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Red lingerie to lure Hungarians online for census

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How Not To Wash Your Luxury Vehicle

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Some people do it because they find it relaxing. Others are a bit more paranoid about maximizing resale value, so they are at it every Saturday morning, rain or shine. If you have invested in a new or quality pre-owned vehicle, you might be thinking that taking care of your automobile is, to some extent, important to you as well.

Regardless of which camp you fall into, there are certain ways you do not want to go about when it comes to providing auto care in the washing of your vehicle. Unless of course, you simply are stuck in your ways, or have scientific versus anecdotal evidence for not performing some of the following tasks, you may want to reconsider how you wash your car next time.

First, if you would rather not have to apply auto wax every other week, do not wash your car with anything you might find under your kitchen sink. Why? The soaps you are likely to find in the kitchen or bath are specifically designed to clean certain types of substances. Animal fats, human fats, household stuff, but not the dirt which usually collects on that fancy paint job.

With repeated use of the wrong types of soaps, your car’s finish is going to become adversely affected and the car washing you’re doing every week will increase the decline (and likely the value) of your favorite car.

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Bra chain record comes apart at the seams

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LONDON (Reuters) - A British attempt to set a new world record for the longest chain of brassieres was called off after volunteers got the lingerie in a twist.

Campaigners at "Bra Chain" hoped to hook together over 100 miles of bras in Worcester, a city in the English West Midlands, to raise money for women's charities and beat the current world record of 166,000 linked brassieres, held by Australia.

Volunteers, or "hookers," aimed to connect 200,000 bras, but were forced to quit at half that number when the undergarments became tangled in the boxes.

"We underestimated the time it would take to get the bras out of their boxes and hooked together - there were bras all over the place," said Launa Walker at Bra Chain.

"It does take a lot of time to assemble bras into a chain and after about nine hours of hooking them up we decided to call it a day," Walker told Reuters.

The organizers say they will attempt another world record bid in the future and are still accepting donations of unwanted bras.

"We are going to try it again -- we've learnt a few tricks of the trade, now all that remains is to set a date," said Walker.

The event was organized in aid of UK women's charities Breakthrough Breast Cancer, the Worcester breast cancer unit and Women's Aid, which supports victims of domestic violence.

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Woman faces trial for fake testicles

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CHARLESTON, South Carolina (Reuters) – The police chief of a small South Carolina town will ask a jury to decide if a woman broke the state's obscenity laws by driving a pickup truck with plastic testicles hanging from the back.

Bonneau Police Chief Franco Fuda ticketed Virginia Tice, 65, in early July at a local convenience store after spying the adornment dangling from her truck.

South Carolina law considers a bumper sticker, decal or device indecent when it describes, in an offensive way as determined by contemporary community standards, "sexual acts, excretory functions, or parts of the human body."

The offense carries a maximum fine of $445 but no jail time, Fuda said.

"This is certainly not a staple of my ticket writing in Bonneau," the police chief told Reuters on Wednesday.

The Charleston law firm Savage & Savage will represent Tice for free, attorney Scott Bischoff said. The trial had been scheduled for next week but was delayed because the defendant will be out of town.

"She's such a sweet lady and she just says 'I don't want to pay the fine.' We'll let a jury decide whether this is really criminal behavior. I don't want to take away from the importance of free speech, but it's really comical," he said.

Lawmakers in some states have sought to ban the colorful plastic or rubber devices that go by brand names such as Bulls Balls and Truck Nutz.

Fuda said if the fake testicles were a free speech issue, "I don't know what they would be trying to express."

"I went to (a) few websites that said, excuse the expression, 'show your nuts,'" he said. "I didn't see anywhere it said support your local proctologist or farmer."

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Southern U.S. distillery to legally sell moonshine

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CHARLESTON, South Carolina (Reuters) - Two entrepreneurs are taking advantage of new micro-distillery laws in South Carolina to make and sell traditional moonshine whiskey legally for the first time in the southern state.

