Hi, everyone!
Let's talk about those odd news which have been published around the world.

Someone sent this old piece of news to me, it goes back to December 17th, 2000.



This is most likely to be a hoax or an urban legend, just make sure it doesn't happen to you!


And talking about oddities...

Swallowed pen still works 25 years later
By Cari Nierenberg

The pen is said to be mightier than the sword. But an unusual case report has shown that a pen may be mightier than stomach acid.

The case, which appeared in the British Medical Journal Case Reports, described a 76- year-old British woman sent to a GI specialist because of weight loss and diarrhea.

She was diagnosed with severe diverticulosis, a condition that's common in older people in which small pouches bulge out from the colon. But when doctors did a scanning test of her belly they noticed something strange: "A linear foreign body in the stomach."



When asked about it, the woman remembered accidentally swallowing a black felt-tip pen 25 years earlier. (In case you're wondering, dentures and toothpicks are two of the most common items that adults accidentally swallow.)

According to her gastroenterologist Dr. Oliver Waters, who authored the case report, she was standing on her stairs using an uncapped pen to poke a spot on her tonsils. She was also holding a hand mirror to guide the pen to the exact spot. Somehow, while doing this, she lost her balance and stumbled. The fall managed to push the pen down her throat. It glided down her gullet and found a home in her tummy.

She told her husband and her doctor what had happened, but they were skeptical of the story. X-rays done at the time were normal and found no trace of the pen. Flash forward to the present, to a different doctor and even better stomach-scanning technology to investigate the case of the missing marker. More than two decades later a scan hit pay dirt: The pen.
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Although the woman's current digestive problems had nothing to do with the marker she had unintentionally downed, doctors decided to remove it anyway. Their rationale was a case in the medical literature of a child accidentally swallowing a ball-point pen that bore a hole in his bowel. Incredibly, the pen had stayed in her stomach for 25 years without causing any significant damage to her GI tract, Waters says.

After bathing in stomach acid for a two-and-a-half decades, the pen was corroded and the plastic was flaky, but, amazingly, the pen still had usable ink and could write!



"This case highlights that plain abdominal x-rays may not identify ingested plastic objects and occasionally it may be worth believing the patient's account however unlikely it may be," the report advises doctors.

Write on!

I was reading this:

Be careful where you buy your iPad...

Fake iPad 2s made of clay sold at Canadian stores
As many as 10 fake iPad 2s, all made of slabs of modeling clay, were recently sold at electronic stores in Vancouver, British Columbia. Best Buy and Future Shop have launched investigations into how the scam was pulled off.

The tablet computers, like most Apple products, are known for their sleek and simple designs. But there's no mistaking the iPad for one of the world's oldest "tablet devices." Still, most electronic products cannot be returned to stores. For the the stores and customers to be fooled by the clay replacements, the thieves must have successfully weighed out the clay portions and resealed the original Apple packaging.

Future Shop spokesman Elliott Chun told CTV that individuals bought the iPads with cash, replaced them with the model clay, then returned the packages to the stores. The returned fakes were restocked on the shelve and sold to new, unwitting customers.

"Customers don't expect to receive this kind of product from Future Shop, so it's a very serious matter and something we are addressing right away for anyone who has been impacted," Chun told CTV British Columbia. "It really saddens Future Shop that people stoop to be this opportunistic and make money in this kind of organized way."

The scam was first brought to CTV's attention by a victim of the crime, Mark Sandhu. Sandhu says after purchasing what he thought was an iPad 2 for his wife for Christmas, he tried to return the clay, only to be rebuffed. "Maybe the way I was dressed, I don't know," he said. "She made me feel like I'm trying to scam them out of $700. I was the one getting scammed."

Sandhu contacted Future Shop's head office, Apple and local police, but no one believed his story. Future Shop has since apologized and given Sandhu a full refund along with a free tablet--a real one.

I'd rather have these clay iPads...


While reading the news today, I saw this interesting article: if you have a just born baby or breastfeed your baby and want to go to the Olympics in London, look at this: you MUST buy a ticket for your baby to enter with you to the Olympic venues! I've never seen anything like this in a massive event. Unless the idea is to discourage mums from taking their babies for security reasons, I think this is abuse!!

What??
Babies should not pay!! It is the mothers, not the babies, who are going to see the shows and sports!! I agree, that is abuse. Is thee any rule to charge mothers and their babies?

That is why I don't have babies!!!