Odd News
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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 -
Cow dung to power more Dutch homes
A plant that converts cow dung into energy for homes opened in the Netherlands on Friday.
November 14, 2009, 6:33 am -
Russia's Putin wins respect at hip-hop party
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin rubbed shoulders with rappers and was hailed with "respect" in a television show on Friday that could help boost his flagging ratings.
November 14, 2009, 6:32 am -
Putin wins respect at hip-hop party
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin rubbed shoulders with rappers and was hailed with "respect" in a television show Friday that could help boost his flagging ratings.
November 14, 2009, 5:49 am -
Heavy metal monk retires from the limelight
MILAN (Reuters) - Italy's "Brother Metal," a 63-year-old monk who became famous for singing in a heavy metal band -- habit and all -- is hanging up his microphone, saying the devil made him too much of a celebrity for his own good.
November 13, 2009, 11:47 pm
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Amy Williams
October 23, 2009, 12:49 pmPublic-art players and pantsless plonkersAs the long weekend beckons, it's time to take a light-hearted look at some of this week's quirkier news...
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Ed's View
November 11, 2009, 11:34 amIs 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...
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Ellie Evans
November 20, 2009, 5:47 pmThe most shocking of talesSeveral 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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