Coozer-Bits.

Creepy: New spider arrival quickly spreading.

Awesome: Lottery wins come easy if you can spot the loopholes.

D'oh: Three self-delusions that influence your decisions and productivity.

Yipes: Kate Winslet escapes fire at Richard Branson's luxury island retreat.

ZombieWatch: Cat urine turns rats into zombie prey.

Man tries to hijack NYC subway train.

Where's Walter Matthau when you need him? Item!

A man wielding a screwdriver and screaming someone wanted to kill him tried to hijack a subway train by forcing his way into a motorman's cab, cops, a witness and the motorman said Monday.

The terrifying 10-minute ordeal on a crowded northbound No. 5 train happened Friday and prompted panicked passengers to rush to the conductor's defense.

"I had some passengers helping me, so thank God for them," said motorman Darryl George, 36. "There are still good people in New York City."

Suspect Richard Arrocho, 42, is accused of entering George's front-car cab by climbing through its open side window from a wall alongside the tracks near the 149th St. station in the Bronx.

"I had opened my window to see what the situation was," George said. "He said someone with a gun was trying to kill him."

As George turned his back to radio a supervisor, Arrocho clambered inside.

"I was shocked," George said. "I couldn't believe it - he was inside my cab.

"He said, 'Move the train or I'm going to f-----g kill you,'" George added. "He wouldn't let me open the door. He pulled a screwdriver and tried to stab me.
"I started to move the train slowly," George added. "He pulled my hand off and pushed the control to make the train go faster. I told him, 'If we keep moving at this speed, we're going to hit something.' It didn't make any difference to him. "

"It was crazy," said witness Ronald Baker, 60, of the Bronx, who shot dramatic video of the 3:40 p.m. incident. "People were screaming, passengers were pounding on the [motorman's] door, trying to get the guy to put down his screwdriver."

Baker's video shows George wrestling with Arrocho and briefly getting the suspect in a headlock as the train rumbled down the tracks. The train stopped once it reached the Jackson Ave. station. George managed to open the door and run out, leaving Arrocho in the cab alone.

The video shows two passengers initially helping George try to keep the suspect locked in the cab. Apparently believing he might commandeer the controls, George and a passenger pushed open the door and attempted to get Arrocho to calm down.

"Someone's trying to kill me!" Arrocho yelled.

Court records show Arrocho claimed someone was trying to kill him in retaliation for a previous robbery. When cops arrived at the Jackson Ave. station, Arrocho surrendered without incident.

"He may have seen 'Taking of Pelham 123' one too many times," said a law enforcement source, referring to the 2009 remake staring John Travolta as the hijacker of a No. 6 train in the Bronx.

The source said Arrocho has a history of mental illness and spent time in a psych ward. He was charged with felony attempted assault, menacing, harassment and criminal possession of a weapon - a pointy Phillips-head screwdriver. He was being held on $2,500 bail.

He has been arrested at least 40 times since 1985 on charges ranging from robbery to petty larceny, records show.

"I could have lost my life over this," George said. "You don't expect something like this to happen when you go to work."

Coozer-Bits.

Yipes: Jellyfish invade FL beach, sting 1600 people!

WTF: 12 arrested for feeding the homeless in Orlando.

Lame: Woman-hating Santorum says abortion exception to protect mother's health is "phony."

PSA: Citibank confirms hacking attack.

Science: Periodic table adds two new superheavy elements.

Bees swarm in Little Italy.

This has the whole city a-buzz! From NY Post:

It was the biggest sting operation in Little Italy since the Gambinos were driven off.

Crowds of people stopped to gape at a bizarre bee swarm (left) yesterday at a mailbox on the corner of Mulberry and Grand streets, snapping cellphone pictures and calling friends to marvel at the little bit of country in the midst of the big city.

Andrew Cote, president of New York City Beekeepers, said there was nothing to worry about, as the buzzers are as sweet as honey when they travel in packs.

"Bees are most docile when they swarm," he said.

"They have no hive to protect, and they pose absolutely no threat."

