Is Google responsible for giving out bad directions through its Google Maps service? We’re about to find out. After Googling walking directions for a trip in Park City, Utah, Lauren Rosenberg claims she was led onto a busy highway, where she was struck by a vehicle. She’s now suing Google for damages
A police investigation into the theft of £10,000 of watches has been scuppered after DNA evidence was found to belong to identical twins. Blood containing DNA matching that of James and John Parr, 25, was found on glass at the scene. However, the Crime Prosecution Service (CPS) has decided not to press charges against the Manchester twins — who both deny responsibility — as it would be impossible to determine if one or the other of them was responsible
An elaborate scheme to get the husband of a co-worker he was obsessed with locked up in jail, backfired on Ilkka Karttunen, a 48-year from Essex. His plan was to get the husband arrested so that he could have a go at a relationship with the woman, and to do this he broke into the couple’s home while they were sleeping, used their family computer to download child pornography and then removed the hard drive and mailed it anonymously to the police, along with a note that identified the owner
Early last month the mayor of Topeka, Kansas stunned the world by announcing that his city was changing its name to Google. We’ve been wondering ever since how best to honour that moving gesture. Today we are pleased to announce that as of 1.00am (Central Daylight Time) 1 April, Google has officially changed our name to Topeka
Anyone who plays FarmVille knows it is critical to harvest your crops on time. But maybe it’s not as important as administrating the second-largest city in Bulgaria. Dimitar Kerin was voted off a committee assignment by the Plovdiv City Council for his inability to stop tending his virtual crops on the Facebook game during meetings
Arthur Firstenberg, who says he is hypersensitive to certain frequencies of electromagnetic radiation, saw the house at the end of a narrow lane as a refuge from physical and neurological symptoms that have plagued him for three decades. It’s been difficult because of my electromagnetic sensitivities,
he said. I had a lot of difficulty finding a house that I could be comfortable in.
So in September 2008, he bought the home on Barela Street, a few blocks from the newly redeveloped downtown rail yard here. But last October, when a friend of his rented a house on the next block that backed up to Firstenberg’s property, the familiar waves of nausea, vertigo, body aches, dizziness, heart arrhythmia and insomnia returned — all, he says, because she was using an iPhone, a laptop computer, a wireless router and dimmer switches. So he sued Monribot in state district court, seeking $530,000 in damages and an injunction to force her to turn off the electronics
The military in India is looking to weaponise the world’s hottest chilli, the bhut jolokia or ghost pepper
. The Bhut Jolokia chili pepper from Assam, India is no ordinary pepper. In tests first conducted by the New Mexico State University in 2008 and subsequently confirmed by Guinness World records and others, the Bhut Jolokia reached over one million Scoville heat units (SHUs), while the next hottest, the Red Savina Habenero clocks in at a mere 577,000. Scoville units are a universally accepted measure of chilli hotness
A Cold War-era nuclear bunker in Britain has been put up for sale on online auction site eBay, and by Monday bidders had pushed the price up to £19,300 (€21,500, US$29,000). A rare opportunity to acquire a piece of Cold War history,
read the sale advert on the web site. Set in a stunning location with glorious views. Your own nuclear bunker within a plot of land and much original equipment.
