Monkey Stolen From San Francisco Zoo

By Mike Anderson

Someone broke into an exhibit and stole a monkey from the San Francisco Zoo, the zoo discovered Friday morning.

The one-foot-tall squirrel monkey's name is "Banana-Sam." He is 17 years old and weighs about two pounds

The vandals apparently cut through a zoo gate overnight. Then they got onto the roof of the primate exhibits. The zoo found two holes cut through the mesh net where Banana-Sam was stolen.

Although he appears cute and cuddly, Banana-Sam has very sharp teeth and will not hesitate to bite if provoked, according to Zoo staff. His bites can easily cause infections. The monkey also eats very particular food...

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Penn sees red in LAX tirade

(New York Post) Sean Penn and Cuban actress Maria Conchita Alonso were once Hollywood co-stars — but they had an angry bust-up at LAX, with Alonso branding Penn a “communist [bleep]hole” after he called her a “pig” in front of a stunned crowd.

It started when Alonso picked up her mother from a Miami flight and spotted Penn in an American Airlines lost luggage area Sunday.

Alonso, born in Cuba and raised in Venezuela, says her “heart stopped” when she saw the actor, to whom she’d written an open letter last year to say she was “appalled” by his public support of Hugo Chavez.

UPI

Sean Penn

She told Page Six: “I was very calm. I said, ‘I would like to talk to you.’ He said, ‘I have nothing to say to you . . . You have been saying a lot of things about me in the press.’ I said, ‘How can you defend Chavez?’ ”

The argument escalated from there. Alonso relates: “I said, ‘You are a communist, Sean Penn.’ He said, ‘You are a pig!’ So I said, ‘And you are a communist [bleep]hole! Is it great to live the way you do as a communist?’

“I went back to my mother, and he started yelling at us,” Alonso told us. “I yelled back, ‘Communist [bleep]hole!’ Nearly 60 people were watching, shocked. My mother wanted to clap, but she couldn’t because she was in a wheelchair and she had a small dog in her lap...”

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Woman chooses pet crocodile over husband

An Australian woman, Vicki Lowing, says she divorced her husband after he asked her to give up her pet crocodile, Johnie, which she says is ‘like a child' to her.

(Confucious Institute Online) WHEN Johnie the croc wants walkies, her owner makes it snappy. 

Johnie - a female - rules the roost at the Lowing home. 

Her favourite time of the day is meal time, the Herald Sun reports. 

"She's just like a cat or dog in that she knows when the fridge door opens there is a good chance of a snack, so she shuffles in for a feed," Vicki Lowing said. 

Chicken wings are her favourite, along with whiting and red meat. 

Ms Lowing said her son Andrew, 15, and Johnie, 13, experienced sibling rivalry. 

"Sometimes Andrew goes to have a shower after school and Johnie's already in there and not keen to share the space," she said. 

Andrew turns on the cold water tap and watches the cranky croc beat it....

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Boy disciplined after waving gun-shaped pizza slice

Reported By Andy Cordan, Reporter

(WKRN) For the rest of the semester, a Rutherford County elementary student has to eat lunch at the "silent table" for allegedly waving around a slice of pizza some say resembled a gun.

Nicholas Taylor attends David Youree Elementary School in Smyrna, about 30 miles southeast of Nashville.

School leaders say the 10-year-old threatened other students at his lunch table with a piece of pizza with bites out of it so it looked like a gun and when asked about it was initially not truthful.

Nicholas' mother LeAnn calls her son's punishment "absolutely ridiculous" saying he was just playing around and never said anything derogatory or anything about shooting anyone.

"The kid across the table from him said it looked like a gun so he picked it up and started shooting it in the air," she told Nashville's News 2 Investigates.

Taylor said she learned of the incident when the school sent her a note saying her son was threatening other students.

James Evans, spokesperson for the Rutherford County School District, said the boy isn't being punished because he had a piece of pizza shaped like a gun.

