posted 02-25-2008 05:48 AM                       

quote: Daily Telegraph, 25 February 2008

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Monk killed by own runaway lawnmower

Last Updated: 2:04am GMT 25/02/2008

A Monk was killed when he was run over by his own sit-on lawnmower as he trimmed the grass at a convent, an inquest heard. Moments before, the 50-year-old was seen running after the driverless machine as it set off in the 12-acre grounds of a peace temple. The Milton Keynes coroner heard that 10 years earlier, Rev Seiji Handa had lost three fingers in another lawnmower accident.

An eye-witness told the jury how she had found the Buddhist monk after he had fallen beneath the blades of the mower at the Peace Pagoda in Milton Keynes, Bucks. Venita Slater said she saw Mr Handa chasing the machine as it pulled away from him while he was cutting lawns at the peace temple. She said that the monk was dragged underneath the blades as he tried to get into the cab and regain control. The mother-of-two said: "The tractor was running away and he was chasing it to stop it. I looked up but he had disappeared."

Emergency services were called, but Mr Handa had died instantly. A post mortem examination revealed that he died of multiple injuries. Taran Hewitt, from the Health and Safety Executive, said officials had inspected the diesel vehicle and found that it should not have been in service. The ratchet on the handbrake was not working, the brakes were not able to hold the tractor steady and the footbrake did not work. Mr Hewitt said: "The only way to get the tractor to stay stationary was to turn the engine off and leave it in gear. It should not have been used."

Mr Handa was in charge of maintenance of the tractor and was also responsible for cutting the grass in the grounds of the convent, where he lived. The jury heard that he was born in Japan and became a Buddhist monk at the age of 21 years. He was ordained at a peace pagoda in Sri Lanka. He arrived in Milton Keynes in 1978 and built a temple with the help of nuns and volunteers.

The inquest jury returned a verdict of accidental death. The coroner, Rodney Corner, said: "He got out of the cab and desperately tried to get back in. He must have slipped on wet grass. It was just an unfortunate accident."

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posted 02-28-2008 11:15 PM                    

quote:

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The teenage girl who is allergic to WATER
Last updated at 00:26am on 29th February 2008

Comments Comments (17)
Teenager Ashleigh Morris can't go swimming, soak in a hot bath or enjoy a shower after a stressful day's work - she's allergic to water.

Even sweating brings the 19-year-old out in a painful rash.

Ashleigh, from Melbourne, Australia, is allergic to water of any temperature, a condition she's lived with since she was 14.

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ashleigh water

Ashleigh, 19, has been allergic to water for five years

She suffers from an extremely rare skin disorder called Aquagenic Urticaria - so unusual that only a handful of cases are documented worldwide.

When Ashleigh gets wet her body explodes in sore, itchy red lumps that take about two hours to ease.

She has to wash. But showering is a painful experience and she can only do it for a minute at a time.

These brief showers are the only contact Ashleigh has with water. The one thing she doesn't miss is the washing up.

"People find it hard to believe, they say things like 'Oh my god, how do you wash.

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ashleigh water

The rash Ashleigh gets after coming into contact with water is MORE painful than it looks

"That makes me feel dirty, but I consider myself a very clean person," she said.

Most of us take showering for granted but for Ashleigh it's a painful endurance that often reduces her to tears.

"Although my rash is unsightly, and often looks like I'm diseased, the feeling is so much worse than it looks," she said.

"I can't go anywhere for about two hours afterwards because it's so severe.

"There's been many occasions where I've been so itchy, I've made myself bleed from scratching."

Away from water pretty Ashleigh appears like any other healthy teenager.

She leads a busy life studying Journalism and Public Relations at university and working in an office.

But if she gets wet she attracts unwanted attention.

"People stare at me in the street," said Ashleigh who lives with her mum Louise Miller, 42.

"After a shower I stay at home until it goes away, that frees me of the burden of having to explain."

