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#1121 Postby TexasStooge » Tue Mar 28, 2006 6:58 pm

Buffet Sets World Record With 510 Dishes

LAS VEGAS, Nev. (AP) - It's time to raise a glass of bubbly — the maker of the Alka-Seltzer antacid tablet has set a record for creating the world's largest buffet.

About 850 hungry customers helped Bayer HealthCare LLC, a subsidiary of the German pharmaceutical and chemical firm Bayer AG, celebrate the 75th anniversary of its heartburn relief product — known for the jingle "plop, plop, fizz, fizz" — by partaking in a massive spread at the Las Vegas Hilton.

In all, 510 dishes were set in front of the crowd Tuesday. Each one had to be certified distinct by a Guinness World Record adjudicator.

They ranged from Mongolian chicken and salmon Wellington to creme brulee and homemade apple pie.

"I didn't taste each one, otherwise I might have needed several Alka-Seltzers in the end," adjudicator Nadine Causey said.

There was no previous record for the stomach-expanding event, so Guinness set the bar high at 500 dishes to qualify.

"It's an amount large enough to make it a feat that will stretch people," Causey said.
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#1122 Postby TexasStooge » Tue Mar 28, 2006 6:58 pm

Hiker Returns Purse With $1M in Jewels

By JUSTIN M. NORTON, Associated Press Writer

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. - John Suhrhoff found the Louis Vuitton bag on a Sausalito park bench during a lunch stop in the scenic city following a weekend hike.

Inside the bag, police say, was a treasure trove: a 12-carat diamond ring, pearl and emerald jewelry, a Cartier watch and roughly $500 in Canadian and American cash. The contents were worth a cool $1 million.

But the respiratory therapist didn't think of heading to a pawn shop — he returned the bag to Sausalito police headquarters on Monday afternoon after failing to track down the owners. The bag is en route to the Ghannadian family of Toronto, Canada, who were in Northern California for a daughter's wedding.

"Every person I know or associate with would have done the same thing," Suhrhoff, 56, of San Rafael, said Tuesday. "I'm glad to be able to help."

The Ghannadians told the Marin Independent Journal of Novato that their flight to Toronto was scheduled for Sunday evening, so they decided to visit Sausalito. The town is known for its waterfront views of San Francisco and is a tourist hub.

Shahla Ghannadian briefly left her husband in charge of the purse, which contained jewelry she wore at the wedding, according to the paper.

Suhrhoff said he found the bag on a park bench near a tour bus depot.

Ghannadian started crying when she returned to her San Francisco hotel and realized the bag was gone, the paper said. The family went to Sausalito police headquarters and didn't have any luck — and were told chances were slim the bag would be returned.

But thanks to Suhrhoff, the bag and its contents are safe.

"You have to be a real man to return that bag," Ghannadian's son Ali told the Independent Journal. "Even the bag is expensive. We're really, really thankful to that guy."

The family did not return calls requesting comment on Tuesday.

Sausalito police Sgt. Kurtis Skoog said it's rare to find someone so honest that they'd pass up a bag of expensive loot. Many others would have tried to pawn the contents off for a fraction of their value, he said.

Suhrhoff is happy the bag is headed back to Canada but couldn't help wondering why the family was taking such pricey items on day trips to begin with.

"It seems like a lot of expensive jewelry to be carrying around in a purse," he said.
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#1123 Postby TexasStooge » Tue Mar 28, 2006 6:59 pm

Three Kids in Family Have Same Birthday

SARTELL, Minn. (AP) - It's almost as if they planned it — Angie and Bob Deering's three children all have the same birthday. And they're not triplets.

The Deering's kids, Robert, 8; Kristie, 1; and Erin, 11 months, share their April 6 birthday simply by chance.

Robert Deering was nearly two weeks past due by the time he was born. Kristie was expected on April 15. Erin was due April 22.

Linda Oman, the children's grandmother from Little Falls, said three birthdays on one day gets pricey.

"I think I might need a birthdays savings club," she said. "I need to save up for the birthdays."

This year, to celebrate the big day, the siblings had their photo professionally taken, and Robert Deering threw a roller skating party earlier this month.

Next week, friends and family will gather for the children's birthday. Angie Deering plans to purchase three small cakes.

As the oldest, Robert Deering doesn't mind sharing his birthday. "I kind of feel great about it," he said.

"It's convenient," Bob Deering said. "Kristie and Erin don't care, and Robert likes it. I'm sure when they get older, they'll want their own birthdays."
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#1124 Postby TexasStooge » Tue Mar 28, 2006 7:00 pm

Conn. Driving Instructor Is 93

DANBURY, Conn. - As a driving instructor, Morton Morrison finds that he can still teach the "kids" something new about driving safely.

