Alligator takes late-night stroll through town

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Alligator+takes+late+night+stroll+through+German+town/3236987/story.html

BERLIN - An alligator was found roaming the streets of a small German town in the middle of the night, authorities said on Friday.

Police in Gross-Rohrheim got a 2 a.m. phone call on Thursday from a bystander who said he had just seen an alligator walking in front of a motorcycle shop in the centre of town.

"At first they just broke out laughing..," said police spokesman Ferdinand Derigs. "But here in the state of Hesse we’re ready for anything that comes our way."

Two officers dispatched to investigate were able to capture the 3.3-foot long alligator with equipment ordinarily used to capture dogs.

"The alligator was taken into custody," police said in a statement. Authorities soon found it had escaped from a small circus being staged at a nearby school. The alligator was later handed over to school officials.

Absent Russia will win World Cup, 8 percent of nation say

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/world-cup-2010/7865389/One-in-10-Russians-believe-they-will-win-World-Cup-despite-not-qualifying.html

Russian pride was shattered when its team was denied a place at the world's most-watched sporting event, currently under way in South Africa, when they were defeated by Slovenia in the qualifying stage.

The poll, conducted by Russia's Levada Centre between the 18th and the 22nd of June, surveyed 1,600 Russian adults across 130 cities.

Brazil - currently pegged a favourite by several bookmakers - came top of the poll, with 33 per cent of Russians believing the football powerhouse would take home the trophy.

Two per cent of those polled said Turkey, a prime Russian tourist spot but also absent from the Cup, would win.

Despite the Russian team's absence, Moscow's bars have been filled with excited fans watching the matches. The Kremlin is also eagerly awaiting December's decision on whether or not its bid to host the World Cup in 2018 or 2022 has been successful.

The Russian team has previously enjoyed a mixed record in international football, securing a historic semi-final place at the European Championship in 2008. However, it failed to qualify for the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

FIFA, which runs the World Cup, considers the Russian team the direct successor to the Soviet squad, whose pinnacle of sporting achievement was victory in the inaugural European Championships in Paris in 1960. It beat fellow Communists Yugoslavia.

Gum boots designed with a blast to charge mobile phones

http://arabnews.com/lifestyle/article75649.ece

LONDON: Modern festival-goers who dread ending up with a dead mobile phone battery after days stuck in a muddy field with no electric plug power points may now have a solution — power boots.

Mobile phone company European Telco Orange has introduced a phone charging prototype — a set of thermoelectric gumboots or Wellington boots with a 'power generating sole' that converts heat from the wearer's feet into electrical power to charge battery-powered hand-helds.

The boot was designed by Dave Pain, managing director at GotWind, a renewable energy company. Pain said the boot uses the Seebeck effect, named after physicist Thomas Johann Seebeck, in which a circuit made of two dissimilar metals conducts electricity if the two places where they connect are held at different temperatures.

"In the sole of the Wellington boot there's a thermocouple and if you apply heat to one side of the thermocouple and cold to the other side it generates an electrical charge," Pain told Reuters Television. "That electrical charge we then pass through to a battery which you'll find in the heel of the boot for storage of the electrical power for later use to charge your mobile phone."

These thermocouples are connected electrically, forming an array of multiple thermocouples (thermopile). They are then sandwiched between two thin ceramic wafers. When the heat from the foot is applied on the top side of the ceramic wafer and cold is applied on the opposite side, from the cold of the ground, electricity is generated.

After a full day's festival frolics music lovers can plug their phone into the power output at the top of the welly and use the energy generated throughout the day to charge their phone. But the prototype boot does have one drawback. You need to walk for 12 hours in the boots to generate one hour's worth of charge.

Thieves steal everything, including the kitchen sink, from police station

http://www.mid-day.com/news/2010/jun/260610-thieves-South-African-kitchen-sink.htm

South African police on the hunt after thieves didn't leave even the kitchen sink

South Africa's police are investigating after thieves stripped a police station of all its contents, down to the kitchen sink.

The office was under renovation and ready for re-occupation when the thieves hit, South Africa's Times Newspaper reported.

The robbers helped themselves to everything of value - including doors, cupboards, basins, cutlery, tiles, furniture, electrical equipment and mortuary fridges.

Small space

Officers from the Carletonville police station, west of Johannesburg, have had to cram into three small rooms.
The space is inadequate, and there are no holding cells or parking spaces. The rent costs the police about 127,000 rand (Rs 8 lakh) each month.

It is not clear how the burglars managed to clean out the office without being detected by the security company contracted by the Department of Public Works to guard the premises.

Democratic Alliance police spokesperson Dianne Kohler Barnard said that the Department of Public Works had "failed taxpayers".

"How bizarre, that the police will now have to investigate a crime committed at a police station."

"It's absolutely terrible, but typical of Public Works. For them to allow that place to be stripped is outrageous," she said.

Public Works spokesperson Thami Mchunu said he was still gathering information about the incident.

"I will give you the full details as soon as possible," he said.

Hospital amputates legs of girl with burnt hands

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/802466-hospital-amputates-legs-of-toddler-with-burnt-hands

Thembisa Kometsi was admitted for treatment after scolding herself in bath water but both of the limbs were amputated below the knee.

