Couple 'suing' zoo for 10 million dollars

A couple from New York is trying to sue the Bronx Zoo for $10 million after being stranded in a gondola for five hours, hanging above dangerous baboons.

The man and his pregnant fiancé's lawyer said they did not know whether they would survive the ordeal, the New York Post reported.

Dozens of people were stuck in the cable cars as it shut down on Wednesday and firefighters and police officers used a crane to rescue a family of three from gondola which swung about 100 feet (30 meters) in the air.

No injuries were reported but Damien Foster and Nandi Taylor who have filed a law suit said they suffered “psychological trauma” and the incident put her pregnancy at risk.

The Skyfari ride, which passes over the butterfly garden, the baboon habitat and part of the African plains exhibit where lions and gazelles roam, offers visitors a bird's-eye view of the celebrated zoo and its surroundings.

Each of its gondolas can hold up to four people.

-- The Metro

At least this doesn't sound as ludicrous as suing McDonalds because your son is overweight!

Malaysian police close down Parliament!

Malaysian police locked down Parliament on Monday with roadblocks and massive security to prevent an anticipated rally by supporters of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who is awaiting interrogation on a sodomy accusation.

Anwar's party, however, said it was not planning a protest.

Anwar's questioning later Monday was to coincide with an opposition demand for an emergency debate in Parliament on what it says is the public's lack of confidence in the government.

The police action against the opposition is likely to increase political tensions, already high amid Anwar's threat to bring down the government by mid-September even as he fights the sodomy allegation.

The debate is not the same as a no-confidence vote, but the speaker was still not expected to allow it. In the past, almost every opposition motion has been rejected on grounds of being non-urgent or not in the public interest.

Anwar, who is not a member of Parliament, was supposed to witness the session from the visitors' gallery before going to a police station for questioning.

But police obtained a court order barring Anwar as well as the public from coming within three miles of Parliament. Copies of the court order were pasted in public places. Members of Parliament were also told not to bring guests to witness the session.

The roadblocks, which also prevented journalists from entering with their vehicles, caused massive traffic jams in many parts of the city.

District police Chief Ahmad Sofian Mohamad Yassin said the measures were necessary because Anwar's supporters had not sought a police permit for a rally, as required by law.

''We have such laws that any public gathering must first have a police permit ... so we are going to disallow any gathering,'' he said, adding only ''those who have business'' in Parliament would be allowed to enter.

Anwar criticized the court order barring him and his supporters from Parliament as an ''abuse of the legal process.''

Tian Chua, information chief of Anwar's People's Justice Party, said the party had merely wanted supporters to come to Parliament for the debate.

''There is no protest planned. We want people to go into Parliament to listen to the debate,'' he said. ''I think it (the police lock down) is deliberately to create a situation to cause confusion.''

Anwar, who has become a thorn in the side of the government, suffered a setback when he was accused last month by a volunteer worker in his office of sodomizing him. Anwar has dismissed the allegation as a political conspiracy to thwart his political ascendancy.

The People's Justice Party and two other opposition parties together won an unprecedented 82 seats in the 222-member Parliament in March 8 elections. Anwar claims he can get more than 30 ruling party lawmakers to defect to form a new government.

Anwar did not contest the elections because a previous corruption conviction barred him from politics for five years. The ban expired in April.

-- Associated Press, 14 July

Text appeal is all down to sending the right message

Chat-up lines are getting shorter because women are now rating prospective dates on the strength of their texting, a new study claims.And the men most likely to get the thumbs-up are those who can combine wit and wisdom rather than sending childish codes such as CUL8R for "see you later".

The way a man uses his mobile phone keypad says a lot about his personality, said the poll of 2000 adults.

More than three in four women (76 per cent) judge a potential date's character by his texting style in the early days of their courtship.

And nearly nine in ten (88 per cent) modern women prefer to use texts than real conversations after they initially swap numbers.

This is partly because 37 per cent believe men who call to talk after getting a girl's number can appear desperate, while texting does not give the same impression.

