Deadly attacks in southern Israel (BBC)
(At least six people have been killed in a series of attacks on vehicles in southern Israel, Israeli medics say. The attacks began when gunmen fired at an Israeli bus that was travelling near the Egyptian border.)
Bus plows over skater (New York Post)
(A woman rollerblading on the West Side yesterday was crushed by an MTA bus near the entrance to the Circle Line. The 67-year-old victim was struck by the M42 as it turned into the West 43rd Street driveway at around 8:10 a.m., and her leg was stuck under a tire for 15 agonizing minutes. "[The bus driver] didn't see her because she came from between the trees, and she was going fast," said Hosny Abdelaal, 56, who works for the parking facility at the pier. "I heard her screaming, 'Ahh! Ahh!'")
Obama's bus tour themes: Washington (not him) really screwed up and we should spend a lot more (LA Times)
(President Obama did some real good talking the last few days out there in Iowa and Minnesota and Illinois. Well, he did a lot of talking anyway. He made it sound as if he's been living in Peosta or Atkinson himself, the way he went on about all the misbehavior going on back there in Washington, D.C., where he has lived since January of 2005 and, since January of 2009, at taxpayer expense in the White House.)
Police Hope Camera and Evidence Will Lead Them to School Bus Sugar Vandals (FOX)
(Police are hopeful the person or people who vandalized buses in Grain Valley by pouring sugar into their gas tanks will be caught. They have several important pieces of evidence that they hope will lead them to the suspects. Sugar bags were left behind and cameras around the school likely captured the crime in progress.)
Bus barns unsafe for hybrids, says driver who caused gas leak (The Star Phoenix)
(A Saskatoon Transit driver who caused a major gas leak earlier this month says the city's bus barns are a catastrophe waiting to happen. Sean Murray was driving one of the fleet's eight hybrid diesel-electric buses into the barns earlier this month when the battery on top of the bus - which is too tall to be driven safely in most of the facility - hit a gas line and prompted the evacuation of the building.)
Two arrested in north Charlotte after party bus brawl (Charlotte Observer)
(Police say two people were arrested Thursday morning after a fight that broke out near and on a party bus in north Charlotte. The fight stemmed from a dispute between a man who was riding the bus and another man who was a patron in an uptown Charlotte club.)
CTA bus driver alerts police to Blue Line robbers (Chicago Tribune)
(A call from a CTA bus driver to police Tuesday led to the arrest of two men suspected of robbing a Blue Line passenger of his iPhone, officials said. Tuesday, a man was listening to music on his iPhone when he exited a train at the Harlem Avenue Station and was grabbed from behind by his backpack, according to the Cook County state's attorney's office.)
Pay with The Force? Tiny Island Nation Mints 'Star Wars' Currency (TIME)
(Four words you'd never expect to hear: "Use the coin, Luke."And you thought you were Star Wars die-hard. Apparently not as die-hard as the Pacific nation of Niue, a roughly 100-square-mile island located 1,500 miles northeast of New Zealand, sometimes called the "Rock of Polynesia," or just "The Rock" for short. These folks just opted to print coins adorned with color images of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Darth Vader and other Star Wars fan favorites. We're not kidding: actual, usable, carry-in-your-coin-purse change.)
Air passengers outraged by Gerard Depardieu's latest act (Vancouver Sun)
(French actor Urinates in cabin before takeoff when airliner's toilets are temporarily closed: 'You could clearly see he'd been drinking')
Abercrombie and Fitch's Jersey Shore shame (MSN)
(A trendy US clothing brand has offered to pay Snooki and other cast members of The Jersey Shore to stop wearing its clothes, saying their hard-partying antics could cause significant damage to its image and "distress" to its fans.)
Giant rodent native to South America seen in Calif (Marin Independent Journal)
(A giant rodent native to South America has been spotted roaming in a city on California's Central Coast. Workers at a Paso Robles sewage treatment plant captured photos of the capybara swimming in the water storage pond before making its way toward the Salinas River late last month, The Tribune of San Luis Obispo reported Wednesday.)
Stolen tombstones found during Calif. meth raid (Forbes)
(Authorities said Wednesday that narcotics investigators raiding a Southern California home during a methamphetamine bust found something odd in the backyard - two dozen granite and marble tombstones. One of the stolen grave markers was traced to the nearby Montecito Memorial Park in Colton, about 50 miles east of Los Angeles, said San Bernardino County sheriff's spokeswoman Cynthia Bachman.)
