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http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2007-11-09-mr-toilet_N.htm

‘Mr. Toilet’ nears completion of commode-shaped house

SUWON, South Korea — Sim Jae-duck has made his political career as South Korea’s Mr. Toilet by beautifying public restrooms. Now he’s got a home befitting his title: a toilet-shaped domicile complete with the latest in lavatory luxury.
Sim is building the two-story house set to be finished Sunday to commemorate the inaugural meeting later this month of the World Toilet Association. The group, supported by the South Korean government, aims no less than to launch a “toilet revolution,” by getting people to open their bathroom doors for the sake of improving worldwide hygiene.

Representatives from 60 countries will gather in Seoul to spur the creation of national toilet associations of their own and spread the word about hygiene. Organizers argue the issue deserves greater attention and cite U.N. figures that some 2.5 billion people live without proper sanitation or water supplies.

“The toilet revolution should start with talking about toilet issues freely,” said Song Young-kwon, head of the organizing committee for the five-day conference that opens Nov. 21.

The Seoul conference will be accompanied by a toilet expo featuring exhibits to excite the public about the cause: including a “Hansel and Gretel” bathroom made from cookies and candy that gives presents to children when they flush, and a “toilet gallery cafe” where people can sit on colorful commodes while drinking tea.

FIND MORE STORIES IN: South Korea | Seoul | Sim | Suwon
Sim, a lawmaker in the National Assembly, hopes his house in his hometown Suwon, some 30 miles south of Seoul, will help bring attention to the cause and is seeking a guest to pay $50,000 to stay one night with the proceeds to benefit the association that hopes to work with developing nations to build more and better toilets.

Several candidates have already expressed interest, but Sim said he would choose someone who can appropriately represent his cause — with the proceeds set to fund his foundation’s work. Visitors just wanting a glimpse inside the bowl will be charged a $1 donation.

“Toilets stand central to people’s lives,” Sim said as workers scurried to put the finishing touches on the home — including installing the final toilet inside.

The toilet theme is central to the house named Haewoojae, or a “place to solve one’s worries,” shaped like a 24½-foot-tall toilet bowl. Thinking of how to push forward his cause of having better hygiene and sanitation, Sim tore down his former home to build the $1.1 million building.

In case they had any doubt about who would choose to live here, a plaque inscribed “Mr. Toilet’s House” greets visitors. As a former mayor of Suwon, Sim spearheaded a campaign to beautify the city’s restrooms — part of a national push to spruce up the country’s facilities for hosting events such as the 1988 Summer Olympics and 2002 World Cup.

A showpiece bathroom at the center of the 4,520-square-foot house is on display through a floor-to-ceiling window made of glass that turns opaque at the touch of a button. When guests enter to do their business, a motion sensor activates classical music.

The bathroom emerges into a spacious living room featuring a grand staircase and lined by windows curving around the rounded facade of the building.

The home has four bathrooms that include a whirlpool bathtub, urinals and large glass showers.

Occupants gain access to the roof balcony around the rim of the “bowl” by climbing up stairs through what would be a toilet drain — which is equipped to collect rain for some functions to conserve drinking water. The home is encased in smooth, white-painted steel that appears similar to the ceramics used to make toilets.

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 Fiona MacRae from the www.dailymail.co.uk on Aug. 6th reports now that research is indicating that diabetic cats in the U.K. are approaching the half million mark. 

Fat cat!

 Mice can relax. Even nesting birds can sing a little more cheerily.

Their number one enemy, it seems, is getting so fat he can barely be bothered to get off the sofa for a night’s hunting.

Vets have found that cats are imitating their owners’ couch potato lifestyle.

As a result of eating more and exercising less, more than a third of cats are overweight and the number of cases of feline diabetes has risen five-fold in 30 years.

Edinburgh University (U.K.) researchers estimate that one in 230 – or up to 400,000 pet cats – is diabetic.

“The lifestyle of cats is changing. They are tending to eat too much, gain weight and take less exercise . . . Unfortunately, just like people, cats will over-eat if they are offered too much tasty food, particularly if they are bored and have little else to do . . . so they have little to do all day but eat, sleep and gain weight.”

-Danielle Gunn-Moore, a professor of feline medicine

Take “Goliath” for example:

In addition, stressed-out Britons are increasingly relying on cats for companionship.

Vet Elaine Pendlebury said much of the problem was because of owners giving their cats calorie-laden treats.

She said: “People are feeding them things like sausages from their own table. Sausages are quite high in salt and quite fatty.

“If you want to give your cat a treat, give it a small bit of boiled chicken or, even better, play a game with your cat.”

The diabetes study, published in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery, looked at the veterinary records of 14,000 cats, coupled with questionnaires filled in by owners.

Cats are not the only pets to be losing the battle of the bulge. A quarter of dogs are clinically obese and overweight rabbits and even hamsters are also a common sight in vets’ surgeries.

Garfield ain’t nothing to this!

