Croatian doctors remove healthy kidney in hospital

By Agence France-Presse
October 26, 2011


ZAGREB — Doctors in a Croatian hospital removed a perfectly healthy kidney from a 56-year-old woman scheduled to have spinal surgery after a mix-up in the hospital, local dailies reported Wednesday.

"Unfortunately it is true. The hospital is talking to the patient and (her) family about compensation," Health Minister Darko Milinovic was quoted by the Jutarnji List daily as saying.

The mistake occurred when two women patients with the same family name and almost identical first names were admitted to a hospital in the southern Adriatic town of Dubrovnik, the paper said.

A probe to establish the cause of the mistake, that occured last month, is underway.



NYC performance artist gives birth in art gallery

By the Associated Press

NEW YORK — A performance artist who said giving birth is the "highest form of art" has delivered a baby boy — inside a New York City art gallery

The Microscope Gallery in Brooklyn said Marni Kotak gave birth to a healthy infant, weighing 9 pounds, 2 ounces, and 21 inches long.

The 36-year-old artist had set up a home-birth center at the gallery, turning the space into a brightly decorated bedroom with ocean blue walls and photo-imprinted pillows.

The gallery said in a statement that "Baby X" was born at 10:17 a.m. Tuesday. It didn't say how many people witnessed the birth or give any other detail.

The gallery said a video of the birth will be added to its upcoming exhibition.


 It's not a UFO, it's the moon

By Gaby Leslie, Yahoo!

A man made an emergency 999 call to the police to report a UFO flying near his house, only to realise it was – in fact – the moon.

The anonymous man from Stevenage, Hertfordshire, described a brightly-lit UFO with a hole hovering over his house and coming towards him.

The caller, who was recorded by Hertfordshire Police, appears to be confused about it on the phone.

However, the operator treats his account seriously and assures him that she has logged it and will get it checked out.

After realising his error, the local man called back two minutes later to apologize to an exasperated operator.

In nervous laughter, he says: “I made a mistake. I thought I saw something really strange, but I didn't. You won't believe this, you won't believe it. It's the moon.”

Hertfordshire Police posted the audio footage online yesterday of some of the calls that were made earlier this month.

Jason Baxter, assistant manager at the force communications room, said: “While the caller here may not have been phoning out of malice, his call still tied up valuable police resources and time for something which was not an emergency.

“It also illustrates the kind of bogus call we might receive to 999, whether as a hoax or an inappropriate call.”

Police made the calls public as a reminder before Halloween that making a bogus call can stop important 999 calls from getting through.

The maximum penalty for hoax call offences is up to six months imprisonment and a £5,000 ($8,003) fine.

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A mother's ultimate sacrifice

This is a true story of Mother’s Sacrifice during the Japan Earthquake.

After the Earthquake had subsided, when the rescuers reached the ruins of a young woman’s house, they saw her dead body through the cracks. But her pose was somehow strange that she knelt on her knees like a person was worshiping; her body was leaning forward, and her two hands were supporting by an object. The collapsed house had crashed her back and her head.

With so many difficulties, the leader of the rescuer team put his hand through a narrow gap on the wall to reach the woman’s body. He was hoping that this woman could be still alive. However, the cold and stiff body told him that she had passed away for sure.

He and the rest of the team left this house and were going to search the next collapsed building. For some reasons, the team leader was driven by a compelling force to go back to the ruin house of the dead woman. Again, he knelt down and worked his hand through the narrow cracks to search the little space under the dead body. Suddenly, he screamed with excitement, "A child! There is a child!"

The whole team worked together; carefully they removed the piles of ruined objects around the dead woman. There was a 3 months old little boy wrapped in a flowery blanket under his mother’s dead body. Obviously, the woman had made an ultimate sacrifice for saving her son. When her house was falling, she used her body to make a cover to protect her son. The little boy was still sleeping peacefully when the team leader picked him up.

The medical doctor came quickly to examine the little boy. After he opened the blanket, he saw a cell phone inside the blanket. There was a text message on the screen. It said, "If you can survive, you must remember that I love you." This cell phone was passing around from one hand to another. Every body that read the message wept.






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Fiance's love saves woman buried by quake

By Umit Bektas, Reuters

ERCIS, Turkey (Reuters) - A fiance's love saved 25-year-old teacher Gul Karacoban from being left to die under the rubble of a restaurant she was eating at when a deadly earthquake struck eastern Turkey.

Brought out alive on Monday along with two colleagues, after 18 hours pinned under a mound of concrete and masonry, she was stretchered into an ambulance while paramedics assured her desperate fiance she would be alright.

"All I want is for her to live, I don't care if she injured or not. It doesn't matter, I just want her alive," air force Lieutenant Onur Eryasar told a Reuters photographer before climbing into the ambulance.

When the quake struck, Eryasar rushed from his base in Van to the town of Ercis some 100 km (60 miles) away to find Karacoban, and by talking with her friends and colleagues he learnt where she had gone to lunch.

Finding the restaurant in the dark, he shouted out her name. Hearing the voices of other people trapped in the collapsed building he persuaded one of the rescue teams to begin digging.

By late Monday morning his perseverance was rewarded as the young woman was carried out, alive and conscious.

