Sonya Thomas ate 4.86 pounds (2.2 kilograms) of chicken wings to win the festival’s contest Sunday, besting world eating marvel Joey Chestnut. Thomas calls herself the Black Widow because she often beats male competitors in eating contests. The previous record was her 174 wings in 2005.

Chestnut came in second after eating 169 chicken wings. That’s 4.55 pounds (2.06 kilograms).

Thomas says she’s “so happy” because Chestnut had been favoured to win. She says her technique of using her hands more than her mouth helped her.

The 43-year-old from Virginia says she was still hungry after the contest — so she ate 20 hot wings.

The National Buffalo Wing Festival says that chicken wings originated in the city.

Source: AFP September 5, 2010

A 2-year-old Indonesian boy whose chain-smoking had shocked the world has reportedly given up.
Ardi Rizal from the island of Sumatra was sent to rehab after pictures spread around the world of him smoking up to 40 cigarettes a day. The clip on ITN’s YouTube channel has received over 4 million hits.
The toddler spent 30 days under medical supervision where it was discovered he was also suffering from heart problems. However, this has also been put down to the fact he is overweight.
His parents have had training on how to help him stay off the cigarettes as well after they had struggled to get him to give up.
They said, if denied a cigarette, he would throw tantrums and bang his head against the floor in protest.
It’s been reported that more than 30 per cent of children smoke a cigarette before the age of 10 in Indonesia.
Source: ITN news online, September 3, 2010

Dr Jacquelyn Kotarac

A woman’s decomposing body has been found wedged inside the chimney of her lover’s home after she tried to sneak into his house.
Dr Jacquelyn Kotarac, 49, scaled a ladder to the roof, removed the chimney cap and slid down the flue of the property in Bakersfield, California.
The woman, who had an “on-again, off again” relationship with the man, had gone to the house on Wednesday last week, police said.
But the man refused to let her in and escaped unnoticed from the house “to avoid a confrontation”, police added.
Dr Kotarac is believed to have been stuck in the chimney for three days.
Her body was discovered by a house-sitter who noticed “an odour and fluids” coming from the fireplace, police said.
The house-sitter and her son found the woman’s body wedged about two feet above the top of the interior fireplace opening.
Firefighters spent five hours dismantling the chimney and flue from the outside of the property to extract the body.
The man’s identity has been revealed in media reports as William Moodie, 58, the owner of a petroleum engineering company.
“She made an unbelievable error in judgement and nobody understands why, and unfortunately she’s passed away,” Mr Moodie told the Associated Press.
“She had her issues, she had her demons, but I never lost my respect for her.”
He would not comment on the circumstances that led to her death but described her as a “superb internist who often provided service and medication free of charge to her patients”.
Dr Kotarac ran a medical practice seeing as many as 200 patients a week, reports said.
Her office staff reported her missing when she failed to turn up to work.
Bakersfield coroner’s office said Dr Kotarac died of asphyxiation and concluded the death was an accident.
Source: Skynews online, September 1, 2010

Deputies arrested 28-year-old Neil Hefner and recovered 163 cellphones, along with computers, wallets, gift cards and rare coins. He was booked for investigation of burglary.

Sheriff’s Lt. John Benedict says one victim was looking for a new phone on Craigslist, found one that looked like his old one and bought it.

When it arrived, many of his phone numbers were still programmed into it so he called deputies. Benedict says the seller’s return address was on the package.

Source: AP, August 31, 2010

Protesting strippers

Several Ohio strippers are protesting outside a church whose members want to put their strip club out of business.

The bikini-clad dancers are picketing a congregation that has photographed customers’ number plates and asked if their wives know where they are.

The Fox Hole club’s owner has told the pastor he will call off his protest if the church ceases its demonstrations.

But the pastor has refused, saying, “as a Christian community, we cannot share territory with the devil”.

“Light and darkness cannot exist together,” Pastor Bill Dunfee told the Associated Press news agency, “so the Fox Hole has got to go.”

The strippers have been sitting in deckchairs outside New Beginnings Ministries church in Warsaw, Ohio, during Sunday services.

Some hold signs bearing Christian messages such as “Jesus loves the children of the world” and citing Bible verses.

The strip club is about nine miles (14.5km) from the church.

“Everybody has sinned, and that doesn’t mean I’m not going to get into heaven,” Fox Hole stripper Laura Meske, 42, told AP.

“I believe in Jesus. I don’t believe what they preach. They preach hate.”

The confrontations between the two camps have reportedly been largely friendly, with Mr Dunfee and congregants greeting and chatting to the strippers outside the church.