After being advertised at a starting price of £500 late Thursday, a bidding war saw the price of the underground shelter rocket. Early Monday the price stood at £19,300 after 39 bids
Doctors were accustomed to alcohol poisoning by then, the routine of life in the Prohibition era. The bootlegged whiskies and so-called gins often made people sick. The liquor produced in hidden stills frequently came tainted with metals and other impurities. But this outbreak was bizarrely different. The deaths, as investigators would shortly realise, came courtesy of the US government
But shocked bus passengers were literally attacked with Spam in Sydney’s inner west today. Police say a 32-year-old man was on a city-bound bus on Illawarra Road at Marrickville about 8.40am when he got into an argument with two other passengers. He got off and chucked the tinned meat — and a brick — at the vehicle’s windows, then fled
Scientists from the University College London in the UK have found that living a life of boredom can kill you
Biblical citations inscribed on US-manufactured weapon sights used by New Zealand’s troops in Afghanistan will be removed because they are inappropriate and could stoke religious tensions. The inscriptions on products from defence contractor Trijicon of Wixom, Michigan, came to light this week in the US where Army officials said Tuesday they would investigate whether the gun sights — also used by US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq — violate US procurement laws. Australia also said Thursday its military used the sights and was now assessing what to do
Channel 4 looks set to become embroiled in another taste row after backing a project which seeks to mummify a terminally-ill volunteer for a TV documentary. The body of the candidate selected to be embalmed could then end up being displayed in a museum. If the project goes ahead it will follow a trail of programmes which seek to challenge views on death
If Amazon is Santa, then the 400 folks living in RVs outside the Coffeyville, KS fulfillment center at Christmas time are the elves. Amazon didn’t always lure in workcampers
from the RV community with the promise of free campgrounds and $10.50-$11 an hour seasonal jobs. Amazon had a bad experience busing in people from Tulsa,
explained tech nomad Chris Dunphy. There was a lot of theft and a lot of people who weren’t really serious.
Workers from Tulsa were adding a 4-hour round-trip commute to a grueling 10-to-12 hour shift, Cherie Ve Ard added. They’d get there exhausted.
The work wasn’t exactly what Cherie had envisioned — via Slashdot
In London, there are more CCTV cameras than any other city in the world with one camera for every eight Londoners. But as victims of crime have found to their cost, catching criminals on camera is dependent on the equipment being both monitored and maintained. One UK businessman thinks he has come up with a solution by recruiting volunteers to watch live CCTV footage streamed over the web in return for cash prizes. Businessman Tony Morgan sees his company, Internet Eyes, as the future with an army of volunteer spies monitoring live CCTV footage online and alerting police to any criminal activity they witness. Their only incentive is a monthly prize of £1,000 for the best crime spotter of the month yet more than 10,000 recruits have already signed up. But civil rights campaigners are not happy with the scheme
Researchers in the Netherlands created what was described as soggy pork and are now investigating ways to improve the muscle tissue in the hope that people will one day want to eat it. No one has yet tasted their produce, but it is believed the artificial meat could be on sale within five years
A record 5,000 words have been added to the latest edition of the Macquarie Dictionary. The Australian dictionary is growing faster than ever before and the new additions to the fifth version are as varied as the rest of the English language. The dictionary’s editor, Sue Butler, says it is meant to be a snapshot of modern English in Australia
A Chinese-American academic has been sentenced to eight years in prison for selling human skulls unearthed in China to buyers overseas. The US national, 44, only identified by his surname Ding, was sentenced on September 21 for illegal business practices
. His arrest came after the US Federal Bureau of Investigation tipped off Chinese police last year, informing authorities that Ding was sending the skulls to the United States via express mail
A campaign backed by automakers and some lawmakers to make electric or hybrid cars noisier in a bid to increase safety for pedestrians and cyclists has taken a strange, Blade Runner
-type twist. Nissan sound engineers have announced that the Leaf electric car set for release next year will emit a beautiful and futuristic
noise similar to the sound of flying cars — or spinners
— that buzz around 2019 Los Angeles in Ridley Scott’s dystopian thriller based on a Philip K Dick science fiction novel
At a busy Madison Common Council meeting on Tuesday night, council members voted to make the plastic pink flamingo the official city bird. At Tuesday night’s meeting, the mayor introduced his proposed capital budget and council members discussed funding for the plastic bag recycling program. The new mascot was debated for five minutes, and then the Common Council voted 15-4 to make the plastic pink flamingo the official city bird. The idea was by a 1979 prank on Bascom Hill when the Pail and Shovel Party on campus put out 1,008 of the birds
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