Ex-NBA ref kills self on day wife's body found (MSNBC)
(A former NBA referee shot and killed himself in a suburban New Orleans hotel room on the same day his wife was found strangled at their Houston-area home last week, authorities said Wednesday. A law-enforcement official in Montgomery County, Texas, said Troy Raymond, 46, was a "person of interest" in the death of his wife, Leslie Anderson Raymond, whose body was discovered last Thursday at their home in Spring.Troy Raymond's body was discovered at a hotel in Jefferson Parish. The coroner's office said he shot himself in the head.)
Sword-swallower arrested… for having swords (News Lite)
(A world record sword-swallower has been arrested while performing in New York… for "brandishing a sword in public". Australian Chayne Hultgren (who performs under then name The Space Cowboy) says that he was busking in New York when he was approached by cops.)
Undergrad student overcomes invisibility hurdle (Cosmos Online)
(One of the roadblocks in the development of invisibility cloaking has been cleared by an unlikely new inventor - a British undergraduate student. By introducing a unique optical device into a cloaking system, Janos Perczel from the University of St Andrews in Scotland has discovered that invisibility cloaking can still operate at speeds below the normal speed of light, known as subluminal light speeds.)
Obese mother in quest to become world's fattest woman (Telegraph)
(Susanne Eman, a 52-stone mother, is aiming to become the world's fattest woman ever despite her doctor warning that she is playing "Russian roulette with her life". Having already overtaken the previous living record holder – compatriot Donna Simpson, 43, of New Jersey, who tipped the scales at 50st – Miss Eman, 32, is now aiming to reach 115st by her forties.)
Meet Beau, the Canine Calculator (Oddity Central)
(Beau the Labrador knows all the usual tricks like “sit”, “roll over”, but he prefers something a little more challenging like subtracting, dividing, multiplying. Yup, you guessed it, this pooch is a canine mathematician. The 12-year-old black Labrador retriever is probably smarter than a lot of people when it comes to math, considering he can multiply, subtract and even bark the square root of some numbers.)
Teen has tongue surgery to speak Korean. Huh? (The Body Odd)
(A British teenager was so desperate to speak the Korean language with the proper accent that she had a surgery that lengthened her tongue, reports The Telegraph. Wait. What? Nineteen-year-old student Rhiannon Brooksbank loves Korean culture and plans to study it in college. Her only problem: She struggled to correctly pronounce certain sounds in the Korean language, because of her shorter-than-average tongue, "caused by an unusually thick lingual frenulum – the flap of skin that joins the underside of the tongue to the floor of the mouth," the UK paper reports.)
(Kevin Smith is stoned, something he declares right off the bat when he calls the Straight from his office in L.A. “And I know that can make you more emotional”, he says, before embarking on a circuitous and highly entertaining hour-long blast of Hurricane Kevin, touching down on a number of subjects—including his affection for the Straight, the real meaning of Kung Fu Panda 2, and why he considers himself your “fat boyfriend”—along the way.)
Kevin Smith's Edmonton premiere of Red State features interesting error of omission (Avenue Edmonton)
(After the Alberta premiere of Red State, filmmaker Kevin Smith spoke to a sold-out house at the Garneau Theatre for two and a half hours. He spoke of his love for Edmonton, how difficult it is to buy Oilers gear in his size, the movie business and his plans to move into the world of television.But what he didn't say was even more interesting.)
(BUS DRIVER NOTE: Kevin would post this later on Twitter: "I'm GUTTED I forgot to shout-out the boy! But I did talk about the movie being half Canadian funded in Montreal. Without Nhaelan, we never could've gotten it made. Bummed he wasn't there last night, but I was told he had a show in town that same night. Still: wish I'd shouted out Nhaelan/Harvey. Will tonight for sure.)Kevin Smith Brings Red State to T.O. and Wastes an Hour of Our Time (The Torontoist)
(Considering how he’s now probably better known for his sold out speaking tours and "Evenings With…" and blog posts about getting kicked off airplanes than his films, it’s not really news, telling you that Kevin Smith likes to talk. Kevin Smith loves to talk. Kevin Smith won’t shut up. If you’re a Kevin Smith fan, this sort of easy anecdotal manner is (presumably) why you’d shell out $60 to hear Smith talk about himself. But if you’re just a guy whose job it is to go to a press conference and try to ask some questions of Kevin Smith that (presumably) you think people want answers to, it can be extremely frustrating. In fact, whether or not you're charged with trying to shake an answer out of his intermittently coherent ramblings, if you’re not a member of what Kevin Smith himself describes as the Cult of Kevin Smith, this is what Kevin Smith is: frustrating.)
