An Adelaide man accused of biting, whipping and having unlawful sex with a girl he met via a vampire website has told a court he was furious when he learned she was underage.

Italian scientists spent 6.3 million euros building a robot that makes coffee.

Police say they’ve made an arrest in the case of the loud bang and bright flash of light disturbing a neighborhood in Pikesville.

Ronaldo’s prostitute turns out to be a transvestite, who accused him of using drugs and not wanting to pay.

Man cleared by DNA free after 27 years.

Cher was “crazy” about Tom Cruise during a brief romance between the two stars in the mid-1980s.

Dogs bark for different reasons and heart rates show that other dogs can tell the difference.

Two or more alcoholic drinks a day can increase the risk of hormone receptor-positive breast cancer, new research suggests.

Children who attend daycare or playgroups cut their risk of the most common type of childhood leukaemia by around 30%, a study estimates.

To save species from extinction, get people to eat it.

It seems bees can discover how to “rob” flowers of nectar.

Heated debate over who planted first sunflower.

An elephant in the picture.

I always feel that ♫ somebody’s watchin’ me ♪

Despite decades of interest in human flight powered by backpack jets, the technology’s limitations have kept it grounded.

Powered model aircraft.

Skating.

Hitchcock, Truffaut, Scorsese… Directors in their films.

The history of New York City in video games.

Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 New York subway map [$299]

A 7-year-old Florida boy stole his grandmother’s SUV, smashed mailboxes, hit parked cars and signposts.

Cross-dressing banker busted for hiding in women’s toilet.

Dolphin dies after collision during Sea World trick.

Polar bear not ‘endangered’, just ‘concerning’.

One of Mexico’s biggest drug cartels has launched a brazen recruiting campaign, putting up fliers and banners promising good pay, free cars and better food to army soldiers who join the cartel’s elite band of hit men.

A sex scandal rattles Tehran government, in spite of numerous attempts to hush it up. But is Reza Zarei, the police chief caught in a brothel with six prostitutes, still alive?

Is Iran’s nuclear program peaceful or not? A trove of new photos is offering some tantalizing clues.

40 people injured when floor collapses at Canadian church.

OPEC president sees $200 oil possible: “Each time the dollar falls one percent, the price of the barrel rises by $4.”

Oilwells are drying up.

When you’re paying more at the pump, don’t blame the station owner.

Warren Buffett: “I think consumers are feeling gas and food prices, and not feeling they’ve got a lot of money for other things.”

Economist says supplies aplenty for U.S. consumers.

They fired the most powerful woman of Wall Street.

Millions of Web surfers crashed a magazine Internet site on Monday in an attempt to see racy pictures of tween idol Miley Cyrus that have triggered a cross-country furor.

The record labels want you to pay a tax on music.

The presidency is the most famous job in America, and probably the hardest. The country is currently trying to fill the position. What does a president do?

Google experiments with next generation Image Search.

The twentieth century is hardly behind us but already its quarrels and its achievements, its ideals and its fears are slipping into the obscurity of mis-memory.

Champagne, Switzerland, can’t use its own name.

How to capture yellow jackets (and not get stung).

Spider snacks on snake.

Calculator spelling, also known as beghilos.

Makes sense.

Gals.

Ball.

Metal replicas of bull testicles have become trendy bumper ornaments. Florida lawmakers consider bill banning ornamental testicles.

Bear unlocks door, walks into home.

More than 100 aftershocks rattle western edge of Reno, Nevada. Scientists say an even bigger event may be coming.

Moderate earthquake rattles Mexico City.

Why haven’t existing home sales fallen further?

Oil strikes new record near $120 a barrel, up almost $30 in just four months. Why this oil shock is the big one.

Macabre story of the week-end.

Vengeance: What can tribal societies tell us about our need to get even?

Benjamin first realized his attraction to men his senior year of high school, but at Brown he tried to put it out of his mind. He flirted with female students and played beer pong with his straight friends. When that became too tedious to bear, he slowly began coming out to friends. Soon he was dating other male students. Young gay rites.
The art of interrogation. “We don’t have any idea — other than anecdote or moral philosophy — what really works.”