At least 239 people died in Sunday's 7.2 magnitude earthquake that struck the cities of Van and Ercis, but hundreds more were feared dead and trapped beneath collapsed buildings.

Elsewhere in Ercis, a town of 100,000, a rescue worker stepped carefully down the heap of dust and rubble that had once been an internet cafe, cradling a tiny boy of maybe three years old.

His neck protected by a brace, the boy was crying as he was carried in his rescuer's arms to a waiting ambulance.

Another man emerged stunned, looking round in disbelief as he sat on the debris that he'd been buried under overnight in the bitter cold. Assisted down to the road, he stumbled away into the crowd.

A Reuters photographer saw a woman and her daughter being freed from beneath a concrete slab in the wreckage of a building that had once been six stories tall.

"I'm here, I'm here," the woman, named Fidan, called out in a hoarse voice. Talking to her regularly while working for more than two hours to find a way through, the rescuers cut through the slab, first sighting the daughter's foot, before finally freeing them.

They were alive, but their bodies were badly swollen. Four dead bodies were pulled from the same building.

Distraught relatives continued their vigil in quake-stricken towns and villages.

"SHE WAS ALIVE... SHE'S WEARING RED PAJAMAS"

In Van, the provincial capital of 1 million people on the shores of Turkey's largest lake, fewer buildings collapsed.

But the quake destroyed a seven-story apartment block, home to around 40 families.

"Our grief is huge. My uncle's wife and her children are under the rubble," said one woman watching heavy lifting machinery trying to remove the slabs of fallen concrete.

"All our houses are damaged. We are staying in the youth sports center," she said, before breaking down in tears.

Another woman told Reuters her aunt and little cousin were buried somewhere in a concertina of concrete slabs. At another site a mother said her 24-year-old son, a veterinarian student, was also missing under the rubble.

Emergency workers from half a dozen rescue teams worked frantically to clear debris from a collapsed four-storey building that had housed eight apartments, fearful rising smoke meant there was a fire burning somewhere down below.

Nobody, either dead or alive, had been brought out of the wrecked building so far, though one woman told a rescue worker she had spoken to a friend, Hatice Hasimoglu, on her mobile phone six hours after the quake and she was trapped inside.

The 24-year-old pre-school teacher had been living on the first floor of the building.

"She called me to say that she's alive and she's stuck in the rubble near the stairs of the building," said her friend, a fellow teacher. "She told me she was wearing red pajamas," she said, standing with relatives begging the rescue workers to hurry.






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NY artist can paint nude models only after dark

10/15/2011 | 01:38 PM

NEW YORK - An artist arrested for applying body paint to a nude model in New York's Times Square will have charges against him dropped if his models strip naked only after dark, according to a court agreement reached on Thursday.

Police arrested Andy Golub, 45, in July and charged him with violating public exposure and lewdness laws. He has been painting nude models for about three years.

Golub's lawyer, Ronald Kuby, argued that New York laws do not prohibit public nudity in the name of art, and a compromise was reached that was the basis of the court ruling.

Under the agreement, "he is permitted to paint bare breasts any time, anywhere, but the G-strings have to stay on until daylight goes out," Kuby said after a hearing in Manhattan criminal court.

State laws against public exposure exempt "any person entertaining or performing in a play, exhibition, show or entertainment," Kuby said. Municipalities are allowed to devise their own restrictions, but New York City generally does not do so, Kuby said.

Golub, of Nyack, New York, said he likes to paint nude models because their bodies have energy and dynamism that he finds lacking in canvas.

"I feel that when I do live body painting it's a good thing, a positive thing," he said.

Charges against Golub will be dropped in six months if he abides by the terms of the agreement and is not arrested again. Charges against Karla Storie, a model from Texas arrested with him, will be dismissed if she too is not arrested again in the next six months.

Golub said he was planning to return to criminal court on Friday and paint a nude model in a park near the courthouse. - Reuters

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Silver-screen strategy nets New York robbers $217,000

New York thieves have been using a Hollywood-born strategy to rob dozens of small stores, telling police they were inspired by the 2010 movie "The Town" to splash bleach on the crime scenes, according to the police.

In what were dubbed the "splash-and-dash" robberies, the suspects would throw bleach over cash machines and cash drawers in a bid to erase their DNA evidence, the New York Police Department said.

They targeted dozens of corner stores, discount stores and pizzerias, netting $217,000 in the past year, police said.

"(The suspects) told detectives that they were inspired by the Ben Affleck movie 'The Town' in which the protagonists used bleach to cover their tracks," police said in a statement.

These suspects also would cut electrical power to the robbery locations and use miners' headlamps to work in the dark, the police said.

Four men have been charged in connection to 62 robberies, and two were scheduled to appear in Brooklyn criminal court. -- Reuters


NY may close bus service that makes women sit in back

NEW YORK - New York City authorities said they will shut down a city bus service run by Orthodox Jews if the group doesn't stop making women sit at the back of the bus.

The Private Transportation Corp, which operates the city's public B110 bus under a franchise arrangement, has come under criticism following publicity about its practice of making women give up their seats in the front to promote Hasidic customs of gender separation.

New York City's Department of Transportation spokesman Scott Gastel said the agency's executive director Anne Koenig has asked the company to respond to the allegations and was waiting to hear back.