He's being punished because "some students reported he was making some threatening hand gestures, that he was shooting other kids at the table and they reported it to a teacher," according to Evans.

He continued, "The student didn't tell him the truth about it so he got silent lunch for six days."

Evans called the punishment minor but said the message is clear.

"I realize some might say we are going overboard but the principal is just trying to use an abundance of caution and send the message that we don't play about guns and it's not something we joke around about," he said.

To that, Taylor said her son knows he shouldn't play with guns.

"We don't have a gun in the house," she said. "He plays with light sabers. He's a big Star Wars fan."

In addition to lunch at the silent table, Nicholas has spent time with the school resource officer learning about gun safety.

Taylor said the school system has made it clear that if her son eats his pizza into the shape of a gun again and there is a similar occurrence, he will be suspended.

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Unexplained shower of apples falls from sky over town

By Eric Pfeiffer

(Yahoo News) More than 100 apples mysteriously rained down upon a small British town on Monday night. The still-unexplained apple shower left 20 yards of city streets and car windshields covered in the cascading fruit just after the daily rush hour.

The news immediately brought up comparisons to biblical tales of raining frogs and whether such reported freaks of nature actually occurred. In this instance, no one has officially confirmed when, how or if the apple storm truly took place as described.

However, Jim Dale, senior meteorologist from the British Weather Services, told the London Telegraph: "The weather we have at the moment is very volatile and we probably have more to come. Essentially these events are caused when a vortex of air, kind of like a mini tornado, lifts things off the ground rising up into the atmosphere until the air around it causes them to fall to earth again."

Dr Lisa Jardine-Wright, a physicist at the Cavendish Laboratory, based at Cambridge University, told the BBC, "Cars and houses have been swept up by tornadoes, so apples are well within the realms of possibility. A tornado which has swept through an orchard will be strong enough to 'suck up' small objects like a vacuum [cleaner]. These small objects would then be deposited back to earth as 'rain' when the whirlwind loses its energy."


Nevertheless, witnesses report that the weather in Coundon in Coventry was reported to be stable and calm at the time of the alleged apple shower. Coventry residents have offered several competing explanations for the event, including a passing plane, roving teenage pranksters--and, yes, witches.

But regardless of the ultimate explanation, the apple storm is no stranger other confirmed, highly unusual forms of precipitation. The BBC offers a roster of pertinent examples:

Frog falls were recorded in Llanddewi, Powys, in 1996 and two years later in Croydon, south London. In 2000, hundreds of dead silver sprats fell out of the sky during a rainstorm in the seaside resort of Great Yarmouth.

There have also been maggot downpours--in Acapulco in 1967 and during a yachting event at the 1976 Olympic Games.

On the sliding scale of inconveniences, an apple storm seems more palatable than maggots. Though, depending on the state of the apples, it's possible that some areas could have experienced both brands of offbeat precipitation at once.

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Cable guy finds sleeping bear in NJ basement

HOPATCONG, N.J. (AP) — A cable TV repairman got quite a surprise when he walked into the basement of a New Jersey home.

There was a 500-pound bear sound asleep on the floor.

The bear had been spotted wandering in the neighborhood in Hopatcong earlier Wednesday. It's not clear how it got into the home.

The bear ambled out of the house before state Fish and Game officials arrived.

WNBC-TV in New York (http://bit.ly/rVbuTV ) reports the officials fired a tranquilizer dart at the animal, which walked a few blocks to the Missouri Trail before it was knocked out.

Officials plan to relocate the bear.

No one was injured.

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Ala-Mode Ala-Barf

By The Queen of Green  


(Organic Planet) It’s time for the Queen of Green to burst another flavor bubble. Think about the creamy vanilla ice cream that you love to indulge in because it melts in your mouth and is bursting with pure vanilla flavor. Think again. Did you know there are many ice cream brands that are not bursting with pure vanilla flavor? Some brands contain a hidden ingredient that is made of Beaver Anal Glands!

