News Features

Wednesday October 14, 2009 12:00 PM EDT
Body modification taken too far, piggyback fetishes and more | more...

News Features

Wednesday October 14, 2009 04:00 AM EDT
LEAD STORY: Beneath the luxury hotels on the Las Vegas Strip is a series of flood tunnels that are home to dozens of people who work odd jobs such as hustling leftover change in casino slot machines. A correspondent for London's the Sun gained the trust of a few and even photographed their "apartments" for a September dispatch, showing well-stocked quarters, with scrounged appliances and... | more...

News Features

Wednesday October 7, 2009 04:00 AM EDT
LEAD STORY: What is believed to be the world's only commercial lounge openly serving cocaine operates in La Paz, Bolivia, though the owners of "Route 36" have to change locations from time to time, depending on the moods of the bribed authorities. An August dispatch in London's the Guardian reported that a nearly pure gram costs the equivalent of about $14 ($22 for "premium"), served by waiters... | more...

News Features

Wednesday September 30, 2009 04:00 AM EDT
LEAD STORY: A male Swedish college student, Ragnar Bengtsson, 26, has begun pumping his breasts at three-hour intervals in a 90-day experiment to see if he can produce milk. If he succeeds, he said, it could prove "very important for men's ability to get much closer to their children at an early stage." A professor of endocrinology told the daily Aftonbladet that male lactation without hormone... | more...

News Features

Wednesday September 23, 2009 04:00 AM EDT
LEAD STORY: If society were ever attacked by zombies, we would probably be doomed, and quickly. That was the conclusion of two university researchers in Ottawa who set up mathematical models hypothesizing zombie attacks as infectious diseases with the well-known characteristics of zombie biology from popular fiction. In fact, according to a July BBC News report, zombies are more threatening... | more...

News Features

Wednesday September 16, 2009 04:00 AM EDT
LEAD STORY: Breakthroughs in Eye Hair: The pharmaceutical company Allergan has introduced eyelash-thickener Latisse, a $120 per month prescription “medication” to help a woman overcome feelings of inadequacy if she suffers from scrawny lashes. Alternatively, eyelash transplants are now available in the U.S. and Britain, originally developed to restore lashes for burn victims, but, according to... | more...

News Features

Wednesday September 9, 2009 04:00 AM EDT
LEAD STORY: A woman offering child-care services in Melbourne, Fla., was dismayed to learn in August that a scam pulled on her by a diaper-wearing man in his 40s was not illegal. A man called her, on behalf of his disabled adult "brother," who has a mental age of 5 and poor bladder control, and she began assisting him in her home during the day for $600 a week. She was later outraged to learn... | more...

News Features

Wednesday September 2, 2009 04:00 AM EDT
LEAD STORY: Lonely Japanese men (and a few women) with rich imaginations have created a thriving subculture (otaku) in which they have all-consuming relationships with figurines that are based on popular anime characters. "The less extreme," reported a New York Times writer in July, obsessively collect the dolls. The hardcore otaku "actually believes that a lumpy pillow with a drawing of a... | more...

News Features

Wednesday August 26, 2009 04:00 AM EDT
LEAD STORY: Donald Duck may be a lovable icon of comic mishap to American youngsters, but in Germany, he is wise and complicated and retains followers well past their childhoods. Using licensed Disney storylines and art, the legendary translator Erika Fuchs created an erudite Donald, who often "quotes from German literature, speaks in grammatically complex sentences, and is prone to... | more...

News Features

Sunday August 23, 2009 01:00 PM EDT
LEAD STORY: World-Class Adolescent Endeavors: Japanese engineer Takuo Toda's paper airplane was certified in May as the Guinness Book record-holder for the longest flight from a single folded sheet of paper: 27.9 seconds. And in Witcham, England, in July, Jim Collins won the World Peashooting Championship, using a "traditional" instrument blowing at a target 12 yards away, but noncompeting... | more...

News Features

Wednesday August 19, 2009 04:00 AM EDT
LEAD STORY: World-Class Adolescent Endeavors: Japanese engineer Takuo Toda's paper airplane was certified in May as the Guinness Book record-holder for the longest flight from a single folded sheet of paper: 27.9 seconds. And in Witcham, England, in July, Jim Collins won the World Peashooting Championship, using a "traditional" instrument blowing at a target 12 yards away, but noncompeting... | more...

News Features

Wednesday August 12, 2009 04:00 AM EDT
LEAD STORY: A Whiff of Injustice: William Dillon was released in November after 26 years in prison when a DNA test ruled him out as the murderer. He was the second Florida man recently freed by DNA after being positively identified at trial by a star police dog, Harass II, whose trainer Bill Preston had sworn could amazingly track scents through water and after months of site contamination. In... | more...

