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#2061 Postby TexasStooge » Tue Jul 11, 2006 9:22 pm

Arlington school district bans grillz

ARLINGTON, Texas (WFAA ABC 8/AP) - The school district here has expanded its dress codes to include mouths — and earlobes.

Students may no longer wear mouth jewelry known as "grillz" — shiny teeth caps — or the earlobe-stretching practice known as "gauging."

"The district is having to respond to fads because they've become distracters or a safety hazard for those around them," said Malcolm Turner, the district's executive director of student services.

The nearby Irving, Grand Prairie and DeSoto districts also ban grillz, and some also address gauging — the process of placing increasingly large items in the ears to stretch the lobes.

But students said the body modification is simply self-expression.

"Really, a grill is just like an earring. It's fashion," said junior Devonte Wright, 16.

But school officials said they hoped to teach students that life would require them to follow specific regulations in specific settings.

"We want to instill in them a sense of modesty and a sense of community," said school board trustee Gloria Pena. "We're preparing them for the work force, and in the work force there are rules."

Image
AP
Rapper Paul Wall displays his 'grillz,' shiny teeth caps, with a smile June 27 while at the 6th annual BET Awards.
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#2062 Postby TexasStooge » Wed Jul 12, 2006 7:29 am

Woman reunited with lost brooch 10 years later

SAN ANGELO, Texas (WFAA ABC 8/AP) - The best story behind Bernice Weinkauf's antique brooch is no longer about the aunt who gave it to her.

Ten years after losing the 70-year-old rhinestoned clasp in a restaurant parking lot, Weinkauf was reunited with her treasured jewelry last week after the woman who originally found it finally placed an ad in the newspaper.

That woman, who did not want to be identified by the San Angelo Standard-Times, told the newspaper she "felt so guilty" for waiting so long. She had intended to locate the owner but forgot until rediscovering the brooch in an old purse, she said.

"This was just the time," Weinkauf said.
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#2063 Postby TexasStooge » Wed Jul 12, 2006 7:39 am

It was a long and twisting sentence...

LOS ANGELES, Calif. (Reuters) - An opening sentence containing a burrito, an angel and a shovel was judged appalling enough to win the annual Bulwer-Lytton literary parody prize on Tuesday.

Retired mechanical designer Jim Guigli of California was proclaimed winner of the contest, which challenges entrants to submit their worst opening sentence of an imaginary novel.

Guigli's winning entry read: "Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean."

Guigli's powers of invention and his determination to succeed -- he submitted 60 different entries -- also won him a "dishonorable mention" in the historical fiction category.

"My motivation for entering the contest was to find a constructive outlet for my dementia," Guigli quipped.

The Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest was started in 1982 by the English Department at San Jose State University to honor the Victorian novelist who opened his 1830 novel "Paul Clifford" with what were to become the immortal words, "It was a dark and stormy night."

It began as a quiet campus affair and now attracts thousands of entries from around the world. But the grand prize winner receives only a pittance and other winners "must content themselves with becoming household names," organizers say.

The 2006 runner-up, Stuart Vasepuru from Scotland, played with one of the most famous pieces of dialogue from the Clint Eastwood movie "Dirty Harry."

"I know what you're thinking, punk," hissed Wordy Harry to his new editor, "you're thinking, 'Did he use six superfluous adjectives or only five?' -- and to tell the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement; but being as this is English, the most powerful language in the world, whose subtle nuances will blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel loquacious?' -- well do you, punk?"
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#2064 Postby TexasStooge » Wed Jul 12, 2006 7:41 am

Sony pulls controversial Dutch PSP ad

By Lisa Baertlein

LOS ANGELES, Calif. (Reuters) - Sony Corp. said on Tuesday it had pulled a Dutch billboard advertising campaign for the new white version of its PlayStation Portable video game player and apologized to anyone offended by the ad, which critics dubbed racist.

