"The first thing is that we need someone with a thick mustache, who can sport a poncho and who's not afraid of donkeys," said Gabriel Silva, the president of the official body. "But it's not just that. We need someone authentic, proud of what he is doing and modest."
A man who apparently severed his penis in an attempt to convince his wife that he was faithful to her was recovering after surgery to reattach the organ at a northern Malaysian hospital, a news report said Tuesday.
The 41-year-old man, who was not identified, got into an argument last Friday with his wife, who found a text message on his mobile phone from another woman. The man was heard by his son shouting that he wanted to prove he was not having an affair, the New Straits Times reported.
Working with illegal immigrants every day in a suburban Atlanta bank, Carlos Carbonell knows exactly where to go to buy a fake green card for his wife. Sometimes he thinks it would be much easier.
His wife, Valentina, has been stuck in their native Caracas, Venezuela, for four years because of backlogs in processing her green card application.
Carbonell believes in reforming U.S. immigration policy, but he and other legal immigrants who have been playing by the rules feel forgotten in the debate over possible amnesty for most of the estimated 12 million immigrants here illegally.
"They are putting as a priority illegal immigration, and legal immigrants are left out of the loop. It's the curse of doing things right," he said. "They think that the legal ones can wait -- hey!"
Even though they have loyalty to their immigrant origins, many legal immigrants also feel a twinge of resentment toward others who have broken the law, and they fear illegal migrants could complicate their own quest for citizenship.
A trio of hungry burglars helped their own undoing by leaving a trail of snack wrappers after stealing six packages of instant lottery tickets from a convenience store.
"This was a combination of good police work and a stupid criminal," said Sgt. Tom Connellan, a police spokesman.
The burglars smashed a window early Wednesday at a convenience store and fled with the lottery tickets and some Little Debbie Coffee Cake snacks. Officer James Johnson followed a trail of discarded wrappers to a nearby apartment building, where he arrested the trio.
An armless man stopped for speeding was driving with one foot on the steering wheel and another on the pedals, a policeman testified in court.
Colin Smith, who was born without arms and has never held a driver's license, appeared in court Thursday charged with driving in a manner likely to be dangerous to the public.
Football gives men a way to express their innermost thoughts and feelings, according to a pre World Cup survey.
Almost two-thirds of men (64%) believe that while watching or playing football, they are more willing to share their feelings with other men than when doing other activities.
Three quarters said they would not be embarrassed to hug their mates while watching a match.
However, the ability of football to bring out a man's emotions does have its limits - three-quarters of men polled said they had never cried over the outcome of a match.
Lithuanian police were so astonished by a breath test that registered 18 times the legal alcohol limit, they thought their device must be broken. It wasn't.
Police said Tuesday 41-year-old Vidmantas Sungaila registered 7.27 grams per liter of alcohol in his blood repeatedly on different devices after he was pulled over Saturday for driving his truck down the center of a two-lane highway 60 miles from the capital, Vilnius.
Lithuania's legal limit is 0.4 grams per liter.
"This guy should have been lying dead, but he was still driving. It must be an unofficial national record," Saulius Skvernelis, director of the national police traffic control service, told the AP. "He was of high spirits and grinning the whole time he was questioned." [emphasis mine]
Sungaila, who was slapped with a $1,110 fine and the loss of his license for up to three years, told police he had been drinking the night before and tried to freshen up by downing a pint of beer for breakfast.
A Civil War-era fort is on the technological auction block, eBay.
Fort Montgomery, built in 1844, was staffed during the war, however the fort never saw any real military combat action during the war between North and South.
Victor Podd who resides in Boca Raton and whose family owns the relic from the 1800’s says, “This is the first time it's been formally for sale.”
A practical joker got a taste of revenge when friends turned part of his apartment into a human-sized hamster cage, complete with shredded newspaper bedding, a six-foot exercise wheel and a giant water bottle.
"It was a lot of work, but it was one of those cases where you do it because you have to," said Keith Jewell, a longtime friend and neighbor who engineered Monday's hamster-cage prank on Luke Trerice.
Trerice, 28, had it coming: In 2004, he enlisted others to help him encase another friend's apartment and most of his belongings in aluminum foil.