News Features

Wednesday August 5, 2009 04:00 AM EDT
LEAD STORY: Apparently believing that religious competition in the Middle East is not exciting enough already, the television station Kanal T in Istanbul, Turkey, is preparing a reality game show for September release in which 10 certified atheists try to resist conversion by a priest, a rabbi, a Muslim imam and a Buddhist monk. The exact rules have not been disclosed, but the "winning" convert... | more...

News Features

Sunday August 2, 2009 02:00 PM EDT
Tooth implants, 40-foot tapeworms and more | more...

News Features

Wednesday July 29, 2009 04:00 AM EDT
LEAD STORY: Unconventional Medicine: British construction worker Martin Jones, 42, who lost one eye and was blinded in the other in a 1997 explosion, regained his sight this year as a result of surgery in which part of his tooth was implanted in the eye. Dr. Christopher Liu of the Sussex Eye Clinic used a piece of tooth because a "living anchor" was necessary to hold a patch of Jones' skin... | more...

News Features

Sunday July 26, 2009 02:00 PM EDT
LEAD STORY: Scientology trains its leaders a good deal more aggressively than other religions do, judging by the revelations by four former church officials to the St. Petersburg Times in June. In an exercise concocted by founder L. Ron Hubbard, leaders who screw up are taken out to sea and forced off a gangplank with the admonition, "We commit your sins and errors to the deep and trust you... | more...

News Features

Wednesday July 22, 2009 04:00 AM EDT
LEAD STORY: Scientology trains its leaders a good deal more aggressively than other religions do, judging by the revelations by four former church officials to the St. Petersburg Times in June. In an exercise concocted by founder L. Ron Hubbard, leaders who screw up are taken out to sea and forced off a gangplank with the admonition, "We commit your sins and errors to the deep and trust you... | more...

News Features

Sunday July 19, 2009 02:00 PM EDT
LEAD STORY: Americans Fantasize, Germans Act: Two formerly well-off retired couples in Speyer, Germany, whose nest egg was largely wiped out by investments in subprime Florida mortgages, vented their anger by kidnapping their investment adviser, James Amburn, in June. They took him to the vacation home of one of the couples near the Austrian border, bound him like a mummy and beat and tortured... | more...

News Features

Wednesday July 15, 2009 04:00 AM EDT
LEAD STORY: Americans Fantasize, Germans Act: Two formerly well-off retired couples in Speyer, Germany, whose nest egg was largely wiped out by investments in subprime Florida mortgages, vented their anger by kidnapping their investment adviser, James Amburn, in June. They took him to the vacation home of one of the couples near the Austrian border, bound him like a mummy and beat and tortured... | more...

News Features

Monday July 13, 2009 02:00 PM EDT
LEAD STORY: A 48-year-old immigrant from Malta regularly hangs out in various New York City bars, but always on the floor, so that he can enjoy his particular passion of being stepped on. "Georgio T." told the New York Times in June that he has delighted in being stepped on since he was a kid. While one playmate "wanted to be the doctor, another wanted to be the carpenter ... I would want to be... | more...

News Features

Wednesday July 8, 2009 04:00 AM EDT
LEAD STORY: A 48-year-old immigrant from Malta regularly hangs out in various New York City bars, but always on the floor, so that he can enjoy his particular passion of being stepped on. "Georgio T." told the New York Times in June that he has delighted in being stepped on since he was a kid. While one playmate "wanted to be the doctor, another wanted to be the carpenter ... I would want to be... | more...

News Features

Sunday July 5, 2009 02:00 PM EDT
Pet wars, 4-foot-long worms and more | more...

News Features

Wednesday July 1, 2009 04:00 AM EDT
LEAD STORY: Using GPS and state-of-the-art sonar, Columbia University researchers recently made the first comprehensive map of the wonders submerged in New York City's harbors. Supplementing those findings with historical data, New York magazine reported the inventory's highlights in May: a 350-foot steamship (downed in 1920), a freight train (derailed in 1865), 1,600 bars of silver... | more...

News Features

Sunday June 28, 2009 02:00 PM EDT
LEAD STORY: Competitive Facial Hair: At the biennial World Beard and Moustache Championships in May in Anchorage, Alaska, four local heroes "defeated" the usually dominant German contingent in the 18-category pageant, including overall champ David Traver of Girdwood, Alaska, whose woven chin hair suggests a long potholder. Said Traver, of the Germans, "They were humble, and you have to respect... | more...

News Features

Wednesday June 24, 2009 04:00 AM EDT
LEAD STORY: Competitive Facial Hair: At the biennial World Beard and Moustache Championships in May in Anchorage, Alaska, four local heroes "defeated" the usually dominant German contingent in the 18-category pageant, including overall champ David Traver of Girdwood, Alaska, whose woven chin hair suggests a long potholder. Said Traver, of the Germans, "They were humble, and you have to respect... | more...
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