Electronic Cigarette Explodes In Man's Mouth

How an e-cigarette works. A Florida man trying to kick the smoking habit was puffing on an electronic cigarette when a faulty battery caused it to explode in his mouth, taking out some of his front teeth and a chunk of his tongue and severely burning his face, fire officials say. "The best analogy is like it was trying to hold a bottle rocket in your mouth when it went off," said Joseph Parker, division chief for the North Bay Fire Department. "The battery flew out of the tube and set the closet on fire."

Fire Chief Joseph Miller said the victim contacted the department on Wednesday to thank firefighters and told them he was recovering at a hospital in Mobile, Alabama, and anticipated being released later in the day.
Officials have not publicly identified him, citing department policy. But a Facebook page under the name of 57-year-old Tom Holloway of Niceville was filled with well-wishers commenting on the injury.
Holloway was in his office at home when the device exploded, leaving behind burned chair cushions, pictures, carpet and office equipment. Thomas Kiklas, co-founder of the Tobacco Vapor Electronic Cigarette Association, said the industry knows of no problems with the cigarettes or batteries exploding.
Also called e-cigarettes, the devices look just like cigarettes and include an atomiser that turns a liquid solution into a mist that can be inhaled.
Mr Kicklas said the rigid, plastic cigarettes include a small battery and cartridge. The battery is designed to generate an electric charge when the device is inhaled. The charge sets off vapour in the cigarette tube. The nicotine-filled mist gives the taste and experience of smoking without the smoke.

Bounty Hunter Pays Killer For Map To Help Find Bodies

A US serial killer on death row has drawn a map of where as many as 20 bodies are buried in exchange for $US33,000 payment from a bounty hunter. Wesley Shermantine, 45, was convicted of four murders and sentenced to death in 2001.Shermantine and his childhood friend, Loren Herzog, were known as the "Speed Freak Killers" after terrorising rural California in a 15-year methamphetamine-fuelled crime spree. Most of their victims were never found.

The killer's map led to the discovery of two sets of remains at separate sites last week.

Police are now searching an abandoned well on farmland outside the city of Stockton. They have so far found 300 human bones.

Les Garcia, a spokesman for San Joaquin County Sheriff's department, said: "We have information that we may have 10 to 20 bodies in that well."

Shermantine agreed to the map in exchange for money from Leonard Padilla, a bounty hunter.About half of it will be used to pay off what he owes in restitution to victims' families.

 He wants to use the rest to commission headstones for his deceased parents, and to buy small luxuries in prison, such as a television set for his cell. Mr Padilla hopes to claim rewards offered by the state of California for information about missing persons thought to be the killers' victims.

He said Shermantine called the well "Herzog's boneyard". Herzog was convicted of three killings but they were overturned after an appeal court ruled his confession was coerced. Herzog was released from jail in 2010 and committed suicide last month, hours after Mr Padilla told him of Shermantine's intention to reveal the location of the bodies.

Shark Attacks Blamed On Humans

A great white shark. Sharks killed twice as many swimmers and surfers last year than in 2010, with the increase blamed largely on a growth in tourism and changing shark patterns because of global warming.

There were 12 deaths in 46 shark attacks last year, a mortality rate of more than 25 per cent compared with an average of under 7 per cent in the past 10 years, according to statistics from the University of Florida.
Countries that recorded shark attack deaths included Australia with three fatal out of 11 attacks; South Africa, two fatal out of five; the French island of Reunion, two deaths in four attacks; and Seychelles with two attacks both ending in death.

 Other countries with non-fatal shark attacks included Indonesia (three), Mexico (three), Russia (three) and Brazil (two).Three locations not normally associated with high numbers of shark attacks - Reunion, Seychelles and New Caledonia - registered a total of seven attacks with five fatal outcomes, according to George Burgess, an ichthyologist from the University of Florida.

