Apple removes Baby Shaker game.

From BBC:

Apple has apologised for a "deeply offensive" iPhone application called Baby Shaker, which made a game of quieting crying babies by shaking them.

It removed the $0.99 (£0.59) game from its iTunes Store on Wednesday, two days after it went on sale.

It sparked outrage from children's groups and brain injury foundations.

The aim of the game was to quieten babies by shaking the iPhone until a pair of thick red Xs appeared over each eye of a baby drawn in black and white.

Venezuela giving island to New Jersey.

Just what NJ needs - more industrial sludge. More here:

Venezuela will give a 300-acre island in the Delaware River to the state of New Jersey, the governor's office announced.

The Venezuelan-owned Citgo Petroleum Corp. had bought Petty's Island -- between Camden, New Jersey, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania -- to use as a fuel storage facility.

The island is home to a pair of American bald eagles as well as several great blue herons and state-endangered black-crowned night herons, New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine said in a news release Wednesday.

Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez announced the island's transfer as part of Wednesday's Earth Day celebrations. Plans are being finalized for the transition, which will not occur before 2020, Corzine's office said.

Spain´s jobless rate hits 17%.

From CNN:

Spain's jobless rate rose sharply, to 17.36 percent in the first quarter, with more than 4 million people out of work, the government said Friday.

Nearly half of the 4 million lost their jobs in the past year, the National Statistics Institute said.

It's the first time that Spain's jobless total has exceeded 4 million, economist Carlos Maravall told CNN.

The numbers did not surprise economists, who have been tracking steady increases of monthly jobless raw numbers from the government. But Spain's official jobless rate is revised only every quarter.

Spain's previous rate of 13.9 percent, issued early this year for the fourth quarter of 2008, was already the highest in the European Union.

Stephen Hawking very ill.

From CNN:

Scientist and author Stephen Hawking is "very ill" and has been hospitalized, according to Cambridge University, where he is a professor.

Hawking, 67, is one of the world's most famous physicists and also a cosmologist, astronomer, and mathematician.

Wheelchair-bound Hawking is perhaps most famous for 'A Brief History of Time' which explored the origins of the universe in layman's terms, is considered a modern classic.

Hawking has Lou Gehrig's Disease (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or ALS), which is usually fatal after three years. Hawking has survived for more than 40 years since his diagnosis.

Be Back Soon!

The Coozer Files is going on a tapas binge.

We'll be back soon!

Please don't forget about us, and use the next few days to post comments and have conversations in posts with other Coozer-Philes!!

Hand of God found in space.

Looks more like the hand of Skeletor, but whatevs. From News.com.au:

The amazing image was taken by NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory, which is orbiting 580km above the Earth.

[...] The hand was created when a star exploded in a supernova, creating a rapidly spinning 20km-wide star called a pulsar, which is deep inside the white blob at the hand's wrist.

The pulsar is spewing out enormous amounts of electromagnetic energy, creating a dust and gas cloud so wide it would take 150 years to cross at the speed of light.

The red disc is a separate gas cloud. The fingers are thought to have been created as energy passed from the pulsar to the gas cloud.

NASA scientists estimated the moment depicted here actually happened 17,000 years ago.

1,500 farmers commit mass suicide in India.

From The Independent:

Over 1,500 farmers in an Indian state committed suicide after being driven to debt by crop failure, it was reported today.

The agricultural state of Chattisgarh was hit by falling water levels.

"The water level has gone down below 250 feet here. It used to be at 40 feet a few years ago," Shatrughan Sahu, a villager in one of the districts, told Down To Earth magazine

"Most of the farmers here are indebted and only God can save the ones who do not have a bore well."

Mr Sahu lives in a district that recorded 206 farmer suicides last year. Police records for the district add that many deaths occur due to debt and economic distress.

Brothers admit killing, eating older sibling.

Why would Russians resort to eating each other when they've got such great cuisine like cold beet soup? From FOX News:

Two men have reportedly admitted killing their elder brother and eating parts of his body which they kept in the fridge for months.

The pair, named only as Timur and Marat G, said they murdered their brother Rafis at their home in the central Russian city of Perm, according to newspaper Tvoi Den.

Police grew suspicious when the brothers reported Rafis missing but were vague about his details.

After raiding their house, officers are said to have found the victim's skeleton, which had been stripped bare and buried in the garden.

Timur reportedly said he had fought and killed Rafis because he bore him a grudge over a 10-year prison sentence.

[...] They then came up with the idea of eating the evidence so Timur would not have to go back to jail.

Mysterious fungus is destroying judo.

This is a topic near and dear to my heart, as I just watched both Sanshiro Sugata films. Judo forever! From The Guardian:

They are among the most famous fighters in the world, renowned for their discipline, speed and toughness. Now Japan’s martial artists are being laid low by an epidemic that is inflicting them with itching, disfigurement and baldness.