Morrison is 93 and the kids are people in their 60s who have been getting some driving tips through AARP's safe-driving refresher program, which is provided at senior centers in Danbury and other area towns.

"We learned an awful lot from him about things like new road safety rules," said Teresa Candela, 67, a retired insurance company typist and one of Morrison's former students.

Students sit in a classroom instead of going out on the road.

"I coach classes seven to ten times a year," Morrison said recently. "I think I'm a better driver now than I was 30 years ago. I know the teaching manual backwards. Sometimes I even dream about it."

Morrison, was born April 15, 1912, the day The Titanic sank, and has an affinity for teaching. He taught in the New York City school system for 36 years and spent a good part of his 30 years in Florida with his wife, Sylvia, teaching at Palm Beach Community College.

Morrison began coaching refresher driving courses for seniors in 2001 when he and his wife returned to Danbury.

Although he restricts his driving instruction to the classroom, Morrison still drives himself around.

"I know every back road around here," Morrison said. "It's important for everyone to know exactly where they're going when they're driving."

Morrison says he's surprised so many people don't know all the roads in their neighborhood and how to tap into modern driving aids.

"If I'm going somewhere I always get on the computer, find a map and print it out," Morrison said. "It works beautifully. Some people are afraid of computers, especially if they're elderly."

Kathy Capellaro, 60, a self-employed health nutritionist, took one of Morrison's courses earlier this year.

"It was such a wonderful experience," said Capellaro. "None of us are too old to learn. I'd take the course again in a heartbeat."

Morrison said it is never to late to set new goals in life, including hitting the century mark.

"I've always had goals," said Morrison. "When I reach 2012 I'll make new plans."
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#1125 Postby TexasStooge » Tue Mar 28, 2006 7:01 pm

Boy, 3, Gets Trapped Inside Toy Machine

By GREG AAMOT, Associated Press Writer

AUSTIN, Minn. - Devin Haskin isn't the first little boy to find the inside of a toy machine too enticing to resist. When the 3-year-old boy crawled through the discharge chute of a Toy Chest claw machine at a Godfather's Pizza here, he ended up on the other side of the glass surrounded by stuffed animals.

Rescuers had to pry the door open to get Devin out, though the boy was in no hurry to leave.

"When we got it open, he didn't want to come out," Fire Chief Dan Wilson said Tuesday. "One of my firefighters had to reach inside and get him. He was happy in there."

Two years ago, a boy crawled inside a toy machine at a Piggly Wiggly in Sheboygan, Wis., and was rescued with the help of a locksmith. Last year, a toddler climbed into a toy machine at a Wal-Mart in Elkhart, Ind. Workers used tools to free the boy.

Ron Morocco, chief executive of Rock Management & Associates, a Spirit Lake, Iowa, company that owns the Godfather's restaurant in Austin, said the machine would be removed until the company talked to the manufacturer.

"We're very happy the young boy wasn't hurt," he said.

An official with Smart Industries Corp., a Des Moines company that makes the toy machine Devin crawled into, didn't immediately return a phone message Tuesday.

To use the toy machine, a player tries to grasp stuffed animals and other toys behind the glass by manipulating overhead claws.

Devin's mother, Heidi Haskin, declined to be interviewed Tuesday.

Wilson said there was a lot of activity at Godfather's on Sunday when the boy got inside the machine. He estimated that 75 to 100 people were in the restaurant when rescuers arrived and that three birthday parties were taking place. But there was plenty of air in the machine and people were taking pictures of Devin.

He said the gap Devin squeezed through was about 7 inches by 9 inches.
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#1126 Postby TexasStooge » Tue Mar 28, 2006 7:02 pm

Pug Lovers Unite Over Internet to Save Dog

FOREST LAKE, Minn. (AP) - A little pug named Buck has been saved, thanks to a group of dog lovers who bonded through the Internet. After the 2-year-old pug was hit by a car last week and broke three legs, its owners, Colleen and Jim Bighley, were faced with a $3,000 surgery bill they couldn't afford.

Colleen Bighley shared her grief on a pug-lovers' Web site and she wrote about her plans to give the dog one night at home before putting it to sleep.

But 14 minutes after Bighley's post, a pug owner in Australia offered to donate money for the surgery. Others followed, and more than 200 donations totaling about $2,000 came in, from as far as France and Alaska.

Buck is home recuperating now, and Bighley has a new appreciation for Web ties.

