Pay as You Poo

Headline: Passengers to pay to poo with credit card
Clip from: news.com.au
Date of clip: 9.3.9
Caption: Pay as You Poo

RYANAIR are a step closer to charging passengers to poo after asking Boeing to design credit card-operated toilets. Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary said he has approached the US aircraft maker after conceding his earlier idea of a coin-operated door wouldn't work because passengers would be using both the euro and the pound.

"We have looked into this before, and the problem is Boeing can't come up with a mechanism on the toilet door to take coins," Mr O'Leary told the Associated Press.

Headline: Welcome to Landlord Nation
Clip from: FOXNews.com
Date of clip: 8.3.9
Caption: Home Sweet Deal

DETROIT — Welcome to Landlord Nation, where foreclosure notices are plentiful and for-sale signs offer at least 1,800 homes for under $10,000 that once were worth at least 10 times more.

In extreme cases, homes are on sale for $1 or less, which has enticed investors to Detroit from as far away as the United Kingdom and Australia.

Headline: Fax Leads Los Angeles Police to Body in Car Trunk
Clip from: FOXNews.com
Date of clip: 8.3.9
Caption: Body Fax

LOS ANGELES — Police following an anonymous tip sent by fax to a television station found a dead woman in the trunk of her car Saturday, and are looking for the sender and two men alleged in the message to have been involved in the crime.

Officers discovered the body in a Valley Village neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley soon after being notified by KTLA-TV staff members about the faxed letter, Officer April Harding said. The sender described himself or herself only as "someone trying to help."

The sender wrote that a woman was killed Feb. 28 and that her body was in a black trash bag in a car. The sender said the car would be within a 2-square-mile area of a specific address; police found it several blocks away on a shady residential street facing the 101 Freeway.

Headline: Crazy driver dances at the wheel
Clip from: FOXNews.com
Date of clip: 7.3.9
Caption: Dancing his life away

Truck driver releases video: dancing in his cab as he speeds along motorway
A Romanian truck driver is being hunted by police after releasing a video of himself dancing in his cab as he thunders along a motorway.

Headline: Man Clings to Life With 2 Beating Hearts in His Body
Clip from: FOXNews.com
Date of clip: 7.3.9
Caption: Two Are Better Than One - We hopes he makes it.

A brave Brazilian man is fighting for his life — with two beating hearts inside his body.

The unnamed 53-year-old is in a stable condition after a 12-hour operation.

But doctors at Sao Paulo's Heart Institute fear he only has a 50 percent chance of surviving.

The patient has suffered severe lung hypertension that stopped his heart pumping blood around his body.

So he was given the new donor organ to prop up his own heart.

The "new" heart was placed on the right side of his chest and is linked to his original heart by a vein, arteries of the lung and the aorta.

"This is not a routine transplant, the situation is exceptional," Surgeon Alfredo Fiorelli, who carried out the transplant, said. "The next 72 hours will be fundamental to evaluate his state."

Headline: Alligator Accused of Starting Fire at Abandoned School
Clip from: FOXNews.com
Date of clip: 7.3.9
Caption: Nothing Like a Aligator Firebug

NEW CASTLE, Pa. — A four-foot alligator rescued in an abandoned school on fire in western Pennsylvania may have also started the blaze.

North Beaver Township officials are not identifying the owner of the former elementary school that burned Thursday afternoon near New Castle, about 40 miles northwest of Pittsburgh.

But they say the man was living with a menagerie of animals in the building, including the alligator, about 70 rabbits and unspecified "aquatic animals." The Pennsylvania Game Commission is involved in caring for the animal.

Fire Chief Paul Henry says the building's owner believes the alligator started the fire by knocking over a portable heater.

Headline: Celebrity Chef's Restaurant Sickens 400, Stays Closed
Clip from: FOXNews.com
Date of clip: 6.3.9
Caption: So Much for the Fat Duck

BRAY, England — It's a culinary mystery worthy of Agatha Christie.
Britain's Health Protection Agency said Friday about 400 people reported falling ill after eating at The Fat Duck, a world-renowned British establishment reputed for dishes such as snail porridge and bacon-and-egg ice cream. Health officials are baffled by the outbreak of diarrhea and vomiting while the celebrity chef, Heston Blumenthal, has said his restaurant will remain closed until the mystery is solved.