"Please be advised that a practice of requiring women to ride in the back ... would constitute a direct violation of your franchise agreement and may lead to termination of that agreement," Koenig wrote.

If such a violation is found, the franchise could be revoked, the DOT said in a statement.

The Private Transportation Corp declined comment.

The B110 bus runs through the sections of the borough of Brooklyn that are heavily populated by Orthodox Jews.

A student reporter at Columbia University in New York published a story about a woman told by other riders to give up her seat in the front. Other news organizations then sent reporters who encountered similar situations.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg told a news conference on Wednesday that gender separation is "obviously not permitted" on public buses.

The DOT said the public bus has been franchised to Private Transportation Corp since 1973 and is not subsidized by city money. No exemptions have been granted to the company to comply with the city's anti-discrimination standards, it said.

Deborah Lauter, director of Civil Rights for the Anti-Defamation League, said in an e-mail to Reuters: "We oppose the practice of gender-segregation on public buses as discriminatory and unlawful. If a community feels it needs gender-segregated buses, then they should not involve the city." -- Reuter


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Technology that helps see through walls

By Indo Asian News Service, IANS

Washington, Oct 19 (IANS) - Peering through thick walls is no longer science fiction but stark reality, thanks to a new cutting edge technology developed by scientists.

MIT's Lincoln Lab researchers Gregory Charvat and John Peabody have built a system that can see through walls from some distance away, giving an instantaneous picture of the activity on the other side.

Their device is an unassuming array of antenna arranged in two rows - eight receiving elements on top, 13 transmitting ones below - and some computing equipment, all mounted onto a movable cart.

But it has powerful implications for military operations, especially 'urban combat situations', says project leader Charvat according to a Lincoln Lab statement.

Walls, by definition, are solid, and that's certainly true of the four- and eight-inch-thick concrete walls on which the researchers tested their system.

At first, their radar functions as any other: Transmitters emit waves of a certain frequency in the direction of the target. But in this case, each time the waves hit the wall, the concrete blocks more than 99 percent of them from passing through. And that's only half the battle.

Once the waves bounce off any targets, they must pass back through the wall to reach the radar's receivers - and again, 99 percent don't make it. By the time it hits the receivers, the signal is reduced to about 0.0025 percent of its original strength.

But according to Charvat, signal loss from the wall is not even the main challenge. '[Signal] amplifiers are cheap,' he says.

What has been difficult for through-wall radar systems is achieving the speed, resolution and range necessary to be useful in real time.

'If you're in a high-risk combat situation, you don't want one image every 20 minutes, and you don't want to have to stand right next to a potentially dangerous building,' Charvat says.

The Lincoln Lab team's system may be used at a range of up to 60 feet away from the wall. And, it gives a real-time picture of movement behind the wall in the form of a video at the rate of 10.8 frames per second.






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Top 10 universities in the world

Cambridge tops Harvard in world's best universities rankings
Oct 19, 2011 at 13:01

By Anita Narayan, US News and World Report

Harvard University may be America's top-ranked national university, along with Princeton University, in US News & World Report's latest Best Colleges rankings, but a competitor across the pond is now stealing some of that thunder.

For the second year in a row, the United Kingdom's University of Cambridge topped Harvard in the US News World's Best Universities rankings, released today and based on data from the 2011 QS World University Rankings.

Developed by QS Quacquarelli Symonds, a leading global career and education network, the World's Best rankings showcase the top international universities, from North and South America to Europe and Asia and beyond.

Six distinct indicators were evaluated to rank the top 400 universities worldwide: academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty-student ratio, proportion of international faculty, proportion of international students, and citations per faculty.

The gap between Cambridge and Harvard was incredibly small - a difference of about 0.7 points in their overall scores - and can be attributed to Cambridge's more impressive faculty-student ratio.

Despite Harvard falling slightly behind a UK university, U.S. schools dominated the top 400 list, with six American institutions appearing in the top 10 (Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University). The highest showing by a non-American or non-British university was Canada's McGill University, at No. 17. Asia's highest ranking came via University of Hong Kong (HKU), at No. 22.

A separate ranking of the top 100 Asian universities highlights the dynamism of the Asian region, where countries such as China, South Korea, and India are investing heavily in higher education to cater to both domestic and international students.

This year, to better reflect the region's unique character, a distinct methodology from the top 400 global rankings was used, with indicators such as Asian academic reputation and Asian employer review.

The leaders of the pack came from Hong Kong, with Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and HKU taking the first and second spots, respectively. The gap between the two was very narrow - a difference of 0.2 points in their overall scores - with HKUST's research productivity giving it the edge.

Japan, whose economy is slowly recovering from the devastating March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, was nonetheless dominant in the Asian rankings, with five Japanese schools in the top 10.

Meanwhile, China, the world's largest source for international students at US universities, made strides with its own schools. Peking University and Tsinghua University were both among the top 20 best Asian universities, performing very well in the academic and employer reputation indicators. India didn't fare as well, due to low citations scores; its highest entries were three Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT Kanpur, Delhi, and Bombay) at No. 36, No. 37, and No. 38, respectively.

Like Asia, Latin America is undergoing significant development, propelled by rising economic powerhouse Brazil. The country's Universidad de Sao Paulo took the No. 1 spot in the top 100 Latin American universities rankings, beating Chile's Pontificia Universidad Cat?lica de Chile by 0.4 points in its overall score.

