Sikh police officers are pushing the British government to come up with a bullet-proof turban design so they can serve as firearms officers. Their religious requirement of wearing a turban prevents them from wearing the protective headgear a firearms officer must have. "We would like to follow any opportunity where we could manufacture a ballistic product, made out of a synthetic fibre, that would ensure a certain degree of protection, so Sikh police officers could take part in these roles," said Inspector Gian Singh Chahal, vice-chairman of the newly formed British Police Sikh Association.

youth68 writes "Australia is known around the world for its large and deadly creepy crawlies, but even locals have been shocked by the size of the giant venomous spiders that have invaded an Outback town in Queensland. Scores of eastern tarantulas, which are known as 'bird-eating spiders' and can grow larger than the palm of a man's hand, have begun crawling out from gardens and venturing into public spaces in Bowen, a coastal town about 700 miles northwest of Brisbane."

Phase 1: Break into a realty office, and steal a computer hard drive.

Phase 2: Ask if they will pay you $50 to fix the computer.

Phase 3: Get charged with theft and receiving stolen property!

Guan Baihua has reinvented the wheel, oddly. The 50-year-old retired Chinese military officer has patented a bicycle with odd-sided wheels. The bike took him 18 months to develop and features a front wheel that is a pentagon and a back wheel that is a triangle. "There are too many identical mass-manufactured things. More and more, people like weird and rarely seen stuff. Making this bike gives people an alternative," he said. A single-cube ice tray, a hammer featuring a self-lubricating handle, and a social networking site are rumored to be Gaun's next big projects.

Looks like the bridge club will finally get what's coming to them.

Thanks to researchers at Cranfield University, you don't have to feel bad when you plow into a group of pedestrians who are crossing the street too slowly. They have designed an external airbag that mounts to your hood at the base of the windshield. Research shows that this is the area where a pedestrian's head is most likely to hit in an accident. "Test results indicate that the system works extremely well. When fitted to a demonstrator vehicle not originally designed with pedestrian protection in mind, the results were well inside all current legal criteria for pedestrian protection currently in force in Europe," Roger Hardy of the university's Cranfield Impact Centre said.

A pig that was a gift to the Kabul zoo from China has been quarantined due to swine flu fears. Pork and all things pig produced are illegal in Afghanistan because they are considered irreligious. The pig at the zoo is the only known pig in the country. "For now the pig is under quarantine, we built it a room because of swine influenza. We've done this because people are worried about getting the flu," Aziz Gul Saqib, director of Kabul Zoo, told Reuters. Just wait until people hear about chickenpox.

Sony Dong sang like the birds he was smuggling when he was stopped by an inspector at the Los Angeles International Airport. Dong was hiding more than a dozen songbirds attached to what has to be the world's most fabulous pair of socks. "He had fashioned these special cloth devices to hold the birds," said US attorney spokesman Thom Mrozek. "They were secured by cloth wrappings and attached to his calves with buttons."

You can put away your wooden stakes, and stop hanging garlic around the windows, thanks to Physicists Costas Efthimiou and Sohang Gandhi. The pair have published a paper where they demonstrate, by virtue of geometric progression, that vampires could not exist. It turns out that the vampire's method of feeding and reproduction would deplete their food supply very quickly. Their paper, "Cinema Fiction vs. Physics Reality," assumes that the first vampire appeared on January 1, 1600 and shows that everybody on the planet would have had their blood drained by June, 1602.

Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you.

An anonymous reader writes "What do you get when you mount a Nikon D200 with a standard rifle stock? Why a Tactical Camera of course! One that no reporter would be caught with in a war zone or covering any armed action anywhere. What started out as a tongue in cheek project for April Fools wound up being quite the successful demonstration of concept. It features a fully functional trigger; it has controls for operating the shutter and auto focus; and for the patient shots, it has a mounted bipod. Carry sling optional."

In an attempt to reverse declining attendance figures, many American churches are starting to ask WWJD in 140 or fewer characters. Pastors at Westwinds Community Church in Michigan spent two weeks teaching their 900-member congregation how to use Twitter. 150 of them are now tweeting. Seattle's Mars Hill Church encourages its members to Twitter messages during services. The tweets appear on the church's official Twitter page. Kyle Firstenberg, the church's administrator, said,"It's a good way for them to tell their friends what church is about without their friends even coming in the building."

What started out as a joke has turned into an effective burglar deterrent for one Croatian bakery. The upscale bakery had been robbed almost every week until the owner put a life-sized photo of Chuck Norris in the window with a sign saying, "This shop is under the protection of Chuck Norris." The bakery has now been crime free for over a month. Sales assistant Mirna Kovac said, "To be honest we just started it as a joke but it really has worked. Thieves haven't been anywhere near us for ages. People seem to respect him. We have had a few customers come in and ask us whether they can get Chuck's autograph. They really believe he is sitting in our storeroom out the back ready to pounce on any burglars." Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.

Somalia's al Qaeda-backed Al-Shabaab wing is getting creative with its recruitment marketing. They have made a well produced eighteen-minute video complete with a hip-hop jihad feel. A voice raps, "Mortar by mortar, shell by shell, only going to stop when I send them to hell," during part of the recruitment tape. Intelligence experts say the video was recently made and comes on the heels of an audio message in March purportedly from Osama bin Laden. Industry insiders are intrigued by the tape, but point out that it fails to include any special appearances by other fledgling groups, which is a necessity in today's terrorist hip-hop market.

"...and now the studio has turned it into something people will actually like."

Dodging arrows teaches good foot work.

Kelson writes "Google's Mountain View headquarters has fields that need to be kept clear of fire hazards. This year instead of mowing them, they took a low-carbon approach: they hired a herd of goats to eat the grass for a week. 'It costs us about the same as mowing, and goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers,' wrote Dan Hoffman."

An anonymous reader writes "A design student made a battered old Skoda 'disappear' by painting it to merge with the surrounding car park. Sara Watson, who is studying drawing at the University of Central Lancashire (Uclan), took three weeks to transform the car's appearance.She created the illusion in the car park outside her studio at Uclan's Hanover Building in Preston. The car is now being used for advertising by the local recycling firm that donated the vehicle."

Marxist writes "The government of Mexico advises people to avoid shaking hands or kissing as a greeting, so what could the people do instead when meeting a friend? As social distancing becomes the norm due to swine flu, CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, advocates the el-bump, or bumping your elbows, as an alternative greeting that serves people's social needs while keeping them safer from swine flu compared to shaking hands. Probably we can expect more etiquette innovations as the swine flu virus spreads arround."

If you thought pulling a sword out of stone was hard, you should try to evict a druid. Mr. "King Arthur Pendragon" — formerly known as John Rothwell — has been camped out at the edge of Stonehenge since June 2008. Last week local official were granted an eviction notice for Mr. Pendragon. He had until 4pm on Sunday to leave, but failed to do so saying that he is fighting for the protected world heritage to be open to all, currently visitors are restricted to a visitor center and confined to marked-out trails. "We have opened a bottle of mead and we are drinking to Stonehenge. I have done a short ritual and spell of protection, calling on the kings of old. I am still here so I am in breach of the order as they see it but I have as much right as anyone else to be here," he said.