It was set up by Stefano Bottoni, from Ferrara, in northern Italy. 
The sheer weight of the cast iron means they can be left on outdoor display with minimal security. 
The woman has what appears to be a pair of men's underwear wrapped around her face and held in place with paper clips.
"One should, as with tobacco, tax the purchase of unhealthy consumer goods at a higher rate and partly maintain the health system. That applies to alcohol, chocolate or risky sporting equipment such as hang-gliders."
Others want even more extreme measures such as weighing school kids each day.
The fat kids would then be reported to social services, who would have the authority to send them to health clinics.
Link
The yawning girl on the left seems a bit bored with the idea of touring the British Prime Minister's residence.
An article at the link below reports on John Kerry's big tax dodge.
It is cheaper to maintain a gravel road than to keep repairing asphalt roads.Paved roads, historical emblems of American achievement, are being torn up across rural America and replaced with gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets and dwindling state and federal revenue.
State money for local roads was cut in many places amid budget shortfalls.
Many hard surfaced roads are now going back to the "S
tone Age."
Link
An angiogram showed the five previous stents were fine and no new ones required.
An Amish girl filmed as she roller blades home with groceries along a road in Middlefield, Ohio.
1. Dog Eat Hog World - a gammon and chicken sorbet topped with a biscuit bone and served in a cone.
2. Canine Cookie Crunch - dog biscuits and ice cream topped with a biscuit bone and served in a cone.
But where do the dogs keep their money to buy the treats? With no pockets, the dogs may need to carry purses.
Link
Now a House investigative committee has charged New York Congressman Charles Rangel with multiple ethics violations.
The photo above shows traders wearing 3-D glasses as they watch RealD 3-D screens on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is shown treating British Prime Minister David Cameron to a high-class hot dog lunch outside Penn Station in New York.
This Time Magazine photo is titled, "Shear Royalty."
Democrats for the first time are acknowledging that Republicans could retake the Senate this November if everything falls into place for the GOP, less than two years after Democrats held a daunting 60-seat majority.
A change of party control in the Senate, where only a third of the members are running and Republicans must capture 10 seats, seemed out of the question.
That's no longer the case. The emergence of competitive Republican candidates in Wisconsin, Washington and California—Democratic-leaning states where polls now show tight races—bring the number of seats that Republicans could seize from the Democrats to 11.
More details here.
An actor wearing a potato costume stands in the doorway of a house during the Potato Festival in Mitzpe Gvulot, Israel last spring.
An overflow crowd packed a City Council meeting in Bell, a mostly Hispanic city of 38,000 about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles, to call for the resignation of Mayor Oscar Hernandez and other city officials. Residents left standing outside the chamber banged on the doors and shouted “fuera,” or “get out” in Spanish.
It was the first council meeting since the Los Angeles Times reported July 15 that Chief Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo earns $787,637 -- with annual 12 percent raises -- and that Bell pays its police chief $457,000, more than Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck makes in a city of 3.8 million people.
Bell council members earn almost $100,000 for part-time work.
The flight originated at Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C. It landed safely at Denver International Airport around 7:45 p.m. Tuesday, and was met by medical crews.
FAA spokesman Ian Gregor in Los Angeles says 26 passengers and four crew members were injured. He says one person was critically hurt, but released no further details.
Denver Health Medical Center spokeswoman Dee Martinez says 21 people have been transported to five area hospitals. Most of them have moderate injuries to the head, neck or back.
The donkey only just survived his ordeal after landing in water near Golubitskaya in the Krasnodar region of Russia, reports The Daily Telegraph.
One report said the donkey took to the skies as part of an advertising campaign launched by a group of entrepreneurs to attract locals to their private beach.
Another report said it was part of a parasailing firm's advertising stunt.
Regional police have now opened an investigation.
Spokeswoman Larisa Tuchkova said: "The donkey screamed and children cried. No one had the brains to call police."
The event raises thousands for SCAN, or Stop Child Abuse and Neglect. Stronger than usual currents that day swept 17,000 plastic ducks past the finish line. Since then, all but 1,500 have been caught.
They're 25 cents a piece and we reuse them. We've been doing the duck race, it's our largest fundraiser, we've been doing it for 22 years," explained Jennifer Boen, SCAN communications manager. "Even though we still have 15-hundred out there it represents almost 400 dollars."
