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VIRGINIA BEACH, Va., Jan. 5 (UPI) -- Guinness World Records said a Virginia man's constantly growing chewing gum wrapper chain was named the top stunt of the past decade. Gary Duschl of Virginia Beach got 62 percent of the online votes for the top stunt category on the Guinness Web site, beating out a man who swallowed swords and another who placed rattlesnakes in his mouth, The (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot reported Tuesday. "It's an honor, and I'm very pleased to be even in the top 100, but to make it in the top 10, boy, I'm just amazed with that," said...

Tourists feed tigers at the Xiongsen Bear and Tiger Park, a private zoo in Guillin, China, in an undated photograph. Many such tourist attractions secretly operate as fronts for illegal tiger farming, butchering captive tigers for their parts, National Geographic magazine reports in the January 2010 story "Asia's Wildlife Trade." On the eve of 2010--the Year of the Tiger in Chinese astrology--the big cats remain highly coveted. A dead adult male can sell for U.S. $10,000 or more on the black market. Tiger bones and penises are often used in traditional medicines, and some restaurants serve tiger meat, including, a...

A Bolivian Journalist, Mr Eduardo Ascarrunz, has claimed that Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on moon, confided in him that a UFO followed the astronauts on the Apollo XI mission. Aldrin allegedly told the journalist that 'The significance of July 20 1969 is not that man's feet touched the lunar surface but that on that day we realised that humans share the universe with other intelligent beings'. NASA is said to have gone to considerable efforts to cover up this UFO event. Aldrin is said to have made the comments regarding his UFO experience on one of a...

PORTLAND, Ore., Jan. 4 (UPI) -- Two U.S. men convicted on federal vandalism charges for fixing typos on public signs said they have landed a book deal to write about their adventures. Benjamin Herson of Oregon and Jeff Deck of Massachusetts said they were given a $150,000 advance to write "The Great Typo Hunt," which is due out Aug. 3, The (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot reported Monday. The men were sentenced to probation and ordered to stay out of national parks for a year for correcting the grammar on a 70-year-old sign at the Grand Canyon's South Rim during their 2008 cross-country...

The Oregon owners of what may be the world's only velvet painting museum said they are closing the attraction after four years. Caren Anderson and Carl Baldwin said they are closing Portland's Velveteria museum of black velvet paintings for the final time Jan. 24 because they are moving from Oregon to Southern California, The (Portland) Oregonian reported Monday. Anderson and Baldwin said they are California natives and have long wanted to return home. They said they hope to re-open Velveteria with their collection of more than 2,000 paintings in California at some point in the future. The pair said their...

A man and woman in the US state of Georgia are facing child cruelty charges after using a homemade device to tattoo six of their children. Patty "Jo Jo" Marsh and Jacob Edward Bartels allegedly used a plastic pen fitted with a piece of guitar string to mark the children, aged 10 to 17. Unlicensed tattooists and the tattooing of minors are illegal in Georgia. Ms Marsh told local media she had not done anything wrong and that the children had asked for the tattoos....

A family dog saved his eleven-year-old owner Saturday when he stepped between the boy and an advancing cougar, say RCMP. The boy, a resident of Boston Bar, was gathering firewood in his backyard when he noticed the predatory cat advancing across the yard. As the cougar charged, the boy's pet, a golden retriever, intercepted the attack. The family called police as the dog and cat battled beneath the back porch of the home, until a Boston Bar RCMP officer arrived and shot the cougar in the rear end — which, said Sgt. Peter Thiessen in a release, "was the only...

CrunchBang Linux is an Ubuntu based distribution featuring the lightweight Openbox window manager and GTK+ applications. The distribution has been built and customised from a minimal Ubuntu install. The distribution has been designed to offer a good balance of speed and functionality. CrunchBang Linux is currently available as a LiveCD; however, best performance is achieved by installing CrunchBang Linux to your hard disk - CrunchBang Linux comes with the ability to play most popular media formats, including but not limited to MP3, DVD playback & Adobe Flash. CrunchBang Linux also comes with many popular applications installed by default, including but...

Citizens of Shanghai are aghast at the collapse of a major new bridge, pictured, which was revealed to be constructed partially out of rubbish instead of concrete. The bridge, spanning the Wusong River in central Shanghai, was completed in 2009 and replaced a century old bridge with a more modern design. However, after only a short period in operation the bridge began to collapse, with investigators finding such sturdy construction materials as bags of rubbish, Styrofoam, scrap wood and waste plastic used in the structure in place of reinforced concrete.

