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A 58-year-old man in Hampshire, UK, severed his own head using a chainsaw, after losing an eviction fight. Police sources have revealed that David Phyall switched on the saw, and put a timer on the socket. He even had a cocktail of pills to knock himself out, and then rested the saw on his neck. When the timer went off, the saw sliced through his neck in an instant. David committed suicide some 10 days ago, and it was his father John who first discovered his body. Policemen and paramedics who reached the site said that they found David’s bloodsoaked corpse. What greeted them was a horrific sight. The head was severed and there was a considerable amount of blood. He seemed to have gone into a great amount of detail to end it all, a police source said. David had fought for several years to prevent developers bulldozing the block of 72 flats he rented in, and replacing them. He was last to leave after all the other flats were boarded up in Bishopstoke, Southampton, added the report. The paper even said that an eviction notice from housing association Atlantic Housing Ltd might have been the last straw. "We had given him 11 other offers of accommodation but he rejected them, basically because he did not want a property owned by us", said a spokesman for Atlantic. Source
Australian police smashed a window to rescue a seemingly unconscious baby from a locked vehicle in Queensland last week only to find it was an extremely lifelike doll. The embarrassing mistake, made in regional Gympie, is not an isolated incident and passionate creator of the "reborn" baby dolls Vynette Cernik knows just how easily they can be mistaken for the real thing. Selling for up to $1000, the painstakingly hand-painted dolls were so lifelike with eyelashes, fingernails, milk spots and wispy hair that they were constantly fooling people, Ms Cernik said. "They're even weighted to feel like a baby's weight and they flop like a baby," she said. The dolls can even come with umbilical cords, cord clamps and their own birth certificates. "They are so realistic, people do become attached to them," Ms Cernik said. "You don't stop playing with dolls because you grow old. You grow old because you stop playing with dolls. "People do have to be careful when they go out with them. I tell them to hold them properly, not dangle them by one leg or something, because other people do think they are real babies and become alarmed." Ms Cernik said she felt sorry for the Gympie police and the members of the public distressed by the situation and suggested owners should put warning cards on the dolls. Gympie Sen-Sgt Phil Edwards said last week's incident had been frightening for both police and members of the public who genuinely believed a baby was dying. "It was incredibly lifelike," he said, agreeing that warning cards on the dolls might be a good idea. He said when the car's owners were eventually found they were "nonplussed and apologetic". Source
The word “Fanboy” is one of the hundred or so new words that Merriam-Webster has decided to add to their Collegiate Dictionary this year. Apparently the first occurrence of the word was in the year 1919. Who knew? Merriam-Webster ’s definition is: Source, Source
UK- A dummy that moves and feels like a real patient and can bleed, vomit and sweat has been unveiled as the latest training tool for health professionals. The remote-controlled mannequin, called iStan, has been created by the University of Portsmouth. The £40,000 model is set to help provide realistic training for doctors, nurses and dentists. It has been designed to replicate a human's anatomical structure, from the skeleton to the eyes. iStan has pupils which can dilate and contract, its skin can have goosebumps and sweat and it can suffer a heart attack. Its blood pressure can also fall, internal organs bleed, lungs collapse and its bowels make realistic sounds. The model can also help doctors dealing with stab victims by simulating a bowel protruding from the stomach. Professor Lesley-Jane Eales-Reynolds, said: "He can be used in real-world situations. "For paramedic students he can be put in a crashed car or collapsed at the foot of some stairs, which is precisely the sort of situation they are likely to encounter in the real world. "He can have a cardiac arrest or an adverse drug reaction in a dental chair, allowing staff and students in dentistry to practise skills that they could not keep honed using their patients." Phil Ashwell, a healthcare professional who teaches at the university, said: "The mannequins suspend disbelief and bring healthcare to life which means the quality of casualty care will improve. "The students are very lucky to learn in this safe environment. When I was training all we had to practise on was 'Resus Annie', a folded up mannequin in a suitcase. "Some of the students are a bit wary when they first meet the simulators because they are so realistic. "But once they have started practising on one they are fine and they learn so much faster and in more depth." Source
