my gem of the day

[stubacca68]

HANOI (Reuters) - A Vietnamese man who once appeared on national television to demonstrate his ability to resist electric shocks has been electrocuted while repairing a generator, an official said on Tuesday.

Nguyen Van Hung, aged in his early 40s, was killed in Tay Ninh province near the Cambodian border while repairing the generator without first cutting the power supply, a local official said.

"When alive, he used to demonstrate at our office how he would insert two fingers into the electrical plughole without problems," the official said.

Hung, nicknamed "Hung Electric", had appeared on television's "Strange Stories of Vietnam".

Again taken from the reuters web site and I think that this story is truly SHOCKING!!!!!!!

[Arwen]

AWwww poor bloke its strange that what he did everyday killed him in the end

[TGLucario]

well....thats life....but it was a shockin end, to a eletric carrea

[Rocol]

Agree, but it would depend on the rate of ' pulse ' of the electricity coming from the generator .. he was probably just unfortunate that it matched his heartbeat.

[stubacca68]

and now for todays! HB got to the one that i wanted so here is my second choice!


BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - They are calling it the "crossed legs" strike.

Fretting over crime and violence, girlfriends and wives of gang members in the Colombian city of Pereira have called a ban on sex to persuade their menfolk to give up the gun.

After meeting with the mayor's office to discuss a disarmament program, a group of women decided to deny their partners their conjugal rights and recorded a song for local radio to urge others to follow their example.

"We met with the wives and girlfriends of gang members and they were worried some were not handing over their guns and that is where they came up with the idea of a vigil or a sex strike," mayor's office representative Julio Cesar Gomez said.



"The message they are giving them is disarm or if not then they will decide how, when, where and at what time," he told Reuters by telephone.

Gomez said the city, in Colombia's coffee-growing region, reported 480 killings last year.

Crime and violence have dropped in Colombia since 2002 when President Alvaro Uribe was first elected promising to crackdown on left-wing rebels fighting a four-decade insurgency and the illegal militia groups who formed to counter them.

But cocaine-trafficking gangs and armed groups still roam parts of Colombia and murder and kidnappings remain a problem despite the fall in crime statistics

[stubacca68]

and now for todays!

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - Residents of two villages in eastern France could make no phone calls on Thursday after criminals stole 550 metres (600 yards) of copper cable, a day after copper thieves disrupted train traffic in the west.

Theft of the metal has become increasingly common in France as thieves try to cash in on soaring copper prices, which have more than doubled in the past year.

The thieves took more than a tonne of copper cables that had been dug out and left exposed awaiting repair work, operator France Telecom said. The theft caused tens of thousands of euros (dollars) of damage.

Phone services in the Oltingue and Wolschwiller villages should be restored by Friday, the operator said.



On Wednesday, criminals stole copper cables used for railway signalling, disrupting high-speed train traffic between the southwestern city of Bordeaux and Paris.


Well in my opinion thats good1a whole to villages in FRANCE that cant comunicate with the outside world!!!

[stubacca68]

and todays gem is:-

MANILA (Reuters) - A bid to earn the record for the world's biggest flag ended in shreds on Saturday when strong winds tore apart a giant Philippine national flag as it was being unfurled at a mountain town north of Manila, an organiser said.

Thousands of people, many of them residents from Nueva Vizcaya province, about 260 km (162 miles) north of Manila, dropped to their knees in prayer when the blue, red and white flag was unfurled.

"Everybody is crying," Grace Galindez-Gupana told Reuters by mobile phone. "The unfurling of the flag was almost over but a sudden gust of strong winds tore it apart," said Galindez-Gupana, founder of the HalleluYAH PG Towers Ministries International.

The Christian group, supported by a Manila-based producer of herbal food supplements, spent about 1 million pesos ($19,900) on the project to make the two-hectare (five-acre) flag.



The group, which hired 18 people to make the 330 feet by 660 feet (100 metre by 200 metre) flag -- about the size of two football fields -- wanted to break the 10-year-old record held by the United States.

