Seniors at the Ed Young Senior Citizens Center near Savannah, GA, have been told they can't pray before meals anymore out of fear of losing federal money for meals. From the article: "But Senior Citizens Inc. officials said Friday the meals they are contracted by the city to provide to Ed Young visitors are mostly covered with federal money, which ushers in the burden of separating church and state. On Thursday, the usual open prayer before meals at the center was traded in for a moment of silence."

One would think it would be easy to get lawmakers to agree that having sex with an animal should be outlawed. However, Florida lawmakers are proving just how hard it is for them to make an agreement on anything after failing to pass a proposed bestiality bill. From the article: "The inability to outlaw something so repugnant reveals how difficult it can be to get even the most carefully crafted, widely supported bill passed in the Florida Legislature. Its advocates say that in the political stew of a legislative session, the very outrageousness of the topic worked against it. Lawmakers said they did not want to be accused of wasting time addressing a rare crime when Floridians needed them to help create jobs. They also did not want to debate the icky subject in public meetings occasionally frequented by children."

The people of Jacksonville, Florida, take their cake seriously. They like their cake so much, in fact, that recently a father ran into his burning house to save his child's birthday cake. From the article: "The fire destroyed the home on Bowden Circle South. Those who live at the home said they were celebrating their child's fourth birthday when the flames started. We're told the child's father ran into the home and grabbed the cake so they could keep celebrating."

theodp writes "A third-grader in a small Texas school district received a week's detention for merely possessing a Jolly Rancher. Leighann Adair, 10, was eating lunch Monday when a teacher confiscated the candy. Her parents said she was in tears when she arrived home later that afternoon and handed them the detention notice. But school officials are defending the sentence, saying the school was abiding by a state guideline that banned 'minimal nutrition' foods. 'Whether or not I agree with the guidelines, we have to follow the rules,' said school superintendent Jack Ellis."

Lanxon writes "At a demonstration of Volvo's new collision warning system in Sweden this week, Wired got first-hand experience (and video) of what happens when it goes badly wrong. The new Volvo S60, due for release later this year, was fired out of Volvo's testing tunnel at around 30MPH, and the collision detection system should have kicked in, bringing the car automatically to a halt before hitting the truck in its path. It didn't. Instead, the brand new car ploughed into the back of the truck in front of us, and indeed the world's press who had gathered in Sweden to see the collision detection system in action."

A TSA worker in Miami was arrested for aggravated battery after he attacked a co-worker for making fun of the size of his genitals. Rolando Negrin walked through one of the new body scanners during a recent training session and a supervisor started making fun of his manhood. From the article: "According to the police report, Negrin confronted one of his co-workers in an employee parking lot, where he hit him with a police baton on the arm and back."

eldavojohn writes "Recent betas of Google's Chrome browser are getting seriously fast. Couple that with better hardware, on average, and it's getting down to speeds that are difficult to demonstrate in a way users can appreciate. Which is why Google felt that some Rube Goldberg-ish demonstrations with slo-mo are in order. Gone are the days of boring millisecond response time metrics."

Matter of Trust, a nonprofit that uses human hair scraps to make mats to clean up oil spills, finds itself with 18,000 pounds of hair and nobody to process it. Lisa Gautier, who runs the organization, says that the recession has closed many of the textile makers that produced the mats and the warehouse that stored them. Unfortunately for Lisa the hair keeps piling up. From the article: "Hair is good at soaking up oil because, up close, the strands are shaped like a palm tree with scalelike cuticles. Drops of oil naturally cling inside those cuticles, says Blair Blacker, chief executive of the World Response Group. A pound of hair can pick up one quart of oil in a minute, and it can be wrung out and reused up to 100 times, Mrs. Gautier says."

wdef writes "The BBC reports that a Russian MP has asked President Dmitry Medvedev to investigate claims by a regional president that he has met aliens on board a spaceship. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the leader of the southern region of Kalymkia, made his claim in a television interview. Mr Ilyumzhinov said in an interview on primetime television that he had been taken on board an alien spaceship which had come to planet Earth to take samples — and claims to have several witnesses. He has been president of Kalmykia, a small Buddhist region of Russia which lies on the shores of the Caspian Sea, for 17 years. As president of the World Chess Federation, he has spent tens of millions of dollars turning the impoverished republic into a mecca for chess players — building an entire village to host international tournaments. MP Andre Lebedev is not just asking whether Mr Ilyumzhinov is fit to govern. He is also concerned that, if he was abducted, he may have revealed details about his job and state secrets."

ygslash writes "The Hoover Dam no longer holds the title of the world's widest dam. Satellite photos of northern Alberta, Canada, show that several families of beavers have apparently joined forces to build a dam 850 meters wide, more than twice as wide as the Hoover Dam."

