Tours at a 163-year-old home-turned-museum are sometimes disrupted by a grumpy groundhog. The furry critter’s digging has foiled some of the Saginaw Valley Historic Preservation Society’s attempts to refurbish the house on the city’s east side.
“We put in a walkway, and part of that collapsed due to Grumpy’s efforts,” preservationist Thomas Mudd told The Saginaw [...]

Popularity: 4% [?]

A dozen Chinese teenagers have been caught in a failed plot to sneak into Canada by masquerading as kung fu masters from the famous Shaolin Temple, state media reported Friday.
The 12 had no martial arts experience but joined a team of genuine kung fu performers from a school in Henan province, also home to the [...]

Popularity: 4% [?]

Outside it was a sticky 111 degrees, but Ali Hamdan was shivering under two parkas as he sipped hot chocolate, surrounded by tables and chairs made of ice.
Chillout, its owners say, is the Middle East’s first ice lounge — the latest venture in this desert Gulf emirate, which has been transformed by a mania for [...]

Popularity: 5% [?]

Big Ben’s bongs fell silent Saturday as workers rappelled down Parliament’s iconic clock tower, beginning a month of maintenance work on the clock and its world-famous bell.
Time briefly stood still as the clock’s hands were frozen shortly after 8 a.m. They then were wound to 12 o’clock as a team of specialist “industrial rope-access technicians” [...]

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Best-selling Canadian author Yann Martel, worried about Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s apparent lack of interest in the arts, sent him a book on Monday and said he would continue doing so once a fortnight.
Martel, who wrote the novel “Life of Pi,” was upset that Harper had paid no attention during a recent parliamentary ceremony to [...]

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Malaysian Islamic scholars have called for a halt to popular exhibitions billed as featuring ghosts, genies and other supernatural beings, saying they are forbidden and could undermine the faith of devout Muslims.
Many Malaysians are willing to suspend disbelief when dealing with the supernatural, and the exhibitions capitalise on a widespread fascination with the ghouls and [...]

Popularity: 3% [?]

When it comes to wacky titles, a book on rogue shopping carts goes straight to the express lane for winners.
“The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification” was named the winner Friday of the Bookseller/Diagram Prize for oddest book title.
The book, written by Buffalo, N.Y.-based artist Julian Montague and published [...]

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The writer of one of Germany’s best known fictional characters, an imp called Pumuckl, is heading to court to battle his illustrator over whether the red-headed mischief maker can marry or should stay chaste.
Writer Ellis Kaut is unhappy that illustrator Barbara von Johnson has given her support to a local TV show’s contest to design [...]

Popularity: 3% [?]

The same rules that make Earth plants green may make non-Earth plants yellow, red or green — but likely not blue, NASA scientists said on Wednesday.
They said their findings — which look at how plants absorb and reflect different types of light — may help narrow the search for life on planets beyond our solar [...]

Popularity: 4% [?]

China state television has started shooting a 40-part television series about U.S.-born kungfu icon Bruce Lee, Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday.
“The Legend of Bruce Lee,” with a budget of just $6.4 million, started production at the weekend in the southern province of Guangdong.
Popularity: 4% [?]

Popularity: 4% [?]