Kung Fu Card Hurler as a Career...

A Chinese man has carved out a new career as a card sharp - by using his kung fu training to hurl playing cards like throwing knives.

Bai Dengchun, 23, can throw cards with such force and accuracy that he can slice a cucumber or burst a balloon from 16ft away.

His parents thought his unusual hobby was a waste of time - until a slot on TV led to an opening as a performer in magic shows.

Bai, from Qingdao, northern China's Shandong Province, showed off his skills by throwing 28 cards into a watermelon from 10ft away. He can also use his card-throwing talents to break an egg or knock off the end of a lit cigarette from a friend's mouth.

"The cards are like darts to me. I can precisely hit any target within a five metre radius," said Bai, who learnt kung fu from childhood.

Ironically, he developed his talent because he was such a poor poker player: "When I was young I loved playing poker but I always lost," he explained. "I would always end up throwing my hand away and eventually I realised I could throw the cards a long way away - and very accurately.

"Three years ago I decided to give up poker and take up throwing cards instead. Each month I used part of my salary to buy cards to practise with and it's paid off."

Boy Head Stuck in a Pressure Cooker

It is not without reason that moms tell their kids to keep away from the kitchen. The case of 3 year-old Shivam, who got his head stuck in a pressure cooker while playing, underlines this. It took two hours of painstaking effort by a team of 12 doctors to release the child from the cooker, with the help of equipment like saw and screwdrivers.

Shivam, a resident of Rani Bagh in north Delhi, was playing with the pressure cooker on Monday evening when his head got stuck inside, sources said.

When all efforts failed, his parents took him to a nearby clinic. "Even doctors at the clinic failed to take his head out. Due to constant pulling, my son underwent tremendous pain. There were cuts on his eyelids and in the forehead area," said Sanjay, the child's father. The parents then took the child to Bhagwan Mahavir Hospital in Pitampura where the doctors had to cut the utensil.

"There was local swelling in the forehead and the eyelids and the child was crying constantly. We first thought of giving him anesthesia and operating on him. But, it did not work out. So, a group of doctors were called and with the help of screw drivers and large cutters the metal object was removed," said Dr Sameer Chikara, who was part of the team.

He said that the sides of the cooker had to be stuffed with cotton so that the child doesn't get hurt. Doctors said that the pressure cooker was local made and its edges was sharper than usual. Because of this, the child's head must have easily slipped inside and there was difficulty in pulling it out.

"Shivam's case should serve as a lesson for parents in future. They should not allow children to get into the kitchen and play with metal objects like these that can hurt them," said a senior hospital official.

Woman Sleeps 20ft Up in Tree

Baffled shoppers in a Chinese city couldn't work out where the snoring noise was coming from until they looked up.

And there - 20ft above them - was a homeless women curled up and fast asleep perched on a narrow tree branch.

Passers-by, in Lanzhou, Gansu province, couldn't believe the woman was able to sleep in her precarious position.

"We wouldn't have known where the snoring was coming from except one of her shoes fell off and hit someone on the head," said one shopper.

Police eventually persuaded her to come down to earth with sandwiches and a bottle of water.

China Builds World’s Largest Underground Theater

The grand opening of the Shanghai Culture Plaza Theater in coming July 2011, may or may not be attended by those busy people compiling world records at Guinness, but the Cultural Plaza Theater will nevertheless, have the distinction of being the world’s largest and deepest underground theater with the highest seating capacity of 2010.

Homeless Man Lives In Flood Pipe

Mao Li, aged 30, has lived in the pipe, which lies beside a bridge in Haikou, Hainan province, southern China, for a year.

Mao Li’s one bedroom apartment even has its own front door. Public authorities have intervened and are forcing him to evacuate only because they have decided that the front door to Mao’s very humble dwelling “lowers the tone of the area.”

Luckily the intervention will work in his favour - as to make up for destroying his home officials have agreed to move him into an actual house.

A Haikou spokesman said: "He will be taken care of and given a proper home. We are a modern city - we can't have people living in pipes.” 

Biggest & Oldest Spider Found in China!

The largest fossilized spider ever found was discovered in Inner Mongolia, China and setting the new world record for the Largest Fossil Spider. This new species called Nephila jurassica, a 165 million-year-old golden orb weaver whose legs spanned an astonishing 15cm.

The fossil’s well-preserved state gave scientists enough details to identify it as an adult female Nephila jurassica where the common name of the arachnid is the golden orb weaver.

Golden orb spiders can weave the largest webs—creating golden silk discs almost five feet in diameter that are large enough to catch bats and birds. 

