thenerdguy
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Christmas fun in Antarctica gets out of hand.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080109...a_christmas;_ylt=AuvSWLKsZ8ycHCM5jaeb7vPtiBIF
WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A groping Santa, a drunken car chase, a bloody punchout. Festivities in Antarctica got a little out of hand this Christmas.
Complaints of "inappropriate touching" were made against a Santa who had posed for photographs on a decorated snowmobile at the U.S. McMurdo station, on the edge of the continent, a New Zealand newspaper reported on Wednesday.
That incident was followed by another in which a U.S. staff member, suspected of drink-driving, raced along an icy road in a four-wheel-drive vehicle chased by a fire engine before she was intercepted, said Christchurch-based The Press newspaper, without citing sources.
McMurdo base is home to about 1,000 U.S. scientists and staff during the summer months and is the largest community in Antarctica.
At a different U.S. station at the South Pole a worker had to be flown out to a hospital in Christchurch, over 5000 km (3000 miles) away, after his jaw was broken in a Christmas punchout with a fellow staff member, The Press said.
Both the bad Santa and rogue driver were summoned before their managers while the attacker in the South Pole brawl had been sacked, it said.
"Touch my muscles!" - Chavez tells Naomi Campbell
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080108...ez_campbell;_ylt=AsSp8.Q5ddN.jwYpKcovfTDtiBIF
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez in an interview with supermodel Naomi Campbell predicted that the U.S "empire" is about to fall, called Jesus Christ history's No. 1 revolutionary -- and offered to pose topless.
"Why not? Touch my muscles!" the burly, 53 year-old former paratrooper said, when asked if he would follow the example of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who caused a stir last year with a series of shirtless pictures.
An actress and model of Jamaican heritage, Campbell was hired by GQ magazine to interview the left-wing leader, who is known for his tirades against the United States.
In the article, to be published on Thursday, Campbell describes Chavez as a "rebel angel," praises his singing voice and chats with him about the Spice Girls.
"I have memories of them," he said, before moving on to more familiar ground criticizing Washington, which he predicted would dramatically lose influence in the next few years.
Chavez, who says he is leading a socialist revolution that he hopes will one day unite Latin America, said he was a devout Christian and that Jesus Christ was "the greatest revolutionary in history, for defending the poor against the powerful."
Chavez, in power since 1999, is liked by many Venezuelans for his folksy, off-the-cuff delivery, but the opposition says his quirky style has often distracted him from the basic tasks of government such as fighting crime.
Campbell, 37, met Chavez three times. She joins a growing list of stars who have dropped by to visit the charismatic leader in the South American oil-exporting nation. Last year he also received actor Sean Penn and film director Oliver Stone.
The model, known for her fiery temper, said last year she was turning over a new leaf after doing community service for throwing a phone at her maid. She hopes to interview more world figures, including Chavez's friend, Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
Chavez said Castro's dress sense made him the world's most stylish leader.
"His uniform is impeccable. His boots are polished, his beard is elegant," he said, of the ailing octogenarian.
224,000 fake anti-impotence pills seized
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080107/od_nm/viagra_odd_dc;_ylt=AkohBAzkd2.cL0O.ceBiMhTtiBIF
PARIS (Reuters) - French customs officials have intercepted a shipment of 224,000 fake Viagra and Cialis anti-impotence pills worth 2.4 million euros ($3.5 million), the Budget Ministry said Monday.
The copies of the bestselling drugs were found on December 18 during a search at the French capital's main air hub at Roissy, in a freight cargo on its way to Brazil from India.
"Branded Powergra and Erectalis, each box contained, in fact, four tablets in the characteristic shape and color of Viagra or Cialis pills," Budget Minister Eric Woerth's office, which is also in charge of customs, said in a statement.
"The companies Pfizer and Eli Lilly, which respectively own the Viagra and Cialis brands, quickly confirmed the counterfeit nature of these products and the 224,000 pills were seized," Woerth's office added.
Riverside man's dream is as big as his quarry
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/l...ll=la-headlines-california&ctrack=1&cset=true
The Center for Bigfoot Studies, like the creature itself, is not easy to find.
