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+3 +1
Cockroaches may soon be unstoppable—thanks to fast-evolving insecticide resistance
The day that squeamish humans—and exterminators—have long feared may have come at last: Cockroaches are becoming invincible. Or at least German cockroaches (Blattella germanica) are, according to a new study. Researchers have found that these creatures, which have long been a prevalent urban pest, are becoming increasingly resistant to almost every kind of chemical insecticide.
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+13 +1
China’s Bizarre Program to Keep Activists in Check
Recently, the Beijing police took my brother sightseeing again. Nine days, two guards, chauffeured tours through a national park that’s a World Heritage site, visits to Taoist temples and to the Three Gorges, expenses fully covered, all courtesy of the Ministry of Public Security. The point was to get him out of town during the 2018 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, held in early September. The capital had to be in a state of perfect order; no trace of trouble was permissible. And Zha Jianguo, a veteran democracy activist, is considered a professional troublemaker.
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+11 +1
A man harasses a woman for wearing a Puerto Rico shirt, saying it's 'un-American'
An Illinois park is investigating after a woman accused one of its police officers of standing by as a man harassed her for wearing a shirt with the Puerto Rican flag, saying it was un-American. Mia Irizarry says she was trying to celebrate her 24th birthday in the Forest Preserves of Cook County last month when the man approached her asking her why she was wearing the sleeveless Puerto Rico flag shirt, which also had "Puerto Rico" written below the V neckline.
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+9 +1
A giant farm in China is breeding 6 billion cockroaches a year. Here's why
Long, narrowly spaced rows of shelves fill a multi-storey building about the size of two sports fields. The shelves are lined with open containers of food and water. It is warm, humid and dark all year round, with freedom to roam to find food and reproduce. Fully sealed like a prison, it has strict limitations on access to visitors. From birth to death, inhabitants never see the sun.
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+7 +1
Alaska Man Arrested After Hitting Roommate With Zelda Sword
Ancohrage police were called to an apartment near the University of Alaska last Friday after a group of roomates got into a fight involving their fists, a knife and a replica Master Sword.
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+14 +1
A man died after being "sucked" into an MRI machine and inhaling pure liquid oxygen
Mumbai police confirmed that an Indian man died after being “sucked” into an MRI machine, according to international news agency Agence France-Presse. The victim, 32-year-old Rajesh Maru, was visiting a relative in Mumbai's Nair Hospital when he entered a room containing a magnetic resonance imaging machine—more commonly known as an MRI machine—while carrying an oxygen cylinder.
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+17 +1
Chunks of a Portland Man's Exploded Hand Struck a Federal Officer. He's Charged With Assault.
When he set off an explosion during a traffic stop, authorities say parts of Jason Schaefer's mangled left hand struck a federal officer. Now, Shaefer faces a charge of assaulting that officer. The bizarre detail emerged today, in an unsealed probable cause statement filed along with federal charges against Schaefer, 26. Beyond the assault charge, he's also accused of using and carrying an explosive to commit a felony.
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+4 +1
How Fake News Turned a Small Town Upside Down
On a Tuesday morning in June 2016, Nathan Brown, a reporter for The Times-News, the local paper in Twin Falls, Idaho, strolled into the office and cleared off a spot for his coffee cup amid the documents and notebooks piled on his desk. Brown, 32, started his career at a paper in upstate New York, where he grew up, and looks the part of a local reporter, clad in a fresh oxford and khakis that tend to become disheveled over the course of his long days.
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+14 +1
Man's bizarre 911 confession released in wife's murder
A man calling 911 in North Carolina told the operator he woke up from a dream and found his wife stabbed to death in their bedroom. Raleigh police charged 28-year-old Matthew Phelps, an aspiring pastor, with murder Friday after he made the emergency call.
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+21 +1
US makes exceptions for North Korea travel ban
The State Department has announced it will allow four categories of Americans to apply for an exemption after it bars most citizens from traveling to North Korea starting next month. The ban will go into effect on Sept. 1 and will make it a felony to use a U.S. passport to travel to North Korea.
