Polish pensioner finds two-metre anaconda in toilet

A 73-year-old Polish pensioner was shocked to find a two-metre- (6.5-foot-) long anaconda peering up out of her toilet bowl Monday in her flat in Wroclaw, south-west Poland, local police said.

“After she raised the lid of the toilet seat, the lady saw a huge snake that wanted to slither out of the toilet bowl. She immediately slammed down the toilet lid and called us,” Wroclaw police spokesman Pawel Petrykowski told AFP. “She was certainly very frightened but managed to keep her wits about her,” he said.

After arriving on the scene, police and an employee from the local zoo managed to catch the reptile, native to South America.

From: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/weird-news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=4346959

N.Zealand school under fire over possum-throwing contest

A New Zealand school that staged a possum-throwing contest came under fire from animal protection groups Wednesday for encouraging students in the “morally wrong” practice.

The contest, in which students swung possum carcasses over their heads and hurled them across the playground, was unacceptable, the New Zealand Royal Society for the Protection of Animals said.

RSPCA manager Danny Auger said he had received three complaints about the competition at Colyton School, in the North Island, and would raise concerns with its teachers.

“While it’s technically not illegal, it’s morally wrong to throw a dead animal around.” Auger told the Manawatu Standard newspaper.

“It’s about time that people wake up and smell 2010 and realise that these sorts of things shouldn’t be happening. It’s an archaic practice and it should be stopped.”

He said if students were taught that throwing around possums was acceptable, they could do the same to pets such as cats.

Possums are protected in their native Australia but regarded as a pest in New Zealand, where the population exploded after they were introduced in the 19th century in an attempt to start a fur trade.

The Department of Conservation said they threaten native bird species and delicate ecosystems.

From: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/weird-news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=4351629

Mozambique: Train-animal crashes blamed on angry ancestors

Residents of the central Mozambican province of Sofala believe angry ancestral spirits are causing trains to crash into animals after collisions that killed a hippopotamus and 35 head of cattle.

Residents say the ancestors are dissatisfied with the traditional ceremonies conducted when the Sena rail line, which connects the Indian Ocean port city of Beira to the interior, was reactivated in 2008 after 25 years of disuse, reported state broadcaster Radio Mocambique.

Their concerns emerged after a train ran over a hippopotamus last week while doing maintenance work on the line close to the Zambezi River.

An accident on a separate rail line in southern Mozambique killed 35 head of cattle on Sunday night when a national railway locomotive en route to neighbouring Swaziland ran over the herd in a difficult-to-access area, Radio Mocambique said.

From: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/weird-news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=4332933

Superfast mobile 3G networks boom: UN telecoms agency

Superfast third generation (3G) mobile phone networks have expanded nearly tenfold in four years, outstripping fixed line broadband, the UN’s telecoms agency said on Wednesday.

The International Telecommunications Union predicted that 3G — which allows users to watch TV and access the Internet from their phones — would exceed 900 million subscriptions worldwide by the end of this year as the pace of expansion continued to accelerate.

At the beginning of 2010, 3G capacity could accomodate 667 million subscriptions worldwide, compared to 73 million four years earlier, the ITU said in a statistics survey.

“While these aren’t all necessarily active subscriptions, the growing number highlights the vast potential wireless technologies hold,” it added.

“ITU has set a clear target by recommending that at least half the world’s people have access to broadband by 2015.”

Over the same period, global fixed line broadband subscriptions rose from 216 million to 479 million.

Third generation now accounts for 14 percent of all mobile telecoms subscriptions compared to three percent in 2006.

But poor nations appear to be left out, as penetration rates for fixed or mobile broadband remain very low in developing countries, just above three percent of inhabitants, according to the ITU.

The fixed broadband figure is barely higher than the agency’s estimate three years ago.

“Tremendous achievements have been made over the past five years in bringing broadband access to millions of people around the world — but much more needs to be done,” the ITU said.

From: http://msn.finance.com.my/index.php/rss/4351696

Man who swam Channel with no arms and legs ‘happiest alive’

A French father-of-two who swam across the Channel 16 years after losing all his limbs in an electrical accident said Sunday that he was “the happiest man alive.”

