In Cambodia and it's neighboring country Vietnam, rat meat is in high demand. Officials blame the economy as the reason why Cambodians are preferring it over livestock and poultry meat. Rat meat is also in demand in Vietnam and is eaten in Thailand and India to combat high prizes of meat prize in the market.
Officials said rats were fleeing to higher ground from flooded areas of the lower Mekong Delta, making it easier for villagers to catch them.
"Many children are happy making some money from selling the animals to the markets, but they keep some for their family," Ly Marong, an agriculture official, said by telephone from the Koh Thom district on the border with Vietnam.
A green crucified frog sculpture is still in display in a Italian museum despite being criticized by different religious groups, even the Pope who denounced the sculpture.
The 3-foot-tall sculpture which is an ironic self-portrait and an expression of his angst is made by German artist Martin Kippenberge who died in 1997 at 43.
It "has offended the religious feelings of many people who consider the cross a symbol of God's love and of our redemption," Pahl quoted the pope as writing in the letter.
Pahl himself has long opposed the display of "Zuerst die Fuesse" ("First the Feet" in German), even staging a hunger strike this summer and saying he would not seek re-election unless it was removed.
The museum then moved the statue out of its foyer and into a less trafficked area on the third floor.
Tomatina Festival is the world's biggest tomato fight held every last Wednesday of August each year in the town of Buñol in the Valencia region of Spain. Each year, approximately 20,000–40,000 tourists come to the tomato fight, multiplying by several times Buñol's normal population of 9,000. The video below is this years (Aug. 27, 2008) celebration were thousands of people went to the Spanish town of Bunol on Wednesday to take part in said festival.
Daryl, a.k.a. the Human Railroad, has amazing railroad tattoos in his body. He has spent 200 hours getting his tattoo which very intricate yet detailed with tracks, switches and tunnels.
Picture has been removed following the photographer's request. Please click the link below to see the of the "The Human Railroad".
John Pearce maybe one of the world's dumbest burglar. He was caught dangling upside down when his shoelaces was caught by the window of his victim after smashing it. He was in that position of about an hour as a crowd of 30 neighbours and passers-by gathered to ridicule him before the house owner and police arrived.
Mr Ives, 44, an air conditioning engineer who recently moved into the house, said: 'The man must be the world's dumbest thief.
'He was hanging upside down. His body was inside the house and he was stuck in the window with his foot outside.
'The more he struggled, the more he got jammed. When I got home, he still had the hammer in his hand which he had used to smash the main window and get some leverage.
'He was screaming to get him down and we were all saying, "I don't think so".
'He kept saying, "I haven't done anything. I was stopping the burglars".'
Without the successful face transplant, this 30-year-old Chinese man would have been hideous all his life. He was attacked by a bear in October 2004.
The surgery included connection of arteries and veins, repair of the nose, lip, and sinuses, as well as other structures in the damaged part of the face.
The Tree of Ténéré was once considered the world's most isolated tree before it was knocked down by an allegedly drunk Libyan truck driver in 1973. It was the only acacia tree within 250 miles and it served as a landmark on caravan routes through the Ténéré region of the Sahara in northeast Niger.
It was the last surviving tree of a group of trees that grew when the desert was less parched than it is today. The tree had stood alone for decades. During the winter of 1938–1939 a well was dug near the tree and it was found that the roots of the tree reached the water table 33–36 meters below the surface.
Gardeners design a giant flower carpet in a central market called Grand Place in Brussels, Belgium. It requires about 700,000 flowers to create, according to event organizers. This is done once every two years.
The flower carpet of Grand Place has a different model every time and it’s made out of roughly 700,000 begonias. This is definitely one of the must see- attractions of Brussels.
A barbie fishing rod made a record catfish catch in backyard pond. The catfish, which weighed 21 pounds and 1 ounce, was caught by David Hayes when his granddaughter asked him to hold the rod and reel for her. The next thing he know, he have a state record catch.
Alyssa's father had bought the pink Barbie fishing rod for Christmas and she had caught a few bluegill before her grandfather hauled in the catfish.
The Winston-Salem Journal reported the catch Aug. 5 in eastern Wilkes County has been certified as a record by the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission.
Hayes and his granddaughter have been fishing in the pond behind his house since she was big enough to hold a pole.
The Burning Monk was a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk named Thích Quảng Đức, who burned himself to death on at a busy Saigon road intersection on June 11, 1963 , as a protest of the persecution of Buddhists by South Vietnam's Ngô Đình Diệm administration. Photos of his self-immolation were circulated widely across the world and brought attention to the policies of the Diệm regime.
