Police spent £20,000 scouring the country for a lion, a horse and a Mr Fox following a tip off they were told had come from the ghost of murdered man.

But after spending weeks on the inquiry, detectives discovered that the messages from beyond the grave suggesting that Carlos Assaf had been killed by gangsters were bogus.

Detectives initially suspected that Mr Assaf, a 32-year-old fitness enthusiast, had hanged himself in his flat. However they revised their opinion and began a murder hunt when a tantalising new line of inquiry emerged.

A group of psychics got in touch claiming a spirit has told them that Mr Assaf had been strangled after being forced to drink petrol and bleach, an inquest into the death was told.

They reported seeing “a lion, a horse and the name Tony Fox in their visions”.

As part of their investigation, detectives interviewed the mediums and visited more than a dozen pubs called the Red Lion and Black Horse in the west Wales area, where Mr Assaf lived.

They tracked down a known criminal called Tony Fox who was immediately eliminated from the inquiry, and they searched an area of Manchester after mediums suggested a possible link.

A second post mortem was carried out on Mr Assaf, the father of a four year-old boy, from Lampeter. But no bleach or petrol was found in his digestive tract.

Sgt Mark Webb, of Dyfed Powys Police, told the hearing officers found the information supplied by the mediums was “far from conclusive”.

But detectives conducted the investigation because they “wanted to be absolutely satisfied there was no third party involved.”

The inquest heard conclusive evidence that Mr Assaf, a baker, had hanged himself from a weight training bench after a row with his girlfriend in March this year.

He had developed “bouts of anger” after becoming addicted to amphetamines.

The Ceredigion coroner, Peter Brunton, recorded a suicide verdict and commented that a “great deal of effort” was expended in following up the spiritualists’ claims.

After the inquest Mr Assaf’s family said they were “grateful” to the police for investigating the information.

His mother, Shirley, said: “There is no doubt in my mind now that my son took his own life. The moral of the story is: `Do not take drugs’. If it had not been for the amphetamines, then my grandson would still have a father.”

A spokesman for Dyfed Powys Police said: “The revelations of the mystics were brought to our attention via the family and these were followed to reassure the family that the full circumstances of the death were as they appeared.

“Police have a responsibility to the deceased, their family and the public to investigate all deaths thoroughly.”

In recent years, a number of people have claimed they have psychic abilities which could help police in solving kidnapping and murder cases.

Last year, psychic investigators from a popular American television programme Haunting Evidence flew to Portugal in an attempt to solve the mystery of missing Madeleine McCann.

An American television drama series, Medium, is based on the experiences of a self-proclaimed spiritual medium Allison Dubois who claims to have worked with law enforcement agencies across America in criminal investigations.

Many police forces have felt the need to declare that they do not regard information derived from such sources as useful or credible on cases. In 2006, 28 British forces were reported to have said they did not and have never used psychics.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

IT was not the triumphant return Britney Spears had hoped for.

Disgruntled fans stormed out of last night’s Australian debut of The Circus concert in Perth upset by the star’s miming and “appalling” performance on stage.

They began walking out after the first three songs, some having paid $1500 to see Spears perform.

So who actually plans these sort of concerts? Surely they ought to know what they are doing by now?

I’m just glad I wasn’t there.

Malaysia withholds ‘Allah Bibles’

The Malaysian government has refused to release 10,000 Bibles which it seized because they contained the word Allah to refer to God.

The government, which is dominated by Muslim Malays, claims that the word Allah is Islamic and that its use in Bibles could upset Muslims.

The Roman Catholic Church is challenging the ban in court.

Religion has become highly sensitive in Malaysia, where about two-thirds of the population is Muslim.

Religious minorities have accused the government of undermining their rights.

The government has impounded Bibles before, intercepting 5,000 in March as they were imported from Indonesia.

Church officials say that although the word Allah originated in Arabic, Malays have used it for centuries to refer generally to God, and Arabic-speaking Christians used it before Islam was founded.

The Christian Federation of Malaysia said the religious freedom guaranteed by the Malaysian constitution was meaningless if people were denied Bibles which used their own language.

One could say she has the determination ... but lacks the drive.

A 68-year-old South Korean woman this week signed up to take her driving test once again—after failing to earn a license the first 771 times.

The woman, identified only as Cha, first took the written portion of the exam in April 2005, said Choi Young-cheol of the Driver’s License Agency in the southwestern city of Jeonju.

At the time, she made her living selling goods door-to-door and figured she would need a car to help her get around, Choi told CNN.

She failed the test. She retook the test the next day and failed again. And again. And again.

“You have to get at least 60 points to pass the written part,” said Kim Rahn, who wrote about the unflappable woman in the Korea Times, an English-language daily. “She usually gets under 50.”

In the beginning, Cha went to the license office almost every day. Now, she no longer works but still turns up once a week, Choi said.