Philippe Croizon, a 42-year-old former metalworker, said he had performed his feat to inspire all those “who think life is nothing but suffering.”

He set off from Folkestone in southern England just before 8:00 am on Saturday, and arrived on the French coast near Wissant just before 9:30 pm, propelled by his specially designed flipper-shaped prosthetic legs.

Steadying himself with the stumps of his arms, Croizon kept up a constant speed in good weather and was accompanied by wild dolphins for part of the 33-kilometre (20-mile) crossing, his support team said.

“For a while, I didn’t realise what I’d done. It was only that night, when I went to bed, that suddenly I burst out laughing, and told myself, ‘You did it!’,” he told AFP by telephone from his home in northern France.

In 1994 Croizon was hit by a 20,000-volt charge as he attempted to remove a television aerial from a house roof and an arc of current surged through him from a nearby powerline.

“I was on my hospital bed, they’d just finished cutting off my last leg. You can imagine how that felt. And then I saw a television documentary on a female swimmer who crossed the Channel,” he explained.

“There and then, I asked myself: ‘Why not me one day?’,” he said.

Croizon trained for two years and last month completed a 12-hour swim between the ports of Noirmoutier and Pornic on France’s Atlantic coast, but his final Channel crossing was much faster than he had anticipated.

“At one point I told myself, ‘Woah, slow down, you’ll never get there if you try to keep up this speed’. I wanted to slow down, but I couldn’t. The motor was running,” he said, adding that he had expected to be at sea for 24 hours.

“It was huge. I was in the zone. I was inside my head. I didn’t want to disappoint anyone,” he said, declaring that his next long-distance challenge will be to swim between Europe and Africa.

From: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/weird-news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=4344633

Experts bite back at bedbug infestations

Killing a single bedbug can be as easy as rolling on top of it in your sleep, but ridding a home or hotel of its siblings and cousins, is an exhausting and expensive task.

Nearly eliminated a few decades ago, bedbugs have returned to America with a vengeance.

They’ve overtaken college dorms, military barracks, apartment complexes, office buildings and even forced the closure of Nike’s flagship New York store on Monday.

And they are big business: $258 million were spent battling them in the United States last year, according to the National Pest Management Association.

Leading experts gathered in a Chicago suburb on Tuesday for a two-day summit on eradicating the hardy critters, which can live a year without feeding and like to explore at night, often catching rides to new homes in luggage, handbags and clothing.

“It’s easy to come in and kill bedbugs with insecticide, but it’s much harder to get to the point where you can be confident that they’re gone,” Kenneth Haynes, an entomologist with the University of Kentucky, told AFP.

Bedbugs are very good at hiding, he explained, and the problem is finding a poison which is powerful enough to kill all the bugs and their eggs but safe enough to be used indoors.

The summit’s showroom was filled with potential solutions: massive room heaters to bake the bugs, carbon dioxide sprayers to freeze the bugs, high powered steamers to boil the bugs, plastic moats and barriers to block the bugs from getting into beds, tight-fitting mattress protectors, and even specially-trained dogs to sniff out their hiding spots.

“There’s so much bedbug hysteria and 75 percent of it is well-founded,” said David James, whose company Packtite sells portable heating chambers designed to kill any critters that crawl into luggage or non-washable possessions like books and shoes.

“They’re so bad out there and they’re so hard to kill,” James said as he manned a busy display at the sold-out show.

“I’ve had people call me and say they’ve gone bankrupt trying to get rid of them because they keep replacing their clothes and furniture.”

There is unfortunately no silver bullet for eradicating bed bugs, said Phillip Cooper, president of BedBug Central, a for-profit educational organization which hosted the conference.

“Nothing works on its own,” said Cooper, who also runs a pest-control company founded by his father in 1955.

The best thing to do is try to keep bed bugs out of your home by carefully inspecting hotel rooms, washing all clothes taken on a trip in hot water and vacuuming or treating your luggage.

If you end up picking up the critters at work, a movie theatre, church or work, hope that you find them quick and call a professional right away.

