A Newscaster from ABC7 in Los Angeles strikes an uncanny resemblance to the police rapist sketch he is reporting on.

filed under Weird Photos

As the economy goes South, Roxanne Usleman’s Psychic business is booming.

“It’s more types of people I have never seen before,” says Usleman. “Men in the business world, high-powered jobs, stock market, Wall Street.”

Since last fall, she says she began to see a new type of client — a “logical, [A-type] of personality.” Many of them are “just completely lost,” says Usleman.

Relationship advice, typically the bread and butter of the psychic business, has been supplanted by something new.

“Should I merge with this company? Should I bring in a partner to my company,” are the kind of questions Usleman gets from her clients.

For a typical reading, she grips a client’s photograph or set of keys and consults “the angels.”

Business is good, she says. Usleman sees five or six clients a day and charges up to $135 a pop for sessions that usually last more than an hour.

Businessman Bruce Levy was skeptical at first but one of his clients pushed him to get a reading.

“What I expected was something like Ouija boards and someone looking at my palm and seeing my lifeline,” says Levy.

Instead, he found a psychic who he says helped him find the answers.

“She helps me make better decisions,” Levy says. “She is able to make me see things that I wouldn’t otherwise see. I just think that she has this intuition that gets through to my subconscious in a way that I can’t.”

There are no national statistics on the business of psychics. But Usleman’s experience is backed up by anecdotal evidence from other psychics around the country. Liveperson.com matches psychics with customers on its Web site and says the uncertain economy has been good for business. Some psychics charge up to $20 a minute for advice.

Many people simply feel like they have to do something, according to Professor Gita Johar at Columbia Business School in New York.

“The biggest reason people are going to see psychics is probably that they want to feel in control,” says Johar, who studies consumer behavior.

“And when they see that their financials aren’t looking so good and they really can’t turn to their financial adviser — they haven’t been getting really good advice and so they have to turn to someone else.”

Source: CNN link Filed under Weird US News

Late one evening last September, Caryl Jones ordered an iced tea at the drive-through of the McDonald’s near her Northwest Baltimore home. But that’s not what she got, according to her lawsuit in Baltimore City Circuit Court.

What Jones got was another sort of “T”: Triazinetrione — Dichloro-s-Triazinetrione Dihydrate, to be exact — better known as “McD Sanitizer,” a cleaning chemical intended for use on kitchen equipment and surfaces, according to her lawyer.

“She took a sip, it burned her mouth and she spit it out,” said Patricia S. Steiger, of the Law Offices of Seymour Goldstein.

Jones, an administrative assistant, convinced the restaurant employees to open the closed interior of the restaurant in the 4200 block of Mortimer Ave., Steiger said. The workers gave her some milk — and a sample of what she unwittingly put in her mouth, the lawyer said.

“They gave her a packet like the one that had been in there — as a matter of knowing what it was — to take with her and then she went to the emergency room” at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Steiger said.

There, doctors determined Jones had “a mild or moderate chemical reaction,” Steiger said, and eventually diagnosed her with chemical pharyngitis and tonsillitis. By mid-November, she had made a full recovery, according to Steiger.

In the suit filed last week, Jones seeks $100,000 on counts of negligence and breach of warranty.

Franchise owner Cynthia Brown declined to comment on the pending litigation, instead issuing an e-mailed statement through a McDonald’s spokeswoman.

“Nothing is more important to me than the well-being of my customers,” the e-mail said. “Rest assured, we take this matter seriously.”

According to label information from the Canadian Pest Management Regulatory Agency, a packet of “McD Sanitizer,” produced by Greensboro, N.C.-based Kay Chemical International Inc. exclusively for McDonald’s, is meant to be combined with gallons of water to clean “shake/soft serve machines, kitchen utensils, kitchen equipment, counter tops and tables.”

At this point, Steiger said, she does not know “who mixed it, when they mixed it or how they mixed it.”

The chemical is a skin irritant and swallowing it could result in mucosal damage, according to the PMRA report. Jones did not swallow the solution, Steiger said.

Asked where this suit fits among others against fast-food chains for defective products — scalding hot coffee, for example — Steiger said her case is “much simpler.”

“It wasn’t iced tea; it was cleaning solution,” she said. “It’s not a matter of degrees. She was given something that was not meant to be consumed.”

