News

[Scheherazade]

Swazi king marries eleventh wife

King Mswati III, ruler of the tiny southern African kingdom of Swaziland, has married his eleventh wife. Noliqwa Ntentesa, 21, was selected by the king three years ago at an annual ceremonial dance.

She is pregnant with his 25th child. Two more young women have already been lined up to marry the king.

Africa's last absolute monarch has been criticised for having so many wives in a country with one of the world's highest rates of HIV infection.

Lavish lifestyle

He owns a fleet of luxury cars, including a $500,000 (£260,000) Maybach, and has spent millions of dollars refurbishing palaces for his wives.

The 37-year-old's lavish lifestyle is at odds with the living conditions of his people, most of whom live in poverty.

The unemployment rate stands at 40% while nearly 70% of the country's one million inhabitants live on less than $1 a day and nearly 40% of adults are HIV positive.

Noliqwa Ntentesa, who was forced to give up high school when she was picked three years ago, was smeared in traditional red ochre and married in a secret wedding service held last week at a royal palace.

King Mswati's late father, King Sobhuza II, who led the country to independence in 1968, had more than 70 wives when he died in 1982.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4592961.stm


US chicken ducks jaywalking fine

A chicken fined $54 for illegally crossing a road in California has had the charge thrown out by a court. The fine was dismissed after a lawyer for the bird's owners argued that the fowl was domesticated and could not be classified as livestock.

California law bans livestock from highways, but not domestic animals.

Linc and Helena Moore had been fined on 26 March after their chicken wandered onto a road in the small rural mining town of Johannesburg in Kern county.

They were warned by their lawyer that if the bird continued to cross the road unattended they could face a minor misdemeanour infraction, the Daily Independent newspaper reported.

Allegations

The Moores say they were fined because of their repeated complaints that local authorities had not done enough to curb off-road drivers.

"For the last two-and-a-half years, no-one has been able to stop the kids riding their bikes in the middle of the road or the neighbours' dogs running around our neighbourhood," Linc Moore was quoted as saying.

"But when our chicken escaped and crossed the road once it became a huge issue."

Officials from the sheriff's department rejected the allegations.

The couple are now seeking legal assistance to file harassment charges against Kern County's Sheriff Department.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4591869.stm

[Scheherazade]

Bottle message saves lost vessel

Costa Rican officials say 86 shipwrecked migrants have been rescued after fishermen found a message in a bottle they had thrown overboard. The migrants, mainly teenagers from Ecuador and Peru, had been adrift in their packed boat for three days.

The vessel had been floating near Cocos Island, a deserted nature reserve 600km (372 miles) off the Costa Rican coast.

It is believed that the group were abandoned by people smugglers when the vessel got into trouble.

Deserted isle

The smugglers stripped the boat of radio and communication equipment when they left it.

"Incredibly [...] these people, who are quite young, wrote a message saying: 'Please Help Us' and put it in a bottle," said Francisco Estrada of marine protection group MarViva.

The bottle, and the SOS message it contained, was found by local fishermen who alerted the park wardens, the only inhabitants of the island, a world heritage site.

The wardens then told MarViva who were able to rescue the group, which included women and children.

The group was hoping to reach Guatemala, from where they wanted to cross the border to Mexico, according to a spokesperson for Costa Rica's public security ministry.

The migrants are now on the island and awaiting the arrival of a ship with food and medical supplies.

Many of them are suffering from dehydration and sea-sickness.

A doctor and an immigration official are also being sent to the island.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4594591.stm

[Scheherazade]

'Inbreeding threat' to bumblebees (Surprise, surprise! )

Bumblebees could be facing extinction as inbreeding in colonies turns hard-working female bees into useless males, scientists have found. The bee populations are now mainly confined to nature reserves - isolated by intensively farmed land with no other bees around.

This forces them to mate with relatives, the study found.

Male bees are "basically lazy", said study leader Dr David Goulson of the University of Southampton.

A bumblebee queen usually produces a large number of worker daughters to help in the nest and with gathering nectar and pollen.

But if the queen mates with a relative, many of the genetically female offspring develop into sterile males.

"Since male bumblebees do no work, and have only one purpose - mating - a sterile male is worse than useless," said Dr Goulson.

"If the queen is producing sterile sons instead of worker daughters, the nest is probably doomed.

"This means that, even on well-protected nature reserves, the last populations of these rare insects may be driven to extinction."