The new Latin rankings use a distinct methodology, evaluating indicators such as Latin American academic reputation, Latin American employer review, and proportion of staff with Ph.D.'s.

Brazil was the clear leader, fielding three institutions in the top 10 and eight in the top 20. The country's huge investments in higher education to fuel economic growth, and its prioritization of research, have paid off: Brazilian universities performed particularly well in measures such as papers per faculty and proportion of academics with Ph.D.'s.

Meanwhile, Mexico - with two institutions in the top 10 of the Latin rankings - showcased strong reputations across the region, despite lower performance in research measures for most of its universities. The fifth-ranked Universidad Nacional Aut?noma de México (UNAM) had the highest academic reputation, while seventh-ranked Tecnoligico de Monterrey (ITESM) had the second-highest employer reputation.

Going beyond global and regional comparisons, the new World's Best Universities subject rankings examine the top schools worldwide in 24 subjects (top 30 for chemical engineering and top 50 for all other subjects).

Divided into five broad categories - arts and humanities; engineering and technology; life sciences; natural sciences; and social sciences - the individual subject rankings are based on academic reputation, employer reputation, and citations per paper.

MIT dominated all engineering and technology rankings, taking the top spot in the computer science; civil engineering; chemical engineering; electrical engineering; and mechanical, aeronautical, and manufacturing engineering fields. Other American institutions that had strong showings in that category include Stanford University, University of California--Berkeley, and California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

US universities similarly led the pack in two other broad categories: life sciences and social sciences. In the former, Harvard took the lead in biological sciences and psychology; in the latter, while Harvard took the No. 1 spot atop the accounting and finance; economics and econometrics; politics and international studies; and sociology rankings, Stanford topped the statistics and operational research rankings.

Only the arts and humanities and natural sciences categories showed some variety at the top. Although Harvard once again took the top spots in the majority of the specific subject disciplines, the UK's University of Oxford was ranked No. 1 for geography and area studies, and Cambridge dominated both the linguistics and physics and astronomy subject rankings.

1. University of Cambridge (United Kingdom)

2. Harvard University (United States)

3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (United States)

4. Yale University (United States)

5. University of Oxford (United Kingdom)

6. Imperial College London (United Kingdom)

7. UCL (University College London) (United Kingdom)

8. University of Chicago (United States)

9. University of Pennsylvania (United States)

10. Columbia University (United States)





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Study finds people with moles may age slower

Oct 15, 2011 at 13:45


By Agence France-Presse


It turns out that Marilyn Monroe and Cindy Crawford's moles may be worth more than their aesthetic value alone: a study shows that people with moles age slower and can appear up to seven years younger than their peers.


A study conducted by researchers at Kings College London that was first published in the Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention Journal was presented last month to a group of doctors and scientists at the UK's Royal Society of Medicine Conference.


Scientists found that an abundance of beauty marks is correlated with stronger bones, firmer muscles, a healthier heart and eyes, fewer wrinkles, and even a nearly 50 percent reduction in the risk of osteoporosis. Scientists say the link stems from the fact that people with moles have longer telomeres -- the region of DNA found at the end of every chromosome that serves as a plastic cap to keep chromosomes from unraveling and mutating.


As humans age, their telomeres naturally shrink. Shortened telomeres are responsible for causing all types of conditions associated with aging including wrinkles, hair thinning, arthritis, weight gain and loss, high blood pressure, diabetes, vision and hearing loss.


But in spite of these results, preserving your telomere length has to do with more than just possessing beauty marks. Other factors such as a poor diet, smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, obesity and psychological stress can also cause your telomeres to shorten faster than natural cell division alone. 


Meanwhile, exercising has been linked to longer telomeres.

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Mystery over a woman's rapid aging

At 21 years old

At 26 years old

Doctors have been baffled by 
a strange condition that saw 
a woman of 23 age 50 years 
in just a matter of days.

