't run out on a paper map.

"No serious hill walker would rely totally on a GPS device in case the power goes or the signal is lost, so it should be the same for the motorist," added Sinclair.

The survey -- based on a poll of 1,000 UK drivers -- estimated Britons' poor map-reading skills resulted in 36 billion wasted miles being driven each year.

Telekom model waits 3 months for phone line 1 hour, 59 minutes ago

Telekom model waits 3 months for phone line 1 hour, 59 minutes ago



BERLIN (Reuters) - A fashion model who features in a high-profile advertising campaign for Deutsche Telekom has threatened to seek another provider after waiting three months for the company to install a new phone line at her apartment.

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The 27-year-old model, known as Dora, can be seen smiling brightly in posters across Germany for Telekom's new high speed connection service. But she told Bild newspaper Tuesday she was fed up with waiting for her Berlin home to be connected.

"I'll give them another week but that's it. After that, I'm going to switch to another provider," the model said.

A Deutsche Telekom spokesman could not be reached for comment. But Bild quoted a Telekom official saying they would be in touch with Dora right away.

Polish officer held for allowing crops at airbase 1 hour, 10 minutes ago

Polish officer held for allowing crops at airbase 1 hour, 10 minutes ago



WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland's anti-corruption police have detained an air force commander for allowing private companies to grow crops at an airbase, PAP news agency said on Sunday. He could face 10 years in prison.

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"Since at least 2000, airbase commander Col. Eygeniusz G. had allowed private firms to raise crops free of charge on nearly 100 hectares (250 acres) of airbase land," the Central Anti-Corruption Agency (CAA) said in a communique.

The airbase is at Malbork in northern Poland.

The CAA, set up last year to spearhead the conservative government's across-the-board war on corruption, did not rule out additional arrests connected with fuel abuses at the airbase, the communique said.

Pencil removed from woman's head after 55 years 1 hour, 10 minutes ago

Pencil removed from woman's head after 55 years 1 hour, 10 minutes ago



BERLIN (Reuters) - A 59-year-old German woman has had most of a pencil removed from inside her head after suffering nearly her whole life with the headaches and nosebleeds it caused, Bild newspaper reported Monday.

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Margret Wegner fell over carrying the pencil in her hand when she was four.

"The pencil went right through my skin -- and disappeared into my head," Wegner told the newspaper.

It narrowly missed vital parts of her brain. At the time no one dared operate, but now technology has improved sufficiently for doctors to be able to remove it.

Most of the pencil, some three inches long, was taken out in an operation at a private Berlin clinic, but the tip had grown in so firmly that it was impossible to remove.

Chicken and rice ends thief's toilet trauma 1 hour, 11 minutes ago

Chicken and rice ends thief's toilet trauma 1 hour, 11 minutes ago



KOLKATA, India (Reuters) - Dozens of bananas failed to do the trick but an Indian thief has finally produced a gold necklace he had snatched and then swallowed after police fed him a hearty meal of chicken, rice and local bread.

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Sheikh Mohsin, 35, grabbed the 45,000-rupee ($1,115) necklace from a woman in the eastern city of Kolkata Friday and popped it into his mouth when cornered by police.

Officers then fed him 40 bananas over a few hours believing they would act as a purgative, and sat back and waited for results.

Mohsin passed an uncomfortable night in jail, but not the piece of jewelry.

Police said Sunday he was then given more substantial fare.

"Now he wants to go free and doesn't want to even hear about bananas any more," senior officer Gyanwant Singh told Reuters.

A tired and rueful Mohsin was, however, staring at 3 years in jail if convicted, Singh added.

"Bananas were good enough for another thief who had swallowed an ornament a few months ago, but Mohsin was definitely a tough cookie," said one clearly impressed police constable

No more crispy duck served at toilets 1 hour, 11 minutes ago

No more crispy duck served at toilets 1 hour, 11 minutes ago



BEIJING (Reuters) - Food stalls attached to Beijing's public toilets will be removed in good time for next year's Olympics, state media said Saturday.

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Complaints over toilets with poor sanitation and toilet operators turning them into commercial operations led to the ban, which comes into force in October.

"It is not proper to sell soft drinks or snacks right at the toilets," the Beijing News said, citing sources within the Beijing Municipal Administration Commission.

"The city authorities also plan to publish a toilet guide, provide toilet information over the telephone and the Internet and erect more road signs to help toilet users."

Billboards near toilets will also be banned, Xinhua news agency said.

Notoriously polluted Beijing is cleaning up its act before it hosts the Olympics. It has also announced crackdowns on spitting and smelly taxis.