Ashleigh spends a lot of time explaining her condition because few people have heard of it. Most doctors and dermatologists have never seen a case of it. "Many people don't even believe me when I tell them," said Ashleigh, who hardly believed it herself at first.

She developed the condition five years ago after an acute case of tonsillitis. She was prescribed a heavy dose of penicillin that rid her of the tonsillitis but left her with another problem.

"I suddenly started getting a rash after I showered or swam," says Ashleigh who used to swim regularly and spend a lot of time at the beach.

"I tried to ignore it but it got progressively worse so I went to see a dermatologist."

Ashleigh's dermatologist, Professor Rodney Sinclair, told her the penicillin had altered the histamine levels in her body and caused the Aquagenic Urticaria to occur.

There is no cure and no successful treatment for the condition so the gravity of the situation began to dawn on the 14-year-old Ashleigh.

"I was in disbelief for a while, but I soon realised how serious it was.

"I cried for a few hours, then picked myself up, and kept going. I realised it was something I had to live with," she says.

So Ashleigh found ways to avoid water - she stopped doing sports and anything that made her sweat.

She makes sure she stays in air-conditioned places and always has an umbrella in her car. Her family and boyfriend of three years, Adam, 23, are very supportive but her condition makes intimate moments with her Adam a little difficult.

"We have to sleep with a sheet between us at night, and I can't go near him if he's sweaty," said Ashleigh.

Even the experts seem a little vague about Aquagenic Urticaria.

Dermatologists agree there's an association with elevated blood histamine levels, but there are other processes at work since antihistamine drugs often provide no relief at all.

Nina Goad of the British Association of Dermatologists says: "There isn't a wealth of information about Aquagenic Urticaria because it's extremely rare.

"We're not sure how many cases there are in the world and we do not yet fully understand the precise mechanisms that trigger the weals."

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posted 03-03-2008 08:00 AM                       

quote: The Daily Telegraph, 3 March 2008

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A Polish worker has come up with an unusual excuse after being caught in the act with a vacuum cleaner.

The building contractor claimed he was cleaning his underpants with Henry Hoover when he was found naked and on his knees in a hospital's staff canteen.

A stunned security guard stumbled onto the man in the middle of a compromising act with the cleaner, which has a large smiley face painted on its front and a hose protruding from its "nose".

According to the Sun, the contractor was supposed to be locking up the building site near the Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital where his firm is refurbishing administration offices. The security guard, suitably horrified, told the man to "clean himself and the hoover" before asking him to leave and informing his bosses.

When later questioned by his employers, the man said he was vacuuming his underpants, which was "a common practice in Poland". He has since been fired. The man's employers, HG Construction, told The Sun: "That behaviour is not acceptable, though it gave a few people a laugh".

Henry Hoover is described on a cleaning website as "famous for its looks, but under its fascia lies a powerful, reliable vacuum cleaner ready to go time and time again." The man is not the first person to be caught in the act with an inanimate object. Last year, Robert Stewart was placed on probation for three years after being caught trying to have sex with a bicycle.

The 51-year-old was naked from the waist down when two cleaners walked in on him at the the Aberley House Hostel in south west Scotland. He paused only to ask, "What is it, hen?", before continuing to "move his hips back and forth as if to simulate sex". The court was told that alcohol was the cause of his problems.

And in 1993, Karl Watkins, an electrician, was jailed for having sex with pavements in Redditch, Worcs.

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Click on the link above for a pic of Henry - 'ready to go, time and time again'

posted 03-12-2008 05:43 PM                       

quote: York Evening Press, 12 March 2008

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Rat found in toilet

A COUPLE woke up to a nasty surprise when they found an "enormous" dead rat in their toilet. Stacy Reeves, 21, of Ostman Road, Acomb, York, and her husband, Mike Reeves, 35, discovered the huge rodent in a toilet at their council home yesterday morning.

And the couple claim they received a further shock when City of York Council initially said it would not be able to remove the rat. The city council denied refusing to remove the creature, saying Mr Reeves was told by the authority that it would try to arrange for the rat to be disposed of.

