Junk News of the Day

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Beware Colombian bureaucrats, your president is watching.
Famed for his tough approach, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe went one step further Thursday when he ordered a local official suspected of corruption arrested as he sat in the audience listening to the presidential speech.
Uribe, who has led a U.S.-backed crackdown on leftist rebels and the cocaine trade, has earned a no-nonsense reputation since first coming to office more than four years ago with a promise to crush the country's four-decade insurgency.
Speaking in the port city of Buenaventura, Uribe accused the city mayor's secretary of trying to get a naval officer to hand over a captured stash of cocaine and ordered police to detain the shocked official sitting in front of him.
"You are unworthy to carry out your duties," Uribe said wagging his finger as two plainclothes officers escorted the official out of the hall. "The government cannot do battle when someone in a position as important as yours lacks patriotism."
Police later released the man pending an investigation into the charges.
Uribe, whose father was killed during a rebel kidnap attempt, was re-elected in May after Colombians praised him for reducing violence. The bespectacled, U.S.-trained lawyer backed off from possible talks with guerrillas after charging them with setting off a car bomb in Bogota last week.
Critics say Uribe has not done enough to curb human rights abuses and corruption in the military and wonder whether his hardline stance can really end the country's conflict.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Vermont's Green Mountain College is getting greener with a new program that uses cow manure to generate power.
The 750-student Green Mountain College in Poultney aims to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by joining Central Vermont Public Service's Cow Power program, which harvests waste from local farms.
"This initiative helps the college do its part to address global warming by reducing its carbon emissions by approximately 3500 metric tons per year, or the equivalent of removing 758 passenger cars, from use for a year," the liberal arts college said in a statement Thursday.
The program capitalizes on a common byproduct from one of the northeastern state's top industries, with a typical Vermont dairy cow producing around 13 gallons of manure daily, according to Cow Power spokesman Steve Costello.
Vermont boasts the highest cow-to-people ratio in the United States, with 300,000 cattle and calves and just over 600,000 people, according to state figures.
High U.S. fuel costs have spurred biofuel and other alternative energy and sustainable initiatives in the world's top oil consumer.

LONDON (Reuters) - Vampyres are prowling for new recruits in London as Halloween approaches to partake in wild parties, trips to Transylvania and bat spotting nights -- but coffin-dwelling, blood drinkers need not apply.
With a penchant for custom-made fangs, striking make-up and gothic clothes, members of the London Vampyre Group (LVG) say it's their fascination with the romantic notion of vampires, rather than any darker intent, that draws them together.
"People who think they're un-dead, hundreds of years old, or that you have to drink blood if you're interested in the dark side of things, we can put them right on that," LVG's Mick Smith, 57, told Reuters in an interview in a London pub.
"The drinking of blood is a taboo. It's a point of view that we don't tend to represent, but we think it is something that should be articulated," said Smith, wearing a somber black suit.
They may be conservatively attired lawyers or computer programmers by day, but Vampyres are transformed by flamboyant clothes after dark for the Dance of the Damned Vampire Ball and Requiem of the Resurrected parties with gothic belly dancing.
The Halloween Goth Ball in the northern English town of Whitby, where Bram Stoker was inspired to write "Dracula," is a major calendar fixture. Trips are planned to the Czech Republic's gothic castles and ossuaries, and to New Orleans, setting for Anne Rice's "Interview with the Vampire."
FANG FIXATION
"I'd always been fascinated by vampires, they are often portrayed as powerful and beautiful. It's the romanticism of it all," said Rebecca Summers, 35, social secretary of LVG which was formed about 12 years ago, a splinter group from parent organization The Dracula Society.