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http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSSYD1415720070801

Catholic dean on leave after YouTube outburst
Wed Aug 1, 2007 9:27AM EDT
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Free $50,000 Practice Account.CANBERRA (Reuters) – A Roman Catholic priest who unleashed a torrent of expletives and racist abuse against skateboarders outside his Australian cathedral, only to have the outburst filmed and placed on YouTube, has been put on leave.

The Reverend Monsignor Geoff Baron, the dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Australia’s second biggest city, Melbourne, was videotaped swearing at and abusing a group of teenagers using the cathedral grounds as a skate park.

“Move, you f****** fool,” Baron tells one skater in the video, slapping one of the group across the head and prompting a torrent of abuse in reply.

Pointing to a skater lying on the ground, Baron is heard telling the youth “Little foreigner there, look at the sleepy eyes, black hair.”

“At least he’s got hair. You f****** bald p****,” one youth replies. Others spat on and shoved the furious priest.

The embarrassed Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Denis Hart, placed Baron on indefinite leave after the outburst appeared on YouTube, while security guards began patrolling the cathedral grounds Wednesday amid threats of reprisal attacks.

“I want to relieve the dean of the pressures and responsibilities he carries as dean of the cathedral,” Hart said, promising further action.

Baron apologized for the outburst Tuesday, but on radio described the skaters as “jackals and hyenas” who had provoked him with allegations he was a pedophile.

“It was outrageous behavior. I let myself down terribly badly, quite clearly, and I’ve also brought scandal and shock to other people,” he told local radio.

The video clip of the outburst, which was filmed a year ago but only recently posted on YouTube, was viewed tens of thousands of times but is now listed as “removed by the user.”

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A Scheme to Profit From Panda Poop
By AUDRA ANG,AP
Posted: 2007-07-30 13:18:58
Filed Under: Weird News
BEIJING (July 30) — Nothing says “I love you” like a photo frame made from panda poop.

The Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Base has come up with a dung-for-profit scheme that turns droppings from the endangered species into odor-free souvenirs ranging from bookmarks to Olympic-themed statues of the animals, state media and base officials said Monday.

AP

The facility in the southwestern province of Sichuan houses about 40 bamboo-fed pandas who produce less than a ton of excrement a day.

“We used to spend at least 6,000 yuan ($770) a month to get rid of the droppings but now they can be lucrative,” Jing Shimin, assistant to the base director, was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency.

The products will be made at a local handicraft company mostly from undigested bamboo culled from the panda waste through a special process, Xinhua said.

An official who answered the phone at the Chengdu facility said the dung is “carefully selected, smashed, dried and sterilized at 300 degrees Celsius (572 degrees Fahrenheit).” He refused to give his name but said the products will be of all colors because they will be dyed.

“They don’t smell too bad because 70 percent of the dung is just remains of the bamboo that the pandas are unable to digest,” Jing said.

While no price has been set, he said the most expensive souvenirs will contain a panda hair – collected from the wild – in each package.

The 2008 Olympic statues will feature “athletic pandas performing various Olympic sports,” Xinhua said.

In March, base officials said they were looking into making high-quality paper from the fiber-rich panda excrement, inspired by a trip to Thailand, where they found paper made from elephant dung.

The Chiang Mai Zoo in northern Thailand already sells multicolored paper made from waste produced by its two resident pandas. Making paper there involves a daylong process of cleaning the feces, boiling it in a soda solution, bleaching it with chlorine and drying it under the sun.

The panda is one of the world’s rarest and most beloved animals, with about 1,590 living in the wild in China, mostly in Sichuan and the western province of Shaanxi. Another 180 have been bred in captivity.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2007-07-30 12:11:55

http://news.aol.com/story/_a/a-scheme-to-profit-from-panda-poop/20070730121109990001

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/07/19/glacier.nudes.ap/index.html

BOSTON (Reuters) – A planned Republican fundraiser in New Hampshire aims to promote gun ownership in America by letting supporters fire powerful military-style weapons — from Uzi submachine guns to M-16 rifles.

The Manchester Republican Committee is inviting party members and their families to a “Machine Gun Shoot” where, for $25 (12.12 pounds), supporters can spend a day trying out automatic weapons, said organizer Jerry Thibodeau.

“It’s a fun day. It’s a family day,” said Thibodeau of the August 5 event. “It’s quite exciting.”

Local Democrats say the event is in poor taste amid a spike in violent crime in Manchester and seeks to glorify the use of machine guns for political gain. The right to own guns has come under heightened scrutiny since the April shooting at Virginia Tech where a gunman killed 32 people.

“It is downright offensive,” Chris Pappas, the Manchester Democratic party chairman, told the Union Leader newspaper.

Thibodeau said he invited all the Republican candidates in the 2008 presidential race to the event at Pelham Fish and Game Club outside of Manchester, the state’s largest city, but he said they declined. He said all shooters would undergo training.

Buying a gun in New Hampshire, whose official motto is “Live Free or Die,” is relatively easy.

