what-a-stupid-world

2011-11-21T17:10:00.000-08:00

2011-09-04T07:41:00.001-07:00

2010-12-06T13:14:00.001-08:00

Noisy children no longer verboten in Berlin

2010-02-19T02:16:00.000-08:00

Children in the German capital Berlin are to be exempt from strict laws on noise pollution.

An amendment to the city's law now makes it "fundamentally and socially tolerable" for members of the younger generation to make a racket.

Berlin has become the first of Germany's 16 federal states to adopt such legislation.

But all Berliners - children included - must continue to respect the official quiet time at night and all day Sunday.

Until now, only church bells, emergency sirens, snow ploughs and tractors have fallen outside the stringent rules on excessive noise in Germany.

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Dye-job donkeys wow Gaza children

2009-10-09T03:52:00.000-07:00

A zoo in Gaza has found a novel way to get around Israeli restrictions on the importation of animals by partly dyeing two donkeys so they resemble zebras.

The owner of the Marah Land zoo in Gaza City said he had used masking tape and black hair dye, applied with a paint-brush, to disguise the white females.

Mohammed Bargouthi said it would have cost him more than $40,000 to bring in a real zebra via smuggling tunnels.

Children seemed delighted by the new additions and happily played with them.

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2009-09-30T04:48:00.001-07:00

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Airborne rabbis fight off swine flu

2009-08-13T04:05:00.000-07:00

A group of rabbis and Jewish mystics have taken to the skies over Israel, praying and blowing ceremonial trumpets to ward off swine flu.

About 50 religious leaders circled over the country on Monday, chanting prayers and blowing the horns called "shofars".

The flight's aim was "to stop the pandemic so people will stop dying from it," Rabbi Yitzhak Batzri was quoted as saying in Yedioth Aharanot newspaper.

The flu is often referred to as H1N1 in Israel, where pigs are seen as unclean.

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Croatian cameraman fired over T-shirt message

2009-08-10T01:45:00.000-07:00

DPA - July 31st, 2009

ZAGREB - A Croatian cameraman was fired Friday after Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor took offence to a message on a T-shirt the cameraman was wearing at the government press conference.

RTL television cameraman Thursday afternoon wore a T-shirt with the words: “I do not need sex, the government f***s me every day”.

Kosor said the sign was insulting, while the cameraman defended himself by saying that it was the only clean shirt he had.

RTL television on Friday fired the cameraman, saying he had behaved unprofessionally and damaged RTL’s reputation.

The Croatian Journalists Association immediately protested and asked the cameraman to be reinstated.

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Woman who missed Flight 447 is killed in car crash

2009-06-12T01:38:00.000-07:00

An Italian woman who arrived late for the Air France plane flight that crashed in the Atlantic last week has been killed in a car accident.

Johanna Ganthaler, a pensioner from Bolzano-Bozen province, had been on holiday in Brazil with her husband Kurt and missed Air France Flight 447 after turning up late at Rio de Janeiro airport on May 31.

All 228 people aboard lost their lives after the plane crashed into the Atlantic four hours into its flight to Paris.

The ANSA news agency reported that the couple had managed to pick up a flight from Rio the following day.

It said that Ms Ganthaler died when their car veered across a road in Kufstein, Austria, and swerved into an oncoming truck. Her husband was seriously injured.

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Family see Jesus image in Marmite

2009-05-29T05:29:00.000-07:00

The family said they found the image comforting

It may not be immediately obvious to everyone, but one family are convinced they can see the face of Jesus on the lid of a jar of Marmite.

Claire Allen, 36, said she was the first to notice the image on the underside of the lid as she was putting the yeast spread on her son's toast.

Her husband Gareth, 37, said he could not believe his eyes when he saw it.

Mr Allen, of Ystrad, Rhondda, said: "The kids are still eating it, but we kept the lid."

He explained: "Claire saw it first and called her dad to come and take a photo of it.

"When I first looked at it I wasn't sure, but when I moved it away from me it started coming out. I thought yeah, she's right - that's the image of Jesus.

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First picture of neglected 'Mowgli' girl, 5, who was raised by dogs

2009-05-29T02:51:00.000-07:00

This is the first picture of a five-year-old 'Mowgli' girl raised by dogs after her parents neglected her.