Amy Winehouse released from jail with warning to stay out of trouble.

Alongside whatever she has offered her audience through the years — sex, glamour, dancing, defiance, blasphemy, spirituality — Madonna has never pretended to be anything but diligent. She’s disciplined, hard-working and determined to sell.

Former radio personality stole tens of thousands of dollars from a charity he helped create.

Humanoid robot to conduct Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

The physics of whipped cream.

Food dyes may protect against cancer.

The standard model still doesn’t describe magnets’ spooky action at a distance. What Is Magnetism?

Suicide rates significantly higher among Australian veterinarians.

Last month, a team of scientists announced evidence that the Grand Canyon is 17 million years old, or 11 million years older than previous estimates.

A revisionist Israeli historian revisits his country’s origins.

McFLY 2015 project, wants Nike to make available to consumers the sneakers seen in the 1989 movie Back to the Future Part 2.

How to drain a waterbed mattress.

Naked chicks on post-it notes [anims].

Wall animation.

NYC subway sketches.

Record-breaking Mentos and coke explosions.

Thank you Internet.

A woman who told police Satan was driving her car after she killed a mother and daughter has been cleared of causing death by dangerous driving.

New charges of sex acts with cows have been brought against a Moorestown policeman who last week was charged with sexually assaulting three girls.

A bogus letter urging parents of Lincoln High School students to supply kids with alcohol on prom night and to open their homes for sex and alcohol and drug use was sent to families this week.

A Florida teenager faces a charge of elder abuse alleging he made his senile grandmother wear a black mask and hold a handgun for a video he made.

CNN Anchorwoman Paula Zahn told pals her sexless marriage to Richard Cohen drove her into the arms of another man.

Another floating body in the East River, the fourth so far in the city in April.

I got Jimmy Hoffa floating in my swimming pool.

NYC officials announce federal plan to test drinking water.

Breast milk cheese.

Bear tranquilized in N.J. after morning escapade.

700-pound grizzly bear attacked and killed trainer at Southern California animal facility.

How DNA could reveal sex practices of Texas sect. Related: Tipped that girls as young as 13 were being forced to enter “spiritual marriages,” have sex and bear children, Texas officials raided an isolated polygamist retreat in West Texas. [More]

Violent video games and desensitization.

Surprisingly large numbers of people appear to be using brain-enhancing drugs to work harder, longer and better.

What happens when a smallish galaxy plows right through the center of a bigger one?

Fountain.

Manhattan South. [More]

Complex apparatus. Related: Rube Goldberg machine.

Joost.

Police released images from a security camera showing a man chopping down tulips with his umbrella alongside a road in Japan. Roughly 1,900 tulips were cut down in attacks in Maebashi on April 9, 14 and 19.

A Central Florida woman fined $150 a day for having nearly 150 cats at her home was in court Wednesday fighting to keep the animals in her so-called animal sanctuary.

Plans to ban gay jokes rejected by the Lords.

The return to coal as a power source in Europe is sowing real alarm among environmentalists.

Organized criminal networks have penetrated portions of the international energy market and tried to control energy resources.

Food prices are already rising here much faster than the returns you are likely to get from keeping your money in a bank or money-market fund. And there are very good reasons to believe prices on the shelves are about to start rising a lot faster.

The tragic sinking of the Titanic nearly a century ago can be blamed on low grade rivets that the ship’s builders used on some parts of the ill-fated liner, two experts on metals conclude in a new book.

Japan’s trade ministry asked Crocs to improve the material and design of the footwear following a rash of accidents in which wearers, mainly children, were injured while using escalators.

Sales of the iPhone have not been as robust on the Continent, leading some to suggest that the company needs a strategy change.

Apple reported revenue of more than one-half billion dollars above analyst expectations.

Is it worth the effort to wash your dishes by hand?

Who’s making your neighbourhood safer?

Did anyone really ever get tied to railroad tracks?

Search me. Related: Octopart, a search engine for electronic parts.