ALTA, Wyo. » Frito the llama defied his name and didn't get eaten. Lou Centrella seemed sure that was Frito's fate after a mountain lion killed another of his llamas on Sunday. Frito was nowhere to be found after the attack on the other llama, named Grayson. On Monday, the cougar returned to the Centrellas' yard in western Wyoming to feed on the llama it had killed. Concerned the big cat may have acquired a taste for llama, Centrella shot it.....

Russia introduced on Friday a minimum price of vodka in an effort to fight counterfeit alcohol production in the country. From January 1, any 0.5l vodka bottle selling at below 89 rubles (almost $3) will be outlawed. The price ban is one of the first government steps toward regulating the domestic alcohol market. First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov said earlier other measures in the sphere would be accomplished by July 1, 2010. Theses include the licensing of alcohol supplies, the introduction of a unified excise duty on alcohol, and tougher responsibility for the production and marketing of fake vodka....

MONTREAL, Jan. 1 (UPI) -- Two Montreal-area women said they would head to British Columbia to retrieve a dog that spent three days by his master's body in a lonely trailer. Melanie Pellerin, 34 and Christianne Hendershott, 24, of Beaconsfield did not know Cyril Roy, 58, who died of heart failure Nov. 27, The Montreal Gazette reported. But Pellerin's husband, Frank Palumbo, was moved by the story of Roy and his dog Fred, and offered to help get the dog to Roy's siblings. "Cyril and the dog had such a powerful link," Pellerin said. "When Cyril was sick he refused...

The annoying buzz of a mosquito means a lot more to the bugs than you might imagine. Mosquitoes rely on harmonizing the "songs" produced by their wing beats to find an appropriate mate — most importantly one of the same species and, of course, the opposite sex. "Everyone must be familiar with the maddening whine a mosquito makes as it hones in for a bite," said Gabriella Gibson of the University of Greenwich at Medway. "Many of us have wondered why it makes its presence so obvious — surely, after all of these centuries of blood-feeding, selection should have favored...

A previously unpublished manuscript by Project Blue Book’s Lt. Col. Hector Quintanilla has just been published. The manuscript book was written in 1975 by Lt. Col. Hector Quintanilla, the head of the USAF Project Blue Book. Project Blue Book was supposed to be an objective investigation and documentation of the UFO phenomenon carried out by the United States Air Force from March 1952 until December 1969. * It demonstrate to the interested public, through the authors own unedited words, Lt. Col. Quintanilla’s attitudes, preconceptions and biases that dominated Project Blue Book. * It describes methodology and practices employed by the...

A creepy case of a man who got tarantula hairs stuck in his eye has doctors advising people to wear eye protection when handling the eight-legged pets. In February 2009, a 29-year-old man visited the St. James's University Hospital in Leeds, England, after enduring three weeks of a red, watery and light-sensitive eye. A dose of antibiotics for what was presumed to be conjunctivitis didn't clear the symptoms. Doctors at the hospital examined the eye under high-magnification lenses and spotted hair-like projections sticking into the cornea of the right eye. "When we looked at this guy's cornea, the clear window...

Seahorses are truly unique, and not just because of their unusual equine shape. Unlike most other fish, they are monogamous and mate for life. Rarer still, they are among the only animal species on Earth in which the male bears the unborn young. Found in shallow tropical and temperate waters throughout the world, these upright-swimming relatives of the pipefish can range in size from 0.6 inches (1.5 centimeters) to 14 inches (35 centimeters) long. Male seahorses are equipped with a brood pouch on their ventral, or front-facing, side. When mating, the female deposits her eggs into his pouch, and the...

Scientists have discovered how to “read” minds by scanning brain activity and reproducing images of what people are seeing — or even remembering. Researchers have been able to convert into crude video footage the brain activity stimulated by what a person is watching or recalling. The breakthrough raises the prospect of significant benefits, such as allowing people who are unable to move or speak to communicate via visualisation of their thoughts; recording people’s dreams; or allowing police to identify criminals by recalling the memories of a witness. However, it could also herald a new Big Brother era, similar to that...

OMAHA, Neb.- Native American tribes tired of waiting for the U.S. government to honor centuries-old treaties are buying back land where their ancestors lived and putting it in federal trust. Native Americans say the purchases will help protect their culture and way of life by preserving burial grounds and areas where sacred rituals are held. They also provide land for farming, timber and other efforts to make the tribes self-sustaining.....

If you have a pet named Max, you’re hardly alone. Max was the most popular name for both male dogs and male cats in 2009, according to the Angell Animal Medical Center in Boston. The hospital compiled its unscientific list from the more than 50,000 patients it treated this year. The top name for female dogs was Bella....