The Dark Corner Distillery will open next month in Greenville, where engineer Joe Fenten, 27, and longtime home beer brewer Richard Wenger will produce and sell small batches of 100-proof moonshine from a custom-made copper still.

The distillery, housed in a 1925 building, will also include a tasting bar and a museum dedicated to the history of the Dark Corner, the local mountains that were once full of moonshiners, feud and mayhem, Fenten told Reuters.

The area was settled, along with the nearby Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, by Scots, Irish and Welsh who migrated down through the Appalachian mountain chain from Pennsylvania in the 1700s.

"They thought it was their inalienable, God-given right to make whiskey," said Fenten, a Dark Corner native. "It was a hard life. If you could make an extra 10 cents more for a gallon of whiskey than you could for a bushel of corn, then why not?"

Moonshine traditionally was the term used to describe illegally distilled corn whiskey often made covertly by the light of the moon. The product made at the new distillery will be un-aged corn whiskey, but will be taxed and regulated.

The area came to be called the Dark Corner in 1832 by South Carolina politicians seeking to nullify federal law and who cursed the people of the mountains as Unionists, said Dean Campbell, a Dark Corner native who is the distillery's official historian.

Whiskey taxes after the Civil War and then Prohibition in the 20th century made the place more lawless, Campbell said.

News accounts in the 1920s called the Dark Corner "a little Chicago" because of federal agents' raids on stills, killings, and gun and knife fights that broke out after church, he said.

Illegal moonshine is still being made there, Campbell said. In June, sheriff's deputies busted a still in Landrum, South Carolina, and confiscated 2,000 gallons of illegal white liquor along with $150,000 in cash.

State lawmakers in 2009 altered existing liquor laws in a way that lessened the financial burden on small distilleries, paving the way for the Dark Corner Distillery to set up shop.

Despite the drink's reputation, legal moonshine makers also have popped up in other states, including Oregon, Wisconsin, Montana, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, New York and North Carolina.

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Hit UFO image was polystyrene

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BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A Belgian UFO photograph that became a worldwide hit was faked with a piece of polystyrene, one of the people behind the picture has revealed more than 20 years later in a TV interview.

"You can do a lot with a little, we managed to trick everyone with a piece of polystyrene," said one of the forgers, identified only as Patrick, who says he pulled it off at the age of 18 with some colleagues.

"We made the model with polystyrene, we painted it and then we started sticking things to it, then we suspended it in the air ... then we took the photo," he said in an interview with French-language broadcaster RTL, which was transmitted late on Tuesday.

The photograph, taken in 1990, became a sensation after it was circulated around the world. It became known as Petit-Rechain picture, after the Belgian town where it was purported to have been taken.

It was closely associated with a period known as the "Belgian UFO wave," which involved a series of reports of UFO sighting between 1989 and 1990.

In one sighting in November 1990, which was later explained as a soviet satellite breaking up, dozens of people in Belgium reported a triangular object with three lights flying slowly and soundlessly, according to a Reuters report at the time.

(Reporting by Ben Deighton; Editing by Alison Williams)

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Green algae in the Yellow Sea

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Come on in, the water's . . . green. In Qingdoo, Shandong Province of China, the coastal waters are covered with algae called enteromopha prolifera. The algae is not poisonous and doesn't affect water quality, but there are concerns about how it may affect local sealife and whether it might spur a drop in tourism. Not everyone, it seems, wants to look like the Incredible Hulk while swimming.

So, what exactly is going on here? According to CNN, researchers aren't entirely sure what's behind the green invasion. One expert told the network that it's possible that the lush green algae plume  may have something to do with "the change in the environment," but is mum when it comes to specifics.

Regardless, the bright green goop has inspired a slew of amazing photographs. In some photos, the algae, which now covers 200 square miles of the Yellow Sea, looks so thick that it resembles a fairway on a golf course. You can check out a collection of photos below.