PornForTheBlind.org

A mirage is not an optical illusion.

RIP.

Police arrest 2 in India for stealing sperm.

Early morning burglar who broke into an adult shop walked away with a $250 replica of porn star Jenna Jameson’s lower half.

A man accidentally shot himself in the stomach after waving his gun in anger at a fellow driver in Tempe, Arizona, and police said Monday he will face charges.

For the first time since the Spanish influenza of 1918, life expectancy is falling for a significant number of American women. Related: US life expectancy may have peaked.

eBay is suing Craigslist, claiming that the company is trying to dilute its stake. At issue is eBay’s 28% minority interest in craiglist.

A United Nations commission has ruled that Australia can expand its continental shelf by 2.5 million square kilometres.

“I didn’t know he was dead.” A Manhattan judge dismissed all charges against the two men accused of dressing their dead friend in a pair of pants, a T-shirt and sneakers - then loading him into a chair, and trying to cash his $355 Social Security check.

Euro rises above $1.60; Airbus raises its prices.

Why do Americans betray their country? Counterintelligence instructors have long offered the mnemonic MICE, for money, ideology, compromise, ego.

An organization of state restaurants asked a federal appeals court Tuesday to stop the city from immediately implementing a requirement that some chain restaurants post calories on menus.

What’s the US Army policy on overweight recruits?

That’s Baker Howard, who calls himself the best-dressed panhandler in New York.

You walk wrong. It’s not your fault. It’s your shoes. Shoes are bad.

Politicians and drug: Who did what.

France’s lighthouses are disintegrating.

Some drugs can boost your cognitive output. Related: Caffeine: Small shots do a brain better than big blasts.

Why can’t you tickle yourself?

Figueroa St.

Success.

Pixel spout in the Lower East Side.

My boobs are really swollen this morning, guess that means a few days until my period.

Angry wife speeds down highway with husband on hood.

Man arrested after pumping gas into imaginary car.

Manhattan jury rejected a Brooklyn man’s claim that employees of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital improperly forced him to undergo a traumatic rectal examination after he sustained an on-the-job injury in 2003.

A man was arrested after he urinated on a 3-year-old child.

Afghanistan swaps heroin for wheat — with wheat prices doubling in the past year, and the street price of heroin falling, it is now more cost effective to grow wheat.

PETA announced plans for a $1 million prize to the “first person to come up with a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in-vitro meat at competitive prices by 2012.”

Gas tops $3.50 a gallon in U.S. for first time.

“We are clearly headed over $120 a barrel and we are targeting $125.”

There is no gas shortage. But Washington, Wall Street, and ethanol and oil and gas companies want you to think there is, says automotive expert Ed Wallace.

Is it safe to drop ammunition and grenades from the air?

Five of the six major airlines in the United States plan to charge passengers for second bag.

What’s better for heating a mug of water: The stove or the microwave?

The human body, inside and out.

Tania will cease the performance immediately if any form of ’surprise buttsex’ occurs.

Son-of-a-bitch mouse solves maze researchers spent months building.

An artist’s complicated relationship with her look-alike sex doll.

In Chelsea, some will never forget.

A barista called 911 to report that she and a co-worker were being harassed by a customer at Espresso Gone Wild, where workers in revealing outfits serve the coffee drinks.

An Italian man was given a suspended jail sentence for staring too intensely at a woman sitting in front of him on a train.

A Malaysian cop was arrested after he allegedly broke into a Mercedes Benz to steal its stereo but then dozed off on its luxurious seat.

CNN personality was busted in Central Park with some drugs in his pocket, a rope around his neck that was tied to his genitals, and a sex toy in his boot.

Bruce Lee, the martial arts actor, is thought to have died by a severe allergic reaction to Equagesic. His brain had swollen about 13%. His autopsy was written as “death by misadventure.”

A married royal said to have performed a gay sex act on his senior aide on a kitchen floor as a Stringfellows stripper egged him on also took drugs.

The gay baby boom.

Who are all these gun owners?

