Chemical Anomie

Japanese officials alarmed over growing number of suicides from toxic fumes

1 hour, 33 minutes ago

By The Associated Press

TOKYO - Officials in Japan are raising the alarm over what they say its the soaring number of people killing themselves by inhaling toxic fumes from household chemicals.

Japan has long battled a high suicide rate.

But officials say the country is now in the grip of a wave of deaths by people who take their own lives by mixing commonly available household products to form poisonous hydrogen sulphide gas.

The gas can form noxious clouds that also affect those who happen to be nearby, often triggering mass evacuations.

Japanese officials say the number of toxic fume suicides jumped to 876 from January to September, 30 times more than in the same period last year.

Alarmed by the surge, police have launched a crackdown on popular Internet sites that give instructions on how to commit suicide using the method.

Toxic fume suicides are the latest in a string of suicide fads in Japan. Until this year, many suicide cases involved people who found each other on the Internet and committed suicide together, often by sealing themselves in a car and lighting a charcoal-burning brazier.

The number of suicides hit 33,093 in 2007, a 2.9 per cent increase from the previous year and the second-highest annual tally on record, according to the National Police Agency.

To curb the high suicide rate, the government has earmarked $220 million for anti-suicide programs to help those with depression and other mental health problems.

Japan has the eighth-highest suicide rate in the world, according to the World Health Organization.

US scientists perfect targeted memory erasure in mice

Thu Oct 23, 11:11 AM

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US researchers have said they are able to selectively erase memories from mice in a laboratory, raising hopes human memory afflictions like post-traumatic stress syndrome can one day be cured.

"Targeted memory erasure is no longer limited to the realm of science fiction," the research team headed by Joe Tsien, from the Brain and Behavior Discovery Institute at the Medical College of Georgia, said in Thursday's issue of Cell Press magazine.

The new technique, which the team stress is at a very early stage, could be applied one day to the human brain to erase traumatic memories or deep-set fears, and leave all other memories unaffected.

Memory is generally separated into four different stages: acquisition, consolidation, storage, and retrieval. Earlier research identified specific molecules that appear to play a role in the various phases of the memory process.

But Tsien said his team found a way to quickly manipulate the activity of the "memory molecule," the protein CaMKII (calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II) that plays a key role in brain cell communication, and so is linked to many aspects of learning and memory.

Researchers developed a "chemical genetic strategy," which made it possible to manipulate the protein in transgenic mice, which had been bred to overproduce the molecule.

"Using this technique, we examined the manipulation of transgenic CaMKII activity on the retrieval of short-term and long-term fear memories and novel object recognition memory" in transgenic mice, Tsien said.

The team figured out they could manipulate the protein in the mice's brain as the animal was stimulated, and observe the brain's ability to recall memory of the stimulation.

Through the protein manipulation, researchers then found a way to not just block the mice's memory of the stimulation, but erase them without impacting the brain's ability to recall other memories.

Tsien became famous in 1999 for his creation of Doggie, the smart transgenic mouse with enhanced learning and memory abilities.

In the recent findings, Tsien's team found that transient excessive activity of CaMKII at the time of recall impaired retrieval of short- and long-term fear memories, as well as memories formed as recently as one hour.

They also showed that recall deficits linked to excessive CaMKII activity were not caused by a blockade of the recall process but instead seemed to be due to rapid erasure of the stored memories.

In addition, they found that the erased memories were limited to those being retrieved, while others remained intact.

"The results demonstrate a successful genetic method for rapidly and specifically erasing specific memories, such as new and old fear memories, in a controlled and inducible manner without doing harm to the brain cells," the researchers said.

Tsien said the technique might one day be applied to war veterans who "often suffer from reoccurring traumatic memory replays after returning home."

However, he warned that it was premature to expect a such a miracle cure.

"No one should expect to have a pill do the same in humans any time soon, we are barely at the foot of a very tall mountain," he said.

Bee swarm kills 3 dogs, injures 70-year-old woman in Florida

1 hour, 45 minutes ago

By The Associated Press

RIVIERA BEACH, Fla. - A 70-year-old woman is injured and three dogs are dead after a swarm of bees terrorized a neighbourhood in South Florida.

Authorities say crews removed about 25 kilograms of honeycomb from the side of a home in Palm Beach County after Friday's attack. The hive has been contained.

