Archive for Weird News

Spate of ‘zombie’ attacks hit road signs

COLLINSVILLE, Ill. — Pranksters in at least three states are messing with electronic road signs meant to warn motorists of possible traffic problems by putting drivers on notice about zombies and raptors. Highway officials aren’t amused.

The latest breach came Tuesday morning near the St. Louis suburb of Collinsville, Ill., where hackers changed a sign on southbound Interstate 255 to read, “Daily Lane Closures Due To Zombies.”

A day earlier in Indiana’s Hamilton County, the electronic message in a construction zone warned drivers of “Raptors Ahead — Caution.”

The incidents follow one in Austin on Jan. 26 in which a sign on Lamar Boulevard was reprogrammed to flash: “Nazi Zombies! Run!!!” and “Caution! Zombies! Ahead!!!”

Officials in Illinois say they are concerned the signs distract motorists from heeding legitimate hazards down the road. The hacked sign Tuesday had warned drivers of crews replacing guardrails.

Some Web sites, such as Jalopnik.com, have published tutorials on “How to Hack an Electronic Road Sign,” reputedly as a way to alert traffic safety officials to security holes. Jalopnik urges its readers not to put the lesson to practice.

“Hacking generally is about showing where there are holes in security systems, and I think this is a great example of that,” said the site’s editor-in-chief, Ray Wert. “We’re trying to make clear this is an issue that needs to be confronted by traffic safety and transportation officials.”

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/nation/02/05/0205zombie.html

16 illegals sue Arizona rancher

*TOTAL INSANITY.*

An Arizona man who has waged a 10-year campaign to stop a flood of illegal immigrants from crossing his property is being sued by 16 Mexican nationals who accuse him of conspiring to violate their civil rights when he stopped them at gunpoint on his ranch on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Roger Barnett, 64, began rounding up illegal immigrants in 1998 and turning them over to the U.S. Border Patrol, he said, after they destroyed his property, killed his calves and broke into his home.

His Cross Rail Ranch near Douglas, Ariz., is known by federal and county law enforcement authorities as “the avenue of choice” for immigrants seeking to enter the United States illegally.

Trial continues Monday in the federal lawsuit, which seeks $32 million in actual and punitive damages for civil rights violations, the infliction of emotional distress and other crimes. Also named are Mr. Barnett’s wife, Barbara, his brother, Donald, and Larry Dever, sheriff in Cochise County, Ariz., where the Barnetts live. The civil trial is expected to continue until Friday.

The lawsuit is based on a March 7, 2004, incident in a dry wash on the 22,000-acre ranch, when he approached a group of illegal immigrants while carrying a gun and accompanied by a large dog.

Attorneys for the immigrants – five women and 11 men who were trying to cross illegally into the United States – have accused Mr. Barnett of holding the group captive at gunpoint, threatening to turn his dog loose on them and saying he would shoot anyone who tried to escape.

The immigrants are represented at trial by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), which also charged that Sheriff Dever did nothing to prevent Mr. Barnett from holding their clients at “gunpoint, yelling obscenities at them and kicking one of the women.”

In the lawsuit, MALDEF said Mr. Barnett approached the group as the immigrants moved through his property, and that he was carrying a pistol and threatening them in English and Spanish. At one point, it said, Mr. Barnett’s dog barked at several of the women and he yelled at them in Spanish, “My dog is hungry and he’s hungry for buttocks.”

The lawsuit said he then called his wife and two Border Patrol agents arrived at the site. It also said Mr. Barnett acknowledged that he had turned over 12,000 illegal immigrants to the Border Patrol since 1998.

In March, U.S. District Judge John Roll rejected a motion by Mr. Barnett to have the charges dropped, ruling there was sufficient evidence to allow the matter to be presented to a jury. Mr. Barnett’s attorney, David Hardy, had argued that illegal immigrants did not have the same rights as U.S. citizens.

Mr. Barnett told The Washington Times in a 2002 interview that he began rounding up illegal immigrants after they started to vandalize his property, northeast of Douglas along Arizona Highway 80. He said the immigrants tore up water pumps, killed calves, destroyed fences and gates, stole trucks and broke into his home.

Some of his cattle died from ingesting the plastic bottles left behind by the immigrants, he said, adding that he installed a faucet on an 8,000-gallon water tank so the immigrants would stop damaging the tank to get water.

Mr. Barnett said some of the ranch´s established immigrant trails were littered with trash 10 inches deep, including human waste, used toilet paper, soiled diapers, cigarette packs, clothes, backpacks, empty 1-gallon water bottles, chewing-gum wrappers and aluminum foil – which supposedly is used to pack the drugs the immigrant smugglers give their “clients” to keep them running.