No, that was not a typo.

Yes, I just said ‘Beaver Anal Glands!’

I don’t know about you, but the thought of shoveling Beaver Anal Glands into my mouth is making my stomach churn.

Beaver Anal Glands are often hidden in ingredient lists as castoreum or natural flavors. They are used to enhance the flavor of vanilla and raspberry drinks, ice cream, candies, puddings, and other desserts. But rest assure, the FDA approves this ingredient as a food additive and has classified it as “generally recognized as safe.” “Generally” recognized as safe—those words do not sound very promising. After all, we are consuming an animal’s private body part that was certainly not intended to excite our taste buds!

According to Gentleworld.org,”castoreum is a bitter, orange-brown, odoriferous, oily secretion, found in two sacs between the anus and the external genitals of beavers. The discharge of the castor sac is combined with the beaver’s urine, and used during scent marking of territory. Both male and female beavers possess a pair of castor sacs and a pair of anal glands located in two cavities under the skin between the pelvis and the base of the tail...”  (continued...)

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Islamic cleric bans women from touching bananas and cucumbers

By Manar Ammar

(BikyaMasr) CAIRO: An Islamic cleric residing in Europe said that women should not be close to bananas or cucumbers, in order to avoid any “sexual thoughts.”

The unnamed sheikh, who was featured in an article on el-Senousa news, was quoted saying that if women wish to eat these food items, a third party, preferably a male related to them such as their a father or husband, should cut the items into small pieces and serve.

He said that these fruits and vegetables “resemble the male penis” and hence could arouse women or “make them think of sex.”

He also added carrots and zucchini to the list of forbidden foods for women.

The sheikh was asked how to “control” women when they are out shopping for groceries and if holding these items at the market would be bad for them. The cleric answered saying this matter is between them and God.
Answering another question about what to do if women in the family like these foods, the sheikh advised the interviewer to take the food and cut it for them in a hidden place so they cannot see it.

The opinion has stirred a storm of irony and denouncement among Muslims online, with hundreds of comments mocking the cleric.

One reader said that these religious “leaders” give Islam “a bad name” and another commented said that he is a “retarded” person and he must quite his post immediately.

Others called him a seeker of fame, but no official responses from renowned Islamic scholars have been published on the statements.

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TV Stunt Goes Awry, Sends Cannonball Rocketing Through Homes

DUBLIN, Calif. (CBS) — A cast iron cannonball rocketed through two homes and landed inside a minivan Tuesday when a “Mythbusters” TV experiment went wrong.

Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage are hosts of the scientific experimentation show, which airs on The Discovery Channel. The pair was reportedly trying to figure out how fast a cannonball would travel, when it misfired and shot hundreds of feet in the air.

“This cannonball was supposed to go through several barrels of water and through a cinder block, and then ultimately into the side of the hill,” said J.D. Nelson of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department.

Instead the cannonball flew over the foothills surrounding Camp Parks Military Firing Reservation, before spiraling back toward Dublin like a cruise missile.

It flew straight though the front door of a home on Cassata Place, and bounced around like a pinball, flying up to the second floor before blasting through a back bedroom wall.

The wayward cannonball then blasted across a busy road and through a second home some 50 yards away, demolishing roof tiles.

The homeowner’s mother was frightened.

“”It was a very loud boom; she thought a tree fell, maybe a meteor,” said Ming Jiang. “It wasn’t clear that it was a cannonball landing on the roof.”

The out of control cannonball finally came to a stop inside Jasper Gill’s minivan.

“It hit the dash, through the passenger window,” said Gill, who had gotten out of the vehicle just 10 minutes before the ball struck. “I’m lucky I’m alive.”

Incredibly, no one was injured in the mishap.

Officials said Mythbusters had been using the firing reservation for the last eight years for similar experiments, but none had gone awry.