Source: BBC news online, August 27, 2010

Police later confiscated some 150 female garments, including more underwear and knee-high boots, from the home of Tsuyoshi Hirano, 43, a teacher at a prefectural school for the visually impaired, the Nikkan Sports daily reported.
The victim, a 22-year-old woman, realised her underpants were missing from a drying tumbler in a coin laundromat in Fukuoka, western Japan.
When she saw Hirano get into a car parked outside, she reported the licence plate number to police, Kyodo News reported.
“At first glance, I knew ’she’ was a ‘he,’” she reportedly told police.
The man was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of theft, Fukuoka police said.
Source: AFP. August 25, 2010

Man and wife taking a walk in Kuwait

A Kuwaiti MP proposed Wednesday state-aid for male citizens to take second wives, in a bid to reduce the large number of unmarried women in the oil-rich emirate.

“The proposal aims at solving the problem of unmarried women, which is a problem facing our society, and encourages widows and divorced men and women to form new families,” independent Shiite MP Faisal al-Duwaisan said.
The Gulf state already grants Kuwaiti men who wed a female citizen for the first time a “marriage aid” of 4,000 dinars (14,000 dollars, 11,000 euros), half of which is a grant and the rest an interest-free loan with easy installments.
But Duwaisan wants the government to grant an additional aid package for men to take second wives, provided certain conditions are met.
The prospective grooms must obtain written permission from their existing wives to marry again, or they must be widowed or divorced.
The women they marry must be widows, divorced or at least 40 years of age and never married, Duwaisan said in his proposal, which was submitted to parliament.
Parliamentary panels will review the proposal, then send it to parliament for consideration. If approved, it will become law.
Kuwait, the fifth-largest producer inside the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, provides a cradle-to-grave welfare system by offering most public services at highly-subsidised rates. Education and health are free for citizens.
Source: AFP, August 25, 2010

Tiger and wife Elin

Tiger Woods and his wife Elin Nordegren have divorced, the couple said in a statement posted on the world number one golfer’s website.
“We are sad that our marriage is over and we wish each other the very best for the future,” the couple said.
They said they planned to “share parenting” of their two children.
News of the split comes nine months after a car crash outside Mr Woods’ Florida home set off revelations that he had been cheating on Ms Nordegren.
Details of the financial settlement have not been disclosed, but US media reports suggest the former Mrs Woods is walking away with well over $100m (£64.4m).
The divorce was finalized in Florida by Bay County Circuit Judge Judy Pittman Biebel in what was described as a brief hearing in which both Mr Woods and Ms Nordegren were present.
Woods has been a rather more distracted figure than the one we have been used to seeing on the golf course, and of course his results have reflected that”
End Quote Iain Carter BBC Golf correspondent
Correspondents say the agreement is almost certain to have included a secrecy clause surrounding the circumstances leading to the crash which left Tiger Woods seriously injured and after which he publicly confessed to serial infidelity.
BBC golf correspondent Iain Carter says that golf insiders had “guessed.. that divorce proceedings have been underway for quite some time”.
“Woods has been a rather more distracted figure than the one we have been used to seeing on the golf course, and of course his results have reflected that,” Carter said.
The couple married in October 2004 in Barbados and have a 3-year-old daughter, Sam, and a 19-month-old son, Charlie.
In November 2009 Mr Woods, the world’s wealthiest athlete, was involved in a single-vehicle accident outside his Florida home.
Soon after, several women came forward and claimed they had had affairs with Mr Woods.
Mr Woods, 34 subsequently lost several major sponsors, including AT&T Gatorade. In February he publicly apologised and admitted that he had been unfaithful to Ms Nordegren, a former model.
In a statement released by their lawyers on Monday, the pair asked for privacy “as we adjust to a new family situation”.
Source: BBC news online, August 23, 2010

A Saudi judge has asked several hospitals if they are willing to damage a man’s spinal cord as punishment for a cleaver attack that left a 22-year-old paralysed.
The victim, Abdul-Aziz al Mutairi, became paralysed and subsequently lost a foot after a fight more than two years ago.
An unnamed man was sentenced to 14 months in prison for the assault, but released after serving only half that time.
The shortened jail time has reportedly enraged Mr Mutairi’s family.
His 27-year-old brother Khaled said they want an equivalent punishment for the attacker and have appealed to a judge in northwestern Tabuk province.
“We are asking for our legal right under Islamic law,” the brother said.
“There is no better word than God’s word – an eye for an eye.”
The judge has since asked several hospitals if medical paralysis was possible and would they perform the operation.
Local newspapers reported a facility in the capital Riyadh had declined, saying it could not inflict such harm.
Saudi Arabia enforces strict Islamic law and occasionally hands out punishments based on the ancient legal code.
Amnesty International has expressed concerns over the reports and said it was contacting Saudi authorities for details.
“We are very concerned and we will appeal to the authorities not to carry out such a punishment,” said Lamri Chirouf, the group’s researcher on Saudi Arabia.
He added this was the first time Amnesty had heard of a punishment involving the damaging of a spinal cord.
“It’s hard to follow details of the Saudi justice system. People are sentenced in closed trials with no access to the public and no lawyers.”
Source: Sky news online, August 20, 2010