A moderate infestation can be eradicated with a single, properly-applied treatment of insecticide, Cooper said. But serious infestations can require several treatments and a multiprong approach costing thousands of dollars.

One way large hotel and apartment complexes are cutting their costs is hiring sniffer dogs to pinpoint exactly which units are affected and find the nests.

A property manager at a large apartment complex outside Chicago, Shellie Beno, got into the business last year after residents started bringing her bags filled with bedbugs.

Pest controllers would spend hours tearing an apartment apart looking for nests. Her three dogs can search a typical unit in about five to seven minutes. And their noses can sniff out places people can’t, like behind the walls.

Another advantage is the dogs are much less intrusive and residents don’t have to worry that their neighbors will know they’ve got bugs.

“Would you rather have me going through your dresser drawers or my dogs?” said her Detective Bedbug partner David Bohannan.

From: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/weird-news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=4352739

German scientists discover rare ape species in Asia

German scientists said on Tuesday they had discovered a new rare and endangered ape species in the tropical rainforests between Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia by its distinctive song.

The new type of crested gibbon, one of the most endangered primate species in the world, is called the northern buffed-cheeked gibbon or Nomascus annamensis, a statement from the German Primate Centre (DPZ) said.

“The discovery of a new species of ape is a minor sensation,” said Christian Roos from the DPZ.

“An analysis of the frequency and tempo of their calls, along with genetic research, show that this is, in fact, a new species.”

The distinctive song “serves to defend territory or might even be a precursor of the music humans make,” the statement added.

The male of the new species is covered with black fur that appears silver in sunlight. His chest is brownish and his cheeks deep orange-golden in colour. The females are orange-beige in colour.

Crested gibbons are found only in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and southern China. Scientists had assumed there were six different species but the recent discovery takes the number to seven.

Gibbons have become endangered due to illegal hunting. “Gibbons are kept as cute pets, or they are eaten, or they are processed into traditional medicines,” said the DPZ.

Many species number only around 100 individuals, said Roos. Scientists currently have “absolutely no idea” how many of the new species might be alive, but are conducting further study to determine this, he told AFP.

Like orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos, gibbons belong to the apes, man’s closest relative.

“Only if we know where which species is found and how many individuals there are can we start with serious conservation actions,” added the scientist.

News of the discovery was published in the Vietnamese Journal of Primatology.

From: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/regional/article.aspx?cp-documentid=4348978

Bizarre World Records

Who says you need to be a celebrity to hit the headlines? These record-breakers proved that nothing is impossible.

Most Pierced Woman – Elaine Davidson

If you think Lady Gaga is eccentric, think again. You wouldn’t believe a woman would willingly punch more than 6,000 holes in her body.

Some of them have probably raked in big moolah for their indescribably amazing feats.

Does he have the biggest mouth too?

Austria’s Marco Hort set the world record for stuffing 259 straws in his mouth at one time, more than anyone else.

“Snake Manu”

C Manoharan,25, who is also known as Snake Manu, tried to break the world record by threading a live snake up his nose and out through his mouth. This is not the only stomach-churning stunt he has performed. In 2005, he claimed the world record with “most worms eaten in 30 seconds”, managing to gobble down 200 live earthworms, each measuring more than 10 cm.

Longest held hand-shake

Jack Tsonis and Lindsay Morrison(picture), both in their 20s, attempted the longest continuous hand shake in September 2009. They managed to break the record by shaking hands for 12 hours, 34 minutes and 56 seconds. However, Americans Matthew Rosen and Joe Ackerman outdid the pair by setting a record at 15 hours, 30 minutes and 45 second in November 2009.

Most Tattooed Woman

Julia Gnuse, from California, is set to feature in 2011 Guinness World Records for sporting more tattoos than anyone else in the world. In her mid 30s, she developed a skin condition called porphyia which causes her skin to blister. In order to cover the scarring, the 55-year-old started getting tattoos over the affected areas. Eventually, 95% of her body was covered with drawings. The pictures range from jungle scenes and cartoons to the cast of Bewitched on her buttocks.