Researchers studied a number of species, including the Moss Carder Bee (Bombus muscorum), at various sites across the UK, from the Hebrides in Scotland to Dungeness on the Kent coast.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4605357.stm


Wedding on top of Mount Everest

A Nepalese couple have exchanged wedding vows on top of Mount Everest, the first people ever to marry there. They briefly took off their oxygen masks and put on plastic garlands, while the groom symbolically applied red powder on the bride's forehead.

Moni Mule Pati and Pem Dorjee Sherpa were part of the Rotary Centennial Everest Expedition earlier this week.

They had kept the plan secret as there was no guarantee they would reach the top of the world's highest peak.

Arriving back in Kathmandu, the bride said it would not have been possible to meet all the religious requirements, so they did what they could with what was available.

"We were there only for 10 minutes, just enough for us to get married and our friends to take pictures of us," Ms Mulepati said.

They plan to hold a more formal ceremony soon.

Interracial marriage

Mr Dorjee said other couples had wanted to do the same in the past, but none had managed because they could not get up on top of the peak together.

Fearing the same possibility, they had kept their own plan secret.

The surprised families have welcomed the marriage, which is also unusual because it cuts across Nepal's deep-rooted caste and ethnic divisions.

"With our interracial marriage, we also wanted to give the message that caste and race has no barriers when it comes to marriage," Pem Dorjee, is quoted as saying by the Associated Press.

One Nepalese paper joked that this was a marriage which, if not made in heaven, was solemnised closest to it.

Record

It has been a busy week of mountaineering at Mount Everest at the start of the popular spring climbing season.

On Monday, 45 climbers scaled the 8,850-metre (29,035-feet) peak - including Pem Dorjee and Moni Mulepati.

Nepalese Appa Sherpa broke his own world record by climbing it for the 15th time while two Iranian climbers became the first Muslim women on top of the peak.

A helicopter also crashed at the Everest base camp but there were no major injuries.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4605711.stm

[Scheherazade]

By Trevor Timpson
BBC News


Their names have passed into common vocabulary but their lives are little-known. As Down's Awareness Week gets under way, we look at the lives behind the names of some of the world's most well known diseases.

Some of the most famous people in the world are virtually unknown to millions of people who mention them every day.

Little more is widely known about these people than the names, which have been given to some of the most serious diseases afflicting humanity.

But their lives were often remarkable, both in and out of the medical sphere.

JOHN LANGDON-DOWN

The man after whom Down's Syndrome is named did not want to be called Down at all.

Born in 1828, John Langdon Haydon Down wanted to change his name officially to Langdon-Down and settled eventually for John Langdon Haydon Langdon-Down.

His own grandson, born in 1905 nine years after his death, had Down's Syndrome.

Dr Langdon-Down pioneered education and training of the mentally handicapped in his own Normansfield Hospital in Teddington, Middlesex, from 1868.

He and his wife Mary, known as "Little Mother", ran a community surrounded by a farm and wooded grounds, where the patients learned trades, and imprisonment and teasing were forbidden.

The crowning glory was the theatre, opened in 1879, with the finest workmanship in scenery and lighting.

From the 1860s, Dr Langdon-Down published works classifying conditions by their mental and physical characteristics.

In line with popular theories of the time, he classed these types in racial terms, most of them long forgotten - but the term "Mongolism" was common until it was officially replaced by "Down's Syndrome" in the 1960s.

Conversion of the disused Normansfield Hospital to a hotel is planned. The magnificent theatre remains, though much restoration work has been necessary on its sumptuous scenery.

ALOIS ALZHEIMER

The story of the identification of Alzheimer's Disease has been made into a play in Germany, exploring "a fear none of us escapes - of losing our memory and suffering an undignified death."

Alois Alzheimer was born in 1864. In 1901, at the Frankfurt psychiatric institute, he examined a 51-year-old woman, Auguste Deter.

Alzheimer's notes on his conversations with Auguste reveal many sad losses of comprehension: "What is your name? Auguste. Last name? Auguste. What is your husband's name? Auguste, I think... She became agitated, screamed, was non-cooperative."

The papers in the case were rediscovered in 1995 by psychiatrist Konrad Maurer, and the conversations made into a play, The Case of Auguste D, by Dr Maurer and his wife Ulrike.