A beekeeper from his group helped the NYPD move the bugs to a safe location, he said.

"People keep bees in New York City, and it's not unusual for them to swarm," Cote said.

"It happens many times. I just picked up a swarm in The Bronx."

But another beekeeper, Chet Crowl, said it's lucky the insects were quickly moved, because "the longer they stay, the more aggressive they get."

Last year, the New York City Board of Health lifted a ban on beekeeping.

Man attacks girlfriend's car with forklift, lifting it with her inside.

From NY Daily News:

A Massachusetts man used a forklift to attack his girlfriend's car, hoisting the vehicle off the ground with the woman inside, cops said.

Then the angry boyfriend slammed the car down on the street several feet away.

Brian Hurley, 41, of Springfield, Mass., began fighting with his girlfriend over money as she dropped him off at work at New England Warehousing Inc. on Saturday morning, police said.

The victim, who was not identified, told cops that Hurley slapped her and then hopped out of her car and began kicking it, causing several dents.

The enraged beau then jumped into the cab of a nearby forklift, steered the forks underneath her car and lifted it into the air.

Hurley split before police arrived, but was later busted when cops found him banging on the door of his home, Springfield's WWLP television reported.

He was charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, assault and battery, and damaging a car.

The woman wasn't seriously injured.

Watermelons explode like land mines in China.

From the Daily News (also submitted by Jen C):

Chinese farmers discovered how science can go bad after fields of watermelons exploded like "land mines" after being over-pumped with growth chemicals.

The chilling chemistry calamity struck after a group of 20 farmers in Jiangsu Province used a growth accelerator for the first time during a period of heavy rains.

That caused hundreds of groaning melons to pop like balloons, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

"On May 7, I came out and counted 80 but by the afternoon it was 100," said farmer Liu Mingsuo. "Two days later I didn't bother to count anymore."

The chemical involved is legal and is often used in the U.S. with kiwis and grapes, but underscores China's recent troubles with the unregulated use of chemicals in the nation's food supply.

Car commits suicide at auto show.

From CBS Local:

BABYLON, N.Y. — Police were investigating how a car accelerated across a parking lot and into the water near a Long Island boat basin.

State park police said the driver was able to swim to safety.

Police said the car hit several motorcycles and a parked car but no one was injured.

Witnesses told Newsday that the driver was standing talking with dozens of people at the Captree State Park auto show when the car started to run away from him. The driver managed to jump inside the car when it took off again.

Witness John Rodriguez said the car went airborne about 7 to 8 feet and then hit the water.

The driver was only identified as a 30-year-old man from West Islip. He was taken to a hospital for undisclosed injuries.

King crabs invade Antarctica.

From Science Daily:

It's like a scene out of a sci-fi movie -- thousands, possibly millions, of king crabs are marching through icy, deep-sea waters and up the Antarctic slope.

"They are coming from the deep, somewhere between 6,000 to 9,000 feet down," said James McClintock, Ph.D., University of Alabama at Birmingham Endowed Professor of Polar and Marine Biology.

Shell-crushing crabs haven't been in Antarctica, Earth's southernmost continent, for hundreds or thousands, if not millions, of years, McClintock said. "They have trouble regulating magnesium ions in their body fluids and get kind of drunk at low temperatures."

But something has changed, and these crustaceans are poised to move by the droves up the slope and onto the shelf that surrounds Antarctica. McClintock and other marine researchers interested in the continent are sounding alarms because the vulnerable ecosystem could be wiped out, he said.

Antarctic clams, snails and brittle stars, because of adaptation to their environment, have soft shells and have never had to fight shell-crushing predators. "You can take an Antarctic clam and crush it with your hands," McClintock said. They could be the main prey for these crabs, he said.

Loss of unique mollusks could jeopardize organisms with disease-fighting compounds, McClintock said. Sea squirts, for example, produce an agent that fights skin cancer. If the crabs eat them, it could bring McClintock's research with that organism to a halt.

McClintock's chemical ecology program has published more than 100 papers on species researchers have discovered, including the compound that combats skin cancer and one to treat flu, that are being explored by drug companies.

