News Stories of the Week

MARCH OF BLONDES

More than 800 blondes wove their way through the streets of Riga on Saturday for the second year of what organisers say they hope will become a regular annual event.

      Decked out in pink,their locks glistening in the sunshine,hundreds of blondes marched through the Latvian capital Riga in an effort to raise spirits in the financial stricken Baltic state.

   
"It is just great to do something positive in Latvia and at the same time promote blondes as being fun, positive, intelligent people," said Ilze, a blonde helping out at the parade.

   The Baltic nation of 2.2 million people is locked in the deepest economic crisis of the 27-nation European Union, after a boom went off the rails and sent its economy shrinking by 18 per cent in 2009.

   
  Money collected during the event will be donated to local charities, including for mothers with disabled children.

FAMOUS BLONDES

  Britney Spears on Japan "I've never really wanted to go to Japan. Simply because I don't like eating fish. And I know that's very popular out there in Africa."

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Jessica Simpson when offered buffalo wings: "Sorry I don't eat buffalo."

Jessica Simpson on her first day at high school: "A teacher asked us if anybody knew the names of the continents. I was sooo excited. I was like, Damn it! It's my first day of 7th grade, I'm in junior high and I know this answer. So I raised my hand, I was the first one, and I said A-E-I-O-U!

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 Paris Hilton on her fame: "There's nobody in the world like me. I think every decade has an iconic blonde, like Marilyn Monroe or Princess Diana and, right now, I’m that icon."

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 Mariah Carey on the death of the King of Jordan: "I loved Jordan. He was one of the greatest athletes of our time."

 Pamela Anderson on her secret to success: "I don't think about anything too much . . . If I think too much, it kind of freaks me out!"

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   Alicia Silverstone on her role in Clueless: "I think that the film was very deep. I think it was deep in the way that it was very light. I think lightness has to come from a very deep place if it's true lightness."

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Goldie Hawn  

Buddhism is really, one of its main practices is understanding and experiencing compassion, and how that ultimately is a road to happiness. 

   Dennis Hopper 

  Hollywood actor Dennis Hopper, best known for directing and starring in the 1969 cult classic Easy Rider, died on Saturday from complications of prostate cancer, a friend of the actor said. Hopper was 74.

    In a wildly varied career spanning more than 50 years, Hopper appeared alongside his mentor James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause and Giant in the 1950s and played maniacs in such films as Apocalypse Now, Blue Velvet and Speed.

Easy Rider is Regarded as one of the greatest films of American cinema, it helped usher in a new era in which the old Hollywood guard was forced to cede power to young filmmakers such as Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese. 
  
  The low-budget blockbuster, originally conceived by Fonda, introduced mainstream moviegoers to pot-smoking, cocaine-dealing, long-haired bikers.

Kayaker World Waterfall Record

Christie Glissmeyer, a student and part-time bar worker, gained the women's kayaking world waterfall record after making the leap of faith at Eagle Creek, Oregon.
World record paddle down Metalako Falls, an 82 ft waterfall in America.

Quote of the Week

Lady Gaga, asked if she would cut bad language from next show.     "I'll do my f***ing best."

The Mutant Animal Corpse

 A corpse on a Canadian beach, revives memories of the infamous "Montauk monster" that was discovered in 2008.Two nurses discovered the animal corpse floating at the edge of a lake while they were walking their dog near the town of Kitchenuhmaykoosib in Ontario, Canada.

 The two nurses went home and told some neighbors but when they returned it was gone.

Viral Bats 

A total of nine people have been quarantined including a nine year old girl after a horse died on a farm at Tewantin on the Sunshine Coast Queensland Australia yesterday.This is the 14th outbreak since 1994 the first one killed Queensland racehorse trainer Vic Rail who trained the great Vo Rogue.

The Hendra virus has been around since1994 with 41 horses in total dying from this infection in that time.The virus is passed onto them from fruit bat body fluids.

Ball Lightning 

This could be all in your head. Apparently scientists believe that fluctuating magnetic fields created by nearby lightning bolts can trick the brain into thinking that they see this hovering orb of light.It can last a few seconds sometimes a few minutes and it thought to be caused when lightning strikes the ground but the exact cause is not known.
Now it seems the glowing blobs may be a hallucination. Moving charges, in lightning strikes or in wire coiled around a patient's head, generate magnetic fields. A fluctuating magnetic field induces an electric field that, if powerful enough, can make neurons fire in the visual cortex. Pale ovals, bubbles, lines, or patches are sometimes observed by patients who undergo transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Graham K. Hubler, a physicist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. 

His experience of ball lightning when he was 16. 

He describes seeing a glowing, tennis ball-size formation hovering nearby."It drifted along a few feet above the ground," Hubler recalled, "but when it came inside [the pavilion] it dropped down to the ground and skittered along the floor."

"It made lots of gyrations or oscillations and a hissing sound like boiling water. When it went out the other side [of the pavilion], it climbed back up [several feet off the ground]."

Hubler says the ball behaved as if it had a charge and was following electric field lines along the Earth.

Ga Ga News

 Suicide Kills Wife

  An American who committed suicide by shooting himself in the head ended up killing his wife with the same bullet.

Depressed Gene Whitmore, 70, lay down next to his sleeping wife Betty and placed a gun to his head.

He fired a single shot, but police said the bullet went through his head and struck his 66-year-old wife.

Their bodies were found just two feet apart.

Police in Wichita, Kansas, initially thought they were dealing with a murder-suicide.

But after an autopsy it was revealed the same medium calibre bullet had killed the couple who were married for more than 40 years.

Wichita Police Lieutenant Ken Landwehr said: 'I have never worked anything like this before.. The bullet has travelled from his head from right to left and struck his wife.'

