Chicken nugget fan Stacey Irvine has been warned they are killing her — because the 17-year-old has eaten practically nothing else since the age of two.

Horrified doctors learned of the teenager’s chronic 15-year addiction after she collapsed and was rushed to hospital struggling to breathe.
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The offending urinals designed by Dutch artist Meike van Schijndel.

Women’s rights campaigners are demanding the removal of urinals shaped like female mouths from the men’s lavatory of a Rolling Stones museum in Germany. The owner denies the bowls are offensive and vows: “They’re staying.”

Women in the northern German town of Lüchow have expressed their dissatisfaction with the design of two urinals in the men’s toilet of a museum dedicated to the Rolling Stones. They are shaped like red lips, similar to the legendary logo of the band, but they look more feminine, and they lack tongues.

Local activist Roda Armbruster wants the urinals removed. “That’s discrimination against women,” she told regional broadcaster NDR. “Why does it have to be a woman’s mouth? If it had been based on the emblem of the Stones with the tongue, it would have been OK. But the tongue’s been left out and they really looks like women’s mouths.”Marianne Jönsson-Olm, the official in charge of women’s issues in the Lüchow town administration, said: “An uproar has gone through the population — around a dozen women came to me and complained.”

Defiant and Unrepentant

The museum was opened last October by a retired banker, Ulli Schröder, 62, who has been collecting Stones memorabilia for decades.

His response to the criticism has been defiant and unrepentant. “That’s not a man’s mouth or a woman’s mouth, that’s art. They were damned expensive and they’re staying where they are and that’s final.”The urinals were designed by a woman, Dutch artist Meike van Schijndel, and have attracted controversy before. They were removed from a toilet in New York after complaints.

The town council subsidized the museum with €100,000. Lüchow’s mayor, Hubert Schwedland, has been trying to mediate. “You can’t argue about personal taste and art, everyone interprets it themselves and draws their own conclusions. People who don’t like them should avoid them.”

cro — with wire reports

Reporting Randy Paige

STUDIO CITY (CBS) — A SoCal woman says the energy efficient window installed in a neighbor’s condominium is melting the plastic components on cars parked in her carport.

Heather Patron of Studio City was dealing with a mystery regarding her Toyota Prius.

“The side view mirrors were melting,” says Patron. “Anything that was plastic on the car was melting.”

Toyota told Patron nothing was wrong with the car. After having the mirrors replaced, she noticed the mirrors on the car parked next to hers were also melting.

Patron then observed a powerful beam of light that was reflecting off the window of a next door condominium, casting a concentrated beam over her carport.

CBS2’s Randy Paige placed a thermometer in the pathway of the beam on a partially cloudy day. The temperature registered over 120 degrees in less than five minutes.

“I’m positive that this window is what is causing the damage to my car,” says Patron.

Patron is not alone. Reports across the country have alleged damages brought on by concentrated sunlight reflected off of energy efficient windows. The National Association of Home Builders is now conducting a study on the matter.

“I just don’t feel like it’s fair,” says Patron. “I feel like it needs to be known that this is happening. And a lot of people probably have damage out there, that they aren’t aware that it’s the windows that are causing this.”

The Los Angeles City Department of Building and Safety says even if the window is the source of the damage, there are no code violations involved. The department says it’s not against the law to install a window that reflects sunlight.

Police officer Andrew Pirtle was struck by the stuffed animal toy after trying to arrest 24-year-old Mr Phipps, a resident of Des Moines in Iowa, who was seen by Pirtle after robbing a corner store.

Officer Pirtle had reported seeing Mr Phipps walking out of the store carrying two stuffed animals, but thought nothing of it. It wasn’t until he was later informed about a robbery involving the toys that he reacted.

Pirtle approached Mr Phipps questioning him about his recent whereabouts on the Saturday night when the incident took place. It was at this point when the 24-year-old became aggressive towards the officer giving him a right hook… with the stuffed monkey he was holding.

The impact of the blow was far from enough to stop officer Pirtle from restraining the suspect and taking him to jail.

