Al-Shamikha magazine looks to give fashion and beauty advice to the widows of suicide bombers as well as tips on getting your children to blow themselves up too. From the article: "A woman called Umm Muhanad hails her husband for his bravery after his suicide bombing in Afghanistan. And another article urges readers to give their lives for the Islamist cause. It advises: 'From martyrdom, the believer will gain security, safety and happiness.' More traditional content for a women's magazine includes features on the merits of honey facemasks, etiquette, first aid and why readers should avoid 'towelling too forcibly.'"

60-year-old Hiromitsu Shinkawa was rescued by maritime self-defence forces 10 miles off the coast of Japan, sitting on part of his roof. Hiromitsu had returned home to retrieve belongings after hearing off the coming tsunami, but was caught by the wave and spent two days on his roof drifting in the ocean. He was quoted as saying: "No helicopters or boats that came nearby noticed me. I thought that day was going to be the last day of my life."

An anonymous reader writes "A Facebook photo of a stolen 3 carat diamond ring recently helped police solve a jewelry theft. After rings and other items valued at more than $16,000 were taken from a home on Saturday, a friend of the victim's roommate saw one of the items on the social network. 20-year-old Crystal Yamnitzky captioned the photo with the following message: 'Look what Robby gave me I love him so much,' in reference to her 21-year-old boyfriend Robert Driscoll. Yamnitzky's cousin saw the post and told some friends, who alerted police. Both Yamnitzky and Driscoll have been charged in the case."

Kilrah_il writes "Whether you think it is useful or useless, you can't ignored the sheer cool geekiness of a game played entirely in the URL bar. From the article: '... While getting lost in a three dimensional virtual world amongst increasingly thoughtful plot and character development may be an adequate pastime for some, the only new title the gaming world should be talking about is URL Hunter, an experimental keyboard-character based game played entirely in your browser's URL bar.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Scientists believe a spider could lead to a breakthrough in sexual health after finding a single bite can cause a four-hour erection. According to the report, researchers at the Medical College of Georgia believe the venom of the Brazilian wandering spider could lead to a new cure for erectile dysfunction. Dr Kenia Nunes, a physiologist at the college, said it works in a different way to Viagra. 'This is good because we know that some patients don't respond to the conventional therapy. This could be an optional treatment for them,' she said. Her study, published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, involved experiments using hypertensive rats with severe erectile dysfunction."

theodp writes "A newly-surfaced Microsoft patent application describes methods of secretly matching up individuals whose shared 'fringe interests' might be 'a source of shame or embarrassment' to them should they become known to society-at-large. No, not sexual preferences. A much bigger taboo. Comic books. 'For example,' explains Microsoft in its filing, 'an ambitious professional is not likely to divulge that he likes, say, comic books, even though quite true. Appreciably, certain affinities especially those relating to fringe interests, eccentricities, or topics about which there is a common misconception or very little mainstream familiarity or understanding are generally omitted rather than included in conventional descriptions. Typically, this is so because these affinities might be a source of shame or embarrassment or incur undue explanation.'"

Giancarlo Sabatini managed to elude police for almost 10 years, but in the end his wife's lasagna was his undoing. From the article: "Acting on a tip, police staked out the homes of Sabatini's wife and daughter Tuesday in Rocca Priora, a town near Rome. When they spied the daughter leaving her mother's house and furtively dashing toward her home bearing a tray of lasagna, police, suspecting a secret guest, burst in and arrested Sabatini."

An anonymous reader writes "38-year-old Stephen Andreassen ended a relationship with 36-year-old Rebecca Pattinson, and immediately started creating websites to insult, embarrass, and terrorize her. Andreassen was apparently annoyed that Pattinson said no when he asked her to look at an apartment together after four weeks of dating, so he created up to 35 blogs to get back at her. After the breakup, Andreassen began bombarding her with calls, e-mails, texts, and Facebook messages begging to be taken back. Pattinson reacted by threatening to call the police, removing all her contact details from her online profiles, and deactivating her Facebook account. Andreassen then set up a series of blogs, posting messages to warn all men about her and listing links to his other websites giving his account of their affair."

sciencehabit writes "Most male mammals wield a penis covered with spines made of keratin, the same material that forms fingernails, to sweep out competitors' sperm and irritate a female into ovulating. Even chimpanzees, our closest relatives, have penile spines. So why don't men? A new study suggests that this feature disappeared due to a chunk of DNA that went missing after our evolutionary divergence from chimps. The researchers have identified another DNA deletion that may have contributed to humans' bigger brains."