Mrs Reeves said after her husband found the rat, he telephoned the council to inform the local authority of his shocking discovery. She said the council asked him where the toilet was, and that he told the authority it was the one in their lobby, which she said was attached to their kitchen.

She claimed the council replied that it could not do anything about the rat because it was "not within the fabrications of the house" - and that the authority said the Reeves would have to get rid of it themselves. She said Mr Reeves told the council the toilet was attached to the house, but that the authority maintained it was not within the house fabrications.

Speaking before the council removed the rat from her home yesterday, Mrs Reeves said: "The rat's massive, enormous. I can't see its tail. It looks like it's come up through the sewer. I don't know what I'm going to do to remove it. I'm certainly not going to touch it myself. I fear they carry all sorts of diseases, and you have to be careful. I don't want to risk it in case we do catch anything. I've got a one-and-a-half-year-old daughter and we don't want her to catch anything either.

"I think it's disgusting really, because the toilet is within the fabrications of the house. City of York Council built the lobby there - all these houses have them. This is what is annoying me - the council built the house this way and they won't come out."

However, a city council spokeswoman said: "There seems to have been some misunderstanding. The housing team understood from Mr Reeves that the rat was in an outside toilet, which would make it the responsibility of the tenant. However, the team arranged for the rat to be removed by the council's street scene team."

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It was in the loo, wasn't it? Why didn't she just pull the flush?

posted 03-16-2008 03:02 AM                    

quote:

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Kansas Woman Sat On Toilet For 2 Years
Woman's Boyfriend Called Police Last Month

POSTED: 2:14 pm PDT March 12, 2008
WICHITA, Kan. -- Authorities are considering charges in the bizarre case of a woman who sat on her boyfriend's toilet for two years -- so long that her body was stuck to the seat by the time the boyfriend finally called police.

Ness County Sheriff Bryan Whipple said it appeared the 35-year-old Ness City woman's skin had grown around the seat. She initially refused emergency medical services but was finally convinced by responders and her boyfriend that she needed to be checked out at a hospital.

"We pried the toilet seat off with a pry bar and the seat went with her to the hospital," Whipple said. "The hospital removed it."

Whipple said investigators planned to present their report Wednesday to the county attorney, who will determine whether any charges should be filed against the woman's 36-year-old boyfriend.

"She was not glued. She was not tied. She was just physically stuck by her body," Whipple said. "It is hard to imagine. ... I still have a hard time imagining it myself."

He told investigators he brought his girlfriend food and water, and asked her every day to come out of the bathroom.

"And her reply would be, `Maybe tomorrow,"' Whipple said. "According to him, she did not want to leave the bathroom."

The boyfriend called police on Feb. 27 to report that "there was something wrong with his girlfriend," Whipple said, adding that he never explained why it took him two years to call.

Police found the clothed woman sitting on the toilet, her sweat pants down to her mid-thigh. She was "somewhat disoriented," and her legs looked like they had atrophied, Whipple said.

"She said that she didn't need any help, that she was OK and did not want to leave," he said.

She was reported in fair condition at a hospital in Wichita, about 150 miles southeast of Ness City. Whipple said she has refused to cooperate with medical providers or law enforcement investigators.

Authorities said they did not know if she was mentally or physically disabled.

Police have declined to release the couple's names, but the house where authorities say the incident happened is listed in public records as the residence of Kory McFarren. No one answered his home phone number.

The case has been the buzz of Ness City, said James Ellis, a neighbor.

"I don't think anybody can make any sense out of it," he said.

Ellis said he had known the woman since she was a child but that he had not seen her for at least six years.

He said she had a tough childhood after her mother died at a young age and apparently was usually kept inside the house as she grew up. At one time the woman worked for a long-term care facility, he said, but he did not know what kind of work she did there.

"It really doesn't surprise me," Ellis said. "What surprises me is somebody wasn't called in a bit earlier."

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