Eye-popping man

Brazillian Claudio Pinto can pop both of his eyes at least 7 millimeters out of their sockets. Mr Pinto said, “It is a pretty easy way to make money. It is a gift from God, I feel blessed.”

Woman with most cosmetic surgeries done

Rock singer Cindy Jackson currently holds the record with the most number of cosmetic surgeries done. Brazillian model Angela Bismarchi(picture) underwent her 42nd plastic surgery in 2008, bringing her close to the world record of 47 surgical procedures, held by Cindy Jackson. Angela started her first surgery in 1992 after her breasts sagged due to nursing.

World’s Tallest and Shortest Men

Sultan Kosen of Turkey, 27 is the current record holder of the tallest living man with a height of 246.5 cm (8 feet 1 inch) and He Pingping of China, 21, is officially the world’s shortest man with a height of 73 cm (2 feet 5 inch).

World’s ‘Hottest’ Woman

In 2009, 28-year-old Anandita Dutta Tamuly smeared ghost chilis, the world’s spiciest chili, in her eyes before gobbling all 51 fire-hot chillis in two minutes during an attempt to enter the Guinness World Records.

From: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/photogallery.aspx?cp-documentid=4258367

Taiwan man ‘marries’ goddess

A Taiwanese man out of luck in earthly love has married a goddess after she ordered him to do so in a dream, a report said Wednesday.

The man, identified by his family name Lin, claimed the Lotus Fairy, a Taoist deity, started coming to him in his sleep after he went to her temple to seek her blessing following a series of failed relationships, said CTS TV.

The goddess soon instructed Lin to marry her, and to comply the 40-year-old held a “wedding ceremony” in which a young woman holding a statue of the goddess stood in for the bride, the report said.

Lin signed a wedding certificate and presented a ring to the goddess in the ceremony at her temple, which was decorated with red banners, according to the report.

Since the wedding, Lin has moved the statue to his home in central Taiwan to worship her and claimed that his “wife” has protected him from both illnesses and accidents, it said.

From: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/weird-news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=4268770

Bangladesh farmers turn to ‘frog weddings’

Farmers in a parched district of northern Bangladesh are marrying off frogs in a desperate bid to bring on monsoon rains and protect their crops, local officials said Wednesday.

Bangladesh suffered its driest July in decades, prompting farmers to turn to the centuries-old rain-making ritual of celebrating frog marriages, officials say.

“There have been lot of frog marriages as there has been hardly any rainfall here even though it’s monsoon season,” Sadullahpur district government administrator Ariful Haq said.

At a frog wedding in Ramchandrapur village, 300 villagers dressed in their best clothes attended the festivities, said Tajul Islam, who was at the wedding.

“The frog bride and groom are highly decorated with a red streak of colour on their forehead and carried in a special basket to a banana-leaf stage,” he said.

“Villagers sing songs, make offerings of rice and grass, then after the ceremony the married frogs are released in the village pond,” he said, adding that all the village children then got traditional sweets.

Monsoon rains normally sweep Bangladesh from June to September, with the country receiving more than 75 percent of its annual rainfall during this period.

In July, usually the wettest month of the year, Bangladesh received 36 percent less rain than last year, said Shah Alam, deputy chief of the weather department.

“The rainfall in July was the lowest in the last three decades,” he said.

Scientists say Bangladesh is one of the countries worst hit by the effects of climate change with extreme weather conditions such as drought and flooding likely to increase in future.

“The situation is horrible. The farmers hardly have enough water to plant paddy crops. The water bodies have dried up,” Sadullahpur district government administrator Haq said.

From: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/weird-news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=4269729

Marriage with a dog

Selva Kumar married a 10-year-old female dog named Selvi to atone for stoning to death two dogs he found engaging in mating when he was a teenager. “After that my legs and hands got paralyzed and I lost hearing in one ear,” Kumar said. The groom also said that he would take care of it until its death.

