Posted by Nick on March 22, 2007 ·
Twenty-two years ago, Mahlon Webb Jr. wrote a note, put it in a bottle and tossed it into the ocean at a North Carolina Beach. Five years ago, he got a call from a woman on Grand Cayman Island saying she’d found the bottle.
Last week, Webb made the same type of call, this time to an Arkansas school [...]
Posted by Nick on March 22, 2007 ·
A Rhode Island woman who routinely had sex with her boyfriend in front of her 9-year-old daughter to teach her about sex was sentenced to three years’ probation, authorities said Tuesday.
Rebecca Arnold, 37, and David Prata, 33, who received the same sentence this week, told investigators they [...]
Posted by Nick on March 10, 2007 ·
Germany, home to some 2.5 million people of Turkish descent, has started offering courses in doner kebab production as part of an initiative to train unskilled workers.
If they pass their exams, the first class of 16 students — all of Turkish descent — will qualify with a certificate in “Meat [...]
Posted by Nick on March 5, 2007 ·
Guidebooks warn tourists of Peruvian time — be fashionably late for parties and dinner or risk a faux pas.
But visitors may now miss out on some social life should locals take to an official “punctuality” drive launched in Peru with fanfare far and wide — from the ancient Machu [...]
Posted by Nick on March 5, 2007 ·
An irate Italian family beat up a principal because they were unhappy with the grades a young relative had received and a ban on cell phones at school.
Three male relatives, including the father and grandfather of the student, punched and pushed principal Ugo Castorina at the Lombardi middle school in [...]
Posted by Nick on March 1, 2007 ·
An attorney challenging the authority of the city’s police chief wants the department’s police dog to appear in court as an exhibit, because he says the dog and the chief have criminal justice degrees from the same online school.
The issue gives “one pause, if not paws, for concern” [...]
Posted by Nick on February 28, 2007 ·
Exam supervisors at a German university stuck to rules so rigidly that a man with a bladder dysfunction had to urinate in a bottle in front of 120 fellow students because they would not let him go to the toilet.
Overseers at the University of Freiburg in southwestern Germany told the 27-year-old, whose [...]
Posted by Nick on February 28, 2007 ·
A Milan teacher cut a unruly 7-year-old pupil’s tongue with scissors to silence him, police and school officials said on Tuesday. The child, of North African origin, needed to go to hospital for five stitches to close the wound. The boy’s family has filed suit against the teacher, [...]
Posted by Nick on February 27, 2007 ·
Students at East Jefferson High School say they see bats in the school even though school officials and an exterminator say they’ve been moved out. “One fell from the ceiling in my chemistry class,” Sarah Jones said.
Last week, officials said the bats had been contained to three second-story [...]
Posted by Nick on February 23, 2007 ·
Misguided text messages led to the arrest of a western Kentucky teacher who is accused of trying to buy pot from a state trooper. Trooper Trevor Pervine was at dinner with his wife and parents, celebrating her birthday when his phone started buzzing.
Pervine was getting text messages about buying marijuana [...]
Posted by Nick on February 23, 2007 ·
Rhiannon Barnes may be the luckiest 15-month-old ever. Or maybe her baby sitter is the fortunate one. While playing with a thrift store book bought earlier in the day for 25 cents, Rhiannon uncovered $1,300 in cash stuck between the pages. Her baby sitter Sheila Laughridge said she only bought the book [...]
Posted by Nick on February 20, 2007 ·
Worrying about how you’ll perform on a math test may actually contribute to a lower test score, U.S. researchers said on Saturday.
Math anxiety — feelings of dread and fear and avoiding math — can sap the brain’s limited amount of working capacity, a resource needed to compute [...]
Posted by Nick on February 17, 2007 ·
India has sent home at least 20 foreign pilots flying for its airlines in the past year as their poor English posed safety concerns, the country’s civil aviation regulator said Thursday.
English is used by India’s hard-pressed air traffic controllers, who are struggling to make sense of crowded [...]
Posted by Nick on February 15, 2007 ·
To an Arizona middle school, Batman! Three schools in the north Phoenix suburb of Cave Creek were on lockdown for about 45 minutes Wednesday morning after a student at Desert Arroyo Middle School reported seeing a person dressed as Batman run across campus, jump a fence and disappear into the desert, [...]
Posted by Nick on February 14, 2007 ·
It definitely doesn’t smell as good as a bake sale. Seniors at Eddyville Charter School are raising three not-so-little pigs to earn money for their senior trip.
The 12 seniors at the farming community school say they will also try the traditional methods of fundraising like raffles or auctions. [...]