"I am very concerned that species could disappear, and we could lose a cure to a disease," he said.

Fertilizers causing huge destruction to Europe's environment and economy.

Jeez. Item.

A major new study has found that nitrogen pollution is costing each person in Europe around £130 - £650 (€150 – €740) a year. The first European Nitrogen Assessment (ENA) is launched at a conference today (11 April) in Edinburgh, Scotland. The 4 minute long official launch video can be watched on Youtube.

The study, carried out by 200 experts from 21 countries and 89 organizations, estimates that the annual cost of damage caused by nitrogen across Europe is £60 - £280 billion (€70 - €320 billion), more than double the extra income gained from using nitrogen fertilizers in European agriculture.

Professor Bob Watson, Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), welcomed the report. He said, "The assessment emphasizes how nitrogen links the different environmental issues that we have come to know so well: climate, biodiversity, air, water, and soil pollution. It develops the vision for a more holistic approach, which is vital if we are to make progress in tackling these issues."

The ENA (available to download here) is the first time that the multiple threats of nitrogen pollution, including contributions to climate change and biodiversity loss, have been valued in economic terms at a continental scale. As well as identifying key threats the assessment also identifies the geographical areas at greatest risk of damage by nitrogen pollution. The report provides EU policymakers with a comprehensive scientific assessment on the consequences of failing to address the problem of nitrogen pollution – and outlines key actions that can be taken to reduce the problem to protect environmental and public health.

The assessment deals with ‘reactive nitrogen’ which includes ammonia, nitrous oxide (laughing gas), nitrogen oxides (NOx) which form acid rain and smog, and nitrates, as distinct from the ‘inert nitrogen’ which makes up 78% of the atmosphere.

Key messages from the assessment include:

• At least ten million people in Europe are potentially exposed to drinking water with nitrate concentrations above recommended levels.
• Nitrates cause toxic algal blooms and dead zones in the sea, especially in the North, Adriatic and Baltic seas and along the coast of Brittany.
• Nitrogen-based air pollution from agriculture, industry and traffic in urban areas contributes to particulate matter air pollution, which is reducing life expectancy by several months across much of central Europe.
• In the forests atmospheric nitrogen deposition has caused at least 10% loss of plant diversity over two-thirds of Europe.

The lead editor of the ENA, Dr Mark Sutton from the UK’s Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, said, “Nearly half the world’s population depends on synthetic, nitrogen-based fertilizer for food but measures are needed to reduce the impacts of nitrogen pollution. Solutions include more efficient use of fertilizers and manures, and people choosing to eat less meat. We have the know-how to reduce nitrogen pollution, but what we need now is to apply these solutions throughout Europe in an integrated way.”

US alarmed at Japan's nuclear crisis response.

I feel terrible for Japan, but their attempt to contain this crisis seems even less competent than BP during the oil spill. Helicopters with buckets of water? Item.

U.S. officials are alarmed at how the Japanese are handling the escalating nuclear reactor crisis and fear that if they do not get control of the plants within the next 24 to 48 hours they could have a situation that will be "deadly for decades."

"It would be hard to describe how alarming this is right now," one U.S. official told ABC News.

President Obama has been briefed by nuclear experts.

The Japanese have evacuated most of the reactor personnel from the Fukushima nuclear complex and are rotating teams of 50 workers through the facility in an attempt to cool it down.

"We are all-out urging the Japanese to get more people back in there to do emergency operation there, that the next 24 to 48 hours are critical," the official said. "Urgent efforts are needed on the part of the Japanese to restore emergency operations to cool" down the reactors' rods before they trigger a meltdown.

"They need to stop pulling out people—and step up with getting them back in the reactor to cool it. There is a recognition this is a suicide mission," the official said.

The official said the United States is in very deep consultations with Japanese about the way forward and that the only thing that has been favorable is the wind pattern that is blowing the contaminated material out to sea instead south towards Tokyo and other populated areas, but that can't be counted upon.