A couple have decided to give away their home to the winner of an essay contest. The catch: It costs $100 to enter, and the home will go only if at least 2,500 people sign up.

Middle-class incomes have been stagnant for several years.

Food prices are causing misery and strife around the world. Related: Global food shortages have taken everyone by surprise.

The role of speculation in recent commodity price movements.

Composition of the air

Presidential candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas held this debate on April 16, 1858 at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

A two-week federal trial will begin in San Francisco on Monday on claims by two veterans’ groups that the government is failing woefully to combat an alleged “epidemic of suicides” and stress disorders among veterans of Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam.

Samll paintings of the abstract kind are having a moment right now in New York. Four young painters who embrace smallness are now having solo shows — three of them New York debuts — that challenge the importance of the big canvas.

Last Manhattan and Brooklyn record stores.

Actress Sandra Bullock and her husband, Jesse James, were involved in a head-on crash with a drunken driver around 10 p.m. Friday.

Nuances between marketing, advertising, PR and branding.

Shoe for one-legged astronauts.

The hard rhymer.

Beer pause.

The Real Hooded Man.

Copyranter is done.

Police arrest naked man who was directing the morning traffic.

Police arrest teens who cooked feces in convenience store microwave.

Happy Crack isn’t actually a drug; it is a mix of powdered Kool-Aid and sugar that kids carry around in plastic bags. “They try to snort it like crack.”

How do ventriloquists do it?

Giving someone flowers improves their mood, not just at the moment of delivery, but long afterwards.

FreshDirect expands Brooklyn delivery service.

Google profit rises 31 percent, beating Wall St. forecast.

Under its new boss Disney has staged an impressive creative turnaround—and is making synergy work.

There is no Easterlin Paradox.

Evolution: 24 myths and misconceptions.

The effect of zoo visitors on the behaviour and welfare of zoo mammals [PDF].

What was the actual cause of death by crucifixion?

Pope meets with U.S. victims of priests’ sexual abuse.

Kennedy Airport is now using a high-tech body scanner to search passengers for hidden weapons.

The costs of solving the air-traffic mess.

This year, Michigan has decided to replace all of its flashing red lights with flashing yellows saying the new lights prevent more crashes, move traffic through an intersection faster, and give traffic engineers more options for handling traffic volumes.

The pose that needs to stop.

Reggaeton singer Miguelito.

LA’s top 12 gang-ridden neighborhoods.

The Bronx in the 60s-70s.

MJ.

Is it safe to eat pork brains?

Beer pause.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget how large and diverse the photography industry is.

Short poem from 8am to 4pm.

Twin amputates arm to give his brother third arm (4/1/1999).

A 22-year-old man is accused of balling up pieces of bread and trying to sell them as crack cocaine to senior citizens in a Florida nursing home.

A man dressed as a woman repeatedly crashed his car into a suburban Detroit lingerie store that refused to hire him.

Headphone dancing ends in arrest in DC.

Party clown arrested on child pornography charges.

Two members of a Bell Gardens family who said police beat them at a Halloween costume party in 2005 have been awarded a $4.5-million civil rights judgment.

Coming from five generations of Ku Klux Klan members, 58-year-old “Ms. Ruth” sews hoods and robes for Klan members seven days a week, blessing each one when it’s done.

In this Austrian town, when you can’t bury bones, you paint them.

Update: Actually, the kid’s sums are in fact wrong, NASA’s are right.

Google faces slowing consumer ad market after finance meltdown. Related: Googolopoly.

An e-mail scam aimed squarely at the nation’s top executives is raising new alarms about the ease with which people and companies can be deceived by online criminals.

This is a meeting of We Are Change Seattle, one of the many local branches of a loosely affiliated network of 9/11 Truth organizations.

The collapse of Australia’s rice production is one of several factors contributing to a doubling of rice prices in the last three months.

Phantom limbs (an often painful sensation that an amputated limb is still part of the body) affect approximately 40 to 80 percent of all amputees. A recent study that used mirrors to erase this phantom pain.

Research has suggested certain vitamin supplements do not extend life and could even lead to a premature death.

