42 People You Won't Believe Actually Exist

These people are really out there somewhere in this world.

Sorry, but your house is soaked in mouse urine

The liquid enables rodents to communicate with one another. It's also at the core of our asthma epidemic.

Stuck In Dallas

This video has caused quite a bit of turmoil in the world of the TSA and airport security! Click on this article's title for more information and an interview with the creators.

For Those Who Like 'Snacks'

Girl has more than 30 ants in her ears

(China Daily)

A 16-year-old girl in Taiwan had more than 30 ants in her ears because of her fancy for snacks.

Recently her ears started itching and when her family members said they had seen ants climbing out of her ears she rushed to see a doctor.

The doctor found that there were about six ants in the girl's left ear, and more than 20 in her right ear.

Fortunately the ants had not caused any harm to the girl's eardrum.

The girl said she always likes eating snacks and clearing her ears when lying in bed.

The $18,000 phone bill

Bob and Mary St. Germain say they can’t believe it. Four years after their son, Bryan, used his cellphone to connect to the Internet, the couple is still trying to fight the bill: a nearly $18,000 tab from Verizon.

Have Yourself A Horribly Traumatic Little Christmas

Kim Jong-Il‘s top ten craziest moments

Crazy Man!

Mark Malkoff is afraid of flying. Or, at least, he used to be.

The comedian and writer, who once spent a week living in an Ikea store, just finished living on an airplane for 30 days straight. He took 135 scheduled flights in a month, setting a world record.

Ewwwwwww!

China's equivalent of eBay has banned an online trader from selling the saliva of pretty teenage girls.

Hong Kong Christens an Ark of Biblical Proportions

HONG KONG -- This city's three billionaire Kwok brothers have just the answer for the rising waters threatening the global economy: the world's first life-size replica of Noah's ark, built to biblical specifications off the coast of this recession-struck Chinese financial center.

The message in its 450-foot-long hull, its rooftop luxury hotel and 67 pairs of fiberglass animals: "The financial tsunami will be over," says Spencer Lu, the Kwoks' project director at Noah's Ark, which is opening soon.

The land-bound ark wasn't built in response to the current global turmoil; it has been in the planning for 17 years. But the financial storm provides a nice marketing hook for the Kwoks' ambitious project, which will probably need to lure visitors from beyond Hong Kong's city limits to be an economic success.

Man killed by 'exploding mobile phone'

A man has died after his mobile phone exploded, severing a major artery in his neck, according to reports.

The man, thought to be a shop assistant in his twenties at a computer shop in Guangzhou, China, died after he put a new battery in his phone. It was believed that he may have just finished charging the battery and had put the phone in his breast pocket when it exploded.

Man says he's eaten 23,000 Big Macs since 1972

A 54-year-old man says his obsessive-compulsive disorder drove him to eat 23,000 Big Macs in 36 years. Fifty-four-year-old Don Gorske says he hit the milestone last month, continuing a pleasurable obsession that began May 17, 1972 when he got his first car.

Getting poor to use toilets 'a major health conundrum'

More than one billion people worldwide have no toilet and defecate outside, while some have to be shamed into changing their habits when presented with conveniences, a conference was told.

Humanitarian organizations have for decades tried various ways -- be it new systems, pumps or subsidies -- of getting people in developing countries to stop defecating outdoors due to the serious health risks concerned.

But despite their efforts, an estimated 1.2 billion people, primarily in Asia and Africa, still don't use toilets to defecate, a forum of experts meeting in Stockholm was told.

For many extremely poor people who are given toilets by aid groups, it becomes the most precious item they own and therefore they use it as a religious shrine or a dry place to store firewood, international development consultant Kamal Kar said.

"What's becoming quite apparent is that the way you actually have an impact on health, development and poverty alleviation is when people adopt certain behaviours," Clarissa Brocklehurst, the head of UNICEF's water, environment and sanitation programme, told AFP.

In recent years, experts have found that the best method has been to shame people into using some form of toilets, even the most primitive sort, to confine excreta.

"It's just a matter of getting them to understand that what is a long established habit is in fact harmful and that you can do something about it," said Brocklehurst, one of 2,500 experts meeting in Stockholm to discuss water and sanitation issues at World Water Week.

She cited the example of India, where 48 percent of the population, or some 665 million people, still practice "open defecation".

Zimbabwe inflation hits 11,200,000 percent

Zimbabwe's inflation rate has soared in the past three months and is now at 11.2 million percent, the highest in the world, according to the country's Central Statistical Office.

Official figures dated Monday show inflation has surged from the rate of 2.2 million percent recorded in May, despite the government's price controls.

The country's finance minister confirmed the new figure in an interview but said the rising inflation rate was not confined to Zimbabwe alone.

"While our case has been aggravated by the illegal sanctions imposed by the Western powers, rising food prices are a world phenomenon because of the use of bio-fuel," said Samuel Mumbengegwi. "But we will continue to fight inflation by making sure that prices charged are realistic."

In February, the price of a loaf of bread in the country was less than 200,000 Zimbabwe dollars. On Monday, that same loaf of bread cost 1.6 trillion Zimbabwe dollars.