Despite the slang abbreviations associated with text messaging, a surprising four in ten (41 per cent) women are turned off by bad spelling and poor grammar.

They do not want brief, scrambled messages with two thirds (67 per cent) claiming they are more likely to go for men who send longer texts which include humour and some flirting.

Men are advised against sarcasm or appearing "lewd" but should use a witty style. Practical missives – such an instructions to meet at a certain time and place – are less popular and more than half of female receivers (56 per cent) are left cold by them.

-- The Scotsman

Men, hear hear!

Woman hit by lightning while filming with camera, survives, posts video!

This is one of those once-in-a-lifetime events. A woman is taking video of a rainstorm from her balcony when she is struck by lightning. She survives, and posts the video on Flickr.

Andy Warhol said we'd all be famous for fifteen minutes. The Internet and Youtube have redefined that to fifteen seconds. This is some of the most amazing fifteen seconds of footage I've ever seen.

Apparently, she was standing on the balcony of her house, filming the rain storm, and resting her right hand on a conductive railing. A lightning stroke hit her camera-hand. Thankfully, the charge didn't go through her chest cavity and stop her heart, but rather went across her back and grounded out through her other hand.

-- Digital Journal

This is just one of those things that makes me go speechless. Even "awesome" seems far off.

Why the Swedish way won't work

I refer to Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew's suggestion in Thursday's report that Singapore emulate Sweden's strategy in improving birth rates ('Taking a leaf from Sweden's book to boost birth rate').

It may not work as Singapore has a very competitive educational environment relative to Sweden. Spending money on creches, giving fathers time off for each childbirth and other Swedish initiatives are not enough in Singapore. The reason our educational environment is so competitive is because parents know that without tertiary education, our kids will not have a good life.

The presence of cheap foreign labour has made low-skilled jobs unrewarding. This is not the case in Sweden. Garbage collectors, bricklayers and carpenters are relatively well paid in Sweden. Thus, even the less skilled in Sweden have a good life. Hence, the urgency on the part of Singapore parents to give their children a tertiary education.

Of course, importing foreign labour has boosted our growth rate. But the price we pay is that it depresses the wages of the lower-skilled workers. That is why Singapore has a high Gini Index compared with Sweden. The index measures the gap between the rich and the poor.

To boost our birth rate, child-rearing should be recognised as a career in itself. Ideally, we want the better-educated women to have more kids. Mothers who stay home tend to have more children than working mums.

I suggest that the Government pay mothers their last-drawn pay for a period of say 10 years after the second child is born, if she chooses to stay at home. If she has more children, the 10-year period restarts after the subsequent children are born. The higher her last drawn pay, the more she is paid.

Second, a portion of her children's future Central Provident Fund payments should be transferred to her after they start working for the rest of her life.

One reason people in the past had more children is that they saw their kids as a source of pension funds for their old age. It's time to restore the old relationship.

Tan Keng Soon - Straits Times Interactive

I think the main reason here is that life in Singapore is very stressful, who wants to bring up a child in a very stressful environment? Its either you make it or you don't. If you don't have a good tertiary education, you're doomed for life.

Xiaxue and Dawn on Yahoo Polls!

This is the current poll results.

Go and vote now!

Woman Posts Cat!

A cat was posted 450 miles by mistake after it crawled into a parcel box for a cat nap.

The cat's owner Gitti Rauch said her pet climbed into a box filled with presents for relatives. She did not notice the cat as she sealed up the package and sent it off.

After the two-day journey from Rottach-Egern in southern Germany to Dorsten in the north of the country the cat leapt out unharmed - and no worse for wear - when the parcel was opened.

Mrs Rauch, 44, said: "Janosch usually goes off on his own for a few days and I wasn't worried when I hadn't seen him for a while - then I got a call telling me what had happened.

"I can understand though how he survived the journey without a scratch. He is a very special little cat. He likes to ride in cars, he likes boxes - and he never complains."

The Local - Germany

Woah! Poor kitty!

We are enough!

