55-year-old engineer Sandy Sanderson has come up with a series of classic car models that are made out of old beer cans. After he was badly injured in a motorcycle accident Sandy started the empty can project. So far he has made buggies, vans, roadsters and sports cars. Mr Sanderson said, "While I was off work, after the accident, I had the time to try making a racing car from drinks cans. I have always looked at the bottoms of cans and thought 'That would make a really neat half wheel.' The plans for each car take around three or four weeks to complete and then around 80 hours to build each one depending on how detailed they are. I actually don't drink much because I spill most of it."

In an attempt to teach safe depositing practices, students at the Institute of Technology Tallaght in south Dublin were offered tickets to attend an "exotic" show for opening a new account with Ulster Bank. After parents accused the bank of "stooping to a new low" to attract young customers, and a women's group raised concerns, the bank canceled the promotion. "In line with Ulster Bank's ongoing support for student events across the country, we can confirm that as part of our student campaign in IT Tallaght we promoted a freshers' week event to be held at the Metro bar. Ulster Bank has no involvement in the organisation of this event and once the nature of the event was realised, the bank immediately withdrew any association with the event," said a spokeswoman.

Having given up on digging his way out with a spoon or launching himself with a giant catapult, Jean-Pierre Treiber, one of France's highest-profile prisoners, escaped by packing himself in a cardboard box. The box was loaded with many others on a truck for a 100 mile journey to to the Yonne region, southeast of Paris. Somewhere during the ride Treiber broke out of the box an made his escape. "We're searching the places where he used to hunt," said a policeman. "But he might well have fled further afield."

An anonymous reader writes "Roger Rude, a retired Sonoma County sheriff's lieutenant, is still fighting a speeding ticket his step-son, Shaun Malone, received in 2007. Shaun Malone was allegedly going 62 mph in a 45-mph zone, according to a Petaluma police officer. To the officer's surprise, Malone was using a GPS tracking device which reported his speed to an online database every 30 seconds. At the time of stop, the GPS reported Malone's speed at 45 mph. Rude has been helping Malone fight the speeding ticket for over two years. The Petaluma Police Department has spent $15,000 in the prosecution of this case. The case is now in the hands of the Commissioner."

AshokaTECH writes "A piece of plastic tubing is taped to an egg beater as replacement for expensive high tech equipment that is used to separate blood into different components that can be tested. From the article, 'The cheap, portable and readily-available egg beater can be used at the point of care, meaning that health workers can diagnose illness in remote areas. The technique also uses smaller volumes of blood than regular centrifuges.'"

inject_hotmail.com writes "The results are in: it's faster to send your data via an airborne carrier than it is through the pipes. As discussed Tuesday, a company in South Africa called Unlimited IT, frustrated by terribly slow Internet speeds, decided to prove their point by sending an actual homing pigeon with a "data card" strapped to its leg from one of their offices to another while at the same time uploading the same amount of data to the same destination via their ISPs data lines. The media outlet reporting this triumph said that it took the pigeon just over 1 hour to make the 80km/50mile flight, whereas it took over 2 hours to transfer just 4% of that data."

Death Metal writes "While everyone would like to work for a nice person who is always right, IT pros will prefer a jerk who is always right over a nice person who is always wrong. Wrong creates unnecessary work, impossible situations and major failures. Wrong is evil, and it must be defeated. Capacity for technical reasoning trumps all other professional factors, period."

Residents of the Ravenwood House apartments in Queens couldn't take the stench coming from one of the apartments anymore so they called the police. Officers and a New York Fire Department hazmat team went into the apartment to remove the decomposing body they expected to find, only to discover a very dirty and very angry 69-year-old Ming Li Sung. Ming was upset that the authorities had disturbed the world of rotting garbage he had been building for himself. "When they started trying to clear away some of the trash to get in, he popped up inside, yelling, 'Get out! Get out!'" said Ray West, who lives across the hall.

And they said all those years of beer drinking and sitting on the couch wouldn't lead to anything worthwhile.

definate writes "Two teenage girls (aged 10 and 12) found themselves trapped/lost in a stormwater drain in Adelaide, South Australia. The interesting point of this article that makes it Slashdot worthy, is that although the teenage girls had mobile phones, instead of calling for help using 000 (Australia's 911 number), they decided to notify people through Facebook. My guess is it was something along the lines of 'Jane Doe is like totally trapped in a stormwater drain, really need help, OMG!'. Luckily a young friend of the girls was online at the time and was able to call the proper authorities."

dagwud writes "Just a few days after this Slashdot article, South Africa's largest telecoms provider, Telkom (which has been taking flak for years for its shoddy and overpriced service), is being pitted against a homing pigeon to see which can deliver 4GB of call centre data logs quickest over a distance of around 80km (50 miles). According to the official website, the race is set to take place September 10."

