Britney Spears Music can Scare Away Somali Pirates
Oh come on, pirates! Her early stuff is perfectly listenable. Britney Spears’ songs “Oops! I Did It Again” and “Baby One More Time” are used to scare away Somali pirates who might otherwise be tempted to attack merchant navy ships off Africa’s east coast, according to officer Rachel Owens. “These guys can’t stand Western culture or music, making Britney’s hits perfect,” Owens said.
The music is blasted at extremely high volumes, with the speakers aimed directly at the pirates so the ship’s crew doesn’t have to deal with the ear-splitting tunes. Owens said Spears’ classics are an effective way of fighting pirates. But Steven Jones, of the Security Association for the Maritime Industry, said there are some lengths Western powers are unwilling to go to for fear of violating international law. “I’d imagine using Justin Bieber would be against the Geneva Convention,” Jones jokingly said. (Huffington Post)
Cellphone Saves Clerk From Bullet
A convenience store clerk in Florida can thank his cellphone for stopping a bullet fired at his chest during an attempted robbery, police said on Tuesday. “He was very lucky,” said lieutenant Scott Allen of the Winter Garden Police Department.
The middle-aged clerk, who police are not identifying for his safety, was shot at by a robber who ordered him and a female clerk to open the safe at a gas station and convenience store near Orlando, Florida, on Monday.
“He (the clerk) was not able to open the safe,” Allen said. “The suspect went to leave, he pointed the revolver at one of the clerks and fired a single shot as he was leaving the store.”
The clerk’s cellphone was in the breast pocket of his baggy shirt.
“When it first happened, he checked himself to see if he was shot. He didn’t see anything,” Allen said. “Sometime later after the police were on the scene, he mentioned he had a little bit of chest pain. So they started looking into it and realized his cellphone had been shot.”
The man did not suffer any injuries, Allen said. (Reuters)
Psychic scammers find fertile ground in Internet age
As pre-Halloween witches and ghouls sprout up on US lawns, experts are warning people to be wary of modern occult scammers who have moved online to hawk virtual voodoo dolls, revenge spells and otherwise “haunted” items. While the idea of spending money for a magic spell — to help with an endeavour or to inflict pain on an enemy — has been around for centuries, experts say the anonymity of online transactions can encourage people who would otherwise never think of visiting a storefront psychic to fall for a con.
“It’s a new twist on an old idea,” said Nicholas little, legal director of the Centre for Inquiry, a Washington-based nonprofit that promotes secular and rational thinking. “It’s easy to hide your identity on the Internet, so people are willing to try scams online that they would never be willing to try in person.” While most scammers offer items in the small-dollar range — selling allegedly haunted items on auction sites for under $10 — some go for large sums of money. A Manhattan woman running a fortune-telling business earlier this month was found guilty of conning two women out of $138,000, claiming that the funds would be used to solve problems related to their past lives. (Reuters)
lost dentures among sick-day excuses
A heavy turkey dinner caused one worker to sleep through his shift. Another said his false teeth flew out the car window as he was driving along the highway. These were just two of the imaginative excuses employees gave bosses when calling in sick last year, according to a study released by CareerBuilder, the jobs website.
Nearly a third of the 5,500 workers and managers who took part in the online survey admitted to taking sick days when they were not in fact ill, which experts said costs businesses money. “These are funny explanations, but employee absence is a fairly serious issue for employers,” said Patricia Purdy, vice-president of core benefits with Chicago-based Pacific Resources, an employee absence management company. (Reuters)
Contestants Bribe Beauty Judges in Brazil: Report
Two contestants in a popular Brazilian beauty contest are lashing out against other women who are accused of bribing judges in bids to win. Models Mari Sousa, 25, and Eliana Amaral, 24, are accused of paying the equivalent of thousands of dollars in bribes to judges in the 2013 Miss Bumbum competition, a nationwide contest to find the woman with Brazil’s most bodacious butt.
A columnist for Brazilian newspaper O Dia published a note announcing that Sousa had already won the contest, and that Amaral was the runner up. The results in Miss Bumbum aren’t supposed to be announced until the contest concludes in November. (Huffington Post)