With a bend of the knees and an arch of the back, a Japanese engineer today set a world flight record for a paper plane, keeping his hand-folded construction in the air for 26.1 seconds. Using a plane specially designed for "long haul" flights, Takuo Toda narrowly failed to match his lifetime best of 27.9 seconds, a Guinness world record set in Hiroshima earlier, but achieved with a plane that was held together with cellophane tape. Today's flight, inside a Japan Airlines hangar near Haneda airport in Tokyo, was the longest by an unadulterated model. "I felt a lot of...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - A female judge in Alabama, concerned about court security cutbacks, says she is keeping both a gun and pepper spray next to her gavel. Jefferson County Domestic Judge Suzanne Childers was prompted to get qualified to bring a gun to court after hearing a child support case a few weeks ago that necessitated her setting off her panic device, The Birmingham (Ala.) News reported Saturday. Because 46 sheriff deputies have been laid off due to budget constraints, court security has dropped off and help didn't arrive for 40 minutes, the newspaper said. "Both the county and the...

<p>HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- Why is the cafeteria at the Pennsylvania Capitol infested with mice?</p>

If you go by conventional thinking Internet Explorer 8 is the slowest of the current web browsers, followed by Opera, with Firefox in third place, Safari taking the silver and Google Chrome leaping ahead in first. Time for a rethink. Opera has announced v10.5 of its browser this week in an ‘alpha’ format (read: this isn’t even beta yet, casual users stay away). Despite this, however, it represents a potential game changing update for the company. According to the respected benchmark of suites run by specialist site betanews.com Opera 10.5 not only boosts the speed of its web browsing performance,...

East Pennsboro Township, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania - Friends and neighbors in two communities have embraced the family of an East Pennsboro Township woman who ran to rescue her dog after it was struck by a car and was struck herself. Tammy Champaign, a sixth-grade teacher at Locust Grove Elementary in the Red Lion School District, is recovering from the significant injuries she received after being struck by a pickup truck as she attempted to help her golden retriever, Roxy, who died. Police have filed no charges, saying the event was simply a tragic accident. Brian Champaign, Tammy’s brother-in-law, said a...

Chimps remain cool under fire, possessing a near human ability to predict how wildfires spread and react accordingly. This newfound capability of chimpanzees to understand flames might shed light on when and how our distant ancestors first learned to control fire, scientists now suggest. Primatologist Jill Pruetz at Iowa State University in Ames was observing savanna chimpanzees in Senegal in 2006 as people were setting wildfires, an annual tradition that clears land and aids hunting. Most areas within the chimpanzees' home range are burned to some degree. "It was the end of the dry season, so the fires burn so...

He belongs to Tracie Steger of Spring Hill and disappeared on Nov. 15. Steger searched for hours in the dark. She put up LOST KITTY signs. Neighborhood kids handed out fliers. People walked the neighborhood, calling out the cat's name. A little girl across the street told Steger she saw a car hit a cat and drive off. It had a gray coat. Steger winced. Another day Steger saw whiskers between the teeth of a hungry vulture. She scared it off and saved a kitten that wasn't Giggle-Blizzard. On Thanksgiving night, they heard something yelping on the porch. There was...

A Michigan photographer taking images of a downtown Christmas display later noticed unusual objects in the sky overhead, according to testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) databse. The city in Michigan was not listed in the public report for this November 27 case. The following is the unedited and as yet unvestigated report filed with MUFON. Please keep in mind that most UFO reports can be explained as something natural or manmade. If Michigan MUFON investigates and reports back on this case, I will release an update. MI, November 27, 2009 - Noticed Lights and shape in 3 of...

ATLANTA (AP) -- Former President Jimmy Carter is offering the Jewish community an apology for any of his "words and deeds" that may have upset them. Carter writes in an open letter to the Jewish community this week that he hopes the new year will bring peace between Israel and its neighbors. He says "we must not permit criticisms for improvement to stigmatize Israel." He adds: "I offer an Al Het for any words or deeds of mine that may have done so."....

FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) -- The parents who carried out the balloon boy hoax were sentenced to jail Wednesday and given strict probation conditions that forbid them from earning any money from the spectacle for four years. Richard Heene was sentenced to 90 days in jail, including 60 days of work release that will let him pursue his job as a construction contractor while serving his time. His wife, Mayumi, was sentenced to 20 days in jail.....

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. (AP) -- Necklaces and Christmas ornaments made from dime-sized pieces of reindeer droppings have earned a Bloomington, Ill., zoo nearly $21,000 this holiday season. The Miller Park Zoological Society made about $5,000 selling reindeer-dropping ornaments last year. It added necklaces this year when customers asked if jewelry was available.....