A billboard ad in the campaign -- which Sony said was launched in the first week of June and created locally and exclusively for the Dutch market -- portrayed a white woman aggressively grabbing the face of a black woman and read "PlayStation Portable White is Coming."

Sony said that the Netherlands campaign intended to highlight the color contrast between the existing black PSP and the new ceramic white PSP.

Instead, the ad campaign riled California Assemblyman Leland Yee, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and a youth civil rights education project called Sojourn to the Past.

Those critics condemned Sony's use of the racially charged photo to sell a product and said it recalled an age and time when black people were portrayed in minstrel shows.

"We recognize that the subject matter of one specific image may have caused concern in some countries not directly affected by the advertising. As a result, we have now withdrawn the campaign," said Sony, which has also removed the image from its Dutch PSP site and apologized to those put off by the ad.

"I am pleased to see Sony taking responsibility for their racially charged ad and appropriately pulling it from the marketplace," said Yee, who has spearheaded state legislation aimed at keeping excessively violent and sexually explicit games out of the hands of minors.

Late last year, Sony sparked controversy in the United States with spray-painted PSP ads that looked like urban graffiti. The stealth campaign featured dazed-looking kids doing a variety of things with their PSPs, from riding them like skateboards to licking them like lollipops.

Each of Sony's controversial PSP campaigns has created massive buzz in the Internet blogosphere -- which can work to the company's advantage.

The PSP's closest competitor is Nintendo Co Ltd.'s DS, a dual-screened mobile game device.
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#2065 Postby TexasStooge » Wed Jul 12, 2006 7:41 am

Vows of love to be stored in space

TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) - Japanese spouses can have their vows of love launched into outer space and stored there from next year -- as long as they buy platinum wedding rings.

The project is part of a campaign to promote platinum wedding rings by the Japanese arm of Platinum Guild International, the body which promotes jewelry made of the precious metal.

"People do not link platinum with wedding rings the way they used to," an official with PGI's Tokyo office said.

Far more valuable than gold, platinum has traditionally been the metal of choice among Japanese couples buying marriage bands, but interest in rings has waned as more opt for simpler nuptials.

Couples who buy a platinum wedding ring at stores taking part in the promotion from August to December this year can write their vows of love on a campaign website.

The messages will be stored on a DVD together with pictures of the loving couples, which will then be blasted off to a space station in a Soyuz rocket due to be launched in March 2007.
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#2066 Postby TexasStooge » Wed Jul 12, 2006 7:42 am

Missiles boost Japan's market for nuclear bunkers

TOKYO (Reuters) - Hiroyuki Mogi heaves open a thick concrete door to reveal a basement room lined with cans of food and bottles of water along with beds, an air filter and a laptop computer.

Like a growing number of Japanese alarmed by the threat of North Korean missiles, Mogi has made his own arrangements to protect himself and his family in case a nuclear bomb should land on Japan.

The government employee from Hino, western Tokyo, said in an interview he had packed enough food to feed his family of four for 10 days into a nuclear shelter in his basement, which is built to withstand temperatures of 1,500 Celsius (2,700 Fahrenheit).

"Since we have a neighbor like North Korea, we as individuals can't avoid shouldering the cost," said Mogi, 44. "Having a shelter at home gives us peace of mind."

Phones have been ringing constantly at precision machinery manufacturer Oribe-Seiki Co., which markets nuclear shelters like Mogi's, since Pyongyang fired off seven missiles last Wednesday.

North Korea has claimed to have nuclear weapons.

Oribe-Seiki, based in Kobe in western Japan, has fitted 80 private homes with nuclear bunkers since North Korea's 1998 launch of a ballistic missile that flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific.

The deluxe shelter under Mogi's log-cabin-style house cost him more than $100,000, but smaller versions start at $20,000, the company said.