Blind man arrested for driving car 1 hour, 11 minutes ago

Blind man arrested for driving car 1 hour, 11 minutes ago



TALLINN (Reuters) - Police in the Baltic state of Estonia stopped a man who was driving erratically at the weekend, only to find he was blind.

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The 20-year-old was driving in the southern city of Tartu early Sunday -- helped by instructions from his 16-year-old passenger.

"At first they thought he was just drunk, but the man kept missing the tube for the breath test, then they realized he was blind" and arrested him, Tartu Police spokeswoman Marge Kohtla said Monday.

I don't care if I'm richest in world... By Chris Aspin

I don't care if I'm richest in world... By Chris Aspin
1 hour, 1 minute ago



MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim, who is estimated by some calculations to be wealthier than Microsoft founder Bill Gates, said Thursday he did not care if he was the world's richest person.

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"It's water off a duck's back to me," the cigar-smoking Slim told foreign correspondents. "I don't know if I'm No. 1, No. 20, or No. 2,000. It doesn't matter."

In July, a journalist who tracks the fortunes of wealthy Mexicans said Slim was worth an estimated $67.8 billion and had overtaken Gates as the world's richest person.

Slim hit the No. 1 spot after a recent surge in the share price of his America Movil, Latin America's largest cell phone company, according to Eduardo Garcia of the online financial publication Sentido Comun.

Garcia said that made him close to $8.6 billion wealthier than Gates, whose estimated worth was $59.2 billion.

Slim, 67, told foreign journalists at a luncheon on Thursday that making sure his job was compatible with his family or personal life was more important than his wealth.

Forbes magazine reported in April that Slim had overtaken billionaire U.S. investor Warren Buffett for the No. 2 spot in the world's richest stakes, but it is not scheduled to recalculate Slim's wealth until next year.

Slim, known for his Midas touch in turning struggling businesses into profit-making machines, told Reuters this year he did not calculate his fortune on a regular basis.

In Mexico, a small elite holds most of the country's wealth and about half the population lives on less than $5 a day.

Slim said Thursday his charitable foundations planned to invest $300 million in the next few years to build 100 schools in poor regions of Mexico that will focus on digital education. The plan would later be expanded throughout Latin America

On-air bottom pincher gets police warning 1 hour, 2 minutes ago

On-air bottom pincher gets police warning 1 hour, 2 minutes ago



LONDON (Reuters) - A British man who pinched the bottom of a television presenter live on air has been cautioned, police said on Thursday.

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Sue Turton, who described the incident as "humiliating" and a "public goosing," was reporting on floods in Oxford last week on Channel 4 when a shaggy-haired Rufus Burdett strolled past and pinched her.

Distracted for just a moment, Turton maintained her composure and completed her report.

A video clip of the bottom-pinching has been viewed nearly 500,000 times on the Web site YouTube.

Police used the footage to identify Burdett and gave him a caution. They had considered imposing an 80 pound ($162) fine for a public order offence but decided against it.

Turton, who told police she did not want to press charges, said she found "the matter quite humiliating and somewhat disrespectful to the plight of those I was reporting about."

Two bouts of flooding, the worst in Britain in 60 years, killed at least nine people, damaged houses and destroyed crops, potentially costing the country about 3 billion pounds, according to insurers.

Turton also said the bottom pinching reflected a gender bias in society.

"Male reporters would never be treated to a public goosing," she said. "Should the women of my profession not expect the same respect?"

Art gallery says Dutch master is fake 57 minutes ago

Art gallery says Dutch master is fake 57 minutes ago



CANBERRA (Reuters) - A painting long thought to be the work of Dutch master Vincent van Gogh has been proven a fake after a series of tests by art experts in Amsterdam, Australian gallery officials said Friday.

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The painting, titled "Head of a Man," has been in the possession of the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia's second largest city of Melbourne since 1940 and was estimated to have been worth A$25 million ($21.4 million) if authentic.

Gallery officials Friday said while they were disappointed at the finding, experts at the van Gogh museum in Amsterdam found the work was painted during the artist's lifetime, although it had stylistic differences to van Gogh's work.

"The reattribution of paintings is part of the daily life in any major gallery with a large and complex collection," National Gallery of Victoria director Gerard Vaughan said on Friday.

Doubts were raised about the painting's authenticity a year ago when critics viewed it at an exhibition in Edinburgh, Scotland, prompting its owners to send the work to the van Gogh museum in Amsterdam for further examination. The painting, portrait of an unknown man, was first brought to Australia by the late newspaper publisher Keith Murdoch in 1939 as part of a traveling exhibition.

Vaughan said the painting was purchased as a van Gogh, and had been accepted as a van Gogh for more than a decade before it was purchased.