"Those areas were not traditional area for tourism in recent years," the scientist said.
"Over the last decade, more and more tourists have been going there ... So we are getting more people coming to places where there are sharks, and the local communities are not prepared for the number of people going into the water at this time."
He said medical facilities in these areas might not be developed enough to provide treatment in emergencies of this type. In addition to the influx of tourists, the effects of global warming have meant sharks migrating to regions where they were not normally seen, he said.

Buyer Refuses To Pay For $63m Vase

 

The 18th-century Qing dynasty vase. It seemed like the ultimate cash-in-the-attic discovery.When the hammer came down in the auction of the old vase that Gene Johnson had found in her late sister's house, it was for the astonishing price of £43 million ($63 million).
With a £8.6 million buyer's premium on top, it was the world's most expensive vase.
Mrs Johnson, 86, and her son Anthony, 55, watched from the sidelines in amazement as they realised that they were going to share a fortune. But 15 months later the mother and son are not a penny richer and the 18th-century Qing dynasty vase is not on display in China, where its buyer was from, but in a secure location awaiting its fate.
Wang Jianlin, a property billionaire, has not paid up because, it is understood, he is reluctant to pay the flat rate 20 per cent fee of £8.6 million levied on the sale by Bainbridges auctioneers in London. Ivan Macquisten, the editor of the Antiques Trade Gazette, said: ''It is my understanding that the vase has not yet been paid for. The sticking point on the completion of the sale has been the buyer's premium.'' Mr Johnson travelled to China last year with the auctioneer for discussions with the buyer's agents, but returned empty-handed.
He now faces a dilemma: he is prevented by Bainbridges' conditions of sale from selling the vase through another auctioneer and must decide whether to hold out for the full price, or re-auction it through Bainbridges for what would be a smaller profit.
Mr Macquisten added: ''Unfortunately they would never get [the original sale price] if they put it back on the market, now that the element of surprise has gone.''
Mr Johnson, a retired solicitor, and his mother found the 40-centimetre-tall vase when they were clearing out the London home of her sister, Patricia Newman, after her death, aged 73, in January 2010. According to family legend it had been brought back from the Far East by Mrs Newman's husband, William.
When Mr Newman died on June 15, 2006, his estate, including the vase, passed to his wife. At this point, since the vase had never been valued, the estate was judged to be worth £135,732. However, Mrs Newman died intestate. Her only surviving relative, Mrs Johnson, therefore had to apply for probate in order to inherit the estate.
There was a leaflet for Bainbridges auctioneers among Mrs Newman's papers and Mr Johnson called them in. It was only when its owner, Peter Bainbridge, consulted valuer Luan Grocholski that its provenance became clear. Mr Grocholski established that the vase had been fired, glazed and enamelled at Jingdezhen during the reign of Emperor Qianlong (1736-95), a period known for the beauty of its ceramic craft.
He placed a valuation on the vase of between £800,000 and £1.2 million. On November 11, 2010, bids for lot 800, an auspicious number for Chinese buyers, rose and rose, finally hitting £43 million.
The repercussions of the stalled sale have also had an impact on Mr Jianlin. The billionaire, 57, was named as the buyer after one of his agents was reportedly barred from registering for the sale of a Qianlong-dynasty scroll in Toulouse, following the alleged non-payment. Mr Jianlin, estimated by the American magazine Forbes to have a property fortune of £2.9 billion, has one of the largest private art collections in China, but publicly denies any involvement in the vase sale.
There has been speculation that the Chinese government sabotages art sales by having officials buy, then refuse to pay, because they believe the antiques were looted from their country and should not be sold. The Johnsons refused to comment on the progress of the sale

CIA Site Shut By Hackers

 

The hacker group Anonymous says it was responsible for a cyber attack that shut down the CIA's website.''CIA Tango down'', a member of Anonymous said on YourAnonNews, a Twitter feed used by the group. ''Tango down'' is an expression used by the US Special Forces when they have eliminated an enemy. Attempts to access the CIA website, cia.gov, were unsuccessful on Friday. Asked about the apparent website shutdown, a CIA spokeswoman said: ''We are looking into these reports.''Members of Anonymous also claimed on Friday to have hacked the website of Camimex, the Mexican chamber of mines. Its website, camimex.org.mx, was also unavailable on Friday.