After Auguste's death Alzheimer discovered protein deposits and decayed nerve cells in her brain. He described the case in a lecture in 1906; the term Alzheimer's Disease was first used in 1910. Alzheimer died in 1915. His birthplace at Marktbreit in south-west Germany has been renovated and opened as a museum by the Eli Lilly Deutschland company.

JAMES PARKINSON

James Parkinson (1755-1824) was a physician who lived all his life in London's Shoreditch and was a keen geologist and fossil hunter.

In the turbulent years following the French revolution, he wrote radical pamphlets under the pseudonym "Old Hubert" and was questioned about an alleged plot to kill the King with a poisoned dart.

His Essay on the Shaking Palsy - defined as "involuntary tremulous motion, with lessened muscular power, in parts not in action" - was published in 1817 and is still hailed as a masterpiece of medical description. Of the six case studies set out, two were "casually met with in the street" and a third was only "seen at a distance".

Parkinson did not know what caused "his" disease. Scientists now say the disease is caused by a deficiency of the brain chemical dopamine.

He wrote a wacky children's book called Dangerous Sports - apparently a worthy volume of safety advice, but actually an uproarious satire in which a boy is hoisted up to the roof by a rope tied to a roasting spit, and the hero turns out to have been maimed by a tiger.

THOMAS HODGKIN

Hodgkin has gained immortality as a medical researcher - but his work came to a sudden halt in 1837. Aged 39, he failed to gain appointment as assistant physician of Guy's Hospital in London and quit all his posts at the hospital.

A lifelong campaigner for aboriginal peoples, he had protested at the effects of the fur trade on the natives of northern Canada - and angered Guy's autocratic treasurer, Benjamin Harrison, who was deputy governor of the Hudson's Bay company.

Hodgkin's Disease is one form of lymphoma - cancer of the network of vessels that drain and filter the body's fluids, which is known as the lymphatic system.

He described the disease as "some morbid appearances of the absorbent glands and spleen" in 1832. Thirty years later his successor as anatomy teacher at Guy's, Sir Samuel Wilks, insisted that the malady should bear Hodgkin's name.

There are 29 other diseases grouped under the heading of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, which together are much more common.

But Hodgkin did not know that there was a special kind of cancerous cells (Reed-Sternberg cells) by which researchers decades later would define "his" lymphoma and distinguish it from the others.

He was once sacked by a wealthy patient for charging him too little and he also gave a celebrated lecture on the barks of different dogs - with impressions.

He died in Jaffa (now Yafo near Tel Aviv) in 1866 while on a visit with his friend Sir Moses Montefiore, and is buried there.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4593311.stm

[Scheherazade]

Two worried young children phoned police for help when they found handcuffs in their parents' bedroom, put them on - and could not escape. It was one of the top 10 strange calls received by Dyfed-Powys Police during the past six months.

There was also the woman who found a tarantula in a bunch of bananas... which turned out to be a leaf.

The force has set up a new number, 0845 330 2000, for non-emergency calls to ease pressure on 999 operators.

The new number replaces the 43 different police station numbers which were available.

Ch Insp Iain Sewell said: "Our aim is to make it easy for people to contact us. But some calls never cease to amaze our trained telephone operators.

"We wish to be helpful but while requests for directions, bin bags or weather reports may sound amusing, there is a serious implication when it stops our staff dealing with matters of real concern, real emergencies where a life could be in danger.

"I hope people will store the new telephone number and use it for non-emergency calls in the future; calls which report an incident or crime that has already taken place and is no longer urgent; calls about cases or for information that are police matters," he added.

The new number is being introduced after it emerged that just one in five 999 calls to the police was for a genuine emergency.

"People perceive the police as a service to the community - a one-stop shop for advice on all kinds of things," said Ch Insp Sewell.

"Many like the fact that they can speak to real people and not the automated service which many companies provide.

"Although we are here to help and treat all calls the same, it is important that people do not abuse the telephone line and use it only for the correct purposes," he said.

Top 10 strange calls

1. Two young embarrassed children: "Can you send the police up here? Mum and dad went out and we found some handcuffs in their bedroom and put them on and now we're stuck together and don't have a key. Come quick, they'll be home soon."

2. A woman rang up screaming that she had been to her local supermarket and bought bananas. When she got them home, a tarantula crawled out. It turned out to be a leaf from the garden.

3. "My husband's late home from work. Where is he?" (Police said: "A call like this could be important ... but this was just a personal moan").