The bees swarmed Nancy Hill and her two dogs.

Hill was treated at a hospital, but the dogs died. The bees also attacked two other dogs in the neighbourhood. One of those died and the other was injured.

Lab tests should determine whether the bees were Africanized bees, also known as killer bees.

Their stings are no more potent than an ordinary bee's, but they are far more aggressive and attack in swarms.

Mail warns financial institutions of "payback"

2 hours, 44 minutes ago

By JoAnne Allen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Threatening letters containing a suspicious white powder mailed to three U.S. financial institutions warn "it's payback time," according to a text released by the FBI on Thursday.

More than 50 letters, with identical or similar threatening language, were sent to Chase Bank offices, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision, the FBI said.

"Steal tens of thousands of people's money and not expect repercussions (sic). It's payback time. What you just breathed in will kill you within 10 days. Thank (redacted) and the FDIC for your demise," said the text posted on the FBI Web site.

The agency also released a photograph of the envelope in which the letter was mailed. It was addressed to a Chase Bank branch in Lakewood, Colorado, and bears an Amarillo, Texas, postmark. All the letters were mailed from the city in the Texas panhandle, the FBI said.

Field tests determined that the powdery substance contained in most of the letters appears harmless, the FBI said, adding that other laboratory tests were being conducted.

U.S. authorities have been on alert for such letters since 2001, when envelopes laced with anthrax were sent to media outlets and U.S. lawmakers and killed five people.

The FBI released the photographs on its Web site and appealed for the public's help in identifying the person who mailed the threatening letters. (http://www.fbi.gov/page2/oct08/threatletters_102308.html)

"Please study the images above and see if you recognize the phrasing of the letter, the envelope label, or any other clue that you think might help investigators," the agency said.

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service is offering a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whomever is responsible.

The letters have been sent to at least 11 states, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, and Virginia.

The New York Times headquarters in Manhattan received envelopes containing a suspicious white powder on Wednesday, but an FBI official said it was not clear whether it was a related incident.

JPMorgan Chase & Co last week surpassed Citigroup Inc to become the largest U.S. bank. It has aggressively acquired other assets as the financial system has weakened, including the banking assets of Washington Mutual Inc.

Chan's Megastick

Britain museum notes discovery of a huge bug, the world's longest

Thu Oct 16, 8:48 PM

By The Associated Press

LONDON - A stick bug from the island of Borneo measuring well over 30 centimetres in length has been identified by researchers as the world's longest insect.

British scientists say the specimen was found by a local villager and handed to Malaysian amateur naturalist Datuk Chan Chew Lun in 1989.

Philip Bragg, who formally identified the insect in this month's issue of peer-reviewed journal Zootaxa, says the insect was named Phobaeticus chani, or "Chan's megastick," in Chan's honour.

Paul Brock, a scientific associate of the Natural History Museum in London unconnected to the insect's discovery, says there's no doubt it was the longest still in existence.

Looking like a pencil-thin shoot of bamboo, the dull-green insect measures about 56 centimetres, if its twig-like legs are counted.

Its body length is 35 centimetres, beating the previous record held by Phobaeticus kirbyi, also from Borneo, by about two centimetres.

Stick bugs have some of the animal kingdom's cleverest camouflage.

Although some use noxious sprays or prickly spines to deter predators, generally the bugs assume the shape of sticks and leaves to avoid drawing attention.

Brock says their main defence is basically just hanging around, looking like a twig. They sometimes just sway in the wind.

Construction workers unearthed Roman city of the dead, archeologists say

1 hour, 42 minutes ago

By Ariel David, The Associated Press

ROME - Workers renovating a rugby stadium have uncovered a vast complex of tombs beneath Rome that mimic the houses, blocks and streets of a real city, officials said Thursday as they unveiled a series of new finds here.

Culture Ministry officials said that medieval pottery shards in the city of the dead, or necropolis, show the area may have been inhabited by the living during the Dark Ages after being used for centuries for burials during the Roman period.

It is not yet clear who was buried in the ancient cemetery, but archeologists at the partially excavated site believe at least some of the dead were freed slaves of Greek origin.

"It's a matter of a few weeks to discover what is down there," said archeologist Marina Piranomonte. "But it's something big; it looks like a neighbourhood."