The cool underground space is not sitting empty while Mogi waits for disaster to strike. His 10-year-old daughter says she beds down there when Tokyo's summer heat makes it hard to sleep.
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#2067 Postby TexasStooge » Wed Jul 12, 2006 7:43 am

Forced cocaine regurgitation was illegal

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany must pay damages and costs to a Sierra Leone citizen living in Cologne who was forced by police to regurgitate a bag of cocaine, according to a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights Tuesday.

The court, based in Strasbourg, said that Abu Bakah Jalloh, who was born in 1965, had suffered inhuman and degrading treatment and had not been given a fair trial. Germany must pay around 16,000 euros ($20,380), it said.

Jalloh was arrested in October 1993 after he was spotted selling drugs. No illegal substances were found on him and he was taken to a nearby hospital after the prosecutor ordered he be given an emetic.

Four police officers held him down while a doctor inserted a tube through his nose and administered a salt solution and syrup which yielded a bag containing 0.2182 grams of cocaine.

"The court was not satisfied that the method, which had already resulted in the deaths of two people in Germany, entailed merely negligible health risks," the court said.

The court also ruled that the drugs had been the decisive evidence in Jalloh's trial, and allowing their use had "infringed his right not to incriminate himself and therefore rendered his trial as a whole unfair."
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#2068 Postby TexasStooge » Wed Jul 12, 2006 7:44 am

Injured China panda in blood plasma alert

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese vets are seeking panda plasma to donate to a giant panda found with a fractured skull and broken legs, probably after a fall into a ravine, state media said Wednesday.

The injured animal, found by tourists on July 1 in the northwest province of Shaanxi, was improving but "doctors still cannot operate on it because of a lack of blood supplies," Xinhua news agency said.

The panda is being fed with milk and a mixture of bamboo leaves and wheat powder, and receiving nutrients intravenously.

"We can't decide the form of medical treatment until it restores more of its physical strength," Ma Qingyi, veterinarian at the provincial rare animal rescue center, was quoted as saying.

The panda's eyes were "full of vigor," but it was still in critical condition from a fractured skull, broken legs and chest injuries. Its internal organs and nervous system were also damaged.

The panda was found at a scenic spot about 80 km (50 miles) southwest of Xi'an, provincial capital of Shaanxi.

"Experts believe the panda may have sustained the injuries after falling into a river ravine," Xinhua said. "They also believe the animal was sick which contributed to the fall."

At least 1,500 milliliters of panda plasma were needed to operate, said Ma, adding that it was difficult to find matching blood from other pandas.

"Experts are extracting blood plasma a bit at a time from the panda itself. We have already collected 200 ml, but it is far from enough," said Ma.

A census in 2002 showed that there were 1,596 wild giant pandas living across China, mainly in the more than 40 nature reserves in Shaanxi, Sichuan and Gansu provinces.
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#2069 Postby TexasStooge » Wed Jul 12, 2006 7:46 am

Man is fined buffalo and pig for bigamy

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) - An indigenous man in Malaysia's Sabah state on Borneo Island was fined a buffalo and a pig for breaking a tribal custom by secretly marrying a second wife, a tribal court official said Wednesday.

The 39-year-old man was asked to compensate his first wife and children with a buffalo and a pig even though he agreed to dissolve the second marriage and return to his first wife and family, Kota Kinabalu Native Court chief William Majimbun told The Associated Press.

The court handles cases only relating to laws of the native indigenous people in Sabah.

Majimbun said the man, whose identity has been withheld, performed the second marriage secretly in a remote village in 2003.

"Indigenous custom doesn't normally punish men who marry a second time, but in this case, he did not get the permission of the first wife," Majimbun said. "The case was handled based on customary laws."

Native Courts in Sabah's 21 districts function alongside the civil and Islamic Sharia courts, and are presided over by district chiefs assisted by tribe leaders, according to The Star newspaper.

