By Julie Steenhuysen Wed Feb 13, 1:21 PM ET

CHICAGO (Reuters)

- U.S. scientists have developed a microfiber fabric that generates its own electricity, making enough current to recharge a cell phone or ensure that a small MP3 music player never runs out of power.If made into a shirt, the fabric could harness power from its wearer simply walking around or even from a slight breeze, they reported Wednesday in the journal Nature."The fiber-based nanogenerator would be a simple and economical way to harvest energy from the physical movement," Zhong Lin Wang of the Georgia Institute of Technology, who led the study, said in a statement.The nanogenerator takes advantage of the semiconductive properties of zinc oxide nanowires -- tiny wires 1,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair -- embedded into the fabric. The wires are formed into pairs of microscopic brush-like structures, shaped like a baby-bottle brush.One of the fibers in each pair is coated with gold and serves as an electrode. As the bristles brush together through a person's body movement, the wires convert the mechanical motion into electricity."When a nanowire bends it has an electric effect," Wang said in a telephone interview. "What the fabric does is it translates the mechanical movement of your body into electricity."His team made the nanogenerator by first coating fibers with a polymer, and then a layer of zinc oxide. They dunked this into a warm bath of reactive solution for 12 hours. This encouraged the wires to multiply, coating the fibers."They automatically grow on the surface of the fiber," Wang said. "In principal, you could use any fiber that is conductive."They added another layer of polymer to prevent the zinc oxide from being scrubbed off. And they added an ultra-thin layer of gold to some fibers, which works as a conductor.To ensure all that friction was not just generating static electricity, the researchers conducted several tests. The fibers produced current only when both the gold and the zinc oxide bristles brushed together.So far, Wang said the researchers had demonstrated the principle and developed a small prototype."Our estimates show we can have up to 80 milliwatts per square meter of this fabric. This is enough to power a little iPod or charge a cell phone battery," he said."What we've done is demonstrate the principle and the fundamental mechanism."Wang said the material could be used by hikers and soldiers in the field and also to power tiny sensors used in biomedicine or environmental monitoring.One major hurdle remains: zinc oxide degrades when wet. Wang's team is working on a process that would coat the fibers to protect the fabric in the laundry

BERLIN (Reuters)

- A woman in Germany who became pregnant after an online sex auction has won a court battle to force the Web site that hosted the sale to reveal the names of the winners, so she can find out who's the father. Six different men won Internet auctions to have sex with the woman in April and May last year. They were only known to her by their online names, a spokesman for a court in the southwestern city of Stuttgart said Wednesday. "The woman wanted to discover which one of the men had made her pregnant," the spokesman said. "So she needed their contact details. Of course, if they're not willing to go along with the gene test, she'll have to take them to court." The woman asked the site's operator to reveal the true identity of the men, but it refused, citing a confidentiality clause in its terms and conditions. The court ruled in her favor, saying the child's right to know who its father was took precedence.

This one  well it says it all all by it's self

Police arrested a 21-year-old Boise man for impersonating an officer after a KTRV-Fox 12 news reporter called police when a car with red lights began following her on Interstate 84 early Wednesday morning. Israel Dominguez, whose 2003 Mitsubishi Galant was equipped with flashing blue and red lights in the grill, was arrested by Idaho State Police near the I-84 and Eagle Road interchange, police reports said. Shayne Wells, morning anchor on Fox 12, was on her way to work about 1:30 a.m. driving west on I-84 near Orchard Road when she noticed a car driving behind her with blinking red and blue lights, according to ISP. Wells, who thought the car looked suspicious, called 911. Both cars eventually pulled off of I-84 at Eagle Road, where ISP and Meridian police pulled over the Mitsubishi.