A separate dig in the north of the city has turned up the tomb of a nobleman who led Rome's legions in the second century AD.

The mausoleum was covered in mud during a flood of the river Tiber, which collapsed most of the monument but helped preserve exquisite decorations, marble columns and inscriptions from plunderers and the ravages of time.

Writings at the site led experts to identify the tomb as belonging to Marcus Nonius Macrinus, one of the closest aides and generals of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius during his campaigns against Germanic tribes in Northern Europe.

Other spectacular discoveries were also unveiled at the news conference at the Culture Ministry.

Archeologists restoring the imperial residences on the Palatine Hill, in the heart of ancient Rome, believe they have discovered the underground passageway in which the despotic Emperor Caligula was murdered by his own guards.

The hill, which is honeycombed with ruins of palaces and villas, has also yielded frescoes and black-and-white mosaics in the first century BC home of a patrician, the ministry said in a statement.

Separately, experts working in Castel di Guido on the outskirts of Rome have enlarged their dig at a previously known complex of country villas owned by Rome's rich and powerful, uncovering fountains, baths and a cistern, the statement said.

Archeologists will keep working at the digs to make them accessible to visitors. Officials plan to build a museum next to Macrinus' tomb, which will also offer a virtual reconstruction of the site.

This 1944 photo provided by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum shows Nazi officers and female auxiliaries, Helferinnen, posing on a wooden bridge in Solahutte. a little known SS resort some 30 km. south of Auschwitz on the Sola River in Poland, At center, Karl Hoecker. The photo is one of approximately 116 rare photographs of senior SS officers and Nazi officials at the Auschwitz concentration camp included in Hoecker's photo album, unveiled Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2007, by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Via

Woman changes name to a URL to protest animal dissections

Mon Oct 13, 11:38 PM

By The Associated Press

ASHEVILLE, North Carolina - You can call her CutoutDissection.com, Cutout for short, but just don't call her Jennifer.

The former Jennifer Thornburg - whose driver's license now reads Dissection.com, Cutout - wanted to do something to protest animal dissections in schools.

The 19-year-old's new name is also the web address for an anti-dissection page of the site for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, where she is interning.

"I normally do have to repeat my name several times when I am introducing myself to someone new," she told The Asheville Citizen-Times. "Once they find out what my name is, they want to know more about what the website is about."

The Asheville High School graduate who is working in Virginia said she began opposing dissections in middle school after a class assignment to cut up a chicken wing made her uncomfortable. She helped create a policy at her high school that allows students who object to dissections to complete an alternative assignment.

Despite her legally changing the name, she said most of her family members still call her Jennifer.

"It will take me a while," said her dad, Duane Thornburg, who lives in Daytona Beach, Florida. "She's still Jennifer to me. I understand why she's done it. Believe it or not, I totally respect it."

A CD showing the treatment of animals before they are dissected finally convinced him to support his daughter's cause, he said.

Pooh characters adorn vacant house in Flint, Michigan

Mon Oct 13, 11:14 AM

By The Associated Press

FLINT, Mich. - Characters from the beloved story of Winnie the Pooh are brightening one of the many vacant homes in the struggling industrial city of Flint, Mich.

Twenty-year-old Kristina Pringle has a sketch pad full of cartoon characters.

Since August, she's been applying her hobby to beautifying an unoccupied house near her own home, painting Winnie's friends on the boarded-up windows.

She was recruited by Art Wenzlaff, community relations director of the nearby International Academy of Flint charter school.

Hoping to beautify the neighbourhood, he used donations and grant money to supply Pringle and other volunteers with art supplies. City officials gave their blessing to the project.

Wenzlaff says the project seems to bring "some vibrancy to the community."

Russia's Vladimir Putin gets tiger cub for his birthday

Fri Oct 10, 8:55 AM

By The Associated Press

MOSCOW - There's no doubt what Vladimir Putin's favourite birthday present is this year - a rare Ussuri tiger cub.

State television showed the Russian prime minister tenderly petting the two-month-old female cub on Friday at his residence outside Moscow. The cub, weighing only about 10 kilograms, was curled up in a wicker basket with a tiger-print cushion.

Putin said a good home will be found for the tiger, presumably in a zoo or wildlife preserve. He hasn't decided what to call her, but is leaning toward Mashenka or Milashka.