VIETNAM – A vietnamese woman Nguyen Thi Phuong now looks like a septugenarian after the rapid
aging affliction took hold following an allergic reaction to seafood. Her sad story began in 2008, when her youthful beauty began to fade over the course of just a few days, leaving her with sagging, wrinkled skin all over her face and body. Until now she has been forced to wear a mask in public to hide her appearance from prying eyes, but now doctors are attempting to establish what caused her sudden and horrifying aging.
Her husband, carpenter Nguyen Thanh Tuyen says his love for his once beautiful wife has not faded while Phuong, now 26, says her condition has only worsened since she was first struck with the condition. The couple, from the Mekong Delta province of Ben Tre, in Vietnam, have agreed to talk to the media for the first time in order to ask for help.
Some have argued that the condition is lipodystrophy - a rare syndrome that causes a layer of fatty tissue beneath the surface of the skin to disintegrate while the skin itself continues to grow at a startling pace. The syndrome with no cure leaves its victims with loose folds of skin all over their bodies, wrinkled faces and the gaunt features of people decades their senior. The condition is extremely rare and out of around seven billion people on the planet, only 2,000
are thought to have lipodystrophy.
Displaying photos of a beautiful 21-year-old woman on her wedding day in 2006, Phuong said: "Five years ago, I was rather pretty and not so ugly like this, right?". Phuong explained she has long been allergic to seafood and that she had suffered a particularly bad reaction in 2008.She said: "I was really itchy all over my body. I had to scratch even while sleeping."
Phuong said she took some medicine bought at a local pharmacy instead of going to the hospital because her and her husband Tuyen, now 33, were too poor to afford it.She said: "After one month of taking the drugs, I became less itchy but hives remained on my skin. "Then I switched to traditional medicine and all the hives disappeared, together with my itching. However, my skin began to sag and fold."Phuong then took another kind of traditional medicine to treat her rapid-aging skin problem - but to no avail. The couple do not remember what the medicine was or which pharmacy they got it from.
Phuong said: "We considered that it was our destiny and I quit treatment in 2009. Now I always wear a face mask whenever I go out." The skin on my face, chest and belly have folds like an old woman who has given birth several times although I have never had a child. "But the rapid-aging syndrome hasn't affected my menstrual cycle, hair, teeth, eyes and mind." In 2010, the couple migrated to the southern province of Binh Phuoc's Bu Dop District where they rent a small wooden house.
Tuyen continued to work as a carpenter while Phuong got a job at a cashew-nut processing factory.
Both earn a total of VND3 million - less than £92 a month - which means they cannot afford an examination at a major hospital in Ho Chi Minh City. Tuyen said his wife's disease has not affected his love for her or their relationship.
He said: "I married Phuong when she was a beautiful woman. I have followed her through her disease and have never been shocked at all."It's not easy to talk about one's own marital affairs. Just simply understand that I still love her very much."
Phuong said her husband's love is the reason she is able to persevere in the face of adversity. She said, "He still loves me like before despite the fact that I look old and ugly. With him, I feel more confident to live and work." On Oct 2, doctors from Nguyen Dinh Chieu Hospital in Ben Tre Province said they would examine Phuong for free and send her to the HCMC Dermatology Hospital if they failed to diagnose her condition.
Meanwhile, stories about Phuong in the local media have prompted a variety of diagnoses from local doctors. Many of them do not believe that Phuong has lipodystrophy, saying instead that Phuong may be suffering the side effects of too much steroid medication. – Agencies

Ireland's judges lose their wigs in austerity move

DUBLIN (AP/AFP) - M'lord, I can see your blad spot.
Hundreds of Ireland's judges abandoned their 
wigs for the first time in centuries Friday after the Irish Courts Service ended the rule requiring them to wear the British-style headgear.
The move is designed to save the taxpayer money in debt-struck Ireland. Until now, each new judge has received a London-made, white-dyed horsehair wig that costs the state about €2,200 ($3,000) each.
Ireland is voting Oct. 27 on a constitutional amendment that would give the government new power to cut judges' salaries.
Ireland's judges are to end the tradition of wearing horsehair wigs that dates back over 350 years to British colonial rule, the country's Courts Service said.
The Superior Courts Rules Committee, chaired for the first time by recently appointed Chief Justice Susan Denham -- Ireland's first female top judge -- approved the court rules change that does away with the requirement for ceremonial wigs to be worn in the Supreme and High Courts.
A similar rule change will apply to judges in the Circuit Court after the change is signed into law by Justice Minister Alan Shatter.
Wigs have been worn in court as "a matter of rule, tradition and law" since about 1660, the time of the restoration of the English monarchy, and survived Ireland's transition to independence in 1921.
The Service said the decision to dispense with wigs is complementary to a rule change made some time ago which removed the necessity to address a judge in court as "My Lord".
It is now the rule that a judge be referred to simply as "Judge" or in the Irish language as "A Bhreithim".
Irish judges have worn wigs since the mid-17th century and kept the policy after Ireland won independence from Britain in 1922.

'Totally blind' Italian hairdresser caught in benefit scam

Rome, Oct 14, 2011 (AFP) -An Italian woman claiming a disability allowance for blindness was remanded in custody on Friday for benefit fraud after police filmed her working as a hairdresser and cycling about town on her bicycle.
The 62-year old woman, who owns a hair salon in the town of Lugo in northern Italy, began claiming benefit in 1986 because her vision was degenerating and by 2011 she claimed to be "totally blind," according to a police statement.
By 1997 her doctor said she had to be accompanied when she left the house, and by 2008 she could only count the number of fingers held up in front of her if the hand was held a few centimeters away from her face.
In double-checking a list of professions of those registered as blind, police stumbled across the salon and filmed the woman cutting clients' hair, shopping for clothes and food and walking and cycling about the town.
Her benefit — 43,000 euros ($59,000) so far — has been suspended.

Sleeping Austrian alerted to fire by cats

VIENNA, Oct 14, 2011 (AFP) -An Austrian man was saved from tragedy in the early hours of Friday morning after his cats woke him up by repeatedly walking over his face as he slept, police said.
When the 37-year-old from Hohenems in the western state of Vorarlberg finally came to, he smelled burning and discovered the blaze in his flat.
After failing to put out the flames with an extinguisher he called the fire brigade at 3:30 am. The man was unharmed but his living room furniture was almost completely destroyed.

