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Link only - Leaping Cockroach Gets Around on Spring-Loaded Knees

Colonoscopies are gross and scary enough on their own without cockroaches being introduced into the mix – but the photograph that you see before you is of exactly that: a cockroach in someone’s colon, a live one no less. A 52-year-old woman with a history of depression was referred by her primary physician for colorectal cancer screening. She had no family history of colorectal cancer and a review of systems was positive for abdominal bloating. Bowel preparation was done using 4 L of polyethylene glycol the evening prior to screening colonoscopy. The procedure was uncomplicated with no gross mucosal pathology,...

The creature that’s expected to inherit the Earth following a nuclear holocaust might also be well suited to help prevent man’s atomic self-destruction. Researchers at Texas A&M University’s Nuclear Security Science and Policy Institute have attached radiation sensors to the backs of cockroaches. They hope public-safety officials will one day send the souped-up insects into situations that are too risky for humans. “Cockroaches really are the perfect medium for this,” says William Charlton, an associate professor of nuclear engineering at the university and a principal investigator on the project. “They can go for extraordinarily long periods of time without food....

MELBOURNE (AFP) – Filmmaker and activist Ken Loach has moved to withdraw his work from Melbourne's International Film Festival in protest against partial sponsorship from Israel, a report said Saturday. Loach, whose work The Wind that Shakes the Barley won the Palme D'Or at Cannes in 2006, wrote to the festival's director Richard Moore threatening to pull his film Looking for Eric because the event had received Israeli funds. "Palestinians, including artists and academics, have called for a boycott of events supported by Israel," wrote Loach, according to The Age newspaper.

My bunny-hugging antagonist’s embarrassed silence on the BBC radio phone-in told me all I needed to know. Yes, it really is now a criminal offense in Britain to abuse an ant, a worm, a slug, cockroach, a scorpion, a stick insect or whatever creature you care to name. The moment you decide to keep it as a pet you are obliged by our Animal Welfare Act to take full account of its welfare needs -- or face a $30,000 fine or a twelve-month prison sentence. And if you think cockroach rights sound crazy, wait till you hear how the law...

PARIS (AFP) - Robots of the future may able to climb up and down walls and zigzag across ceilings -- and the cockroach will be the one we should thank. One of the most reviled species in the book of life, the cockroach is also one of the most successful. Its design, honed by 300 million years of evolution, enables it to exploit a huge range of habitat niches, and its locomotion is notoriously fast and versatile. In a study published on Wednesday, University of Cambridge zoologists Walter Federle and Christofer Clemente say they can explain how the roach (Nauphoeta...

Thirty workers at a Turkmenistan television network have been sacked after a cockroach was seen scuttling across the newsreader's desk during a live broadcast, it has been reported. The large brown insect crawled a full lap of the newsdesk on the 9pm news programme, Vatan, before the blooper was aired again on the 11pm edition. The sacked workers included journalists, directors, camera operators, and technical staff The national station was bombarded with calls from disgusted viewers, who said the cockroach's guest appearance had put them off their dinner. But the mishap was to have more far-reaching consequences than the odd...

A Watsonville farm manager already facing charges that he molested a 5-year-old girl was rearrested Tuesday on suspicion he sent the little girl to Mexico so she couldn’t testify against him. Virgelio "Hilo" Garcia Yepez, 50, and another Dutra Farms employee, Jose Oscar Ramirez, 52, allegedly worked together to move Yepez's family and the girl, who was known to him, to rural Guanajuato, Mexico, in October, according to the District Attorney’s Office. They were arrested at the farm Tuesday morning on suspicion of kidnapping, obstruction of justice and conspiracy. "The whole thing is sufficiently troubling," prosecutor Andrew Isaac said. "We...

BAN CHAN KREM TRAINING AREA, Thailand (May 25, 2007) -- Cockroaches, grasshoppers and grubs taste like burnt chicken skin. Bamboo and a lot of elbow grease will start a fire. Chicken necks are not very resilient. Cobras take it personally when people don't look them in the eye. In a small, backwoods training area in the heart of Thailand's vast subtropical landscape, dozens of Okinawa-based Marines learned those lessons and more May 14 during a crash course in jungle survival during Cobra Gold 2007. Over Cobra Gold's 26-year history, the day of survival training has become the must-see event for...

A US halloween festival has sparked a row by offering free admission to anyone who eats a live, Madagascar hissing cockroach.The stunt by the annual Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom's Fright Fest in Louisville has been met with protests of both child and animal cruelty. Some say it targets poor children and is a form of child abuse, while an animal rights group says it's cruel to cockroaches. But the amusement park claims to have received only a "minimal number of complaints" and has no intentions of canceling it, said park spokeswoman Carolyn Gaeta McLean. "People complaining are not going to...

BRISTOL, England: Some 1,400 copies of a British newspaper that had front-page reports of a cockroach-infested restaurant were purchased and disappeared within minutes. Two men apparently embarked on a spending spree and bought up all the Bristol Evening Post editions at a cost of nearly $800 when it featured the story of two brothers were fined $35,000 for offenses at their Chinese restaurant. But Cam and Kiem Mu, owners of the Sea Palace in Weston super Mare, denied they knew anything of the newspaper cull, the BBC reported. They were fined after a woman found a live cockroach in her...