chebucto writes "The BBC reports that 'A comic book shop owner in Australia became a real-life superhero when he caught a robber red-handed. Michael Baulderstone, who was dressed as Spider-Man for a promotional event, spied a customer behaving suspiciously during an International Free Comic Day celebration. CCTV footage shows him "leap" into action and confront the would-be shoplifter who had slipped a AU$160 (£97) X-Men book into his bag. ... He said a group of Jedi knights blocked the door to prevent the thief from escaping, as The Flash looked on.'"

greenrainbow writes "A Japanese company called Super Faith has developed a new machine that turns used adult diapers into a clean fuel source in about 24 hours. You simply place the bag of dirty diapers in the machine, and once set it motion it pulverizes, sanitizes and dries the material in the diapers and then forms it into small pellets that contain 5000 kcal of heat per kilogram and are meant to be used in biomass heating and electricity systems. Super Faith has reportedly installed two SFD systems at a hospital in Tokyo's Machida area. Each is capable of turning 700 pounds of used diapers — and everything they hold — into fuel every day."

Tracy Woodhouse and Graham Peck have finished the unusual renovations to their beach house on the North Sea. What makes the project odd is that their house used to be a public restroom. The couple purchased the restroom five years ago and completed the $22,800 renovation with the blessing of local officials. "They gave us planning permission and praised the idea," Woodhouse said. "They called it the building's renaissance."

Everyone knows how boring a debate on a controversial abortion bill can get on the Senate floor. So it's no wonder that Florida State Sen. Mike Bennett took the time to look at a little porn and a video of a dog running out of the water and shaking itself off. From the article: "Ironically, as Bennett is viewing the material, you can hear a Senator Dan Gelber's voice in the background debating a controversial abortion bill. 'I'm against this bill,' said Gelber, 'because it disrespects too many women in the state of Florida.' Bennett defended his actions, telling Sunshine State News it was an email sent to him by a woman 'who happens to be a former court administrator.'"

lucidkoan writes "Two Rice University students have transformed a simple salad spinner into an electricity-free centrifuge that can be used to diagnose diseases on the cheap. Created by Lauren Theis and Lila Kerr, the ingenious DIY centrifuge is cobbled together using a salad spinner, some plastic lids, combs, yogurt containers, and a hot glue gun. The simple and easily-replicated design could be an invaluable tool for clinics in the developing world, enabling them to separate blood to detect diseases like anemia without electricity."

An anonymous reader writes "Conductor and composer Eric Whitacre has successfully created a virtual choir using the voices of 185 people who posted their performance on YouTube. The piece that's performed is called 'Sleep,' composed by the conductor himself in 2000. Anyone can join in — all you need is a webcam and a microphone."

theodp writes "Despite the whiff of danger, or perhaps because of it, the WSJ reports that the City Museum is one of St. Louis's most popular attractions. Housed in a 10-story brick building, the City Museum shows none of the restraint or quiet typical of most museums. It boasts a five-story jungle gym with two real-life jets kids can climb on, an enclosed Monster Slide that drops riders the length of three staircases, and a rooftop Ferris wheel. Sure, there are the occasional severed fingers and skull fractures, but museum founder Bob Cassilly contends that it is as safe as it can be without being a bore. 'They [lawyers] are taking the fun out of life,' says Cassilly, adding that 'when you have millions of people do something, something's going to happen no matter what you do.'"

If a well-known Saudi dream interpreter gets his wish, you'll soon be able to get a Ph.D. in your sleep. Yusuf al-Harthy, with the help of an unnamed Arab university, plans to start up an institute offering degrees in explaining dreams and visions. "Dream interpretation is by nature a way of counseling a person," said Harthy.

An anonymous reader writes "Back in 1938, the British magazine Homes and Gardens ran a rather fascinating feature on Adolf Hitler's mountain home... 'A handsome Bavarian chalet 2000 feet up on the Obersalzburg amid pinewoods and cherry orchards... barely ten miles from Mozart's own medieval Salzburg.' The story was a major coup in those darkening days leading up to World War and gave Europe an almost unprecedented look into a small slice of Hitler's private home life. Apparently, there are some who do not want people to be able to read and study certain parts of human history and Homes and Gardens want to take the pictures of the magazine feature story down from internet ...allegedly over 'UK copyright infringement.'"

An anonymous reader writes "By the time the trumpets sound, the candles have been lit and the salmon platters garnished. Harald V, King of Norway, enters the room, and 200 guests stand to greet him. Then a chorus of 30 men and women, each wearing a blue police uniform, launches into a spirited rendition of 'We Are the World.' This isn't cabaret night at Oslo's Royal Palace. It's a gala to inaugurate Halden Fengsel, Norway's newest prison."