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A New York man claimed in a lawsuit filed on Wednesday that he found a knife with a 7-inch (18-cm) blade baked into the bread of his foot-long "Cold Cut Trio" Subway sandwich. John Agnesini, 26, a magazine designer, said he had already taken a few bites from the sandwich in late June when he spotted the knife jutting out from the bread's crust. The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan state court, seeks $1 million. "If I didn't look at it, I don't know what would have happened," said Agnesini. "That's the last thing you think about a sandwich you eat all the time." A colleague telephoned the chain to complain, but Subway never apologized, he said. Subway spokesman Kevin Kane said in a statement the company was investigating. "At Subway restaurants, we take food safety and customer comments very seriously. We are aware of the complaint made and are investigating the facts alleged. As a pending legal matter, we cannot discuss this matter further," said Kane. The case was filed on public health grounds, but Agnesini's lawyer, Yetta Kurland, also said she was looking into whether the June incident may have been intentional or malicious. Source
A woman got the shock of her life when she found an 8-foot snake mixed in with clothes in her washing machine. The snake, identified as a reticulated python, somehow got into the water pipes of Mara Ranger's 1800s-era farmhouse and slithered into the machine. After Ranger took her blue jeans out of the machine Wednesday, she reached back into the load and felt something move. "I jumped back and all of sudden its head starts coming out of the washing machine and it looked huge," Ranger told WMTW-TV. Ranger quickly closed the lid and called police and an animal control officer, but they didn't want anything to do with the serpent. When Richard Burton, who operates Maine Animal Damage Control in Lewiston, arrived at Ranger's house, he could barely believe his eyes. Burton reached into the machine wearing a pair of welding gloves, expecting to come out with a 4-foot snake. But when he pulled the animal out, it kept coming and coming _ all 8 feet of it. Once out of the machine, the angry snake wrapped itself around Burton's hand, cutting off the blood flow. Burton then wrestled the scaly reptile into a plastic bag, tied it shut and brought it to Lewiston. That's where Jen Lewis, a wildlife rehabilitator who works at the Kennel Shop, identified it as a python. The snakes kill prey with their teeth but are not poisonous, she said. Lewis and Lewiston's animal control officer planned to find the snake a home at a wildlife refuge. But how the snake ended up in the washing machine remains a mystery. Burton guessed it was somebody's pet and that the owner ended up tossing it out into the wild when it got too big. It then made its way through the water pipes and into the washing machine, probably after the load was done, he said. In the meantime, Ranger said she's a little paranoid. "Now that it's gone, I'm going to be checking crevasses and corners," Ranger said. "I'm going to be looking in the tub first _ before and after, maybe even during, the rinse cycle." Source / Source
SEATTLE - Seattle's five problem-plagued public toilets could be yours if you're flush. City officials decided to pull the plug on the multimillion-dollar self-cleaning toilet stalls and instead put them on the auction site eBay. Starting bids are $89,000 apiece. Neighbors and city-commissioned analysts said the unisex facilities attracted drug users and prostitutes, and were less cost-effective than regular public restrooms. On May 19, the City Council voted to remove the problem toilets. Council President Richard Conlin said although people were using the high-tech, self-cleaning silver stalls, they also fostered illegal behavior, such as prostitution and drug use. The German-made automatic, high-tech toilets were installed in 2004 and have cost the city about $5 million. Each has handsfree washing and drying ability and an emergency button that automatically dials 911. The automated doors on the impact- and graffiti-resistant toilets will close Aug. 1, said Andy Ryan, a spokesman for Seattle Public Utilities. The auction will last for 10 days. As of Thursday morning, none of the toilets had received any bids. Source
A call by Nasa for donations of urine so it can create the perfect space lavatory has been leaked, resulting in a flood of offers. The US space programme said it was seeking urine from workers at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, as part of its work on the new Orion space capsule. The Orion will eventually take astronauts to the moon, according to an internal memo posted on the Web site Nasawatch.com. Designers of the Orion, which will park unoccupied in space for up to six months while astronauts work on the moon, have to solve a pressing issue of getting rid of stored urine, said John Lewis, Nasa's head of life support systems for Orion. To design, build and test the systems, Nasa needs nearly 8 gallons of urine every day - about the total daily output of 30 people. "Urine is a mess because urine is full of solids," Mr Lewis said. Those solids clog the venting system for dumping urine which meant keeping the waste disposal system clear