The office estimates she has spent more than 4 million won ($2,888) in exam fees.

Cha’s last failed attempt was Monday.

She tries for the 772nd time either Thursday or Friday.

Real articles on it:-
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/10/28/2009-10-28_colonel_sanders_impersonator_sneaks_into_united_nations_for_kfc_grilled_chicken_.html

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/10/27/steven-edwards-sneaking-into-the-un-is-finger-lickin-easy.aspx

Humourous article on it(exert copied below)
http://www.loweringthebar.net/2009/11/col-sanders-appears-at-united-nations.html

United Nations officials in New York said they were “still trying to find out exactly what happened” to enable a man dressed as Colonel Harlan Sanders to get past security and into the UN building on October 22.  Reports suggested that a UN security guard and apparent Sanders sympathizer had personally escorted the Colonel past security barriers and into the General Assembly.

A spokesman for the current President of the General Assembly, Dr. Ali A. Treki, denied rumors that the president had actually met with Sanders, though that statement seemed to be undermined by this photo:

The spokesman stuck to his guns.  “I wouldn’t call that a meeting,” he said.  “No appointment [was] scheduled.”  He eventually conceded, though, that Sanders did experience “a brief encounter with the president of the General Assembly.”  That was getting a little too close to “romantic interlude” for my comfort, but the spokesman then clarified that Treki just shook hands in order to be polite.

.... cont

Actually I’m not too surprised.  The officer was well liked by the inmates most likely because he didn’t treat these men like animals (many officers do and seem to enjoy the power they hold).  While working as a correctional officer I was advised by a few inmates that ‘Officer Hulit, if anything ever happens here, a fight or a riot, please get down and we’ll protect you’.  I worked at an institution for the criminally insane, those incarcerated for multiple murders.  And yes, I believed what they told me and I still do.

A third severed foot has washed up on a Gulf Island. All three are right feet, and all were in sneakers.

“It is unusual,” RCMP Const. Annie Linteau said yesterday. “We are in the preliminary stages of this particular investigation, and, of course, we will not enter into speculation.”

The latest foot was found Friday on the east side of Valdes Island, south of Gabriola Island.

The first foot was found last August on nearby Jedidiah Island. The second was found a week later on Gabriola.

Nanaimo coroner Dave Sherstone said all three feet have been sent to Vancouver for forensic study. “They’ll try to extract DNA,” said Sherstone.

He said it’s impossible to say where the feet may have originated or if they came from a single source such as an accident. “It’s all current and tidal action, it could come from anywhere,” he said. “The reason these things come to the surface is they float.”

Police said DNA from the first two feet did not match DNA in police databases.

Jeff Dolen, B.C.‘s assistant deputy chief coroner, said although it is somewhat common to find individual body parts, this is “the first instance of three such similar remains being discovered” in such proximity. “We’ll be using pathology examinations and anthropology examinations to garner as much information as we possibly can about the remains,” he said.

A body in the ocean will first sink, and then, depending on the depth, float back to the surface as it becomes bloated with gas.

It is common for hands, feet and the head to detach as a body decomposes, said

Gail Anderson, a forensic entomologist from Simon Fraser University who has submerged pigs in the ocean to study decomposition.

Generally, she said, those limbs do not float.

“Obviously there’s some sort of current picking up light items and washing them to those particular areas,” said Anderson.

Full Story

Brazil man appears at own funeral

A 59-year-old Brazilian man has surprised his family by turning up at his own funeral, local media report.

Relatives of Ademir Jorge Goncalves, a bricklayer, had identified him as the victim of a car crash in southern Parana state the previous day.

Police told O Globo newspaper that relatives had trouble identifying the corpse because it was badly disfigured.

It emerged that Mr Goncalves had spent the night drinking a rum-like liquor called “pinga” with his friends.

He did not get word of his funeral until it was already happening on Monday morning, his niece Rosa Sampaio said.

She said some family members - including herself and the man’s mother - had doubts, but an aunt and four friends had positively identified the body.

“What were we to do? We went ahead with the funeral,” she told O Globo.

A police spokesman welcomed the happy ending: “Before long, the walking dead appeared at the funeral. It was a relief,” the unnamed officer told the paper.

The body was correctly identified later, he said, and buried in another state.

“A police spokesman welcomed the happy ending. . .”  Happy for this family, at least.  Probably not so happy for other people.

Feeling grumpy ‘is good for you’

In a bad mood? Don’t worry - according to research, it’s good for you.

An Australian psychology expert who has been studying emotions has found being grumpy makes us think more clearly.

In contrast to those annoying happy types, miserable people are better at decision-making and less gullible, his experiments showed.

While cheerfulness fosters creativity, gloominess breeds attentiveness and careful thinking, Professor Joe Forgas told Australian Science Magazine.

‘Eeyore days’

University of New South Wales researcher says a grumpy person can cope with more demanding situations than a happy one because of the way the brain “promotes information processing strategies”.

