The world’s most dedicated Loch Ness monster hunter has scotched reports that has finally given up looking for the legendary Scottish beast after a quarter of a century of searching. Last week, the Times newspaper reported that Steve Feltham, who gave up his job, house and girlfriend 24 years ago to look for the creature full-time, had abandoned his long […]
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■ A Canadian man was scratching his back when he noticed a pointy protrusion. It turned out to be a 3-inch knife blade that was buried in his flesh three years earlier. Billy McNeely, 32, said he’d often complained to doctors about chronic back pain after he was stabbed in a 2010 brawl, but physicians told him it was just […]
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A mother-of-eight, 30, died suddenly from a cardiac arrest because she drank up to 18 pints of Coke every day for years, a coroner has ruled. Natasha Harris died at home in Invercargill on New Zealand’s south island. An inquest revealed that she would drink at least four 2.5 litre bottles of the fizzy drink each day, consuming more than […]
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A Spanish woman has filed papers staking an official legal claim to the sun. Angeles Duran, 49, states in notarized documents she is now the official “owner of the sun, a star of spectral type G2, located in the center of the solar system, located at an average distance from Earth of about 149,600,000 kilometers” Duran now wants to impose […]
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Secrets of supermarket meat and fish: Testing the food you buy Investigators went undercover to test the supermarket meat and fish. Their studies uncovered lots of disturbing food fraud. As it turns out, that supermarket meat and fish might not be so healthy to consume after all. Over 150 pieces of fish were tested to see if what consumers were […]
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■ A police station in northern France is storing so much seized marijuana that officers are getting high off the fumes. “The odor is really strong” said one officer. “After a day, you are stoned.” About 88 pounds of weed has piled up at the Roubaix station because of a strike at the agency that is supposed to dispose of […]
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Researchers have discovered a new map of the octopus genome that is so strange that it could actually be an “alien”. The first whole cephalopod gene sequence shows a striking level of complexity with 33,000 protein-coding genes identified – more than in a human. Not only that, the octopus DNA is highly rearranged – like cards shuffled and reshuffled in […]
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■ A Georgia college student faked his own kidnapping to avoid telling his parents he was flunking English. After receiving the F grade, Aftab Aslam, 19, texted his parents on behalf of a group of make-believe abductors, warning them not to call police or he would be killed. He camped out for eight days but came home when the weather […]
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The “stoner” stereotype isn’t just a myth. Heavy use of marijuana in the teenage years dulls intelligence—and the loss of IQ points may last for life, according to a new study. Researchers tested the IQs of more than 1,000 New Zealand schoolchildren at age 13, before most had tried marijuana, and again at age 38. In between, they regularly surveyed […]
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“Trainwreck” hilariously depicts some sobering news: Alcohol consumption is on the rise among educated professional women. And in a high-pressure culture where workdays can end in rounds of drinks, collegial boozing is creating some tricky situations. For the young creatives at one Washington, D.C.-based marketing agency, grabbing a beer together is as typical as a group coffee run. And on […]
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