This weeks’ collection of the lame, the halt and the deeply disturbed, including the last weenie roast of the summer.
From AFP On Wednesday
A Japanese game maker said Wednesday it would withdraw arm-wrestling machines from arcades after three players — two of them foreigners — broke their arms. Players would choose a strength level from 10 characters, ranging from a maid to a professional wrestler, and face off with an artificial arm on the other side of the table. A 25-year-old South Korean man broke his right arm while playing the game in Osaka, while a 19-year-old Frenchman and 24-year-old Japanese man also suffered arm fractures, the company said.
Atlus, a Tokyo-based arcade game maker, said it will remove the 155 machines of the game — called "Udedamashii," which means Arms Spirits — which were put into service just a month ago.
"We had done careful simulations on the possibility of injuries before putting it on sale, but unexpected accidents can happen with game machines when people are too excited or fail to follow instructions," a company spokeswoman said. "But I’m afraid some foreign nationals couldn’t understand the instructions well as it was written only in Japanese," she said. By paying 100 yen, or just under one dollar, the player would have two battles of strength.
I’ll pay the $1 to pit any 13 year-old boy without a girlfriend against the machine, as long as he can have a copy of FHM or Maxim to help.
From the Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre, PA Police officer charged with prostitution
Part-timer for Newport Township arrested in sting at W-B motel. By Edward Lewis
A Newport Township part-time police officer was working as an escort when he was arrested in a prostitution sting at a Wilkes-Barre motel on Friday, according to arrest papers. Levi Gibbon Jr., 40, of East North Street, Wilkes-Barre, was charged by the state police Organized Crime Unit with a single count of prostitution. He was arraigned before Hanover Township District Judge Joseph Halesey and released on $5,000 bail.
Newport Township Solicitor Richard Shiptoski said Gibbon has been suspended without pay until resolution of the charge, a third-degree misdemeanor. Gibbon couldn’t be reached for comment on Tuesday.
I know being a part time cop does not pay well, but couldn’t he check the schedule before going to his other job.
From ABCNews Aug 22, 2007
BEIJING (Reuters) – A Beijing factory recycled used chopsticks and sold up to 100,000 pairs a day without any form of disinfection, a newspaper said on Wednesday, the latest in a string of Chinese food and product safety scares.
Counterfeit, shoddy and dangerous products are widespread in China, whose exports have been rocked in recent months by a spate of safety scandals, ranging from pet food to medicine, tires, toothpaste and toys. Officials raided the factory and seized about half a million pairs of recycled disposable bamboo chopsticks and a packaging machine, the Beijing News said.
The owner, identified only by his surname Wu, said he had sold the recycled chopsticks for 0.04 yuan a pair and made an average of about 1,000 yuan ($130) a day. Wu, who had no license to sell the goods, said he had sold 100,000 pairs a day when business was good.
From AFP under the heading to Tit for Tat
(Xinhua) China said Wednesday it had discovered many safety problems with soybeans imported from the United States, urging US authorities to deal with the problem. "Inspection and quarantine units in various areas have discovered a large number of quality and safety problems with imports of US soybeans," the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said.
"We have reported this to the US side, demanding that it look into the causes and adopt effective measures to ensure that a situation like this does not repeat itself," it said on its website. It detailed a series of safety problems, including the discovery of sorghum halepense and other exotic harmful weeds among the soybeans. There was no mention in the statement of any plan to restrict or halt imports of US soybeans.
Recent global scares over the safety of China’s exports — ranging from toys to clothes to toothpaste — have not made major headlines in the nation’s state-run media. However, frequent reports have emerged about safety problems in goods imported into China, especially from the United States.
On Monday, China said it had returned 272 heart pacemakers imported from the United States after they failed quality inspections. The Xinhua news agency quoted the general administration as saying the pacemakers posed potential threats to patients’ lives as they could cause misdiagnoses.
Of course there were defective pacemakers, half the components were made in China and the other half in that hotbed of medical device technology, Taiwan. Perhaps it is just a way for Taiwan to get even…
Survey: Seniors Have Sex Into 70s, 80s
Aug 22, 8:24 PM (ET) BY MARILYNN MARCHIONE
(AP) An unprecedented study of sex and seniors finds that many older people are surprisingly frisky – willing to do, and talk about, intimate acts that would make their grandchildren blush. That may be too much information for some folks, but it comes from the most comprehensive sex survey ever done among 57- to 85-year-olds in the United States.
Sex and interest in it do fall off when people are in their 70s, but more than a quarter of those up to age 85 reported having sex in the previous year. And the drop-off has a lot to do with health or lack of a partner, especially for women, the survey found.
The federally funded study, done by respected scientists and published in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine, overturns some stereotypical notions that physical pleasure is just a young person’s game. "Most people assume that people stop doing it after some vague age," said sex researcher Edward Laumann of the University of Chicago. However, more than half of those aged 57 to 75 said they gave or received oral sex, as did about a third of 75- to 85-year-olds.
The rumor is that there is sex in the afterlife. The drawback? You can’t feel it.
And to wind up with the final summer weenie roast…
MOSCOW (Reuters) – A woman set fire to her ex-husband’s penis as he sat naked watching television and drinking vodka, Moscow police said Wednesday. Asked if the man would make a full recovery, a police spokeswoman said it was "difficult to predict."
The attack climaxed three years of acrimonious enforced co-habitation. The couple divorced three years ago but continued to share a small flat, something common in Russia where property costs are very high. "It was monstrously painful," the wounded ex-husband told Tvoi Den newspaper. "I was burning like a torch. I don’t know what I did to deserve this."
Hmmm. Would sitting around the apartment for three years, watching television, naked and drinking vodka all day long constitute a ‘reason’ for your ex to set fire to you? She was probably trying to see if you were still alive.
RoadDave 