Jubilant crowds greet Bhutan’s newly married king

King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wengchuck with wife Jetsun Pema

THIMPHU — Bhutan’s newly-married king and his 21-year-old bride greeted huge crowds of well-wishers on Friday as they made their way on foot back to the capital along windy Himalayan roads.
The hugely popular 31-year-old king, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, married and crowned Jetsun Pema, the commoner daughter of an airline pilot, on Thursday in a colorful Buddhist ceremony in the ancient capital of Punakha.
The staunchly royalist people of this remote Himalayan nation, which has resisted outside influences for centuries, are enjoying a three-day public holiday to mark the occasion.
The royal couple set off on foot from Punakha — a two-and-half-hour drive from the capital along roads with stunning views over untouched mountains — and had covered only a few kilometers (miles) by midday.
“There are people lined up along almost the entire stretch,” royal spokesman Dorji Wangchuck told AFP by phone from the scene.
The king’s habit of diving into crowds, greeting people and picking up babies is known to exasperate his security detail, but is a core part of his appeal to his 700,000 adoring subjects.
When he was crowned in 2008 in Punakha, he did much of the return journey to the capital Thimphu on foot.
This time the couple planned to cover parts of the route that go through less populated areas by car.
The main streets of Thimphu have been decorated with flashing lights and the official poster of the royal couple and the national flag adorn lampposts, building facades and roundabouts.
Lines of schoolchildren with the national orange-and-yellow flag had already started forming at midday, hours before the royal couple were due to arrive.
Amid clouds of incense and chanting monks, Pema was crowned queen at the end of a series of elaborate rituals in the 17th-century fortified monastery in Punakha that served as the headquarters of the country’s ancient capital.
The “Dragon King”, an Oxford graduate who came to power in 2008 at the start of democracy in Bhutan, said afterwards that he had waited to get married but was sure he had found “the right person”.
“She is a wonderful human being,” he told a small group of foreign reporters.
Bhutan banned foreign television until 1999 and is the only nation in the world whose government pursues “Gross National Happiness” for its people instead of economic growth.
Dasho Karma Ura from the Centre for Bhutan Studies, a think-tank, said the queen would bring a “new dimension of feminine leadership” to the country. The previous king had four wives, all sisters, who shunned the limelight.
“The Bhutanese youth are starting to look up to her, to dress up like her and trying to be an attractive personality like her,” he told AFP in an interview.
Bhutan, which has never been colonised, remained in self-imposed isolation for centuries and is still wary of outside influence and the impact of globalisation.
The country had no roads or currency until the 1960s and continues to resist mass tourism to this day. — AFP-year-old bride greeted huge crowds of well-wishers on Friday as they made their way on foot back to the capital along windy Himalayan roads.
The hugely popular 31-year-old king, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, married and crowned Jetsun Pema, the commoner daughter of an airline pilot, on Thursday in a colorful Buddhist ceremony in the ancient capital of Punakha.
The staunchly royalist people of this remote Himalayan nation, which has resisted outside influences for centuries, are enjoying a three-day public holiday to mark the occasion.
The royal couple set off on foot from Punakha — a two-and-half-hour drive from the capital along roads with stunning views over untouched mountains — and had covered only a few kilometers (miles) by midday.
“There are people lined up along almost the entire stretch,” royal spokesman Dorji Wangchuck told AFP by phone from the scene.
The king’s habit of diving into crowds, greeting people and picking up babies is known to exasperate his security detail, but is a core part of his appeal to his 700,000 adoring subjects.
When he was crowned in 2008 in Punakha, he did much of the return journey to the capital Thimphu on foot.
This time the couple planned to cover parts of the route that go through less populated areas by car.
The main streets of Thimphu have been decorated with flashing lights and the official poster of the royal couple and the national flag adorn lampposts, building facades and roundabouts.
Lines of schoolchildren with the national orange-and-yellow flag had already started forming at midday, hours before the royal couple were due to arrive.
Amid clouds of incense and chanting monks, Pema was crowned queen at the end of a series of elaborate rituals in the 17th-century fortified monastery in Punakha that served as the headquarters of the country’s ancient capital.
The “Dragon King”, an Oxford graduate who came to power in 2008 at the start of democracy in Bhutan, said afterwards that he had waited to get married but was sure he had found “the right person”.
“She is a wonderful human being,” he told a small group of foreign reporters.
Bhutan banned foreign television until 1999 and is the only nation in the world whose government pursues “Gross National Happiness” for its people instead of economic growth.
Dasho Karma Ura from the Centre for Bhutan Studies, a think-tank, said the queen would bring a “new dimension of feminine leadership” to the country. The previous king had four wives, all sisters, who shunned the limelight.
“The Bhutanese youth are starting to look up to her, to dress up like her and trying to be an attractive personality like her,” he told AFP in an interview.
Bhutan, which has never been colonised, remained in self-imposed isolation for centuries and is still wary of outside influence and the impact of globalisation.
The country had no roads or currency until the 1960s and continues to resist mass tourism to this day. — AFP

No sex please, we're British and over 60

LONDON (Reuters) - An event organized by British city to school its older residents in the arts of safe sex has been cancelled due to lack of interest.

The "Generation Sex" workshop was part of an annual over-60s festival in the southern English city of Portsmouth and billed as a "frank, fun and factual" way for older people to talk about sex in later life.

"The background was the risk of sexually-transmitted diseases in older people and the need to practise safer sex," said Drusilla Moody, Portsmouth Council's tourism and visitor services manager.