4. "What's the weather like in Carmarthen? There's snow in Brecon."

5. A school rang up to say there was a pigeon in the building and wanted police to get it out.

6. A man rang to say that he had received an electricity bill but had already paid it. It turned out he had changed supplier so had two bills.

7. "Get the police now, there's a peacock on my lawn."

8. Man: "My next door neighbour is in my garden". Police: "Have you asked him what he's doing?", Man: "No. Get the police straight away." (It turned out he was gardening).

9. "I've lost my snake in the house."

10. A teenager rang to say he missed the bus home from school and wanted a lift from the police as his dad could not pick him up.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/4071066.stm

[mono]

Actress Anne Bancroft Dies At Age 73

NEW YORK - Friends recalled Anne Bancroft as anything but ordinary Tuesday, a day after the actress died at age 73. She died of uterine cancer, according to John Barlow, a spokesman for her husband, producer Mel Brooks.

In a long list of memorable film and stage roles, Bancroft was best known for her role as Mrs. Robinson in "The Graduate." It was a part she almost didn't take.

She said in 2003 that nearly everyone discouraged her from playing the role of Dustin Hoffman's middle-aged seductress "because it was all about sex with a younger man." Yet Bancroft saw something deeper, viewing the character as having unfulfilled dreams and having been relegated to a conventional life with a conventional husband.

"Film critics said I gave a voice to the fear we all have: that we'll reach a certain point in our lives, look around and realize that all the things we said we'd do and become will never come to be — and that we're ordinary."

Friends recalled Bancroft as anything but ordinary Tuesday, a day after the actress died at age 73. She died of uterine cancer, according to John Barlow, a spokesman for her husband, producer Mel Brooks.

"Her combination of brains, humor, frankness and sense were unlike any other artist," Mike Nichols, who directed her in "The Graduate," said in a statement. "Her beauty was constantly shifting with her roles, and because she was a consummate actress she changed radically for every part."

The lights on Broadway will be dimmed Wednesday in Bancroft's honor.

Bancroft was among the most lauded actresses of the 1960s and 1970s, earning five Academy Award nominations and one Oscar, for playing the teacher of a young Helen Keller in "The Miracle Worker," a role that also brought her one of two Tony Awards.

Yet "The Graduate" overshadowed her other achievements. Hoffman delivered the famous line when he realized his girlfriend's mother was coming on to him at her house: "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me. Aren't you?"

"I am quite surprised that with all my work, and some of it is very, very good, that nobody talks about `The Miracle Worker.' We're talking about Mrs. Robinson. I understand the world," she said in 2003. "I'm just a little dismayed that people aren't beyond it yet."

Bancroft's beginnings in Hollywood were unimpressive. She was signed by Twentieth Century-Fox in 1952 and given the glamour treatment. She had been acting in television as Anne Marno (her real name: Anna Maria Louise Italiano), but it sounded too ethnic for movies. The studio gave her a choice of names; she picked Bancroft "because it sounded dignified."

After a series of B pictures, she escaped to Broadway in 1958 and won her first Tony opposite Henry Fonda in "Two for the Seesaw." The stage and movie versions of "The Miracle Worker" followed. Her other Academy nominations: "The Pumpkin Eater" (1964); "The Graduate" (1967); "The Turning Point" (1977); and "Agnes of God" (1985).

Bancroft became known for her willingness to assume a variety of portrayals. She appeared as Winston Churchill's American mother in the film "Young Winston"; as Golda Meir in "Golda" onstage; a gypsy woman in the film "Love Potion No. 9"; a centenarian for the TV version of "Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All."

In recent years, Bancroft appeared opposite Demi Moore as a feminist U.S. senator in "G.I. Jane," lent her voice to the computer-animated feature "Antz," and played for laughs in 2001's "Heartbreakers."

After an unhappy three-year marriage to builder Martin May, Bancroft married comedian-director-producer Brooks in 1964. They met when she was rehearsing a musical number, "Married I Can Always Get," for the Perry Como television show.

In a 1984 interview she said she told her psychiatrist the next day: "Let's speed this process up — I've met the right man. See, I'd never had so much pleasure being with another human being. I wanted him to enjoy me too. It was that simple."

A son, Maximilian, was born in 1972. She also is survived by her mother, two sisters, a daughter-in-law and a grandson.

