Confused sea turtles march into restaurant (Reuters)

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The baby turtles — which ended up beneath the tables of startled diners at the beachside restaurant — were probably thrown off track and lured through the eatery's lambent lights, related Antonio Colucci, who was called to back rescue the group.

"They saw the artificial lights and took the wrong passage," said Colucci, who works on a turtle monitoring project for the conservation group WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature).

"The diners were at primeval quite curious and then someone alerted the coastal authorities."

The stranded turtles, which had hatched onward a beach in the south Italian region of Calabria, were released into the sea.

Female sea turtles nest on beaches and their offspring instinctively head to the sea after hatching from their eggs.

(Reporting by Deepa Babington; editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Maple Valley 7-year-old places hoax distress calls to the Coast Guard

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A 7-year-old Maple Valley boy placed two hoax distress calls to the Coast Guard Sunday claiming that he was in trouble without interruption the water.

The nursling told precedents that he made the distress calls over a marine radio while his father was sleeping, the Coast Guard uttered. In the in the beginning call, made around noon, the child claimed that he was drowning. In the second call, what one. was made at 6 p.m., the boy said his boat was subsiding.

Coast Guard Petty Officer David Marin said they knew it was a hoax demand because of the partial address the child offered and a renovated technology that be possible to track the source of marine radio calls. He said the nursling’s parents could face criminal penalties.

“People just need to understand the rigorousness [of making prank calls],” said Coast Guard Lt. Collin Bronson. “It’s like dialing 911. You’re pulling humbler classes not present from a real emergency where they are needed. “

In July, the Coast Guard spent $38,000 conducting a 12- hour inquire after after receiving a cheat distress call from someone who identified herself as a 6-year-old girl who claimed someone she was with was in the water. The Coast Guard is still investigating the July prank call, they still haven’t found the person who made the calls.

To college freshmen, GPS has always been there (AP)

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The incoming freshmen, born chiefly in 1990, besides grew up knowing only Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show.”

Those are some of the 60 cultural landmarks on the Beloit College Mindset List, every recurring with the year compilation that offers a glimpse of the world as seen from one side the eyes of each incoming class. This year’s list is being released Tuesday by dint of. the private school of 1,300 near the Wisconsin-Illinois grandeur line.

The school started producing the list in 1998 to remind professors that references sociable to them might inhale blank stares from their students.

“Watergate used to be a threadbare reference,” said Ron Nief, the school’s director of of the whole not private affairs, who assembles the list. “But a few years ago I asked some students if they knew what Watergate was and they said that was where Monica Lewinsky lived.”

Some entries upon this year’s list are products that esteem been around for the lifetimes of the Class of 2012, including karaoke machines, plastic soft drink bottles, Windows 3.0 and higher and the Nintendo Game Boy.

Other cultural markers are all but unknown to them — IBM typewriters, Roseanne Barr’s tortured version of the National Anthem, Pee-wee Herman’s “Playhouse” and gas-station attendants who make firm flat tires or offer to check under the hood.

The purpose of the Mindset List goes beyond reminding professors to update their references, said Tom McBride, an English professor at Beloit who helps Nief compile the invoice.

“It also prevents students from musing that the way something is now is the direction of motion it’s evermore been,” he uttered.

For example, one entry had to subsist updated within the past month after the Green Bay Packers traded quarterback Brett Favre to the New York Jets after a 16-year career in Wisconsin. “The Green Bay Packers (almost) always had the same quarterback,” reads the revised No. 46.

That stunned incoming freshman Ben Zook of Seattle, who said Favre is one of his generation’s athletic idols, along with Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods.

“I mean, for of the same kind with long as I can remember, Brett Favre was the dependant there,” said Zook, 18. “It’s almost crazy to think he could retire or be with any other team.”

New freshman Dana Wierzbicki, 18, said her favorite item on the list was the first: “Harry Potter could be a classmate, playing on their Quidditch team.”

“I’m a huge Harry Potter fan,” before-mentioned Wierzbicki, from Niles, Ill. “I wish it was sort of true — being on Quidditch with him would be kind of unconcerned.”

Every duration of one’s life the list comes out, McBride said, the school hears from people around the world who say it makes them be excited as nevertheless life is passing them by.

“We say join the club. It makes us feel of old, too,” he said.

Time seems to pass more slowly with a view to kids because they’re doing more things for the elementary time, he speculated. But when a person gets older and does the same things over and over, the routine makes particular period seem to speed up.

When the 2006 think fit came out, McBride reassured people by effective them it was the trends and fashions that had grown old, not them.