The victim of that prank, Chris Kirk, spent nearly two years cleaning up the meticulous coating of foil, which was wrapped around everything from his toilet and CD collection to the individual coins in his spare change. [emphases mine]
A young boy who believes he was born the wrong sex was allowed to enroll as a girl at an elementary school in southwestern Japan, a school official said Thursday.
The 7-year-old boy entered the school as a girl in April 2005 after he was diagnosed with gender identity disorder at age 6, a spokesman for the local school board said. The Japanese school year starts in April.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect the identity of the boy and his school district, said the boy's name is listed with girl students, and that he attends a girls' gym class and uses the girls' bathroom. The boy, who's in the second grade, wears a girl's swimsuit at the school pool.
"At this point, we are relieved that the child was accepted into first grade and is being raised in a healthy manner," the official said.
Katsuki Harima, a psychiatrist specializing in gender identity disorder at Tokyo Musashino Hospital, said the decision to allow the boy to enroll as a girl seemed appropriate, but would get complicated as he grew older.
[...]
"I am a bit concerned about the child's future," he added, saying he has never heard of a case like this before at an elementary school. "There will be problems."
Witnesses told the homeowner they saw the thief taking the sod, plants and irrigation system to a nearby residence, [sheriff's spokeswoman Staci] Johnson said.
David Roger Bowers, 34, was arrested at the home and booked for investigation of grand theft and possession of stolen property, the sheriff's spokeswoman said.
The Oriskany, commissioned in 1950 and named after an American Revolutionary War battle, saw duty during the Korean War and was home to John McCain when the Navy pilot and future senator served in Vietnam. It was also among the ships used by President Kennedy in a show of force during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. It was decommissioned in 1976.
McCain was shot down over Hanoi in 1967 after taking off from the Oriskany and was held as a prisoner of war for five years.
The name of a new restaurant in Scottsdale is stirring up some trouble. The Las Vegas-based Pink Taco Mexican Restaurant is scheduled to open its second location in downtown Scottsdale in June.
Nearly half a dozen people in the upscale city recently expressed their objection to the name, claiming it's a derogatory slang term for a portion of the female anatomy.
In late April, the city received four e-mails, three of which bore no names, objecting to the restaurant's name.
One of those e-mails stated: "The City of Scottsdale has a very fine reputation around the world. Let's keep the standards high. Let's let what plays in Vegas stay in Vegas."
Restaurant spokeswoman Lisa Perez said the company's name comes from one of its menu items.
California is considering a change to the way it teaches history.
The state already requires mentions of the historical roles of women, African-Americans and Asians.
Today the Democratic-controlled state Senate approved a bill that would require social science textbooks to note the contributions homosexuals have made to history. It's apparently the first attempt to pass a law of this kind in the country, and of course it has sparked a furor.
A high school teacher who posed for revealing photos on a Web site will not face any discipline, a school district official said Thursday.
The district's professional standards department decided Thursday not to investigate Erica Chevillar, whose photo spread on the USA National Bikini Team's Web site has become the talk of West Boca Raton High School. Chevillar, 25, is a first-year social studies teacher at the school.
"She didn't violate any school rules or policies or state laws," district spokesman Nat Harrington said.
CHESTERTON, Ind. - A 17-year-old boy who police said asked a friend to hit him with a car "for fun" was still hospitalized Tuesday with a broken leg.
Michael Morris, a junior at Chesterton High School, was in fair condition at Porter hospital, spokeswoman Robin Carlascio said.
His friend, Stephen D. Domonkos, 18, told police that Morris on Saturday night asked him to hit him with his car, something they had done before. He told police that Morris was "an adrenaline junkie."
[...]
Domonkos was charged with felony criminal recklessness. If convicted, he could face six months to three years in jail.
"I won't do this no more," Morris of Chesterton told The Times of Munster.
Convicted terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, declaring his surprise at having received a fair trial, asked a federal judge Monday to allow him to withdraw his guilty plea so he can be tried again. This time he won't lie on the witness stand, he said.
Judge Leonie M. Brinkema quickly turned down the request. She said federal law prevents a criminal defendant from withdrawing a guilty plea after sentencing. Moussaoui was given life in prison without parole Thursday.