Source: MDRecord  Link Filed under Weird US News

It has been called the Betty Ford clinic for jihadists and within minutes of arriving at the Care Rehabilitation Centre on the outskirts of Riyadh, you can see why. The small complex, where the Saudi Arabian government is exploring a new way of reforming its wayward radicals, feels more like an exclusive boarding school than a Saudi jail.

Inmates have access to swimming pools, table tennis and PlayStations. In the evenings, guards and prisoners play football. An air-conditioned tent sits adjacent to the sports field, serving as a dining hall and common room where the prisoners are served rice and lamb with fresh fruit.

In return for this privileged treatment, the prisoners – Islamic extremists, some of whom are convicted murderers – are obliged to attend lessons based around Islamic law and the jurisprudence of jihad. A team of psychologists teaches detainees how they should manage their emotions, particularly when reacting to world events.

The Saudi government insists all this is necessary to promote genuine rehabilitation and foster a meaningful relationship with the jihadists. But in the easy-going atmosphere of the “resort” – nobody calls it a prison – where inmates are referred to as “beneficiaries”, it is easy to forget the seriousness of some of their crimes.

The centre is divided into six areas, four of which hold Saudi nationals who fought (or tried to) in Iraq. The other two hold returnees from Guantanamo Bay.

The government has realized that the use of force alone will not contain Al-Qaeda. It has created an ideological security unit that coordinates the kingdom’s efforts in the war of ideas against its native jihadists. Those arrested in connection with terrorism are routinely subjected to attempts to reform their thinking. Hundreds of men have passed through the Saudi program, which has been viewed as a model for similar efforts elsewhere.

Since the program started in 2004, Nine graduates, including some who had been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, have been arrested for rejoining terrorist groups .

The Saudi Interior Ministry acknowledged the arrests after it emerged last week that two other graduates had joined the Yemeni branch of al-Qaeda. Both had been released from Guantanamo, in Cuba, in 2007, and one is suspected of having helped plan a deadly attack in Yemen last year.

Sources: Times Online &  Sydney Morning Herald  -  filed under Weird World News

Residents of Morris County, New Jersey were recently visited by UFOs. Five strange red lights appeared in the sky. The lights seemed to move together in groups, a trio and a duo. They were seen by dozens of people.

Paul Hurley, who is a pilot, saw the lights and immediately ruled out the possibility of airplanes, citing his 20 years experience in the aviation industry.

Here’s another video of eye-witnesses on Fox News that backs up the sighting.

CANBERRA — Two Myanmar fishermen have survived for almost a month in shark-infested waters by floating in a large ice box after their boat sank, rescue officials said.

The men, both aged in their 20s, were on a 12-meter Thai wooden fishing boat with 18 others when it sank in heavy seas off Australia’s north coast on December 23, said Australian Maritime Safety Authority spokeswoman Tracey Jiggins.

“They had no safety equipment, no beacons, no means of communication and they’d been drifting for 25 days,” Jiggins told Reuters on Tuesday, describing the ice box as “desk sized.”

“For them to have even been spotted in a huge body of water is amazing,” she said.

The men were spotted by an Australian coastal patrol aircraft on Saturday. They were winched onto a rescue helicopter and taken to hospital on Thursday Island, off Australia’s far north.

“They were desperately keen to get on. When they got up they drank 2 liters of water each, within seconds,” helicopter pilot Terry Gadenne told Australian television.

A photograph taken by Customs aircraft showed the pair standing in a high, red-sided ice box used by commercial fishing boats and desperately waving at rescuers, surrounded by open sea.

Hospital officials said the pair were hungry and dehydrated after drifting 25 days at sea during the monsoon season and recent cyclonic storms in the region, but they were recovering well and would be released later on Tuesday.

The pair would then be questioned by immigration officials and police, who had not yet determined how the pair survived and what they did for food and water.

Jiggins said the others on board the boat would certainly have perished and no search for other survivors was planned.

Source: NewsDaily Link Filed under Weird World News.

LAGOS – Police in Nigeria are holding a goat on suspicion of attempted armed robbery.

Vigilantes took the black and white beast to the police saying it was an armed robber who had used black magic to transform himself into a goat to escape arrest after trying to steal a Mazda 323.