Can you say bummer dude 

DOTHAN, Ala., Feb. 12, 2008

(AP) A Hartford man has been charged with two misdemeanors for allegedly staging his own shooting, which put him in the hospital, to get sympathy from family members.
Charles Gregory Hatcher was indicted by a Geneva County grand jury on charges of obstruction of justice and giving false information to law enforcement officers, both Class A misdemeanors. He turned himself into the Geneva County Jail last week and was released on $1,500 bond.
Police found Hatcher in a cotton field with a bullet wound on his back and another on the back of his leg on Dec. 3. He spent several days in the hospital.
Hartford Police chose not to prosecute the case, but the grand jury indicted him anyway, Geneva County District Attorney Kirke Adams said.
"The purpose of this prosecution is to recover money for the Geneva County Sheriff's Office for the lost man hours they spent on this case," Adams said. "They (grand jurors) chose not to close their case, but to continue their investigation to find the truth."
Adams said Hatcher threatened an employee with firing if he didn't shoot him. Hartford Police Chief Nick Finer has said Hatcher staged the shooting to gain sympathy from family members.

LONDON (Reuters)

- British officials pay’s a psychic to exorcise a supposed poltergeist from state housing after the distressed occupants said otherwise they would leave and become homeless, a council official said on Tuesday.Easington Council in County Durham said the family could not be persuaded to stay in the house, and that through paying half the psychic ghosthunter's 120 pound ($235) fee they were saving money as otherwise they would have had to pay for emergency housing.The Fallon family told reporters they heard banging from the loft, saw items fly across rooms and had doors slammed in their faces. They called police, who found nothing. Then they called in psychic Suzanne Hadwin and asked the council to help pay."This is the first time we have had to take such a measure," a council spokeswoman said. "However, the tenants were extremely distressed at the time and we therefore believed it was the most appropriate course of action."Hadwin told the Sunderland Echo she used her Russian spirit guide and some angels to help rid the property of evil, which she said was linked to the murder of a woman in the house years earlier.

The council said the family were now happy to stay in the house and therefore they believed their money was well spent -- although they had never taking similar action before.

I really pray our government dose not get wind of this. I mean we would be paying gost hunters all over the place

RIYADH (Reuters)

- Saudi Arabia's religious police have banned red roses ahead of Valentine's Day, forcing couples in the conservative Muslim nation to think of new ways to show their love.The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has ordered florists and gift shop owners in the capital Riyadh to remove any items colored scarlet, which is widely seen as symbolizing love, newspapers said."They visited us last night," the Saudi Gazette quoted an unidentified florist as saying. It is not unusual for the Saudi vice squad to clamp down ahead of Valentine's Day, which it sees as encouraging relations between men and women outside of wedlock, the newspaper said.

Saudi Arabia imposes an austere form of Sunni Islam which prevents unrelated men and women from mixing, bans women from driving and demands that women wear a headscarf and a cloak.

Relations outside marriage are strictly banned and punishable by law.

JAKARTA (Reuters)

- Indonesian commuters riding on the roofs of trains will be sprayed with colored liquid so that security officers can identify and arrest them, a report said Saturday.Electric trains linking the Indonesian capital and its neighboring towns are packed with passengers during rush hours, with many sitting on the roofs due to a lack of space inside or to avoid paying.After several failed attempts to discourage roof riders over years, the state owned railway company PT Kereta Api will from next week douse them with a colored liquid so that officers can identify them when they get off the train, the Jakarta Post said."We will confiscate their IDs and give them a ticket," Kereta Api regional spokesman Akhmad Sujadi was quoted as saying."We will send a copy of the ticket to their family, their local neighborhood unit head, their employer, or, if they're students, their headmasters," added Sujadi, who described the move as "unique."

Although illegal, roof riding is rampant due to a lack of efficient and affordable means of transport for commuters in the greater Jakarta area. At least 53 roof riders have been killed in the past two years, the Post said.