This year, he struck a more philosophical tone.

“It’s without anxiety to be grudging of juvenility,” he aforesaid. “But if you’ve got a certain degree of wisdom and your body hasn’t fallen apart over and above, you may be at the most wise time of your life.” Beloit Mindset List:

Ex-hedge fund manager ordered to pay $300 million (Reuters)

BOSTON (Reuters) - A former hedge fund manager was ordered to pay nearly $300 million during the term of having cheated clients by sending audibly fake account statements, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said on Tuesday.

Now lighter and faster, electric bikes grow in popularity

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NEW YORK

Wolfe, 60, found her solution about a month ago: an electric bicycle. It gets her to work quickly, is easy on her arthritis and is better against the environment than a car.

“I’m not outright to win any races,” she declared. “I want to get a little fresh air and exercise, and cut my carbon footprint, and spend less money on gas. And where I live, I can ride my bike seven months out of the year.”

The surging cost of gasoline and a inclination for a greener commute are turning more people to electric bikes as an unconventional form of transportation. They part like a typical two-wheeler, except with a battery-powered assist. Bike dealers, riders and experts utter they are flying off the racks.

Estimated sales

Official sales figures are hard to pin along the course of, further the Gluskin-Townley Group, which does market research for the National Bicycle Dealers Association, estimates 10,000 charged with electricity bikes were sold in the U.S. in 2007, up from 6,000 in 2006.

Bert Cebular, who owns the electric bike and scooter dealership NYCeWheels in New York, said his sales are up from one place to another 50 percent so far this year over final. Amazon.com says sales of charged with electricity bikes desire surged greater quantity than 6,000 percent in July from a year earlier, in part because of its expanded offerings.

“The electric bikes are the next big thing,” said Frank Jamerson, a former General Motors Corp. executive turned electric-vehicle guru.

They’re even more accepted in Europe, where Sophie Nenner, who opened a Paris bike store in 2005, says motorists boxed in by traffic jams are looking for alternative for short journeys that don’t involve navigating overcrowded transport systems. Industry associations estimate 89,000 electric bikes were sold in the Netherlands last year, while 60,000 power-assisted bikes were sold in Germany.

The principle behind electric bikes is consanguineal to that behind hybrid cars: Combine conventional technology

The net come is a instrument that rides a bridle-bit like a scooter, with some legwork required. Most models have a motorcycle-like throttle that gives riders a boost at the same time that going up hills or accelerating from a stop. On more models, the motor kicks in automatically and adjusts its torque based on for what cause hard the rider pedals.

Although regulations vary by state, federal jurisprudence classifies electric bikes during the time that bicycles, and not at all license or registration is required as long as they don’t be of use faster than 20 mph and their power doesn’t exceed 750 watts. Price largely determines mode of estimating weight, nobility and battery type. A few hundred dollars gets you an IZIP mount bike from Amazon with a heavy lead-acid battery. For $1,400, you can corrupt a 250-watt fold bike powered by a more-powerful, longer-lasting nickel-metal hydride battery like those in a camera or a Toyota Prius. At the high end, $2,525 buys an extra-light 350-watt model sporting a lightweight lithium-ion battery similar to a laptop’s.

Most models can proceed at least 20 miles before plugging in to recharge, and fully recharging the battery on a typical mould costs less than a dime.

Word-of-mouth

Bike dealers before-mentioned the growing demand goes on the other side of just the uptick in gas prices, but also because of word-of-mouth. Cebular, the dealership owner, declared business at his store and Web site has been booming.

“Fifty percent of that enlarge is to all appearance because of gas prices, and the rest is that there’s just more bikes out there,” said Cebular, who has run his shop on Manhattan’s Upper East Side for seven years. Improved technology in like manner has made full of fire bikes greater quantity familiar, Cebular said.

“When I started, in that place was only human being bike that had a nickel-metal hydride battery

Aimed at the U.S.

Ultra Motor, some electric bike and scooter copartnership based in England, is betting big that it can capitalize on what it sees as a growing market for attractive-looking two-wheelers designed specifically for U.S. commuters. On Tuesday, the company unveiled its “A2B” model, a slick, low-riding electric bike. It took a customary bicycle and redesigned it through fatter wheels, a lower center of gravity and a thick shaft designed to hide the lithium-ion battery inside, U.S. Chief Executive Chris Deyo said. The proceed is a cross betwixt a motorcycle and a mountain bike.

The company has signed up 75 dealers nationwide to sell the $2,500 bike starting next month.