“The group of vigilante men came to report that while they were on patrol they saw some hoodlums attempting to rob a car. They pursued them. However one of them escaped while the other turned into a goat,” Kwara state police spokesman Tunde Mohammed told Reuters by telephone.

“We cannot confirm the story, but the goat is in our custody. We cannot base our information on something mystical. It is something that has to be proved scientifically, that a human being turned into a goat,” he said.

Belief in witchcraft is widespread in parts of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation. Residents came to the police station to see the goat, photographed in one national newspaper on its knees next to a pile of straw.

Source: Reuters via Yahoo News Link filed under Weird World News.

A manhunt is under way in western Germany for a convicted drug dealer who escaped by mailing himself out of jail.

The 42-year-old Turkish citizen – who was serving a seven-year sentence – had been making stationery with other prisoners destined for delivery to stores.

At the end of his shift, the inmate climbed into a cardboard box and was taken out of prison by express courier. His whereabouts are still unknown.

The chief warden of the jail remarked this was an embarrassing incident.

WOMEN in Papua New Guinea’s Highland region are killing their male babies to end a tribal war that has gone on for more than 20 years.

Two women from the Eastern Highlands spoke of the slaughter to PNG’s National newspaper during a three-day peace and reconciliation course in the region’s capital of Goroka.

Rona Luke and Kipiyona Belas, from two warring tribes, said male infanticide reduced the cyclical payback violence infamous in Highlands tribal fights.

If women stopped producing males, their tribe’s stock would go down and this would force the men to end their fight, the women said.

“All the womenfolk agreed to have all male babies born killed because they have had enough of men engaging in tribal conflicts and bringing misery to them,” Ms Luke said.

The women could not give a figure on how many male babies had been killed.

Ms Belas said getting food was hard as husbands kept fighting and mothers and children were left to fend for themselves.

The Salvation Army told the Australian Associated Press that women were so fed up with the ongoing violence that they were taking drastic steps.

“This situation shows the extreme frustration the women have with the men in these areas,” a spokesman said.

Source: AAP Link Filed under Weird World News

Photo: AP

MEXICO CITY – Hiroshi Nohara is on a layover at the Mexico City airport. It has lasted almost three months, and he has no plans to leave.

For reasons he can’t explain, the Japanese man has been in Terminal 1 of the Benito Juarez International Airport since Sept. 2, surviving off donations from fast-food restaurants and passengers and sleeping in a chair.

At first, he frightened passengers, and airport authorities asked the Japanese Embassy to investigate why the foul-smelling man refused to leave. Now, he’s somewhat of a celebrity, capturing Mexico’s collective imagination with nearly daily television news reports on his life at the food court.

Tourists stop to pose with him for photographs or get an autograph.

The Tokyo native flew into Mexico with a tourist visa and a return ticket home, but he never left the airport. In an interview Thursday alongside the airport McDonald’s, he said he had no motive for his extended stay and doesn’t know how much longer he’ll remain.

“I don’t understand why I’m here,” he said through a visiting interpreter originally hired by a television station. “I don’t have a reason.”

The embassy can’t force him to leave, and since Nohara’s visa is valid all Mexican officials can do it wait for it to expire in early March.

During his stay, Nohara’s wiry goatee has grown into a scraggly mass. His red-tinted hair is speckled with dust and dandruff, and his cream-colored jacket and fleece blanket are dingy with overuse. He smells like he hasn’t had a shower in months.

“He’s a calm person, a nice man,” said Silvia Navarrete del Toro, an airport janitor. “He just sits here and eats all day.”

Various stalls in the food court give Nohara free snacks and drinks, sometimes even throwing in hats or coffee mugs with store logos to get free publicity during his frequent television appearances.

Strangers often buy him pastries or hamburgers; he prefers the latter.
.

Source: Brisbane Times via AP Link filed under Weird World News

A baby boy with eight toes on each foot was discharged from a hospital in Leizhou, southeast Guangdong province on November 5, 2008. The baby has five fingers on each hand but doesn’t have thumbs. Doctors said this might have something to do with genetics or environment pollution.

Source: ChinaDaily Link Filed under Weird Diseases

A Polish man drove his vehicle into a lake after following the instructions of a satellite navigation system, police have said.