 Giraffe Kills Woman

A woman has died after being kicked by a giraffe while walking her dogs in a South African game reserve.

Merike Engelbrecht was out with her pets in the northeastern province of Limpopo when one of the dogs ran towards a herd of giraffes.

As she tried to retrieve the animal, the 25-year-old was kicked in the neck by one of the frightened giraffes.

The powerful blow killed her.

It is believed the animal felt threatened by the dogs and was trying to protect its calf which was nearby.

On This Day

Stevie Wonder Birthday

b. Steveland Hardaway Judkins, 13th May 1950, Saginaw, Michigan, U.S.A.

Stevie Wonder has been a major figure within the Black Music scene over the last forty years.

Stevie Wonder was born Steveland Judkins, however, he now prefers to be known as Steveland Morris after his mother's married name.

Placed in an incubator immediately after his birth, baby Steveland was thought to have been given too much oxygen at birth, however he was suffering from Retinopathy of Prematurity (R.O.P.).

In fact, without the oxygen that he received he would not be here. The cause was the prematurity of the eye.

Blood vessels in the back of the eye had not reached the front of the eye thus when he was born, prematurely, that growth temporarly halted then wildly took off branching out into the Vitreous of the eye.

When it reached a certain point it caused scar tissue to pull at the retina eventually causing the retina to detach.

NEWS OF TODAY

Strange Bikie Funeral

   Instead of the traditional presentation of the body in a casket, Mr. Colón's corpse, dressed in casual duds and sunglasses, was instead posed in a very lifelike position atop his Repsol-liveried Honda CBR600 F4. According to Puerto Rico's Primera Hora newspaper, the motorcycle was given to the victim by his uncle, and upon Mr. Colón's untimely demise, family members delivered the bike to the funeral home specifically for this unusual wake.

POPCORN LUNG DAMAGE

• A NEW York woman has filed a lawsuit after her 16-year popcorn habit left her with permanent lung damage, the New York Post reports.

• Agnes Mercado from Queens devoured two to three bags of Act II Lite microwave popcorn a day between 1991 and September 2007. The popcorn was flavored with diacetyl, a compound that gives food a buttery taste.

• Workers who packaged the popcorn for manufacturer ConAgra Foods developed "popcorn lung," an airway obstruction that does not respond to medicine.

The food giant dumped diacetyl from its recipe in 2007.
Mercado, just diagnosed last month, uses an oxygen tank and is "likely to require a lung transplant," the Queens Supreme Court suit against ConAgra says.

LATEST TRENDS AND NEWS

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ON THIS DAY  

LUSTIANIA

• The British ocean liner RMS Lusitania, famous for its luxurious accommodations and speed capability, primarily ferried people and goods across the Atlantic Ocean between the United States and Great Britain. On May 1, 1915, the Lusitania left port in New York for Liverpool to make her 202nd trip across the Atlantic. On board were 1,959 people, 159 of whom were Americans.

• Since the outbreak of World War I, ocean voyage had become dangerous. Each side hoped to blockade the other, thus prevent any war materials getting through. German U-boats (submarines) stalked British waters, continually looking for enemy vessels to sink.

• All ships headed to Great Britain were instructed to be on the lookout for U-boats and take precautionary measures such as travel at full speed and make zigzag movements. Unfortunately, on May 7, 1915, Captain William Thomas Turner slowed the Lusitania down because of fog and traveled in a predictable line.

• Approximately 14 miles off the coast of Southern Ireland at Old Head of Kinsale, neither the captain nor any of his crew realized that the German U-boat, U-20, had already spotted and targeted them. At 1:40 p.m., the U-boat launched a torpedo. The torpedo hit the starboard (right) side of the Lusitania. Almost immediately, another explosion rocked the ship.

• At the time, the Allies thought the Germans had launched two or three torpedoes to sink the Lusitania. However, the Germans say their U-boat only fired one torpedo. Many believe the second explosion was caused by the ignition of ammunition hidden in the cargo hold. Others say that coal dust, kicked up when the torpedo hit, exploded. No matter what the exact cause, it was the damage from the second explosion that made the ship sink

GA GA NEWS

OIL SLICK GULF OF MEXICO

A vast, wind-driven oil slick bore down on the U.S. Gulf Coast Sunday, threatening an economic and ecological disaster as President Barack Obama sharpened his criticism of BP Plc and pressed the energy giant to halt the oil gushing from its ruptured well.

"Let me be clear: BP is responsible for this leak. BP will be paying the bill," said Obama as he visited the area and pledged a "fully coordinated, relentless relief effort" in the region where the coastlines of four Gulf states are being menaced by the spill.

The government suspended fishing across a wide swath of its Gulf of Mexico waters, one of the most productive areas in the country, on worries about contamination of seafood.

The swelling black tide threatens wildlife, beaches and one of the world's most fertile fishing grounds in an area stretching across the Mississippi Delta from Louisiana to Florida.

"This is a terrible day. People can still fish west (of the Mississippi river) but if the oil keeps flowing the whole coast could be closed down," Roger Halphen, whose whole family is involved in commercial fishing, told Reuters in Venice.

A team of government agencies is working on relief, but Obama made it clear BP would be on the hook for what could be billions of dollars in cleanup costs.

In 2008, commercial fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico harvested more than one billion pounds of fish and shellfish, about 20 percent of domestic production, according to government

estimates.

Since the explosion and sinking last month of the Deepwater Horizon rig, a disaster scenario has emerged with hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil gushing into the Gulf and moving inexorably north toward the coast.

Oil is still gushing into the Gulf from the leak more than mile under the sea, with no easy or quick fix in sight.

The looming disaster threatens to eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez catastrophe in Alaska, the worst previous U.S. oil spill to date.