From: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/photogallery.aspx?cp-documentid=4221102&page=1

First person to marry a dolphin

Sharon Tendler, who was the first person to marry a dolphin, said it was love at first sight with Cindy. They got married in the southern Israeli port of Eilat in 2006. Sharon kissed Cindy, whispered “I love you” in his blow hole, and dived into the water to give the dolphin a hug.

“It’s not a perverted thing. I do love this dolphin. He’s the love of my life. He will still play with all the other girls there,” she said, of their prenuptial agreement. “I hope he has a lot of baby dolphins with the other dolphins. The more dolphins the better.”

From: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/photogallery.aspx?cp-documentid=4221102&page=2

Man forced to ‘marry’ goat

In February 2006, a Sudanese man was forced to take a goat as his “wife”, after he was caught having sex with the animal. He was also ordered by the goat’s owner, Mr Alifi to pay a dowry of 15,000 Sudanese dinars.

From: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/photogallery.aspx?cp-documentid=4221102&page=3

Virtual girlfriend

A Japanese man, who only wanted to be known as “Sal9000″, had fallen in-love with computer powered character, Nene Anegaski and decided to marry her.

“Her character changes to my liking as we talk and travel to different places”, said Sal.

This unique couple was married by civil wedding in a ceremony that had 40 guests in a town near Tokyo, Japan.

“I only want Nene right now, she’s better than a human girl,” Sal9000 told CNN.

From: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/photogallery.aspx?cp-documentid=4221102&page=4

Human-cat marriage

A German man unofficially married his asthmatic cat, Cecilia after the animal fell ill and vets told him it might not live much longer, Bild newspaper reported in March 2010.

Uwe Mitzscherlich, 39, paid an actress 300 euros (£260,$395) to officiate at the ceremony, as marrying an animal is illegal in Germany.

“Cecilia is such a trusting creature. We cuddle all the time and she has always slept in my bed,” he said.

From: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/photogallery.aspx?cp-documentid=4221102&page=5

‘Frog prince’

Two seven-year-old girls, from the remote Pallipudupet village in Tamil Nadu’s Villupuram district were married off to frogs in January 2009. The ceremony, an annual feature during the Pongal festival, was said “to prevent the outbreak of mysterious diseases in the village”.

From: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/photogallery.aspx?cp-documentid=4221102&page=6

Marriage with a cobra

A woman who fell in love with a cobra has reportedly married the reptile at a traditional Hindu wedding celebrated by 2,000 guests in India’s Orissa state.

“Though snakes cannot speak nor understand, we communicate in a peculiar way. Whenever I put milk near the ant hill where the cobra lives, it always comes out to drink. I always get to see it every time I go near the ant hill. It has never harmed me,” she told the agency.

From: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/photogallery.aspx?cp-documentid=4221102&page=7

Internet upgraded to foil cyber crooks

The Internet has undergone a key upgrade that promises to stop cyber criminals from using fake websites that dupe people into downloading viruses or revealing personal data.

The agency in charge of managing Internet addresses teamed with online security services firm VeriSign and the US Department of Commerce to give websites encrypted identification to prove they are legitimate.

“This is, by any measure, an historic development,” ICANN chief executive Rod Beckstrom said while breaking the news at a premier Black Hat computer security conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday.

“This security upgrade matters to everyone who uses a computer, and that means most of us.”

The Domain Name System Security Extensions, referred to as DNSSEC, basically adds a secret, identifying code to each website address.

The domain name system is where the world’s Internet addresses are registered and plays a key role in enabling computers around the world to speak with one another online.

Applications commonly used on the Internet can be tailored to essentially check the ID of a website to make certain it is what it claims to be, according to Dan Kaminsky, a hacker turned computer security specialist.

For example, web browser software such as Google or Bing could be adapted to tell whether a bank log-in page is authentic.

“When a user receives an email from a bank they should know it came from a bank,” Kaminsky said. “This is something we needed as engineers to make this a reality.”

A frightening structural flaw in the foundation of the Internet revealed by Kaminsky at Black Hat here two years earlier led to the “biggest structural” upgrade to Web in decades, according to Beckstrom.

“I can’t say I really knew what I was getting into when I broke that whole DNS thing,” Kaminsky quipped as he took part in a press conference announcing the Internet improvement.