The U.S. official says experts believe there is a rupture in two, maybe three of the six reactors at the Fukushima power plant, but as worrisome is the fact that spent fuel rods are now exposed to the air, which means that substances like cesium, which have a long half-life, could become airborne.

"That could be deadly for decades," the official said.

There is a growing concern around the world that a nuclear catastrophic disaster is in the works.

"There is talk of an apocalypse and I think the word is particularly well chosen," European Union's energy commissioner Günther Oettinger said today, according to various reports. "Practically everything is out of control. I cannot exclude the worst in the hours and days to come."

Coozer-Bits.

Awesome: Step-by-step guide on making your own human skull goblet!

Robot Uprising Watch: Brain-machine interfaces to learn about users.

Tech: Scientists create car that can be driven by THOUGHT.

Religion: 36 killed in stampede at holy festival.

Sad: Aspiring NYC artist dies homeless, frozen to death.

Yipes: Stranded motorist struck and killed by own car.

20% of US's dams in danger of collapsing.

From Daily Mail:

The U.S. could be set for a catastrophic flood in the near future after 4,400 of the country's dams were declared susceptible to failure.

Nearly 20 per cent of the nation’s 85,000 dams could give way and need to be repaired, according to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials.

However, with costs of repairs running into billions of dollar, a fix is unlikely any time soon considering the current economic climate.

One of the communities most at risk are the 4,000 residents who live downstream of the Lake Isabella Dam, which is built on an active fault line that has the potential to cause a devastating earthquake which would crumble the earthern water barrier.

Engineers who built the 57-year-old dam have said that the structure is also in danger of eroding internally.

If the dam were to break, Lake Isabella would probably be carried away and billions of gallons of water would rush down the Kern River Canyon onto the town of Bakersfield, home to 340,000 people.

The potential disaster would rival the Great Flood of 1889 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, which killed over 2,000 people and caused million of dollars' worth of damage.

Climate change affecting food safety.

From Michigan State University:

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Climate change is already having an effect on the safety of the world’s food supplies and unless action is taken it’s only going to get worse, a Michigan State University professor told a symposium at this year’s meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Ewen Todd, an MSU professor of advertising, public relations and retailing, organized a session titled “How Climate Change Affects the Safety of the World’s Food Supply” at which several nationally known experts warned that food safety is already an issue and will worsen unless climate change is confronted.

“Accelerating climate change is inevitable with implications for animal products and crops,” said Todd, who also is an AAAS Fellow. “At this point, the effects of climate change on food safety are poorly understood.”

However, Todd said there are already a number of examples of climate change taking its toll on the world’s food supply. One is Vibrio, a pathogen typically found in warm ocean water which is now becoming more common in the north as water temperatures rise.

“It’s been moving further up the coast these past few years,” he said. “There was an outbreak of it near Alaska in 2005 when water temperature reached 15 degrees Celsius.”

Todd also said that extreme weather – droughts and heavy rains – is having an impact on the world’s food supply. In some areas crops are being wiped out, resulting in higher prices and other issues.

Drug trafficking submarine found in Colombia.

From CNN:

The Colombian military has seized a 100-foot-long submarine capable of transporting eight tons of cocaine from Colombia to Mexico, news reports say.

The vessel was found in a jungle area in Timbiqui in southwestern Colombia on Sunday, according to a report from RTT News.

Colombian navy officials said the homemade sub had two diesel engines and sophisticated navigational equipment that would enable it to travel to Mexico while remaining up to 30 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean.

The vessel was set up for a crew of four but was unoccupied when found, RTT reported. Officials estimated it would have cost $2 million to build.

The submarine is just the latest example of crafts smugglers have made to try to get their illicit cargo past law enforcement.

Coozer-Bits.

Creepy: Snakes used to have legs.

Duh: The more you lie, the easier it gets.

Neat: Anthropologists discover earliest cemetery in Jordan. Also: red foxes may have been Man's best friend before dogs.

Yipes: Pirates seize Italian oil tanker.

Neat: New bear habitat lets children swim with polar bears.

Half the world covered in snow.