It hides amid the forest of homes and thickets of Christmas lights on a quiet Riverside street.
No signs or monster-size tracks point the way, but those in the know can pin it down to an upper floor of one unassuming house. There, jammed inside a few small rooms, sits one of the nation's largest repositories of Bigfoot lore.
Rows of books, stuffed filing cabinets, sculptures and plaster casts of overgrown feet compete for space in a cluttered world dedicated to the legendary hulking primate.
Daniel Perez, 44, is curator and director of the center, which doubles as his home. It's not typical Bigfoot habitat, but he couldn't beat the price. And for Perez it's the work, not the location, that matters.
"This isn't about finding some new species of butterfly in South America which would have little impact on your life or mine," he said. "If we ever find this, it might be the biggest scientific discovery the world has ever seen."
Perez is no flake. He's a serious-minded, soft-spoken electrician who let his hobby become his passion and now much of his life. He publishes the monthly Bigfoot Times, circulation 760, and has traveled the country investigating sightings and interviewing witnesses.
A recent newsletter reported a sighting from 1936 in Davistown, Pa. The 81-year-old witness told Perez she had seen an upright animal lurking around her rural home on numerous occasions when she was a girl.
"He must have been 6 feet tall, dark brown, long arms and very hairy," she said. "Gosh, did we run across the fields into the house."
Another article is about two men's claims to have audio recordings of Bigfoot's "breathing, teeth popping and growls."
"But our conclusion was that it was nothing more than wind," a local Bigfoot researcher wrote.
Perez is a believer but also a skeptic.
Hoaxers have tried to con him, and promising leads have unraveled. Critical evidence, such as a hefty ape-like skull allegedly found near Bishop, has had a habit of disappearing. Yet there are the stories that keep him going, the strikingly similar accounts of hairy, stinking, bipedal animals stomping through forests from Canada to California to Ohio.
Tales of ape men leading clandestine lives in the North American backwoods go back centuries. Native Americans called them Sasquatches. But the modern Bigfoot phenomenon really got its start in 1958, Perez said, when workers began finding large footprints while building a road in Oregon.
"Some guy took the story to the local newspaper, and the word 'Bigfoot' was born," he said.
In 1986, Perez interviewed members of a six-man crew building a bridge 26 miles south of California's Mt. Whitney who reported seeing a large upright creature that left 13-inch footprints in its wake.
"It scared the heebie-jeebies out of them," said Perez, who interviewed the workers at the scene. "One guy told me it sounded like an elephant trumpeting. Another said it was a bloodcurdling scream which resembled a woman being tortured. These were serious, grown men with no reason to lie. It was my first experience with multiple sightings. I was hooked after that."
Actually, he was hooked before that.
Perez's pursuit of Bigfoot began at age 10 after he watched "The Legend of Boggy Creek" at a Norwalk theater. The documentary-style film dealt with a Bigfoot-like beast frightening rural Fouke, Ark.
"I thought it was just another monster movie, but it turned out to be the paving stone to who I am today," he said. "I was curious but skeptical."
Egypt 'to copyright antiquities'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7160057.stm
Zahi Hawass, who chairs Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, told the BBC the law would apply in all countries.
The money was needed to maintain thousands of pharaonic sites, he said.
Correspondents say the law will deal a blow to themed resorts across the world where large-scale copies of Egyptian artefacts are a crowd-puller.
Mr Hawass said the law would apply to full-scale replicas of any object in any museum in Egypt.
"Commercial use" of ancient monuments like the pyramids or the sphinx would also be controlled, he said.
"Even if it is for private use, they must have permission from the Egyptian government," he added.
But he said the law would not stop local and international artists reproducing monuments as long as they were not exact replicas.
The Luxor hotel in the US city of Las Vegas would also not be affected because it was not an exact copy of a pyramid and its interior was completely different, Mr Hawass told AFP news agency.
But he said claims by the hotel that it was "the only pyramid-shaped building in the world" could no longer be made.