"It gets you out of that mundane world. And if you can live forever and remain beautiful then most people would want to do that," said Summers, who works as a business consultant.
With flowing black hair, red lips and a range of corsets, bustles and PVC outfits in her wardrobe, she says her work colleagues are unperturbed by her fixations with vampires and vampire myths which go back thousands of years and occur in almost every culture around the world.
But persuading her husband to ditch his "Coldplay" CD collection and have fangs fitted is a bigger challenge, said Summers, who carries her own set of sharp teeth in her handbag.
Few LVG members believe that the blood-sucking maniacs portrayed in Hollywood horror movies are roaming London's streets, wearing black capes and sucking blood from humans and animals to maintain immortality.
But some do believe in vampire-like personalities.
"There are people who believe in psychic vampires, that there are people who act as vampires, are very predatory, they take energy from other people," said Summers.
"You do get the odd strange people who believe they need to drink blood to survive. I've only had email dealings with them."
LVG is keen to project vampire fans in a positive light after coming under scrutiny several years ago when a German woman, convicted with her partner of a satanic murder, said she became a vampire at so-called "bite parties" in London.
"In one sense, we have a positive social function -- rectifying bad ideas," said Smith, who edits LVG's Chronicles magazine, with articles on vampires in literature, coffin-shaped sleeping bags and the "Vindicator" agony aunt advice.
"For me the most horrific things that happen in the world are on the news every day, not what you see in a horror film."

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - A Canadian city under pressure for alleged sexual harassment within its fire department has ordered firefighters to wear only boxer-style underwear.
Richmond, British Columbia will spend C$16,000 ($14,200) to buy six pairs of underwear for each firefighter in a bid to make firehalls in the suburb of Vancouver more gender neutral, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.
"We supply firefighters with various pieces of gear such as gloves, now it's underwear," city official Ted Townsend told the Vancouver Sun, saying it was part of the "integration of the sexes in the workplace."
A recent investigation of the department described its workplace culture as "characterized by juvenile and hostile behavior" toward female firefighters by their male colleagues.
Firefighters strip off most of their clothes in order to don protective gear when responding to fire alarms, although Townsend said the city is considering buying gear that can be put on over regular uniforms.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Think you've seen it all when it comes to cosmetic surgery?
Look more closely. Eyelash transplant surgery wants to become the new must-have procedure for women -- and the occasional man -- convinced that beauty is not so much in the eye of the beholder as in front of the eye itself.
Using procedures pioneered by the hair loss industry for balding men, surgeons are using "plug and sew" techniques to give women long, sweeping lashes once achieved only by glued on extensions and thick lashings of mascara.
And just like human hair -- for that is the origin -- these lashes just keep on growing.
"Longer, thicker lashes are an ubiquitous sign of beauty. Eyelash transplantation does for the eyes what breast augmentation does for the figure," said Dr Alan Bauman, a leading proponent of eyelash transplants.
"This is a brand new procedure for the general public (and) it is going to explode," Bauman told Reuters during what was billed as the world's first live eyelash surgery workshop for about 40 surgeons from around the world.
Under the procedure, a small incision is made at the back of the scalp to remove 30 or 40 hair follicles which are carefully sewn one by one onto the patient's eyelids. Only light sedation and local anesthetics are used and the cost is around $3,000 an eye.
The technique was first confined to patients who had suffered burns or congenital malformations of the eye. But word spread and about 80 percent are now done for cosmetic reasons

For many women, eyelash surgery is simply an extra item on the vast nip tuck menu that has lost its old taboos.
More than 10 million cosmetic procedures -- from tummy tucks to botox -- were performed in the United States in 2005, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. The figure represents a 38 percent increase over the year 2000.
Erica Lynn, 27, a Florida model with long auburn hair, breast implants and a nose job, had eyelash transplants three years ago because she was fed up with wearing extensions on her sandy-colored lashes.
"When I found out about it, I just had to have it done. Everyone I mention it to wants it. I think eyelashes are awesome. You can never have enough of them," Lynn said.
Bauman, who practices in Florida, does about three or four a month. Dr. Sara Wasserbauer, a Northern California hair restoration surgeon, says she has been inundated by requests.
"I have been getting a ton of eyelash inquiries ... If I had $10 dollars for every consultation, I'd be a rich woman."
The surgery is not for everyone. The transplanted eyelashes grow just like head hair and need to be trimmed regularly and sometimes curled. Very curly head hair makes for eyelashes with too much kink.

ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Two prisoners in an Ivory Coast jail who courted and fell in love through a peephole in an iron door have been released for a few hours to get married, one of their jailers said Friday.
Roland Guy Bouabre, serving a 3-year sentence for stealing a bicycle, courted Emilie Yobouet, who was given a one-year sentence for kidnapping a child, while he was delivering groceries for her to cook.
He would take the groceries to the iron door and then a guard would deliver them.
"You can find love in all kinds of places -- even prison," Daloa prison guard Norbert Bah told Reuters by telephone.
Yobouet completed her sentence two days after the wedding but brings food to the jail each day to supplement her husband's meager prison diet.
"He eats much better now," said Bah.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Just as trucking companies put signs on their vehicles asking the public to report unsafe drivers, parents can now put license plates on their baby strollers to get feedback on the behavior of their nannies.
Jill Starishevsky, a mother of two and a New York prosecutor, launched HowsMyNanny.com on Thursday, which sells stroller license plates that have a unique number and include the Web site address so the public can anonymously report good or bad nanny behavior.
The parents, who pay $50 for a plate, receive an e-mail alerting them to the report, which they access on the Web site (http://howsmynanny.com//default.aspx) using a password.
"It's a tool to empower the parents and to protect the parents and the children, it's not a tool to work against nannies. It's just a tool to give parents peace of mind," said Starishevsky, a lawyer who prosecutes child abuse and sex crimes.
Starishevsky said she came up with the idea after she saw a nanny in a New York city park who for at least an hour ignored the two young girls she was looking after.
"I was so frustrated," said Starishevsky. "How do I tell the mother that these kids could have run into the street, they could have been taken away at the hand of a stranger."
The most recent data from the U.S. Department of Labor shows that in 2004 there were about 1.3 million childcare workers across the United States, of which about 21 percent worked in private households.
"People keep asking me if this is because I am a mom do I want to do this or is it because I am a prosecutor? My answer is I think it's both," Starishevsky said.

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A vicar has come to the rescue of a small New Zealand town that has run out of women's underwear.
A group of women at the local Anglican church revealed the crisis caused by the only clothing shop in the small town of Inglewood, about 280 km (175 miles) north west of the capital Wellington, no longer stocking women's underwear.
"Someone came up with the point that it was a bit difficult that ladies essentials were not able to be bought in Inglewood," Reverend Gary Husband told National Radio.
"So we're going to have what's been called a knickers run."
Husband, who came up with the solution to the less-than-spiritual problem, said volunteers would now take anyone without transport to the nearby city of New Plymouth, about 20 km (12 miles) away, to buy their essentials.
Men's underwear is readily available in the town of around 3,000, but it also has no shoe shop and no bus service.
Husband said a trial run would be made before Christmas and if successful it would probably become a monthly event and open to all, regardless of faith.
"This is for the community ... the response has been positive, we've had one (other) denomination get in touch with us, so it's spreading."

SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian prisoner who went on a crash diet so he could squeeze his way out of jail escaped to show authorities that he could go straight on the outside, a court heard Friday.
Robert Cole, 37, fasted and used laxatives to lose some 30 pounds before he squeezed through a hole he had chiseled with a butter knife to escape from a hospital in a Sydney maximum security prison in January.
Weighing just 123 pounds, Cole squeezed through the hole he had made between brickwork and a window frame, scaled a razor-wire fence, walked along a prison wall and then jumped to freedom. He was recaptured three days later.
Cole's lawyer Richard Leary told the New South Wales District Court that his mentally ill client -- jailed on theft and assault charges -- had acted naively after failing to convince authorities he was fit for release, Australian Associated Press reported.
"He committed this offence in a vain hope to show authorities that he can survive outside," Leary said.
Judge Roger Dive described Cole's offence as serious and jailed him for 21 months.
"It has involved some time-consuming efforts and planning and preparation," Dive said.
Cole's sister Denise Roberts, an Australian actress, said he had long suffered from drug-induced psychosis. She said her brother had put on a lot of weight since his recapture.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - At least four funeral homes stole human body parts from thousands of corpses to sell for use in transplants in a scheme in which seven funeral directors have pleaded guilty, New York prosecutors said on Wednesday.
The plot's suspected ringleader, Michael Mastromarino, a former New Jersey oral surgeon who ran a Fort Lee, New Jersey, company that sold human tissue for medical implants, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday along with three others to new charges in the case, including body stealing and opening graves.
The prosecutor said the case raised concerns that some tissue provided for possible use in transplants could have been tainted.
"These ghoulish thieves thought they could pull off the crime of the century, stealing bones from the dead, without any thoughts of their victims' families or the transplant recipients who would receive possibly tainted bone and tissue grafts," Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes said in a statement.
One of the bodies possibly harvested was that of famed British broadcaster Alistair Cooke, longtime host of the U.S. TV program "Masterpiece Theater," who died in 2004. Prosecutors said the suspects changed documents to show Cooke died at age 85 of a heart attack, not at age 95 from cancer.
The seven unidentified funeral directors who pleaded guilty to undisclosed charges agreed to cooperate in the investigation, Hynes said. They all agreed to surrender their licenses and face prison time, based on their level of involvement, he said.
Court papers said Mastromarino and the three others worked with funeral homes to take bones and organs from dead people without the consent of their families or from people who were ineligible for organ donations because they had died of serious illnesses.
They sold the parts through legal medical channels for hip replacements and other operations, resulting in a profit of millions, according to the court papers.
The four men forged death certificates and organ-donor consent forms to create the appearance the dead donated their bodies and were eligible to do so, court papers said.
The transplanting of tissues such as muscle, skin and bone is common in the United States and the trade in implantable body parts is legal, providing certain conditions are met.
Mastromarino and the three others were previously indicted in February on charges including conspiracy, unlawful dissection and forgery. Those charges were superseded by the indictment announced on Wednesday.
A grand jury brought the additional charges against the men in a new indictment including the suspected theft of more bodies at funeral homes in Rochester, New York, the Bronx and Manhattan, Hynes said.
Prosecutors said it was suspected that more funeral homes were involved in the scheme.
The suspects remain free on bail. They each face a maximum of 25 years in prison.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Picasso's famed "Dream" painting turned into a nightmare for Las Vegas casino magnate Steve Wynn when he accidentally gave the multimillion dollar canvas an elbow.
Wynn had just finalized a $139 million sale to another collector of his painting, called "Le Reve" (The Dream), when he poked a finger-sized hole in the artwork while showing it to friends at his Las Vegas office a couple of weeks ago.
Director and screenwriter Nora Ephron, who witnessed and related the incident in her blog on the Huffington Post Web site (www.huffingtonpost.com), said Wynn had raised his hand to show the group something about Picasso's 1932 portrait of his mistress Marie-Therese Walter.
"At that moment, his elbow crashed backward right through the canvas. There was a terrible noise," Ephron wrote, noting that Wynn has retinitis pigmentosa, an eye disease that damages peripheral vision.
"Smack in the middle ... was a black hole the size of a silver dollar. 'Oh shit,' he said. 'Look what I've done. Thank goodness it was me.'"
Wynn's office on Tuesday confirmed the story, an account of which also appeared in this week's The New Yorker. Both accounts said Wynn had decided to release the buyer from the sale agreement and to repair and keep the painting himself.
Wynn, a millionaire casino developer and art collector, developed The Mirage and Bellagio resorts in Las Vegas in the 1990s, which spearheaded a profusion of luxury hotels and casinos on the once-seedy Las Vegas Strip.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A confection billed as the most expensive wedding cake in the world makes its debut on Monday night in Beverly Hills, but is likely to cause indigestion.
The extravagant $20 million diamond-studded wedding cake, created by Mimi So Jewelers and cake designer Nahid La Patisserie Artistique, is the star attraction of the Luxury Brands Bridal Show and will be unveiled on exclusive Rodeo Drive.
"Where else would you debut a $20 million wedding cake but on Rodeo Drive?" said show organizer Ilona Sherman.
The cake is protected by a team of uniformed security guards at all times, she said. And there's no way it will ever be eaten.
"I think diamonds are too hard on the stomach," Sherman said.

ROVINJ, Croatia (Reuters) - Croatia, already a popular holiday destination for sunseekers, is now tempting tourists with the offer of dental services at less than half the prices paid in western Europe.
Zeljko Popadic and his sister Jelena Nedeljkovic started a modest dental practice in the northern Adriatic town of Rovinj in 1997. They had only three employees and a few local patients.
Less than a decade later, their reputation has reached foreign markets as Europeans take advantage of low prices in former communist countries.
"Some 10 percent of our patients are foreigners and we're confident the number will grow. Most of them are Italians, but there is also a rising number of queries from the United Kingdom," Nedeljkovic, who is in charge of the administrative side of the business, told Reuters.
She said their services were twice as cheap as in Italy and three or four times cheaper than in England, while quality was the same.
Price list at the Popadic clinic Web site says that, for example, simple tooth extraction costs 42 euros ($52.54), while a complete set of dentures costs 725 euros.
They recently attended the Body Beautiful Show in London to present their services and promote the tourist attractions of their town.
Nedeljkovic and her brother hope the new low-cost flights from the UK to Croatia would further boost their business.