Anonymous had given no explanation for shutting the websites.

Musical Thieves Only Go For Brass

When thieves broke into a southern Californian high school music room this week, they cut through the bolts on all the storage lockers and ripped two doors off their frames. But they didn't touch the computer or the projector or even the trumpets.

''It was strictly a tuba raid,'' said Rolph Janssen, an assistant principal at Bell High School.
The school is only the most recent victim in a string of tuba thefts from music departments. In the past few months, dozens of brass sousaphones - smaller tubas used in marching bands - were taken from schools in southern California.
Although the police have not made any arrests, music teachers say the thefts are motivated by the growing popularity of banda, a traditional Mexican music form in which tubas play a dominant role.
Teachers point to the targeted pattern of the burglaries: the expensive brass tubas and sousaphones, which cost $2000 to $7000, are pilfered but electronics, cheaper fibreglass tubas and other brass instruments are usually left behind.

Child's Tale Sets Cat Among The Publishers

Author James Joyce.

A children's story by James Joyce (below) has been published for the first time by a small press in Ireland. Ithys Press says The Cats of Copenhagen is a ''younger twin sister'' to the previously published Joyce children's story The Cat and the Devil, which told how the devil built a bridge over a French river in one night. Publisher Anastasia Herbert called it a ''little gem'' that ''reflects Joyce's lighter side, his sense of humour, which can fairly be called odd or even somewhat absurdist''.
Like its predecessor, The Cats of Copenhagen was written in a letter to Joyce's grandchild, Stephen James Joyce, while the author was in Denmark and four-year-old Stephen was in France. The tale is ''exquisite, surprising, and with a keen, almost anarchic subtext'', said Ithys, which has printed a run of 200 illustrated copies, priced from €300 ($370) to €1200.
Ms Herbert said: ''For an adult, Cats reads as an anti-establishment text, critical of fat cats and some authority figures.'' The letter in which the story was found, dated September 5, 1936, was donated to the Zurich James Joyce Foundation. But the publication is controversial. The foundation has called it an ''outrage'', stressing that it had not granted permission for the book's release.

A poster advertising the launch of James Joyce's The Cats of Copenhagen.

Couple Receive $66m Wedding Present

In the money ... Cassey Carrington and Matt Topham. A young British couple set to enter marital bliss is already in seventh heaven, making plans on how to spend a £45 million ($66 million) jackpot won this week.

Cassey Carrington and Matt Topham, both 22, said their first priority was to buy a new computer and washing machine - both had simultaneously broken down on the eve of their winning the EuroMillions draw on Tuesday.

Carrington, a supermarket supervisor, said she would not change the dress she had already chosen for her September wedding. But she was looking forward to building her own home, as well as buying a house for her parents.Topham, who works as a decorator and painter in his father's business, said: "I have often painted these huge houses and wondered what it would be like to live in one, now I can find out."

The couple, from Nottinghamshire, in central England, are seventh on the list of the largest jackpots ever to be won in Britain.They won £45,160,170.50 in Tuesday's rollover draw after playing online with just £5.

Carrington, an Iceland supermarket worker, said she only set up her online account last Friday when she felt she was on a lucky streak. "I did have a feeling I was going to win," she said.

"The store where I work had won an incentive for delivering excellent sales. We had been presented with £10,000 which was shared between staff. After that I just felt like it was my lucky day and decided to get a EuroMillions ticket."

The couple, who are due to be married in September, are the second pair from the county to win a EuroMillions jackpot of more than £40 million in less than a month.

Gareth and Catherine Bull, from Mansfield in Nottinghamshire, won nearly £41 million on January 20.

