KEY POINTS:
Vigilantism is alive and thriving on both sides of the Atlantic. Citizen Prime, a 40-year-old married man whose first name is Jim, has been protecting the streets of Phoenix in the US for a year. He became a superhero to spread the message that people don't have to be fearful of crime. "Are you going to sit inside scared that a terrorist might attack your city, or are you going to go out and live your life?" he asked. But Prime, who patrols once or twice a week in a black, blue and yellow costume, found one chink in his armour. He couldn't find any crime. "The only crime I've ever stopped is when I was actually walking out of a sporting goods store with my wife," he said. "A shoplifter came running past me, and I managed to throw him to the ground."
Meanwhile, in Britain, Angle Grinder Man patrols London and Kent by night looking for unhappy drivers who have been clamped and then sets their cars free. An odd-job man by day, he operates in Kent during the week and in London at weekends. He decided to go "full-time vigilante" in May. "My obsession with wheel-clamping is actually a rebellion against a much deeper malaise," he said, "namely, the arrogant contempt that politicians hold for the people who put them into power, and whom they claim to represent."
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A Papakura reader writes: "On Tuesday night some clowns in a car (probably not theirs) drove up the kerb, did a u-turn on my lawn and demolished my letterbox as they drove off. On Wednesday morning I quickly gathered the remains and piled them where the box once stood and went to work. When cleaning up that afternoon I discovered a postcard from NZ Post wedged in the remains. The face of the card read 'The Mail Must Get Through' and the back 'Please help us deliver your mail by ... keeping your letterbox at a height between 1-1.5m'. Apparently the postie didn't notice the tyre marks in the lawn and simply thought my letterbox was too short?"
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A New Jersey woman woke to find someone stole her backyard pool - and baffled by how they did it without leaving behind a splash, drip or trace of the 3785 litres of water it contained.
Dairy Valdivia awoke to find her family's hip-high, inflatable, three-metre diameter swimming pool gone from her backyard.
She told The Record of Bergen County the theft must have occurred between 1am when her husband went to bed and 5am, when she awoke. She just wanted to know "what the heck they did with the water".
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An Indonesian maid has been jailed for six days in Hong Kong for serving her boss a cup of water containing urine. The 29-year-old pleaded guilty to a charge of "administering poison or other destructive or noxious substance with intent to injure", but insisted she had used the urine to treat a skin condition and its appearance in her employer's cup was a mistake. Her boss, Szeto Ching-han, smelled the urine after asking for a cup of water, and then asked the maid to drink it - which she did. Szeto, however, kept the liquid to have it tested in a lab, the South China Morning Post reported.
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A planned Republican fundraiser in New Hampshire aims to promote gun ownership in America by letting supporters fire powerful military-style weapons - from Uzi submachine guns to M-16 rifles. The Manchester Republican Committee is inviting party members and their families to a "Machine Gun Shoot" where, for US$$25 ($32), supporters can spend a day trying out automatic weapons, says organiser Jerry Thibodeau. "It's a fun day. It's a family day," says Thibodeau of the August 5 event. "It's quite exciting." Local Democrats say the event is in poor taste.
Source: Reuters
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Among the recent discoveries of substances that provide similar virility outcomes to Viagra:
1. The venom of a variety of black widow spider found in southern Chile, according to a researcher at Universidad de la Frontera in Temuco, Chile;
2. The health drink Boost Plus (according to a lawsuit filed by Christopher Woods of New York City, who developed priapism - a persistent erection);
3. The winter-flowering heather plant (according to botanists at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh, Scotland);
4. And walnut extract, according to a researcher at Universiti Malaya in Malaysia (though one would need 3kg of walnuts to achieve the effect of one tablet of Viagra).
Source: News of the Weird