Bancroft appeared in three of Brooks' comedies: "Silent Movie," a remake of "To Be or Not to Be" and "Dracula: Dead and Loving It." She was the one who suggested that he make a stage musical of his movie "The Producers." She explained that when he was afraid of writing a full-blown musical, including the music, "I sent him to an analyst."

When Bancroft watched Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick rehearse "The Producers," she realized how much she had missed the theater. In 2002 she returned to Broadway for the first time since 1981, appearing in Edward Albee's "Occupant."

She was born Sept. 17, 1931, in New York City to Italian immigrant parents. She recalled scrawling "I want to be an actress" on the back fence of her apartment when she was 9. Her mother encouraged her to enroll at the American Academy for Dramatic Arts.

Live television drama was flourishing in New York in the early 1950s, and Bancroft appeared in 50 shows in two years. "It was the greatest school that one could go to," she said in 1997. "You learn to be concentrated and focused."

In mid-career Bancroft attended the Actors Studio to heighten her understanding of the acting craft. Later she studied at the American Film Institute's Directing Workshop for Women at UCLA. In 1980 she directed a feature, "Fatso," starring Dom DeLuise. It received modest attention.

Among her notable portrayals: a potential suicide in "The Slender Thread"; Mary Magdalene in Franco Zeffirelli's miniseries "Jesus of Nazareth"; actress Madge Kindle in "The Elephant Man"; Anthony Hopkins' pen pal in "84 Charing Cross Road"; and the Miss Havisham role in a modernized "Great Expectations."

(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050608/...NlYwMlJVRPUCUl)

[Basil]

Well, hopefully this will dispel those unfounded rumors of autoerotic asphyxiation:

Israeli Doctor: Clot May Have Killed Jesus
JERUSALEM - Jesus may have died from a blood clot that reached his lungs, an Israeli physician said Wednesday, challenging the popular conception that he died of asphyxiation and blood loss during his crucifixion.
[. . .]
"It is known that the common cause of death in the setting of multiple trauma, immobilization and dehydration is pulmonary embolism," wrote Brenner in Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis. "This fits well with Jesus' condition and actually was in all likelihood the major cause of death of crucified victims."
A pulmonary embolism is caused when a blood clot travels to the lungs, usually from the leg, causing an acute shortness of breath and chest pains. It is frequently fatal.
[. . .]
But Bible scholars said that focusing on Jesus' physical suffering as the cause of death missed the point.
"What they are doing is the autopsy of the physical body, which is always interesting from an academic standpoint," said Stephen Pfann, a Bible scholar in Jerusalem. "But if people concentrate on that part of the event alone they are missing the most important part, which is the spiritual suffering."
"The major trauma for the son of God is the spiritual trauma, the loneliness feeling the rejection of God and the shame of the world that came upon him at that point," he said.

[Scheherazade]

At a time when most children prepare to go to school, Saurabh Nagvanshi is off to the office. Saurabh works at a police station in Raipur, the capital of India's central state of Chhattisgarh. He is five years old.

He is part of an Indian system that allows a family member to take the post of a government employee who dies while in service.

There is no age limit and many families have no alternative but to send young children to work to make ends meet.

Saurabh has to feed a family of five and so his mother, Ishwari Devi Nagvanshi, holds his hand and takes him the 110km (68 miles) from Bilaspur, where they live, to Raipur.


Signing for the cheque

In this surrogate police job, a child must work one day and go to school the next. At work, the children are asked to do filing and bring tea and water for senior officials. The children are paid 2,500 rupees ($57) a month.

At an age when children are learning how to write, Saurabh now knows how to sign his name when he receives his monthly salary.

He is quiet. If you try to talk to him he will either run away or hide behind his mother.

Mrs Nagvanshi says: "In order to run the house I had no option but to make my child work. It's not nice. He should be jumping around and playing at his age."

Respect

For most of the children who take on the responsibilities of their dead fathers, there is no time to play.

Manish Khoonte, who is 10, works as a child officer in the Korba police station.

His begins at 0600 by going to school with his two younger brothers. In the afternoon, after finishing his studies, he goes to work. He gets extra tuition in the evening.

He loves football, but has no time to play.

But he does get 2,400 rupees a month and the respect of his peers - they call him "policeman".

Manish says he wants to become an inspector someday.

Jitesh Singh, 13, wants to leave his job as a child officer as soon as possible but thinks it could be many years before that happens.

Janki Prasad Rajwade, 18, feels the same way. She joined the police in 1994 after her father's death.