Kadazans and other indigenous people make up less than 5 percent of Malaysia's 26 million people, although the groups represent the majority in the states of Sabah and Sarawak on Borneo.
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#2070 Postby TexasStooge » Wed Jul 12, 2006 7:48 am

Inmates sue to overturn nude magazine ban

By KEN KUSMER, Associated Press Writer

INDIANAPOLIS - Two inmates have filed a lawsuit against the Indiana Department of Correction to overturn a policy that bars magazines such as Playboy and Hustler.

The lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Indianapolis seeks class-action status on behalf of more than 20,000 state prisoners and challenges a policy that went into effect July 1 barring adult magazines and other printed material that depict nudity or sexual content.

The policy could prohibit sexually explicit letters and publications such as National Geographic magazine and daily newspapers, according to the complaint, which said the new rule violates the plaintiffs' civil rights.

"The policy is written so broadly that it includes within its prohibitions such things as personal letters between prisoners and loved ones and much of the world's great literature and art," said the complaint, which was prepared by the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana.

One of the two plaintiffs named in the complaint is Ernest Tope, 53, an inmate at the Pendleton Correctional Facility near Anderson who is serving a life sentence for murder. He claims he cannot subscribe to the motorcycle magazine Easyriders because it contains partial nudity.

The policy may also may bar books such as steamy novels by the best-selling author Jackie Collins that have been available in the past through the prison library, the lawsuit claims.

Both Tope and the other named plaintiff, murder and auto theft convict Wade Meisberger, 34, challenged the new policy through the prison grievance system but so far been unsuccessful, the complaint said. Meisberger, 34, is held at the Miami Correctional Facility near Peru.

DOC spokeswoman Java Ahmed said agency officials had not yet reviewed the lawsuit and had no comment.
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#2071 Postby TexasStooge » Wed Jul 12, 2006 7:49 am

Inmate pleads guilty in Bible drugs case

HUNTINGTON, Ind. (AP) - A jail inmate pleaded guilty to charges that he asked his wife to smuggle cocaine to him inside two Bibles.

Anthony W. Duckworth, 32, pleaded guilty Monday in a Huntington County court to two counts of trafficking with an inmate. His wife, Amy M. Duckworth, 28, pleaded guilty to the same charges on June 19.

On March 10, Jail Commander Steve McIntyre intercepted one Bible that was to have gone to Anthony Duckworth's cellmate, Joshua Gidley. McIntyre opened the ends of the spine, which had been glued shut, and found a plastic bag containing about 2 grams of cocaine, he said.

According to police reports, guards could not remember who had delivered the Bible to the jail in the city about 20 miles southwest of Fort Wayne. But on March 27, Sgt. Paul Douglas found a similar Bible with a lump in the spine and discovered two plastic bags inside. One contained cocaine and the other contained a substance later identified as tobacco.

Bar-code stickers led authorities to a Wal-Mart, where they found a Bible had been bought with a credit card. The receipt was signed by Amy Duckworth and a surveillance video showed her making the purchase, police said.

Investigators said she later admitted buying the Bibles but said someone else supplied the cocaine and that she enlisted two other people to deliver them to the jail, where her husband planned to sell the drugs.

Anthony Duckworth's sentencing is set for Aug. 7. Amy Duckworth is scheduled to be sentenced July 24.
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#2072 Postby TexasStooge » Wed Jul 12, 2006 7:50 am

Pregnant woman saves neighbor from fire

ALBION, Mich. (AP) - Jessica Bates expects to give birth to twin girls any day now, but that didn't stop her from rushing to the aid of a neighbor in distress.

Just before midnight Saturday, Bates was in her living room watching her 2-year-old daughter and another child when she heard a cry for help.

Bates, 22, rushed across the street to an apartment, where flames were visible through a window. The woman who lived there, Barbara Wellman, is paralyzed from the waist down.

"I knew she was in a wheelchair, and that's why I was like, 'Oh my God,' " Bates told The Jackson Citizen-Patriot.