is "really a challenge," he added. Nasa has a long-standing tradition of collecting samples from its workers to help design better space toilets because "you can't make fake urine," Mr Lewis said. The memo seeking daily contributions from July 21 to July 31, contains detailed instructions for participants, but was not meant to go public. It requests donors do not drink too much to encourage urination, warning that "you are not encouraged to over-hydrate as this could dilute the urine we collect". "Unlike in the doctor's office, you do not need to worry about starting collection midstream," the memo states. "Our testing will be much more accurate if you collect as much of the entire urination as possible including the beginning." It also calls for urine to be fresh, no more than an hour old. "We suggest that morning urine be collected at home, but not night-time urine," the memo states. Source
ORLANDO, Fla. -- Someday, when a boy named Dixon and Willoughby Partin asks how he got his 24-letter name, he'll learn it came with a hundred bucks worth of gasoline. David Partin of Orlando offered the right to name his unborn son to a local radio station that offered $100 worth of free gas to the listener with the most interesting item to trade. Radio hosts Richard Dixon and J. Willoughby took Partin's deal. When the baby is born this winter, he'll be named Dixon and Willoughby Partin, with the "and" included. Partin's girlfriend, Samantha Bailey, tells the Orlando Sentinel that at least the boy will have an interesting story about how he got his name. Dixon and Willoughby plan to hand over the free gas card when they see the birth certificate. Source Have any interesting articles you'd like to share? Article Request Thread.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Three genes may play a strong role in determining why some young men raised in rough neighborhoods or deprived families become violent criminals, while others do not, U.S. researchers reported on Monday. One gene called MAOA that played an especially strong role has been shown in other studies to affect antisocial behavior -- and it was disturbingly common, the team at the University of North Carolina reported. People with a particular variation of the MAOA gene called 2R were very prone to criminal and delinquent behavior, said sociology professor Guang Guo, who led the study. "I don't want to say it is a crime gene, but 1 percent of people have it and scored very high in violence and delinquency," Guo said in a telephone interview. His team, which studied only boys, used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a U.S. nationally representative sample of about 20,000 adolescents in grades 7 to 12. The young men in the study are interviewed in person regularly, and some give blood samples. Guo's team constructed a "serious delinquency scale" based on some of the questions the youngsters answered. "Nonviolent delinquency includes stealing amounts larger or smaller than $50, breaking and entering, and selling drugs," they wrote in the August issue of the American Sociological Review. "Violent delinquency includes serious physical fighting that resulted in injuries needing medical treatment, use of weapons to get something from someone, involvement in physical fighting between groups, shooting or stabbing someone, deliberately damaging property, and pulling a knife or gun on someone." GENES PLUS ENVIRONMENT They found specific variations in three genes -- the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene, the dopamine transporter 1 (DAT1) gene and the dopamine D2 receptor (DRD2) gene -- were associated with bad behavior, but only when the boys suffered some other stress, such as family issues, low popularity and failing school. MAOA regulates several message-carrying chemicals called neurotransmitters that are important in aggression, emotion and cognition such as serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine. The links were very specific. The effect of repeating a grade depended on whether a boy had a certain mutation in MAOA called a 2 repeat, they found. And a certain mutation in DRD2 seemed to set off a young man if he did not have regular meals with his family. "But if people with the same gene have a parent who has regular meals with them, then the risk is gone," Guo said. "Having a family meal is probably a proxy for parental involvement," he added. "It suggests that parenting is very important." He said vulnerable children might benefit from having surrogates of some sort if their parents are unavailable. "These results, which are among the first that link molecular genetic variants to delinquency, significantly expand our understanding of delinquent and violent behavior, and they highlight the need to simultaneously consider their social and genetic origins," the researchers said. Guo said it was far too early to explore whether drugs might be developed to protect a young man. He also was unsure if criminals might use a "genetic defense" in court. "In some courts (the judge might) think they maybe will commit the same crime again and again, and this would make the court less willing to let them out," he said. Source