The ducks have been spotted as far east as Ohio, and have likely split up, floating down the Saint Joseph, the Saint Mary's and the Maumee.
Germany's autobahns are renowned for average speeds well in excess of 80 miles an hour. But the average dropped near zero Sunday as tens of thousands of people sat at a 37-mile table for a cultural celebration titled, appropriately enough, "Still Life."
Cars were strictly verboten.
A festival spokesman said an estimated three million people turned out amid fine weather, one million of them with their bicycles, to celebrate on the highway between Dortmund and Bochum, in western Germany.
Tens of thousands sat at the table, which was made up of 20,000 individual tables.
More here.
The battle lines were drawn in the run-up to this year’s Farnborough Airshow as the world’s dominant plane makers prepare for the next stage of competition in the aerospace industry.
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is shown above. The Airbus A350XWB is shown below.
Link
Under pressure, the Democrats are cracking.
On both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, there is a realization that Nancy Pelosi's hold on the speakership is in true jeopardy; that losing control of the Senate is not out of the question; and that time, once the Democrats' best friend, is now their mortal enemy.Since January, when Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy's Massachusetts Senate seat, the President's party has tried to downplay in public what its pollsters have been saying in private: that Obama's alienation of independents and white voters, along with the enthusiasm gap between the right and the left, means that Republicans are on a trajectory to pick up massive numbers of House and Senate seats, perhaps even to regain control of Congress.
More of this bleak report on the Democrats chances to maintain control after the November mid-terms can be found here.
During the past year there is another type of comment spam coming on the scene. The comment itself will often contain a compliment to the blog post. However, it will also contain a link to a commercial website.
Ryanair's vertical seating will cost £4 (about $6).Budget airline Ryanair has said it will introduce ‘standing-room only’ areas on its flights.
The low cost carrier has announced proposals to install new ‘vertical seats’ (pictured) on a range of short haul flights within the next two years.
New federal regulations issued this week stipulate that the electronic health records--that all Americans are supposed to have by 2014 under the terms of the stimulus law that President Barack Obama signed last year--must record not only the traditional measures of height and weight, but also the Body Mass Index: a measure of obesity.
The obesity-rating regulation states that every American's electronic health record must: “Calculate body mass index. Automatically calculate and display body mass index (BMI) based on a patient’s height and weight.”
The law also requires that these electronic health records be available--with appropriate security measures--on a national exchange.
We wonder what U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin (pictured), who is fat, thinks of this obesity rating?
Link
The Obama administration is bracing for the first in a series of Washington Post articles said to focus in unprecedented detail on the government's spending on intelligence contractors.
The intelligence community is warning that the article could blow the cover of contract companies doing top-secret work for the government. At the same time, a senior administration official acknowledged that the kind of wasteful spending expected to be spotlighted in the series is "troubling" and something the administration is trying to address.
Will others in the media jump to the defense of the Obama administration in an effort to play down the upcoming exposé?
Link
A woman leaves with her dogs after voting in a travel trailer turned polling station in Cornwall, England last spring.
Health care workers toss pamphlets over the Chilean Congress in protest of massive layoffs hitting the health care industry.
A fisherman rows a boat through the algae-filled Chaohu Lake in Chaohu, China.
The owner of a seafood business planted crosses in his front yard in Grand Isle, La., to mark casualties of the oil spill. "Our soul is dying," said the graveyard's creator, Patrick Shay.
Photo above shows Daly playing in the 2010 British Open. Below, Daly and his girlfriend, Anna Cladakis, wore matching argyle pants during a walk along the course during practice for the British Open in St Andrews, Scotland.
Daly made a dizzying entrance at the champions dinner before the British Open. While other past tournament winners sported traditional red coats, Daly showed up in a blazer of orange and blue sunbursts against a black background as shown below on the left.
That may be commonplace as cities and states scramble to cope with budget deficits in a recession.The recession may be claiming a new victim: the 5-10-mph "cushion" police and state troopers across the USA have routinely given motorists exceeding the speed limit.