The latest big winners said they couldn't sleep when they heard about their windfall, which they say they will use to treat family and friends and create their dream home, as well as boost their wedding fund.

"We can now get a big firework display and some entertainment in the evening. It will be our dream day," said Carrington.

The couple's win is the seventh largest jackpot ever to be handed out in the UK.

It puts them equal in wealth to actor Hugh Grant, who has a fortune of £45 million and sits at 1,474th place on the Sunday Times Rich List.

The biggest EuroMillions prize was a £161 million jackpot won by Colin and Chris Weir, from Largs, Scotland, last year.

Building Collapse In Brazil Kills 3-year-old

 

 

A 13-story building partially collapsed in an industrial suburb outside Sao Paulo, Brazil killing a 3-year-old girl, firefighters said today.
The concrete floor of the top story collapsed and took down all the other floors in the building, said Vanessa Andrade, a fire department spokeswoman.
The building remains standing, and there are no indications that its shell was damaged, she added.
Six people were injured in the Monday night (local time) collapse, and at least one person, a 25-year-old nurse who worked in one of the offices, is known to be missing.
Most of the building's 74 units were occupied by commercial and doctors' offices and one luncheonette.
Victor Lutti of the Sao Bernardo do Campo police department told reporters there were no signs that the collapse was caused by an explosion and that investigators are trying to determine if the building had a structural flaw.

The building's superintendent, Lauro Salera told the UOL internet news portal that no unauthorized construction work of renovation was taking place inside the building. Luiz Marinho, the city's mayor, said the building had been recently undergone a routine safety inspection by the fire department that found no problem.

Monday's incident came less than two weeks after three buildings collapsed in downtown Rio de Janeiro, killing at least 17 people. Authorities have said they suspect unauthorized construction work inside a 20-story building created structural damage that led to the fall.
Officials believe the falling building wrenched down two neighboring office buildings.

Liz Taylor's $21m art sale

Three top works from the late Hollywood star Elizabeth Taylor's art collection have sold at a London auction for nearly 14 million pounds ($22 million), the auctioneer Christie's said.

The lot's biggest-selling item was Van Gogh's "Vue de l'asile de la Chapelle de Remy," which used to hang in the living room of Taylor's Bel Air home. The tan-and-turquoise landscape was sold for more than 10 million pounds (nearly $16 million) to an anonymous telephone bidder.

The two other pieces, a self-portrait by Edgar Degas and a landscape by Claude Pissarro, sold earlier in the evening.

Marc Porter, chairman of Christie's Americas, called the works the "crown jewel" of the showbiz legend's collection, and he said in a statement that the auctioneer hoped for more positive results when it offered the rest of Taylor's art collection later in the week.

Taylor died in March at age 79, and Christie's has been selling off her possessions piecemeal.

Last month, the auctioneer sold a 17th-century portrait that once hung over Taylor's fireplace for $2 million. In December, Christie's sold her collection of jewelry, fashion and memorabilia for well over $100 million, including $8.8 million for a diamond ring given to her by Richard Burton, whom she married twice.

Auction-house staff members taking telephone bids were packed three deep at the sale of 88 impressionist, modern and surrealist works.

Economic volatility and decreased returns on financial investments have spurred rich individuals to buy art as an alternative asset class. Sellers are encouraged by rising prices for museum-quality works

Biggest Baby Born In China

A mother in central China has given birth to a seven-kilogram baby, possibly the largest newborn in the country's record books.

The state-run Tianjin Post said the 29-year-old mother in Henan province gave birth to the boy on Saturday by caesarean section.

It said the delivery took just 20 minutes and both mother and the baby, named Chun Chun, were fine.

The paper said the parents were average size and there was nothing unusual about his mother's pregnancy or diet.

The paper said it was not immediately clear whether Chun Chun's 7.04 kilograms made China's record books.
Guinness World Records says the heaviest newborn ever recorded was born to an Ohio woman in 1879 and weighed 10.77 kilograms.