She found Wellman in the front part of the house and dragged her wheelchair by the foot pedals to the sidewalk. Bates then started banging on neighbors' doors, warning them to flee.

Another neighbor doused the flames with a garden hose before the fire department showed up to extinguish it.

The fire started in the kitchen, according to the Albion Department of Public Safety, and the cause is still under investigation. Damages were estimated at $5,000.

Wellman, 45, has lived for 20 years in the apartment. Neighbors said she wasn't seriously injured.

"I'm just so thankful that those two were there to save her," said Tronetta Weatherall, office assistant for the complex. "Her son came and got her, and she's staying with him until we can get repairs done."

Bates said she's always willing to aid those in need.

"I don't look at it as being a hero, I just looked at it like helping someone," she said. "I knew it was a risk to myself, but I couldn't leave her."
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#2073 Postby TexasStooge » Wed Jul 12, 2006 3:56 pm

Killer kangaroo, demon duck of doom roamed Outback

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Forget cute, cuddly marsupials. A team of Australian palaeontologists say they have found the fossilised remains of a fanged killer kangaroo and what they describe as a "demon duck of doom".

A University of New South Wales team said the fearsome fossils were among 20 previously unknown species uncovered at a site in northwest Queensland state.

Professor Michael Archer said on Wednesday the remains of a meat-eating kangaroo with wolf-like fangs were found as well as a galloping kangaroo with long forearms that could not hop like a modern kangaroo.

"Because they didn't hop, these were galloping kangaroos, with big, powerful forelimbs. Some of them had long canines (fangs) like wolves," Archer told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio.

Vertebrate palaeontologist Sue Hand said modern kangaroos look almost nothing like their ferocious forebears, which lived between 10 million and 20 million years ago.

The species found at the dig had "well muscled-in teeth, not for grazing. These things had slicing crests that could have crunched through bone and sliced off flesh", Hand said.

The team also found prehistoric lungfish and large duck-like birds.

"Very big birds ... more like ducks, earned the name 'demon duck of doom', some at least may have been carnivorous as well," Hand told ABC radio.

Archer said the team was studying the fossils to better understand how they were affected by changing climates in the Miocene epoch between 5 million and 24 million years ago.
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#2074 Postby TexasStooge » Wed Jul 12, 2006 3:58 pm

Farinelli rises from grave to reveal castrati secrets

By Stephen Brown

ROME (Reuters) - Historians and scientists have exhumed the remains of legendary castrato Farinelli in Italy to study the anatomical effects of castration carried out on young boys to turn them into high-pitched stars of the opera.

Castrati played heroic male leads in Italian opera from the mid-17th to late 18th century when the bel canto was the rage in Europe. Farinelli, born Carlo Broschi in 1705, was the most famous of them all, in a stage career lasting from 1720 to 1737.

Carlo Vitale of the Farinelli Study Centre in Bologna said they had recovered the bodies on Wednesday of the singer and his great-niece, who moved his body from a first grave destroyed in the Napoleonic wars.

His final resting place in Bologna's Certosa cemetery was only recently discovered.

"They are in a middling state of preservation but the scientists say there is something to work on," Vitale told Reuters from the graveyard, where Farinelli and his great-niece lay beneath a tombstone with a long Latin epitaph.

His remains were to be taken to Bologna University for study by a team of scientists including an acoustics expert eager to find remains of the vocal chords and larynx to discover what gave castrati such extraordinary vocal range and power.

"This is the only skeleton of them we have," said Nicholas Clapton, a British expert on the castrati.

"We want to know if they were like the cartoons at the time depicted them, tall and dangly, or with women's breasts and large buttocks, or like the grand gentleman in Farinelli's official portraits," he told Reuters.

A singing professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London and curator of an exhibition on the composer Handel's use of the castrati, Clapton said the removal of boy chorists' testicles kept their vocal chords small while the hormonal changes meant their bodies kept growing well into adulthood.