Police reports revealed that Mr Phipps had entered the Git-N-Go convenience store robbing it of not only the two fluffy toys, but also a pair of sunglasses and double packs of smokeless tobacco.

Mr Phipps foresaw his fate when he replied to a confused store clerk: ‘Don’t you worry about it. I’m going back to prison anyway.’

Rebecca Hains / AP

In this Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2011 photo provided by Rebecca Hains, a TSA agent holds a jar containing a cupcake that was confiscated at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. Hains says the agent took her cupcake, telling her its frosting was enough like a gel to violate TSA restrictions on allowing liquids and gels onto flights to prevent them from being used as explosives.

A woman who just flew back home from Las Vegas says an airport security officer confiscated her frosted cupcake because he thought the icing on it could be a security risk.

Rebecca Hains said the Transportation Security Administration agent at McCarran International Airport took her cupcake Wednesday, telling her its frosting was enough like a gel to violate TSA restrictions on allowing liquids and gels onto flights to prevent them from being used as explosives. She said the agent told her the frosting was conforming to the jar it was inside.

“I just thought this was terrible logic,” Hains said Friday.

Hains, who lives in Peabody, just north of Boston, said the agent didn’t seem concerned that the cupcake could actually be explosive, just that it fit some bureaucratic definition about what was prohibited. She said he even offered to let her eat it away from the airport security area.

Hains, a 35-year-old communications professor at Salem State University, said she told the agent she had passed through security at Boston’s Logan International Airport earlier in the week with two cupcakes packaged in jars, gifts from a student. But she said the agent told her that just meant TSA in Boston didn’t do its job.

The TSA, which is entrusted with protecting the nation’s transportation system, was reviewing the situation, agency spokesman Nico Melendez said. Passengers are allowed to take cakes and cupcakes through checkpoints, he said.

Hains ultimately surrendered the cupcake. But she said the situation highlighted a lack of common sense by the agent and the ludicrousness of TSA policies.

“It’s not really about the cupcake; I can get another cupcake,” she said. “It’s about an encroachment on civil liberties. We’re just building up a resistance and tolerance to all these things they’re doing in the name of security, when it’s really theater. It is not keeping us safe.”

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/12/23/national/a162747S27.DTL#ixzz1inolxyM2

Tuesday, 06 December 2011 As of December 1, 2011, it is illegal to be homeless in the European country of Hungary, as a new law prohibiting it comes into effect. Those who are found to be in breach of this law will initially be given a warning for sleeping out on the streets. Offenders may also face a fine of US$600, which equates to £382 or €445, or a jail sentence.

A significant majority of the National Assembly of Hungary voted in favour of the law in October of this year. The Fidesz, a ruling party in the country, proposed the law on the basis that homelessness was becoming too significant a problem for the capital Budapest. The city is thought to contain ten thousand homeless individuals.

The unemployment rate for Hungary as a whole is approximately 10.7%. However, for the Romani people, this figure may rise to somewhere in between sixty and ninety per cent, according to International Business Times. 48% of those in the country without an occupation have not had one for at least twelve months, RTTNews reported.

According to BBC News Online, the new law has attracted a substantial amount of criticism from various quarters, including charities supporting the homeless, that it could not be enforced, while there are too few positions available in hostels, they have claimed. Hungarian Maltese Charity Service deputy head Miklos Vecsei believed that the laws were put in place due to the dissatisfaction of the public and had not been based on any professional or rational examinations. Vecsei believes that the problem of homelessness should not be outlawed but resolved.

István Tarlós, the Mayor of Budapest, told The Budapest Report that “those who believe that all problems would be solved if homeless people were given housing” would be “mistaken” in thinking so.

Mate Kocsis, the Fidesz MP that created the law, said that the issue of homelessness is one that should be rectified by the local councils of Hungary, while indicating that various recently introduced plans for and positions in hostels existed. Charities for those affected by homelessness believe that this would nonetheless cause one to three thousand individuals to have no shelter to reside in. Those who do not approve of the law are preparing to demonstrate to the National Assembly in opposition of it.

Information from: Wikinews, http://www.wikinews.org

Image: Gubbubu.