Since then, she has spent every day wondering when she will be able to leave.

She says she does not like filing and serving tea but has little choice.

She hopes to finish her studies and get a job with the federal Indian Police Service, not the state force.

'Illegal'

Railway Police superintendent in Raipur, Pawan Dev, says the employment of the children in the police must be seen from a social perspective.

The money is a great relief to the families, he says. In addition, the workload is light.

But Subhash Mishra, a member of the state's Human Rights Commission, says it is wrong to make children work like this.

He says, instead, the families should be given an equal amount of money to pay for the child's upbringing and education.

Subhash Mahapatra, president of a human rights organisation called Forum for Fact-finding, Documentation and Advocacy, goes further.

According to the Geneva Convention, he says, employing children as police officials and making them work at such a young age is against Indian and international laws.

"It is very similar to the definition of child soldiers as outlined by the United Nations," he says.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4073204.stm

[mono]

'Earth's Bigger Cousin' Detected
Hot and rocky extrasolar planet orbits star similar to sun

Astronomers announced today the discovery of the smallest planet so far found outside of our solar system. About seven-and-a-half times as massive as Earth, and about twice as wide, this new extrasolar planet may be the first rocky world ever found orbiting a star similar to our own.

"This is the smallest extrasolar planet yet detected and the first of a new class of rocky terrestrial planets," said team member Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "It's like Earth's bigger cousin."

Currently around 150 extrasolar planets are known, and the number continues to grow. But most of these far-off worlds are large gas giants like Jupiter. Only recently have astronomers started detecting smaller massed objects.

"We keep pushing the limits of what we can detect, and we're getting closer and closer to finding Earths," said team member Steven Vogt from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

The discovery of Earth’s distant cousin was announced today at a press conference at the National Science Foundation in Arlington, Va.

The new planet orbits Gliese 876, an M dwarf star 15 light years away in the constellation Aquarius. The “super-Earth” is not alone: there are two other planets — both Jupiter-sized — in the same system. This third world was detected by a tiny extra wobble that it caused in the central star.

From this wobble, the researchers measured a minimum mass for the new planet of 5.9 Earth masses. The planet makes a full orbit in a speedy 1.94 days, implying a distance to the central star of 2 million miles — or about 2 percent of the distance between the Earth and the sun.

Orbiting so close to its star, scientists speculate that the planet’s temperature is a toasty 400 to 750 degrees Fahrenheit (200 to 400 degrees Celsius). This is likely too hot for the planet to retain much gas, like Jupiter does. Therefore, the planet must be mostly solid.

"The planet's mass could easily hold onto an atmosphere," said Gregory Laughlin from UC Santa Cruz. "It would still be considered a rocky planet, probably with an iron core and a silicon mantle. It could even have a dense steamy water layer.”

(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8206263/)

[Scheherazade]

Lawyer invents lobster stun-gun

Lobsters could soon be "crusta-stunned" to death, if an invention by a British barrister takes off. Simon Buckhaven says his electronic stun-gun would be a humane way of killing the creatures.

He has worked for two years with scientists from the University of Bristol to make the Crusta-stun and has estimated its cost at up to £2,000.

Currently most lobsters are either drowned in fresh water or stabbed before being cooked.

Mr Buckhaven told BBC News the new device conformed with slaughter regulations applied to animals such as cows or sheep.

'Very viable'

He said: "In a fraction of a second it knocks them unconscious and then, by the sustaining of the current, it destroys the entire nervous system, which kills them."

Last year Mr Buckhaven told a parliamentary select committee that workers in the fishing industry would be able to afford the stun-gun.

"Until now there has been no electronic method of dealing with crabs, lobsters and crayfish. We have it now. We know it works," he said at the time.

"When the question of cost has been raised, the shellfish producers in Cornwall think it is very viable in terms of the equipment they have to use."

He said that the cost for restaurants would be between £1,000 and £2,000 for one machine.

On the BBC Food website, Lloyd Burgess from Masterchef has argued that freezing lobsters is a humane alternative.

In his recipe for Lobster Fricassee, he said: "Live lobsters can be humanely killed by putting them in a plastic bag in the freezer for about two hours. They slowly lose consciousness and die."


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4097798.stm


US teen on 'vomit assault' charge

A US high school student who vomited on his Spanish teacher has been charged with battery against a school official. The 17-year-old from Olathe, Kansas, explained it was an accident brought on by the stress of final exams.