The Mercedes mini-van driver ignored a series of warning signs before using an abandoned road which led to the lake. His vehicle was almost entirely submerged by the time emergency services arrived on the scene, but the man and his two passengers had already escaped unharmed.

“The man took a road that was closed a year ago when the area was flooded to make an artificial lake serving as a water reservoir – he ignored three road signs warning of a dead end,” Piotr Smolen, police spokesman in Glubczyce, southern Poland told AFP.

“It was still night time and he didn’t notice the road led into the lake. His GPS told him to drive straight ahead and he did.”

Smolen confirmed that the man in question made his first emergency call while he was still inside the sinking van. He then sat on the vehicle’s roof with his passengers as they waited for assistance.

Source: DigitalSpy Link filed under Weird World News.

ATLANTA – A Delta baggage worker got a bit of a fright before Halloween when she opened a jetliner’s cargo door and found a cheetah running loose amid the luggage. Two cheetahs were being flown in the cargo area of a Boeing 757 passenger flight from Portland, Ore., to Atlanta on Thursday when one escaped from its cage, Delta spokeswoman Betsy Talton said Friday.

“They told us a large animal had gotten out of a container in the cargo hold and they were having to send someone to tranquilize it,” said one passenger, Lee Sentell of Montgomery, Ala.

He said luggage was delayed, but baggage handlers promised to send his bags to him in Alabama.

The good news for passengers: The escaped cheetah didn’t damage any of their luggage.

The airline summoned help from Zoo Atlanta, and experts rushed to a closed airport hangar and tranquilized the escaped animal and took both big cats to the zoo.

Both 1-year-old female cheetahs were on their way from the Wildlife Safari Park in Winston, Ore., to the Memphis Zoo in Tennessee, Memphis Zoo spokesman Drew Smith said in an e-mail. He said the two cheetahs will stay a few days at the zoo in Atlanta until the Memphis Zoo gets a team together to fetch them.

The cheetahs are on loan to the Memphis Zoo, but Smith said he wasn’t sure how long they would stay there.

Source: Yahoo News via AP Link filed under Weird US News

An ad billboard has caused outrage and panic in a Chinese city by featuring what appears to be a man hanging from a rope.

The advertisement, on top of the Yinji Shopping Mall in Zhengzhou, features a mannequin hanging from the top of the billboard.

In a reference to the global financial crisis, it reads: “It’s better to invest money here than put it into the stock market.”

But residents thought it was a real suicide and say children as young as eight were terrified, reports Oriental Today.

After receiving complaints, the local industry and trade bureau has now stepped in and taken down the mannequin.

“Without the hanging man, it’s really not that shocking,” said the deputy director of the bureau.

Jiang Chengpu, the creative director behind the ad, says the aim was to catch people’s attention, not to terrify them.

“We are making fun of the depressing stock market here. And the place the mannequin is hanging is right next to the stock index line,” he said.

Source: Ananova Link  Filed under Weird Advertisements

Tom Leppard, whose entire body is covered in leopard-spot tattoos, lived in a ruined home on the Scottish island of Skye for 20 years, with no electricity or furniture.

The Leopard Man, who spent $9,500 on tattoos, used to have to canoe three miles for his weekly shopping, but he has now moved from his remote stretch of shoreline near Kyleakin after admitting he’s getting too old at 73.

Mr Leppard, an ex-special forces soldier, told the Daily Telegraph: “I was perfectly happy… but I’m like everyone else – I’m getting too old for that kind of life.

“I had to canoe to Kyle once a week for shopping and it was getting too hard for me – I was one big wave away from disaster. It’s a pretty nasty stretch of water.

“About six weeks ago a friend with a boat offered to take me off and I just decided there and then to go.”

Mr Leppard, originally from London, held the title of world’s most tattooed man until recently, when he was overtaken by Lucky Diamond Rich from New Zealand.

He said: “I’ve loved every minute and when you’re covered in leopard tattoos you certainly get noticed – I became a bit of a tourist attraction on Skye.

“But all I want now is peace and quiet and just to relax a bit more. I can walk to the local shop instead of canoeing.

“I might go back to Skye one day for a look around if somebody offered me a lift but it would be just out of curiosity – those days are behind me now.”