The reasons that creates disgust.

Interview: Michael Foley, director of Foley Gallery in Chelsea.

Meeting with Lawrence Taylor.

I meet Keith Richards at his office [interview].

Have you ever noticed you can divide people in two groups?

Fergie and Quentin Tarantino celebrate their birthdays in Las Vegas.

Sorry to trouble you sir…

A man is accused of handcuffing his wife inside a dog cage days after they were married in Las Vegas.

A Westland teenager has been charged with sodomizing, torturing and killing a cat.

The Bush administration said yesterday that it plans to start using the nation’s most advanced spy technology for domestic purposes soon.

Man returns home to find neighbour’s plane crash-landed on his patio.

The retired engineernicknamed “Mole Man”.

A 13-year-old German schoolboy corrected NASA’s estimates on the chances of an asteroid colliding with Earth. Update: Actually, the kid’s sums are in fact wrong, NASA’s are right.

Tiny towns in N.J. may have to merge.

Huge California quake predicted within 30 years.

Manhattan rents down except for one-bedrooms.

The recession may not be as severe as many fear, but the recovery could take longer.

Worst food inflation in 17 years.

Britain could be hardest hit by the global credit crisis as banks in this country have racked up bigger losses than anywhere else in the world.

British royal family gay sex blackmail case.

How France freed the hostages and captured the pirates.

Oklahoma leaks tens of thousands of Social Security numbers, other sensitive data.

What makes sad music sad?

At 31, she had been on one antidepressant or another nearly continuously since she was 14.

How to make an anatomically correct brain cake.

You may think you decided to read this story — but in fact, Your brain made the decision long before you knew about it.

Hey RIAA, suck on this one.

Giant 20-foot-long replica of a human colon.

I woke up with spiderman’s dick in my living room.

Three men stepped into a Boynton Beach strip club and shot several dancers with paintball guns in retaliation for another stripper’s alleged mispayment.

35 dozen oysters in eight minutes. “I could probably do a couple dozen more, especially if they were charbroiled.”

Uruguay hosts biggest BBQ, grills 12 tons of beef.

Boy blows 213 balloons with nose.

Big U.S. study links breast cancer to drinking.

A promising new cancer treatment that may one day replace radiation and chemotherapy is edging closer to human trials.

Over the weekend I learned that all of my current and future problems have been solved.

Monsanto already dominates America’s food chain with its genetically modified seeds. Now it has targeted milk production. Just as frightening as the corporation’s tactics–ruthless legal battles against small farmers–is its decades-long history of toxic contamination.

NYU president John Sexton has been promised a blank check to duplicate his university on a desert island in Abu Dhabi. The expansion will leave both campuses flush with petrodollars.

Gawker sells three sites.

Munehisa Honma, the greatest trader of all time.

Lawyer admits stealing $310,000 from his grandparents.

Police charged an aspiring reality show director with blocking four women — half of a cast billed as ordinary girls hoping to become “princesses” — from leaving the central Florida house where the show was being shot. The women were also upset that they had not been paid for the past five weeks of filming.


Wal-Mart to film gun sales in bid to fight crime. Related: More attempts to limit guns.

More demand for pets’ end-of-life care.

Test if a plant is edible. Avoid thorns, spines, mushrooms, plants with shiny leaves, yellow or white berries, umbrella-shaped flowers, milky sap…

Stuff Korean people like.

Forty-five years ago, Elaine Kaufman, who was running a restaurant in Greenwich Village, used her life savings to buy an Austro-Hungarian bar at 88th Street and Second Avenue. Elaine’s became a famous literary refuge, saloon and restaurant.

A spelling-challenged city worker changed the name of SoHo’s Mercer St. to Merser St.

Jean Shrimpton in New York, 1962.

Cholera in Nineteenth-Century New York.

Receive bacon.

Eames, fake, obese.

Magicians to repopulate hives.

Don’t drink nitrogen: “within two seconds, I collapsed to the floor, unable to breathe or indeed do anything except feel intense pain.”