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+24 +1
Why Are Americans So Afraid?
In December 2016, at a rally in North Carolina, a 12-year-old girl looked at then candidate Donald Trump, "I'm scared," she said. “What are you going to do to protect this country?” “You know what, darling?” Trump replied. “You’re not going to be scared anymore. They’re going to be scared.”
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+19 +1
A Neuroscientist Just Tricked 4 Dodgy Journals Into Accepting a Fake Paper on 'Midi-Chlorians'
If we ever needed a timely reminder that in the world of academic publishing not all scientific journals are created equal, we now have it. To test just how low the quality bar is for exploitative predatory journals, a prominent neuroscientist has tricked four publications into accepting a totally fake paper about midi-chlorians – the entirely fictional life forms in Star Wars that make 'the force' possible.
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+24 +1
Italian village will give $2200 in cash to anyone willing to live there. Will also provide cheap housing at $55 a month
The population in Bormida, a mountainous village in northern Italy, has been dwindling in the past several decades, and has now reached a record low of 394 people. To avoid becoming a ghost town, the local mayor has declared that anyone who will buy or rent a house in the village will receive 2,000 Euros ($2,200) in cash. The new villagers will also be eligible for cheap rent - $55 for a small apartment and $130 for a spacious unit.
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+8 +1
Minister gifts 700 brides wooden bats; to be used on husbands if they turn alcoholic
What would you generally gift a newly-married couple? A Madhya Pradesh minister decided on an unusual present – a ‘mogri’ or a wooden bat – for nearly 700 brides at a mass marriage ceremony. While the mogri is traditionally used to wash clothes, the minister has advised the brides to use it on their husbands if they turn alcoholic or harass them and refuse to mend their ways.
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+18 +1
Off-duty security instructor pepper-sprayed autistic man for eating free cookies, charges say
He was the training director of one of St. Paul’s largest security companies — a man certified on when and how to use Mace. Which left police mystified as to why Timothy Knutsen would pepper spray an autistic man in the face for eating a cookie from a Cub Foods sampler tray. Knutsen, 53, of St. Paul, has been charged with two counts of fifth-degree assault and disorderly conduct for an incident in Roseville last month.
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+24 +1
A punk take on The Wizard of Oz screens in a massive graffiti installation.
This version of the installation is part of a nationwide tour. If, on a recent Saturday night, you happened to find yourself walking down a desolate street at the edge of L.A.’s Skid Row, you might have passed an open warehouse roll gate in a building displaying a Swoon mural on the exterior. Inside that warehouse, you would have immediately encountered a giant multi-eyed upside-down alien next to a wolf serving fresh popcorn. A film was screening deep inside the space, and if you made your way past the small shack with a roof made of compressed spray cans — and didn’t trip over another pile of empty paint cans with a small metal chimney spew
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+15 +1
Why Our Super Bowl Ad Failed
Cards Against Humanity purchased a Super Bowl ad, but it was not successful. This weekend, Cards Against Humanity purchased an ad during the Super Bowl, the most-watched American television broadcast of the year, reaching 114.4 million viewers. Cards Against Humanity is known as an innovator in the games space, and we saw an opportunity to apply our unique brand of “outside the box” thinking to the old-fashioned world of Super Bowl commercials.
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+3 +1
Doctors remove live cockroach from a woman’s skull in Chennai
The doctors are glad that Selvi turned up at the right time because if the cockroach would have died, it might have harmed her brain.
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+27 +1
A Dictator's Nuclear Bunker Gets a Second Life as an Art Space
And it's still pretty creepy.
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+19 +1
'I voted for Brexit because of straight bananas', woman explains
A Question Time audience member sparked sniggers after claiming she changed her vote in the EU referendum from Remain to Leave because of straight bananas. The woman made the statement on Thursday night’s BBC programme, during a debate about the state of political affairs in the run up to triggering Article 50. The woman said: “I was voting Remain and at the very last minute I changed my decision and I went to Leave.
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