20060823

Robber mistakes town hall for a bank

A would-be robber was arrested after he tried to hold up his local town hall, mistaking it for a bank, Austrian police said Wednesday.

Wearing a mask and waving a toy pistol, the unemployed man burst into the town hall in the village of Poggersdorf, southern Austria, and shouted: "Hold-up, hold-up!"

The building has a sign signaling there is a cash point on the outside wall, police said.

He realized his mistake when an employee explained to him where he was, police said in a statement, adding he fled to a nearby wood.

The 34-year-old man was arrested when he came back later to pick up his motorbike which he had parked outside the town hall.

20060819

Are you SURE you want to remove that?

An Indian businessman born with two penises wants one of them removed surgically as he wants to marry and lead a normal sexual life, a newspaper report said Saturday.

The 24-year-old man from the northern state of Uttar Pradesh admitted himself to a New Delhi hospital this week with an extremely rare medical condition called penile duplication or diphallus, the Times of India said.

"Two fully functional penes is unheard of even in medical literature. In the more common form of diphallus, one organ is rudimentary," the newspaper quoted a surgeon as saying.

The surgery was expected to be challenging as both organs were well-formed and full blood supply to the retained penis had to be ensured to allow it to function normally, he added.

The newspaper did not disclose the identity of the man or the hospital to protect the patient's privacy.

There are about 100 such reported cases of diphallus around the world and it is known to occur among one in 5.5 million men, the newspaper said.

It is caused by the failure of the mesodermal bands in the embryo to fuse properly. The mesodermal bands are one of three primary layers of the embryo from which several body parts are formed.

20060807

You know anybody who needs an 'anti-stupid' pill?

A German scientist has been testing an "anti-stupidity" pill with encouraging results on mice and fruit flies, Bild newspaper reported Saturday.

It said Hans-Hilger Ropers, director at Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, has tested a pill thwarting hyperactivity in certain brain nerve cells, helping stabilize short-term memory and improve attentiveness.

"With mice and fruit flies we were able to eliminate the loss of short-term memory," Ropers, 62, is quoted saying in the German newspaper, which has dubbed it the "world's first anti-stupidity pill".

20060804

Abusing their power by abusing their power...

Two Chinese officials cut off power to a hotel after they were not invited to its opening party and forced managers to drink spirits before they would turn the electricity back on, a state newspaper said Friday.

The two officials, who were subsequently fired, said they would lessen the power outage by one hour for every bottle of "baijiu" -- a strong grain-based alcohol -- two female managers drank, the Beijing Times said.

The two officials, who worked at the power company in the central province of Hunan, were found to have "severely harmed the image of the electricity bureau" and "caused a depraved social disturbance," the newspaper said.

The loss of power also caused chaos and blackouts for surrounding residents, it added.