Thích Quảng Đức's act increased international pressure on Diệm and led him to announce reforms with the intention of mollifying the Buddhists. However, the promised reforms were implemented either slowly or not at all, leading to a deterioration in the dispute. With protests continuing, the Special Forces loyal to Diệm's brother, Ngô Ðình Nhu, launched nationwide raids on Buddhist pagodas, seizing the holy heart and causing deaths and widespread damage. Several Buddhist monks followed Thích Quảng Đức's example and burned themselves to death. Eventually, an Army coup toppled and killed Diệm in November. The self-immolation is widely seen as the turning point of the Vietnamese Buddhist crisis which led to the change in regime.
A 27- year-old Egyptian woman named Ghazala Khamis gives birth to Septuplets or seven babies via Ceasarean section. The babies, four boys and three girls are now in stable condition. Ghazala who has three daughters, took fertility drugs in order to have a son. Lucky for the parents because Egypt's health minister will shoulder the milk and diapers of the seven babies for two years.
"This is a very rare pregnancy — something I have never witnessed over my past 33 years in this profession," Darwish told The Associated Press by phone from the hospital.
Darwish decided to carry out the Caesarean section at the end of Khamis' eighth month of pregnancy due to the pressure on her kidneys. He said Khamis, who already has three daughters, took fertility drugs in an effort to have a son.
A Japanese grapes called "Ruby Roman" was sold for $900 a bunch. The said grapes has the same size of pingpong ball each.
On August 11, 2008, in Ishikawa Prefecture Japan, a bunch of “Ruby Roman” grapes were auctioned and purchased by a restaurant owner for a record high of 100,000 yen (around $910).
The bunch had about 35 grapes on it, costing around $26 per grape, and each one was as big as a ping pong ball.
The other bunches sold for average of 27,000 yen (around $245).
A premature 610-gram baby comes back to life after it was pronounced dead and was put into a freezer for five hours. Premature infants of this weight and age have only 10 percent survival.
The father, Ali Majdub, told Channel 2 that his wife realized the child was alive after asking to see her dead daughter one last time.
"When we unwrapped the baby to see her, she realized it was moving. I began screaming and ran with it toward the doctors," he said.
She was then rushed to the neonatal intensive care unit, where doctors are fighting for her life.
"I was in shock," the mother told Channel 2 last night. "I thought I wasn't hearing it right when they said she was still alive."
Dr. Moshe Daniel, the hospital's deputy director, said that in his 35 years as a physician, he had "never heard of such a case. It was like a medical miracle."
A Bigfoot that was found in North Georgia is gaining so much attention since yesterday when the two Bigfoot hunters who claims to have discovered the body made a press conference about their latest discovery. The two hunters presented photos and DNA samples of the Bigfoot but many wants to see the real body which is, according to the hunters, in a freezer somewhere. Many are speculating this is another big hoax but the two hunters are claiming otherwise.
"We were not looking for Bigfoot. ... We wouldn't know what we were doing if we did," said Whitton, a police officer on leave after being shot in the hand while making an arrest. "I didn't believe in Bigfoot at the time. ... But you've got to come to terms with it and realize you've got something special. And that's what it was."
The men say they were hiking in early June when they discovered the body of a 7-foot-7, 500-pound half-ape, half-human creature near a stream. They also claim to have spotted about three similar living creatures -- and showed reporters video stills of what they say is one of those creatures shadowing them through the woods.
The announcement, which the men first made on the Internet radio show "Squatch Detective" several weeks ago, has been greeted with healthy skepticism, even among some Bigfoot enthusiasts.
Proposal 2.0: Marry Me, Leslie is a geek idea of Michael Weiss-Malik to propose marriage to his longtime girlfriend, Leslie, on Google Streetview. It went live on Google Maps on August 5, 2008.
Scientist have recently found that the songbirds' throat muscles is the world's fastest muscle. It can move a hundred times faster than the blink of an eye.
"[Pigeons] have really boring, slow songs, and it made me wonder what the muscles in songbirds were like, so I decided to find out."
What Elemans and colleagues discovered is that zebra finches and European starlings can change their tunes at frequencies as high as 250 hertz via direct muscle control.
This means that they are moving their muscles a hundred times faster than a blink of the human eye.
Wanna eat all you can and stay fit? Be a world class Olympian like Michael Phelps. He eats a whooping 12,000 calories a day or 4,000 calories every meal. That's six times than the average man of his age and size suggested calorie intake of 2,000 calories. Apparently, his calorie intake is being washed away by his training of five hour a day, six time a week regimen.
Phelps lends a new spin to the phrase "Breakfast of Champions" by starting off his day by eating three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise.
He follows that up with two cups of coffee, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar and three chocolate-chip pancakes.
At lunch, Phelps gobbles up a pound of enriched pasta and two large ham and cheese sandwiches slathered with mayo on white bread - capping off the meal by chugging about 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.
For dinner, Phelps really loads up on the carbs - what he needs to give him plenty of energy for his five-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week regimen - with a pound of pasta and an entire pizza.