CHARLESTON, S.C. - A fifth-grade teacher allowed five students — a boy and four girls — to use a trash can as a toilet during a school lockdown drill when no one was supposed to leave the classroom.
The Charleston County teacher, Philip Frandino, was reprimanded last year for putting cardboard around a student's desk and keeping him isolated from his classmates for two hours for talking, The (Charleston) Post and Courier reported Friday.
On Tuesday, Frandino gave the Charlestowne Academy students permission to use the trash can. When a girl used the bathroom, other girls held up jackets to shield the view while other students stood on the opposite wall with their backs turned, school district spokesman Jerry Adams said. Boys also did the same for the boy.
"It's not acceptable," associate superintendent Patricia Yandle told the newspaper.
During the drill, which lasted less than an hour, Frandino called the school's main office and said students needed to use the restroom. It's unclear what the he was told to do, but Yandle said he was not told to have students use the trash can.
"We always learn something" during lockdown drills, school district spokesman Jerry Adams said Friday. "And clearly communications between the classrooms and the main office to get directions on things was one of the issues here."
Adams said as much privacy was given as possible. He also said students were given sanitary wipes.
The teacher was on administrative leave with pay. Frandino did not comment on the situation to The Associated Press.
Adams said officials were still looking into the incident.
"In a drill like this, teachers and principals have discretion and they have to make decisions," Adams said. "I'm not going to second-guess that today."
The school sent a letter to fifth-grade parents explaining that in an effort to follow lockdown procedures and ensure students' comfort, the teacher allowed the trash can to be used as a toilet. The lockdown was practice for an intruder entering the building.
Last year, Caren Weldon walked into Frandino's fourth-grade classroom and found her son surrounded by a cardboard box.
She planned to re-enroll her child this year, but didn't when she found out Frandino would be her son's fifth-grade teacher, she told the newspaper.
"Thank you, Lord, my child is not in that class," she said. "It just shows he makes poor decisions when it comes to the children."
Yandle said if the school had been on an actual lockdown and students needed to use the restroom, she would have encouraged them to think about something other than the bathroom.

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea's decision to test a nuclear weapon may mean no more French wines and spirits for the Dear Leader or jet skis for his beloved sons.
The United Nations is moving closer to imposing sanctions on North Korea for its announced nuclear test Monday that include steps to hit the Stalinist state's nuclear and missile programs as well as keeping luxury goods away from its leaders.
"In a country as impoverished as North Korea, luxury goods are a key currency that keep the elite happy and reward those who win the favor of its leaders," said a South Korean government official, who asked not to be identified.
No one enjoys luxury goods more than paramount leader Kim Jong-il, who boasts the country's finest wine cellar with space for 10,000 bottles.
Kim has a penchant for fine food such as lobster, caviar and the most expensive cuts of sushi that he has flown in to him from Japan, according to Kim's former chef.
Kenji Fujimoto, a pseudonym, who worked as Kim's personal sushi chef in the late 1980s and 1990s at a time when more than 1 million North Koreans perished in a famine, said in a book Kim would go to extremes to satisfy his appetite.
Kim would have aides purchase caviar for him in Iran and even sent one envoy to Beijing to bring back McDonald's hamburgers, he said.
He would give gifts such as lingerie, a bidet, foreign currency and a down blanket to winners of gun-shooting matches or gambling games, Fujimoto said.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Walt Disney Co. on Thursday said it took "appropriate action" against employees at its Paris theme park who were caught simulating sex while dressed as Disney characters in a digital video that has received wide attention on the Internet.
Disney would not say whether it had dismissed any of the costumed employees featured in the grainy video, which appears to have been shot with a hidden camera at a backstage dressing room at Disneyland Resort Paris.
"The behavior shown on the video is unacceptable and inexcusable," Disney said in a statement.
"The video was taken in the backstage area not accessible to guests. Appropriate action has been taken to deal with the cast members involved."
The video shows Minnie Mouse struggling to free herself as she is grabbed from behind by Goofy and then a giant snowman.
Later, Mickey Mouse simulates sex with the snowman and Goofy does the same with either Chip or Dale, the chipmunks, as laughter is heard on the tape.
The tape is described on the Internet as the "Mouse Orgy."