The state does not require buyers to obtain a handgun license or undergo safety training before buying a handgun, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a gun-control lobby group.

The Democratic presidential candidates will line a stage in Charleston, S.C., tonight for their first official debate.

And already, debate fatigue is setting in.

The Democratic contenders have taken part in three “unofficial” debates this year, on top of numerous other “forums” sponsored by various political constituencies. The schedule is only going to get more demanding: After tonight’s debate, sponsored by CNN and YouTube and the first of six sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee, there will be a crush of events, culminating in one week in early August when unofficial debates are planned in Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles.

At the end of a recent gathering in Detroit sponsored by the NAACP, former senator John Edwards (N.C.) and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) were overheard discussing their desire to limit the number of participants in the process, as well as the number of debates themselves.

The conversation, which the two candidates appeared to think was private but was caught on an open microphone, captured what strategists, particularly in the top campaigns, have been saying privately all year. Other candidates outside the top tier, particularly Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (Ohio), blasted the discussion as a slight.

“Everyone is afraid to say no,” said Democratic strategist Steve Elmendorf, who is backing Clinton but not working for the campaign.

“Some group is sponsoring it who is an important constituency, and they don’t want to get in trouble,” he said. “The staff all sit around and wring their hands and say, ‘We wish we weren’t doing all these.’ “

The problem is not, Elmendorf said, “the debate itself.”

“It is the debate prep, it is the travel,” he said. “The problem with debates is you don’t control your fate or your schedule. If you’re a candidate, you want to be the one to decide when you go to Los Angeles or Miami. You don’t want to be told you have to be there.”

The next DNC-approved debate is scheduled for Aug. 19 in Iowa, followed by an official debate in New Hampshire in late September and four more debates in early-primary states after that. With the candidates already spending so much time in the early-voting states, those debates are considered the least disruptive to meeting the other demands of campaigning.

But some of the others — for example, a debate focusing on gay and lesbian issues in Los Angeles on Aug. 9 — are putting strains on the campaign schedulers, who are already caught between finding time for the candidates to spend in early states and finding time for fundraising. The evolving and ever advancing primary calendar has made the crunch worse, several strategists for Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be seen as complaining about the debates.

It is a much smaller problem on the Republican side, where there has not been a debate since June 5 and where there are fewer advocacy groups demanding attention from the field. The next GOP debate is scheduled for early August, when all the candidates will appear on ABC’s “This Week,” hosted by George Stephanopoulos.

Even Clinton, a disciplined and experienced candidate with a polished delivery on policy matters, sets aside time to prepare for each debate, underscoring how none of the campaigns treat the forums as toss-away events.

As the Democratic Party did in 2004, DNC Chairman Howard Dean tried at one point to intervene in the process, brokering the deal that resulted in six debates this fall (the same number held in the last election cycle). Yet there is nothing to stop the candidates from signing up with every special interest group that makes an offer, and the lesser-known candidates, such as Kucinich and Sens. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.) and Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.), often do, forcing the front-runners’ hands.

Edwards, frustrated by the time restrictions forced on the candidates when so many are on the stage, has offered to participate in a smaller, three-person event with Clinton and Kucinich, if the other candidates will accept similar events.

“Senator Edwards feels strongly that voters deserve more substantive debates between the candidates,” Eric Schultz, a campaign spokesman, said yesterday. “One way to do that would be to break up the field into smaller groups for real debates. You cannot explain how you will end the war in Iraq or solve the climate crisis in 60 seconds.”

Geoffrey Garin, a Democratic pollster who is not affiliated with any campaign, said part of the problem for the campaigns is that the significance of each debate is diminished by having so many, and each one offers an opportunity for the candidates to make mistakes. Still, he said, “these are not the functional equivalent of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. It’s just another venue where voters have a chance to hear and see how the candidates handle themselves.”

But Rep. James E. Clyburn (D) of South Carolina — home to tonight’s debate — said the process itself is to blame. “I think there may be some danger of campaign fatigue, but I don’t think anybody will get all that upset about the debates,” he said. “I think they get upset about being in campaign mode for such a long period of time.”

BERLIN (Reuters) – A mysterious blonde paid a visit to a petrol station shop in the small eastern German town of Doemitz on Sunday — wearing nothing but a pair of golden stilettos and a thin gold bracelet.

The tall, slender woman strolled into the shop in the town of Doemitz on the warm afternoon and bought cigarettes, petrol station employee Ines Swoboda told Reuters on Monday.

“I wasn’t surprised because she’s come in naked before — she’s a very nice woman,” Swoboda said, adding none of the other customers was bothered. The woman could have faced charges of creating a public disturbance if anyone had complained.

A quick-witted customer did, however, snap pictures of the woman believed to be about 30 years old as she walked back to a waiting Ferrari and climbed into the passenger seat. Several of those photos appeared in the German media on Monday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/uc/20070719/od_notw/nwx070722xml