"Some people think I'm weird because I go on the Internet to talk about my dog," Bighley said. "My sister-in-law told me she can't call me a geek anymore, because all these people saved my dog's life."
___

Information from: Star Tribune
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#1127 Postby TexasStooge » Tue Mar 28, 2006 7:02 pm

Woman Gets Ring Back After Flushing It

EMMITSBURG, Md. (AP) - A $15,000 diamond ring is back on the hand of its owner, five weeks after it was accidentally flushed down a toilet.

A Mount St. Mary's University worker found Debbie Squiccimarri's engagement ring on a grate at the campus wastewater treatment plant last week, school spokesman Duffy Ross said Monday.

Squiccimarri, of Ramsey, N.J., lost the ring when it slipped off her finger into an automatic flush toilet while she was visiting the campus with her daughter Feb. 20, Ross said. She returned to the school Monday to pick it up.

"I had resigned myself to accepting that my ring was gone," Squiccimarri said in a university press release. "I guess this means I'll have to send my daughter to Mount St. Mary's."
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#1128 Postby TexasStooge » Tue Mar 28, 2006 10:34 pm

Vegas spread is world's largest buffet

LAS VEGAS, Nev. (Reuters) - Even in this over-the-top town famed for all-you-can-eat spreads, nobody had ever seen one quite like this: Forty soups, 100 salads and 150 desserts perched upon a 500-foot (152-metre) maze of tables.

It was enough -- 510 different dishes in all -- to qualify on Tuesday for a Guinness record for the World's Largest Buffet.

"I'm interested in trying some of the desserts now," said tired and hungry Guinness official Nadine Causey, who flew in from London to certify that Las Vegas Hilton Executive Chef George Bargisen had assembled at least 500 unique offerings to create the new record buffet.

Bargisen spent 24 hours straight overseeing the mammoth spread, which included dishes from a dozen ethnic cuisines and offered everything from salmon Wellington to fried alligator, and from pumpkin pie to baklava and pistachio truffles.

"I was in town anyway and thought it might be fun to come by," said tourist Marianne Ruiz, 56, of Seattle, as she headed to her table with a plate overflowing with lyonnaise potatoes, curried chicken, a pile of Waldorf salad, a bowl of gazpacho soup and a slice of apple pie.

Proceeds from the $7.50 (4 pound) a head buffet were donated to hunger relief charity America's Second Harvest.
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#1129 Postby TexasStooge » Tue Mar 28, 2006 10:36 pm

Taiwan veterans seek young China brides

By Alice Hung

TAIPEI, China (Reuters) - Huang Chiang-nan became a soldier at 17 and fought the communists in China before the Nationalist armies were defeated and fled to Taiwan in 1949.

Fifty-seven years later, Huang is still fighting, but the adversary now is Taiwan's restrictions on travel, and the stakes are matrimonial rather than territorial.

After a decades-old ban on travel to the mainland was lifted in the late 1980s, many veteran Nationalist soldiers like Huang, most now in their 70s and 80s, visited their hometowns in China and came back with young wives dreaming of a better life on the affluent island over which Beijing claims sovereignty.

"People like us dedicated our entire lives to this country. Now we are old, we want to have a normal family life, meaning husbands and wives living together," said Huang, who heads a private group helping Chinese spouses cope with life in Taiwan.

"Instead of helping mainland brides and their families, the government imposes unreasonable restrictions. Many mainland brides are treated poorly and without dignity," Huang said.

About 250,000 Chinese brides now live in Taiwan, more than double the 130,000 foreign nationals, most from Southeast Asia. But Taiwan treats cross-Strait marriages with suspicion, citing political as well as social concerns.

Taiwan officials say many young Chinese women claiming to be married to Taiwan men simply disappear into the island's seedy brothels and hostess bars as soon as they enter Taiwan.

CRUELTY

"We treat people from Taiwan nicely and with respect, but look at how they treat us?," said Tang Shulan, a native of China's Hunan province who came to Taiwan seven years ago.

"We are descended from the same ancestors. We are all Chinese, why treat us like foreigners? Why treat people from the same family with such cruelty?" said Tang, complaining about the lengthy waiting period to get her Taiwanese identification. She has one more year before becoming eligible for becoming a Taiwan citizen.

"Before I came, I was told Taiwan was a great place and I would live a good life. If I had known, I would not have come no matter how poor I was at home," said Tang, whose husband is 82.

Although Taiwan allowed Chinese nationals married to Taiwanese to apply for residency in 1992, they must wait an average eight years or longer, compared with five years for other foreign nationals.

In the first two years, they are not allowed to work and have to leave Taiwan every six months.

