Strange & Stupid: Amusing News

DETROIT — A city of Detroit planner can proceed with her lawsuit alleging a co-worker’s perfume made it difficult for her to breathe and impossible to do her job, a federal judge has ruled.

In an opinion released late Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Lawrence P. Zatkoff rejected the city’s attempt to have Susan McBride’s lawsuit, filed under the Americans with Disabilities Act, dismissed.
McBride “has produced evidence that her breathing is significantly restricted” by a co-worker’s perfume, and she has a potential claim, Zatkoff ruled.

Both McBride’s Detroit attorney and the chairwoman of the Chemical Sensitivity Foundation said Wednesday that Zatkoff’s decision to allow the lawsuit to proceed is significant.

“He recognizes that this is the type of claim that’s viable,” said attorney Ann Curry Thompson, who represents McBride. “These are types of claims that in many jurisdictions … are sort of pooh-poohed and are not taken seriously.”

Alison Johnson, chairwoman of the Chemical Sensitivity Foundation in Topsham, Maine, said she welcomes Zatkoff’s decision to let the lawsuit proceed.
“These perfume sensitivities are very real, and I can’t tell you how many lives they are ruining,” Johnson said. “Maybe there’s beginning to be recognition that these things are serious.”

CCTV cameras which can ‘predict’ if a crime is about to take place are being introduced on Britain’s streets.

The cameras can alert operators to suspicious behaviour, such as loitering and unusually slow walking. Anyone spotted could then have to explain their behaviour to a police officer.

It will also fuel fears that Britain is becoming a surveillance society. There are already 4.2 million cameras trained on the public. The technology could be used alongside many of these to allow evermore advanced scrutiny of our movements.

Civil rights campaign group Liberty is sceptical over the plan. A spokesman said: ‘Bringing expensive Hollywood sci-fi to our car parks will never be as effective as having police on the street leading the fight against crime.’

The cameras, trained on public places, such as car parks, are being tested by Portsmouth City Council.

Computers analyze the movements of people or vehicles in the camera frame. If someone is seen lurking in a particular area, the computer will send out an alarm to a CCTV operator. The operator will then check the image and – if concerned – ring the police. The aim is to stop crimes before they are committed.

Councillor Jason Fazackarley of Portsmouth Council said: ‘It’s the 21st century equivalent of a nightwatchman, but unlike a night-watchman it never blinks, it never takes a break and it never gets bored.’

Crimes are predicted by special CCTV operators in the blockbuster Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise

Mr Hewitson added: ‘Although we are a long way off Minority Report, it is a step closer.

‘But what it cannot do is say whether a guy is waiting for his girlfriend or about to commit a crime. That is for the operator to make a subjective human decision on.’

The system is already successfully in use in New York and other US cities.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany’s churches criticized a businessman on Tuesday for selling thousands of Jesus chocolates.
Frank Oynhausen set up his “Sweet Lord” chocolate Jesus-making business saying he wanted to restore some traditional religious values to Christmas in Germany.

But the German Protestant Church criticized the idea as “tasteless” and the Roman Catholic Church was not amused.
(www.goldjesus.com).

“It is terrible that Jesus is being wrapped up in gold foil and sold along with chocolate bunnies, edible penguins and lollipops,” said Aegidius Engel, a spokesman for the archbishopric of nearby Paderborn.
“This is ruining the symbol of Jesus himself,” he added.

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German man who slept with a loaded revolver under his pillow has lost his gun license after a court ruled it to be irresponsible behavior.

The 56-year-old was stripped of his license for failing to store the weapon properly, Braunschweig administrative court judge Torsten Baumgarten told Reuters Tuesday. The gun was only discovered by chance during a police inspection.

“His home was being checked because he had threatened to throw a hand grenade if the city council approved plans to build a high-voltage power line in his neighborhood,” Baumgarten said. “The decision to take his license was made independently.”

Baumgarten said the ruling, which sets a legal precedent in Germany, in effect outlaws sleeping on top of a firearm — because the owner of the gun is not in control of the weapon and is therefore putting himself and others at risk.

“Anyone could come along and take the gun away from him, his wife for example,” Baumgarten said. The man, who also owned several other weapons, said he kept the gun under his pillow because he feared burglars.

I much prefer to imagine himself sleep-shooting his stupid face off.

