Hoax Forum

For Sale: One Baby (UPDATED)

2008-05-24T20:52:46-08:00

German police investigate mum who ‘put baby on eBay’

German police are investigating a couple after they allegedly offered their eight-month-old son for sale on internet auction site eBay.

Renee Beck, a police spokesman in the Bavarian town of Krumbach west of Munich, said on Saturday the 23-year-old woman told them it was only a joke.

But he said police were nevertheless continuing their investigation and the baby was put in state custody.

“She says it was a joke,” he said. “That’s not yet clear. Detectives are investigating on suspicion of child trafficking.”

A number of people called authorities across Germany after seeing the offer on eBay that read: “Baby—collection only. Offer my nearly new baby for sale because it cries too much. Male, 70 cm long.”

The opening bid was 1 euro ($1.65). There were no bidders during the two hours before the offer was removed, police said.

The mother was quoted in Bild newspaper saying: “It was only a joke. I just wanted to see if someone would make an offer. They’ve taken my son to hospital and I’ve got to take psychiatric tests next week.”

“Bright stationary object” is moon

2008-07-04T13:12:56-08:00

Clever police have solved a man’s bright object in the sky mystery.

They discovered it was the moon.

South Wales Police were dispatched to a 999 emergency reporting a “bright stationary object” above a caller’s house.

Officer today released the recording of the astonishing emergency call.

But police have not revealed the identity of the dim-witted caller except to say he was from the South Wales Valleys.

The recording runs as follows:

Control Room: “South Wales Police, what’s your emergency?”

Caller: “It’s not really. I just need to inform you that across the mountain there’s a bright stationary object.”

Control room: “Right.”

Caller: “If you’ve got a couple of minutes perhaps you could find out what it is? It’s been there at least half an hour and it’s still there.”

Control: “It’s been there for half an hour. Right. Is it actually on the mountain or in the sky?”

Caller: “It’s in the air.”

Control: “I will send someone up there now to check it out.”

Caller: “OK.”

A few minutes later, all became clear in the following exchange between the control room and the police officer sent to the scene.

Control: “Alpha Zulu 20, this object in the sky, did anyone have a look at it?”

Officer: “Yes, it’s the moon. Over.”

A South Wales Police spokeswoman said: “It was 100% legitimate. There was no hoax. It was a serious call from a member of the public.”

The mystifying sighting, reported in May, must rate as the oddest emergency call in the history of the south Wales force.

It was highlighted today as part of a continuing public campaign to cut down on the number of inappropriate emergency calls.

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?in_article_id=204958&in_page_id=2

I suspect that drink may have been involved.

Soul goes to Hell as the highest bidder

2008-07-03T03:07:47-08:00

A New Zealand man auctioned off his soul. Which was bought by Hell Pizza.

New Zealand man Walter Scott didn’t sell his soul to the devil, but that didn’t stop it from going to Hell.

The Hell Pizza company has paid $NZ5001 for Scott’s soul after he advertised it on the auction website TradeMe.

The 24-year-old said he had been thinking about selling his soul for some time.

“I can’t see it, touch it or feel it, but I can sell it, so I’m going to palm it off to the highest bidder,” he said.

It was in “pretty good nick” except for a rough patch when he reached the legal drinking age, he said.

Hell Pizza’s head of marketing Rachael Allison said the company wanted to give Scott’s soul a home.

“The soul belongs to Hell, there is simply no better place for it.”

Hell will hand over the money to Scott tomorrow and they will receive a contract outlining details of ownership and a signed certificate.

“If a person’s game enough to sell their soul then it deserves a good home,” Allison said.

WELLINGTON

Computer Techs Fight Texas Law Requiring A Private Eye’s License

2008-07-04T07:35:51-08:00

A lawsuit is being filed to protect computer technicians, parents and anyone who searches for a computer virus from a new state law that could require them to obtain a private detective’s license.

According to high-tech sleuths the new state law requires them to secure a private detective’s license to retrieve data from a computer, analyze it and prepare a report for a client.

