[Matt]

there's a penis-vacuum story every month...

yeah coming from your apartment!

[tjconheady]

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2007/09/man-dead-after-.html

Man dead after three-day Internet gaming binge

State-run media report that a man died Saturday after three days of non-stop gaming at an Internet cafe in Guangzhou, China.

"Paramedics tried to revive him but failed and he was declared dead at the cafe," Beijing News says, according to the Associated Press. The Chinese paper theorizes that the 30-year-old man "died from exhaustion brought on by too many hours on the Internet."

AFP says one medic thinks it may have caused heart problems. Reuters says officials have ruled out suicide.

Beijing News didn't report what game he was playing at the time of his death.

[Matt]

that'll be me on the 28th

[Matt]

Mystery illness strikes after meteorite hits Peruvian village

LIMA (AFP) - Villagers in southern Peru were struck by a mysterious illness after a meteorite made a fiery crash to Earth in their area, regional authorities said Monday.

Around midday Saturday, villagers were startled by an explosion and a fireball that many were convinced was an airplane crashing near their remote village, located in the high Andes department of Puno in the Desaguadero region, near the border with Bolivia.

Residents complained of headaches and vomiting brought on by a "strange odor," local health department official Jorge Lopez told Peruvian radio RPP.

Seven policemen who went to check on the reports also became ill and had to be given oxygen before being hospitalized, Lopez said.

Rescue teams and experts were dispatched to the scene, where the meteorite left a 100-foot-wide (30-meter-wide) and 20-foot-deep (six-meter-deep) crater, said local official Marco Limache.

"Boiling water started coming out of the crater and particles of rock and cinders were found nearby. Residents are very concerned," he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070918/sc ... lthoffbeat

[cbobcat49]

This sounds like the plot to an old X-Files episode. Alien microbes infecting the earth. Mankind will be wiped out in a matter of months.

[Brenda]

I just happened to catch an old episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation yesterday afternoon that had the very same plot. The Cardasians are coming!

[VinceClortho]

I figured it would start in Peru.

[Matt]

First pic from the scene:

[Matt]

Forklift Removes 900-Pound Man From Home

LANSING, Michigan (AP) — Firefighters cut a hole in the side of a house and used a forklift to extricate a 900-pound (408-kilogram) man from his second-floor bedroom after a visiting nurse became worried about his health.

Rescue workers were called in Tuesday by the nurse, who determined the 33-year-old man needed medical help, Fire Chief Tom Cochran said.

Cochran said the man had not left his home since 2003.

The man's brother, who lives with him, said he suffers from Prader-Willi Syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that creates a chronic hunger feeling that can lead to overeating and life-threatening obesity.

Rescue workers brought in a forklift, high enough to raise a platform to a hole cut into the wall of the house. They covered the man with a blue tarp to shield him from onlookers and slid the platform onto a flatbed truck for a trip to Sparrow Hospital.

http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/ ... b_man.html

[Matt]

Scientists Doubt Meteorite Sickened Peruvians

Scientists doubt that the supposed meteorite strike that sickened some 200 residents of Peru last weekend actually involved anything from space.


Based on reports of fumes emanating from the crater, some scientists actually suspect that the event could have been some kind of geyser-like explosion rather than a meteorite impact.


"Statistically, it's far more likely to have come from below than from above," said Don Yeomans, head of the Near Earth Object Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.


The noxious fumes that have supposedly sickened curious locals who went to examine the crater would seem to indicate hydrothermal activity, such as a local gas explosion, because "meteorites don't give off odors," Yeomans told SPACE.com.


Skepticism warranted


Several times in recent history, reports of meteorite impacts have turned out to be untrue after scientific examination. Doubt in the scientific community was as rampant today as the speculations out of Peru.


Details surrounding the incident are also increasing experts' skepticism.


"Many of the reported features of the crater ('boiling water,' sulphurous fumes, etc.) point to a geological mechanism of the crater formation," wrote Benny Peiser, a social anthropologist at John Moores University, in a daily newsletter that catalogues research and media coverage of space rock impacts and other threats to humanity. "I would not be surprised if, after careful analysis, the alleged meteorite impact reveals itself to be just another 'meteorwrong.'"