Entry would have been free, but those taking part would have had to supply proof of age and of residency in Portsmouth.

These requirements are no longer needed, since the workshop was cancelled "because too few people booked places", Moody said.

Nigerian woman gets prison for enslaving 2 women

ATLANTA (AP) — A Nigerian woman convicted of enslaving two young women from her country to work as servants and nannies at her suburban Atlanta home has been sentenced to more than 11 years in federal prison.Bidemi Bello apologized to the judge and to the victims before her sentencing Thursday.

A federal jury convicted Bello in June of human trafficking, making false statements and other charges.

Prosecutors say she lured the women to Georgia on separate occasions with false promises of education and then forced them to do menial labor. They say she routinely beat them, forced them to eat spoiled food and cut her lawn by hand.

The two women, both 27, managed to eventually escape. They still live in the US and are working to rebuild their lives.



Landlord cracks down on NY demo as protests spread

Police watch Wall Street protesters in New York.

NEW YORK (AP) — Protests against corporate greed and corruption are spreading across the United States into Canada and the United Kingdom, just as the New York demonstration that started the movement faces a crackdown by its unwilling landlord.

The owner of the private park where "Occupy Wall Street" protesters have been camped out for nearly a month in lower Manhattan gave notice Thursday that it will begin enforcing regulations that prohibit everything from lying down on benches to storing personal property on the ground.

The landlord, Brookfield Properties, handed out a notice to protesters saying they would be allowed back inside after a planned park cleanup on Friday morning if they abide by park regulations.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg visited the protesters Wednesday to offer assurances they would not be evicted. Bloomberg's girlfriend, Diana Taylor, is on Brookfield's board of directors, according to the property owner's website.

Protesters said they believe the effort is an attempt to end their encampment at Zuccotti Park, a three-quarter acre (one-third hectare) open square near the New York Stock Exchange, which triggered a movement against unequal distribution of wealth that has spread across the globe.

"They're going to use the cleanup to get us out of here!" said Justin Wedes, 25, a part-time public high school science teacher.

Hacker says was addicted to prying on celebrities

Oct. 13 (Reuters) - The man charged with hacking the private e-mail accounts of Scarlett Johansson, Christina Aguilera and other celebrities apologized on Thursday, saying he became addicted to prying into their affairs.

But Christopher Chaney, 35, said he never intended to sell or release the information, which included nude photos that later made their way to the Internet.

"It started as curiosity and it turned into just being addicted to seeing behind the scenes of what was going on with these people you see on the big screen every day," Chaney told Fox television affiliate WAWS in Jacksonville, Florida.

"I was almost relieved months ago when they came in and took my computer...because I didn't know how to stop," he said.

Chaney was charged on Wednesday with 26 counts of cyber-related crimes against Hollywood celebrities after an 11-month FBI probe dubbed "Operation Hackerazzi."

Victims included "Iron Man 2" star Johansson, whose topless photo was leaked online in September, and "Black Swan" actress Mila Kunis, who was seen in a bubble bath.

Chaney said he couldn't remember who or when he started hacking but said his activities just "snowballed".

"I deeply apologize," he said. "I know what I did was probably one of the worst invasions of privacy someone could experience. I am not trying to escape what I did."

Chaney faces up to 121 years in jail if convicted on all counts.

Investigators said there is no connection between Chaney and a hacking scandal involving one of the London newspapers owned by media giant News Corp. has spread across the globe.

"They're going to use the cleanup to get us out of here!" said Justin Wedes, 25, a part-time public high school science teacher from Brooklyn. "It's a de facto eviction notice."

It's not clear whether the regulations are new or how they would be enforced.

Oprah top-paid woman entertainer, Gaga catches up

By Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Watch out Oprah, there's a savvy pop star and an ambitious real housewife nipping at your financial heels.

Oprah Winfrey remained the entertainment world's top woman earner, but Lady Gaga and Bethenny Frankel, one of the original housewives in the "Real Housewives of New York," are moving quickly up the ranks of the rich, according to Forbes.com.

Winfrey held on to the top spot with $290 million in earnings from May 2010 to May 2011 and an estimated net worth of $2.7 billion.

But Winfrey's daytime talk show, which she wrapped up in May, was her chief money earner and her newly launched cable network, OWN, has drawn paltry ratings since its January launch.

"The network has a long way to go before advertisers start paying the kind of rates Winfrey was charging for her syndicated show," said Forbes' Dorothy Pomerantz, who compiled the list by culling information from agents, managers, lawyers and others in the know.

Lady Gaga was a distant second with $90 million in gross earnings, followed by Frankel with $55 million. Frankel, who launched her own diet and lifestyle brand, sold her Skinnygirl Margarita cocktail mix for an estimated $100 million and has been expanding her brand, which will soon include food, supplements and a possible talk show.

Four women, model Gisele Bundchen, a singer Taylor Swift, talk show host Ellen DeGeneres and Judge Judy Sheindlin, each earned $45 million last year and tied for fourth place.

The entire list can be found at http://tinyurl.com/3mqr6f4

Woman gives birth after finishing marathon

CHICAGO (AP) — Amber Miller says she felt contractions minutes after crossing the Chicago Marathon finish line. 