"His motion is too late and must be denied on this basis alone," she said.
Moussaoui, in a three-page affidavit filed in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., said he was "extremely surprised" that he received a fair sentencing trial over the last two months and admitted that he lied when he testified he had been preparing to fly a fifth hijacked plane into the White House on Sept. 11, 2001.
Most people probably dream of being the world's richest person — except, perhaps, the man himself.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates told an online advertising conference Wednesday that he'd prefer not to be the richest person in the world.
"I wish I wasn't," he said in a session in which he was being interviewed by Donny Deutsch, the host of an interview show on CNBC.
Gates is ranked by Forbes magazine as the world's richest individual, with an estimated wealth of about $50 billion.
"There's nothing good that comes out of that," he said. "You get more visibility as a result of it."
Prostitutes, strippers and lap dancers can claim tax deductions for adult toys and lingerie, officials said Friday, as the Australian Taxation Office issued a list of deductible items for the sex industry.
Condoms, lubricants, gels and oils are among a myriad of other items that these workers can claim against tax, according to a fact sheet issued on the office's Web site.
[...]
"You can claim the cost of replacing or repairing things like equipment, adult novelties and other apparatus used in your work," the office advises, under a section titled "tools of trade."
A legless Indiana man's attempt to do a good turn for a deaf drinking companion ended with one man charged with battery and the other with drunken driving.
Kent Hisey, who has two prosthetic legs and uses a walker, offered James Mills a ride home from the Playboy Lounge in New Chicago, the Gary (Ind.) Post-Tribune reports. But Hisey became angry when Mills' attempts to direct him led to a series of wrong turns.
Hisey pulled over at the Porter County Airport and tried to pull Mills from the car. He says Mills knocked him down, the newspaper account said.
[Ronald] Shanabarger was convicted of murder in May of 2002 for suffocating his seven-month-old son, Tyler, in June of 1999. He said he did it to get revenge on his wife for skipping his father's funeral three years earlier, before the couple had married.
Ike Brown is a legend in Mississippi politics, a fast-talking operative both loved and hated for his ability to turn out black voters and get his candidates into office.
That success has also landed him at the heart of a federal lawsuit that's about to turn the Voting Rights Act on its end.
For the first time, the U.S. Justice Department is using the 1965 law to allege racial discrimination against whites.
Brown, head of the Democratic Party in Mississippi's rural Noxubee County, is accused of waging a campaign to defeat white voters and candidates with tactics including intimidation and coercion. Also named in the lawsuit is Circuit Clerk Carl Mickens, who has agreed to refrain from rejecting white voters' absentee ballots considered defective while accepting similar ballots from black voters.
[...]
The Justice Department complaint says Brown and those working with him "participated in numerous racial appeals during primary and general campaigns and have criticized black citizens for supporting white candidates and for forming biracial political coalitions with white candidates."
The federal case against Brown, scheduled for trial this fall, represents a change in direction in the use of the Voting Rights Act, says Jon Greenbaum, director of the voting rights project for the Washington-based Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
The law was written to protect racial minorities in the 1960s when Mississippi and other Southern states strictly enforced segregation.
"The main concern we have in the civil rights community isn't necessarily that that DOJ brought this case," Greenbaum says. "It's that the department is not bringing meritorious cases on behalf of African-American and Native American voters."
The star of the upcoming Mission: Impossible III tells GQ readers to think twice before polluting their bodies with psychotropic chemicals. Also, if you're craving crack, give him a call.
"I've always found the 'If it makes me feel better, it's OK' rationale a little suspect," he says. "I think it's appalling that people have to live a life of drug addiction when I have personally helped people get off drugs."
Cruise adds that using Scientology detox protocols, he can get someone off heroin in three days.
A Chinese businessman has bought a MiG-21f plane from a U.S. seller on the online auction Web site eBay for US$24,730 (euro19,726) and plans to use it to decorate an empty space at his offices, a newspaper reported Sunday.
The Beijing News newspaper identified the Chinese buyer as Zhang Cheng.
"I like to collect valuable items. I have the buying power and my company has an empty space where I can display the plane," the newspaper quoted Zhang as saying.