The government stands by its policy, saying tough rules are necessary to stem the huge flow of immigrants from its giant neighbour and political foe, which has threatened to use force if necessary to bring the self-ruled island under its control.

Critics say the crackdown on fake marriages came at the expense of the rights of legitimate Chinese brides.

"We face a unique situation because of the complicated nature of cross-Strait relations. The government must serve as a gatekeeper," Steve Wu, deputy director of the Bureau of Immigration, told Reuters.

"We cannot ban cross-Strait marriages, but we will not encourage them," Wu said.

TOUGH INTERVIEWS

Concerned about fake marriages, Taiwan started interviewing Chinese spouses seeking residency on the island from September 2003 and taking their fingerprints. People of other nationalities are not subject to these rules.

"The interview was very unpleasant. They asked all sorts of questions, private questions," Yuan Huanzhen, a 43-year-old textile factory worker married to a man twice her age whom she had met only once.

"They made me so nervous and I felt as if I had committed some serious crime," said Yuan, who said she had travelled hundreds of miles to Taiwan to escape poverty in China.

Yuan and her 86-year-old husband live in a tiny room leased from the city government for $100 (57 pounds) a month and spend most of their days reading newspapers on a park bench. Their only source of income is his military pension.

Since the interview scheme was introduced, the number of cross-Strait marriages has halved from 38,000 in 2003 to 19,000 last year, according to data provided by the semi-official Straits Exchange Foundation that handles bilateral exchanges.

Of 52,000 Chinese spouses interviewed by Taiwan customs so far, 8,000 failed the test and were sent back.

Once allowed to settle, many Chinese spouses -- whose accents are the only thing which set them apart from locals -- have a hard time fitting in.

Yuan recalled she was once scolded by a cab driver who criticised Chinese leaders for wanting to attack the island.

"I don't know if you call it discrimination, but I am always looked down on here," she said.
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#1130 Postby TexasStooge » Tue Mar 28, 2006 10:38 pm

Games hosts try to polish Chinese manners

By Joel Kirkhart

BEIJING, China (Reuters) - Some 30 years ago, no home in China was complete without the collection of sayings of Chairman Mao Zedong known universally as the Little Red Book.

By the end of this year, Beijing authorities hope etiquette guides, aimed at improving the manners of the city's inhabitants before the 2008 Olympics, will have found a similar place in the capital's 4.3 million households.

Bad manners were a significant threat to the success of the Olympics, He Zhenliang, advisor to the Beijing Games organisers, warned last week.

The series of books go far beyond encouraging citizens to cheer for foreign athletes and not take flash photographs at sporting events.

The "Basic Reader in Civility and Etiquette" is packed with suggestions on posture, crossing the street, ordering steaks and at least one tip that seems to have been plucked from a guide for swinging singles.

"Intimate gazing zones include the eyes, lips and the chest. Gazing at these areas can stimulate emotions and express love," it reads.

WOMEN'S UNDERWEAR

There is extensive advice on fashion and formalities, some harking back to a past era.

"Women's underwear should not be exposed and especially should not be worn on the outside... Pyjamas should not be worn in public areas," the book says.

"The proper way to greet a person from a Socialist or Marxist-Leninist country is with the term 'comrade'."

Sister volume "Rules and Propriety for Olympic Programmes" walks readers through all the Olympic sports -- each illustrated by cartoons with athletes represented as a chicken and a plump panda -- and explains when and how to cheer at different events.

Cartoons and strange fashion advice aside, the etiquette drive is no joking matter to Beijing.

"Beijing's audiences will represent the spirit and style of the city and the entire country," mayor Wang Qishan writes in the introduction to "Rules and Propriety".

"Along with the athletes and others, they will be like 'actors' appearing on billions of television screens around the world. It goes without saying this is a big problem!"

Beijing sports crowds have been known to get rowdy, to the embarrassment of the authorities.

STREET CAMPAIGN

In August 2004, angry soccer fans went on the rampage after hosts China lost to Japan in the final of the Asian Cup.

A July 2005 basketball game between China and Puerto Rico in Beijing deteriorated into a brawl, with fans hurling insults and missiles at the visiting team.

City officials admit that book learning will not be enough to get people to change their ways, so the Chinese capital is taking its etiquette campaign to the streets.

The city is mobilising an army of volunteer "civility supervisors" charged with persuading people to queue for buses and stop spitting in public.

The volunteer patrols will be backed up by thousands of new trash cans bearing reminders to "spit civilly" and warnings that expectorating in public can fetch fines as high as 50 yuan (4 pounds).