The announcement came two days after an Egyptian newspaper called on the hotel to pay a share of its profits to the central Egyptian city of Luxor, which administers the ancient Valley of the Kings burial site.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080109...a_christmas;_ylt=AuvSWLKsZ8ycHCM5jaeb7vPtiBIF
WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A groping Santa, a drunken car chase, a bloody punchout. Festivities in Antarctica got a little out of hand this Christmas.
Complaints of "inappropriate touching" were made against a Santa who had posed for photographs on a decorated snowmobile at the U.S. McMurdo station, on the edge of the continent, a New Zealand newspaper reported on Wednesday.
That incident was followed by another in which a U.S. staff member, suspected of drink-driving, raced along an icy road in a four-wheel-drive vehicle chased by a fire engine before she was intercepted, said Christchurch-based The Press newspaper, without citing sources.
McMurdo base is home to about 1,000 U.S. scientists and staff during the summer months and is the largest community in Antarctica.
At a different U.S. station at the South Pole a worker had to be flown out to a hospital in Christchurch, over 5000 km (3000 miles) away, after his jaw was broken in a Christmas punchout with a fellow staff member, The Press said.
Both the bad Santa and rogue driver were summoned before their managers while the attacker in the South Pole brawl had been sacked, it said.
"Touch my muscles!" - Chavez tells Naomi Campbell
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080108...ez_campbell;_ylt=AsSp8.Q5ddN.jwYpKcovfTDtiBIF
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez in an interview with supermodel Naomi Campbell predicted that the U.S "empire" is about to fall, called Jesus Christ history's No. 1 revolutionary -- and offered to pose topless.
"Why not? Touch my muscles!" the burly, 53 year-old former paratrooper said, when asked if he would follow the example of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who caused a stir last year with a series of shirtless pictures.
An actress and model of Jamaican heritage, Campbell was hired by GQ magazine to interview the left-wing leader, who is known for his tirades against the United States.
In the article, to be published on Thursday, Campbell describes Chavez as a "rebel angel," praises his singing voice and chats with him about the Spice Girls.
"I have memories of them," he said, before moving on to more familiar ground criticizing Washington, which he predicted would dramatically lose influence in the next few years.
Chavez, who says he is leading a socialist revolution that he hopes will one day unite Latin America, said he was a devout Christian and that Jesus Christ was "the greatest revolutionary in history, for defending the poor against the powerful."
Chavez, in power since 1999, is liked by many Venezuelans for his folksy, off-the-cuff delivery, but the opposition says his quirky style has often distracted him from the basic tasks of government such as fighting crime.
Campbell, 37, met Chavez three times. She joins a growing list of stars who have dropped by to visit the charismatic leader in the South American oil-exporting nation. Last year he also received actor Sean Penn and film director Oliver Stone.
The model, known for her fiery temper, said last year she was turning over a new leaf after doing community service for throwing a phone at her maid. She hopes to interview more world figures, including Chavez's friend, Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
Chavez said Castro's dress sense made him the world's most stylish leader.
"His uniform is impeccable. His boots are polished, his beard is elegant," he said, of the ailing octogenarian.
224,000 fake anti-impotence pills seized
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080107/od_nm/viagra_odd_dc;_ylt=AkohBAzkd2.cL0O.ceBiMhTtiBIF
PARIS (Reuters) - French customs officials have intercepted a shipment of 224,000 fake Viagra and Cialis anti-impotence pills worth 2.4 million euros ($3.5 million), the Budget Ministry said Monday.
The copies of the bestselling drugs were found on December 18 during a search at the French capital's main air hub at Roissy, in a freight cargo on its way to Brazil from India.
"Branded Powergra and Erectalis, each box contained, in fact, four tablets in the characteristic shape and color of Viagra or Cialis pills," Budget Minister Eric Woerth's office, which is also in charge of customs, said in a statement.
"The companies Pfizer and Eli Lilly, which respectively own the Viagra and Cialis brands, quickly confirmed the counterfeit nature of these products and the 224,000 pills were seized," Woerth's office added.
Riverside man's dream is as big as his quarry
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/l...ll=la-headlines-california&ctrack=1&cset=true
The Center for Bigfoot Studies, like the creature itself, is not easy to find.