Scouts in the UK are no longer allowed to bring penknives on camping trips because they have been deemed too dangerous. Traditionally scouts have learned knife safety skills, using them to cut firewood or make tools. Dave Budd, a knife-maker who runs courses training Scouts about the safe use of blades wrote, "Sadly, there is now confusion about when a Scout is allowed to carry a knife. The series of high-profile fatal stabbings [has] highlighted a growing knife culture in the UK. I think it is safest to assume that knives of any sort should not be carried by anybody to a Scout meeting or camp, unless there is likely to be a specific need for one. In that case, they should be kept by the Scout leaders and handed out as required." There is no doubt that soon scouts will get rid of their tents for large sound-proof lucite containers, which will be able to protect the children from the horrors of campfire embers, bug bites and foul language.

Mixel writes "Two Bangladeshi newspapers have apologized after publishing an article taken from a satirical US website which claimed the Moon landings were faked. From the article: 'The Daily Manab Zamin said US astronaut Neil Armstrong had shocked a news conference by saying he now knew it had been an "elaborate hoax." Neither they nor the New Nation, which later picked up the story, realised the Onion was not a genuine news site.'"

theodp writes "An amazing surveillance tape of a burglary in progress at a New Jersey Apple Store shows five perps in masks smashing the plate-glass doors at 2:05 a.m., signaling to the security guard that they had a gun, and clearing off the display tables with the efficiency of a Indy 500 pit crew. The take: 23 MacBook Pros, 14 iPhones and 9 iPod touches in 31 seconds flat. Estimated value, based on average selling price: $46,345. No word yet on whether Microsoft's Laptop Hunters have alibis."

Quothz writes "Last spring, an Arlington police officer listed his neighbor's athletic gear on Craigslist. After a review, the Tarrant District Attorney's office has decided no crime was committed. 'The law just wasn't there,' says county prosecutor Dixie Bersano. So, Texans, clean up those yards and lock those doors, your stuff is free for the giving."

Philosopher Adam Shriver suggested that genetically engineering cows to feel no pain could be an acceptable alternative to eliminating factory farming in a paper published in Neuroscience. Work by neuroscientist Zhou-Feng Chen at Washington University may turn Shriver's suggestion a reality. Chen has been working on identifying the genes that control "affective" pain, the unpleasantness part of a painful sensation. He has managed to isolate a gene called P311, and has found that mice who do not have P311 don't have negative associations with pain, although they do react negatively to heat and pressure. This could end much of the concern about cruel farming practices, but unfortunately still leaves my design for the fiery hamburger punch in the unethical column.

The Cash for Clunkers program has a new group of critics, demolition-derby drivers. In addition to the fact that scrap-metal prices have doubled in the past two years, the Clunkers program has created a shortage of derby-worthy cars. "Obama is an anti-demo-derby guy," says Tory Schutte, head of the Demolition Derby Drivers Association. "He's targeting the cars we've been using."

brumgrunt writes "Technically a corridor in a science-fiction movie should just be a means of getting from one big expensive set to the next, and yet Den Of Geek writes lovingly of the detailed conduits in films such as Alien, Outland, Solaris and even this year's Moon by Duncan Jones."

A 65-year-old anti-health care reform protester had his finger bitten off during a fight with a pro-health care reform protester. Around 100 protesters were holding a health care reform rally when a group of anti-reform folks gathered on the opposite side of the street. A witness says a man walked through the anti-reform group to get to the pro-reform side when he got into an altercation with the 65-year-old. It's good that we can have this debate in a calm, adult manner before we start biting off digits.

porjo writes "The Sydney Morning Herald reports that: 'A Perth man has been charged with stealing a sea container full of premium Belgian beer worth $35,000, West Australian police say. Police allege two men stole a shipping container holding 1,349 cartons of Hoegaarden beer from a storage yard in Welshpool, in Perth's east on August 20. "It will be alleged that at 6.05pm two men using a side-loading container trailer, stole a sea container containing 1,349 cartons of Hoegaarden beer, police spokeswoman Susan Usher said."'"