Past attempts to free the city of unsanitary habits such as spitting, including a big push when Beijing was in the grip of the SARS epidemic in 2003, have failed to have much impact.

"They spend lots of money on printing all those books but it seems like a waste to me," taxi driver Zhang Jie, a 45-year-old Beijing native, told Reuters.

"There are just too many people in this country. How are you supposed to be able to control the actions of that many people?"
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#1131 Postby TexasStooge » Wed Mar 29, 2006 7:53 am

College student spends 41 hours in Wal-Mart

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Some students set out for sun-drenched beaches and tropical party bars for spring break. Skyler Bartels, a 20-year-old Drake University sophomore, headed for the local Wal-Mart.

Bartels, an aspiring writer from Harvard, Neb., thought he'd spend a week in the store as a test of endurance, using it as the premise for a magazine article. He called his adviser and she liked the idea.

"I just intuitively thought, 'This is brilliant!'" said Carol Spaulding-Kruse, a Drake associate professor of English. "I wasn't quite sure why, but it just sounded like a really good idea."

For 41 hours, Bartels wandered the aisles of the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Windsor Heights. He watched shoppers, read magazines, watched movies on the DVD display and played video games.

He bought meals at the in-store Subway sandwich shop, but was able to catch only brief naps in a restroom stall or on lawn chairs in the garden department.

Other shoppers and employees didn't pay much attention until the end of his stay, he said, when it appeared some store greeters began to take notice — pointing at him and whispering.

A shift manager approached him and asked him if he was finding everything he needed.

"He said, 'Didn't I see you over by the magazines, like, five hours ago?' I told him, 'Maybe,'" Bartels said.

Tiring to the point of hallucinating, Bartels said he decided to go home before he was thrown out.

He considered the project a failure.

Then, The Des Moines Register, which had been contacted by Spaulding-Kruse, called to ask him about the experience. Once the story ran, ABC and other networks began calling.

He started his day Tuesday talking with Diane Sawyer on ABC's "Good Morning America" and told The Associated Press he had decided the stunt wasn't such a failure after all.

He's talked with a book agent after a Penguin books author saw the story on the Internet. He also has been contacted by New Line Cinema about a movie concept.

Tuesday afternoon he did a radio interview with National Public Radio, and CBS' "Late Show with David Letterman" was arranging a flight to New York for an appearance later in the week.

Bartels said he's surprised by the attention, but it's like a dream for anyone with hopes of ever becoming a writer.

"Whereas, I think the project itself is a failure, I could use this media stuff as a third leg of a book if I wrote it, about how America eats this stuff up," he said. "I'm incredibly happy with the press coverage. It would be kind of silly not to accept it with open arms."

The manager of the Windsor Heights Wal-Mart referred questions to company headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., where spokesman Kevin Thornton said Bartels neither violated store policy nor broke the law.

"We were unaware of his presence and if we were aware of it we certainly wouldn't have condoned it," Thornton said. "We're a retailer, not a hotel."

Thornton said the story has taken off because of Wal-Mart's stature.

"We have 3,800 locations in the U.S. One-hundred million people go through our stores every week," he said. "Wal-Mart is part of the fabric of life and this kind of reiterates that."
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#1132 Postby TexasStooge » Wed Mar 29, 2006 7:54 am

Surgeons remove two fetuses from infant

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Surgeons operated on a 2-month-old Pakistani girl Tuesday to remove two fetuses that had grown inside her while she was still in her mother's womb, a doctor said.

The infant, who was identified only as Nazia, was in critical condition following the two-hour operation at The Children's Hospital at Pakistan Institute of Medical Science in the capital, Islamabad, said Zaheer Abbasi, head of pediatric surgery at the hospital.

Abbasi, the chief doctor who led the operation, said the case was the first he was aware of in Pakistan of fetus-in-fetu, where a fetus has grown inside another in the womb.

"It is extremely rare to have two fetuses being discovered inside another," Abbasi told The Associated Press, adding that he did not know what caused the medical abnormality. "Basically, it's a case of triplets, but two of the siblings grew in the other."

The baby comes from Abbotabad, about 30 miles north of Islamabad. She is the fifth child of a woman in her 30s, who was at the hospital to be with her daughter. Her father works in the Arabian Gulf.

Abbasi said surgeons removed the two partially grown fetuses, totaling about two pounds, that had died at about 4 months.