It's not impossible that the crater was left by a meteorite, Yeomans said, but if so, then the impact object most likely was small, based on the size of the crater. It would also probably have been a metal meteorite, because those are the only kind of small meteorites that don't burn up as they plummet through Earth's atmosphere, he added. Small stony meteorites rarely make it to the surface.


A couple features of the event reports suggest there was a space rock involved, said geophysicist Larry Grossman of the University of Chicago. The bright streak of light and loud bangs seen and heard by locals are consistent with a meteor streaking through Earth's atmosphere, he said. Most meteors do burn up, never becoming meteorites (which is what they're called if they reach the surface).


Because no one actually saw anything impact at the crater site, it's hard to say whether a space rock was involved because they are often deceptive as to where they will land. Many times, people swear a meteor landed nearby when in fact it was so far away that it dipped below the local horizon but never actually struck the ground.


"Sometimes these things land hundreds or thousands of miles away from where [people] think they will land," Grossman said.


Investigation needed


Pictures of the crater show that the hole in the ground appears fresh, Grossman said, and the debris strewn around it is consistent with a meteorite impact but also could have been caused by digging.


And there are no previous reports of noxious fumes emanating from meteorite remnants or their craters, he said.


"If the noxious fumes came from the hole, it wasn't because the meteorite fell there," Grossman said, saying they would like have come from something already in the ground.


Grossman said that to determine whether the crater was made by a meteorite, the water in the hole must be pumped out and any large chunks of rock at the bottom should be examined to see if they are consistent with meteoritic composition.


Peruvian geologists are on their way to examine the crater, according to news reports.

[Brenda]

"Statistically, it's far more likely to have come from below than from above," said Don Yeomans, head of the Near Earth Object Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Duh.

[cbobcat49]

ah, so it basically is just like an X-Files episode. The government coverup has begun. Interesting.

[tjconheady]

http://newsfromrussia.com/society/stories/25-09-2007/97676-boeing-0

Teen boy flies inside Boeing-737 wing for 2 hours and loses his both hands

Doctors are trying to do their best to save the hands of 15-year-old boy Andrey Sherbakov, a native of the city of Perm in Russia’s Ural region. The boy miraculously survived the 1.300-kilometer flight inside a wing of Boeing-737 jetliner. Surgeons will probably have to amputate the boy’s both hands because of gangrene which started developing as a result of severe frostbite.

Doctors from the Department of Surgery of the Clinical Hospital for Children in the city of Perm estimate the boy’s condition as critical. The plane was flying at the height of 10,000 meters for two hours while Andrey was staying inside one of its wings. As a result, the boy suffered deep frostbite of his both hands.

When Andrey came to his senses after his extraordinary journey, he told the police that the story started with his decision to escape from his boozing father. The boy had a supper with his grandmother and told her that he was going to spend the night at his friend’s, who had a birthday that day. Instead, the boy took a cab and went to the airport. “I had some money with me. I just wanted to take a look at the planes. I was wandering about the territory of the airport and saw a hole in its fence. I sneaked in and approached a big plane . It was already dark and no one saw me. I didn’t know what to do next. Eventually, I decided to climb up the landing gear into the wing. When I was in, I sat down there on a tire and fell asleep,” the boy said.

The boy woke up when the plane was already flying. It is not clear how technicians inspected the jetliner before the takeoff, but they found nothing suspicious.

“I got so scared and fainted. I don’t remember what was happening afterwards. They told me later that I had spent about two hours at the height of 10,000 meters at very low temperatures. I came to my senses again when the plane had already landed. I got down on the runway and collapsed. I could not control my legs and it was very cold,” the boy said.

The plane landed in Moscow’s Vnukovo airport. Employees saw the teenager falling down on the ground from the hull of the plane. The boy was hospitalized in half-conscience state. When at the hospital, the “passenger” was constantly saying that his hands were burning. Andrey’s swollen hands did not make it an easy task for the doctors to take off his jacket.

The boy’s mother, Olga, did not know that his son had been hospitalized in severe condition at one of Moscow hospitals. The woman learned about it at night, when a phone rang in her flat and a voice from Moscow spoke to her.

Andrey’s mother arrived in Moscow and took her son back home to Perm because the family could not afford the expensive treatment in Russia’s capital. A doctor from the Perm hospital, where the boy is staying at the moment, said that the tissue of the boy’s hands started dying away, which may make surgeons amputate both hands of the extreme passenger.

