Mid Day International News |
- Woman survives being cut in half to beat 'untreatable' bone cancer
- Nuts kill British woman at daughter's wedding
- Beauty queen exposed as sex worker, topless model
- Two dogs to tie the knot in Britain!
- Japan says no to Paris Hilton
- Obama, Palin on Archie comics cover
- Teen exposes flaw in twitter: Sparks hacker activity
- Men don't even notice women in high heels
| Woman survives being cut in half to beat 'untreatable' bone cancer Posted: A mother of two in Canada has become the first person to survive being cut in half after she was diagnosed with an "untreatable" form of bone cancer. Janis Ollson, 31, discovered she was suffering from sarcoma, a form of bone cancer that cannot be treated with chemotherapy or radiotherapy, when she was pregnant with her second child. When she started having severe back pains she visited her doctor, who discovered a tumour, which was described as the biggest ever seen. Experts in Toronto, Canada, initially told Ollson that there was nothing that could be done for her. But after a consultation at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, surgeons suggested a groundbreaking procedure, which involved removing the tumour, the lower half of her spine, her left leg and part of her pelvis. It was the first time the surgery had ever been attempted on a living human being. Having agreed to undergo the drastic surgery, Ollson's family and friends proceeded to raise 20,000 dollars to cover her family's travel and living expenses for the 52 days she spent at the clinic. The initial operation to remove the tumour and parts of her body took 20 hours, 12 specialists and 20 units of blood, and after a week's rest she underwent a second operation which took eight hours and more than 240 staples to put her back together again. The surgeon reassembled her by attaching the leg bone to her spine with pins and screws, close to her centre, which gave the procedure its name: the "pogo stick" process. Now three years later, after an intensive period of rehabilitation, Ollson says there is little that holds her back. "Where we live, we use ATVs and snowmobiles. I use my ATV to take my daughter to school. There really isn't a whole lot that stops me," the Daily Mail quoted her as saying. "I don't like to be left out," she added.
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| Nuts kill British woman at daughter's wedding Posted: In a sad incident, a British woman died after consuming nuts at her daughter's wedding, a media report said. Leslie Watson died from a severe allergic reaction after accidentally eating walnut oil at daughter Rachel's big day; she collapsed at the hotel in London after her face and lips began to swell up, the Daily Star reported. An inquest heard the former dental nurse was given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation by a guest before being rushed by ambulance to the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. But she suffered a further anaphylactic shock after a latex glove was put on her chest as she was moved to intensive care in July. Westminster Coroner's Court heard Watson, 49, had food allergies and an allergy to latex but this was not recorded in her general physician notes, the report said. Recording a verdict of accidental death, coroner Dr Shirley Radcliffe said: "Leslie Watson died on what should have been one of the happiest days of her life, the wedding of her daughter." She told relatives: "It must be a terrible, tragic loss of a very vibrant member of your family."
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| Beauty queen exposed as sex worker, topless model Posted: A beauty queen has been thrown out of the Miss Great Britain contest after she was found to have posed topless and worked at a massage parlour that offered sex services. Laura Anness, 27, was crowned Miss Plymouth City recently and was gearing up to participate in November's national beauty pageant. The Sun reported on Thursday that pageant organisers were not aware that she had in 1999 posed topless as a teenager and worked in a massage parlour offering sex services. Laura, from Saltash, Cornwall, had been stripped of another beauty pageant title contest earlier this year for lying about her age. She then went on to enter Miss Great Britain, where the rules clearly say that participants must have never posed naked or been involved in prostitution. "I'm totally shocked," Miss GB organiser Liz Fuller was quoted as saying.
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| Two dogs to tie the knot in Britain! Posted: Each dog has its day. The adage seems to hold true for two five-year-old greyhounds, Pete and Zoe, who are set to tie the knot in a canine marriage ceremony at an animal shelter in Britain. The duo will be married at pavilion at Wood Green Animal Shelters in Godmanchester; the bizarre wedding will be attended by staff, members of the public and doggie friends, The Sun reported. It will be performed by vicar-for-the-day Gail Lees from Wood Greens cat section who will read specially written vows for the duo. After the ceremony, the hounds will return to their kennel to share a three-tier liver cake and toast the occasion with a bowl of water, the report said. Zoe will wear a wedding dress made by dog re-homer Donna Furnie. Pete and Zoe were found as strays and taken to Wood Green in June. Since then they have been inseparable. Staff at the shelter thought a wedding ceremony would be a good way of sealing their love and ensuring they are re-homed together. Nicola Tyler of the canine home was quoted as saying, "Zoe and Pete enjoy each others company so much that we have decided to hold a wedding ceremony to seal their union. We also hope it will help them find them a new home. "Zoe and Pete are lovely dogs who can live with children over 10 years. They cannot live with cats. They love being with people and will make lovely pets."