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- An Ohio woman who asked that police be called after she caught her 6-year-old daughter shoplifting a package of stickers said Wednesday that she was just trying to teach the girl a lesson early in life. Diane Lyons said she doesn't believe she overreacted when she discovered the girl, Shiane, had taken the $3.11 package of stickers used to make temporary tattoos. An older 10-year-old daughter told Lyons about the theft. Chief Ronald Yeager of the Carrollton Police Department in eastern Ohio arrived at the Discount Drug Mart Dec. 15 and took the girl to the...

LONDON, A London scientist has authored a paper arguing angels as classically depicted, mostly-human forms with wings, would be unable to fly. Professor Roger Wotton of University College London wrote in his paper, which was published by the school's Opticon magazine, that human-appearing angels with feathered bird-like wings would not be able to use the wings for flight, The Daily Telegraph reported Tuesday. "Even a cursory examination of the evidence in representational arts shows that angels and cherubs cannot take off and cannot use powered flight," Wotton wrote. "And even if they used gliding flight, they would need to be...

WARREN, Mich. - Police in Michigan said a man with a 5-inch knife lodged in his chest walked into a restaurant , called 911, ordered coffee and sat down to wait for paramedics. Warren police said the 52-year-old man told the 911 operator he had been stabbed in Warren and walked half a mile to Bray's Hamburgers in Hazel Park to use the telephone, WDIV-TV, Detroit, reported Tuesday. Restaurant employees said the man then sat down and ordered a coffee while waiting for the ambulance. "It was like out of a movie," said George Mirdita, an employee at the restaurant....

State Sen. Anthony D. Galluccio has failed random alcohol tests - blaming his toothpaste - while on home confinement less than a week after pleading guilty to a hit-and-run crash in Cambridge. A judge could rule as early as tomorrow if the Cambridge Democrat should be sent to jail for violating terms of his sentencing. Galluccio pleaded guilty Friday to an Oct. 4 hit-and-run accident that injured two people, including a 13-year-old boy.

OMAHA, Neb. — Two small dogs that police say fed on the body of their owner after he killed himself are headed to Indiana. The Nebraska Humane Society says the two pugs, named Harry and Sally, will meet their new owners Tuesday....

A 6ft garden Christmas tree planted by a couple 30 years ago now towers over their home after growing to 50ft tall. Avril Rowlands, 64, and her husband Christopher, 65, bought the pine tree from a garden centre for £6 in 1979 and expected it to grow to around 10ft. To celebrate planting it in their front garden, the couple took a photograph of it with their new home and garage in the background. But after 30 years of care and attention the tree stands 50ft tall and it is still growing. The tree is now the focal point of...

The "Arbeit macht frei" sign stolen from Auschwitz in southern Poland has been found in the north and five men are being questioned by police. The five suspects, aged in their 20s and 30s, were not members of a neo-Nazi group, Krakow police said. The metal sign from the main gate, which symbolises for many the atrocities of Nazi Germany, had been cut into three pieces, they added. A major search was launched after the sign was stolen before dawn on Friday. Andrzej Rokita, the local police chief in Krakow - where the men were being questioned - said the...

The "Arbeit macht frei" sign stolen from Auschwitz in southern Poland has been found in the north and five men have been arrested, police say. They said the metal sign from the main gate, which symbolises for many the atrocities of Nazi Germany, had been cut into three pieces. A major search was launched after the sign was stolen before dawn on Friday. Its theft, the motive for which was not being reported, caused outrage in Israel and among Polish politicians. Five men in their 20s or 30s were detained and were being taken to Krakow for questioning, a police...

Important information just in time for the holiday season has been released. Darker alcohols result in worse hangovers than the clear ones. Most drinkers had already figured this out, but there had been no real explanation as to why this happened. The study also revealed that the sluggish effects that accompany a hangover are the same for all types of alcohol hangovers. The study was conducted by Damaris J. Rohsenow from Brown University. The university is in Rhode Island. 95 healthy, heavy drinkers between the ages of 21 and 33 were used in the study. They were required to drink...

Maybe it was nine lives, but one feline is lucky to be alive after he was found with his paws glued to a Minnesota interstate, KSFY.com reported. A couple saw the cat on the side of the road and thought it had been injured by a car, the KSFY.com reported. But the cat was stuck, though its paw pads were ripped off by the glue when the couple removed him from the road, the site reported.....