A couple of Swedish bank robbers had the perfect plan: sneak inside a bank vault on Friday, spend all weekend emptying safe deposit boxes, escape when the bank opens again on Monday. They would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling pee bottles they left behind. From the article: "They managed to surprise bank staff and escape when the vault was reopened. But prosecutor Frederik Larsen said they forgot to take the urine with them 'so we were able to get their DNA samples from the bottles.' The evidence helped prosecutors win a 21-month prison sentence for the Swede. His accomplice is still at large and the loot hasn't been recovered."

A Washington State bill that would narrow the definition of what a service animal is has an Olympia man hissing mad. The new bill seeks to limit the species that could be considered service animals to only dogs and miniature horses. Daniel Green uses a snake. He says he's taught the snake to hug him when it feels an epileptic seizure coming on. From the article: "At a Senate Labor committee hearing, Green said the new law would preclude him from going to many places. Green kept his snake in a bag during the hearing, but did take it out outside the building. Restaurants and other retailers have backed the measure, saying that allowing any animal to be considered a service animal creates health hazards and other problems to their customers."

Durfee high school students who can't seem to get to school in time are now getting robo-calls from their principal to wake them up. From the article: "Durfee joins the ranks of US schools taking on the added role of alarm clock to combat high rates of tardiness and absenteeism, including New Bedford, Massachusetts and Chicago, Thibault said. In New York City, the wake-up calls feature the voice of former professional basketball star Magic Johnson."

Cynthia "Cindy" Economou had no idea taking Karl Lambert's foot would end up being such a big deal, after all it wasn't even attached when she took it. Now Lambert is suing the paramedic for taking his severed foot from the scene of his crash to train her body recovery dog. From the article: "'It was an unrecognizable mass of flesh,' Economou said. 'It wasn't a clean cut. You couldn't even recognize it as a foot....If I had thought it was somehow reattachable and usable, I would have gone to my commander.'"

carusoj writes "Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft's first CTO, made his mark in the tech world. Now he's cemented his place in the world of cooking and food science with the publication of a groundbreaking six-volume, 2,438-page cookbook. Some of the techniques in Myhrvold's Modernist Cuisine are intimidating, to put it mildly, calling for such daunting ingredients as liquid nitrogen and equipment such as centrifuges and rotor-stator homogenizers. But Myhrvold and his co-authors insist that the majority of recipes can be made in a conventional home kitchen — with a few recommended, inexpensive extras such as a digital gram scale and water bath for sous vide cooking." Dear Bosses: When you see the centrifuge on my March expense report, please note that this is a legitmate business expense. If you're still curious, we ran a story a couple years ago on Nathan's Kitchen Lab.

I've always loved generative music, and this guy used Pi as the basis for his composition. I'm not saying it's as good as Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber or something, but it's a great way to get ready for Pi day which is tragically still not a federal holiday. Write your congressman.

The new $39.5 million Fountaindale Public Library features: flat-screen TVs, video games, self-checkout stations, a variety of e-readers, and a cafe. Library officials say the new facility is a blueprint for libraries of the future, and will focus on using new technologies. From the article: "The Fountaindale Public Library, with its state-of-the-art, Wi-Fi equipped space, is starkly different from the previous antiquated library, a nearby one-story brick structure built in 1975 that awaits the wrecking ball. Officials are hopeful the new facility attracts a demographic libraries haven't seen in a number of years — young professionals."

Part public information forum and part MacGyver home improvement page, Showusyourlongdrop highlights some of the best makeshift toilets in Christchurch, NZ. In addition to be able to view some unappreciated works of ingenuity, visitors to the website can vote on which bathroom is the best.

MrShaggy writes "An engineering lab and a culinary school have teamed up to construct novel edible objects with 3D printers that use pureed foods in place of ink. From the article: '"It lets you do complex geometries with food that you could never do by hand," said Jeffrey Lipton, a researcher and graduate student at the lab. "So far, we've printed everything from chocolate, cheese and hummus to scallops, turkey, and celery," Lipton told CBC Radio's Spark in an interview that aired Sunday.'"

The people at National Geographic have built a house modeled after the one in the movie UP! for a new TV series called How Hard Can It Be?. The house flew for about an hour and reached 10,000 feet. There was no report of anyone spotting The Beast of Paradise Falls.

The Space Shuttle Discovery left the International Space Station this morning for the last time. To commemorate the ship's accomplishments over 27 years of service, the crew was greeted to a morning wake-up message from Capt. Kirk. "Space, the final frontier," Shatner said in a prerecorded message. "These have been the voyages of the space shuttle Discovery. Her 30-year mission: to seek out new science, to build new outposts, to bring nations together on the final frontier, to boldly go and do what no spacecraft has done before."