"It's so weird — we haven't found anything. But I can't take the risk of keeping open until we have exhausted every single avenue," Blumenthal told The Times of London last week, shortly after the first group of people reported falling ill.

Headline: Conn. Man Chewing On Charges Of Stealing Gum
Clip from: CBSnews.com
Date of clip: 6.3.9
Caption: I'm forever chewing bubble gum

Police in Connecticut have arrested a man with a several-pack-a-day habit _ of Orbit gum.

Twenty-one-year-old Kenneth McManus of Stratford has been charged with stealing hundreds of packs of the chewing gum.

Fairfield police say McManus turned himself in Thursday. He is accused of stealing 175 packs of gum worth more than $500 from a Shaw's supermarket in Fairfield in January.

Police say he also faces larceny charges of stealing $200 worth of gum from the Shaw's in Stratford and $75 worth of gum from a CVS store in Bridgeport.

Smoking Cat - Say What! - It's Mine!

Headline: Man stuffs cat in marijuana pipe
Clip from: news.com.au
Date of clip: 3.3.9
Caption: Smoking Cat

A MAN who tried to calm down his cat by stuffing her into a homemade marijuana pipe faces cruelty charges - and catcalls from animal lovers.
The Associated Press (AP) reported sheriff's deputies responding to a domestic disturbance call yesterday alleged they saw 20-year-old Acea Schomaker smoking marijuana through a piece of garden hose attached to a duct-taped, plastic glass box in which the cat had been stuffed.

"This cat was just dazed," Sgt Andy Stebbing told AP. "She was on the front seat of the cop car, wrapped in a blanket, and never moved all the way to the humane society."

Mr Schomaker told police 6-month-old Shadow was hyper and he was trying to calm her down. The contraption she had been stuffed inside was 30 centimetres by 15 centimetres.

Headline: Airline selling "penis" on flights
Clip from: news.com.au
Date of clip: 3.3.9
Caption: Say What!

A US airline is now selling "penis" on flights, an anchorwoman has declared. The slip-up happened on CNN when anchorwoman Zain Verjee was reporting about Northwest Airlines now selling peanuts on flights.

Ms Verjee mentioned the word “penis” three times instead of “peanuts”.

“Northwest began serving penis this month as its merger partner Atlanta-based Delta airlines has done for years,” Ms Verjee said.

“Georgia is the top penis producing state in the country.”

The footage has been uploaded to YouTube in many different versions and has become an internet sensation with more than 700,000 views today.

Headline: Five People Claim Ownership of 840-Pound Emerald
Clip from: FOXNews.com
Date of clip: 3.3.9
Caption: It's Mine!

Just before Christmas, detectives from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department pried open a crate outside a warehouse to find something they had been chasing for months: an 840-pound Brazilian emerald that had been reported stolen.

Now, if they could just figure out who owns it. So far, at least five people have come forward to say it's theirs.

"It seems like the more we talk to people, the more people claim to have ownership over this thing," said Lt. Thomas Grubb, who heads the sheriff's investigative team on the case. "We haven't determined who's not a suspect, really."

Unable to determine who the real owner is, Lt. Grubb decided to keep the emerald locked up while the investigation proceeds. Meanwhile, a Los Angeles civil court is scheduled to hear from different claimants in the case on Tuesday.

Sad Situation

Headline: Woman told to 'check-in dead husband'
Clip from: news.com.au
Date of clip: 5.2.9
Caption: Sad Situation

"Must be transported respectfully"
A BRISBANE family is in shock after an airline told the mother she could only take her husband's ashes to India as checked luggage, contrary to Sikh tradition.

Nashater Hayer and her daughter Debbie are scheduled to fly to the Indian state of Punjab on Sunday to throw Kewal Singh Hayer's ashes into the Kiratpur River, but the airline will not let Mrs Hayer carry the urn with her.

