Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

Odd News

  • Lost man drives nine hours to get newspaper

    CANBERRA (Reuters) - An elderly man who went out to fetch a morning newspaper ended up driving nearly 400 miles after getting lost and taking a wrong turn onto a major Australian highway, police said on Wednesday.

    November 19, 2009, 6:56 am
  • Johnny Depp named People's "sexiest man alive"

    NEW YORK (Reuters) - "Pirates of the Caribbean" star Johnny Depp was named People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" on Wednesday, reclaiming a title he first won in 2003.

    November 19, 2009, 6:24 am
  • U.S. residents fight for the right to hang laundry

    PERKASIE, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - Carin Froehlich pegs her laundry to three clotheslines strung between trees outside her 18th-century farmhouse, knowing that her actions annoy local officials who have asked her to stop.

    November 19, 2009, 2:03 am
  • Make toilets cool to fix sanitation woes?

    MUMBAI (Reuters) - Jack Sim, founder of the World Toilet Organization, has a theory about why governments and people are so reluctant to talk about hygiene: it isn't cool.

    November 18, 2009, 6:49 am
  • What's in a name? More than you might think

    LONDON (Reuters) - A London-based translation firm is offering parents-to-be the chance to check the meaning of prospective baby names in other languages to avoid inadvertently causing their offspring future embarrassment.

    November 18, 2009, 6:48 am
  • Trapped thief drops trousers in bungled burglary

    LISBON (Reuters) - He wiggled, jiggled and even dropped his trousers, but a thief trying to break into a supermarket in Portugal stayed stuck fast in a tiny window until he was rescued by police and the fire brigade.

    November 18, 2009, 6:37 am
  • Make toilets cool to fix sanitation woes, expert says

    MUMBAI (Reuters) - Jack Sim, founder of the World Toilet Organization, has a theory about why governments and people are so reluctant to talk about hygiene: it isn't cool.

    November 18, 2009, 6:36 am
  • What's in an unusual name? More than you might think

    LONDON (Reuters) - Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes might have thought twice about naming their daughter Suri if they'd known that it means "pickpocket" in Japanese, "turned sour" in French, and "horse mackerels" in Italian.

    November 18, 2009, 6:31 am
  • Japan's marathon queen Takahashi to run veggie farm

    TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's former Olympic marathon gold medallist Naoko Takahashi has decided to become a vegetable farmer.

    November 18, 2009, 3:43 am
  • Japan ask 2010 hosts South Africa to ban vuvuzela

    TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's football chief has joined in the chorus of protestors wanting the noisy vuvuzela trumpet to be banned from next year's World Cup in South Africa.

    November 17, 2009, 7:56 pm
  • Cannibals nabbed selling corpse to kebab house

    MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian police have arrested three homeless people suspected of eating a 25-year-old man they had butchered and selling other bits of the corpse to a local kebab house.

    November 17, 2009, 1:09 pm
  • Robber behind "perfect crime" surrenders

    PARIS (Reuters) - The driver of a security van who vanished earlier this month with more than 11 million euros ($16.5 million) in cash has surrendered to police in Monaco, French authorities said on Monday.

    November 17, 2009, 9:10 am
  • Women disappointed by Gaddafi "party"

    ROME (Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, in Rome for a U.N. food summit, spent several hours in the company of 200 Italian women recruited by an agency and tried to convert them to Islam, Italian media reported on Monday.

    November 17, 2009, 9:08 am
  • Cannibals nabbed selling corpse to kebab house

    MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian police have arrested three homeless people suspected of eating a 25-year-old man they had butchered and selling other bits of the corpse to a local kebab house.

    November 17, 2009, 9:04 am
  • Italian women disappointed by Gaddafi "party"

    ROME (Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, in Rome for a U.N. food summit, spent several hours in the company of 200 Italian women recruited by an agency and tried to convert them to Islam, Italian media reported on Monday.

    November 17, 2009, 5:01 am
  • Greek police catch helicopter jail fugitive

    ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek police arrested Monday a heavily-armed fugitive, Alket Rijai, who embarrassed authorities by twice escaping from prison in a helicopter.

    November 16, 2009, 9:45 pm
  • Obama in a grass skirt? Hawaii to host APEC 2011

    SINGAPORE (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama invited fellow leaders in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation to a summit in Hawaii in 2011, but may have alarmed them with the dress code.

    November 15, 2009, 8:34 pm
  • Mock funeral mourns Venice's shrinking population

    VENICE, Italy (Reuters) - A procession of gondolas accompanied a pink coffin along Venice's Grand Canal on Saturday in a mock funeral to protest against the steep decline in the city's population.

    November 15, 2009, 7:52 am
  • French cash stunt scrapped as huge crowd gathers

    PARIS (Reuters) - An Internet company that planned to throw envelopes of cash to passers-by from the top of a bus in Paris had to cancel the publicity stunt for security reasons after thousands of people turned up, police said on Saturday.

    November 15, 2009, 7:45 am

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Opinion

  • Amy Williams

    October 23, 2009, 12:49 pm
    Public-art players and pantsless plonkers

    As the long weekend beckons, it's time to take a light-hearted look at some of this week's quirkier news...

  • Ed's View

    November 11, 2009, 11:34 am
    Is Hone Harawira a racist?

    The Oxford Dictionary defines racism as "1. Belief in the superiority of a particular race; prejudice based on this. 2. Antagonism towards people of other races."Since his expletive laced email tirade Hone Harawira has been called many...

  • Ellie Evans

    November 20, 2009, 5:47 pm
    The most shocking of tales

    Several stories this week merit a special mention in my mind-boggling news blog, but this first one will take some beating. Or shocking.A police officer called to a house in an small Arkansas town saw fit to use his Taser on the house's unruly...

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