Don't Panic! Lighten Up!S


Document

Customers get billion-dollar power bills


Associated Press
Fri, 23 Feb 2007 08:46 UTC
WEATHERFORD, Texas - Perhaps his $24 billion electric bill will teach Richard Redden not to leave the heat running. Thanks to a printing error, Redden and more than 1,300 Weatherford utility customers this week received billion-dollar electric bills marked as late notices.

Irving-bases DataProse, which prints customer bills for Weatherford Electric, said the company was embarrassed by the error.
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Sheeple

Jesus appears atop mobile phone mast

Lester Haines
The Register
Thu, 22 Feb 2007 12:43 UTC
Large crowds gathered yesterday around a mobile phone mast in the northern Ugandan town of Gulu after locals spotted Jesus Christ atop the structure, Kampala's The Monitor reports.

Witness Eric Odongo, who claimed he "first saw clouds on top of the mast and that Jesus appeared to be standing amidst clouds", told the paper: "I saw Jesus standing on top of the mast. He was standing between two people and was putting on a white cloth. His hair was black."
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Attention

Psychopathy Exposed: a literary liar and her phoney love

By Kathy Marks in Sydney
UK Independent
Thu, 22 Feb 2007 09:08 UTC
She duped the literary world into believing that she fled Jordan with a fatwa on her head after her best friend was murdered in an "honour killing". Now Norma Khouri is the star of a film that tries to help her to clear her name, but ends up painting her as a compulsive liar.

Khouri's "memoir", Forbidden Love, published in 2003, sold half a million copies in 15 countries. The book, which recounts the fatal love affair between her Muslim friend Dalia and a Christian army officer, tapped into the apparently unquenchable appetite for "confessional" autobiographies.
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Coffee

In Hong Kong, eat up or you'll be fined


AFP
Thu, 22 Feb 2007 07:18 UTC
Hong Kong restaurants have come up with a novel way to cut down on waste from food leftovers -- threatening to fine diners who don't eat up.

A number of restaurants in the Chinese city alert customers that they will charge them between five and 20 Hong Kong dollars (0.64-2.5 US dollars) if they leave any food on their plates, the South China Morning Post reported.

It said a handful of restaurants serving do-it-yourself hotpots, sushi and buffets had set up the system.
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Question

Sex attacks blamed on bat demon


BBC News
Wed, 21 Feb 2007 22:40 UTC
Men in parts of Tanzania's main city, Dar es Salaam, are living in fear of a night-time sex attacker.

A BBC correspondent says the attacks are being blamed by some on a demon called "Popo Bawa" meaning winged bat.

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No Entry

A Giant Doom Magnet

MAUREEN DOWD
Free Democracy
Wed, 21 Feb 2007 13:55 UTC
So I was sitting around watching "Oprah" yesterday afternoon when I realized how I could stop W. and Crazy Dick from blowing up any more stuff.

All I needed to do was Unleash my Unfathomable Magnetic Power into the Universe!

Energy flows where intention goes. Or maybe it's the other way around.

Anyhow, Oprah taught me how to stop abusing myself and learn The Secret. I finally get it: because the Law of Attraction dictates that like attracts like, my negativity toward the president and vice president is attracting their negativity and multiplying the negative vibrations in the cosmos, creating some sort of giant doom magnet.
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Crusader

Fortean = anti-evolution? Not Even Close


Doubtful
Wed, 21 Feb 2007 09:43 UTC
The topic of creationism nearly makes me retch. I hate arguing about it, I hate even acknowledging that the fight even exists because it shouldn't. I must vent so indulge me.

The debate between creationists and evolutionists rages on these days over at Cryptomundo in a post opened solely for the two teams to duke it out. I would opine that it was a mistake to do that. These aren't kids who will give up fighting and make nice. It could end up with hard feelings and people leaving in a huff. I gotta keep telling myself not to read those types of posts and comments, and for all that's logical and sane, quit responding to the commentary! Alas, I didn't listen to myself and entered the fray.
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Question

Do you believe in ghosts? Now you can find out why...

BRIAN FERGUSON
Ediburgh News
Wed, 21 Feb 2007 09:40 UTC
MYSTERIES such as what makes men and women disagree and why people believe in ghosts are set to be explained at the Capital's annual science festival.

Top minds will also be exploring what makes cigarettes so addictive while children will have the chance to take part in robotic chariot races.
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Heart

Youngest Premature Baby's Survival Called a 'Miracle'

Catherine Elsworth
New York Sun / Daily Telegraph
Wed, 21 Feb 2007 08:48 UTC
The world's youngest surviving baby, born at 21 weeks and six days and weighing just 10 ounces, is due to be discharged from hospital this week after a battle for life described as miraculous.

With feet the size of an adult's little fingernail, Amillia Taylor measured 9.5 inches - not much longer than a ballpoint pen -when she was born at a Florida hospital on October 24.

The odds were stacked against her. Doctors consider babies who weigh less than 14.1 ounces to have no chance of survival. And no infant born before 23 weeks has survived until now.

But defying the odds, Amillia was breathing on her own when she was born by caesarean section and even made several attempts to cry.
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Wolf

Stumpy, an 8-day-old duckling born in Britain, has a rare mutation: 4 legs


Canadian Press
Wed, 21 Feb 2007 08:40 UTC
Webbed feet run in Stumpy's family, but he's the first to have four of them.

A rare mutation has left the eight-day-old duckling with two nearly full-sized legs behind the two he runs on. Nicky Janaway, a duck farmer in New Forest, Hampshire, 95 miles southwest of London, showed the duckling to reporters Saturday.

"It was absolutely bizarre. I was thinking 'he's got too many legs' and I kept counting 'one, two, three, four,'" Janaway said.
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