How often it is that we go the extra mile to please people and end up being disappointed? Why do we have to keep comparing ourselves with people who are more prettier, skinnier, taller etc than us? It only makes us feel worse off.

As you know, beauty/slimming centres, magazines etc, blatantly feed on our insecurities. I'm not saying that I've never felt insecure, I'm sure everyone has.

The thing is, we don't give ourselves enough credit. Being who we are can be tough. All of us play many different roles to different people. We are mothers, sisters, fathers, brothers, sons, daughters, wives, husbands, friends, teachers etc. We always feel that we can be a better person. Yes we can, sure we can. But, lets save that for another day.

We need to realise just for this moment that we - we, are enough. Our purpose in life is not pleasing people to gain acceptance, we just have to be enough for ourselves.

We are enough!

Now, go tell your mom, dad, husband, wife that they're enough. Even writing them a "you are enough" post it note will mean a lot to them.

I am enough! And you are too ;)


-- Starwish

The ‘Fake’ Steve Jobs Is Giving Up Parody Blog!

The once-mysterious blogger known as “Fake Steve Jobs” is turning off his iPhone for good.

Daniel Lyons, the former Forbes magazine journalist who wrote the blog The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs for the last two years, is moving on with his professional life and creative pursuits. In a final entry Wednesday entitled, “I’m sailing away,” the author, who is moving to Newsweek as a technology columnist this fall, said he was shutting down the popular parody of the life of the Apple chief executive and starting a new blog under his own name.

Mr. Lyons said that he had grown tired of his fictional creation, but mainly he was worried about making fun of a real person whose health has been a recent topic of speculation. (After a reporter for The New York Times asked about his lean appearance at a conference last month, Mr. Jobs said he was healthy.)

“I tried transitioning to other voices, like Jerry Yang’s, but it just didn’t work,” Mr. Lyons said, referring to the embattled Yahoo chief. “It seems clear that people reading the blog wanted to read Fake Steve or nothing.”

For Mr. Jobs’s online doppelgänger, the lights are dimming on a creation that once captivated the technology world. Publishing pseudonymously until an article in The Times revealed his identity last summer, Mr. Lyons wrote with insight and hyperbole about Mr. Jobs’s tyrannical moodiness at Apple and the fictional antics of other high-profile technology figures, including Microsoft’s Steven A. Ballmer and Oracle’s Larry Ellison.

An industrywide guessing game as to the identity of “Fake Steve” ensued, with the real Mr. Jobs and Microsoft’s Bill Gates weighing in.

Mr. Lyons translated the appeal of his blog into a novel, “Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, a Parody,” published in October by Da Capo Press, and he is writing a screenplay based on the book for Hollywood production house, Media Rights Capital. Unlike the book, Mr. Lyons said, the screenplay will feature a generic chief executive.

-- NYTimes

Bangkok voted world's best city

Bangkok was voted the world's best city for 2008 and the Galapagos were picked as the best islands in an online poll by Travel + Leisure magazine, trumping last year's winners Florence, Italy and Bali, Indonesia.

Magazine readers also voted Singita Sabi Sand, at the Kruger National Park, South Africa, as the world's top hotel while Singapore Airlines grabbed the best airline award again.

It was the first time that Bangkok, the vibrant capital of Thailand, and the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador topped their respective categories, said Nancy Novogrod, editor-in-chief of Travel + Leisure.

Last year, Bangkok was ranked number 3 and the Galapagos number 8. The 2007 winners of best city and best island -- Florence an Bali -- fell to number 5 and number 2 respectively.

"We're delighted to welcome so many new winners this year," she said in a statement. "Nature, and adventure, were clearly a draw in the selections."

Last year's number one hotel, the Oberoi Udaivilas in India, fell to number 4 this year. Singita Sabi Sands was voted the number two hotel in 2007.

The results were complied from votes by magazine subscribers in an Internet poll which went live between January and March. Travel + Leisure will honour winners on July 24 in New York City.