A diner at a restaurant in Germany has been awarded almost £700 compensation after he put a live cockroach in his mouth. The man was at a Chinese restaurant in Rastatt when he stuck his hand into a bowl of peanuts. He put a handful of peanuts, including the cockroach, into his mouth and started munching before he realised. Health food inspectors who were called out to the restaurant found the kitchen was infested with cockroaches and ordered the property to be closed until it could be fumigated. A court in Rastatt ordered the owner of the restaurant to pay...

PERTH, Australia -- An Australian restaurant owner's attempt to get rid of cockroaches in his kitchen has left his eatery in ruins. The owner set off 36 fumigation devices. However, he apparently forgot to extinguish an oven pilot flame. Fire officials said the ensuing explosion lifted the roof off of the Thai restaurant, blew out the back wall as well as the front window and caused the ceilings to cave in. Three men were hospitalized with burns. One fire official said of the owner, "He's just overdone it."

Long before he defended O.J. Simpson on murder charges, Johnnie Cochran prosecuted Lenny Bruce for alleged obscenity. Even in the more genteel days of 1964, the young deputy city attorney couldn't convict the notoriously foul-mouthed comedian. In a 1996 memoir, Cochran belatedly conceded that his attempt to do so was contrary to the 1st Amendment. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard another case that threatens the 1st Amendment, this one featuring the famed attorney as plaintiff. The issue in Tory vs. Cochran is straightforward: Can Ulysses Tory, who was found to have defamed Cochran, be permanently barred from saying...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cockroaches worsen asthma symptoms in children far more than furry pets or dust mites, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday. High-rise apartments in Northeastern U.S. cities were the worst places for the allergic effects of cockroaches, the team at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas found. Single-family houses were the worst for dust mites -- miscroscopic creatures that live in bedding and furniture. "We found that a majority of homes in Chicago, New York City and the Bronx had cockroach allergen levels high enough to trigger asthma symptoms, while a majority of homes in Dallas...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The sexy scent used by female cockroaches to attract males could be the best tool yet against the creepy pests, U.S. researchers said on Friday. They made an artificial version of the mating pheromone used by the bugs and hope it could be used to lure them into traps. "It would prevent the need to spray poison widely," said Fran Webster of the State University of New York, who led the study. "You could use it when and where it was needed most." Other insects are often trapped using pheromones -- pantry moths, for example -- but...

"A "monster" cockroach and other new insects have been discovered in the jungles of Borneo, scientists say. An expedition of caves and cliffs, led by the Nature Conservancy, also said it saw previously unknown fish and plants. "In just five weeks, the expedition team discovered numerous new species previously unknown to science," the conservancy's Scott Stanley said. "Who knows what else is out there?" he added, calling for the area surveyed in East Kalimantan to be preserved. "If something is not done soon to protect these areas, dozens of species could disappear before anyone knew they ever existed." Borneo...

JERUSALEM: A Palestinian woman suicide bomber blew herself up near a hitch-hiking post in Jerusalem yesterday, killing two people and wounding 15. The blast tore through the mainly Jewish district of French Hill in East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in a move not recognised internationally. Witnesses said a young woman, wearing a headscarf, blew herself up as she approached a security position near the post used mostly by soldiers. "She threw her head back and then there was an explosion," one witness said. "A few seconds later, her body burst into flames."...

TOKYO - A big brown cockroach crawls across the table in the laboratory of Japan's most prestigious university. The researcher eyes it nervously, but he doesn't go for the bug spray. He grabs the remote. This is no ordinary under-the-refrigerator type bug. This roach has been surgically implanted with a micro-robotic backpack that allows researchers to control its movements. This is Robo-roach. "Insects can do many things that people can't, " said Assistant Professor Isao Shimoyama, head of the bio-robot research team at Tokyo University. "The potential applications of this work for mankind could be immense." Within a few years,...

It is said, "The truth will set you free." From my experience, and those of my opinion-sharing Latino colleagues, the truth just gets a lot of people mad at you. Take, for example, the recent usage of the popular character "Hello Kitty" by political satirist Lalo Alcaraz in his nationally syndicated comic strip La Cucaracha. Aside from drawing Kitty with a decidedly Latino twist, a sombrero planted behind the ever-present bow, it was the text in the cartoon that animated discussion. As with most of his work, Alcaraz's blunt assessment of life in the United States for Latinos and Latino...

Evidence of new virus found in stool samples, journal report says Scientists working to identify the cause of a mysterious respiratory illness that has killed 111 people worldwide are now almost certain that it is associated with a new kind of coronavirus, a family of viruses also responsible for the common cold. One of two groups of scientists whose findings were published online yesterday in separate New England Journal of Medicine articles also said they had found genetic evidence of the virus in some victims' stool samples. The finding lends support to a previously advanced theory that the virus might...

Since I am approaching my one year anniversary of being a "freeper" and since I have never contributed a dime to FR, jim or the republican party, I am going to beat the powers to be at FR and voluntarily leave, rather than have them come up with one of the cock and bull stories to ban me. Been fun,Bye