Doctors and officials say the sport of judo is facing ruin because of an infectious skin fungus spreading through clubs across Japan. It is passed from one participant to another during the grappling that is at the heart of the sport.

Practitioners of Western-style wrestling and the ancient sport of sumo have also been afflicted by Trichophyton tonsurans, a skin-eating fungus similar to athlete’s foot. So concerned is the sport’s governing body, the All Japan Judo Federation, that it commissioned research to gauge the extent of the problem.

It revealed that almost one third of judo clubs and half of all high-school judo teams have been struck by the fungus, which is highly infectious and difficult to treat. Its symptoms include patches of redness on the neck, face and upper body, which are often itchy and swollen.

Man uses catapult to deter burglars (but is burgled anyway).

My favorite parts in bold. From Ananova:

A Nottinghamshire businessman who set up a 30ft dung-firing catapult to deter intruders has been burgled after police warned him it was illegal.

Joe Weston-Webb, 71, a former travelling showman, decided he needed the deterrent after a series of break-ins, reports the Daily Telegraph.

The catapult, based on a Roman boulder-thrower, was originally built for a series of unsuccessful attempts to fire his wife, Mary, across the River Avon in 1976.

Mr Weston-Webb settled for a career in business after designing a type of click-together wooden flooring which earned him contracts with hotels and the entertainment industry, including the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing.

But following a series of attacks by vandals on his company, Grumpy Joe, in Ratcliffe-on-Soar, he restored the rusty catapult and equipped it to fire bags of chicken droppings at intruders if an alarm was triggered.

His eccentric methods attracted media attention as well as a warning from Nottinghamshire Police that using the giant catapult would be illegal as it did not constitute "reasonable force".

Kids ruin marriages.

I'd like to point out that children are also annoying, selfish, cruel, stupid, and more than a little smelly. From LiveScience:

Parents all know that children make it harder to do some of the most enjoyable adult things. Bluntly put, kids can get between you.

Now scientists have attached some numbers to the situation.

An eight-year study of 218 couples found 90 percent experienced a decrease in marital satisfaction once the first child was born.

"Couples who do not have children also show diminished marital quality over time," says Scott Stanley, research professor of psychology at University of Denver. "However, having a baby accelerates the deterioration, especially seen during periods of adjustment right after the birth of a child."

[...] An unrelated study in 2006 of 13,000 people found parents are more depressed than non-parents. Scientists speculate that the problem is partly a modern one, because parents don't get as much help at home as they did in previous generations.

Coozer-Bits.

Creepy: US gov't holds major summit... on bedbugs.

Booze: Egypt's oldest wines were spiked with meds.

Politics: Court says Franken won Minnesota.

Cthulhu Watch: Japanese fisherman come upon bizarre, slimy sea creature (with video).

Politics: US to provide Lebanon military with unmanned aircraft.

Tech: VCR's still standard in one in three Japanese households.

Lesbian seduction leads to singer biting off man's nose.

From Colombia Reports:

A Colombian businessman will have to undergo numerous cosmetic operations after his nose was allegedly bitten off by singer Julio Nava at a bar in Bogotá.

Businssman Santiago Montoya told Radio W, that the incident was sparked by a lesbian encounter. He and his girlfriend Ingrid Callejas were at El Sitio bar with his April 28th when Nava's girlfriend approached Callejas and attempted to engage her sexually. Callejas protested and Montoya intervened. Montoya said his intervention provoked the attack from Nava.

"He could have punched me and held me to the ground, but no. His reaction was to grab me, throw me to the ground, bite my nose off and chew it. Then he and his girlfriend left smiling," said Montoya.

He said he then looked for the piece of his nose on the floor but couldn't find it. " I never saw him spit it out".

Money in bra saves woman's life.

From Breitbart:

Money stuffed in a woman's bra saved her life after she was shot aboard a bus in the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia, local media reported.

The incident took place Saturday in Bahia's capital, Salvador, where 58-year-old Ivonete Pereira was shot in the chest by one of two attackers who tried to rob the bus.

She was traveling to her summer home in the nearby town of Lauro de Freitas and because of frequent bus attacks in the region, she hid 150 reals (69 dollars) in 20- and 10-real notes coiled inside the left side of her bra.

Her bra was stuffed with just enough cash to absorb most of the impact, although she still had to be taken to hospital to have the bullet removed.

A retired sergeant was gunned down during the shooting with the assailants, who managed to escape.

$10 cardboard box saving lives, the world.

From News.com.au:

A $10 cardboard box that uses solar power to cook food and sterilise water has won a $100,000 science prize for ideas to fight global warming.