Putin refused to say who gave him the cub for his 56th birthday, which was Tuesday.

He called Russian journalists to his country home late Thursday without telling them why. Past midnight, after asking them "not to make noise, make a clatter or squeal," Putin ushered the curious journalists into the room where the tiger cub was waiting.

As president and now prime minister, Putin is known for his tough talk and macho image. But children and animals seem to bring out a softer side.

His dog, a Labrador Retriever named Koni, is often with him, even during meetings with world leaders. He told journalists that Koni has not yet met the tiger cub.

In August, Putin had occasion to pet a full-grown female Ussuri tiger after shooting her with a tranquilizer gun. He was visiting a wildlife preserve in Russia's Far East and shot the five-year-old tiger as part of a program to track the rare cats, also known as the Siberian, Amur or Manchurian tiger.

Once the tiger was asleep, Putin placed a collar with a GPS tracking system around her neck. Television footage showed him patting her cheek like a pet.

Fewer than 400 Ussuri tigers are believed to survive in the wild, most of them in Russia and some in China. They are the largest tiger species, weighing up to 270 kilograms.

Sex a 'hassle,' says 105-year-old virgin

Fri Oct 10, 6:42 AM

LONDON (AFP) - A woman who celebrated her 105th birthday this week said the secret to long life was celibacy, adding that she imagined sex was a "lot of hassle."

Clara Meadmore, who marked her birthday with a drop of wine at the Perran Bay nursing home in Cornwall, southwest England, also received a card from Queen Elizabeth II.

"People have asked me whether I am a homosexual and the answer is no," Meadmore said.

"I have just never been interested in sex.

"I imagine there is a lot of hassle involved and I have always been busy doing other things."

Born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1903, Meadmore lived in Canada and New Zealand as a child before returning to Britain in her 20s to work as a secretary and housekeeper.

She served with the army in Egypt during World War II, and subsequently lived in London and New Zealand before retiring 40 years ago in Cornwall.

NYC National Debt Clock runs out of digits
By The Associated Press

NEW YORK - In a sign of the times, the National Debt Clock in New York City has run out of digits to record the growing figure.

As a short-term fix, the digital dollar sign on the billboard-style clock near Times Square has been switched to a figure - the "1" in $10 trillion. It's marking the federal government's current debt at about $10.2 trillion. The Durst Organization says it plans to update the sign next year by adding two digits. That will make it capable of tracking debt up to a quadrillion dollars.

The late Manhattan real estate developer Seymour Durst put the sign up in 1989 to call attention to what was then a $2.7 trillion debt.

Man nabbed for skinny dipping in moat that rings the Imperial Palace in Tokyo

Tue Oct 7, 11:18 AM

By Mari Yamaguchi, The Associated Press

TOKYO - Police have apprehended a westerner who went skinny dipping in a moat ringing the Imperial Palace in Tokyo.

The naked middle-aged man attracted a huge crowd as he jumped into the moat, then threw rocks and splashed water at two policemen who chased him in a rowboat. Japanese police said they had no information on the man's identity.

But Public broadcaster NHK and Kyodo News agency say the man is believed to be a 40-year-old Briton living in Spain who visited the moat with several Spanish friends.

TV footage showed the man swimming around the moat as police chased him with a long stick, attracting a crowd of onlookers.

He was in the water for about an hour before getting out and climbing a stone wall only to fall into the hands of waiting police. No word on possible charges.

A palace official said Emperor Akihito was in the palace, but that it was unlikely he saw the nude swimmer.

From the Annals of Improbable Research

Spermicide Coke, stale chips research wins Ig Nobels

Fri Oct 3, 7:01 PM

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A researcher who figured out that Coke explodes sperm and scientists who discovered that people will happily eat stale chips if they crunch loudly enough won alternative "Ig Nobel" prizes Thursday.

Other winners included physicists who found out that anything that can tangle, will tangle and a team of biologists who ascertained that dog fleas jump farther than cat fleas.

The Ig Nobels honor real research, but are meant as a funny alternative to next week's deadly serious Nobel prizes for medicine, chemistry, physics, economics, literature and peace.

Awarded by the editors of the Annals of Improbable Research, a scientific humor magazine, the prizes are based on published research, some intended to be humorous but often not. Usually the "honored" researchers go along with the joke.