Full Story

School Locked Down Due to Ninja Sighting

2008-07-04T08:19:25-08:00

Wow, people are really morons.

School locked down after ‘ninja’ sighted in woods

June 25, 2008

BARNEGAT, N.J.—It’s the case of the nonexistent ninja. Public schools in Barnegat were locked down briefly after someone reported seeing a ninja running through the woods behind an elementary school.

Turns out the ninja was actually a camp counselor dressed in black karate garb and carrying a plastic sword.

Police tell the Asbury Park Press the man was late to a costume-themed day at a nearby middle school.

The lockdown began shortly after 9 a.m. Wednesday and lasted until 9:30.

Pregnant Man? [UPDATED]

2008-03-26T05:35:57-08:00

Transgender, really...

Transgender man says he’s ‘pregnant’

A transgender man in the US - who kept his female reproductive organs - claims he is pregnant with a baby girl.

Thomas Beatie, of Oregon, is reportedly due in July after deciding to carry a baby for his wife, Nancy, who underwent a hysterectomy years ago.

Beatie, who had surgery to his chest to look like a man and also underwent testosterone therapy, said he decided to try to conceive after the couple discussed the prospect of him carrying the child.

He told The Advocate magazine for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender readers that his periods resumed about four months after stopping bimonthly testosterone injections.

“It had been roughly eight years since I had my last menstrual cycle, so this wasn’t a decision that I took lightly,” Beatie told The Advocate.

“My body regulated itself after about four months, and I didn’t have to take any exogenous oestrogen, progesterone, or fertility drugs to aid my pregnancy.”

The article was accompanied by a photo of Beatie with a hand on his protruding belly. But a neighbour of the couple has claimed the whole story is a hoax.

“Quite frankly, I think it’s a hoax,” neighbour Ron Schlieper told the Portland television station KATU.

“I saw him a few days ago and he didn’t look like that.”

Beatie said the couple’s decision had exposed them to discrimination and anger by people who did not understand their choice.

He said doctors had refused to treat them, while other medical workers had refused to recognise Nancy as his wife.

“Friends and family have been unsupportive; most of Nancy’s family doesn’t even know I’m transgender,” he said.

Despite the challenges he said he was looking forward to being a loving parent of a baby girl.

“… I will be my daughter’s father, and Nancy will be her mother. We will be a family,” he said.

The Evils of Bottled Water

2008-06-28T12:44:30-08:00

I don’t know if this is the best spot for this thread. I’ll abide by the “in the news rules” by starting with a newslink:

U.S. Mayors Ban Bottled Water

Vinnee Tong / Associated Press
NEW YORK—The nation’s mayors voted Monday against spending taxpayer money to buy bottled water, a blow to the beverage industry that has enjoyed growing profit from water sales in recent years.
A majority of about 250 mayors at the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Miami voted to phase out government use of bottled water. That means attendees of city council meetings around the country could more often see pitchers of water instead of clear plastic bottles on the tables of local legislators.

This article also points out that, “Corporate Accountability International said in a statement that cities spend about $70 million a year to dispose of plastic water bottles.”

Another non-news article attempts to calculate the total carbon footprint of bottled water:

We have tried to calculate the true cost of producing and transporting bottled water before, and have come up with just vague approximations, which did not take the production of the bottle into account. Over at Triple Pundit, Sustainability Engineer and MBA Pablo Päster has done a thorough and exhaustive study of the cost of bring a litre of Fiji Water to America. He starts with the production of the bottle in China, taking the bottle blanks to Fiji, and confirming that it takes more water to make the bottle than it actually holds. He then transports the bottle to the States by ship. Not even including the distribution in the States, the numbers are absolutely staggering.

In one of these articles, I read that 60% of bottled water is merely filtered tap water.