A few hours after completing the 26.2-mile race Sunday, the suburban Chicago woman gave birth to her daughter, June.

The 27-year-old is an experienced marathoner who found out she was pregnant after signing up for the race months ago. She figured she'd play it by ear on whether or not she'd run. When the baby hadn't been born by Sunday, she got clearance from her doctor to half run and half walk the race.

She finished in 6 hours and 25 minutes, much slower than her previous seven marathons.

Miller spoke to The Associated Press from the hospital and says she received encouraging cheers during the race and never felt bad, except for some feet blisters.

___

With 24 high-tech fingers, Japan robot washes hair

TOKYO - It may look like a glorified salon chair, but a new Japanese hair-washing robot replicates the dexterous touch of a human hand to care for the locks of the elderly and the infirm.

Its creators at electronics firm Panasonic say the machine features the latest robotic technology and could help replace human care-givers in this rapidly ageing nation without degrading the quality of the service.

"Using robotic hand technology and 24 robotic fingers, this robot can wash the hair or handicapped in the way human hands do in order to help them have better daily lives," said developer Tohru Nakamura.

The customer leans back in what looks like a regular salon chair, over a sink, and the machine -- upgraded from a 16-fingered version -- shampoos, massages the scalp and rinses in about three minutes. Conditioning and a blow-dry add another five minutes.

Nakamura said Japan's ageing society supports a healthy market in care-giving robot technologies.

"We will develop more care-giving technologies for the elderly or handicapped in Japan and will export those technologies to other ageing societies, such as South Korea and China, in the future," Nakamura said.

The hair-washing machine is not available to consumers at this point, and a price has yet to be set. Panasonic plans to start sales next year, targeting nursing homes and hospitals. -- Reuters

Nobel winner died days before award announced

Nobel Prize for Medicine winner Ralph Steinman (right)
 died just days before the winners were announced.

By the CNN Wire Staff

October 3, 2011 

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: The Nobel committee expresses "deep sadness and regret"
• Ralph Steinman, died days ago after extending his life with his own discoveries
• Posthumous awards are banned unless the winner dies after the announcement
• Bruce Beutler and Jules Hoffmann received the other half of the prize, worth about $1.5 million

(CNN) -- One of the recipients of this year's Nobel Prize in medicine died just days before the winners were announced, after extending his own life using a kind of therapy he designed.

The news -- which the Nobel committee was unaware of when it announced the winners Monday -- presents a unique quandary for the prestigious organization. Nobel rules prohibit awarding a prize posthumously unless the winner dies after the award is announced.


Ralph Steinman, a biologist with Rockefeller University, "discovered the immune system's sentinel dendritic cells and demonstrated that science can fruitfully harness the power of these cells and other components of the immune system to curb infections and other communicable diseases," the university said in a statement Monday.

Steinman died Friday at the age of 68. "He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer four years ago, and his life was extended using a dendritic-cell based immunotherapy of his own design," the university said.

The winners of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine were announced Monday.

Half the prize went to Steinman. The committee that awarded the prizes noted Steinman's "discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity."

The other half went to Bruce A. Beutler and Jules A. Hoffmann "for their discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity."

In its announcement, the Nobel committee made no mention of Steinman's death.

Later, the committee put out a statement expressing "deep sadness and regret" at the news, which was conveyed after it made its decision. "Our thoughts are with Ralph Steinman´s family and colleagues," the statement said.

The Nobel Prize website states that since 1974, rules have stipulated that a prize "cannot be awarded posthumously, unless death has occurred after the announcement."

In 1996, William Vickrey died days after the announcement that he had won the Nobel Prize in economics.

Before 1974, two people received Nobel Prizes posthumously -- Dag Hammarskjold won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1961, and Erik Axel Karlfeldt won for literature in 1931.

Monday's announcement about the winners kicked off a week of awards that will also honor achievements in physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics.

The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute said Beutler, Hoffmann and Steinman have "revolutionized our understanding of the immune system by discovering key principles for its activation."

"Bruce Beutler and Jules Hoffmann discovered receptor proteins that can recognize such microorganisms and activate innate immunity, the first step in the body's immune response," the committee said in a written statement. "Ralph Steinman discovered the dendritic cells of the immune system and their unique capacity to activate and regulate adaptive immunity, the later stage of the immune response during which microorganisms are cleared from the body."

The Nobel laureates' discoveries and work has opened up new opportunities for the development of prevention and therapy against infections, cancer and inflammatory diseases, the committee said.

The prize in medicine, worth 10 million Swedish kronor (about $1.5 million), went last year to Robert G. Edwards -- "the father of the test tube baby."

Since the first birth from in vitro fertilization in 1978, Edwards' work has led to the birth of about 4 million babies, the awards committee said in praising his work.

On Tuesday, the committee will announce its award for achievement in physics. The next day, the winner of the Nobel prize in chemistry will be announced.

The committee will announce the most anticipated of the annual honors -- the Nobel Peace Prize -- on Friday.

On October 10, the committee will announce its award for the prize for economics.

Since 1901, the committee has handed out the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 101 times. The youngest recipient is Frederick G. Banting, who won in 1923 at the age of 32. The oldest medicine laureate is Peyton Rous, who was 87 years old when he was awarded the prize in 1966.