BERLIN (Reuters) - Hoping to spice up their summer business, German butchers have introduced a new line of exotic-tasting sausages with flavors ranging from kiwi, maraschino cherry, lemon and even aloe vera.
The wide variety of new ingredients may seem like heresy to what is for many ordinary Germans the national dish. But for others the new flavors may help negate stagnant demand for the greasy Bratwurst you can find on almost any street corner.
Berlin butcher Uwe Buenger has developed a “chili-honey” Bratwurst while rival Dankert has come up with a “kiwi wurst” that also includes pineapples and maraschino cherries, Bild newspaper reported Tuesday.
For sausage connoisseurs, there is also the “Truefflebratwurst” that includes truffle, a fungus spiced with black and white pepper. Other sausages in Berlin are made of lamb, ginger, parsley, cardamom and edible blossoms.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers who wanted to find out why it is not only taboo to kiss your sister, but also disgusting, said on Wednesday they have discovered why in a discovery that challenges some basic tenets of Freudian theory.
The instinct evolved naturally and cannot be taught, John Tooby and Leda Cosmides of the University of California Santa Barbara wrote in their report in the journal Nature.
Spending time in the same household and watching your mother care for your brother or sister is all it takes. This is
all subconscious, of course, reported the researchers, who worked with Debra Lieberman of the University of Hawaii.
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Freckles speckle his pink wrinkly skin. Ginger whiskers sprout only between his veiny ears, beneath his gummy chops and at the end of a rat-like tail.
In a park full of fluffy labradors and spaniels, passers-by stare as Juan, a hairless Mexican Xoloitzcuintle dog, cavorts about then springs effortlessly into his owner’s arms, his glabrous skin gleaming with body lotion.
“People don’t know what they are. They ask us what’s wrong with them. They say ‘why are your dogs bald?’ and suggest cures,” said breeder Ana Maria Rivera, who owns Juan and 40 other Xoloitzcuintles (pronounced sho-lo-itz-CWINT-leh).
“One person came up to me and said I should rub on engine oil to help the fur grow back,” she said, shaking her head.
An 80-year-old Chinese man has washed his hair for the first time in 26 years.
Shampoo had little effect on Luo Shiyuan’s matted 6ft long hair and 5ft beard so the whole family pitched in with washing powder, reports Chongqing Morning Papers.
In all, it took 12 people - including his son, daughter-in-law, grandchildren and neighbours - five hours and three family bags of washing powder.
NAKASHIBETSU, Hokkaido — A brewery here has succeeded in producing a low-malt beer with milk, after the drink was suggested as a product that would help use up surplus milk.
The drink, called “Bilk” will go on sale on Feb. 1. It reportedly has a fruity flavor that its brewers hope will be popular among women.
The idea for the drink was conceived after dairy firms threw out a huge amount of surplus milk in March last year. The son of the manager of a liquor store in Nakashibetsu, whose main industry is dairy farming, suggested the idea of producing the milk beer to local brewery Abashiri Beer.
The 31-year-old factory head of the brewery was against the idea, saying that fermentation would be difficult because of the high starch content in milk, but went through a trial and error process to produce the drink anyway.
TOKYO - A species of shark rarely seen alive because its natural habitat is 2,000 feet or more under the sea was captured on film by staff at a Japanese marine park this week.
The Awashima Marine Park in Shizuoka, south of Tokyo, was alerted by a fisherman at a nearby port on Sunday that he had spotted an odd-looking eel-like creature with a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth.
Marine park staff caught the 5-foot long creature, which they identified as a female frilled shark, sometimes referred to as a “living fossil” because it is a primitive species that has changed little since prehistoric times.
SHANGHAI, Jan 23 (Reuters Life!) - Taxi drivers in China’s financial capital of Shanghai are to be issued with “spit sacks” to curb their habit of rolling down their windows and hawking into the road, state media reported on Tuesday.
Phlegmatic cabbies will soon have a sack fixed to the metal grill that surrounds the driver’s seat, so that both they and their passengers can make use of it.
The special sacks will be distributed to 45,000 taxis by the Shanghai Patriotic Sanitation Committee to curb spitting in public places, a habit Chinese authorities have long been trying to discourage.
