Don't Panic! Lighten Up!S


Snowman

Moscow student asks Santa to freeze his lecturers


RIA Novosti
Wed, 05 Dec 2007 00:49 UTC
A Moscow university student has sent a letter to Ded Moroz, Russia's version of Santa Claus, asking him to freeze all his lecturers, a source in Santa's official residence said on Tuesday.

Ded Moroz, whose official residence is near the Russian town of Veliky Ustyug, about 800 kms (500 miles) northeast of Moscow, comes to his temporary residence in Moscow's Kuzminskiy Park every November. This year he has so far received a total of 4,500 e-mails and 1,500 letters.

"A Moscow university student asked the New Year wizard to freeze all his lecturers for the period of mid-year exams," the source said.
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Monkey Wrench

Chimps Beat Humans on Memory Tasks

Bill Blakemore
ABC News
Tue, 04 Dec 2007 07:40 UTC


©Tetsuro Matsuzawa/ Kyoto/ Primate Research Institute/ AP Photo
This photo provided by the Primate Research Institute in Kyoto, Japan, show a chimpanzee named Ayumu as he performs the second stage of a memory test. The chimp must recall the location on a touch sensitive monitor of numerals that have changed to squares.

In a memory competition of man versus chimp, Japanese researchers found that chimpanzees performed better than humans.
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Calculator

Wachovia Bank Tells Man He Owes $211 Trillion


WSB Atlanta
Sun, 02 Dec 2007 19:03 UTC
It's one thing to bounce a check and it's another to be so far in the red Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Donald Trump combined couldn't come close to bailing you out. A Cobb County man got a letter from his bank with that very shocking news.

"And I open up the letter and I look at it and I'm like, 'No, you've got to be kidding me,' said Joe Martins.

Martins said he recently closed an account at Wachovia Bank and made good on an outstanding check. He just got a letter about the closure and his negative balance -- $211,010,028,257,303.00. That's $211 trillion.

©Unknown
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Black Cat

Cat Survives 19 Days With Jar on Head


Associated Press
Sun, 02 Dec 2007 18:55 UTC
Tabitha Cain has fed a feral cat she calls Wild Oats for several years, but now she's thinking of changing the feline's name to Survivor.

That's because she says the cat survived for 19 days with a peanut butter jar stuck on its head.

"We tried to get her, but being the type of cat you can't catch, she kept running and hiding," said Doretha Cain, Tabitha's mother.

The family saw the cat several times with the jar on its head and tried in vain to catch it. But after not seeing the cat for a week, the Cains feared the worst.
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Smiley

Video: NBC news host calls George W. Bush a monkey


MSNBC / YouTube
Fri, 30 Nov 2007 14:53 UTC
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Monkey Wrench

Police: Hershey Candy Looks Like Drugs

Marc Levy
Associated Press
Sun, 02 Dec 2007 04:41 UTC
New mint packets being sold by The Hershey Co. look nearly identical to the tiny heat-sealed bags used to sell illegal powdered drugs like crack, heroin and cocaine and glorify the drug trade, a Philadelphia police official said.

©AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
A Hershey Co.'s Ice Breakers Pacs product containing nickel-sized dissolvable pouches with a mint flavored powdered sweetener inside, is photographed in Harrisburg, Pa., Friday, Nov. 30, 2007. Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector William Blackburn told the Philadelphia Daily News that Ice Breakers Pacs look similar to the tiny heat-sealed bags used to sell illegal powdered drugs like crack, heroin and cocaine.
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Smiley

Thai King sparks pink shirt craze


BBC
Sat, 01 Dec 2007 14:01 UTC
Clothing stores in Thailand have seen a rush to buy pink shirts, thanks to a fashion craze sparked by the country's King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

Thais have been queuing in their hundreds to buy the shirts ever since the King left hospital last month wearing both a pink shirt and blazer.

The Phufa fashion chain said it had sold 40,000 pink shirts this month.

©AP
Clothing factories are working flat out to keep up with demand
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Take 2

Mafia boss arrested while watching Mafia TV show


Reuters
Fri, 30 Nov 2007 23:31 UTC
Italian police burst into the room of a suspected Mafia mobster in Sicily and arrested him as he watched a television show about the arrest of a Mafia boss, investigators said Friday.

©REUTERS/Carabiniere/Handout
Italian Carabinieri police accompany Michele Catalano (C) after his arrest in Palermo November 29, 2007.
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Beer

Who would want 40,000 pints of stolen beer? Guinness asks

David Sharrock
The Times
Fri, 30 Nov 2007 23:24 UTC
It couldn't have happened at a worse moment: just as Operation Freeflow was getting under way, putting more police on Dublin's streets as a pre-Christmas warning to drink-drivers, an opportunistic thief drove out of the Guinness brewery with 40,000 pints.

About 450 kegs of beer and stout were lifted from under the noses of security guards in what is believed to be the first raid on the historic St James's Gate Brewery at Victoria Quay along the River Liffey.
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Sherlock

Sticky Situation: Chocolate Price Fixing?


ABC News/Associated Press
Thu, 29 Nov 2007 22:23 UTC


©Getty Images

Toronto -- Regulators have launched an investigation into allegations that the Canadian divisions of Nestle, Cadbury, Hershey, Mars and others have teamed up in a price-fixing scheme in the multibillion-dollar Canadian business of chocolate bars, according to a media report.
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