The complete "World's Best Awards" is available on www.travelandleisure.com. Following are some highlights:

Best hotel - Singita Sabi Sand, South Africa

Best island - Galapagos, Ecuador

Best cruise line (large ships) - Crystal Cruises

Best cruise line (small ships) - Silversea Cruises

Best international airline - Singapore Airlines

Best domestic airline - Virgin America

Best tour operator - Micato Safaris

Best car-rental agency - Hertz

Best hotel for $250 or less - Domaine des Hauts de Loire, France

-- Reuters

Beijing Olympics Results Already Predicted Before Actual Games Begin

Study: China will win more medals than U.S in Beijing

Accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has come out with a study that estimates China to win one more medal than U.S in the Beijing Olympics.

Accountants got their turn in the Olympics with the publication of a report that predicts China to top the medal tally in the Beijing Olympics in terms of overall medals as well as number of gold medals won. The report predicts China to win a total of 88 medals, one higher than United States overall tally of 87.

John Hawksworth, the report's author, says a number of factors such as population, average income level and being the host nation are taken into consideration while preparing the report.

Hawksworth predicts Russia will drop to third place at Beijing with an overall tally of 79 medals , down 13, followed by Germany (43), Australia (41), Japan (34), France (30), Italy (29), Britain (28) and South Korea (27). He also said former Eastern bloc nations are likely to do better because of their planned approach.


-- Digital Journal

hmmm? I also predict that China will be first.

Will Anwar Swear on the Holy Quran to Prove His Innocence?

Anwar and his wife

It is on everyone's mind right now. Will he or will he not? Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan, the alleged person whom he commited sodomy with, challenged him to swear in front of the Ulamas (religious leaders). According to The Star Online, Anwar responded by replying, “Just inform me of the time and date. I am not afraid to keep my promise”.

Swearing on the Holy Quran is a very big deal. It is the most sacred book to Muslims just as the Bible is to the Christians. Should Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak also swear on the Quran to prove that he did not have an affair with Mongolian Altantuya Shaariibuu who was murdered in 2006?

With allegations, suspicions and tempers flying, will this measure bring a temporary reprise to the Malaysian political scene?

If they did no wrong, they should have nothing to fear - or do they?


-- Starwish

Bat found in teen's bra !

A teenager was stunned to find that a baby bat had been curled up inside her bra for five hours - as she was wearing it.

Hotel receptionist Abbie Hawkins thought her mobile phone was ringing when she felt vibrations, reports the Daily Telegraph.

But she later discovered the tiny creature tucked away in the padded pocket of her underwear.

As staff and colleagues crowded around, Miss Hawkins, 19, produced the frightened bat, which her manager later released outside.

She said: "Once I realised it was a bat I was shocked, but then I felt quite sorry for it really. It looked very snug in there and I thought how mean I was for disturbing it."

Miss Hawkins, who works at the Holiday Inn Norwich North, added: "When I was driving to work I felt a slight vibration but I thought it was just my mobile phone in my jacket pocket."

It was not until her lunch break when she felt a strange movement inside her bra, which had been hanging on her washing line the previous night.

"I plucked up the courage to investigate and I pulled out a little baby bat. I just lost my breath when I saw it and I did not know what it was at first," she said.

Jaime Eastham, of the Bat Conservation Trust, said they had never heard of a bat being found in a bra before. But she said the animals roost anywhere that appears dark and safe.

-- The Daily Telegraph

If I was in her situation, I would have been so freaked out that I'd strip right there and then. Yucks! A bat in your bra! Can you picture that?!

More "national monuments" being erected

Wah lau, like that I can say bye bye to ever owning a car in Singapore. If the government is really hardcore about deterring us from owning a car, why don't they increase the COE instead? Why must we have ERP everywhere? Here tax, there tax, everywhere tax, tax, tax! Now that the oil prices are crazy high already, still need to have more ERP gantries meh? If they really want all of us to take public transport then please increase the frequency of busses and MRT.

"It was Day One of higher ERP charges for vehicles going into the Central Business District (CBD) and Orchard Road.