Other fetus-in-fetu cases have been reported elsewhere in the world. A report in a June 2000 issue of the U.S. journal Pediatrics called such occurrences rare and estimated their rate at about 1 per 500,000 births.
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#1133 Postby TexasStooge » Wed Mar 29, 2006 8:23 am

Church ousts dominatrix from vicarage

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A South African dominatrix has given up her battle to live in a vicarage, telling the church's congregation they can "shove" the disputed residence, a local newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The Pretoria News said Marianne Ellis had been renting the manse, or vicarage, at the Doornkloof Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk near Pretoria for some time when church elders discovered her sideline as a local dominatrix and asked her to move.

Ellis and her husband at first sought to fight the church in court, but on Tuesday decided to back down, the newspaper said.

"It is a long story, but basically I am tired of fighting, really tired. They can take their manse back, in fact they can shove it," she told the newspaper.

Ellis, who said she was promised a long lease and option to buy the vicarage, had earlier showed reporters her "torture chamber" at the house but said she never had sex with her clients and was not running a brothel.

Following the dispute with the church, Ellis told the Pretoria News she was temporarily calling a halt to her career.

"But I will crack the whip again after we have moved. Then I will be back with a vengeance," the newspaper quoted her as saying.
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#1134 Postby TexasStooge » Wed Mar 29, 2006 8:24 am

German teen truant exposed by "burglar" boyfriend

BERLIN, Germany (Reuters) - German police discovered a truant teenager at home in bed with her boyfriend after a neighbour spotted a man climbing into her window and reported a burglary, authorities said on Wednesday.

Thinking he had witnessed a break-in, the neighbour called police, who sped towards the would-be crime scene with their siren blaring.

When officers arrived, the girl's mother told them the room belonged to her 15-year-old daughter who was at school.

Further investigation revealed the mother was wrong.

"She wasn't looking at school books, she was in bed with her boyfriend and was presumably learning something else," Frankfurt police said in a statement.
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#1135 Postby TexasStooge » Wed Mar 29, 2006 8:27 am

The Beatles and Apple face off in court

By Adam Pasick

LONDON, England (Reuters) - The Beatles and Apple Computer Inc faced off in court on Wednesday in a trademark dispute triggered by Apple's move into the music business through its iTunes download service.

Apple Corps Ltd, owned by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon's widow Yoko Ono and the estate of George Harrison, has sued Apple Computer twice before over the companies' competing fruit logos.

The latest settlement in 1991 resulted in a $26 million (15 million pound) payment by Apple Computer and an agreement to limit the use of the Apple trademark in the music business.

Apple Corps claims that Apple Computer's use of its trademark in advertising and software for the iTunes Music Store violates that agreement. The iTunes Music Store, integrated with the popular iPod digital music player, has sold more than 1 billion songs.

Apple Corps is seeking a judgement of liability and an injunction against Apple Computer; if it succeeds a subsequent hearing will assess damages.

"Apple Computer can go into the recorded music business in any way they want. What they cannot do is use Apple (trade)marks to do it," Apple Corps counsel Geoffrey Vos said in his opening presentation.

He noted that the Apple Computer logo is displayed when users buy songs from the iTunes Music Store, and he showed the courtroom an Apple Computer advertisement with the band Coldplay that prominently featured the logo.

Apple Computer counsel Anthony Grabiner is due to give his opening presentation later on Wednesday.

Judge Edward Mann, who is presiding over the case in London's High Court, is a self-professed iPod user.

"I have a certain familiarity with the technology," he said.

Apple Corps, run by former Beatles road manager Neil Aspinall, has refused to licence any Beatles recordings for sale through online music services.
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#1136 Postby TexasStooge » Wed Mar 29, 2006 8:32 am

Workaholics struggle to say "No" to work

By Ellen Wulfhorst

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sam used to sneak into his office before dawn so no one would know how many extra hours he worked. Charles goes on all-night work binges to meet deadlines, and Susan can't say no to volunteer projects, social clubs, bridge games, choral singing, lectures and classes.

Each one is a member of Workaholics Anonymous, a 12-step recovery program for compulsive workers based upon the structure of Alcoholics Anonymous. Each one opted to keep their identity secret.

"It's been called the addiction that society applauds," said Mike, a physician and member of the group known as WA.

"People brag about it and say, 'I'm a workaholic,'" he said. "But workaholics burn out and then you've lost them or they become very dysfunctional and bitter and cynical in the organisation and corrosive."

Workaholics Anonymous keeps no central count of members, but organisers estimate dozens of weekly meetings are held in the United States as well as in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Britain. The group also sells about 100 books about WA a month via its Web site, according to organisers.

WA's roots go back to 1983, when a New York corporate financial planner and a school teacher founded a group based on AA but designed to fight compulsive working.