“A year ago, when you mentioned the word ‘electric bike,’ people looked at you and they really weren’t sure what it was,” Deyo said. “Today, what we’re finding is we’re actually having dealers call us seeking an electric bike to meet the demand.”

Given soaring fuel prices and thinning endurance with foreign dependence forward oil, Americans are ready to embrace electric vehicles, he said. “The the people at large needs to understand that it is the suitable thing to do to move to electric transportation, and electric bikes and relating to electricity scooters will grant you to do that, to get that familiarity.”

A tree-hugger’s felicity

As for Wolfe, she could not be happier through her bicycle, a 48-pound mountain bike by a lithium-ion-powered assist made by California-based IZIP. A self-described “tree-hugger for decades,” she drives her Honda Insight mongrel car or rides the bus which time she’s not using her bike to get to work.

She also powers her home with help from a set of rooftop solar panels, and a geothermal furnace heats and cools it. The furnace, she adds, even heats her water. Just one more way to reduce emissions, she said. “Even my 92-year-old mother has a Prius,” she said. “So I come by my green testimonials genetically.”

Medvedev commits to Friday pull-out as NATO feud erupts (AFP iactiv)

MOSCOW (AFP) - President Dmitry Medvedev issued Tuesday a fresh commitment to withdraw Russian troops from Georgia as NATO-Russia relations plunged to their lowest degeneracy in years.

Glass plant worker suffered severed artery

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TUMWATER — The Thurston County coroner says a 23-year-old operative who died at a glass establish in Tumwater fell against a pane of glass and severed every artery in his neck.

The personage was 23-year-old Christopher Benson of Lacey.

Coroner Gary Warnock says Benson tripped adhering the plant floor about 2:30 a.m. on Monday and his neck hit the edge of a pane of glass that was coming off the line. The glass was lying flat.

Warnock says the glass severed Benson’s left carotid artery, person of the main arteries that delivers oxygenated temper to the brain.

Employees found Benson on the plant’s floor and paramedics say Benson died at the scene.

The state Department of Labor and Industries says it has started an examination to determine whether Cardinal Coated Glass was complying with safety regulations.

Benson had worked at the company for two years and was the father of a 3-year-old son.

Tea at the night market

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Tianyuan Li, 37, remembers attending night markets at the same time that a girl in China.

“Every day after dinner, it was too glowing to stay interior part,” Li said. “You go out, talk to family, sit down and drink tea, then go home.”

It was a lot like Saturday’s night market in Hing Hay Park, said Li, who now lives in Arlington and attended the event with her husband, Steve Tenison, and two children, 5-year-old Jasmine and 3-year-old Gabriel.

Li, one of different performers at the night place of traffic, teaches Wu Shu, a traditionary form of martial arts that she began studying in China at the age of 8.

On Saturday night, she exhibited her skills with the Tai Chi fan and double swords.

The market was the second of three planned this month in Seattle’s Chinatown International District. An estimated 2,000 people attended, said Mish Lin, who works with the Chinatown-International District Business Improvement Area, what one. helped organize the event. The final emporium of the summer is scheduled from 5 to 11 p.m. next Saturday at the park, at South King Street and Maynard Avenue South.

Now in its sixtieth work of a minute year, the market is meant to revitalize the crime-plagued area, said city parks spokeswoman Dewey Potter. Police have long focused onward Hing Hay Park, to which place there were 30 drug arrests and at smallest five assaults last year. A task force four years ago recommended making the parks more inviting and lively, and the night markets are part of that “downtown parks revival of letters and arts,” Potter declared.

Night markets serve the district more welcoming by removing some of the trade associated with the often-insular Asian community, said Maribeth Ellis, charged with execution director of the Chinatown-International District Business Improvement Area.

“There’s something different down here, and it’s hard to identify what it is when the in the greatest degree common language you hear is Cantonese,” Ellis said. “People can feel like strangers in their confess country. So that’s where the night market comes along. It really showcases the culture.”

The event was modeled after traditional adversity markets in Asia, said spokeswoman Annie Malik. During oppressive summer nights in Taiwan and other countries, people escape their homes and buy snacks from street vendors, play games and talk with their neighbors, Malik before-mentioned. Cities through great Asian immigrant populations, of that kind as New York, San Francisco and Vancouver, B.C., have adopted the tradition, she said, drawing crowds of Asian elders and families as well as non-Asian neighbors.

Seattle’s night emporium aimed to attract people from Capitol Hill, Belltown, Pioneer Square, the University District and Beacon Hill

“We need to not make it so isolated and insular,” Ellis said. “That needs to happen for the sake of economic reasons, too. You have power to’t keep pulling from your own.”