He asked volunteers to watch different films and dwell on positive or negative events in their life, designed to put them in either a good or bad mood.

Next he asked them to take part in a series of tasks, including judging the truth of urban myths and providing eyewitness accounts of events.

Those in a bad mood outperformed those who were jolly - they made fewer mistakes and were better communicators.

Professor Forgas said: “Whereas positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, co-operation and reliance on mental shortcuts, negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking, paying greater attention to the external world.”

The study also found that sad people were better at stating their case through written arguments, which Forgas said showed that a “mildly negative mood may actually promote a more concrete, accommodative and ultimately more successful communication style”.

His earlier work shows the weather has a similar impact on us - wet, dreary days sharpened memory, while bright sunny spells make people forgetful.

On a spring day last year, three months after the death of my younger son, Max, I opened my front door and saw a butterfly resting on the steps—an Eastern tiger swallowtail, I later determined, a species native to the Northeast but not one I remembered seeing before in the middle of Brooklyn. The date stuck in my mind because, as it happens, it was also my birthday. The butterfly, with its otherworldly beauty and silence, is, of course, a common metaphor for the soul. Its emergence from entombment as a chrysalis may have inspired ideas about human resurrection. In the newsletter of the Compassionate Friends, a support group for bereaved parents, the sudden appearance of butterflies (and birds, cloud formations, and particular songs on the radio) is sometimes cited as evidence of communication from beyond the grave. So let me be clear about where I stand: not only do I not believe it, but I can’t understand why anyone would take comfort from it. I would hate to think of Max, with his fierce intelligence and tenacity, reduced to sending mute signals by way of insects.

I was put in mind of this by reading a new book by Dinesh D’Souza, provocatively titled Life After Death: The Evidence, and I can’t help wondering what D’Souza, a well-known conservative political commentator starting a second career as a Christian apologist, would make of my experience. To be consistent, he would have to say nothing at all: it is what scientists call anecdotal evidence, useless by definition, and D’Souza’s book attempts to build a case on unshakable scientific grounds for the survival of consciousness beyond death. Ghosts, mediums, and miraculous cures by the intercession of saints play no role in his argument, which draws instead on quantum mechanics, neuroscience, and moral philosophy. Life After Death, along with other recent books including mathematician David Berlinski’s The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions, physicist Frank J. Tripler’s The Physics of Christianity, and The Language of God by the director of the National Institutes of Health, the geneticist Francis S. Collins, constitutes an effort by believers to confront the so-called new atheism on its own intellectual turf, without benefit of scripture or revelation. D’Souza, who likens this to fighting with one hand tied behind his back, is a frequent debating opponent of prominent atheists including Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great) and Sam Harris (The End of Faith). He regards the emergence of such enemies as a God-given opportunity to bring Christian apologetics into the new century. “C. S. Lewis addressed issues from his own era, such as the Holocaust,” D’Souza notes, “but today we have new questions—about Darwin, brain science, modern physics, and Islamic terrorism. The new atheists have done believers a favor by putting the issue of faith on the agenda. If I’d written this book 10 years ago, people would have asked, ‘why?’ “

Some people may still ask. D’Souza takes it as given that we are all consumed with wondering what will happen to us after death, the way all Europeans were in medieval times, and D’Souza himself still is. Believers, of course, need no convincing on the subject of life after death, so D’Souza must address himself to skeptics, who presumably have made their peace with the expectation of personal annihilation. Skeptics may object to D’Souza’s mode of argument, which is to state a proposition, present the evidence for both sides with an elaborate if spurious show of impartiality, and proceed briskly to the conclusion that his own preference is obviously the winner. But on some level, D’Souza believes, even skeptics would like to be convinced.

The “evidence,” of necessity, is indirect: D’Souza doesn’t claim to have communicated with anyone who has died, and he doesn’t expect to. Instead, he looks to the human heart, and finds therein a universal moral code underlying acts of self-sacrifice and charity that appear to run counter to the Darwinian imperative to outcompete thy neighbor. This is a time-honored argument for the existence of a God who created human beings in his image and imbued them with a moral sense, as well as the free will to follow, or ignore, it. Berlinski uses the argument in his book, and Collins credits it with turning him from atheism to evangelical Christianity. (D’Souza acknowledges that the prominent atheist Richard Dawkins has offered an evolutionary explanation for human goodness, but he doesn’t buy it.) In a Jesuitical display that does credit to his reputation as “an Indian William F. Buckley Jr.,” D’Souza turns to his advantage one of the atheists’ favorite arguments, God’s apparent tolerance for human suffering. Precisely because evil so often goes unpunished in this world, he asserts, the moral code must reflect another reality, in which souls are judged, punished, or rewarded after death. “The postulate of an afterlife enables us to make sense of this life,” he writes. It worked for Dante, didn’t it?