Kaminsky is chief scientist at New York start-up Recursion Ventures and worked with ICANN and VeriSign on the the Internet upgrade.

Internet engineers have been toiling on DNSSEC for 18 years, but technical and political obstacles stalled progress, Internet Engineering Task Force chairman Russ Housely said in a video call from a meeting of the group in the Netherlands.

“It can be thought of as tamper-proof packaging for the domain name structure,” Housely said.

“The whole Internet engineering community is excited by this development.”

He added that IETF members at the meeting toasted the announcement with champagne which “I assure you is not a common occurrence at a gathering of engineers.”

It will take time for Internet firms to take advantage of DNSSEC and for it to be applied to local domains in every country, according to Kaminsky.

“We are on Day One of a multi-year journey,” Kaminsky said.

DNSSEC strips cyber criminals of being able to do attacks that involve manipulating code to redirect people from legitimate websites to fake pages rigged with malicious code or asking for passwords and other valuable data.

“This provides a high level of protection with minimal disruption,” said VeriSign chief executive Mark McLaughlin.

“It is not a panacea for everything, but it is a good start.”

From: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/top-stories/article.aspx?cp-documentid=4245686

“Darth Vader” robs NY bank

Times must be tough for the Galactic Empire. According to The Daily Mail, a UK newspaper, a six-foot man dressed as the villainous Darth Vader robbed a bank in Long Island, New York. When man first entered the bank, staff and customers thought it was a joke. Their amusement quickly turned to shock when he took out a handgun and demanded cash.

Reportedly, one of the customers tried joking with the towering Sith Lord, thinking the wardrobe to be quite silly. He was quickly rebuffed when the man, gun in hand, screamed, “This is not a joke” to cashiers.

Admittedly, not very Vader-ish language.

From: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/weird-news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=4241486

‘Rabbit-fearing’ German teacher loses case against pupil

A German court on Tuesday threw out the case of a schoolteacher against a pupil who had allegedly been tormenting her by scrawling pictures of rabbits on the blackboard.

The court in Vechta, northern Germany declined to hear the complaint of the teacher, who was seeking an injunction against the 16-year-old girl to stop her from making the drawings or claiming the plaintiff had a paralysing fear of rabbits.

“The plaintiff now has a month to appeal the verdict,” the court’s chief judge Mechthild Beckermann said, declining to elaborate.

Witnesses had told the judge that the teacher ran sobbing out of the classroom when she saw the image of a rabbit on the blackboard. The girl denied making the drawings.

Two years ago at another school, the teacher took a pupil to court and reached a settlement in which the teenager agreed never again to claim that the plaintiff “freaked out” when she saw a rabbit or heard the word.

From: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/weird-news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=4229926

UFO sighted at Malaysian beach resort

If you’re Malaysian, rejoice! We haven’t escaped the notice of suspected extraterrestials. We’ll let you decide if the following is a precursor to a full-scale invasion or a routine sampling of our country’s famously varied food.

The serene atmosphere at a beach resort near the city of Kota Kinabalu, Sabah was quickly broken when a UFO allegedly appeared in the sky without warning on Saturday evening, according to Harian Metro, a Malaysian paper.

One witness, 27-year old Jemas Dungil, reported seeing a round, blue object floating in the air that turned green seconds later.

The appearance of the UFO (unidentified flying object) was reportedly witnessed by several Tuaran Beach Resort staff members and guests. They claimed that the object emitted blue and green light, floated in the air for a minute, and then vanished in a blink of an eye.

While some witnesses claimed to have successfully captured images of the object with their handphones, others asserted that their mobile phones mysteriously “went dead” when they attempted to do so.

Harian Metro noted that Malaysia’s first recorded UFO sighting took place in the 1950s. A man allegedly saw a flying saucer in Petaling Jaya, Selangor.

The last UFO sighting apparently happened in 1999 at Tanjung Sepat, Kuala Langat.

Editor’s note: Were you at the resort? Got pics of the UFO described above? Send them to sebastian.loh@catchadigital.com. No spam, please.

