San Francisco's landmark Golden Gate Bridge is not only a tourists' favorite visiting venue, but also a hot spot for those potential suicidal people. According to LAtimes, about 2,000 people have jumped from the storied bridge since it opened in 1937. In 2007 only, there were 39 confirmed suicides. This year, 19 people have already ended their lives from the bridge. The somewhat rampant suicidal cases have finally lead the board of the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District to make a decision to install a giant stainless-steel netting which was estimated to cost $40 million to $50 million beneath the bridge to prevent the tragical incidents to happen again. But the net will still need extra permits before it can go ahead and is subject to an environmental review before work can start. It is expected to take up to three years to build.
Sabtu, 11 Oktober 2008
Kamis, 01 Mei 2008
Most Polluted Cities in USA
Top Ten U.S. Cities Most Polluted by Short-Term Particle Pollution: 1) Pittsburgh, Pa.; 2) Los Angeles/Long Beach/Riverside, Calif.; 3) Fresno/Madera, Calif.; 4) Bakersfield, Calif.; 5) Birmingham, Ala.; 6) Logan, Utah 7) Salt Lake City, Utah ; 8) Sacramento, Calif.; 9) Detroit, Mich.; 10) Baltimore, Md./Washington, D.C./Northern Virginia.
Top Ten U.S. Cities Most Polluted by Year-Round Particle Pollution: 1) Los Angeles/Long Beach/Riverside, Calif.; 2) Pittsburgh, Pa.; 3) Bakersfield, Calif.; 4) Birmingham, Ala.; 5) Visalia/Porterville, Calif.; 6) Atlanta, Ga.; 7) Cincinnati, Ohio; 8) Fresno/Madera, Calif. 9) Hanford/Corcoran, Calif.; 10) Detroit, Mich.
Top Ten U.S. Cities Most Polluted by Ozone: 1) Los Angeles/Long Beach/Riverside, Calif.; 2) Bakersfield, Calif.; 3) Visalia/Porterville, Calif.; 4) Houston, Texas; 5) Fresno/Madera, Calif. 6) Sacramento, Calif. 7) Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas; 8) New York, N.Y./Newark, N.J.; 9) Baltimore, Md./Washington, D.C./Northern Virginia; 10) Baton Rouge, La.
Kamis, 13 Maret 2008
Pam Babcock Is a Kansas Woman Who Was Stuck on Toilet for 2 Years
Woman Stuck on Toilet for 2 Years? Yes, she is Pam Babcock from western Kansas! A police officer who went to resue Pam Babcock said “She was not glued. She was not tied. She was just physically stuck by her body. It is hard to imagine. … I still have a hard time imagining it myself.” So do we!
The 35-year-old woman, Pam Babcock, locked herself in the bathroom and sat there for so long that her skin grew around the toilet seat.
Her boyfriend, Kory McFarren, 36, said he had brought her food and water every day and often asked to come out of the toilet. However the kansascity.com news portal reported that she would unfailingly reply, "Maybe tomorrow."
It is not known where McFarren relieved himself for the 24 months that the toilet was 'occupied.'
The man called police on February 27, saying that there was something "wrong with his girlfriend," Whipple said. McFarren has not yet explained why it took him two years to call for help.
Police said they found Babcock sitting on the toilet and that her legs appeared to have atrophied. She initially refused medical help and was reported to have been reluctant to leave the bathroom.
"We pried the toilet seat off with a pry bar and the seat went with her to the hospital," Whipple said. "The hospital removed it."
Source: RIA
Senin, 10 Maret 2008
Baby Diaper Mustache Video
Opie from The Opie & Anthony Show has to deliver on a promise to make a baby diaper mustache when Rich Vos shows up with a dirty diaper.
Minggu, 09 Maret 2008
10 Worst Countries for Women
Afghanistan Women in veils picture (source)
From thestar.com
In spite of real progress in women's rights around the globe – better laws, political participation, education and income – the bedrock problems that have dogged women for centuries remain. Even in wealthy countries, there are pockets of private pain where women are unprotected and under attack.
Here are 10 of the worst countries in the world to be a woman today:
• Afghanistan: The average Afghan girl will live to only 45 – one year less than an Afghan male. After three decades of war and religion-based repression, an overwhelming number of women are illiterate. More than half of all brides are under 16, and one woman dies in childbirth every half hour. Domestic violence is so common that 87 per cent of women admit to experiencing it. But more than one million widows are on the streets, often forced into prostitution. Afghanistan is the only country in which the female suicide rate is higher than that of males.
• Democratic Republic of Congo: In the eastern DRC, a war that claimed more than 3 million lives has ignited again, with women on the front line. Rapes are so brutal and systematic that UN investigators have called them unprecedented. Many victims die; others are infected with HIV and left to look after children alone. Foraging for food and water exposes women to yet more violence. Without money, transport or connections, they have no way of escape.
• Iraq: The U.S.-led invasion to "liberate" Iraq from Saddam Hussein has imprisoned women in an inferno of sectarian violence that targets women and girls. The literacy rate, once the highest in the Arab world, is now among the lowest as families fear risking kidnapping and rape by sending girls to school. Women who once went out to work stay home. Meanwhile, more than 1 million women have been displaced from their homes, and millions more are unable to earn enough to eat.
• Nepal: Early marriage and childbirth exhaust the country's malnourished women, and one in 24 will die in pregnancy or childbirth. Daughters who aren't married off may be sold to traffickers before they reach their teens. Widows face extreme abuse and discrimination if they're labelled bokshi, meaning witches. A low-level civil war between government and Maoist rebels has forced rural women into guerrilla groups.
• Sudan: While Sudanese women have made strides under reformed laws, the plight of those in Darfur, in western Sudan, has worsened. Abduction, rape or forced displacement have destroyed more than 1 million women's lives since 2003. The janjaweed militias have used systematic rape as a demographic weapon, but access to justice is almost impossible for the female victims of violence.
• Other countries in which women's lives are significantly worse than men's include Guatemala, where an impoverished female underclass faces domestic violence, rape and the second-highest rate of HIV/AIDS after sub-Saharan Africa. An epidemic of gruesome unsolved murders has left hundreds of women dead, some of their bodies left with hate messages.
In Mali, one of the world's poorest countries, few women escape the torture of genital mutilation, many are forced into early marriages, and one in 10 dies in pregnancy or childbirth.
In the tribal border areas of Pakistan, women are gang-raped as punishment for men's crimes. But honour killing is more widespread, and a renewed wave of religious extremism is targeting female politicians, human rights workers and lawyers.
In oil-rich Saudi Arabia, women are treated as lifelong dependents, under the guardianship of a male relative. Deprived of the right to drive a car or mix with men publicly, they are confined to strictly segregated lives on pain of severe punishment.
In the Somali capital, Mogadishu, a vicious civil war has put women, who were the traditional mainstay of the family, under attack. In a society that has broken down, women are exposed daily to rape, dangerously poor health care for pregnancy, and attack by armed gangs.
While 10 Best Countries for Women are Iceland, Norway, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, Japan, Netherlands, France