But prosecutors said witnesses alleged the boy intentionally threw up on teacher David Young.

Assistant district attorney Rick Guinn said they were seeking an apology from the teenager, who has since been expelled from the school.

Teacher Mr Young described the incident as "outrageous".

"I think a message is being sent by both the school district and the district attorney that this behaviour will not be tolerated," he told the Associated Press news agency.

The charge of battery against a school official was filed on Monday against the student of Olathe Northwest High School.

The teenager's father said the district had advised his son to enrol in an alternative school at the start of the new school year.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4094120.stm

[Scheherazade]

The sculpture is a tribute to the loneliness of writing

A table and chair the size of a house have been captivating visitors to north London's Hampstead Heath.

The 30ft (9m) sculpture, The Writer, will be on Parliament Hill for four months before returning to Italy.

The tribute to the loneliness of writing is meant to inspire visitors to the heath, which has associations with writers Keats and Coleridge.

Leslie Mare, from the Corporation of London which runs the heath, said: "People seem to love it or hate it".

Giancarlo Neri, who used to play soccer for New York Apollos in the seventies, chose the heath, one of London's most popular parks, after hearing of its artistic heritage.

The Naples-born artist used six tons of steel and 1,000lb of wood to create the giant sculpture.

He said he wants people to interact with it, using it as a picnic spot or using the legs as goal posts.

When it was on display in Rome two homeless people were said to have lived underneath it.

Ms Mare told BBC News: "People talk about it, look at it, some people have even graffiti'd on it but it's really engaged people.

"It's almost a reminder of the heath's hidden heroes, and hopefully will encourage new young budding artists and writers."

The sculpture will be officially unveiled at a party on the heath on Wednesday, during the first week of Art Fortnight London.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4117974.stm

[Scheherazade]

A 13-year-old girl has become the youngest author to be published in South Africa's main medical journal for her research on "PlayStation thumb". Safura Abdool Karim interviewed 120 of her former schoolmates for a science project about whether they suffered problems after playing computer games.

Symptoms of "PlayStation Thumb" include blisters numbness and tingling, mainly in the thumb, she wrote.

She said the condition is similar to Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI).

"Although RSI is not new, in the past it occurred mainly among adults," she said.

"Today computers and computer games are creating new medical problems, such as PlayStation thumb, which are becoming common in children."

'Waste of time'

South African Medical Journal's deputy editor, Professor JP van Niekerk, said Ms Karim's work would be listed on the Index Medicus, an international registry of medico-scientific articles, "so the world can see this and cite it".

"I think it's a jolly good article. It was accepted on merit, but we also thought it was great fun," he said.

Her study found that 28 of the 60 boys and 17 of the 60 girls she spoke to played regularly.

Of these, eight boys and seven girls complained of symptoms such as redness, tingling and blisters.

Ms Karim said she had not seen the journal yet, "but I was really happy to hear it had been accepted".

She said she herself did not own a PlayStation because they were a "waste of time".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4122828.stm

[mono]

Disaster On A Stick
Snapple's attempt at popsicle world record turns into gooey fiasco

NEW YORK - An attempt to erect the world’s largest popsicle in a city square ended with a scene straight out of a disaster film — but much stickier.

The 25-foot-tall, 17½-ton treat of frozen Snapple juice melted faster than expected Tuesday, flooding Union Square in downtown Manhattan with kiwi-strawberry-flavored fluid that sent pedestrians scurrying for higher ground.

Firefighters closed off several streets and used hoses to wash away the sugary goo.

Snapple had been trying to promote a new line of frozen treats by setting a record for the world’s largest popsicle, but called off the stunt before it was pulled fully upright by a construction crane. Authorities said they were worried the thing would collapse in the 80-degree, first-day-of-summer heat.

“What was unsettling was that the fluid just kept coming,” Stuart Claxton of the Guinness Book of World Records told the Daily News. “It was quite a lot of fluid. On a hot day like this, you have to move fast.”

Snapple official Lauren Radcliffe said the company was unlikely to make a second attempt to break the record, set by a 21-foot ice pop in Holland in 1997.

The giant ice pop was supposed to have been able to withstand the heat for some time, and organizers weren’t sure why it didn’t. It had been made in Edison, N.J., and hauled to New York by freezer truck in the morning.

(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8321110/)

[amuse]

gross!

[Jay]

They should have attempted that in winter, lol