Headline: Woman, 60, Reportedly Gives Birth to Twins
Clip from: FOXNews.com
Date of clip: 5.2.9
Caption: Granny Pops Twins

CALGARY, Alberta — A 60-year-old woman in the Western Canadian city of Calgary has given birth to twins after going to India for fertility treatments, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp reported on its website on Thursday.

The report said the twins, both boys, were seven weeks prematurely delivered by Caesarean section. Though one is breathing with the help of special equipment, doctors said the twins are doing well but will be kept in hospital until they gain weight and both can breathe on their own.

Headline: Careful! These Statues Could Get You Pregnant
Clip from: CBSnews.com
Date of clip: 5.2.9
Caption: BIRTH CONTROL FOR STATUES

Starting a family might be a little easier with a trip to Ripley's Believe It or Not museum in Myrtle Beach. The museum on Thursday opens a monthlong display of its fertility statues.

The 5-foot tall wooden statues were acquired on the Ivory Coast of West Africa in 1993. The company says they were then placed in its corporate headquarters in Orlando, Fla., and within months, 13 women became pregnant.

Not Sexy Enough To Be a Airline Hostess

Headline: Hostess told to dress more 'sexy'
Clip from: news.com.au
Date of clip: 24.1.9
Caption: Not Sexy Enough To Be a Airline Hostess

Dress debate ... Karin Keegan says a male JetBlue employee told her to change into a lower-cut shirt and tighter pants before letting her on a plane / AFP
A FEMALE flight attendant is suing a US airline after allegedly being denied a flight because she wasn't dressed provocatively enough. Thirty-seven-year-old Karin Keegan says a male JetBlue employee told her to change into a lower-cut shirt and tighter pants before letting her on a plane, reports the Associated Press.

"Ms Keegan changed into more provocative clothes, but (the employee) told her she was too late to board the plane and should have dressed like that before," said the lawsuit, which has been filed...

Headline: Man Kills Wife for Changing Facebook Status to 'Single'
Clip from: FOXNews.com
Date of clip: 23.1.9
Caption: A very sad story - Not the Joys of being online

A man murdered his estranged wife after he became “enraged” that she had changed her marital status to single on the social networking site Facebook.

Edward Richardson, 41, was found guilty of stabbing to death Sarah Richardson, 26, a hairdresser, in her parents’ house in Staffordshire on May 12 last year.

Fiona Cortese of the Crown Prosecution Service said: “Richarsdon became enraged when Sarah changed her marital status on Facebook to single and decided to go and see her as she was not responding to his messages.”

Stafford Crown Court heard that Richardson, a carpenter from Biddulph, Stoke-on-Trent, had sought out Mrs Richardson in her parents house and entered by breaking the front door window.

Headline: Virgin golfer fined for mid-air fondle
Clip from: FOXNews.com
Date of clip: 23.1.9
Caption:Pervert or Immature - You Decide

AN up-and-coming golfer who fondled a woman's breast on an international flight has escaped conviction after being labelled "massively immature" by a magistrate.

Leighton Lyle, the 2007 Victorian amateur champion who earned his Australasian professional tour card last month, was seated next to the woman on a Los Angeles to Melbourne flight in April of that year.

She awoke to feel her nipple being tugged and the top half of her breast exposed, the Melbourne Magistrates Court was told today.

The court was told the victim was significantly affected by the incident, which occurred while Lyle was returning home from caddying for his brother, professional golfer Jarrod Lyle, on the US PGA tour.

Headline: North Carolina Student Arrested During Snowball Fight
Clip from: FOXNews.com
Date of clip: 23.1.9
Caption: Snowball to jail

Campus police at East Carolina University said they made one arrest and used pepper spray on some students as officers tried to control a huge snowball fight on campus.

Police were called to a dormitory three times as more than 200 students pelted each other with snowballs as a rare snowstorm dropped several inches of snow in eastern North Carolina on Tuesday, The Daily Reflector of Greenville reported Thursday.

Some witnesses said they were hit hard by indiscriminately hurled snowballs.