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All of those wasted oreos could have been avoided. If I just had this information sooner!

Five-second rule for dropped food? Try 30

CTV.ca News Staff

Updated: Tue. Jun. 12 2007 10:16 PM ET

A man drops a brownie on the floor. If he picks it up within five seconds, should he still eat it? Two U.S. students claim the answer is yes.

In fact, they say he could wait half a minute.

The students, who are seniors at Connecticut College, studied the five-second rule as part of their microbiology class.

“It is an eye-opener,” student Molly Goettsche told ABC News. “There may be a little more time than just seconds.”

First they dropped Skittles candy and apple slices on the school’s dining hall floor for different lengths of time.

Then they swabbed the food for samples and checked for any bacteria.

Their conclusions may be a relief to those who rescue fallen food: it took more than 30 seconds for bacteria to cultivate on the apple slices, which represented wet food.

As for the Skittles, which stood in for dry food, it took longer than a minute.

But despite their findings, the students said they would never eat anything that’s hit the ground.

“I don’t know if I would ever eat off that floor,” said Goettsche.

High school student Jillian Clarke conducted a more exhaustive study in 2003, and her research earned her an Ig Noble award — a parody of the Nobel Prize — the following year.

She traced the five-second rule to Genghis Khan. But the Mongol leader, known more for his military tactics than passion for science, thought food could be left on the floor for half a day.

Like the Connecticut College students, Clarke found that dry food dropped on clean floors did not pick up a noticeable amount of bacteria.

However, when she dropped food on floors contaminated with E. coli, the bacteria latched onto the food in less than five seconds.

Two jailed after bridge built by blind man collapses
Mon Jun 11, 2007 8:41 AM ET

BEIJING (Reuters) – A Chinese court has jailed two officials after they let a blind contractor build a bridge which collapsed during construction and injured 12 people, the official Xinhua news agency said Monday.

Huang Wenge, township head of Bujia in the southeastern province of Jiangxi, and colleague Xia Jianzhong were sentenced to 18 months and one year in jail, respectively, for not stopping the project, Xinhua said.

“Huang Wenge and Xia Jianzhong, who were in charge of road management and supervision, did not ask the contractors to provide certificates guaranteeing their proficiency,” it said, citing the court ruling.

“When they knew the bridge was being built by a blind contractor, they did not stop it,” it said, adding the contractor had changed the blueprint without getting a professional to look at the design.

“After the blind contractor changed the blueprint, he carried out the work only using a roughly drawn draft of the plan, which caused the bridge to collapse,” the report said.

Xinhua did not explain how the contractor was able to run the project considering his inability to see.

German vandal, 70, nabbed spraying rude graffiti

BERLIN (Reuters) – A German pensioner has been arrested for vandalism after being caught spraying the word “Puff” (whorehouse) on houses in the Bavarian town of Hof, near the Czech border, a police spokeswoman said on Monday.

The 70-year-old had sprayed at least two houses with graffiti when a young man saw him in action with his spray can and challenged him, the spokeswoman said.

The elderly vandal dropped the can and ran, but the younger man caught up with him and held him down until police arrived. The spokeswoman said the houses he had sprayed were just people’s homes and his motive was unclear.

Indian lawyers tie man to tree, beat him
Thu May 31, 2007 2:32 PM ET

LUCKNOW (Reuters) – Lawyers tied a young man to a tree and beat him outside a court in India for refusing to marry one of their relatives, an official said on Wednesday.

They rounded on the victim when he arrived at a court in the Taj Mahal town of Agra to settle a dispute over marrying the niece of one of the lawyers.

Indian TV channels showed the abusive lawyers tearing off the man’s shirt, tying him to a tree trunk and cutting bald patches into his hair. The 22-year-old victim was then beaten up.

Local official K. Chandramauli said he ordered police to file a case against the lawyers. The Agra Bar Association said it was investigating the attack.

The horn curves downward and looks like the stalk of a pumpkin, reports the Yangcheng Evening Post.

Granny Zhao, 95, of Zhanjiang city, Guangdong province, says it first appeared three years ago.

“At first, it was only a mole, but it gradually grew and became like a horn,” she said.

Zhao says the horn causes her little trouble except to affect her vision slightly: “It causes me no discomfort, but blocks part of my view.”

But her family are hoping that medical experts can explain the phenomenon.