Deborah Anderson of Boston University Medical Center and colleagues were awarded the chemistry prize for a 1985 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that found Coca-Cola kills sperm.

She said she was serious in testing the soft drink because women were using it in a douche as a contraceptive and, later, to try to protect themselves from the AIDS virus.

"It definitely wouldn't work as a contraceptive because sperm swims so fast," Anderson said. But Coke made with sugar quickly kills sperm, she said, probably because sperm soak it up. "The sperm just kind of explode," she said in a telephone interview.

It kills the AIDS virus too, she said.

The Ig Nobel committee made up a "nutrition prize" to go to Massimiliano Zampini of the University of Trento, Italy and Charles Spence of Britain's Oxford University, who tricked people into thinking they were eating fresh potato chips by playing them loud, crunching sounds when they bit one.

The biology prize goes to a French team that found dog fleas can jump higher than cat fleas, while the medicine prize was awarded to a team at Duke University in North Carolina who showed that high-priced placebos work better than cheap fake medicine.

Dorian Raymer of the Scripps Institution in San Diego and a colleague won the physics prize for demonstrating mathematically why hair or a ball of string will inevitably tangle itself in knots.

The peace prize was given to the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology for adopting the legal principle that plants have moral standing and dignity. There is a website explaining this: http://www.ekah.admin.ch/en/topics/dignity-of-creation/index.html.

A team at The University of Sao Paulo in Brazil won a special archaeology prize for showing how an armadillo can mess up an archaeological dig.

The economics prize went to researchers at the University of New Mexico who learned that a professional lap dancer earns bigger tips when she is most fertile, while David Sims of Cass Business School in London won the literature prize "for his lovingly written study 'You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations'," the committee said.

Past winners include the creator of the plastic pink flamingo, a researcher who recorded a mallard duck sodomizing a dead drake and a doctor who cured hiccups by applying digital rectal massage.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox, editing by Anthony Boadle)

And

Strippers, armadillos inspire Ig Nobel winners

Thu Oct 2, 8:48 PM

By Mark Pratt, The Associated Press

BOSTON - Deborah Anderson had heard the urban legends about the contraceptive effectiveness of Coca-Cola products for years.

So she and her colleagues decided to put the soft drink to the test. In the lab, that is.

For discovering that, yes indeed, Coke was a spermicide, Anderson and her team are among this year's winners of the Ig Nobel prize, the annual award given by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine to oddball but often surprisingly practical scientific achievements.

The ceremony at Harvard University, in which actual Nobel laureates bestow the awards, also honoured a British psychologist who found foods that sound better taste better; a group of researchers who discovered exotic dancers make more money when they are at peak fertility; and a pair of Brazilian archeologists who determined armadillos can change the course of history.

Anderson, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Boston University's School of Medicine, and her colleagues found that not only was Coca-Cola a spermicide, but that Diet Coke for some reason worked best. Their study appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1985.

"We're thrilled to win an Ig Nobel, because the study was somewhat of a parody in the first place," Anderson said, adding she does not recommend using Coke for birth control purposes.

A group of Taiwanese doctors were honoured for a similar study that found Coca-Cola and other soft drinks were not effective contraceptives. Anderson said the studies used different methodology.

A Coca-Cola spokeswoman refused comment on the Ig Nobel awards.

Duke University behavioural economist Dan Ariely won an Ig Nobel for his study that found more expensive fake medicines work better than cheaper fake medicines.

"When you expect something to happen, your brain makes it happen," Ariely said.

Ariely spent three years in a hospital after suffering third-degree burns over 70 per cent of his body. He noticed some burn patients who woke in the night in extreme pain often went right back to sleep after being given a shot. A nurse confided to him the injections were often just saline solution.

He says his work has implications for the way drugs are marketed. People often think generic medicine is inferior. But gussy it up a bit, change the name, make it appear more expensive, and maybe it will work better, he said.

Charles Spence's award-winning work also has to do with the way the mind functions. Spence, a professor of experimental psychology at Oxford University in England, found that potato chips - "crisps" to the British - that sound crunchier taste better.

His findings have already been put to work at the world-famous Fat Duck Restaurant in England, where diners who purchase one seafood dish also get an iPod that plays ocean sounds as they eat.