He said he carried a pistol during his searches for the immigrants and had a rifle in his truck “for protection” against immigrant and drug smugglers, who often are armed.

ASSOCIATED PRESS DEFENDANT: Roger Barnett said he had turned over 12,000 illegal immigrants to the Border Patrol since 1998.

A former Cochise County sheriff´s deputy who later was successful in the towing and propane business, Mr. Barnett spent $30,000 on electronic sensors, which he has hidden along established trails on his ranch. He searches the ranch for illegal immigrants in a pickup truck, dressed in a green shirt and camouflage hat, with his handgun and rifle, high-powered binoculars and a walkie-talkie.

His sprawling ranch became an illegal-immigration highway when the Border Patrol diverted its attention to several border towns in an effort to take control of the established ports of entry. That effort moved the illegal immigrants to the remote areas of the border, including the Cross Rail Ranch.

“This is my land. I´m the victim here,” Mr. Barnett said. “When someone´s home and loved ones are in jeopardy and the government seemingly can´t do anything about it, I feel justified in taking matters into my own hands. And I always watch my back.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/09/16-illegals-sue-arizona-rancher/

Meteor-a-thon!

A spectacular meteor spotted over Scandinavia on Saturday is likely to have landed in the Baltic Sea, south of Denmark

http://www.cphpost.dk/news/scitech/92-technology/44478-weekend-meteor-very-unusual.html

Breaking News: Millions see UFO crash, Saudi Arabia

http://www.allnewsweb.com/page1901903.php

Meh, I know there have been other accouts, I cannot find them currently…

Feces-throwing monkey on the loose in Tampa Bay

*Ahem.*

CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) – Wildlife officials said a rhesus monkey known to throw feces when mad is on the loose in Tampa Bay. Authorities have been trying to capture the primate since Tuesday afternoon, but it managed to evade a bucket truck and tranquilizer dart.Gary Morse with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says the adult male is thought to have escaped from an unlicensed source. It was last seen in Clearwater.

The monkey is not considered dangerous.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D95N55DG0&show_article=1

Pelicans fall out of sky from Mexico to Oregon

SANTA ANA, Calif. — Pelicans suffering from a mysterious malady are crashing into cars and boats, wandering along roadways and turning up dead by the hundreds across the West Coast, from southern Oregon to Baja California, Mexico, bird-rescue workers say.

Weak, disoriented birds are huddling in people’s yards or being struck by cars. More than 100 have been rescued along the California coast, according to the International Bird Rescue Research Center in San Pedro.

Hundreds of birds, disoriented or dead, have been observed across the West Coast.

“One pelican actually hit a car in Los Angeles,” said Rebecca Dmytryk of Wildrescue, a bird-rescue operation. “One pelican hit a boat in Monterey.”

While some of the symptoms resemble those associated with domoic-acid poisoning — an ocean toxin that sometimes affects sea birds and mammals — other symptoms do not. Domoic acid also apparently has not been found in significant amounts offshore, although more tests are needed.

Rescuers are wondering whether the illness is caused by a virus, or even by contaminants washed into the ocean after recent fires across Southern California. Many of the birds also have swollen feet.

“These birds are on the freeway, getting run over,” said Jay Holcomb, executive director of the rescue center in San Pedro. “A bunch we’ve seen have been hit. They’ve been landing on yards five miles inland. When some of the people have captured them in parking lots, they just sit in the corner. They just go pick them up.”

“Maybe the weather has been particularly difficult on them,” said Heather Nevill, a veterinarian tracking the problem for the International Bird Rescue Research Center. “Maybe the fish stocks are particularly low. It might be more than one thing, all coming together at once.”

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008597545_pelicans07.html

How to be a good little disinformation agent :)

Man fined for penis in pasta jar

A MAN caught by police with his penis submerged in a pasta sauce jar was still pleasuring himself while resisting arrest, a court has been told.

Police drew their weapons after New South Wales man Keith Roy Weatherley, 46, led them on a brief, slow-speed car chase, the Newcastle Herald reports.

Weatherley attracted police attention while he was parked in a no-stopping zone near Nobby’s Beach on October 26, Newcastle Local Court was told yesterday. .

Police thought he might have a weapon because they saw him doing something with his hands in his lap, the Herald said.

Instead, they found him partially clothed with his genitals in a jar, a police statement said.

That’s when the pursuit began, the court was told.