Paul Selden, director of the Paleontological Institute at the University of Kansas, told Live Science that environmental change must have occurred in Inner Mongolia at some point, for golden orb weavers are now found in tropical environments. 

He also said that the insect world was very different for these spiders. "There were many large or medium-sized flying insects around at that time on which it would have fed indiscriminately," said Selden to Live Science.

Additionally, Selden and his colleagues are interested in sexual dimorphism of Nephila jurassica. Female modern golden orb weavers are giant in comparison to their male partners. Selden and his colleagues wish to find a fossil of a male golden orb spider to study the differences.

The previous record was a Guinness world record for the oldest fossil spider trapped in amber has been dated at 125-135 million years old. It is from the family linyphiidae, and was discovered in Lebanon and analysed by David Penney and Paul Selden (both from University of Manchester, UK).

Details of the findings were published on April 20 in Biology Letters.

Dutch Football Team Signs 18-month-old Boy

A one and a half year old Dutch footballer has shot his way to fame and a 10-year professional contract with his local champion's division football club.

Baerke van der Meij scored almost a million hits on YouTube after his father Jorg posted a film of the toddler shooting three balls into his toy box last week.

The boy and his family are supporters of the Venlose Voetbal Vereniging, or VVV, football team in the city of Venlo where Baerke's grandfather once played as a professional.

The toddler joined VVV's star midfielder Ken Leemans during a training session in De Koel Stadium on Tuesday before being offered the “symbolic” contract.

”The toddler's favourite position has not yet been determined. However, we can speak of a right-footed player with a very good kicking technique, perseverance and, importantly: football genes via his grandfather,” said a VVV Venlo press release.

Two-headed Calf Shocks Owner

A Chinese grandmother collapsed with shock when her cow gave birth to a two-headed calf.

Dong Yubao, 65, of Gaoyang village, northern China's Hebei Province, said his wife Li Chunhua, 60, was helping the cow give birth.

"My wife and a neighbor were in the barn to help the cow through labor," he said. "The calf came out - heads first - and my wife fell to the floor when she saw the two heads and four eyes."

Dong said the cow had previously been a mother many times and her calves had all been healthy and normal. "I can't understand why she produced such a weird calf this time," he added.

The calf's two heads point in almost opposite directions. Both heads have their own eyes, nose and mouth but only three ears between them.

Dong said the two-headed calf can't stand unaided so his 16-year-old granddaughter Jinfeg is bottle-feeding it with sheep milk.

Parents Chop Off Girl's Nose Over Her Love Marriage

Seven close relatives of a girl, including her parents, were arrested on Friday in a remote village of Chhattisgarh after they chopped off her nose to punish her for eloping with and marrying a village boy.

Seven close relatives of a girl, including her parents, were arrested on Friday in a remote village of Chhattisgarh after they chopped off her nose to punish her for eloping with and marrying a village boy, police said.

The arrests were made from Rahmankapa village in the state's Kawardha district, some 280 km from Raipur.

Police said family members of 19-year-old Nanki Bai were highly upset after she eloped on April 19 with village boy Narendra, 19. The boy and the girl returned on April 20 after getting married at a temple in Raipur.

"After returning to the village, the girl was living with her husband's family," Sushil Malik, head of Pandariya police station that covers Rahmankapa village, told IANS over phone.

"The girl's parents and five other close relatives stormed into her in-laws' house and dragged her into a room and chopped off her nose to punish her for love marriage," he added.

Malik added that the girl's family chose to attack her when most of her in-laws were not home.

Later, the girl registered a police complaint and finally her parents and five other relatives, including three women, were arrested for house-trespass, criminal intimidation, causing injury by dangerous weapons and other offences.

Man Jabs Crocodile's Eye to Escape

An Australian man had to jab a crocodile in the eyes to force its jaws off his arm after it leapt from the water and bit him during a fishing trip.

The man's hand was badly mauled in the attack on the Adelaide River, southeast of Darwin, which took place as his friend was sleeping in the back of their boat overnight Saturday, according to the Northern Territory News.

He had surgery and was recovering in hospital, the report said.

A second crocodile washed up on a Darwin beach over the weekend without a head or tail after falling victim to trophy hunters, rangers said. "They took the head for a trophy and the tail for meat," he told ABC radio.

An average of two people are killed each year in Australia by saltwater crocodiles, known locally as "salties", which can grow up to seven metres (23 feet) long and weigh more than a tonne.

Anti-Porn Indonesian MP Caught Watching Porn

An Indonesian member of Parliament has resigned after being caught by a photographer watching porn on his tablet during a debate. The irony: this MP also helped pass one of the strictest anti-porn laws in the country.