Geoffrey Miller's work could affect the earning potential of exotic dancers everywhere.

Miller, an associate professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico, and his colleagues knew of prior studies that found women are more attractive to men when at peak fertility. So they took the work one step further - by studying earnings of exotic dancers.

In the 18 subjects Miller studied, average earnings were $250 for a five-hour shift. That jumped to $350 to $400 per five-hour shift when the women were their most fertile, he said.

"I have heard, anecdotally, that some lap dancers have scheduled shifts based on this research," he said.

Armadillos helped win an Ig Nobel for Astolfo Gomes de Mello Araujo, a professor of archeology at the Universidade De Sao Paulo in Brazil, and a colleague earned.

Pesky armadillos, they found, can move artifacts in archeological dig sites up, down and even laterally by several metres as they dig. Armadillos are burrowing mammals and prolific diggers. Their abodes can range from emergency burrows 50 centimetres deep, to more permanent homes reaching six metres deep, with networks of tunnels and multiple entrances, according to the Humane Society of the United States' website.

Araujo was thrilled to win. "There is no Nobel Prize for archeology, so an Ig Nobel is a good thing," he said in an e-mail.

-

On the Web:

Ig Nobels: http://www.improbable.com

-

Ig Nobel winners inspired by fleas, Coca-Cola

The 2008 Ig Nobel winners, awarded Thursday at Harvard University by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine:

NUTRITION: Massimiliano Zampini and Charles Spence for demonstrating that food tastes better when it sounds better.

PEACE: The Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology and the citizens of Switzerland for adopting the legal principle that plants have dignity.

ARCHAEOLOGY: Astolfo Gomes de Mello Araujo and Jose Carlos Marcelino for showing armadillos can scramble the contents of an archeological dig.

BIOLOGY: Marie-Christine Cadiergues, Christel Joubert and Michel Franc for discovering that fleas that live on a dog can jump higher than fleas that live on a cat.

MEDICINE: Dan Ariely for demonstrating that expensive fake medicine is more effective than cheap fake medicine.

COGNITIVE SCIENCE: Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Hiroyasu Yamada, Ryo Kobayashi, Atsushi Tero, Akio Ishiguro and Agota Toth for discovering that slime moulds can solve puzzles.

ECONOMICS: Geoffrey Miller, Joshua Tyber and Brent Jordan for discovering that exotic dancers earn more when at peak fertility.

PHYSICS: Dorian Raymer and Douglas Smith for proving that heaps of string or hair will inevitably tangle.

CHEMISTRY: Sheree Umpierre, Joseph Hill and Deborah Anderson for discovering that Coca-Cola is an effective spermicide, and C.Y. Hong, C.C. Shieh, P. Wu and B.N. Chiang for proving it is not.

LITERATURE: David Sims for his study "You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations."

-

Source: Annals of Improbable Research.

Shootings, hundreds of arrests mar Brazilian local elections

1 hour, 41 minutes ago

RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) - The shooting deaths of at least seven people and the arrests of 808 others -- including 101 candidates -- marred local elections held Sunday across Brazil that were expected to give a big boost to the country's ruling coalition and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

A 30-year-old unidentified man was also shot and wounded in the leg by guards when he ignored warnings and tried to enter Lula's official residence in the capital Brasilia, officials said.

Lula was not there at the time, having gone to his southwestern home town of Sao Bernardo do Campo to vote.

The incidents did not have a significant effect on the elections in the country, where 128 million voters were obliged by law to cast ballots, officials said.

The four-year mandates for mayors and municipal councillors in 5,563 towns, cities and villages were up for grabs.

Lula's leftwing Workers' Party (PT in its Portuguese initials) and its 13 coalition partners were expected to sweep many of the bigger urban centers.

The mayors for the three biggest cities -- Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte -- would have to be decided in run-off elections to be held October 26, however, according to exit poll results released by the Ibope institute.

The Superior Electoral Court said after voting ended that 2,511 polling violation complaints had been registered during the day, resulting in the 808 arrests.

Many of the 101 candidates apprehended were running in the largely rural states of Minas Gerais, Espiritu Santo and Mato Grosso, it said.

Local media reported that three people, including the brother of a candidate running for mayor, were killed in two gunfire exchanges in the northeastern town of Bom Lugar where rival political groups clashed.