Next Top Model Fired For Being "Too Fat"

A winner of Holland's Next Top Model is suing her agency for refusing to give her the full prize money because it says she is ''too fat''.
Ananda Marchildon said she has received only €10,000 of the €75,000 contract she was promised after winning the competition in 2008, aged 21. She was also stripped of her title. The 183-centimetre model claims she was sacked by Elite Model Management two years into a three-year agreement because her hips exceeded the agency's limit of 90 centimetres. The average European woman has 103-centimetre hips.
Dieuwke Levinson-Arps, representing Marchildon, claims her client was told by a lawyer for Elite she was sacked because ''although she has a nice face, she has a fat arse'' and ''she never had it in her to become a top model because she was unsuitable for catwalk work''.
Suing Elite for unfair dismissal, Marchildon wants them to pay the remaining €65,000 she says she was promised. Elite is contesting the claim.
Wikke Kootstra, a lawyer for Elite, said: ''It was impossible for Elite to find [Marchildon] modelling jobs since she wasn't in the required shape.''
Ms Kootstra said in an email: ''Couture clothing is made in one size only: [tres tres] petite. This is not something agencies can change.''
A court judgment is expected next month.

Entire Spanish Village Win Lottery

Anica Bordei serves a drink to a customer at the village cafe she manages, in Sodeto, Spain.

JUST a few weeks ago, the 70 households in the tiny isolated farming village of Sodeto were struggling under the double whammy of Spain's economic downturn and the ravages of a severe drought.

Some were even thinking of passing up Spain's huge Christmas lottery, known as El Gordo - the fat one. But they bought tickets out of loyalty to the local homemakers' association, which makes a small percentage on the sales.
And then, their number came in and all but one household in Sodeto held at least a piece of a winning ticket in the lottery's huge first prize, $US950 million ($A894 million), the biggest ever.
Some of Sodeto's residents, mostly farmers and unemployed construction workers, won millions. The least fortunate came away with a minimum of $US130,000.
It is a rare piece of happy news in the relentlessly gloomy European economic crisis, in which Spain has been one of the hardest of the hard-luck cases. But it is not without cost: the village, until now a dot on the map three hours north-west of Barcelona, has been inundated with salesmen and fortune seekers - bankers offering high interest rates, car salesman talking up BMWs and furniture dealers going door to door.
Like many other local farmers, Jose Manuel Penella Cambra, who had recently invested in more efficient irrigation, worried about how he would meet his payments. But his wife bought two tickets, worth $US260,000, and his son found two more she had bought earlier and had forgotten, bringing the total to $US520,000. ''This money means that now we can breathe. And the best part is that it isn't just me. Everybody won,'' he said.
The Christmas lottery, first established in 1812, is a huge event in Spain. Many people take the morning off to watch the televised coverage of the numbers being drawn.
The Sodeto homemakers' association sells the tickets and usually nets about $US1300, which it uses to pay for food and decorations at local festivals. This year the tickets brought in more than $US150 million. So far, though, no one has splurged on anything much.
Some hope the money will help keep the next generation in the village. In the 1960s, Sodeto had 400 residents, but nowadays only 250 people live there.
The only resident who did not win was Costis Mitsotakis, a Greek filmmaker, who moved to the village for love of a woman. It did not work out. But he still lives here in a barn he is restoring outside the village. Somehow, the ticket sellers overlooked him as they made the rounds.
Mr Mitsotakis said it would have been nice to win. But he has benefited nonetheless. He had been trying to sell some land without much success. The day after the lottery a neighbour called to say he would buy it. The next day another neighbour called. But Mr Mitsotakis refused to get into a bidding war. ''This is a small village,'' he said. ''You don't want bad feelings.''