Nissan gets testy with drunk drivers By Dan Sloan

Nissan gets testy with drunk drivers By Dan Sloan
57 minutes ago



OPPAMA, Japan (Reuters) - Beer-breaths beware. A new concept car with breathalyzer-like detection systems may provide even greater traction for Japanese efforts to keep impaired drivers off the road.

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Nissan's alcohol-detection sensors check odor, sweat and driver awareness, issuing a voice alert from the navigation system and locking up the ignition if necessary.

Odor sensors on the driver and passenger seats read alcohol levels, while a detector in the gear-shift knob measures the perspiration of the driver's palm when starting the car.

Other carmakers with detection systems include Sweden's Volvo, which has developed technology in which drivers blow into a measuring unit in the seat belt before an engine can start.

But Nissan's car includes a mounted camera that monitors alertness by eye scan, ringing bells and issuing a voice message in Japanese or English if a driver should pull over and rest.

The car technology is still in development, but general manager Kazuhiro Doi says the combination of detection systems will ultimately keep an eye on who's behind the wheel.

"We've placed odor detectors and a sweat sensor on the gear shift, but for example if the gear-shift sensor was bypassed by a passenger using it instead of the driver, the facial recognition system would be used," said Doi.

Also keeping a short leash on drivers, car seat belts tighten if drowsiness is detected, while an on-road monitor checks if a car is keeping its lane properly.

Japan's No. 3 carmaker has no specific timetable for marketing, but aims to yoke all technology to cut the number of fatalities involving its vehicles to half 1995 levels by 2015.

Nissan's Doi says they still have to distil exactly what impairment means: "If you drink one beer, it's going to register, so we need to study what's the appropriate level for the system to activate."

Nissan gets testy with drunk drivers By Dan Sloan

Nissan gets testy with drunk drivers By Dan Sloan
57 minutes ago



OPPAMA, Japan (Reuters) - Beer-breaths beware. A new concept car with breathalyzer-like detection systems may provide even greater traction for Japanese efforts to keep impaired drivers off the road.

ADVERTISEMENT

Nissan's alcohol-detection sensors check odor, sweat and driver awareness, issuing a voice alert from the navigation system and locking up the ignition if necessary.

Odor sensors on the driver and passenger seats read alcohol levels, while a detector in the gear-shift knob measures the perspiration of the driver's palm when starting the car.

Other carmakers with detection systems include Sweden's Volvo, which has developed technology in which drivers blow into a measuring unit in the seat belt before an engine can start.

But Nissan's car includes a mounted camera that monitors alertness by eye scan, ringing bells and issuing a voice message in Japanese or English if a driver should pull over and rest.

The car technology is still in development, but general manager Kazuhiro Doi says the combination of detection systems will ultimately keep an eye on who's behind the wheel.

"We've placed odor detectors and a sweat sensor on the gear shift, but for example if the gear-shift sensor was bypassed by a passenger using it instead of the driver, the facial recognition system would be used," said Doi.

Also keeping a short leash on drivers, car seat belts tighten if drowsiness is detected, while an on-road monitor checks if a car is keeping its lane properly.

Japan's No. 3 carmaker has no specific timetable for marketing, but aims to yoke all technology to cut the number of fatalities involving its vehicles to half 1995 levels by 2015.

Nissan's Doi says they still have to distil exactly what impairment means: "If you drink one beer, it's going to register, so we need to study what's the appropriate level for the system to activate."

Bad bosses get promoted, not punished? By Rachel Breitman

Bad bosses get promoted, not punished? By Rachel Breitman
55 minutes ago



NEW YORK (Reuters) - How do people get ahead in the workplace? One way seems to be by making their subordinates miserable, according to a study released Friday.

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In the study to be presented at a conference on management this weekend, almost two-thirds of the 240 participants in an online survey said the local workplace tyrant was either never censured or was promoted for domineering ways.

"The fact that 64.2 percent of the respondents indicated that either nothing at all or something positive happened to the bad leader is rather remarkable -- remarkably disturbing," wrote the study's authors, Anthony Don Erickson, Ben Shaw and Zha Agabe of Bond University in Australia.

Despite their success in the office, spiteful supervisors can cause serious malaise for their subordinates, the study suggested, citing nightmares, insomnia, depression and exhaustion as symptoms of serving a brutal boss.

The authors advocated immediate intervention by industry chiefs to stop fledgling office authoritarians from rising up the ranks.

"As with any sort of cancer, the best alternative to prevention is early detection," they wrote.

They faulted senior managers for not recognizing the signs of workplace strife wrought by bad bosses. "The leaders above them who did nothing, who rewarded and promoted bad leaders ... represent an additional problem."

The study will be presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management, a research and teaching organization with nearly 17,000 members, from Sunday to Wednesday in Philadelphia.