The Land Transport Authority has said the higher charges, mostly double the old rates, are meant to manage traffic flow.

Our reporter Imelda Saad travelled with 30—year—old sales executive Tan Chee Kheong on the first day of the higher ERP charges.

In just half an hour, they passed not one, not two, but five gantries.

And that’s not counting the S$7.50 Tan already paid to get into the CBD for work in the morning and to meet our reporter in the afternoon.

Tan is resigned to the fact that he now has to fork out about S$300 to S$400 a month in ERP charges. He has no choice, as his work requires him to travel in and out of the CBD.

Tan said the ERP charges are literally eating into his salary despite his company increasing his transport allowance by S$150 a month.

Motorists Channel NewsAsia spoke with also questioned the rationale for imposing higher ERP charges within the CBD during the day.

"I just don’t understand why they have to increase the charges during the noon time when the traffic is not really that high," said a motorist.

True enough, as our reporter found out, it was a relatively smooth journey going from the CBD to Orchard Road and back.

A cabbie, who did not want to be seen on camera, said the higher rates will further deter taxies from going into the CBD area.

Some motorists said a better way to manage traffic flow is to improve road infrastructure and limit vehicle population growth.

Meanwhile, along the Singapore River area, five new gantries were also activated on Monday, charging evening ERP rates. The LTA said this is to reduce cross—traffic flow from one side of the city to the other.

For motorists, the latest rate revisions and the addition of new gantries will not be the end of ERP woes.

In November, more ERP gantries will be operational along expressways and arterial roads.

And when the Kallang—Paya Lebar Expressway is fully operational, new gantries will also be put up there, adding to the 60 or so already operational islandwide

However for many motorists, the new rates — which started on July 7 — could not have come at a worse time, given that fuel prices have also risen in tandem."

-- ChannelNewsAsia

Study: The French Are The Most Obnoxious Tourists!

According to a new and recent study, the award for the most obnoxious tourists goes to the French. The French are now considered the most obnoxious tourists.

Not long ago, I had written about how Australia now ranks first as the most obese nation. Now, the French rank 1st for most obnoxious tourists in the world. The award for world’s most obnoxious tourists goes to France. Yes, the world’s most obnoxious tourists amongst Europeans are the French.

That puts France in second place. The poll shows that India possibly ranks behind France in having the most obnoxious tourists. In last place, that award goes to China. Out of 21 nations being the most polite when traveling abroad in the poll, France has ranked 19th. That’s pretty close to being in last place. The 1st place award for most polite tourists belongs to Japan.

Americans and Thais are tied in 11th place. 2nd place goes to the Germans, 3rd place goes to the British, and 4th place goes to the Canadians. But, 11th place is definitely a lot better than 19th place.

French commercial travelers or the “voyageur francais” were revealed as either unwilling or not able to speak in foreign dialects. However, the study has shown that the French fared pretty well for being the best-dressed tourists. That could be deemed as a plus for French tourists.

But, the 1st place award for being best dressed goes to the Italians.

For American tourists, the poll results did not seem to show any negativity. Instead, it shows that American tourists are in 1st place of willingness and effort to speak in local dialects. That is a major plus for American tourists.

France along with a few other countries came in last in that regard.

However, the poll shows that both French and American tourists are equally rude when traveling abroad. But, the reasons are different. Despite that negative aspect directed at American tourists, the award for most obnoxious tourists goes to the French. So no, the award for most obnoxious tourists does not go to the Americans.

Also, France ranks near last place in those that vacation in their home countries.

In a nutshell, France is ranked as the most obnoxious tourists amongst Europeans.

Coincidentally, French President Nicholas Sarkozy is one president who is not afraid to speak his mind out to anybody. Sarkozy gave verbal lashings to many people recently. Sarkozy is not really gaining any brownie points with the international community.

In regards to French tourists, they’re definitely got gaining any brownie points when traveling abroad.

-- digitaljournal.com


I'm surprised that Singapore isn't there! I guess we're too small to make such an impact.