Don't Panic! Lighten Up!S


Ambulance

Doctors save man with vodka drip

Australian doctors have kept an Italian tourist alive by feeding him vodka through a drip for three days, medical staff in Queensland say.

The 24-year-old man, who had swallowed a poison in an apparent suicide attempt, was treated while in a coma.


HAL9000

Space station ma'am gets a whip

US astronaut Peggy Whitson has been given an unusual gift a day before she is due to blast off to take charge of the International Space Station.


Display

Japanese workers in Wikipedia row

Japan's Agriculture Ministry has reprimanded six civil servants who spent hours at work editing articles on Wikipedia - mainly about robots.

One man was found to have made 260 entries to articles about Gundam, a popular animated series featuring giant robotic fighting machines.

©AP
Gundam is a popular animated science-fiction series

Question

US man seeks change for $1m note

A man who handed over a counterfeit million-dollar bill to a cashier at a Pittsburgh supermarket and asked for change has been arrested.

Police told the BBC the man became abusive when a manager at the Giant Eagle store confiscated the fake note.


Smiley

Dog saves family from fire blamed on cat

GREENVILLE, Maine - Thumper, a black Labrador retriever, is getting credit for saving a Greenville man when a fire swept through his home.

Roland Cote said his wife and their 7-year-old grandson were away when the blaze started early Sunday in a converted two-story garage. He said Thumper grabbed him by the arm to wake him, leaving just enough time for him to dial 911 before fleeing the fast-moving fire.

Smiley

Crazy kangaroo causes havoc on racetrack

This crazed kangaroo defied death when it hopped onto a racetrack and caused havoc for the drivers.

The panicking marsupial bounded into the path of several cars when it somehow found its way onto the track at Australia's premier touring car race, the Bathurst 1000, in New South Wales.

Drivers veered off the track to avoid the creature as it leapt along with the flow of the traffic for one 100 yards.

Smiley

Ig Nobel Prizes a Mouthful of Fun

Boston - Good news for your Viagra-using hamster: On his next trip to Europe he'll bounce back from jet lag faster than his unmedicated friends.

The researchers who revealed that bizarre fact earned one of 10 Ig Nobel prizes awarded Thursday night for quirky, funny and sometimes legitimate scientific achievements, from the mathematics of wrinkled sheets to U.S. military efforts to make a "gay bomb.''

Smiley

Survey finds people are in committed, destructive relationships with PCs

According to recent research, people spend more time with their computers than with their spouses/significant others (64%). 84% claim to be more dependent on their computers today than they were three years ago. 19% admitted to wanting to throw their computers out the nearest window when it gave them problems.

Smiley

Woman Sues Kmart Over Toilet Paper Tax

A woman has sued Kmart for allegedly collecting a 7 percent state sales tax on a nontaxable item: a 12-pack of toilet tissue. Mary Bach alleges a Kmart department store in the Pittsburgh suburb of Monroeville improperly collected the tax on the $3.99 item, charging her $4.27 - or 28 cents too much.

Magic Hat

'World's biggest diamond' revealed as fake

The discovery of the "world's biggest diamond" last August sent ripples of excitement around the world. It was said to be twice the size of the Cullinan, or Great Star of Africa, discovered near Pretoria in 1905.

Neither the South Africa Diamond Board, nor the Diamond and Jewellery Federation, the trade body, confirmed its authenticity. But the warnings were drowned out by the breathless claims of one Brett Jolly, a spokesman for the mining firm Two Point Five Construction, who had announced the stone was being transported to a bank vault in Johannesburg "until we calm down and decide what we are going to do".