The two-year-old is now at home after the operation, thought to have taken place after a communication breakdown during a hospital transfer.

An investigation into how the blunder happened is under way but politicians are demanding a full inquiry.

One theory is that Thembisa had gangrene in her legs and medical staff thought she was supposed to go under the knife to remove them.

‘If any member of hospital staff has been guilty of negligence, they will face disciplinary action and possible dismissal,’ said Mandla Sidu, spokes-man for the Gauteng department of health in South Africa.

‘It is possible the girl was suffering from some form of gangrene in her lower limbs and that is why the operation was performed.

‘However, it could be that there was a miscommunication or mistake. This is what will be established.’

He added: ‘The child is with the family and we are providing them with all the support that they need. I believe the girl is recovering well.’

Thembisa is thought to have burned her hands in hot water in a bath.

She was taken to Far East Rand hospital near Johannesburg and then transferred to the nearby Charlotte Maxeke Academic hospital.

Jack Bloom, health spokesman of the opposition Democratic Alliance party, called for an independent inquiry into what he described as the ‘maiming’ of the toddler.

The snake that ate itself

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/802400-reggie-the-snake-who-ate-himself

When confronted by a free lunch, it was natural for him to want a bite. But the greedy reptile was literally chasing his own tail.

Reggie's owner found him with a mouthful of himself, and headed straight for the vets. Little did he know that Reggie was close to digesting himself. Removing his tail required patience and skill because the snake's teeth face inwards.

'Its teeth were acting like a ratchet,' said vet Bob Reynolds, from Faygate, West Sussex.



'If a snake like this one is kept in a space that is too small then there is always a temptation for it to lunge at its own tail. They can't spread themselves out and think their tails are another snake.'

Reggie was close to being put down because his tail was nearly in his stomach, where it would have begun being digested. King snakes are native to California and feed on rattlesnakes and lizards. And, it seems, themselves.

Machines now beat humans at lip-reading

http://www.zopag.com/news/computers-now-better-at-lipreading-than-humans/7169.html

Washington, September 10: A new study has revealed that computers are better at lip-reading than humans – a finding that could lead to novel methods of lip-reading training for the deaf and hard of hearing.

The research team from University of East Anglia compared the performance of a machine-based lip-reading system with that of 19 human lip-readers.

They found that the automated system significantly outperformed the human lip-readers – scoring a recognition rate of 80 per cent, compared with only 32 per cent for human viewers on the same task.

Unlike the traditional approach to lip-reading training, where viewers are taught to spot key lip-shapes from static (often drawn) images, the new video-based training system significantly improved their ability to lip-read monosyllabic words.

"This pilot study is the first time an automated lip-reading system has been benchmarked against human lip-readers and the results are perhaps surprising," said the study''s lead author Sarah Hilder.

Charge your car while you drive

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/153299/german-innovation-would-charge-your-car-while-you-drive/

One of the usual complaints about electric cars is how you handle long road trips. If an electric vehicle has a range of just a couple hundred miles, and then requires eight hours plugged into the wall, well, that family drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles turns from one long (but manageable) day of driving into a three-day ordeal.

But what if you could charge your car while you were on the road? That's the idea behind Germany's IAV Automotive Engineering, which has patented a system that embeds charging electronics right into the roadway, juicing up cars as they merrily roll along.

The idea is similar to any number of wireless power innovations: Electromagnetic field generators embedded in the road would induce an electrical current in charging equipment on the underside of your car, which would charge your battery as you drive. The chargers would activate only when a vehicle is present, using an RFID tag to identify the vehicle to the charging system (in part, presumably, to bill you appropriately for power used).

IAV says the system currently works at 90 percent efficiency and would be ready for commercial rollout in about three years. Similar systems could also be adapted for home use while cars are parked: Wireless chargers could be installed in your garage, for example, freeing you from the hassle of having to remember to plug your car into wall power after a long slog home from the industrial park. Nissan has a garage-based charging system in the works, as well.

Naturally there's a bit of a problem with the idea, and that's the little matter of how you outfit a highway system as vast as America's with what sounds like relatively complicated charging equipment. The U.S. has over 46,000 miles of interstate highways alone. Adding charging circuitry to all that roadway would surely cost tens of billions of dollars or more -- and that doesn't even consider adding equipment to intrastate roads.

Still, great idea... at least in theory.

"thank you littell f***ker", says waiter

http://www.caterersearch.com/Articles/2009/09/11/329843/rude-waiter-sacked-from-halifax-restaurant.html

A waiter has been sacked after signing off a customer’s bill with the misspelt words “thank you littell f***ker”.

The waiter at the Cactus Joe Mexican restaurant in Halifax put the message on the bottom of a family’s bill referring to their two year old, who had complained during the meal, according to reports in today’s Metro.

The family visited the restaurant on its opening weekend and had been seated in the advertised kid’s zone but had been frustrated by slow service and poor food which had led to complaints from the little girl.

Dad Craig Cartin said: “The meal was indifferent anyway but to be abused on the bill is unbelievably offensive, it’s awful behaviour.”

Restaurant owner Steve Ryan apologised unreservedly to the family for the message, admitting the behaviour was “inexcusable” and has invited the family back this weekend as his guests.