Arifinto, who oversees a parliamentary commission dealing with transportation, telecommunications and rural development, was an outspoken supporter of the [anti-porn] law. He was caught watching the video clip for several minutes as fellow legislators debated plans to build a new parliament building.

In almost poetic irony, if he is found guilty of downloading a pornographic movie, which the picture seems to indicate, he might find himself confronted with the same strict and unforgiving anti porn law that he himself helped to create!

Magnum Café ~ Indonesian Luxury Ice Cream

Jakarta is a city of dynamic change and burgeoning growth particularly among the rapidly growing middle classes. There is much competition in all things, whether it is watching the latest Hollywood flick, owning the trendiest gadget or being seen at the cool Magnum Café, which opened last February in central Jakarta.

For many of us, Magnum conjures images of a handsome, mustached private detective who lived in Hawaii and rescued damsels in distress and righted wrongs for a few years.  But in Indonesia, the name Magnum has come to mean something else even more delectable.

Just as popular as the café itself is its offshoot, Magnum Ice Cream, a brand launched by Unilever, an Indonesian consumer goods conglomerate. Ice cream lovers line up in queues that get longer each day as they wait patiently for the unique chocolate-coated ice cream on a stick.

“It’s the Belgian chocolate that makes it different from other ice creams. The chocolate is amazing,” says Githa, a teacher in Jakarta.

Magnums can be enjoyed in different delicious ways. The chocolate can act as a dipping sauce into almost everything the café has to offer: appetizers, main courses, desserts and cocktails. An Italian chef developed the devastating menu which features: Waffle de Aristocrat, Goblet of Chocolate, Crown Jewel and Truffle Royale.

Magnum is not just ice cream. Its consumption marks an elite journey into celebrity, luxury and a lifestyle in view but just barely out of reach. Television stars such as Eva Longoria of Desperate Housewives and actor, Benicio del Toro, have endorsed the “luxury” ice cream.

The café sells hundreds of Magnums each day and charges about $1.38 for each one. This may seem cheap by US standards but isn’t when juxtaposed with the fact that according to the World Bank data, the average Indonesian lives on less than $6 per day.

Wedding Dress Made with 99,999 Pearls Sparkles

A romantic Chinese man took a year to make his bride a dazzling wedding gown which was decorated with 99,999 pearls. As the number 9 has the same pronunciation as "long-term or forever", this wedding gown Peng Yu made contains the meaning of loving his bride forever.

Peng Yu (58) had the wedding this April 12th, after his first wife died years ago. And the bride, Yang Pingzhi was quite touched in wearing this wedding gown made with 99,999 pearls. Peng runs a pearl company in Beihai, southern China's Guangxi Province. 

Peng explained: "Two years ago, when Yang agreed to marry me, I started to think what surprise I should give her?" Peng finally decided to make a very special wedding gown.

Peng invited a Hong Kong designer to make the gown, and bought 99,999 light water pearls to make this gown. The pearls were sewn onto the gown with the help of 7 friends of the bride, and just the pearl sewing part took the 7 sisters a year to finish. The final wedding gown weighs 9 kilos.

Last month, Peng applied to the British World Guinness Office for a record for the dress with the most pearls.

DOCUMENTARY: Discovery Channel - Nuclear Nightmare: Japan in Crisis (2011)

Info:

Discovery Channel - Nuclear Nightmare: Japan in Crisis (2011)

PDTV-Rip | XviD 986kbps | 624x352 | MP3 VBR 124kbps | 43:33 | 350MB

Language: English | Subtitle: No

Genre: Documentary, Nuclear Disaster

A comprehensive timeline of the unthinkable natural disaster that triggered a nuclear crisis at Fukushima Daiichi. Paula Zahn takes us inside the dramatic story in Japan, and explores out what it will mean for nuclear power in the United States.

Download links:

Hotfile.com-Single Download Link

DOCUMENTARY: Nat. Geo. - Can it be Build? - Leaning Skyscraper

Info:

National Geographic - Can it be Build? - Leaning Skyscraper

2010 | English | 00:45:17 | XviD  | 624x352 | 30 fps | MP3 128kbps | 350 MB

Genre: Documentary

Abu Dhabi is famous for its extreme engineering, but now one project could surpass them all - the world's most inclined skyscraper, Capital Gate. Capital Gate is a tower that spirals out of the ground at 525 feet and tilts almost five times more than the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The tower will include a five-star hotel on the top 18 levels, an infinity pool, a restaurant hanging 300 feet above the ground and a helicopter pad on the roof.

Download links:

Hotfile.com-part 1/2

Hotfile.com-part 2/2