OYSTER CREEK, Texas—Officials are on the lookout for a Bengal tiger in Brazoria County. No joke. Police say a man recently reported spotting a tiger near the Buc-ee’s at FM 523 and Highway 332. That’s close to the town of Oyster Creek. Game wardens with Texas Parks and Wildlife have been searching the area, even using special goggles equipped with night vision in a bid to find the big cat. Authorities said they haven’t actually spotted the animal, nor have they found any tracks or other signs of it. Still, the chief of police in Oyster Creek wants his officers...

On December 18, the English edition of Russia’s Pravda newspaper ran a story on a pyramid UFO sighting over the Kremlin, Moscow that day. The report cited amateur videos taken of the sighting by hundreds of cell phones. The only problem was that the pyramid UFO actually appeared on December 9, the same day of the mysterious Norway Spiral Lights, and one day before President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize speech. Was it simply a mistake or was Pravda deliberately trying to confuse the public over the Moscow sighting reported 9 days earlier by various Russian and Western media sources? More...

OTTAWA, Kan. A young girl and her family are calling a local man their “Superman” after he lifted a car off of her in an accident early Friday morning. Nick Harris, 32, was dropping off his daughter, 8-year-old Cheyenne, at Eugene Field Elementary school shortly before 8 a.m. when he saw the incident unfolding on Tremont Avenue — a driver backing her vehicle out of a driveway who was about to hit a student. “I was getting ready to pull the emergency brake when I looked up and saw the vehicle backing over her,” Harris said. “I didn’t even think....

Being sick in front of the boss at the office Christmas party is the biggest faux pas for Britain's workers, a new report has shown. And half of Britain's workforce think that festive party mishaps can have career damaging results according to a Christmas dating study by Singles365.com. The survey of more than 1,000 Britons found that Innappropriate behaviour should be avoided at all costs in a bid to safeguard jobs and career prospects. The worst behaviour included being sick in front of your boss (47per cent), telling the boss what you really think of him (46per cent) and becoming...

<p>Two dogs are up for adoption in Papillon, Neb. -- and they have a unique back story that the Humane Society hopes won't deter potential adopters.</p> <p>Police said the owner of pugs Harry and Sally committed suicide in his suburban Omaha home two weeks ago. His body was just found last Friday. Because Harry and Sally were alone and hungry, their instincts kicked in.</p>

A giant triangular UFO was spotted hovering over the Kremlin in Moscow – in a film that has sent shockwaves throughout Russia. The flying object, which witnesses said could be up to a mile wide, was filmed by two amazed spectators – one at night from a car and another during the day. The hovering pyramid has been likened to Darth Vader’s Imperial Cruiser in Star Wars and has been showed repeatedly on Russian news channels. A clip of the UFO, which reportedly hovered over Moscow’s Red Square for hours, has become a Russian YouTube sensation. Nick Pope, who worked...

PARIS - Many people love horses and traditionally, many French people have loved them even more with a side of salad. That passion, however, has slowed to a trickle in the last couple of years as crisis-hit French consumers buy less meat and years of campaigning by animal rights groups take effect. Looking to ram home their advantage, campaigners have launched a pre-Christmas blitz in Paris featuring posters of riding school ponies and graceful yearlings aimed at rending the hardest of hearts. "Every year in France, riding school horses like Caramel are sent to the abattoir," says one poster by...

A British family said their missing cat was discovered on a ferry that traveled to Spain and was treated to a luxury ride home in a $434 cabin. Tim and Patricia Austin , both 67, of Portsmouth, England, said their cat, Sandi, disappeared after they let him outside Thursday night and he did not return as usual in the morning, The Sun reported Wednesday. The couple said they received a phone call four days later informing them Sandi had been found hiding beneath a truck on the P&O Pride of Bilbao ferry as it was being unloaded in Bilbao, Spain....

An unholy row has broken out in New Zealand over a church billboard aimed at "challenging stereotypes" about the birth of Jesus Christ. A dejected-looking Joseph lies in bed next to Mary under the caption, "Poor Joseph. God was a hard act to follow". St Matthew-in-the-City Church in Auckland, which erected the billboard, said it had intended to provoke debate. But the Catholic Church, among others, has condemned it as "inappropriate" and "disrespectful". Within hours of its unveiling, the billboard had been defaced with brown paint. The church's vicar, Archdeacon Glynn Cardy, said the aim of the billboard had been...

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's opposition Liberal Party has taken down from its website a doctored photo of Lee Harvey Oswald being shot and killed in which Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper's face was substituted for Oswald's. A Liberal official said on Tuesday the assassination picture, submitted as part of a photo contest in connection with the Copenhagen climate talks, should never have been there. The party on Tuesday also took down another doctored photo of Harper with his fist in a cow's posterior, which it had offered as one of the "best seven" depicting where Harper would rather be than...