[Brenda]

6 Die From Brain-Eating Amoeba in Lakes

By CHRIS KAHN, Associated Press Writer
(AP) -- It sounds like science fiction but it's true: A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die.

Even though encounters with the microscopic bug are extraordinarily rare, it's killed six boys and young men this year. The spike in cases has health officials concerned, and they are predicting more cases in the future.

"This is definitely something we need to track," said Michael Beach, a specialist in recreational waterborne illnesses for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"This is a heat-loving amoeba. As water temperatures go up, it does better," Beach said. "In future decades, as temperatures rise, we'd expect to see more cases."

According to the CDC, the amoeba called Naegleria fowleri (nuh-GLEER-ee-uh FOWL'-erh-eye) killed 23 people in the United States, from 1995 to 2004. This year health officials noticed a spike with six cases - three in Florida, two in Texas and one in Arizona. The CDC knows of only several hundred cases worldwide since its discovery in Australia in the 1960s.

In Arizona, David Evans said nobody knew his son, Aaron, was infected with the amoeba until after the 14-year-old died on Sept. 17. At first, the teen seemed to be suffering from nothing more than a headache.

"We didn't know," Evans said. "And here I am: I come home and I'm burying him."

After doing more tests, doctors said Aaron probably picked up the amoeba a week before while swimming in the balmy shallows of Lake Havasu, a popular man-made lake on the Colorado River between Arizona and California.

Though infections tend to be found in southern states, Naegleria lives almost everywhere in lakes, hot springs, even dirty swimming pools, grazing off algae and bacteria in the sediment.

Beach said people become infected when they wade through shallow water and stir up the bottom. If someone allows water to shoot up the nose - say, by doing a somersault in chest-deep water - the amoeba can latch onto the olfactory nerve.

The amoeba destroys tissue as it makes its way up into the brain, where it continues the damage, "basically feeding on the brain cells," Beach said.

People who are infected tend to complain of a stiff neck, headaches and fevers. In the later stages, they'll show signs of brain damage such as hallucinations and behavioral changes, he said.

Once infected, most people have little chance of survival. Some drugs have stopped the amoeba in lab experiments, but people who have been attacked rarely survive, Beach said.

"Usually, from initial exposure it's fatal within two weeks," he said.

Researchers still have much to learn about Naegleria. They don't know why, for example, children are more likely to be infected, and boys are more often victims than girls.

"Boys tend to have more boisterous activities (in water), but we're not clear," Beach said.

In central Florida, authorities started an amoeba phone hot line advising people to avoid warm, standing water and areas with algae blooms. Texas health officials also have issued warnings.

People "seem to think that everything can be made safe, including any river, any creek, but that's just not the case," said Doug McBride, a spokesman for the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Officials in the town of Lake Havasu City are discussing whether to take action. "Some folks think we should be putting up signs. Some people think we should close the lake," city spokesman Charlie Cassens said.

Beach cautioned that people shouldn't panic about the dangers of the brain-eating bug. Cases are still extremely rare considering the number of people swimming in lakes. The easiest way to prevent infection, Beach said, is to use nose clips when swimming or diving in fresh water.

"You'd have to have water going way up in your nose to begin with" to be infected, he said.

David Evans has tried to learn as much as possible about the amoeba over the past month. But it still doesn't make much sense to him. His family had gone to Lake Havasu countless times. Have people always been in danger? Did city officials know about the amoeba? Can they do anything to kill them off?

Evans lives within eyesight of the lake. Temperatures hover in the triple digits all summer, and like almost everyone else in this desert region, the Evanses look to the lake to cool off.

It was on David Evans' birthday Sept. 8 that he brought Aaron, his other two children, and his parents to Lake Havasu. They ate sandwiches and spent a few hours splashing around.

"For a week, everything was fine," Evans said.

Then Aaron got the headache that wouldn't go away. At the hospital, doctors first suspected meningitis. Aaron was rushed to another hospital in Las Vegas.

"He asked me at one time, 'Can I die from this?'" David Evans said. "We said, 'No, no.'"

On Sept. 17, Aaron stopped breathing as his father held him in his arms.

"He was brain dead," Evans said. Only later did doctors and the CDC determine that the boy had been infected with Naegleria.

"My kids won't ever swim on Lake Havasu again," he said.

---
http://www.physorg.com/news110255496.html

[Matt]

Shana will read that and not touch water ever again.