If there’s something wrong with a municipal water supply, we should address that problem. For the most part, there isn’t.*

Instead, people are just paying some 12,000% over the cost of tap water to get water in a plastic bottle. I just read that figure somewhere, but in my case, it’s an underestimate. I pay about $40 a quarter for unlimited non-metered water. Even if I got all my drinking water from a bottle, I’d still need to pay that $40 to have water for my toilet, my shower, dishwashing, laundry and watering my plants. So basically my drinking water is completely free, meaning bottle water costs infinitely more than tap water in my case.

And there is no evidence at all that it is in any way superior to tap water.

*Aside from the colossal failures of attempts to privatize municipal water service.

School Confiscates Birthday Invitations

2008-06-29T23:38:53-08:00

And here I thought that only America had gotten so ridiculously politically correct! Wow.

Swedish school confiscates boy’s party invitations

Jun 29, 8:02 PM (ET)

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) - A school has confiscated an 8-year-old boy’s birthday party invitations after they were handed out during class because it said it had a duty to ensure against discrimination.

The boy handed out invitations to classmates at his school in Lund, southern Sweden, but did not invite two boys because they were not his friends, the Sydsvenskan newspaper reported earlier this week.

The school, 360 miles south of Stockholm, confiscated all the invitations, saying it objected because it had a duty to ensure against discrimination.

The report on Friday did not name the boy or his family. It said the boy’s father has filed a complaint with the parliamentary ombudsman.

The father told the newspaper that the two classmates were not invited because one had bullied his son and the other had not invited his son to the classmate’s birthday party.

“My son has taken it very hard,” the father told Sydsvenskan of the school’s decision. “It’s like taking someone’s mail.”

The parliamentary ombudsman has asked the school board to decide on the issue before Sept. 8.

News Link Here

Video lands Teen in Jail

2008-07-03T06:36:35-08:00

May not be safe for work...highly graphic. I actually cried when I saw this…

A Lee County, Georgia teenager put up a shocking video on YouTube, showing him using a large, inflatable pillow to launch an eight month old baby through the air.

Now that 16-year-old boy is charged with felony cruelty to a child.

He was arrested after a Lee County school teacher saw the video and called the Sheriff’s Office.

It’s a mother’s nightmare.

A 16-year-old boy demonstrates, for the world to see, how to, as he put it, ‘make a baby fly.’

He puts the baby on an inflatable pillow, then jumps on the pillow to launch the baby through the air.

The baby landed several feet away on the floor and can be heard crying.

“It was terrible,” says Lee County Sheriff Harold Breeden. “I can’t believe a 16-year-old kid would do something like this.”

The 8-month-old child was left in the care of the family of the teen who was actually behind the camera shooting the video.

The Lee County Sheriff’s office got a call from a Lee County High School teacher who was shown the posting by another student.

Fearing for the child’s safety she called investigators, and now her former student is in the detention center.

“He’s incarcerated in RYDC,” Breeden said. “We took him down this morning and he has been arrested and charged with cruelty to children in the first degree, and in the third degree.”

The first count for violence to a child under 18 and the second count for allowing his 16-year-old friend to see the violence by encouraging him to videotape it.

The teen who videotaped it is not charged with a crime.

Pediatrician Donna King, who has 8-month-old twins, says the baby could have been seriously injured.

“Trauma to the skull, of course comes to mind at first. A trauma to the skull resulting in the fracture of the skull which can cause a contusion to the brain, bleeding inside the brain,” said the doctor.

As for the teen’s actions, the Sheriff’s office hopes others will learn from their mistake.

“It’s not going to be funny when the judge gets through with him, he’ll think twice next time you know, about how funny it was,” Breeden says.

The video has been removed from the YouTube site and the teen, who’s never been in trouble before, must now await his fate in court.

The Lee County Sheriff’s office has asked the baby’s parent to have the child seen by a doctor, they’re still waiting to hear if the baby had any injuries from the fall.

Link

The link contains the video…

Faceless ‘aliens’ spotted in crowd at Wimbledon

2008-07-03T04:37:57-08:00

With the blankest of blank expressions on their faces, these mysterious figures have been popping up in the most unlikely of places.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1031062/Faceless-aliens-spotted-crowd-Wimbledon.html