By Rebecca Harrison Tue Feb 12, 1:08 PM ET

JERUSALEM (Reuters)

- Israel's Asian restaurants went on a one-day spring roll strike Tuesday in protest over government plans to rid kitchens of foreign chefs, and said sushi and noodles would be the next items off the menu.The restaurants are angry at government plans to purge Japanese, Chinese and Thai eateries of Asian cooks and replace them with Israelis as part of a broader program to cut the number of foreigners working in the Jewish state.The Israeli Ethnic Restaurant Organization said the country's 300 Asian restaurants refused to serve spring, or egg, rolls -- among their most popular dishes -- Tuesday, and planned a follow-up strike in two weeks for sushi and noodles."Today there is no egg roll and in two weeks time there will be no sushi and noodles," Arnon Volosky, head of the organization, told Reuters. Israel attracts virtually no immigrants from Asia since anyone seeking citizenship here must prove they have Jewish family or links to the country.Seeking to plug a gap in the labor market during the first Palestinian uprising, Israel allowed foreigners to work in the Jewish state. But now it is trying to limit those numbers to create more jobs for Israelis.This year the government is granting 500 permits to Asian chefs compared with 900 last year. Next year no permits will be issued, although restaurants willing to pay twice the average national salary will be allowed to employ chefs as "experts."The government argues Israelis can be trained."Everyone can make Chinese food it's not impossible to learn," said Shoshana Strauss, a lawyer working on foreign worker issues for the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor. Asian restaurants first started dishing up chicken chow mein and Thai green curry to Israelis about 30 years ago and have evolved into a 1-billion-shekels-a-year ($275 million) industry.Sushi has proved a massive hit, particularly in the secular coastal metropolis of Tel Aviv and the city's 100th sushi restaurant opened last month.Volosky said his organization had asked Israel's Supreme Court to force the government to rethink the decision, arguing it could force many out of business or make them inflate prices to cover the salaries needed to secure "expert" visas for chefs

Just think if we tried to do that in this  country can you just imagine what would happen

LONDON (Reuters)

- Police in central England are hunting for a badly scorched would-be copper power cable thief after finding a hacksaw embedded in an 11,000 volt power cable Saturday night.The thief, who also left a lit blow torch at the scene, is expected to be badly charred, spiky haired and not exactly the brightest bulb in the socket."The sheer stupidity of cutting through power cables should be glaringly obvious to everyone," said Phil Wilson, customer operations manager with local power company Central Networks."At the very least putting the hacksaw through the cable would have created an almighty bang and the line would have burned for quite a few seconds, showering them with molten copper... We can only assume they left in a great hurry or they were injured and were dragged away by an accomplice." But searches of local hospitals have so far not found the culprit, a spokeswoman for Derbyshire Police said Tuesday."Maybe they had a lucky escape," she said. "We don't have any leads yet." Nearly 800 customers in the village of Creswell were cut off when the wannabe copper thief sawed into their power supply on Saturday night, but Central Networks got the lights back on within a few hours. Copper prices have more than doubled in the last four years as China has gobbled up huge quantities of it, sparking a wave of copper thefts across the globe from South Africa and the United States to Italy and Britain.

Thieves targeting power lines and electricity substations have already led to two fatalities in Britain and many serious injuries, while leaving thousands without power.

Can anyone say gene pool need cleaning there ????

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Feb. 12, 2008

(AP) Alaska State Troopers see plenty of hazards, but Trooper Howard Peterson was nearly felled by a new one: falling moose. Peterson was driving Feb. 2 on the Seward Highway south of Anchorage when something big and black fell out of the sky about 20 feet in front of his patrol car. "Falling rock!" he thought, ready to steer clear if it bounced onto the highway.
The thing didn't roll or shatter. It turned out to be a moose that fell from cliffs next to the highway.
Drivers often see Dall sheep on the cliffs but rarely moose. Peterson estimates the animal fell 150 feet or more.
It was windy that night, Peterson said, and a gust may have startled the moose into a fatal fall.
"They occasionally have bad days like the rest of us," said wildlife biologist Rick Sinnott. "They slip and fall. Maybe he was reaching for a branch and the snow just gave way."
Sinnott has heard or moose dying in strange ways _ breaking through ice and drowning, jumping off railroad bridges at the sound of a train, falling off small banks. Once he saw the remains of two bulls that died during a rutting battle when their antlers got hooked together by a single piece of barbed wire.

A fall off a cliff probably doesn't happen often, he said.

Well gee officer you think ???