When Weatherley was stopped, he refused to leave his car and four officers used batons and capsicum spray to get him out.

They found a 750mm jar around his penis and said Weatherley attempted to continue “pleasuring himself in between bouts of wrestling”.

A search of his car uncovered pornography, a homemade sex aid, women’s stockings and a Jack Russell terrier.

Weatherley pleaded guilty to offensive behaviour, resisting police and disobeying a police direction.

He was convicted and fined $600.

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24675791-5003402,00.html

A mammoth tusk to bring dead species back to life

*Are they CRAZY???*

THE woolly mammoth may be closer to walking again after scientists unscrambled most of its genetic code.

Experts from the United States and Russia say they have pieced together 80 per cent of the mammoth genome, using DNA samples extracted from hair preserved over tens of thousands of years.

The chemical sequences shed new light on the evolution of mammoths and elephants, and are expected to help answer why mammoths failed to survive.

They may also help future researchers bring the mammoth back to life by inserting its genes into the modern-day elephant, the scientists believe.

However, other experts said that resurrecting the woolly mammoth would be an enormously difficult task.

Much of the work was done using DNA taken from the hair of two mammoths mummified in Siberian permafrost. One had been buried for 20,000 years and the other for at least 60,000.

DNA data from a number of other specimens investigated previously helped to complete the genetic jigsaw.

Hair was a better source of DNA than bone because it protected the strands of genetic material like “biological plastic”, said the scientists.

The findings, reported today in the journal Nature, revealed that woolly mammoths and modern-day elephants share many genes and are more closely related than had previously been thought. The mammoth genome differs from that of the African elephant by as little as 0.6 per cent.

http://news.scotsman.com/uk/A-mammoth–tusk-to.4712403.jp

Lesbians, condoms go wild in attack on Christian church

Worshippers at a Bible-teaching church in Lansing, Mich., were stunned Sunday when members of a pro-homosexual, pro-anarchy organization named Bash Back interrupted their service to fling propaganda and condoms around the sanctuary, drape a profane banner from the balcony and feature two lesbians making out at the pulpit.

According to a blog posting by Nick De Leeuw on Right Michigan, the Bash Back organization orchestrated a protest in front of Mount Hope Church to draw the church’s security staff away from the sanctuary.

Then Bash Backers who had dressed up and mixed in with church worshippers took action.

According to De Leeuw, “Prayer had just finished when men and women stood up in pockets across the congregation, on the main floor and in the balcony.

“‘Jesus was gay,’ they shouted among other profanities and blasphemies as they rushed the stage. Some forced their way through rows of women and kids to try to hang a profane banner from the balcony while others began tossing fliers into the air. Two women made their way to the pulpit and began to kiss,” he wrote.

He cited the Bash Back organization’s own announcement of other items members brought into the church, including “a megaphone, noise makers, condoms, glitter by the bucket load, confetti, pink fabric. …”

According to the alternative Lansing City Pulse – which reported it was notified of the protest ahead of time and sent a reporter along instead of warning the church – the protesters also screamed at parishioners and pulled the church facility’s fire alarm. Printed material protesters distributed said, “We specialize in confronting homophobia, transphobia and every and all other forms of oppression.”

The report said Bash Back issued a statement today confirming it targeted Mount Hope, which has about 5,000 church participants, because it participates in “the repression of queers.”

On the newspaper’s forum page, a contributor commented, “Homosexuals and anarchists. A perfect combination of human beings with no hope, no morals, no future.”

Many demonstrators fled and the rest were quiet after sheriff’s officers were summoned.

“Mount Hope churchgoers were unclear as to what the purpose of the demonstration was,” said a statement from David Williams, a spokesman for the church.

“The leadership of Mount Hope Church does not attempt to identify the church as anti-homosexual, anti-choice, or right wing. The church does take the Bible at face value and believes what the Bible says to be the truth,” Williams’ statement continued.

“According to the Bible, Mount Hope Church believes homosexuality to be a sin, just as fornication, stealing, drunkenness, and lying are sins. No sin greater than the next. Mount Hope Church strives to follow Jesus’ example of loving the sinner but not the sin while helping people change their lives for God’s glory and their improved quality of life. Mount Hope Church also recognizes that to each person God grants freewill.”

The church then offered help for people “caught up in unwanted sexual sin, drug abuse, and many other areas.”

De Leeuw reported “the ‘open minded’ and ‘tolerant’ liberals ran down the aisles and across the pews, hoping against hope to catch a ‘right winger’ on tape daring to push back (none did).