Source: Ananova Link  filed under Weird World News

Yoshiteru Takahashi and his team

KATHMANDU – A team of Japanese adventurers say they have discovered footprints they believe were made by the legendary yeti said to roam the Himalayan regions of Nepal and Tibet.

“The footprints were about 20 centimetres (eight inches) long and looked like a human’s,” Yoshiteru Takahashi, the leader of the Yeti Project Japan, said in Kathmandu on Monday.

Takahashi was speaking after he returned with his seven-member team from their third attempt to track down the half-man-half-ape, tales of which have gripped the imaginations of Western adventurers and mountaineers for decades.

Despite spending 42 days on Dhaulagiri IV — a 7,661-metre (25,135-foot) peak where they say they have seen traces of yetis in the past — the team failed in their prime objective of capturing one on film.

But Takahashi said the footprints were proof enough.

The yeti footprint beside a human footprint.

“Myself and other team members have been coming to the Himalayas for years and we can recognise bear, deer, wolf and snow leopard prints and it was none of those,” he said.

“We remain convinced it is real. The footprints and the stories the local tell make us sure that it is not imaginary,” he added.

Photographs of the prints have been posted on the expedition’s website.

The team had set out nine motion-sensitive cameras in an area where Takahashi saw what he thought was a yeti during a previous expedition in 2003.

“It was about 200 metres away in silhouette. It was walking on two legs like a human and looked about 150 centimetres tall,” said Takahashi.

Despite their lack of success this time, the team plans to continue the quest.

“We will come back as soon as we can, and we will keep coming back until we get the yeti on film,” said Takahashi.

Source: AP via canada.com Link filed under Weird News, Cryptozoology

LINCOLN, Nebraska ― A judge has thrown out a Nebraska legislator’s lawsuit against God, saying the Almighty wasn’t properly served due to his unlisted home address. State Sen. Ernie Chambers filed the lawsuit last year seeking a permanent injunction against God.

He said God has made terroristic threats against the senator and his constituents in Omaha, inspired fear and caused “widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants.”

Chambers has said he filed the lawsuit to make the point that everyone should have access to the courts regardless of whether they are rich or poor.

On Tuesday, however, Douglas County District Court Judge Marlon Polk ruled that under state law a plaintiff must have access to the defendant through a known address, for a lawsuit to move forward.

“Given that this court finds that there can never be service effectuated on the named defendant this action will be dismissed with prejudice,” Polk wrote.

Chambers, who graduated from law school but never took the bar exam, thinks he’s found a hole in the judge’s ruling.

“The court itself acknowledges the existence of God,” Chambers said Wednesday. “A consequence of that acknowledgment is a recognition of God’s omniscience.”

Therefore, Chambers said, “Since God knows everything, God has notice of this lawsuit.”

Chambers has 30 days to decide whether to appeal. He said he hasn’t decided yet.

Source: CBS2Chicago Link filed under Weird US News

Travellers at New York and Los Angeles airports will be among the first in the world to be searched using a new body scanner which can see through clothes.

The millimetre wave imaging technology, which begins trials this week, creates an picture of the body which critics say amounts to a virtual strip search.

But security officials say it can show contours of the body and can pick up hidden items, such as guns or knives and may be more effective than a physical ‘pat-down’ in detecting contraband.

After the normal airport routine of walking through metal detectors, some travellers will be selected at random to go through the scanning devices, which each cost $150,000. Passengers will walk into a large booth and the machine will beam electromagnetic waves on to the body, creating a detailed three-dimensional image.

Security staff in a separate room will examine the image, which will supposedly be erased from the system. Officials officials say this distance protects a person’s privacy because, apart from the image, they are unable to see the people being examined. The passenger’s face is blurred and the images are not stored.

Passengers may choose not to go through the scanner, but will then be subject to other screening, including pat-down searches.

Peter Bibring, from the American Civil Liberties Union said safeguards were needed if the technology was not going to be abused.

“I don’t think people are really aware of just how accurate and detailed the images are of their naked body,” he said. “We need to make sure there are good safeguards. The temptation is great not to follow procedures when a celebrity or someone well known is involved.”

Source: Telegraph  Link filed under Weird US News

News reporter is not amused by a bystander

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A local TV reporter lets loose after a bug flies into into his mouth.

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