A good question
“A would-be convenience store robber,” Japantoday.com reports, “called police and turned himself in after being reprimanded by an employee in Fukushima on Tuesday morning. According to police, Takashi Owata entered a Sunkus convenience store and demanded cash from a 59-year-old female employee. The woman told police she glared at the man and yelled, ‘What the hell do you think you're doing?' According to police, Owata threatened the woman with a wooden stick, but left the store without any money after she yelled at him. He then called police from his mobile phone and confessed to trying to rob the store.”
First out the airlock?
“The man who hopes to be the first clown in space, Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté, said Tuesday he would tickle fellow astronauts as they sleep aboard the International Space Station,” Associated Press reports. The clown told reporters he had been tickling his fellow astronauts during training.
The only problems
“Years ago,” David Allen writes in Wired magazine, “a friend added to my understanding of the fundamental duality of our universe by sharing this observation: ‘There are only two problems in life: You know what you want and you don't know how to get it; or you don't know what you want.'”
Fighting germs
As concern over swine flu grows, germophobes are on high alert, Laura Landro writes in The Wall Street Journal. “Sales of alcohol-based hand sanitizers were up nearly 17 per cent as of the first week of September compared to the same period last year, according to Chicago-based research firm Information Resources. And marketers are taking full advantage of our paranoia, introducing anti-bacterial dishwasher-safe keyboards, machine-washable leather shoes, germ-resistant paper file folders and even hands-free communion wafer dispensers for churches.”
Do bombers walk funny?
“Al-Qaeda has made a horrifying – if bizarre – advance in terrorist tradecraft,” Christopher Dickey reports for Newsweek.com. “As recently reported by my friend Frank Gardner, security correspondent for the BBC, the suicide bomber who tried unsuccessfully to blow up Saudi Arabia's counterterrorism chief in August actually had the explosives inside his body. It's possible the bomb – which was made from materials that wouldn't set off metal detectors – was swallowed or stitched into him in some fashion, but according to one usually authoritative Saudi official, the explosives had been inserted in the terrorist's rectum.”
A busy cleaner
“A pregnant woman has filed paternity claims against six separate inmates of a Romanian prison,” Ananova.com reports. “Mum-to-be Raluca Dionescu from Iasi says any one of the convicts she met while working part-time at the jail could be the father. The prisoners – aged between 24 and 35 – will have to submit to blood and DNA tests. Dionescu, who was employed as a cleaner at the prison near Iasi, admitted she had enjoyed steamy sessions with the inmates in the prison's laundry room. She said: ‘I couldn't resist some of the men. … What I want now though is to find out which one is the father of my child.'”
Hyena teamwork
U.S. evolutionary anthropologists say they've discovered that spotted hyenas outperform primates on co-operative problem-solving tests, United Press International reports. Duke University scientists led by associate professor Christine Drea said captive pairs of spotted hyenas that needed to tug two ropes in unison to earn a food reward co-operated successfully and learned the manoeuvres quickly with no training. Experienced hyenas even helped inexperienced partners do the trick. When confronted with a similar task, chimpanzees and other primates often required extensive training, Prof. Drea said. Her study, co-authored with Allisa Carter of the University of California, Berkeley, is published in Animal Behaviour.
Stressed koalas
“The koala, Australia's star symbol, is dying of stress,” Associated Press reports. “Koalas live in the rolling hills and flat plains where eucalyptus trees grow, because they need the leaves for both food and water. But as people move in, koalas are finding themselves with fewer trees, researchers say. The stress is bringing out a latent disease that infects 50 to 90 per cent of the animals. ‘Koalas are in diabolical trouble,' says researcher Frank Carrick, who heads the Koala Study Program at the University of Queensland. ‘Numbers show that even in their stronghold, koala numbers are declining alarmingly.' … Chlamydiosis is a virus that breaks out in koalas in times of stress – like cold sores in humans – and leads to infections in the eyes and urinary, reproductive and respiratory tracts. It can cause blindness, infertility and death.”
Thought du jour
"Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as much as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions."
– Agatha Christie