Natasha Mikhailova was kept locked in a room with dogs and cats for several years, causing her to behave like an animal. She does not speak, laps up her food and drink with her tongue, and walks on all fours.

Though living in filthy conditions in the same home as her father Viktor Lozhkin, 27, and grandparents in the Siberian city of Chita, child experts say she was treated as a family pet.

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Gunners fan hangs himself after United victory

2009-05-06T07:31:00.000-07:00

May 6, 2009

An Arsenal fan hung himself following his team's 4-1 aggregate drubbing by arch-rivals Manchester United in the Champions League semi-final, police said.

Suleiman Alphonso Omondi, a 29-year-old Kenyan living in the capital Nairobi's Embakasi neighbourhood, hanged himself in his Arsenal shirt after the match.

"We were watching the match at Bamba 70 pub, and when Arsenal was defeated, Suleiman just walked out in protest and he was crying," Calvin Otieno, one of his friends, said.

"We didn't know he was going to hang himself until this morning when we received the reports and came here to find his body at the balcony," Otieno said outside the deceased's home.

Arsenal slumped to a 3-1 defeat at home in the second leg of the Champions League semi-final, capping a disappointing season for the Gunners who were already out of the Premier League title race early in the season.

German couple abandon three children in Italian pizzeria after telling staff they were going for a cigarette

2009-04-22T00:53:00.000-07:00

Italian police were last night searching for a couple who abandoned three children - including an eight month old baby - at a pizzeria.

The baby and two siblings of two and four were left after the couple told staff they were 'going out for a cigarette.'

But staff grew suspicious when they did not return and alerted police who raced to the scene and took the children away.

Italian police are searching for a German couple after they abandoned three children at an Italian restaurant on Sunday (file photograph of Italian police)

Today police named the couple as Ina Caterina Remhof, 26, the mother of the children and her partner Sascha Schmidt, 24, who is her companion and not the father.

Police in Aosta, where the children were dumped, said the couple were German and had arrived in Italy by car on Sunday, stopping at the pizzeria after travelling through the Mt Blanc tunnel.

Waiting staff said the children were 'noisy and boisterous' as they tucked into their pizzas while they looked for the couple in the car park and toilets.

Owner Carmelo Casella said:'They looked like any other couple. They ate their pizza and said they were going outside for a cigarette and would be back in a few minutes.

'They gave me a card for the bill and the children were noisy and boisterous and eating their pizzas without a care in the world.

'After about ten minutes they hadn't come back so we looked for them in the toilets and the car park but there was no sign of them.'

Police said that the couple's Ford Fiesta was found a short distance away and they were examining notes and other personal possessions found inside.

Descriptions of the couple were also released with Remhof said to be 1.7m tall, of average build, with straight brown hair and she was wearing light blue jeans and a grey hooded top.

Schmidt is 1.8m tall, with short dark hair, thin build and unshaven. He was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt with the word 'London' on it.

Last night police said the maternal grandmother of the children had been traced in Germany but released no further details.

The children were examined by a doctor at Aosta hospital and then placed in the care of local social services.

It also emerged that the couple had checked into a local hotel the morning they disappeared and a credit card they had tried to use to pay for the room was out of date.

Police said the couple had financial difficulties and a spokesman said.

Bones which lay undisturbed in the branches for 29 years

2009-04-03T03:26:00.000-07:00

Bones which lay undisturbed in the branches for 29 years A skeleton which lay undisturbed in a tree for 29 years has been found in Germany.

A teenage boy walking in the woods of Bruckberg, Bavaria in southern Germany made the gruesome discovery. He spotted what looked like human bones in the branches half way up a tree and quickly called the police.

Officers climbed up the 11 metre-high tree to find the remains of a man.Investigations revealed it was the body of a 69-year-old pensioner who disappeared in 1980. It is believed the man tied himself to a branch of the tree with rope and shot himself - and then lay undiscovered for decades.

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'Acne lights' used to stop young people gathering

2009-03-27T02:51:00.000-07:00

Pink "acne lights" are being used in a bid to prevent young people gathering near underpasses in Mansfield.

The lights, put up in two underpasses in the town, are the same kind used by dermatologists to show up pimples and acne blemishes.

The project, championed by Layton Burroughs Residents' Association following consultation with Nottinghamshire Police, is set to be extended to a third site.

A spokesman for The National Youth Agency said the use of pink lights was equivalent to treating young people as the enemy.

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