The "Kyoto Box", named after the United Nations' Kyoto Protocol that seeks to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, is aimed at billions of people who use firewood to cook.

Costing just €5 ($9.20) to make, it can also make it easier to boil polluted water.

"We're saving lives and saving trees," the Kyoto Box's developer Jon Boehmer, a Norwegian based in Kenya, said.

Urine spray man to piss off for 9 years.

As if UK food wasn't bad enough... From BBC News:

A chemist who contaminated food and wine in Gloucestershire supermarkets with his own urine and faeces has been sent to prison for nine years.

Sahnoun Daifallah, 42, of Bibury Road, Gloucester, was found guilty of four counts of contaminating goods at four businesses in May 2008.

Judge Carol Hagen said at the hearing in March that she found him to be "a potentially very dangerous man".

Daifallah, who defended himself, had pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Fir tree grew in man's lungs.

Dang, I guess it's true what they say about swallowing apple seeds... From Ananova:

Astonished surgeons have removed a two-inch long fir tree growing inside a patient's lungs.

Doctors thought Artyom Sidorkin, 28, had cancer when he began coughing up blood and complaining of agonising chest pains.

But as they operated to remove a tumour the medics were amazed to discover the perfectly formed spruce thriving inside the lung.

"I blinked three times and thought I was seeing things," said surgeon Vladimir Kamashev at Izhevsk Hospital in Russia.

Doctors believe that Artyom breathed in a tiny seed which then began growing in his lung and that the sharp pains were the plant's needle-like leaves digging into his lung.

Dead: Marilyn Chambers.

Pre-Internet, Marilyn Chambers soft core on Skinemax changed my life. R.I.P. From KTLA:

Famed adult film star Marilyn Chambers was found dead in her home in the Canyon Country area, authorities said today.

L.A. County Sheriff's investigators tell KTLA that the 56-year-old actress was discovered Sunday night just before 9p.m. by her daughter McKenna in a mobile home in the 16000 block of Vasquez Canyon Road.

Chambers, whose real name was Marilyn Ann Taylor, had been living at the Canyon Country location for the past several months.

No cause of death was given, but investigators say foul play is not suspected.

An autopsy is planned.

Chambers broke into the porn industry by appearing in the 1972 film "Behind the Green Door," which was the first widely released pornographic film in the United States.

NYers help rogue robots find their way through the city.

This is madness. Why don't we just hand the robots guns and stand in front of them?? From the NY Post:

An NYU student took her fleet of miniature robots out for a roll in the park and was shocked by what she found -- kind, helpful, New Yorkers!

Kacie Kinzer sent 10-inch-tall cardboard "tweenbots" across Washington Square Park, equipped with nothing more than directions written on their flags and drawn-on smiles.

The little electronic critters can only go forward, so their journeys were totally dependent on the kindness of strangers.

Park visitors, Kinzer said, were more than willing to pay heed to the message on the robots' flag: "Help Me."

Without fail, Kinzer said the robots made it from the park's northeast corner at University Place and Waverly Place all the way to the southwest corner, at MacDougal and West Fourth streets.

Kinzer tailed her robots with a hidden camera in her bag.

"Every time the robot got caught under a park bench, ground futilely against a curb, or became trapped in a pothole, some passer-by would always rescue it and send it toward its goal," Kinzer, a Tisch School of Arts student, wrote on her blog. "Never once was a Tweenbot lost or damaged."

Kinzer measured her first Tweenbot trip at a relatively speedy 42 minutes, with the help of 29 pedestrians who intervened with a push in the right direction.

China publishes national human rights action plan.

Only heard about this through China's media, so not sure if it's just lip service, but wow - this is pretty sweeping. It even includes a page on "freedom of religious believes" - but "religious affairs" of course regulated by the government. Here is the full text, which I'm still digesting.

BEIJING, April 13 (Xinhua) -- China published its first working plan on human rights Monday, pledging to further protect and improve human rights conditions.

The National Human Rights Action Plan of China (2009-2010), issued by the Information Office of the State Council, or Cabinet, highlighted goals that would be implemented in less than two years.

This action made China one of 26 countries that have responded to the United Nations' call to establish a national human rights plan since 1993.

The 54-page document is divided into five sections: Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; Civil and Political Rights; Rights and Interests of Ethnic Minorities, Women, Children, Elderly People and the Disabled; Education in Human Rights; and Performing International Human Rights Duties, and Conducting Exchanges and Cooperation in the Field of International Human Rights.

"The realization of human rights in the broadest sense has been a long-cherished ideal of mankind and also a long-sought goal of the Chinese government and people," the document stated.

China plans to continue to "raise the level of ensuring people's civil and political rights" through improving democracy and the rule of law, it said.