Well, today on odd world, there’s a Japanese man calling toll-free line to hear woman’s voice and yes it’s automated. Kinda sad in a way but it somehow suggests how easily contented this man can be. Just listening to a voice only?
Japan man stalks toll-free line to hear woman’s voice
TOKYO (Reuters) – A Japanese man was arrested for calling a food company’s toll-free number 500 times in 16 months because he wanted to hear the woman’s voice on the automated tape, police said on Monday.
The 38-year-old plumber, who was arrested on Sunday, made 3,100 hours worth of free calls to the company, costing it almost 4 million yen (19,500 pounds) in phone bills, a police spokesman in Takasaki, northwest of Tokyo, said.
“He gets excited by the woman’s voice on the guidance tape,” the spokesman said, adding that the voice sounded normal to the detective who was involved in the investigation.
The food company asked for its name to be withheld. The spokesman said police are investigating if the man placed an excessive number of calls to any other firms.
DULUTH, Minn. – The driver of a 1997 Honda Civic that struck and killed a dog near Cloquet is suing the dog’s owners for damage done to his vehicle.
Jeffery Ely was driving on the night of Jan. 4 when Fester, a miniature pinscher, squeezed past owner Nikki Munthe as she was letting in her other dog and ran out onto the road. Ely’s car struck Fester, killing the 13-pound dog instantly.
Now Ely is suing the Munthes for about $1,100 for damage to his car, time he had to take off from his two jobs to get the car repaired, and court fees.
Ely said he feels sorry for the Munthes’ loss but, as a dog owner himself, feels that they must be responsible for their pets’ actions.
Munthe said she has always been worried about the busy road the family lives on.
The Munthes have filed a $2,400 countersuit against Ely for the cost to buy Fester, the time they had to take off work for court appearances, and the cost of buying a dog to replace Fester. (Source: MSNBC News)
I wonder what would all these lawsuits achieve. The cost of getting a lawyer probably made the whole suit not worth it already.
The White House has scheduled a dinner next week in honor of Pope Benedict XVI’s first visit to the United States, but one guest will be conspicuously absent from the proceedings: the pope himself.
From Friday’s press briefing:
Q Just to clarify, for the pope’s visit to the White House, you said that now there’s a dinner in the East Room in honor of the pope?
MR. STANZEL: Yes.
Q Will the pope actually be attending that dinner?
MR. STANZEL: I don’t believe so, no.
Q Okay. Thank you.
[...]
Q I’m sorry. The pope doesn’t attend a dinner in his honor?
MR. STANZEL: No.
Q (Off mike.)
MR. STANZEL: He doesn’t come into the building.
Q Well, then it’s not a dinner for the pope, is it?
MR. STANZEL: It’s in honor of his visit. There will be leaders from the Catholic community from all over the country who are in town for that visit.
Q Is there a reason the pope doesn’t attend the dinner?
MR. STANZEL: I don’t know. I don’t have the full extent of his schedule.
Woman thinks she’s about to be fired, goes into office over weekend and destroys past 7 years’ worth of archives.
Angry Employee Deletes All of Company’s Data
When Marie Lupe Cooley, 41, of Jacksonville, Fla., saw a help-wanted ad in the newspaper for a position that looked suspiciously like her current job — and with her boss’s phone number listed — she assumed she was about to be fired.
So, police say, she went to the architectural office where she works late Sunday night and erased 7 years’ worth of drawings and blueprints, estimated to be worth $2.5 million.
“She decided to mess up everything for everybody,” Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office spokesman Ken Jefferson told reporters. “She just sabotaged the entire business, thinking she was going to get axed.”
It didn’t take Steven Hutchins, owner of the architectural firm that bears his name, much time to figure out who’d done it — Cooley was the only other person who had full access to the files.
Police arrested Cooley Monday evening and charged her with causing greater than $1,000 damage to computer files, a felony. She was bailed out the following afternoon.
An Australian girl spontaneously changed blood groups and adopted her donor’s immune system after a liver transplant, in what doctors treating her said Thursday was the first known case of its type.
Australian girl switched blood type after transplant: doctors
Demi-Lee Brennan was aged nine and seriously ill with liver failure when she received the transplant, doctors at a top Sydney children’s hospital told AFP.
Nine months later they discovered she had changed blood types and that her immune system had switched over to that of the donor after stem cells from the new liver migrated to her bone marrow.
She is now a healthy 15-year-old, Michael Stormon, a hepatologist treating her, told AFP. He said he had given several presentations on the case around the world and had heard of none like it.
“It is extremely unusual — in fact we don’t know of any other instance in which this happened,” Stormon told AFP from the Children’s Hospital at Westmead.
A pair of twins who were separated at birth got married without knowing they were brother and sister. They were adopted by separate families, and neither was told that they had a twin sibling.
Parted-at-birth twins ‘married’
A pair of twins who were adopted by separate families as babies got married without knowing they were brother and sister, a peer told the House of Lords.
A court annulled the British couple’s union after they discovered their true relationship, Lord Alton said.
Details of the identities of the twins involved have been kept secret, but Lord Alton said the pair did not realise they were related until after their marriage.
‘Truth will out’
The crossbench peer, a former Liberal Democrat MP, raised the couple’s case during a House of Lords debate on the Human Fertility and Embryology Bill in December.
“They were never told that they were twins,” he told the Lords.