From: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/weird-news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=4228564

Scientists devise guide to the perfect handshake

Help is here for people who are overcome with nerves when faced with the age-old custom of shaking hands — British scientists have unveiled a step-by-step guide to the perfect handshake.

Researchers at the University of Manchester, in northwest England, said on Thursday that the biggest problems were sweaty palms, limp wrists, gripping too hard and lack of eye contact.

Geoffrey Beattie, the university’s head of psychological sciences, came up with a mathematical formula which took into account 12 key measures needed to convey trust and respect to the recipient.

They include vigour, eye contact and hand temperature.

“The human handshake is one of the most crucial elements of impression formation and is used as a source of information for making a judgment about another person,” he said.

The researcher added he was surprised “that up until now there has not been a guide showing people how they should shake hands,” which has been a traditional greeting and a key part of business deals for thousands of years.

Beattie’s steps to the perfect handshake, for both men and women, are: use the right hand; a complete grip and a firm squeeze (but not too strong); a cool and dry palm; approximately three shakes, with a medium level of vigour, held for no longer than two to three seconds.

The handshake must also be executed with eye contact kept throughout and a good natural smile with an appropriate verbal statement, according to the scientist.

From: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/weird-news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=4223168

Top Weirdest Health Therapies – Smoking

Yes, we do know that smoking kills. But evidence suggests that the chances of developing Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s might be 50% lower in smokers. Nicotine has also been found to help those with ADHD, affecting the brain the way normal stimulants would. However, even with these medical findings, we’re not suggesting that you start lighting

From: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/photogallery.aspx?cp-documentid=4352823&page=2

Top Weirdest Health Therapies – Beer baths

The Czech cure for aging. Originating from the town of Chodova Plana in the Czech Republic, the world’s first beer health centre offers soothing hot baths containing healing mineral water and a dark bathing beer, complete with a bath-side bar.

From: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/photogallery.aspx?cp-documentid=4352823&page=4

Top Weirdest Health Therapies – Dog dung

A cure for throat inflammations. ‘Album Graecum’, dog dung that has turned white due to exposure to air, is mixed with a little honey and used as a medicinal drug to cleanse inflammations of the throat. Overkill, much?

From: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/photogallery.aspx?cp-documentid=4352823&page=5

Maggots – debridement therapy

Treatment that makes use of the natural impulses of maggots to feed on rotting, decaying flesh. Perfect for cleaning out infected wounds. These little creepy crawlies are placed in a wound and from there, they dissolve the infected tissue, killing off the bacteria while promoting healing. Of course, after the healing process, the maggots are conveniently removed to avoid further complications.

From: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/photogallery.aspx?cp-documentid=4352823&page=6

Fecal Bacteriotherapy

Used in treating certain inflammatory bowel disorders like ulcerative colitis. The process comes in a series of enemas given to the patient over a course of 5 days. A sample of poop is taken from a healthy donor and turned into liquid for anal insertion. The healthy bacteria will grow in the target patient, ultimately healing him or her. If that’s not gross enough, fecal bacteriotherapy can also be administered via a tube in the nose!

From: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/photogallery.aspx?cp-documentid=4352823&page=7

Virtual Dolphin Therapy

This particular therapy is cheap and simple. Zero props required. It’s all in your head, man. The process sounds excessively simple, but surprisingly has produced positive results. One simply has to lie down on a couch without shutting one’s eyes. Then imagine watching dolphins play around underwater as you focus your auditory senses to the sounds of the ocean. This peculiar treatment claims to bring a deep state of Zen-like relaxation and rejuvenation.

From: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/photogallery.aspx?cp-documentid=4352823&page=8

Hope you all enjoyed the strange and interesting news from around the world to help you relax from the daily grind. Read the news. Do a round of Migtseymas. Have some tea and remember, everything is not as it seems according to our perceptions. It is only weird as we have labels. Ultimately everything in Samsara is weird. I do not necessarily agree or promote anything I have blogged here. It is just ‘interesting’ news to share with my interesting friends around the world.

Tsem Tulku