"That gave them huge lung capacity but with a very sweet voice," he said.

It could also mean castrati grew abnormally tall or fat and could sprout breasts, though surviving official portraits of Farinelli depict a handsome man in fine dress.

Castrati also had their critics who thought their voices were ghastly and their mutilation was barbaric.

The Catholic Church banned it on pain of excommunication, while also using castrati in choirs and the Vatican's Sistine Chapel until as recently as 1903, Clapton said.

The last surviving castrato, Sistine Chapel chorist Alessandro Moreschi, lived long enough to make recordings in 1902 and 1904, though on the dated gramophone records his voice sound like what Clapton described as "Pavarotti on helium".
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#2075 Postby TexasStooge » Wed Jul 12, 2006 3:59 pm

Putin tells reporters: please, don't feed my dog

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin is fed up with reporters slipping his dog titbits.

"Sometimes, Koni leaves a room full of journalists with a very pleased expression on her face and biscuit crumbs around her mouth," he said in answers to emailed questions posted on his Web site on Wednesday.

"Therefore, I appeal once again, this time via the internet, to all my visitors. Please. Don't feed my dog."

Koni is a curvaceous black labrador who made headlines by giving birth to eight puppies on the eve of 2003 parliamentary elections. She frequently sits in on Putin's meetings with foreign heads of state.
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#2076 Postby TexasStooge » Wed Jul 12, 2006 4:00 pm

Ripley to challenge China to 'Believe It or Not!'

By Doug Young

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Nearly a century after legendary U.S. showman Richard Ripley first came to China, the firm bearing his name plans to open one of its trademark "Believe It or Not" museums of the bizarre in Asia's most populous nation.

Ripley visited China many times in the early 20th century, his fascination with the country stemming partly from his belief that he had been Chinese in a previous life, Ripley Entertainment president Bob Masterson said.

"Ripley loved everything about China," said Masterson of a man whose name became synonymous for Americans with everything from odd-shaped vegetables to strange arts and crafts and weird quirks of timing.

"He had a huge collection of Chinese art and a Chinese junk. He dressed in a traditional Chinese robe. And the love of his life was a Chinese woman," Masterson told Reuters.

Ripley's taste for the bizarre is shared by the country where Masterson aims to open his latest museum within a year.

Unlike other markets such as the United States, where people prefer more mundane fare such as strange arts and crafts, Ripley's Chinese brethren go for the truly bizarre, Masterson said.

He cited the firm's previous experience with a Hong Kong museum.

"The strange and bizarre were more popular there than anything: multi-headed animals, shrunken heads from the Amazon," he said. "Anything on the extreme side of nature -- they enjoy that immensely."

One of the most unbelievable things about the planned China museum, which the company hopes to build in a second-tier tourist city, would be the price it envisages charging for admission.

Masterson says he believes Chinese may be willing to pay 80 yuan (5.4 pounds) per ticket to see the bizarre, a princely sum in a country where many still earn less than $100 a month.
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#2077 Postby TexasStooge » Wed Jul 12, 2006 8:18 pm

Strayhorn sues to get 'Grandma' on ballot

AUSTIN, Texas (The Dallas Morning News/AP) – Independent gubernatorial candidate Carole Keeton Strayhorn sued the Texas secretary of state Wednesday in her attempt to have the nickname "Grandma" listed with her name on the Nov. 7 ballot.

Strayhorn had promised to sue earlier this week after Secretary of State Roger Williams ruled that "Grandma" is a slogan, not a nickname permitted on the ballot.

At the same time, Williams allowed independent candidate Kinky Friedman to be listed as Richard "Kinky" Friedman on the ballot. Friedman has used the nickname for years.

Strayhorn's suit says that the Texas Election Code guarantees her the right to use her nickname. Her attorney, Roy Minton, has said that Strayhorn began using the name when she became a grandmother in 1994.