Graffiti Artist Scores $200m Windfall

The graffiti artist who took Facebook stock instead of cash for painting the walls of the social network's first headquarters made a smart move. The shares owned by the artist, David Choe, are expected to be worth more than $US200 million ($187 million) when Facebook stock trades publicly this year.
The social network company announced a $5 billion public offering this week, which is expected to value the company at up to $US100 billion.
The Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, 27, has 533.8 million shares, worth $US28.3 billion based on a company valuation of $US100 billion, or $US53 a share. He has undisputed control of the company - owning 28.4 per cent of the company outright and controlling 57 per cent of the voting rights.
Facebook's first outside investor, Peter Thiel, the billionaire contrarian, led a $US500,000 investment in Facebook in late 2004. He has 44.7 million shares that could be worth more than $US2 billion. Elevation Partners, the venture capital firm of Bono, the U2 frontman, paid $US120 million for a chunk of Facebook's shares in 2010.
Choe's payout could provide more money from his paintings than Sotheby's attracted for its record-breaking $US200.7 million auction in 2008 for work by the artist Damien Hirst.
In 2005, Choe was invited to paint murals on the walls of Facebook's first offices in Palo Alto, California, by Sean Parker, then Facebook's president. As pay, Mr Parker offered Choe a choice between cash in the ''thousands of dollars,'' according to several people who know Choe, or stock then worth about the same amount. Choe, who has said that at the time that he thought the idea of Facebook was ''ridiculous and pointless'', nevertheless chose the stock.
Many ''advisers'' to the company at that time, which is how Choe would have been classified, would have received about 0.1 per cent to 0.25 per cent of the company, a former Facebook employee said. That may sound like a paltry amount, but a stake that size is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, based on a market value of $US100 billion valuing Choe's payment at about $US200 million.

150 Missing, 200 Saved After Ferry Sinks

Waiting ... family members standby for news about the passengers on board.

Australian rescue crews saved more than 200 Papua New Guineans from drowning after the MV Rabaul Queen ferry they were travelling on sank in open waters. But as night fell efforts were called off and fears remained for the 150 still missing. Officials believe up to 350 people were on board the ferry when it went down about 8.30am yesterday. They had been travelling in the Solomon Sea to Papua New Guinea's north town of Lae from the West New Britain town of Kimbe.

The ship is owned by the brother of Papua New Guinea's National Maritime Safety Authority chairman.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority, working with NMSA, directed commercial ships and several aircraft to scour the area as part of a co-ordinated search and rescue mission.

Despite initial fears that most of the passengers would drown, late yesterday afternoon AMSA spokeswoman Carly Lusk said there were eight merchant vessels on the scene, five of which had recovered survivors.

''There are reported to be 238 survivors on these five vessels,'' she said.Three search helicopters were helping rescue passengers as well as AMSA's dedicated search and rescue Dornier aircraft from Cairns, an Australian Defence Force PC3 Orion aircraft and AMSA's Dornier from Darwin.

Three life rafts from the MV Rabaul Queen float above the sunken hull of the ferry.

 

Underwear Scam Rocks Luge World

Tonga's 'Bruno Banani' during a practice session at the FIL Luge World Championships in Cesana Pariol, Italy. 

When news surfaced in Germany of a promising young luger from Tonga who bore the same name as a racy German underwear firm, scepticism might have been warranted.

But the story was too delicious. Bruno Banani, 24, ostensibly the son of a coconut farmer, was aiming to be Tonga's first ever competitor at a winter Olympic games.
When Banani was unveiled to the German media, he was naturally sponsored by Bruno Banani, a purveyor of knickers from the east German city of Chemnitz. But now an investigation by Der Spiegel magazine has revealed that the plucky luger was in fact christened Bruno Banani by some opportunists at a marketing company in Leipzig. According to Spiegel, it seems that the young IT student who was picked for luge success was actually called Fuahea Semi, and marketing firm Makai somehow arranged for a passport to be issued for Semi in the name of Bruno Banani.