In Rio, a man in a western slum was shot for allegedly insulting some of the 5,000 soldiers deployed to keep order in the crime-ridden city Sunday along with 27,000 police officers. Three other people were shot and killed in another part of the city by police who said they were battling drug traffickers.

In the northern town of Juriti, dozens of voters emptied ballot boxes in anger over several would-be candidates being barred from running because of irregularities.

The popularity of Lula, who has a public approval rating as high as 80 percent, was expected to hand a big advantage to candidates running under his political umbrella.

The PT controlled 13 of Brazil's 79 biggest urban centers going into the election and would likely win another 22, analyses by newspapers said.

The allied centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) was expected to win another 17 or so, while the opposition Social Democrats were expected to pocket around 20.

A political science professor, David Fleischer, said it was possible 600 PT mayors would be elected nationwide -- 50 percent more than in the last local elections in 2004.

The Folha de S. Paulo daily said the PT could win as many 700 municipalities.

"If things continue like this, the opposition is going to disappear," complained an opposition senator, Demostenes Torres, before the elections.

Political analysts said that, if PT's gains are confirmed by final results, Lula's efforts to be succeeded by his current chief of staff, Dilma Roussef, would be reinforced.

Under Brazil's constitution, Lula has to step down at the end of 2010 after having served the maximum two four-year terms.

The former trade unionist has won plaudits from both Brazil's poor and business elite for his centrist policies, which were accompanied by an economic boom driven by commodities exports.

Chinese shopping mall selling Mao Zedong's plane

Fri Oct 3, 6:10 AM

By The Associated Press

BEIJING - Mao Zedong's jet is up for sale.

It seems a shopping mall in the southern town of Zhuhai where the late Chinese leader's official plane is on display needs to make room for parking.

However the mall's owner (Zhuhai Ridong Group) declined to disclose the asking price or other details.

The British-made Trident jetliner was retired in 1986 and was sold to the mall's owners in 1999, according to the Chinese newspaper Southern Metropolis Daily.

Southern Metropolis Daily reports Mao's plane was one of three Tridents bought by Beijing in 1969. Mao died in 1976.

Another Trident served as the personal plane of Lin Biao, Mao's heir apparent, who died when it crashed in 1971 in Mongolia after what some accounts say was a failed coup attempt against Mao.

Triumph of the Guillotine
Taunay, Nicolas-Antoine.
Oil on canvas. 129x168 cm
France. 1795

'Battered' testicles on the menu in nutty e-cookbook

47 minutes ago

LONDON (AFP) - Squeamish men look away now: a Serbian chef is bringing out Thursday a no-holds-barred guide to cuisine with a twist: "The Testicle Cookbook: Cooking With Balls."

Hailed as the world's first testicle recipe collection by e-book publishers YUDU, the cookbook includes author Ljubomir Erovic's favourite dishes, like testicle pizza, battered testicles and and barbecued testicles and giblets.

The e-book, available for download from the Internet, comes with handy video guides showing the Serb peeling the skin off testicles and slicing them up into bite-size chunks.

Several different animals, including stallions, ostriches, bulls, pigs and turkeys, get the Erovic treatment.

"Wash testicles thoroughly for 30-45 minutes," begins the recipe for testicles pie.

"Once softened, mince them in a mincer."

A "very sharp knife" is needed for traditional style testicles, which get boiled, cut up and deep fried in hot oil.

Erovic, 45, may be self-taught in the art of testicle cuisine but his 20 years of "cooking with balls" make him a world authority in the field.

"The tastiest testicles in my opinion probably come from bulls, stallions or ostriches, although other people have their own favourites," he said.

"All testicles can be eaten -- except human, of course."

Testicles are rich in testosterone and they are believed to be a powerful aphrodisiac in countries such as Serbia and China.

"The best for aphrodisiac properties are sheep and stallion testicles", said Erovic.

And with the credit crunch kicking in, more people may give up their rump steaks and turn to testicles instead.

Erovic also organises the World Testicle Cooking Championship, held annually in Serbia since 2004. It draws in chefs from Australia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Norway and Serbia. One metric tonne of testicles are prepared.

"When not cooking or eating testicles, or helping others to do so, (Erovic) now runs a company involved in the maintenance of medical and dental equipment," the book said.