The American "Superflag", at 255 feet by 505 feet and weighing 3,000 lb (1,363 kg), made it into the Guinness Book of World Records in 1996.

($1 = 50.3 pesos)

now thats what i call a waste of money! but hey i bet it looked nice!

[stubacca68]

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Worm, crocodile, tripe and Nelson Mandela's favourite beef and bean stew.

Johannesburg restaurant Gramadoelas gives diners the chance to see how South African food reflects the diversity of its people.

More than 30 years ago, Gramadoelas defied stringent apartheid-era laws to allow blacks and whites to eat together and now, more than a decade after white rule collapsed, this restaurant in the heart of South Africa's economic capital remains one of the only eateries that serves worms.


Mopane worms, a favourite among the Venda ethnic group clustered mostly in northern South Africa, is the raciest option on the menu.

Thicker and hairier than most worms, the Mopane worm is actually a caterpillar named after the tree it eats.

It's an acquired taste and resembles cardboard. After its innards are squeezed out, the worms are boiled and sun-dried.

At Gramadoelas they come drenched in spicy peri-peri sauce -- presumably to mask the flavour.

"If you close your eyes they're not so bad," mused one diner, a visitor from the United States, as she screwed up her nose.

Deep-fried crocodile is easier to stomach.

"It's like a cross between battered cod and KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken)," the same diner quipped.

For the main course, opt for unbleached tripe or fillet of ostrich or kudu - an antelope found in southern Africa.

For the less adventurous, Gramadoelas offers a range of Cape Malay classics - a cuisine born of slaves from Indonesia and Malaysia who were brought to South Africa's Cape by Dutch settlers to serve as household chefs.


They infused hearty but tasteless Dutch meals with Eastern spices, spawning dishes like bobotie -- spiced minced lamb topped with a savoury egg custard.

Eduan Naude opened Gramadoelas in 1967 and it became one of the few restaurants in Johannesburg to welcome both blacks and whites.

After democracy dawned in South Africa in 1994, Naude and his partner Brian Shalkoff refused to join the white businesses that fled the city centre for fear of crime in favour of gentrified northern suburbs.

"For a while we got really despondent, the city centre was dead and we would go for days without customers but we were just too lazy to move," Shalkoff told Reuters in the main dining room, which is cluttered with trinkets and paintings that tell the story of South Africa's turbulent history.

Newtown is now the epicentre of a push to revamp the city centre and lure back businesses, property developers and late-night revellers.

As one of the city's only traditional African restaurants, the guest book includes names like Mandela, the Queen, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, and Hollywood actor Denzel Washington.

Name: Gramadoelas Restaurant

Location: The Market Theatre, Bree Street, Newtown, Johannesburg

Cost: main courses start at 49.95 rand $7.10

now I have been to South Africa and eaten most of these barring the worms, Kudu is stunning, oterich is beautiful but crocodile is just simply amazing!
Give it a whirl you never know you might be amazed!!

[stubacca68]

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Policemen in the Indian capital, widely perceived as rude to ordinary people, have been told to be brush up their manners when dealing with politicians.

The Home Ministry has asked New Delhi's police to "listen patiently" to politicians, rise to their feet when they arrive or leave, and ensure they get comfortable seats at public functions, the Hindustan Times reported on Wednesday.

The directive, which came after lawmakers complained that officers were not adhering to "basic courtesies", has already run into criticism.

"Everyone should be treated equally," lawyer Kamini Jaiswal was quoted in the paper as saying. "Why should extra respect be given to MPs (Members of Parliament)?"



But police defended the new guidelines. "It is required, since in a democracy MPs are people's representatives," New Delhi Police spokesman Deependra Pathak told the Hindustan Times.

THIS MANNERS GONE BARMY! what makes them so special, just because they are MP's dont make them any different from Joe Bloggs! GET A GRIP!!!!

[Setarime]

Quite agree stubacca, their poo stinks the same as mine or yours well maybe not as much as yours