Seriously
ATLANTA (Reuters) - Two U.S. car thieves failed to make their getaway in a car they had just stolen because they couldn’t figure out how to use its manual transmission, a witness said on Wednesday.
The teenagers armed with a gun approached a man outside a pizza restaurant in Marietta, Georgia, late on Monday. They stole his wallet and the keys to his Honda Accord, got into the car but couldn’t make it start because it had stick shift, according to John Williamson, 18, a restaurant employee.
“The kid was just sitting in the car trying to start it but he had no idea what to do. He looked dumbfounded. The only thing he had going was the radio,” said Williamson who witnessed the scene.
While the thief was trying to start the car, restaurant employees called the police who arrived and caught the teenagers as they tried to escape into nearby woods.
Unlike many parts of the world, the majority of cars in the United States are automatic and many drivers are unused to driving “stick shift” vehicles, in which a clutch pedal must be depressed to change gear.
MERRILL, Wis. - A service station that offered discounted gas to senior citizens and people supporting youth sports has been ordered by the state to raise its prices. Center City BP owner Raj Bhandari has been offering senior citizens a 2 cent per gallon price break and discount cards that let sports boosters pay 3 cents less per gallon.
But the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection says those deals are too good: They violate Wisconsin’s Unfair Sales Act, which requires stations to sell gas for about 9.2 percent more than the wholesale price.
Bhandari said he received a letter from the state auditor in late April saying the state would sue him if he did not raise his prices. The state could penalize him for each discounted gallon he sold, with the fine determined by a judge.
WINSTED, Conn. - Bank robbers, terrorists and prowlers have given ski masks a bad name for years, but a Connecticut man is wearing them around town to prove that not everyone who dons one is plotting mayhem.
Kevin Lambert, 31, got the idea in 2005 after he walked out of a local package store and slipped on a ski mask for an impromptu photograph. A passerby, fearing the store had been robbed, called police. Lambert was charged with breach of peace and had to perform 15 hours of community service.
Since then, he and his friends have worn ski masks in public places in an attempt to dispel the stereotype. Lambert has even launched a Web site dedicated to “Striving to keep America Warm By Combating Ski Mask Discrimination.”
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) employee fired this week for allegedly intercepting and recording messages from a New York Times reporter and others said he felt pressured to uncover who at the retail giant was leaking embarrassing information to outsiders, The Wall Street Journal reported.
After a flurry of articles about Wal-Mart’s employment and benefit practices in The New York Times newspaper and elsewhere, Bruce Gabbard said in the Journal that he took it upon himself to find out if any of the newspaper’s information was coming from internal sources.
“Our job was to plug any information hole,” Gabbard, a systems technician, said in the Journal. “That was the primary reason for our team to be there.”
Gabbard and his supervisor were dismissed earlier this week after the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas told the retailer he was looking into possible violations of federal law.
Walmart is junk
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Desperate to get answers from a terrorism suspect who is refusing to talk, steely eyed U.S. intelligence agent Jack Bauer bursts into an interrogation room and shoots the prisoner in the leg.
In an instant, the squirming, grimacing villain fesses up, revealing the target of an assassination plot.
On other occasions, our hero seeks to obtain crucial information from bad guys by suffocating them with a plastic bag, administering pain-inducing intravenous drugs or even cutting off a finger.
Welcome to an evening of television in post-September 11 America.
ALMATY (Reuters) - Fictional Kazakh TV reporter Borat has made an unexpected cameo appearance as a victim of censorship in a heavyweight annual human rights report issued by the State Department.
The 2006 report, released in Washington on Tuesday by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, criticized the real Kazakhstan, a vast oil-producing Central Asian state, for increased restrictions on freedom of speech and other abuses.
The State Department, which says Kazakhstan has no independent judiciary, also listed the murder last year of Kazakh opposition politician Altynbek Sarsenbaiuly, his bodyguard and driver as “unlawful deprivation of life.”
CHICAGO, March 5 (Reuters Life!) - White U.S. teenagers who watch a lot of R-rated movies or have unsupervised access to TV shows appear more likely than similar black youths to start smoking cigarettes, a study found on Monday.
Researchers found that white adolescents with the most exposure to R-rated movies were nearly seven times more likely to have started smoking compared to those with less exposure.
Even after taking into account such things as having a friend who smoked, lack of parental guidance or doing poorly in school, those who watched more R-rated movies were still three times more likely to start smoking, the study found. In theaters, anyone age 16 or younger who attends an R-rated movie must be accompanied by a parent or adult guardian.
White adolescents allowed unsupervised television viewing were also more likely to start smoking, the study said.
I am sure its only the R-rated movies…. ha
SEATTLE, Washington (AP) — Unwanted when it was proposed in the early 1960s, a bronze statue of Leif Erikson on shores of Seattle’s Shilshole Bay seems to be exacting revenge.
Crews attempting to move the statue have been unable to budge the 17-foot-tall Viking from his pedestal.
“That’s one stubborn Scandinavian,” remarked Kristine Leander of the Leif Erikson International Foundation.
On Tuesday, workers spent eight hours drilling at the base, pounding on the concrete and tugging with the crane. They found that concrete poured into the statue’s hollow legs had attached it securely to the base.
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (Reuters) — A new dating Web site helps match people who are compatible with their dogs, cats or other pets.
The Dutch site, called Dier-en-Mens or Animal and Human, says it is a meeting place for all animal lovers, whether you are looking for a partner, someone who also likes snakes and spiders or someone who takes care of your chickens when you want to go away for the weekend.
“How can you find a nice partner who is just as crazy about animals as you are?” said Betty Mercey on Sunday who launched the dating site this weekend.
The Arizona license plate is a nice touch
ATLANTA, Feb 20 (Reuters Life!) - A hard-hitting documentary on hip-hop that asks why it often shows black men as violent sex-addicts who abuse woman is sparking debate among a generation of young people raised on rap videos.
In “Beyond Beats and Rhymes” film maker Byron Hurt, a former college football star, goes on a journey of discovery around the United States, challenging hip-hop artists and record producers in the multibillion dollar industry.
The documentary, due to be aired on national PBS television on Tuesday, has been screened to dozens of audiences of young people and students, said Sabrina Schmidt-Gordon, the film’s co-producer.
Most critics of hip-hop argue that it shows women as sex objects but the documentary focuses on images of hyper-masculine men and says black youths fall into the trap of trying to emulate the thug life of the videos.
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Alcoholics have one, and so do drug abusers. Now people addicted to e-mail also have a 12-step programme designed to tackle their obsession.
An executive coach in Pennsylvania has devised a plan to teach people how to manage the electronic tool, which some users say can be as much an intrusive waste of time as it is fast-paced and efficient.
Developed for cases such as a golfer who checked his BlackBerry after every shot, and lost a potential client who wanted nothing to do with his obsession, Marsha Egan’s plan taps into deepening concern that e-mail misuse can cost businesses millions of dollars in lost productivity.
“There is a crisis in corporate America, but a lot of CEOs don’t know it,” Egan said. “They haven’t figured out how expensive it is.”
Email addicts?
