Date : Thursday, July 22, 2010
Time : 5:00 AM
Title : Weird Articles

Been reading a couple of weird articles lately:

'Abducted' scientist found in US

TEHERAN - IRANIAN nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri, who claims he was kidnapped by US spies, surfaced at Teheran's interest section in Washington on Tuesday to declare Americans 'losers' in the long-running saga.

Iranian state television's website said Dr Amiri had taken refuge at the interest section, which is overseen by the Pakistani embassy in Washington, and added he had asked 'for a quick return to Teheran.'

Dr Amiri soon afterwards told the New York reporter of the channel by telephone from the interest section that the Americans had wanted to try to resolve the affair quietly but had failed, the website said.

'After the release of my interview on the Internet and the disgrace for the American government over this abduction, they wanted to quietly return me to Iran by some country's airline, so that while denying the whole thing they can put a cap on the abduction,' Dr Amiri said.

'But in the end they couldn't. Since the day of the release of my remarks on the Internet, the Americans have seen themselves as losers in this saga.' In June, a man claiming to be Dr Amiri was shown in two separate videos broadcast on Iran state television. In one of the videos he said he had escaped from the hands of US agents in Virginia.

Pakistan confirmed that Amiri was at the Iranian interest section in Washington and that he was being repatriated to Teheran.

Boy dies during exorcism ritual

MOSCOW - A FOUR-YEAR-OLD boy died during an exorcism ritual carried out by a traditional healer in the Far East of Russia, investigators said on Tuesday.

The boy's mother went to police on Saturday after the boy died while visiting a 'healer' in a village, investigators said in a statement.

'According to the boy's relatives, his death was caused by alternative medicine methods used on him,' it said.

The boy along with family members visited an ethnic Korean healer in the village of Sergeyevka in the Far Eastern Primorye region, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported, citing relatives.

The healer said that the family had a curse on it because the boy was a 'demon' and told them to leave while she carried out an exorcism, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported. When they returned, they found the boy had died.

The boy apparently suffocated during the ritual, after healers held him face-down to the ground, Life News web site reported, naming the boy as Dima Kazachuk.

New species of octopus found

HONG KONG - RESEARCHERS have discovered four new species of octopus in Antarctica with venom that works at sub-zero temperatures.

They hope to analyse the venom to see if it has medical uses, said one of the researchers, Bryan Fry, of the University of Melbourne. Their discovery, during a six-week expedition to Antarctica in 2007, was published in the journal Toxicon.

Experts have long known there were octopuses in Antarctica, but what surprised Mr Fry and his colleagues was the sheer biodiversity and how natural selection changed the way they hunted and the nature of their venom.

The octopuses would drill small holes in large, shelled prey, through which they inject their toxic saliva.

'We found that venom can work at sub-zero temperatures. It was quite remarkable to find how well octopuses have adapted to Antarctic life,' Mr Fry said.

There was a great diversity of species, ranging from octopuses that were two inches long to giant ones, he said.