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How bizarre!
by Thanos Kalamidas
2011-11-19 10:38:20 |
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Swiss can ban naked hiking, court rules
 Switzerland's highest court has ruled that local authorities can impose fines on people hiking nude in the Alps. The federal court threw out an appeal by a man who was fined after hiking past a family picnic area with no clothes on.
Judges said the eastern canton (region) of Appenzell had been entitled to uphold a law on public decency. They said the ban on naked hiking was only a marginal infringement on personal freedom. Although Switzerland does not have a law against public nudity it does have one against public indecency.
The man had been fined 100 Swiss francs (£69; $109) after he walked naked past a family with small children at a picnic area and a Christian rehabilitation centre for drug users in Appenzell. "It is not overly high-handed to qualify naked hiking as a breach of decency customs," the court said in a statement.
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Bands banned for term
 Queen’s Bands were suspended yesterday after controversial material was brought to university administrators. After the announcement, the Journal received three years of pamphlets entitled ‘The Banner’ which was distributed to band members.
The pamphlets contained phrases like “I will rape you with a lamp” and photos of band members as “people with dicks in their mouths.” Front page titles over the past three years included: “Mouth raping your little sister since 1905,” “Sucking the nipple and biting the tit since 1905” and “Perpetuating racial stereotypes since 1905.”
The pamphlets described The Banner as “our dirty gossip rag.” On Sept. 17 2010, an issue of it warned first years not to misplace a copy. “We poke fun at people who we think can take it,” a letter inside that September issue stated. Inside the pamphlets were images of genitalia and pictures of animals and slugs under the headline “Beastiality’s Best…?”
Some of the pamphlets included the lyrics of Queen’s Bands songs, which contained phrases like “chew me, screw me, suck me, fuck me, yaaay Queen’s.” There were also heckling suggestions for the annual RMC and Queen’s hockey game, the Carr Harris Cup like “we hope you can shoot the Taliban better than you shoot the puck!” Yesterday afternoon the Queen’s Bands Executive sent an email to bands members ordering them to destroy all hard copy or digital versions of the Queen’s Bands Songbook.
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Stolen car driven to court
 In need of a ride to court, an Albany woman and two friends allegedly took a stolen car. Colonie police received a call at 5:14 p.m. Wednesday from officers in Albany. A stolen car with an OnStar global positioning system indicated that the car was in Colonie at 243 Wolf Road. A short time later, it had been moved to 312 Wolf Road, the address of the town's Public Safety Centre.
Police found the unoccupied car in their parking lot and arrested three suspects. One of those arrested, Pamela D. Copes, 33, of Albany, had a court appearance in Colonie Justice Court for two previous arrests. The car is a white 2007 Chevrolet Impala four-door sedan valued at $12,325. The car was reported stolen from 427 Second Ave., Albany, at 6:52 a.m. Wednesday.
Copes is charged with criminal possession of stolen property in the third degree, a felony. Copes was in court answering charges from an incident on March 28 that include unlawfully fleeing a police officer in the third degree, reckless driving and aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle in the third degree, all misdemeanours. She also was charged with unlawful possession of marijuana, a violation.
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Bird flu research rattles bioterrorism field
Scientists and security specialists are in the midst of a fierce debate over recent experiments on a strain of bird flu virus that made it more contagious. The big question: Should the results be made public? Critics say doing so could potentially reveal how to make powerful new bioweapons. The H5N1 virus has been circulating among birds and other animals in recent years. It's also infected about 500 people. More than half died. But this dangerous virus has not caused widespread human disease because, so far, sick people haven't been very contagious.
 If the virus evolves to spread as easily between people as seasonal flu, however, it could cause a devastating global pandemic. So in an attempt to stay ahead of H5N1, scientists have been tweaking its genes in the lab to learn more about how this virus works, and what it is capable of. In September, one scientist made a stunning announcement. At a flu conference held in Malta, he said he'd done a lab experiment that resulted in bird flu virus becoming highly contagious between ferrets — the animal model used to study human flu infection. It seemed that just five mutations did the trick.
News of the results raised red flags for Dr. Thomas Inglesby, a bioterrorism expert and director of the Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. "It's just a bad idea for scientists to turn a lethal virus into a lethal and highly contagious virus. And it's a second bad idea for them to publish how they did it so others can copy it," says Inglesby. No science journal has published the information yet. And Inglesby hopes none of them do. Biology research usually has a culture of openness. Scientists report their methods and results so others can repeat their work and learn from it.
Inglesby agrees that's the way to go the vast majority of the time. But not this time. "There are some cases that I think are worth an exception to that otherwise very important scientific principle," he says. "I can only imagine that the process of deliberating about the publication of these findings is quite serious." The researcher who presented these findings at the science meeting is virologist Ron Fouchier, of the Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands. NPR has learned that his work is now under scrutiny by a committee called the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity.
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