ROME (Reuters) - An Italian right-wing party is offering 1,500 euros ($1,930)[when did the euro fall so hard?] to parents who name their babies after wartime fascist dictator Benito Mussolini or his wife Rachele, saying their names are under threat.

The MSI-Fiamma Tricolore party, the descendant of Mussolini’s fascist party, said the initiative in the poor, southern region of Basilicata was meant to keep alive names “at risk of extinction” and pay tribute to the movement’s roots.

“Benito and Rachele are nice names and I hope our original initiative will get people going,” party official Vincenzo Mancusi told Reuters.

The bonus — intended to pay for baby clothes and food — applies to babies born in 2009 in five villages where the birth rate is especially low, Mancusi said.

Mussolini ruled from 1922 to 1943 when he was ousted after leading Italy to ruin by entering World War Two as an ally of Germany. He was executed along with his mistress Claretta Petacci in 1945. His widow Rachele died in 1979.

A couple of University of Iowa fans took a break from Saturday’s game at the Metrodome against the University of Minnesota to have some illicit sex in a Dome restroom, police said.

The duo — a 38-year-old woman and a 26-year-old man from Carroll and Linden, Iowa, respectively — turned a handicapped toilet stall into their love nest about 8:30 p.m., late in the Hawkeyes’ 55-0 trouncing of the Gophers.

A crowd of intoxicated fans gathered in the restroom to laugh and cheer the off-the-field action, until an Avalon Security guard tipped off University of Minnesota police to the ruckus.

University of Minnesota Police Chief Greg Hestness assumed the woman was embarrassed about being caught: She initially gave a false name to officers and had to be identified by her husband before she was released.

The man was attending the game with his girlfriend, according to police.

“It’s a long ride back to Iowa,” Hestness said.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Astronomers looking at the spectacular supersonic plumes of gas and dust shooting off one of Saturn’s moons say there are strong hints of liquid water, a key building block of life.

Their research, appearing in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature, adds to the growing push to explore further the moon Enceladus, as one of the solar system’s most compelling places for potential life.

Using images from NASA’s Cassini probe, astronomers had already figured that the mysterious plumes shooting from Enceladus’ icy terrain contain water vapor. New calculations suggesting the gas and dustspew at speeds faster-than-sound make the case for liquid, said study lead author Candice Hansen of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in California. Her team calculated the plumes travel more than 1,360 mph.

Carolyn Porco, the head of the Cassini camera team and an astronomer who didn’t take part in Hansen’s research, said “the evidence in my mind is building on liquid water.” That moon, one of 60 circling Saturn, “has become the go-to place” for exploration in the outer planets, she said.

Europa, a moon of Jupiter, may have a liquid ocean beneath its frozen surface. But Enceladus, thought responsible for producing one of Saturn’s rings, is more accessible, Hansen said. “Enceladus is sort of helpfully spewing out its innards,” she said.

“Mind if I come with you?” Love said. He had recovered from his spasm of mirth, though his pocket handkerchief now contained the evidence of something evil and brown inside him.

He knew about homosexuality, of course, as an idea, without every having really connected it to human emotion; certainly never to any emotion of his own. It had never occured to him that two men, even homosexual men, might kiss in that way. He had assumed, to the degree he had ever permitted himself to give it any thought at all, that the whole thing must be a matter of blow jobs in dark alleyways or the foul practices of love-starved British sailors. But those men with the neckties and mustaches - they had been kissing the way people kissed in the movies, with care and vigor and just a hint of showiness. One fellow had caressed the others cheek.

and for you, Mimsy [And Casey now, too!] Poor little librarians of the world, those girls, secretly lovely, their looks marred forever by the cruelty of a pair of big black eyeglasses!

Following a guilty plea by the man accused of rape by a contestant in a “win a date” contest on Nextmedia WXLC/WAUKEGAN, IL, the victim has now filed suit against the man and the station for setting up the date. The Daily Herald reports that the woman’s suit claims that the station failed to do a simple background check that would have disclosed that TRAVIS HARVEY JR. had a record that included felony and misdemeanor violations of domestic violence protective orders.

Harvey entered his plea last Monday, pleading guilty to a criminal sexual abuse charge resulting from the woman’s accusations regarding the “Win a Date With Travis” contest in Jan 2007. Harvey, who will spend 24 months on felony probation and will register as a sex offender for 10 years under the plea bargain, represented himself in the contest as a marketing executive and divorced father of three.