Wasted Daily News

LONDON – In English, the road sign was just fine, warning drivers that the route ahead is not suitable for heavy trucks.

But the translation in Welsh didn’t work so well. “I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated,” it said.

Swansea Council says the embarrassing error occurred when officials didn’t realize an e-mailed reply from a translator was a warning that he wasn’t available, not the wording to be used on the sign. Read the rest of this entry →

As a dead man, Ahmad Akhtary shouldn’t have needed a doctor’s appointment.

Akhtary’s checkup, six months after he allegedly died in Afghanistan, scuttled his ex-wife’s attempt to collect 300,000 pounds (US$550,000) on a life insurance policy.

At a court hearing last week in Gloucester, a judge sentenced 34-year-old Akhtary to 60 hours of community service and his former wife, Anne Akhtary, to 40 hours of community service but suspended prison sentences of nine months each. Read the rest of this entry →

An Italian museum Thursday defied Pope Benedict and refused to remove a modern art sculpture portraying a crucified green frog holding a beer mug and an egg that the Vatican had condemned as blasphemous.

The board of the Museion museum in the northern city of Bolzano decided by a majority vote that the frog was a work of art and would stay in place for the remainder of an exhibition.

The wooden sculpture by the late German artist Martin Kippenberger depicts a frog about 1 meter 30 cm (4 feet) high nailed to brown cross and holding a beer mug in one outstretched hand and an egg in another.

Called “Zuerst die Fuesse,” (Feet First), it wears a green loin cloth and is nailed through the hands and the feet in the manner of Jesus Christ. Its green tongue hangs out of its mouth.

Kippenberger’s works have been shown at the Tate Modern and the Saatchi Gallery in London and at the Venice Biennale, and retrospectives are planned in Los Angeles and New York. Read the rest of this entry →

Fuelled only by used cooking fat, eight teams completed a 2,500-mile car rally from London to Athens on Wednesday in a bid to promote awareness of cheap and environmentally-friendly bio-fuels.

The “Grease to Greece” race, the brainchild of 34-year-old Londoner Andy Pag, took the teams on a 10-day mission across Europe in which they begged oil to fuel their cars from restaurants, motorway cafes and fast-food joints along the way.

“There is no reason why Joe Public cannot do this, save themselves a bit of money and help the environment because they are not using fossil fuels,” Pag said.

The race ended on Wednesday with a ceremony at the British Embassy in Athens where Ambassador Simon Gass presented a Golden Lard award to the team which had earned the most “Grease Marks” for collecting fuel.

Unlike expensive conventional rallies such as the Paris-Dakar, Pag paid only 500 British pounds for his second-hand Peugeot 405 and spent nothing on fuel since leaving London — saving the equivalent of what he paid for the car.

An experienced eco-traveller, Pag drove to the desert town of Timbuktu in Mali last year using a truck powered by waste chocolate. His next scheme is a round-the-world trip next year using aviation fuel made from recycled plastic bags.

Racers received a warm welcome from most restauranteurs.

“Whenever people have had oil they have been really, really willing to give it. It’s a waste product for them so we are taking away their rubbish,” Pag told Reuters.

The competitors in the race included a policeman, several engineers, farmers, a film editor, and an accountant.

Farmers Coleen and Mario Chadwick drove to Athens in their unconverted Range Rover, using used cooking oil sieved through kitchen equipment. They plan to keep driving on cooking oil from their local primary school once they return to England.

Pag’s red Peugeot was converted to run on cooking oil using an kit produced by Britain’s Regenatec.

“Demand for this technology is rocketing,” said Adrian Hensen, whose company sells bio-fuel equipment. “With petrol prices so high, lots of people are looking for ways to reduce their fuel bills and this is a fantastic way to do it.”

By Daniel Flynn, (Additional reporting by Deborah Kyvrikosaios)

The owners of Yoda — a cat with four ears — could use a couple extra hands to answer their telephones.

Ted and Valerie Rock said they’ve been inundated with television offers and media inquiries since their son posted a photo of their smoke-colored cat on a Web site. That turned the four-eared feline from a suburban animal oddity into an instant Internet celebrity.

The Rocks, from the Chicago suburb of Downers Grove, have fielded calls from “Good Morning America,” “Fox News” and “The Tyra Banks Show.” The cat’s photo has graced the London Guardian and a British tabloid. The Daily Mail said if Batman had a cat, it would be Yoda.

“It’s amazing,” Ted Rock said. “For the past few days, our phone has just been ringing off the hook.”

Yoda’s extra ears give him a hint of a devilish appearance. The Rocks said they found him in 2006 while watching a Chicago Bears game at a Blue Island bar. Read the rest of this entry →

British condom maker Futura Medical Plc said on Thursday that results of a study showed its new condom helped men have firmer and bigger erections, as well as a longer-lasting sexual experience.

Shares in the company, which specializes in sexual healthcare and pain relief, rose 14.5 percent to 59.25 pence on hopes the condom, which will be marketed by Durex condom-maker SSL International, could go on sale next year.

Futura said the study of 108 healthy couples showed its CSD500 condom helped men to get a firmer erection compared with a standard condom, increased penis size and made the sexual experience last longer, delivering statistically significant results. Read the rest of this entry →

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” descended to clean the clock’s four latticework faces, part of maintenance ahead of its 150th anniversary in 2009.

Although the clock soon will be ticking again, the famed bell that sounds the hour at Britain’s Houses of Parliament will be silent for four to six weeks as engineers replace bearings in the clock mechanism.

This is the first time since 1956 that both Big Ben’s sonorous hourly bongs and the chimes that mark each quarter-hour will be silent, robbing London of one of its most distinctive sounds.

Parliament’s neo-Gothic clock tower, designed by Charles Barry, is popularly known as Big Ben, although the name refers only to the 13.5 ton Great Bell inside.

Cast at the Whitechapel Foundry in east London, Big Ben first rang out in July 1859. Soon after, it cracked — as an earlier version had during testing. Officials simply turned the bell so the hammer wouldn’t strike the crack. That same bell, crack and all, remains in use.

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On the Net:

Big Ben and the clock: http://www.parliament.uk/about/history/big_ben.cfm