Lion Mutilates 42 Midgets in Cambodian Ring-Fight

BBC News

Monday, 2 May, 2005, UK

Spectators cheered as entire Cambodian Midget Fighting League squared off against African Lion

Tickets had been sold-out three weeks before the much anticipated fight, which took place in the city of Kâmpóng Chhnãng.

The fight was slated when an angry fan contested Yang Sihamoni, President of the CMFL, claiming that one lion could defeat his entire league of 42 fighters.

Sihamoni takes great pride in the league he helped create, as was conveyed in his recent advertising campaign for the CMFL that stated his midgets will “… take on anything; man, beast, or machine.”

This campaign is believed to be what sparked the undisclosed fan to challenge the entire league to fight a lion; a challenge that Sihamoni readily accepted.

An African Lion (Panthera Leo) was shipped to centrally located Kâmpóng Chhnãng especially for the event, which took place last Saturday, April 30, 2005 in the city’s coliseum.

The Cambodian Government allowed the fight to take place, under the condition that they receive a 50% commission on each ticket sold, and that no cameras would be allowed in the arena.

The fight was called in only 12 minutes, after which 28 fighters were declared dead, while the other 14 suffered severe injuries including broken bones and lost limbs, rendering them unable to fight back.

Sihamoni was quoted before the fight stating that he felt since his fighters out-numbered the lion 42 to 1, that they “… could out-wit and out-muscle [it].”

Unfortunately, he was wrong.

http://www.fmft.net/archives/BBC_NEWS.htm

Man Cited for DWI at Ark. Drive-Through
Tuesday, May 22, 2007

CAMDEN, Ark. —

A man who was a little slow in picking up his fast food has been charged with drunk driving. Police said they found Terrance Forte, 32, asleep behind the wheel in the drive-through lane at a McDonald’s restaurant.

Restaurant employees called police about 12:30 a.m. Saturday after waiting 15 minutes for Forte to drive from the first window to the second window in the drive-through.

In a police report, Officer William Mahon said he found Forte asleep inside the car with the engine running and his right foot on the brake. The report said Forte offered Mahon $10 for his food order when Mahon tried to wake him.

Forte’s blood alcohol level was registered at 0.19, more than twice the legal limit.

Forte was cited for his third drunk-driving charge and was later released.

A telephone number for Forte could not be found Tuesday and it was not known if he had a lawyer.

BERLIN (Reuters) – A nine-year-old German girl was so upset about having to tidy her room she put up a sign in her window urging passers-by to call police for help.

Pedestrians in the central city of Braunschweig saw the girl crying in the window, holding up a sign up saying “Help! Please call the police!” Next to her sat a small boy. Quickly alerted, officers rushed to the scene to discover the girl had argued with her mother about tidying her room and enlisted her two-year-old brother’s aid to attract attention.

“The room looked like a battlefield,” said a spokesman for local police on Monday. “Officers told the girl to tidy her room. When they came back two hours later to check, it was all cleaned up. And the mother and daughter had made up too.”

Man Sleeps Through Gunshot to the Head
May 21, 2007 – 9:05pm

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP) – Michael Lusher apparently is a sound sleeper. A small-caliber bullet struck the 37-year-old Altizer man in the head as he slept Sunday morning, but he didn’t realize it until he awoke nearly four hours later and noticed blood coming from his head, said Cpl. R.H. McQuaid of the Cabell County Sheriff’s Department.

The bullet that struck him was one of five that someone sprayed across his mobile home and truck at about 4:20 a.m. Sunday, McQuaid said. The one the struck Lusher apparently lost velocity as it traveled through two walls.

“We’re just glad he didn’t suffer any life-threatening injuries with a head wound,” he said.

Lusher came home from a night on the town about an hour before he was shot while lying in bed, McQuaid said.

He remained hospitalized at St. Mary’s Medical Center on Monday. His condition was not immediately available.

(Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

Bride turns down “dark” groom
Sun May 20, 2007 8:07 AM ET

PATNA, India (Reuters) – Turned down for marriage due to his dark complexion, an Indian man staged a hunger strike outside his would be bride’s house for two days before she finally relented, an official said Saturday.

Saral Prasad, the 23-year-old groom in eastern Bihar state, said he would not budge from the girl’s village home after she refused to marry him earlier this week in an arranged marriage because he was too dark.

Rajani, 19, changed her mind after two days and the couple got married, Arun Kumar Mishra, a village council official said.

“We were all taken by surprise but Rajani was finally moved by the gesture of the young man and married him,” Mishra said.

Most Indian women, especially those in rural areas, often have no choice in matters of marriage, and are coerced into it by relatives and parents.