Williams says Strayhorn, the state comptroller since 1999, has never appeared on a ballot under the name "Grandma" and that her election documents listed her as "Carole Keeton Strayhorn."

On Wednesday, spokesman Scott Haywood said Williams was confident the courts would agree with his interpretation of the Texas Election Code.

Strayhorn and Friedman are trying to oust Republican Gov. Rick Perry and become the first independent elected Texas governor since Sam Houston in 1859. Two other candidates are also running.

Strayhorn has claimed Williams, as Perry's hand-picked secretary of state, is using his office in a political fashion.
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#2078 Postby TexasStooge » Thu Jul 13, 2006 7:21 am

Unlicensed wrecking company continues towing

By DAN RONAN / WFAA ABC 8

DALLAS, Texas - While AJ's Towing of Dallas continues to tow cars despite the fact the company's business license expired June, the city said they have few tools to legally shut the company down unless the public comes forward.

One Dallas woman did just that after her car was broken into by an AJ's Towing tow truck driver and then hauled off. Heather Heather Blankenship's car was towed in a lot that displayed to towing sign, which the city says is illegal.

While there were no towing signs in the lot Wednesday when News 8 visited the site, a sign appeared Thursday.

While Blankenship came forward and the company has no license, the company still continues to operate.

The penalty for any towing company operating without a business license may sound like a soft slip of the wrist to many, a $500 fine.

On an average night, a tow truck driver can make that much money for his company in an hour with two or three tows.

Dallas authorities said while they would like to start an investigation against AJ's towing immediately, they can't.

"We need people that they tow to contact us so we can issue an outside complaint and take it to municipal court," said Gary Titlow.

The city must get two convictions against the company within a year before it can even begin to shut A.J.'s down.

But then there's another problem.

While the towing company's business license expired in June and they continue to haul off cards, the city still can't shut them down.

"...Unfortunately we don't operate under that premise," Titlow said. Meanwhile, Blankenship's car towing was captured on a camera phone and showed the tow truck driver make four attempts before securing the car, pry open the door to take off the emergency brake, set off the alarm and crawl under the car to tear out the wiring.

"[They were] bound and determined to tow my car from a place that doesn't even say a towing zone," Blankenship said.

Blakenship said she wants her car repaired, the towing fees refunded and she doesn't want this to happen to anyone else again.
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#2079 Postby TexasStooge » Thu Jul 13, 2006 7:34 am

"Wear nice pants" - police tell women drinkers

LONDON (Reuters) - Women going on boozy nights out have been warned by police to "wear nice pants" in case they fall down drunk in the street.

A Suffolk police safety campaign magazine shows pictures of young women slumped on the ground next to messages urging them: "If you've got it, don't flaunt it."

"If you fall over or pass out, remember your skirt or dress may ride up," the magazine says. "You could show off more than you intended -- for all our sakes, please make sure you're wearing nice pants and that you've recently had a wax."

Readers are also told to stick with friends, book a taxi home and watch the amount they drink.

Police said the Safe! magazine's gossipy, tongue-in-cheek style was designed to alert young women to the dangers they could face if they get drunk during a night out.

"We need to raise their awareness of potential problems," said Chief Superintendent David McDonnell. "They become more vulnerable whilst under the influence of alcohol."
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#2080 Postby TexasStooge » Thu Jul 13, 2006 7:35 am

Chicken lays mystery Allah egg

ALMATY (Reuters) - A chicken in a Kazakh village has laid an egg with the word "Allah" inscribed on its shell, state media reported Thursday.

"Our mosque confirmed that it says 'Allah' in Arabic," Bites Amantayeva, a farmer from the village of Stepnoi in eastern Kazakhstan, told state news agency Kazinform.

"We'll keep this egg and we don't think it'll go bad."

The news agency said the egg was laid just after a powerful hail storm hit the village.

Kazakhstan is a large, thinly populated Central Asian state where Sunni Islam is a dominant religion.
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