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| Posted: Paris Hilton was denied entry to Japan, two days after she pleaded guilty to a drug charge in Las Vegas. A Japanese immigration official said she was denied entry Wednesday after six hours of questioning.  Japan has strict immigration laws that bar entry to those convicted of drug offences, although exceptions are occasionally granted. The country has taken a tough line with famous figures in the past, although it also grants occasional exceptions. The socialite appeared unmoved by the decision. "I'm going back home, and I look forward to coming back to Japan in the future," a smiling Hilton told reporters at Tokyo's airport. The 29-year-old celebrity was supposed to promote her fashion and fragrance lines at a news conference Wednesday morning in Tokyo. She arrived Tuesday evening but was stopped at the airport and spent the night at a hotel there after being questioned by officials. Soccer icon Diego Maradona was initially banned from entering the country during the 2002 World Cup finals for his past drug offences, but was eventually given a 30-day visa as a "special delegate." The Rolling Stones struggled for years to gain entry to the country but were eventually allowed in despite its members' drug convictions. In January 1980, former Beatles member Paul McCartney was arrested for marijuana possession upon arrival at Narita airport. He was deported without carrying out a planned concert tour by his rock group Wings.
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| Obama, Palin on Archie comics cover Posted: Ever imagined US President Barack Obama and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin sharing a milkshake? Well, they do in an upcoming edition of Archie comics. Obama and Palin, who was the Republican vice presidential candidate in the US elections in 2008, are reportedly dragged into a campaign battle between Archie Andrews and Reggie Mantle, who are both running for class president of Riverdale High in the December issue, the New York Post reported Wednesday. "Things aren't going so well for Archie," said the comic's editor-in-chief, Victor Gorelick. So Archie's campaign manager, Veronica Lodge, pulls some strings and arranges for him to meet Obama. Reggie, on the other hand, manages to get Palin on his side.
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| Teen exposes flaw in twitter: Sparks hacker activity Posted: An Australian teen has caused havoc on Twitter by discovering an "exploit" that hit thousands of users, including US President Barack Obama's press secretary, and resulted in the tweets of a former British PM's wife linking to hardcore porn.
But later, some mischievous users of the site started using the exploit to make people "retweet" infected messages (when they hovered over a tweet with the code inserted) that they had not authorised. Twitter engineers were pressed into finding a fix for the exploit within hours of it being discovered. Pearce, who is studying year 12 at Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School, said that he was surprised that "so many famous people got infected". He said it was Twitter's responsibility, not his, to keep the site secure. "When one considers entities like the White House, you don't expect someone to actually be sitting there refreshing the Twitter home page and mousing over links from whoever they're following," he said. "I guess regardless of power or fame, on the internet you have to be as careful as everyone else about security risks; this is one of the few areas that affects everyone on an equal scale." News site Netcraft said it appeared as though Pearce found the exploit by looking at another Twitter page that took advantage of a similar exploit. Pearce confirmed this, however, there has been some confusion over who first created certain parts of the exploit. He said it was first discovered by Twitter user @kinugawamasato, who changed the colour of tweets. Pearce was then the "first person to report the Javascript vulnerability", he said, which made alert boxes appear when users hovered over tweets. Twitter user @judofyr was then the first one to create a self replicating retweet worm by accident, he said, while some New Zealand Twitter users used the vulnerability to create a malevolent worm deliberately. "I analysed the code within these 'rainbow tweets' more carefully, and it became evident that you could use any Javascript or HTML (code) rather than just CSS (code) -- which meant that instead of just changing the appearance of the tweet, you could actually execute commands within the user's browser." He said that after he started noticing the exploit, some of his followers "realised the power" of the vulnerability, "and within a matter of minutes scripts had taken over my (Twitter) timeline". He said he gained an extra 130 followers from tweeting about the exploit. "In all the four years of using Twitter, this is the first time I recall a security hole spreading at the rate it did." More seriously, he added: "I guess I have gained knowledge of how easy information can spread throughout social media networks. Literally moments after I had tweeted the ... script, I had dozens of replies in shock, questioning how I managed to do that." Asked whether he thought it was irresponsible to discover and then tweet the exploit he had found, he said: "The situation could have been handled better if Twitter had been notified of the ... exploit." Security expert Graham Cluley of computer security firm Sophos said the bug only affected users of the Twitter.com website and not third-party programs developed to access the popular microblogging service. Twitter, which allows users to pepper one another with messages of 140 characters or less, has more than 145 million registered users, co-founder Evan Williams said recently.
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| Men don't even notice women in high heels Posted: Wearing high heels certainly makes women look taller and slimmer, but it seems they do nothing to grab the attention of men, as they don't even notice them, according to a new study. Researchers at Northumbria University are studying the reactions of men to women walking while wearing high heels and others without heels. But they say research has shown that men cannot even tell if a woman is wearing high heels when they walk. It is part of a wider research project into attraction and the signals sent out by movement like walking and dancing. Researchers have already used 3D motion-capture technology to identify the movement areas of a male dancer''s body that influence female perceptions of whether their dance skills are good or bad. The study, led by evolutionary psychologist Dr Nick Neave and researcher Kristofor McCarty, for the first time identified potential biomechanical differences between "good" and "bad" male dancers. Neave believes that such dance movements may act as signals of a man's reproductive quality, in terms of health, vigour or strength. Now another study is looking at women between 18 and 35 and what signals are sent out when they walk with and without heels. "Women are spending money on high heels, which can be dangerous, presumably to make themselves look good and add to what nature has given them," the Telegraph quoted Neave as saying. The study is investigating if the change in body posture brought about by wearing heels, such as the illusion of longer legs, tilting torso and more prominent rear, sends a signal which has an impact on men.
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