Is Anyone Surprised?

Just nine months before the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese government's news agency, Xinhua, reported that gymnast He Kexin was 13, which would have made her ineligible to be on the team that won a gold medal this week.

In its report Nov. 3, Xinhua identified He as one of "10 big new stars" who made a splash at China's Cities Games. It gave her age as 13 and reported that she beat Yang Yilin on the uneven bars at those games. In the final, "this little girl" pulled off a difficult release move on the bars known as the Li Na, named for another Chinese gymnast, Xinhua said in the report, which appeared on one of its Web sites, www.hb.xinhuanet.com

The Associated Press found the Xinhua report on the site Thursday morning and saved a copy of the page. Later that afternoon, the Web site was still working but the page was no longer accessible. Sports editors at the state-run news agency would not comment for publication.

The Pill makes women pick bad mates

Birth control pills could screw up a woman's ability to sniff out a compatible mate, a new study finds.

While several factors can send a woman swooning, including big brains and brawn, body odor can be critical in the final decision, the researchers say. That's because beneath a woman's flowery fragrance or a guy's musk the body sends out aromatic molecules that indicate genetic compatibility.

Hungry? Eat A Rat

An official in the Indian state of Bihar has come up with a new idea to encourage low caste poor people to cope with food shortages - rat meat.

The Principal Secretary of the state's Welfare Department, Vijay Prakash, said that he was advancing his proposal after "much survey and ground work".

Bihar's extremely poor Musahar community are rat-eaters by tradition.

The Musahar are on the bottom strata of the caste system with the lowest literacy rate and per capita income.

Less than one percent of their 2.3 million population in Bihar is literate and 98% are landless

India Gives Its Image Problem An Airing

NEW DELHI: The personal hygiene of Delhi's taxi drivers is an unusual topic for ministerial-level discussion, but recently it has been central to a government debate over how to lure more tourists to India.

Convinced that the body odors of many of the capital's drivers were far from inviting, the tourism minister, Renuka Chowdhury, has started an advertising campaign aimed at persuading those who work in the tourism sector to clean up their act.

The initiative, called "The Guest is God," has been implemented nationwide and offers free training to everyone who comes in regular contact with foreign visitors - taxi drivers, tour guides, shop owners, waiters and customs officials. The message is simple: behave nicely, and tourists - and their money - will return.

India's government has become conscious that it needs to work much harder to squeeze revenue from its tourism industry. Despite its diversity of attractions - ranging from beaches in Goa to Himalayan trekking, yogic retreats and the Taj Mahal - the nation attracts less than 1 percent of global tourism traffic every year.

Smelly taxis Warned to Tarnish Beijing's Image in Olympic Games

Some Beijing taxi drivers should take it seriously the smell inside their cabs, which may tarnish the city's image in the 2008 Olympic Games, a political advisor has said.

Shi Xiangpeng, who came from Hong Kong to attend the annual session of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), said on the basis of his own experience that about one third of the taxis in Beijing were smelly.

"Sometimes I could smell unbearable stink once I got into the cab, but was afraid of being too rude to get off immediately. So I had to roll down the windows, regardless of how cold it was outside," said Shi, a CPPCC member who visited Beijing frequently.

He attributed the odor to the bad habits of some drivers from the suburbs of Beijing. Since they live far away from the downtown areas where they can do more business, they sometimes sleep and have meals, with onion or garlic, inside the cars, Shi said.

Some drivers don't bath for a long time and some smoke in their cabs, he added.

He called on taxi drivers to pay more attention to their personal hygiene and try to keep a clean and pleasant scent inside the cars.

A smelly cab, though a trivial thing, may impair the country's international image when Beijing hosts the Olympic Games next year, as it's not polite to the guests, he said.

Statistics show that Beijing has 2.9 million registered motor vehicles, including about 67,000 taxis.

Well Now We Know

Flush so we don't blush: Taiwan city

340 tonnes of stinky waste generated daily by toilet paper being thrown into the trash instead of being flushed down. -Reuters

Tue, Jul 08, 2008
Reuters

TAIPEI - A CITY in south Taiwan began training potty users this week to flush toilet paper instead of throwing it in the trash, to reduce 340 tonnes of stinky waste generated daily, local media and officials said on Tuesday.

'An old habit is to throw toilet paper in the trash can beside the toilet, which causes a major stink that's bad for public sanitation,' city Environmental Protection Bureau Director Chang Hwang-jen told Reuters.

'Japanese and Western visitors who come to Taiwan find this Taiwan toilet habit to be quite poor,' she added.

Taiwan's plumbing can now handle toilet paper without clogging the pipes, a break from the past, the city of Tainan told its 764,000 citizens at a news conference on Monday.

Leaders in other Taiwan cities haven't gotten off the pot on the issue, Ms Chang said.

Toilet sitters in Taiwan and China customarily target trash bins instead of the porcelain because of pipe backup worries.

Clogged pipes in Tainan are caused by the flushing of other objects, such as toothbrushes, Ms Chang said.

Sticking non-recyclabe toilet paper in the trash also costs the city T$4,600 (S$206) per tonne, or T$600 million per year, to treat, local media said. -- REUTERS