“This is what we’re up against,” De Leeuw wrote. “Amidst worshiping congregants and following unifying prayers that our president-elect be granted wisdom as he prepares to lead our nation through difficult global, social and economic challenges, the Michigan left declared open war on peaceful churchgoers.

“Mount Hope, for the record, is an evangelical, Bible believing church whose members provide free 24-hour counseling, prayer lines, catastrophic care for families dealing with medical emergencies, support groups for men, women and children dealing with a wide variety of life’s troubles, crisis intervention, marriage ministries, regular, organized volunteer work in and around the city, missions in dozens of countries across the globe, a construction ministry that has built over 100 churches, schools, orphanages and other projects all over the world and an in-depth prison ministry that reaches out, touches and helps the men and women the rest of society fears the most. They also teach respect for all human life and the Biblical sanctity of marriage as an institution between one man and one woman,” De Leeuw wrote.

“The church’s response? After things settled down, the blasphemy ended, the lewd props removed and the families safe from fear of additional men and women running into and past them the pastor took the stage and led the congregation in one more prayer … not for retribution, or divine justice or a celestial comeuppance (that’s what I’d have prayed for) but instead that the troubled individuals who’d just defiled the Lord’s house, so full of anger and hate, would know Jesus’ love in their lives and God’s peace that exceeds human understanding,” De Leeuw wrote.

His blog attracted dozens of comments, including one that said it was just as well the protesters hadn’t picked his church.

“It was well within the church members’ rights to respond with non-lethal force to put an immediate end to this assault. It this happened in my house, I’d have every right to throw someone out a window or two.”

In a statement posted on the Internet, Bash Back confirmed its “operatives” were in the service, “stood up, declared themselves fags, and began screaming loudly. … Another group threw over a thousand fliers to the entire … congregation. The fire alarm was pulled. Queers began making out in front of the pastor. And within a matter of minutes, everyone had evaded the guards and made their escapes.”

The statement continued, “Let is be known: So long as bigots kill us in the streets, this pack of wolves will continue to BASH BACK!”

The report comes just a day after video documentation of pro-homosexual protesters in California challenging a 69-year-old woman to a fight because she was affirming the biblical perspective of homosexuality.

“This screaming and shouting, name-calling and pushing by homosexual activists is not unlike a small child throwing a fit because he doesn’t get his way,” said Randy Thomasson, chief of the Campaign for Children and Families, a leading California-based pro-family group. “The public is getting a clue that homosexual activists don’t like democracy and are willing to trample anyone and anything that gets in their way.”

California voters by nearly 53 percent to 47 percent last week adopted a state constitutional amendment limiting marriage to one man and one woman.

Thomasson also has issued an analysis and a challenge called “How Shall We Live Under President-Elect Obama?” in which he describes the “moral free fall” encompassing the United States.

“America’s greatness has been in people’s self responsiblity, strong work ethic, moral character and knowledge of the proper role of government. But now a majority of Americans don’t have these virtues and don’t vote according to moral standards,” he said.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/?pageId=80743

World of Warcraft: Teenager collapses after 24-hour gaming session

The 15-year-old is believed to have suffered an epileptic seizure after his marathon session of the fantasy game. Psychiatrists have previously warned that World of Warcraft’s addictive qualities could have “serious consequences” on young people.

The boy and six friends are understood to have played Wrath of the Lich King, the new extension of the game released last week, for 24 hours straight at his house in Laholm, Sweden this weekend.

“They played all day and all night. Maybe they got a few hours of sleep. They ate a little food and breakfast at their computers,” his father told a local newspaper.

After the teenager collapsed on Sunday afternoon, doctors said that his system had been weakened by lack of sleep, lack of food and over-concentration. He is expected to make a full recovery.

The boy’s father says he now plans to limit his son’s computer time and urged other parents to do the same.

World of Warcraft, which creates a vast interactive world for the gamer to explore, has grown into one of the most popular of all online games. More than 11 million people worldwide are registered as players.

More than 2,000 people queued for up to 18 hours outside an Oxford Street store in central London, in advance of a special midnight opening to get their hands on the second “expansion pack” for the role-playing game on Thursday.

Dr Richard Graham, a child psychiatrist at the Tavistock Centre, warned last week that some young people were damaging their social and mental development by playing the game for up to 16 hours at a time.

“The problem with World of Warcraft is the degree it can impact and create a socially withdrawn figure who may be connecting with people in the game and is largely dropping out of education, social opportunities,” he said.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/3477959/World-of-Warcraft-Teenager-collapses-after-24-hour-gaming-session.html

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