KEY POINTS:
An ad campaign trying to attract Londoners to Paris might make staunch rugby fans squirm. One of the billboards the regional tourism committee has commissioned is based on the World Cup and features what can only be described as a full-on front-row pash between France and England. Reminds us of All Black great Colin Meads' reaction to Anton Oliver's gig as an artist's model. "We're meant to be salt of the earth, down-to-earth, grassroots, bloody good guys," Meads said.
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Andres Vasquez, 20, of Kentucky initially told the 911 operator that someone had thrown his truck on top of him. He finally admitted he was drunk, had pranged his car, and was trapped upside-down in dire pain. For more than two hours, emergency operators pleaded for Vasquez to divulge his location, but after his admission that he'd been drinking he was reluctant and drunkenly answered every request with "I'm under the [expletive deleted] truck".
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Jonathan Powell, 17, was convicted in April of sexually assaulting a college student in Iowa, after his DNA was found in several places on her body. Powell claimed that he had bumped into the woman accidentally while jogging and had become so "entangled" with her that he was unable to free himself for about 45 minutes. (Source: News of the Weird)
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Another good reason to be a vegetarian: "A kilogram of beef is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution than driving for three hours while leaving all the lights on back home," says New Scientist magazine.
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Alexis Purvis, who recently returned from a European holiday, writes: "At Manor Farm restaurant in Interlaken, Switzerland, the menu read: "NZ Lamb, Belgium Beef, NZ Horse". We questioned the waiter, saying we were unaware NZ exported horse meat for human consumption and that we didn't eat it in NZ, but he was adamant it was from New Zealand."