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French runners suspended for "unspeakable behaviour"

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PARIS (Reuters) - French team mates Mehdi Baala and Mahiedine Mekhissi-Benabbad have been provisionally suspended after trading blows in an extraordinary incident after the 1,500 metres at the Monaco Diamond League.

Baala finished ninth in Friday's race while Mekhissi, the Olympic 3,000 steeplechase silver medallist, came in 11th but an attempt to console each other went badly wrong.

At one point Baala head-butted Mekhissi who responded by swinging his arms wildly as he threw a series of punches, some of which missed their intended target.

"Following the unspeakable behaviour of Mehdi Baala and Mahiedine Mekhissi-Benabbad ... the president of the French Athletics Federation decided today to hold an emergency disciplinary hearing," a federation statement said Saturday.

"At the same time the federal office under the general regulations has decided on a temporary suspension of the two athletes until the meeting of the disciplinary commission. It will meet as an emergency and within eight days."

The pair were separated on the track but the row did not stop there as they exchanged strong words in the media zone after Mekhissi appeared to slap Baala.

"I'm going to break you in two," an angry Baala responded.

(Writing by Mark Meadows, editing by Tony Jimenez)
 

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Calif. woman charged with torture in severed penis case

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A California woman was charged with torture on Wednesday after authorities said she cut off her husband's penis with a kitchen knife and ground it up in a garbage disposal.

Catherine Kieu, 48, is accused of tying her sleeping husband to a bed with nylon ropes, pulling down his pants and slicing off his penis, the Orange County District Attorney's Office said in a written statement.

The Garden Grove woman then took the severed penis into the kitchen, threw it into the garbage disposal and turned it on, mutilating the organ, Orange County prosecutors said.

She then called 911, they said.

Kieu, who was taken into custody at the scene on Monday night, was charged with one count each of torture and aggravated mayhem, with sentencing enhancements for causing great bodily injury and using a knife.

During a brief court appearance on Wednesday, an Orange County Superior Court judge assigned a public defender to represent Kieu and postponed her arraignment on the charges until July 22.

Kieu, who is being held without bail, faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted.

Orange County prosecutors say the incident followed an argument between Kieu and her 60-year-old husband, who has not been identified by authorities, over friends staying at the residence.

Garden Grove police say Kieu, who was initially identified as Catherine Kieu Becker, told officers who responded to the 911 call and found her husband tied to the bed and bleeding from the groin that he "deserved it."

Police have also said she may have drugged or poisoned her husband's food to make him sleepy and that the couple, who married in late 2009, was involved in divorce proceedings.

Kieu's husband was taken to the nearby University of California, Irvine Medical Center following the attack, where he underwent emergency surgery and was listed in serious condition.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Cynthia Johnston)

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Not All Young Australian Men Want More Sex?

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(Reuters) – Unbelievable as it may sound, not all young men want more sex.

According to a survey of Australian men, 12 percent between the ages of 16 and 24 said they wanted less sex — the highest proportion of any age group.

“Although it’s a minority, it’s still interesting that it’s more of them (than any other age group), which is not that sort of myth, boys not getting enough sex and dying to get it,” Juliet Richters, Associate Professor in Sexual Health, University of New South Wales, told Reuters.

Richters and a team of researchers from around Australia surveyed some 4,300 heterosexual men and 4,400 women between the ages of 16 and 64.

She said another survey five years ago showed similar results.

Only 31 percent of men in that age group said they wanted more sex, the lowest of any other age group as well.

“It may well be that they are being overwhelmed by girls of much the same age who are madly in love and very keen,” she said.

“It also takes men of that age about a year or longer to commit to a relationship.”

More predictably, the survey found that 57 percent of men between 35 and 44 wanted more sex compared with only 28 percent of women, while 14 percent of women said they wanted less.

Half of men aged 55 to 64 wanted more sex, while only 27 percent of women in the same age group felt the same.

“The evolutionary explanation is women are only keen on sex when they can conceive. A social explanation is a whole lot of stuff, including time, pressure, tiredness,” Richter said.

“I mean, sex is a leisure activity after all.”