It hides amid the forest of homes and thickets of Christmas lights on a quiet Riverside street.
No signs or monster-size tracks point the way, but those in the know can pin it down to an upper floor of one unassuming house. There, jammed inside a few small rooms, sits one of the nation's largest repositories of Bigfoot lore.
Rows of books, stuffed filing cabinets, sculptures and plaster casts of overgrown feet compete for space in a cluttered world dedicated to the legendary hulking primate.
Daniel Perez, 44, is curator and director of the center, which doubles as his home. It's not typical Bigfoot habitat, but he couldn't beat the price. And for Perez it's the work, not the location, that matters.
"This isn't about finding some new species of butterfly in South America which would have little impact on your life or mine," he said. "If we ever find this, it might be the biggest scientific discovery the world has ever seen."
Perez is no flake. He's a serious-minded, soft-spoken electrician who let his hobby become his passion and now much of his life. He publishes the monthly Bigfoot Times, circulation 760, and has traveled the country investigating sightings and interviewing witnesses.
A recent newsletter reported a sighting from 1936 in Davistown, Pa. The 81-year-old witness told Perez she had seen an upright animal lurking around her rural home on numerous occasions when she was a girl.
"He must have been 6 feet tall, dark brown, long arms and very hairy," she said. "Gosh, did we run across the fields into the house."
Another article is about two men's claims to have audio recordings of Bigfoot's "breathing, teeth popping and growls."
"But our conclusion was that it was nothing more than wind," a local Bigfoot researcher wrote.
Perez is a believer but also a skeptic.
Hoaxers have tried to con him, and promising leads have unraveled. Critical evidence, such as a hefty ape-like skull allegedly found near Bishop, has had a habit of disappearing. Yet there are the stories that keep him going, the strikingly similar accounts of hairy, stinking, bipedal animals stomping through forests from Canada to California to Ohio.
Tales of ape men leading clandestine lives in the North American backwoods go back centuries. Native Americans called them Sasquatches. But the modern Bigfoot phenomenon really got its start in 1958, Perez said, when workers began finding large footprints while building a road in Oregon.
"Some guy took the story to the local newspaper, and the word 'Bigfoot' was born," he said.
In 1986, Perez interviewed members of a six-man crew building a bridge 26 miles south of California's Mt. Whitney who reported seeing a large upright creature that left 13-inch footprints in its wake.
"It scared the heebie-jeebies out of them," said Perez, who interviewed the workers at the scene. "One guy told me it sounded like an elephant trumpeting. Another said it was a bloodcurdling scream which resembled a woman being tortured. These were serious, grown men with no reason to lie. It was my first experience with multiple sightings. I was hooked after that."
Actually, he was hooked before that.
Perez's pursuit of Bigfoot began at age 10 after he watched "The Legend of Boggy Creek" at a Norwalk theater. The documentary-style film dealt with a Bigfoot-like beast frightening rural Fouke, Ark.
"I thought it was just another monster movie, but it turned out to be the paving stone to who I am today," he said. "I was curious but skeptical."
Egypt 'to copyright antiquities'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7160057.stm
Zahi Hawass, who chairs Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, told the BBC the law would apply in all countries.
The money was needed to maintain thousands of pharaonic sites, he said.
Correspondents say the law will deal a blow to themed resorts across the world where large-scale copies of Egyptian artefacts are a crowd-puller.
Mr Hawass said the law would apply to full-scale replicas of any object in any museum in Egypt.
"Commercial use" of ancient monuments like the pyramids or the sphinx would also be controlled, he said.
"Even if it is for private use, they must have permission from the Egyptian government," he added.
But he said the law would not stop local and international artists reproducing monuments as long as they were not exact replicas.
The Luxor hotel in the US city of Las Vegas would also not be affected because it was not an exact copy of a pyramid and its interior was completely different, Mr Hawass told AFP news agency.
But he said claims by the hotel that it was "the only pyramid-shaped building in the world" could no longer be made.
The announcement came two days after an Egyptian newspaper called on the hotel to pay a share of its profits to the central Egyptian city of Luxor, which administers the ancient Valley of the Kings burial site.