Kevin Smith not afraid to share his tricks (Calgary Herald)
(Kevin Smith screened his film Red State at the Uptown Stage and Screen on Wednesday night. Attendance: 474 (sold out). "Jay and Silent Bob do not show up . . . " said maverick filmmaker Kevin Smith to a few boos Wednesday night. "If you are waiting for them, you'll be horribly disappointed.")
Anne Hathaway's Batman rap attack (Stuff)
(Anne Hathaway got so frustrated with paparazzi during filming of the new Batman film she wrote a rap about it. The actress, who plays Catwoman in Christopher Nolan's upcoming film The Dark Knight Rises, told talk show host Conan O'Brien writing raps helped her vent anger towards paparazzi. She said packs of photographers were constantly trying to get shots of her in awkward situations.)
Arkham City Up To 40 Hours Long, Map 5 Times Size Of Asylum's (Now Gamer)
(Paul Crocker, lead narrative designer at Rocksteady has revealed to NowGamer that Batman: Arkham City will be longer and bigger than Akham Asylum. Speaking with Crocker at Gamescom, he told us, "We have the single player game with the full narrative, and for that you're talking about the 20-25 hour mark. But if you want 100 per cent complete, with finding all 400 Riddler trophies, finding all the cameos, then we reckon that's at least 40 hours of gaming.")
Batman filming resumes Downtown; traffic stops expected (Post Gazette)
(Pedestrians and vehicles were dodging the Caped Crusader and his entourage of hundreds of film crew members and actors today as several Downtown streets closed for production of the Batman movie "The Dark Knight Rises.")
Bat causes stir at NH selectman's meeting (News Day)
(Pedestrians and vehicles were dodging the Caped Crusader and his entourage of hundreds of film crew members and actors today as several Downtown streets closed for production of the Batman movie "The Dark Knight Rises.")
Sony cuts price of PlayStation 3 to boost demand for 5-year-old machine (Yahoo News)
(Sony Corp. is cutting the price of its PlayStation 3 gaming console by $50 in an attempt to drum up demand for the 5-year-old machine. It is now $249, down 17 per cent from $299. The last time Sony lowered the price of the PlayStation 3 was in 2009, when it launched a lighter, slimmer model of the video game system.)
Why most people don't finish video games (CNN)
(Once considered a cult pastime, video games have grown immensely in the last 30 years to become a mainstream fixture alongside movies and music. But you wouldn't know it by how often players finish their games.In fact, the attrition (or bounce rate) of video games is pretty pathetic. "What I've been told as a blanket expectation is that 90% of players who start your game will never see the end of it unless they watch a clip on YouTube," says Keith Fuller, a longtime production contractor for Activision.)
Report: Cell phone use could reduce sperm count (CNET)
(Gentlemen, your cell phone could be your enemy. According to an Italian report published in the Journal of Andrology (PDF), researchers in the United States and around the world have found that the radio-frequency electromagnetic radiation (RF-EMR) emitted by cell phones may decrease sperm count and damage sperm quality.)
IBM's New Chips Compute More Like We Do (Technology Review)
(A microchip with about as much brain power as a garden worm might not seem very impressive, compared with the blindingly fast chips in modern personal computers. But a new microchip made by researchers at IBM represents a landmark. Unlike an ordinary chip, it mimics the functioning of a biological brain—a feat that could open new possibilities in computation.)
Shooting of young couple stuns quiet New Jersey suburb (LA Times)
(A quiet suburb in New Jersey has been stunned by the apparently targeted slaying of a young Pakistani-born woman who was shot dead while walking with her husband and their 3-year-old son. The shooting occurred late Tuesday night in Boonton, about 22 miles from New York City, and left 27-year-old Nazish Noorani dead and her husband, Kashif Pervaiz, hospitalized with gunshot wounds.)
Bomb attacks in Afghanistan kill 26 (CNN)
(A truck bomb ripped through the main security gate of a U.S. military base in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday, killing at least two local guards and injuring nine others, the International Security Assistance Force said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the suicide attack against the base in Gardez, the provincial capital of Paktia province.)
Poor Jen is home alone and Shecky is depressed. Here is a song for Jennifer's because, hey, they deserve it! Except Jen Thompson from the 6th grade...you broke my heart!!!
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