HANOI (Reuters) - A death-row inmate held in solitary confinement in Vietnam for almost a year is pregnant and is seeking a pardon to give birth, a newspaper reported on Thursday.
The Lao Dong (Labour) newspaper quoted a police doctor as saying tests in September confirmed that convicted heroin trafficker Nguyen Thi Oanh, 39, was then 11 weeks pregnant.
The report said it was the first time that a death-row prisoner had become pregnant in Vietnam and that police were investigating how it had happened.
Oanh's husband was serving a jail sentence at another prison in another province, the newspaper said.
Oanh was due to face a firing squad this year after losing her appeal against the death sentence she received last year for possession of a billion dong ($63,000) worth of heroin.
Trafficking more than 600 grams of heroin in Vietnam is punishable by death or life imprisonment.

TORONTO (Reuters) - An animal rights group called Tuesday for a North American theme park operator to cancel a competition in which people will try to break the world cockroach-eating record.
Theme park operator Six Flags Inc, based in New York, is staging the contest as part of a promotion leading up to Halloween in which it is also offering customers free entry or line-jumping advantages if they eat a live Madagascar hissing cockroach.
The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said it had been flooded with calls from children, adults and even anonymous employees of Six Flags opposing the record-breaking contest and the overall promotion.
"Insects do not deserve to be eaten alive especially for a gratuitous marketing gimmick," PETA spokeswoman Jackie Vergerio told Reuters.
The competition to beat the world cockroach eating record is being held Friday at a Six Flags park in Gurnee, Illinois. Anyone who beats the record will win a season pass for four people for 2007 with VIP queue-jumping status.
Competitors will try to break the current world record, which is held by Ken Edwards of Derbyshire, England, who devoured 36 Madagascar hissing cockroaches in one minute in 2001.
However Six Flags spokesman James Taylor said the only complaints the company had received were from people who did not have the opportunity to sign up and eat a cockroach because
only 12 of its 30 parks in the United States, Canada, and Mexico were participating in the promotion.
Taylor dismissed any health concerns, saying the cockroaches were raised in a sterile environment and were as safe to eat as shrimp or lobster with high nutritional value.
Madagascar hissing cockroaches are large, wingless cockroaches that can grow to between 1.5 to 3 inches.
Taylor said no one who had indulged in this rare delicacy had complained.
"It's something that's supposed to be scary, it's icky, it's gross, it's Halloween fun and it's just one small part of the haunted houses and thrilling rides going on."

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - An Argentine policeman has been suspended for 10 days without pay for cheering a goal while on duty at a soccer match and sparking violent protests by fans.
The policeman cheered the third goal scored by Estudiantes de La Plata, the city where he is based, in their 3-0 win at Lanus Saturday and was pelted with objects thrown by home team supporters until he was removed, Argentine media reported.

BERLIN (Reuters) - An 80-year-old German motorist obediently following his navigation system ignored a motorway "closed for construction" sign and crashed his Mercedes into a pile of sand further down the road, police said Monday.
"The driver was following the orders from his navigation system and even though there was a sufficient number of warnings and barricades, he continued his journey into the construction site," a police spokeswoman told Reuters.
"His trip finally ended when he wound up crashing into a pile of sand," she added.
The driver and his wife escaped uninjured from the collision, which occurred on a motorway near Hamburg.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Research into stinky feet, a study on the sound of fingernails on a blackboard and a device that repels teen-agers with an annoying high-pitched hum on Thursday won IgNobel prizes -- the humorous counterpart to this week's Nobel prizes.
Other winning research included a U.S. and Israeli team's discovery that hiccups could be cured with a finger up the rectum and a study into why woodpeckers do not get headaches.
"The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative -- and spur people's interest in science, medicine and technology," said Marc Abrahams, editor of the science humor magazine "Annals of Improbable Research," which sponsors the awards with the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association and Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Physics Students.
All the research is real and has been published in often-prestigious scientific and medical journals. However, unlike the Nobel prizes awarded this week by the Swedish Academy of Sciences, IgNobel winners receive no money, little recognition and have virtually no hope of transforming science or medicine.
Even the name of the award, a play on the word "ignoble," is meant to be deprecating.
But they receive their awards from real Nobel winners in an event broadcast on the Internet at http://www.improbable.com on Thursday evening.