As cities and states scramble to fill budget gaps with revenue from traffic citations, "not only are the (speeding) tolerances much lower, but the frequency of a warning instead of a ticket is way down," says James Baxter, president of the National Motorists Association, a Wisconsin-based drivers' rights group that helps its members fight speeding tickets.
Most people, if they're stopped now, are getting a ticket even if it's only a minor violation of a few miles per hour," Baxter says. He cites anecdotal evidence of drivers being pulled over at slower speeds.
More here.
Britney Spears told the Toronto Star in 1999, “I get to go overseas places, like Canada” when asked about the perks of fame.
Congressman Aaron Schock (R-IL) has joined the chorus of Republican outrage over stimulus signs and claims at least $20 million has been spent on them.
He told ABC News, "I think it's a bit of an oxymoron to spend tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money, borrowed money, on a bunch of signs to tell them how we are spending their taxpayer money."
But isn't Congressman Schock missing the whole point of the signs? Aren't they Obama's 2012 re-election signs?
When asked about the Republican outcry over spending on stimulus signs, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs replied with a well rehearsed line about how nice it was that the Republicans noticed the road projects underway this summer.
Link
A policeman is attempting coral a moose that found its way into the suburbs of Lubin, Poland. The moose was later returned to the forest.
Is it a long shot? Sure. But it’s no longer crazy.
If it’s occurring to millions of Americans who voted for Obama, it must be occurring to Hillary Clinton too: The magic is gone. Barack Obama can’t walk on water no matter how hard his fans in the media tried to turn him into the messiah. And that hope and change thing? Well, it isn’t working out the way it was supposed to, either.
Hillary really should resign as Secretary of State - she is just a figurehead anyway because Obama won't let her do her job.
The position was given to her as a "trophy" after her bitter primary campaign against Obama.
If she wins the presidency in 2012, Bill will be back in the White House. Who will he rent out the Lincoln bedroom to this time?
Will Hillary keep him supplied with cute young political interns like Monica? Maybe, but he probably can't use the Oval Office for his hanky panky this time.
More of the Hillary for president story here.
Researchers have found that a protein called ovocleidin (OC-17) is crucial in the formulation of eggshells, and it is produced in the pregnant hen's ovaries, the Daily Express reports.
Therefore, the answer to the conundrum must be that the chicken came first.
Using a high-tech computer to look at the molecular structure of a shell, the team of scientists from the Universities of Sheffield and Warwick found that OC-17 acts as a catalyst, kick-starting the conversion of calcium carbonate in the chicken's body into calcite crystals.
They make up the hard shell that houses the yolk and its protective fluids while the chick develops.
These people really need to get out more. They spent a lot of time and resources just to solve an age-old riddle we really didn't want solved.
The article goes on:
"It had long been suspected that the egg came first but now we have the scientific proof that shows that in fact the chicken came first," said Dr Colin Freeman, from Sheffield University.
"The protein had been identified before and it was linked to egg formation but by examining it closely we have been able to see how it controls the process."
They haven't finished yet. The article ends with:
LinkBut the researchers have not yet got an answer to how the protein-producing chicken existed in the first place.
Dinner and a movie: Experts say
bedbugs favor feasting on moviegoers in cushy theater seats
Playing now in a city theater near you: Attack of the Bedbug.
Bedbugs need people in a stationary position to attack. People in hotel beds or in movie theater seats are perfect targets.
Will the old-time good night salutation, "Sleep tight - don't let the bed bugs bite" come back into use?
More of this story here.
Many frequent fliers complain they're time-consuming or invade their privacy. The world's airlines say they shouldn't be used for primary security screening. And questions are being raised about possible effects on passengers' health.
"The system takes three to five times as long as walking through a metal detector," says Phil Bush of Atlanta, one of many fliers on USA TODAY's Road Warriors panel who oppose the machines. "This looks to be yet another disaster waiting to happen."
The machines — dubbed by some fliers as virtual strip searches — were installed at many airports in March after a Christmas Day airline bombing attempt.
That was the time Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that "the system worked."
As if to make up for Napolitano's embarrassing statement last January, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has spent more than $80 million for about 500 machines, including 133 now at airports. It plans to install about 1,000 by the end of next year.
The machines are running into complaints and questions here and overseas.
Link
A picture of my cave
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