WA identifies workaholics as people who often are perfectionists and worriers, derive their self esteem from work, keep overly busy, neglect their health, postpone vacations and overschedule their lives.

Workaholics don't even have to have a job; they can just be compulsively busy as they seek an adrenaline high, to overcome feelings of inadequacy and low self esteem and to avoid intimacy, it says.

DESTROYING LIVES

The weekly meeting in New York draws an average of a half dozen people in a city that might be considered a hotbed of workaholism. Such meagre attendance invites the predictable joke that most workaholics are too busy to attend meetings, a quip that organiser Charles has heard a million times.

"People think it's funny," he said. "It's amusing until you hear the stories. There have been many people who have come, and work is destroying their lives."

Unlike alcoholics, who can measure recovery by their days of sobriety, workaholics have no quantifiable gauge of their problem, or their recovery.

"In my case, my boss was telling me I had to get my work hours down to 40 a week, and I couldn't do it," said Sam, a former senior project engineer in California's Silicon Valley.

"I was sneaking into work at 5 a.m. on a Sunday so I could get work done and be out of the place before anyone else showed up," he said. "I didn't want people to see how much time I was putting in.

"Now I'm more willing to try to do a mediocre job and keep my own mental health and sanity than to do the perfect job on everything I attempt," he said.

Like AA, WA uses a 12-step program for recovery from addiction. At meetings, members share their experiences and study the organisation's literature and guidelines.

"It really forces you to look inside and say, 'What's really going on with me?'" said Charles. "A lot of people don't want to do that."

Even if workaholism is hard to define, you know it when you feel it, said Mike, who has left his high-pressure urban job for work at a rural clinic where cows wander outside.

"After a while one gets a feeling of what driven, compulsive working feels like," he said. "There's a tightness to it. There's a lot of adrenaline surging. There's a lot of worry.

"There's a lot of preoccupation, which is different from just waking up in the morning and saying, 'Wow, I really love what I do'," he said.
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#1137 Postby TexasStooge » Wed Mar 29, 2006 8:33 am

Law Professor Bans Laptops in Class

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) - A University of Memphis law professor has banned laptop computers from her classroom and her students are passing a petition against it.

Professor June Entman says her main concern is that students are so busy keyboarding they can't think and analyze what she's telling them.

Students have begun collecting signatures on petitions and tried unsuccessfully to file a complaint with the American Bar Association.

Student Cory Winsett says if he must continue without his laptop, he'll transfer to another school. Winsett says he won't be able to keep up if he has to rely on hand-written notes, which he says are incomplete and less organized.
___

Information from: The Commercial Appeal
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#1138 Postby TexasStooge » Wed Mar 29, 2006 12:31 pm

'Booze patrol': Bad for business?

Convention official fears state stings will undercut city marketing

By SUZANNE MARTA / The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS, Texas - As Dallas seeks to reshape its image with a global marketing campaign focused on the arts and night life, reports of a crackdown on drinking in public threaten to derail some of the city's momentum.

The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission is sending undercover officers into bars, issuing citations or making arrests for public intoxication – even if customers haven't left the building.

Phillip Jones, CEO of the Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau, has received scores of nasty phone calls and e-mails in recent days from meeting planners and area residents who learned about the busts from news reports.

One meeting planner sent a note calling the TABC an "idiotic booze patrol" and said the group would no longer consider Dallas as it sought locations for a citywide convention of 25,000 delegates, Mr. Jones said.

Another group threatened to take Dallas out of the running, saying the undercover stings had rubbed it the wrong way.

Even local business leaders have expressed concern.

"I spoke at breakfast today and there were questions about it," Mr. Jones said.

The news reports have described how the TABC was issuing more criminal citations to rein in people who could be a danger to themselves or others – especially by driving drunk.

Lawmakers who oversee the commission said they generally agreed with the agency's increased emphasis on public safety.

Some also said accounts of certain arrests suggest the program should be reviewed to check for abuses and to measure its effectiveness. Among those arrested was an Arkansas man who said he drank "no more than six" beers at a hotel restaurant before he retired for the night to his room in the same hotel.

Dallas restaurateur Al Biernat, who gets as much as 20 percent of his business from convention attendees, said he hasn't had any sting operations in his bar, but worries that news about the actions send a message of intolerance to potential visitors.

"There's a perception throughout the country that Dallas has a witch hunt going on," Mr. Biernat said.

And Mr. Biernat is concerned that it could hurt the progress the city has made in attracting conventions.

"Dallas is at a key point where things are starting to turn around," Mr. Biernat said. "I'd hate to see anything slow it down."

