Don't Panic! Lighten Up!S

Padlock

Jail me, urges chocolate-eating Dutchman

A Dutch journalist asked an Amsterdam court on Friday to convict him for eating chocolate, saying by doing so he was benefiting from child slavery on cocoa farms in Ivory Coast.

Teun van de Keuken, 35, is seeking a jail sentence to raise consumer awareness and force the cocoa and chocolate industry to take tougher measures to stamp out child labour.

"If I am found guilty of this crime, any chocolate consumer can be prosecuted after that. I hope that people would stop buying chocolate and thus hurt the sales of big corporations and make them do something about the problem," van de Keuken said.

Wolf

Deputies find alligator during drug bust

Pierce County sheriff's deputies were startled when they entered a house near here during a drug bust and found- an alligator.

"It's alarming in that it's big enough and its mouth looked big enough, that if it were to bite it would definitely do some serious damage," sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer said of the 4-foot-long alligator.


Heart

Missing for 25 years after getting on wrong bus

BANGKOK - A 76-year-old Malay Muslim woman from southern Thailand who got on the wrong bus 25 years ago and ended up living at the other end of the country has been reunited with her family, officials and domestic media said on Tuesday.

Unable to speak, read or write Thai, Jaeyaena Beuraheng boarded a bus in Malaysia thinking it was bound for Narathiwat, one of three Muslim-majority provinces in Buddhist Thailand's far south.

Magnify

Beware Pseudo-Skepticism - Randi is a Fraud

On January 29th, 2005, we were talking about the James Randi $1 Million Paranormal Challenge in the chat room. If you don't know what the Challenge is, the short version is that this ex-magician, James Randi, is willing to give a million dollars to anyone who can prove something paranormal. It's common for people to ask us why we don't take the Challenge with all the stuff we talk about on PsiPog. Clearly we qualify for the paranormal, and it would seem like easy money. While talking in the chat room, annie made the observation that the prize was in the form of bonds, and not cash. She tried to explain to me how bonds can be "worth" a million dollars legally, but in reality could be completely worthless.

Wine

Cheddarvision TV

Cheese lovers can now watch cheddar mature 24 hours a day on the internet.

West country farmers set up the Cheddarvision website featuring a 25 kg block of cheddar, reports ITN.

Farmer Tom Calver said: "How many other cheeses do you know of on the internet that have their own webcam and a live feed to the internet? I don't think many."

No Entry

Something is rotten in UK: School bans Mother's Day cards

A school has banned the making of Mother's Day cards because the headteacher does not want to upset children without a mother.

Helen Starkey has ended the tradition in the interests of "sensitivity".

"More than five per cent of children here are separated from their birth mother and have either no contact or no regular contact with their mother," she said.

"This decision was not taken because of any philosophical attitude towards the celebration of Mothering Sunday, but to protect a significant number of children in our school.

Bizarro Earth

German court jails school girl for truancy

A 15-year-old girl from the German town of Goerlitz will be jailed for two weeks as punishment for persistently skipping classes, the education ministry for the eastern state of Saxony said on Wednesday.

The ministry said the decision was made by a district court and came after the girl's parents failed to pay a fine and the girl herself refused to do community service.


Clock

Sorry I'm 25 years late - I got on the wrong bus to go shopping

It was just a normal shopping trip when Jaeyana Beuraheng bade farewell to her eight children as she left to cross the border into Malaysia. But it would be 25 years before she would find her way home.

Now, at the age of 76, she has been reunited with her family and has finally told how her misfortune began when she boarded the wrong bus.

Mrs Jaeyana would almost certainly have made it home without mishap had it not been that she speaks only Yawi, a dialect spoken by Muslims in southern Thailand. But unable to write, read, or speak Thai or English she boarded a bus for Bangkok, about 800 miles (1,300km) north, by mistake rather than travelling back to her home in Narathiwat.

Heart

Lovers Locked in an eternal embrace



©Daily Mail
Their loving embrace has lasted an eternity - well 5000 years to be precise

No Entry

'Holy relic' ad angers Russians

The Russian Orthodox Church has expressed indignation at an attempt to sell a skull and bone allegedly belonging to Saint Philipp.

The advert for the remains appeared on a Russian website.

It described the relic as "remains of an Orthodox saint, in good condition, with an inscription on the cranium confirming the saint's name".