At first glance it looks like a graphic from a Discovery Channel programme about a distant ice age. But this astonishing picture shows the world as it is today - with half the Northern Hemisphere covered with snow and ice.

The image was released by the National Oceanic And Atmospheric Association (NOAA) on the day half of North America was in the grip of a severe winter storm.

The map was created using multiple satellites from government agencies and the US Air Force.

That Antarctica, the Arctic, Greenland and the frozen wastes of Siberia are covered in white comes as no surprise. But it is the extent to which the line dips down over the Northern Hemisphere that is so remarkable about the image.

The shroud of white stretches down from Alaska and sweeps through the Midwest and along to the Eastern seaboard. The bitter cold has reached as far as Texas and northern Mexico where in Ciudad Juarez temperatures today were expected to dip to minus 15C.

In the U.S. tens of millions of people chose to stay at home rather than venture out. In Chicago, 20in of snow fell leading to authorities closing schools for the first time in 12 years. The newspaper for Tulsa, Okalahoma, was unable to publish its print edition for the first time in more than a century.

More here.

Coozer-Bits.

Awesome: Baseball-loving nuns sell Honus Wagner baseball card for $220K.

Hero: Cool profile on Dos Equis' "Most Interesting Man."

Sad: Mass slaughter of dogs after Vancouver Olympics revealed.

Yipes: US president may gain power to shut off Internet.

Spain's unemployment rate surges to 20%.

From Yahoo! News:

Spain announced Friday its jobless rate surged to a 13-year record above 20 percent at the end of 2010, the highest level in the industrialised world, as the economy gasped for air.

It was more bad news for an economy fighting to regain the trust of financial markets and avoid being trapped in a debt quagmire that has engulfed Greece and Ireland and now menaces Portugal.

Another 121,900 people joined Spain's unemployment queues in the final quarter of the year, pushing the total to 4.697 million people, said the national statistics institute INE.

The resulting unemployment rate was 20.33 percent for the end of the year -- easily exceeding Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's target of 19.4 percent.

Spain appears to be stuck in a rut of staggeringly high levels of unemployment.

After posting a jobless rate of 18.83 percent in 2009 and now 20.33 percent in 2010, the government is forecasting 19.3 percent for 2011 and 17.5 percent in 2012.

The Spanish economy, the European Union's fifth biggest, slumped into recession during the second half of 2008 as the global financial meltdown compounded the collapse of a labour-intensive construction boom.

Utah army base loses vial of military's most lethal nerve agent.

It's still legal to use weaponized nerve agents? From the NY Daily News:

The Army gave the all-clear Thursday after loosing track overnight of a vial of lethal VX nerve agent at a Utah base.

An emergency lockdown went into effect around 6 p.m. Wednesday at the sprawling Dugway Proving Grounds when the vial turned up missing during a routine inventory check.

More than 1,000 employees were held at the base southwest of Salt Lake City as military officials launched a frantic search.

The missing vial was found on the base around 3 a.m.

A military spokesman said "all personnel are uninjured and safe. The public is safe as well."

The vial contained less than 1 milliliter, or roughly a quarter-teaspoon, of the VX, considered the deadliest agent in the military's arsenal.

Earlier in the day, military officials mysteriously said the shutdown went into effect amid a "serious concern."

Armed sentries blocked the entrances while Army officials refused to say what prompted the lockdown.

"No one is in immediate danger but these steps are required," Col. William King IV, the base commander, said at the time.

Dugway is used by the Army Reserves and the U.S. National Guard for training, and the base also serves as a bombing range.

The Army Test and Evaluation Command center also conducts training and tests of defenses against biological and chemical weapons attacks.

Man dies after falling into tortilla-mixing machine.

Holy guacamole! Item!

New York City police say a man was killed after falling into a commercial-size machine used for mixing tortillas.

Police say they received a 911 call at 2:30 a.m. Monday of an unconscious man at the commercial site in Brooklyn. When they arrived they discovered that the 22-year-old victim had fallen inside the waist-high machine. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Police say no criminality is suspected.