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Alec Baldwin: Booted from plane for playing game

By Gordon Cameron

(Yahoo) You know when the flight attendants tell you to turn off all electronic devices prior to takeoff? They're not kidding -- even if you happen to be a star.

Actor Alec Baldwin was removed from an American Airlines flight leaving Los Angeles for New York on Tuesday when he was apparently too engrossed in a game of Zynga's "Words With Friends" to power down his iPad.

"Flight attendant on American reamed me out 4 playing WORDS W FRIENDS while we sat at the gate, not moving. #nowonderamericaairisbankrupt," the actor tweeted.


The incident caused a one-hour delay in the flight and kicked off a flurry of Internet chatter. Baldwin's own Twitter feed has been pulsing with caustic comments about his removal.

"Last flight w American," the "30 Rock" star tweeted Tuesday afternoon, "Where retired Catholic school gym teachers from the 1950s find jobs as flight attendants."

More diplomatically, Baldwin's spokesman Matthew Hilzik said in a statement to MSNBC that the actor is "so in love with 'Words with Friends' that he would risk getting thrown off a flight to play." He also confirmed that Baldwin was re-booked on a later American Airlines flight to New York.

Indeed, the big winner in all this seems to be Words With Friends publisher Zynga, who've just gotten a nice bit of free PR and an unexpected celebrity spokesman.  The immensely popular game is a bit like Scrabble, challenging players to build words and outscore opponents. Asked by a follower to explain the game's appeal, Baldwin tersely tweeted: "It's…well…addicting."

According to Latimes.com, American Airlines is looking into the situation. A spokesperson said that, due to customer privacy concerns, American Airlines does not comment on "something that might or might not have happened."

The 53-year-old actor joins a growing list of celebs who have been kicked off flights this year, including Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong and Green Card's Gerard Depardieu.

So will Baldwin be flying American in the future?

"Now, as I was kicked off this flight, the word I was playing was UNITED," he tweeted.

We'd say that's a no.

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Pole dancing pushes bid as Olympic sport

Argentina's Jessica Wajner competes for second place in the Miss Pole Dance Argentina 2011 and third place in the Miss Pole Dance South America 2011 competition in Buenos Aires on November 11, 2011 ahead the Pole Dance World Championship 2012 to be held in the U.S. (Credit: JUAN MABROMATA/AFP/Getty Images)

By Stephen Smith

(CBS News) The criteria for being considered a new Olympic sport is certainly evolving.

In 2009, the IOC deemed golf, rugby and women's boxing as worthy additions - but popular sports such as baseball, softball and karate were nixed.

Now another "sport" is staking its claim as Olympic caliber - pole dancing.

The campaign to get pole dancing into the Games has been in the works for a couple of years. But now, according to the Washington Post, the Pole Fitness Association and other like-minded groups are circulating petitions to get the dance form in the 2012 London Games.

Pole dancing may conjure up images of strip clubs but these days it's more about health clubs. The sensual dance is now commonly called "pole fitness" or "vertical dance" and according to the AFP, there are more than 500 pole dancing fitness studios across the U.S. Indeed, serious pole dancers arguably have athletic chops similar to some Olympic gymnasts.

"Nowadays there are very few who are training to perform in a strip club," Anjel Dust, an organizer at the California Pole Dance Championships, recently told LA Weekly. "It's all about fitness or competitions. There is no longer the stigma. I think pole dancing is being seen more as an art form."

That may well be true but how seriously will the IOC take someone named Anjel Dust? Pole dancing -- with its connotations of seedy night clubs and half-naked women - is still more Las Vegas than London. Other than a name change, pole fitness (or vertical dancing) may have to find another way to tone down its sexy past to make the Games.

While it's likely too late to get into the 2012 lineup, the pole fitness petition boasts over 6,000 signatures. It's worth noting that women's boxing got the IOC approval after petitioning the committee and that sport is not immune to sex-appeal controversy. Right now, organizers are deciding whether female boxers will make their Olympic debut in miniskirts.

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