“The ‘no spitting’ regulation came after Shanghai decided to make people give up the ugly and unhygienic habit and present a healthy city for the 2010 World Expo,” the China Daily said.
A man is fighting to have his world record bid officially recognised - for peeling off the largest ever whole piece of sunburnt skin.
Barry Kwok, from Hong Kong, claims the 21.6cm skin flap is in the shape of China.
Guinness World Records officials say they cannot consider Kwok’s record attempt, as he doesn’t have any proof the preserved sheet of skin came from him.
The Book of Guinness World Records have been inundated with record bids from China and Hong Kong since appointing a Chinese record assessor three years ago.
PARIS, Jan 5 (Reuters Life!) - A French prisoner who killed his cellmate “very probably” ate some of the victim’s body parts, a prosecutor in the northern town of Rouen said on Friday.
The victim’s body was discovered in a prison cell on Wednesday, with a large wound to the chest. The alleged killer, who shared the cell, told investigators he had removed and eaten his victim’s heart.
Investigators initially discounted the possibility of cannibalism after the victim’s heart was “found intact in its usual place and in its membrane which was also intact,” Rouen state prosecutor Joseph Schmit said in a statement.
However an autopsy revealed that pieces of muscle from the victim’s rib area and part of his lung were missing.
RURAL RETREAT, Va. - One of the newest arrivals at Kirk Heldreth’s dairy farm is drawing crowds. A calf with two faces was born Dec. 27 at Heldreth Dairy Farm, and word has spread in southwest Virginia as residents flock to his farm.
The animal is normal from its tail until its unusually large head. The calf breathes out of two noses and has two tongues, which move independently, according to Heldreth. There appears to be a single socket containing two eyes where the heads split.
“It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen,” the dairyman said.
During the calf’s birth, Heldreth said he first thought there were two calves.
SINGAPORE, Dec 22 (Reuters Life!) - Dogs, bats, Kentucky Fried Chicken and barramundi will grace dinner tables across the Asia Pacific this Christmas, a festival celebrated with lots of cheer, and very little turkey, in this mainly non-Christian region.
Christmas Day is seen as a foreign, Western festival in many countries in Asia but that doesn’t stop millions of people from cooking up banquets of local food unheard of in the West.
In Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country which also has a substantial Christian community, Christmas feasts include delicacies such as pork soaked in blood and dog meat.
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Julio Cesar Cu wanted to be an oceanographer but instead he swims through foul-smelling sewage in underground tunnels where the occasional dead body bobs beside excrement and car parts.
Paid just $400 a month to de-clog the miles of sewage tunnels running beneath the Mexican capital, diver Cu comes across the nastiest of flotsam.
“The oddest have been dead animals, animal heads, dead people,” he said. “Unfortunately a lot of bodies end up here.”
ORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A beer distributor says Maine is being a Scrooge by barring it from selling a beer with a label depicting Santa Claus enjoying a pint of brew.
In a complaint filed in federal court, Shelton Brothers accuses the Maine Bureau of Liquor Enforcement of censorship for denying applications for labels for Santa’s Butt Winter Porter and two other beers it wants to sell in Maine.
NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla. - A woman’s body was found wedged upside-down behind a bookcase in the home she shared with relatives who had spent nearly two weeks looking for her.
A spokesman for the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office said Mariesa Weber’s death was not suspicious. Family members said they believe she fell over as she tried to adjust the plug of a television behind the bookshelf.
SEATTLE (Reuters) - After introducing the world to new soda flavors like fish taco and salmon, Seattle specialty beverage maker Jones Soda Co. is offering a new flavor: Green pea.
Green pea, along with other unusual sodas such as turkey and gravy, dinner roll, sweet potato and antacid flavor, will be part of the company’s $10 to $15 “holiday pack” of bottled drinks available nationwide.
EL CERRITO, Calif. - A man was arrested on suspicion of carrying a concealed weapon after police found him outdoors — naked — and he told them he had a tool in his rectum, authorities said.
The man was lying on a tree stump, masturbating beside a nature path, near a Bay Area Rapid Transit station Thursday, police said.