He washes all that down with another 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.
Update: Michael Phelps won his 8th Olympic gold medal, breaking the record of Mark Spitz's who won seven gold medals at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. He now have a total of thirteen Olympic gold medals from three Olympics Games.
Michael Phelps is now the winningest Olympian ever with eleven Olympic gold medal. He has gone were all Olympians has never been before by capturing his 10th and 11th gold medal after winning the 200-meter butterfly and the 4x200 freestyle relay which both broke the previous records. He has now a total of five gold medal in this Summer Olympics in China. At 23 years old, you bet he is far from retiring from the Olympics.
“I’m almost kind of at a loss for words,” Phelps said. “Growing up, I always wanted to be an Olympian. Now to be the most decorated Olympian of all time, it just sounds weird saying it. I just have absolutely nothing to say. I’m speechless.
“It’s a pretty cool title, I guess you could say.”
Once considered the world's heaviest living man, Manuel Uribe finally got his first outing in five years. He was forklifted in his specially designed bed to a platform truck to a lake in Mexico. He now weighs 700 pounds after losing more than 500 pounds through dieting and bed exercise.
Once considered the world's fattest man when his weight hit over half a ton, more than two years of steady dieting had helped Uribe drop to about 700 pounds as of June - 550 pounds less than his former Guinness record weight of 1,235 pounds. He did not say what his current weight is.
While somewhat bothered by the summer heat, Uribe appeared to enjoy Sunday's outing. He is still unable to walk, and his last planned outing in March was aborted after the platform carrying his bed got stuck under an overpass.
Google's Streetview camera has really been into places, and it has captured a wide array of images. This time, it's a house on fire. We're wondering if the crew called the 911.
The Slightest Touch device promise one thing - Orgasms "at the touch of a button". According to the makers, this device can give women longer, better and more intense orgasms. And the more interesting is, it can give orgasm without touching a woman's genital just by stimulating the body's sexual nerve pathway.
Women start by drinking an electrolyte sports drink 20 minutes before using the device.
They then apply two white electrode pads inside their ankles.
These pads are connected to the Slightest Touch device, which is about the size of a personal stereo.
"The Slightest Touch does not provide an orgasm," said Cherisse Davidson, the company's director of customer support.
"It gently stimulates the sexual nerve pathways taking the woman to a pre-orgasmic plateau where she dangles on the edge of orgasm for as long as she wants.
"From there, gentle stimulation can then effect the orgasm."
BBC News Online has been unable to get independent scientific verification that the product works.
But Ms Davidson, who first tested the device three years ago, insists it is effective.
"It can be of great benefit to many women," she told BBC News Online.
"I've been using mine for three years and I just love it."
The Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge Tunnel is truly a marvelous piece of engineering. This underwater bridge between Sweden and Denmark connects connects Suffolk, VA and Newport News, VA. The submerged portion of the bridge serves as ships canal.
Invented by Swedish inventor Jan von Heland, Waboba ball, the ball that bounces on water, is now becoming popular around the world after videos of it were posted in YouTube.
This ball is made of a combination of plastics with lycra coating. It has the same density as water and floats when at rest. Wabobal ball which is said to have a consistency of breast implant, took the inventor several years to perfect and now being sold around the world after debuting in the beaches of Australia.
"I first got the idea when I was throwing a frisbee upside down on the water trying to get it to bounce,” he said.
"I thought it would be good to get something that used the water to bounce off and began to experiment.”
He added: "It has been very successful and we sell the balls all over the world - Australia is our biggest market.
"It seems a bit odd that a Swede should invent this because it is best for a hot climate where people are in the sea and in swimming pools all the time."
The giant Palm Salamander's tongue is the world's most explosive muscle. This Central American reptile's tongue muscles has explosive tongue thrust that releases over 18,000 watts of power per kilogram of muscle. Enough to catch even the most elusive insect.
Stephen Deban of the University of South Florida in Tampa said the secret to the tiny salamander's strength lies in its "ballistic" tongue-firing mechanism.
His team used high-speed video and implanted electrodes to study the prey-catching behavior of several related salamander species.
Much like an arrow shot from a bow, Deban said, the giant palm salamander's bony tongue is launched with an initial burst of energy and flies forward under its own momentum.
The "bow" is provided by elastic fibers in the salamander's mouth that stretch to store muscular energy and then release it all at once.
Where is Matt Video - a traveling man's dancing video. Matt Harding, travels around the world just to dance. He has been to 84 countries (and more to come) just to dance - some with local people and some on his own. Matt is now an internet celebrity because of his dancing videos. His YouTube videos is watched by millions of viewers worldwide. The video below is has been watched eight million times and counting.
Officials said rats were fleeing to higher ground from flooded areas of the lower Mekong Delta, making it easier for villagers to catch them.
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