Mind Soup

A Croatian man claims he has drunk nothing but Coca-Cola for the past 40 years – because he promised his mother he would not touch alcohol. Pero Ajtman, 71, said he promised his mother he would stop drinking alcoholic beverages four decades ago. "My mum didn't like me drinking when I was a young man as she was very religious," he explained to the Croatian tabloid 24 Sata . "She made me promise never to drink again and Coca-Cola was the only thing that tasted as good as wine so I started drinking that. "Now I have a glass in the morning, before and after lunch, with my dinner and then before I go to bed. I never drink anything else." The pensioner, who lives in the village of Karanac, near the city of Osijek, in eastern Croatia, said he had no intention of abandoning his habit. "My mother isn't here to tell me not to drink any more but I'm not even tempted to quit coke for alcohol. ...

A Japanese restaurant in New York has taken pity on a 140-year-old lobster and said that it would not end its days boiled in a pot but instead swim free in the Atlantic Ocean. On Saturday, the venerable crustacean, named Craig, will leave the acquarium at the Halu Japanese Restaurant & Grill in Brooklyn, where it has been on display, and head north. The owners of the Dyker Heights restaurant have asked People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) to return the ancient 20-pound crustacean shipped to Maine, where it is to be released into the sea on Saturday. Local law in Maine forbids taking lobsters above a certain size. "Kudos to Halu for allowing Craig to live out the rest of his days in his native habitat," Ingrid Newkirk, president of the animals rights group Peta, said in a statement. Peta has been campaigning to liberate restaurant lobsters and save them from being thrown alive in a pot of boiling water. According to invertebrate zoologist Jaren...

TORONTO – Sarah Palin unwittingly took a prank call Saturday from a Canadian comedian posing as French President Nicolas Sarkozy and telling her she would make a good president someday. “Maybe in eight years,” replies a laughing Palin. The Republican vice presidential nominee discusses politics, the perils of hunting with Vice President Dick Cheney, and Sarkozy’s “beautiful wife,” in a recording of the six-minute call released Saturday and set to air Monday on a Quebec radio station. Palin campaign spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt confirmed she had received the prank call. “Governor Palin was mildly amused to learn that she had joined the ranks of heads of state, including President Sarkozy and other celebrities, in being targeted by these pranksters. C’est la vie,” she said. The call was made by a well-known Montreal comedy duo Marc-Antoine Audette and Sebastien Trudel. Known as the Masked Avengers, the two are notorious for prank calls to celebrities and heads of state. Audette, posi...

Versace, the renowned fashion house, is to create the world’s first refrigerated beach so that hotel guests can walk comfortably across the sand on scorching days. The beach will be next to the the new Palazzo Versace hotel which is being built in Dubai where summer temperatures average 40C and can reach 50C. The beach will have a network of pipes beneath the sand containing a coolant that will absorb heat from the surface. The swimming pool will be refrigerated and there are also proposals to install giant blowers to waft a gentle breeze over the beach. Soheil Abedian, founder and president of Palazzo Versace, said he believed it is possible to design a refrigerated beach and make it sustainable. “We will suck the heat out of the sand to keep it cool enough to lie on,” he said. “This is the kind of luxury that top people want.” Hyder Consulting, a British construction consultancy, is overseeing the engineering on the project. The hotel will be marketed strongly in the UK where D...

A baby boy playing with his dad’s telephone accidentally called 911, which led police to their house — and a 500-plant marijuana-growing operation. Police said Tuesday the incident happened at about 11 a.m. Friday in the 14800 block of Goggs Avenue in White Rock. When White Rock RCMP officers arrived at the rental house, they found the 11-month-old child fiddling with the phone while his 29-year-old dad sat watching television. “He was surprised to see us,” Const. Janelle Canning said. The 911 call was a hang-up call and police had heard no voices. The dad, whose name has not been released, protested that he hadn’t called 911 and his son didn’t know how to use the phone. Nevertheless, police checked the place out because of the amount of condensation on the house’s windows and found the pot-growing operation in a locked room. The dad was then arrested and was expected to appear in court in ...

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