Mr. Jones doesn't expect the recent crackdown to cause groups to cancel their meetings and conventions, but he worries it could cause more customers to take Big D out of the running.

He's expressed his concerns to Gov. Rick Perry's office at an unrelated meeting last Friday and has forwarded more than 100 of the angry e-mails there.

Dallas Mayor Laura Miller has received around 50 e-mails and several phone calls on the issue, a spokeswoman said.

Mr. Jones doesn't condone public intoxication or driving drunk, but said he fears that media coverage will leave the wrong message with would-be conventioneers or other visitors who spend some $8 billion in the city annually.

"There's a tremendous potential for lost revenue," Mr. Jones said. "It puts us in a very difficult and tricky situation."

The Dallas visitor bureau relies heavily on exposure the city and its attractions get through news articles in travel magazines and other publications around the U.S. and elsewhere.

But the recent coverage of the TABC's undercover operations at Texas bars isn't the kind of exposure Mr. Jones was hoping for.

"Any type of negative publicity for Dallas, especially when we're trying to reposition ourselves, is very harmful," he said.

Officials from Houston and Austin said they hadn't heard from customers on the issue. A spokesman from the Fort Worth Convention & Visitors Bureau said response has been limited.

Steven Hacker, president of the Dallas-based International Association of Exhibition Management, said any impact likely would be relegated to a "blip."

"When you're talking about business, the days have long since past when people made decisions about where to go based on where you can party," Mr. Hacker said. "Today, it's all about return on investment."

Mr. Hacker said more mundane issues such as whether there are enough hotel rooms or flights to an area rank higher in importance for event planners.

"If they were hauling people out of the convention center and throwing them in jail, then it would be an issue," he said.
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#1139 Postby TexasStooge » Wed Mar 29, 2006 12:40 pm

Four beautiful words: All You Can Eat.

LAS VEGAS, Nev. (Reuters) - Even in this over-the-top town famed for all-you-can-eat spreads, nobody had ever seen one quite like this: Forty soups, 100 salads and 150 desserts perched upon a 500-foot (152-meter) maze of tables.

It was enough -- 510 different dishes in all -- to qualify on Tuesday for a Guinness record for the World's Largest Buffet.

"I'm interested in trying some of the desserts now," said tired and hungry Guinness official Nadine Causey, who flew in from London to certify that Las Vegas Hilton Executive Chef George Bargisen had assembled at least 500 unique offerings to create the new record buffet.

Bargisen spent 24 hours straight overseeing the mammoth spread, which included dishes from a dozen ethnic cuisines and offered everything from salmon Wellington to fried alligator, and from pumpkin pie to baklava and pistachio truffles.

"I was in town anyway and thought it might be fun to come by," said tourist Marianne Ruiz, 56, of Seattle, as she headed to her table with a plate overflowing with lyonnaise potatoes, curried chicken, a pile of Waldorf salad, a bowl of gazpacho soup and a slice of apple pie.

Proceeds from the $7.50 a head buffet were donated to hunger relief charity America's Second Harvest.
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#1140 Postby TexasStooge » Thu Mar 30, 2006 8:00 am

First-grader sent home for spiked hair

TULIA, Texas (DallasNews.com/AP) – All 7-year-old Dallas Saenz wants to do is express his personality, but school officials in this Panhandle town have countered that the first-grader's Mohawk hairdo is disruptive.

Highland Elementary officials sent Dallas home March 10, the day before spring break, because of the spiky cut. When classes resumed March 20, Dallas had tamed the Mohawk by combing it down.

"They laughed at me," he said.

The next day his parents allowed him to go to school with the spiked styling, but he was again ordered home.

Tulia Superintendent Ken Miller said Dallas could return to school when his hairdo is acceptable.

"If it's no distraction, it's no problem," Miller said.

Dallas has been home since March 21 because his mother, Toni Ramirez, said she understood he can't return until his hair grows out.

Dallas' parents said they've gotten two citations, each with a $300 fine, for "disrupting classes." Their son could face truancy charges, and he could be held back a grade if he misses more than 21 days, they said.

Ramirez and husband Ricky Saenz said they are willing to face all of that to protect their children's rights to express themselves.

"Everybody's different," Ramirez said. "He's not hurting anybody."

Miller said the solution is easy for Dallas' parents. Tulia's dress code states: "Hair should be neat, clean and well-groomed. Style or color should not be extreme to the point of creating a distraction."

The boy's porcupine-like cut caused a distraction, principal Johnny Lara said.

"All the students were commenting and going on about the hairstyle," Lara said. "It was very visible."
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