A fisherman fills his cupped palms with water from the algae-filled Chaohu Lake in Hefei, Anhui province, June 16, 2009. The country has invested 51 billion yuan towards the construction of 2,712 projects for the treatment of eight rivers and lakes including Huaihe River, Haihe River, Liaohe River, Chaohu Lake, Dianchi Lake, Songhua River, the Three Gorges region of the Yangtze River and its upstream area, Xinhua News Agency reported.
REUTERS/Stringer
Mexican naval officers stand guard after cutting open more than 20 shark carcasses filled with slabs of cocaine after checking a container ship in a container port in the southern Mexico state of Yucatan June 16, 2009. Mexico's navy seized more than a tonne of cocaine stuffed inside frozen sharks, as drug gangs under military pressure go to greater lengths to conceal narcotics bound for the United States.
REUTERS/Argely Salaza
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A Belgian teenager has told police how she emerged from a tattoo parlor with 56 stars over one side of her face, rather than the three she had asked for, prosecutors said on Tuesday.
"I said this part, the top, is ok, but not the rest," Kimberley Vlaeminck from the city of Kortrijk, 90 km (56 miles) northwest of Brussels, told Belgian broadcaster VRT.
The 18-year-old said she fell asleep during the procedure, and woke up in pain when her nose was being tattooed.
A spokesman for Kortrijk prosecutors' office said police were investigating after a complaint from the teenager.
The tattoo artist said Vlaeminck had agreed to 56 stars.
"She agreed, but when her father saw it, the trouble started," Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws quoted the man as saying.
Vlaeminck said she wanted to keep the tattoos on her forehead but would have the rest removed.
(Reporting by Antonia van de Velde)
Creator Byron Casebier, at Gizmodo: Here is my weak (and slightly unfinished) Atari iPod Dock. I thought sharing may create interest for someone that can do this better. As far as specs, I gutted a broken, iPod clock radio and put it all inside the Atari.
See a gallery o'er the Giz: The Atari 2600 iPod Dock
LONDON (Reuters) - An ancient burial pit containing 45 severed skulls, that could be a mass war grave dating back to Roman times, has been found under a road being built for the 2012 British Olympics.
Archaeologists, who have only just begun excavating the site, say they do not yet know who the bones might belong to.
"We think that these dismembered bodies are likely to be native Iron Age Britons. The question is -- how did they die and who killed them," said dig head, David Score, of Oxford Archaeology.
"Were they fighting amongst themselves? Were they executed by the Romans? Did they die in a battle with the Romans?
"The exciting scenario for us possibly is that there were skirmishes with the invading Romans and that's how they ended up chopped up in a pit," he told Reuters.
When the main Roman invasion force landed in Britain in AD 43, Claudius' legions moved swiftly through western England to subdue fierce Celtic tribes.
The skulls and other bones were unearthed at a place called Ridgeway Hill, on the construction site of a new major relief road to Weymouth, on the Dorset coast in southwest England.
The seaside town -- in the heart of Thomas Hardy country -- is to host sailing events for the London Olympics.
The grave site is close to Maiden Castle -- Europe's largest Iron Age hill fort where local tribes are said to have staged a last stand against the Roman legions after the invasion.
Some historians believe the Romans sacked the site, butchering its population including women and children, before burning it to the ground.
Score said they had counted 45 skulls so far in the 6-meter wide pit, together with a tangle of torsos, arms and legs, More could be found in the coming weeks.
Most of the skulls were those of young men, supporting the theory they could have been killed in battle or executed en masse.
"One of the things that we will be looking for is do they have sword cut marks on the bones, and how were the heads dismembered: prior to or after death in an act of victory," Score said.
Archaeologists say they could also be Roman citizens or indigenous people who had died through disease or disaster.
Few artifacts have so far been found with the bones, though pottery shards dating to the late Iron Age and early Roman period have been found scattered around the pit."It is rare to find a burial site like this one," Score said. "There are lots of different types of burial where skeletons may be aligned along a compass axis or in a crouched position, but to find something like this is just incredible."
(Editing by Steve Addison)
Mon Jun 15, 2009 8:37am EDT
JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Taliban fighters beat musicians, shaved their heads and left them tied to trees overnight because they performed at an Afghan wedding, a village tribal chief said Monday, a sign of the fighters' growing influence.
While in power from 1996-2001, the Taliban banned music as un-Islamic.
The militants have returned to areas in the east and south of the country, where violence has sharply spiked in recent years. They attack government officials, Afghan police, foreign troops and schools that teach girls, another practice they forbid.
"A party was going on when a group of Taliban grabbed five musicians and started beating them and smashing their musical instruments," said Rahmatullah Khan, a head of Merke Khel village in the east of the country.
"The musicians were tied up with rope to trees last night and villagers found them in the morning when going out for prayers," Khan said.
Khan said Taliban fighters shaved the heads of the musicians and made them take oaths in the presence of villagers that they would not sing or play music at weddings again.
Afghan weddings and engagement parties in rural areas are traditionally celebrated with hundreds of guests, music and singing that often continues until late at night.
(Reporting by Rafiq Sherzad; Writing by Hamid Shalizi)
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Job-seekers are using unusual gimmicks to grab the attention of potential employers, such as in one case sending a shoe along with a resume to get a "foot in the door," said a survey released on Wednesday.
Almost a fifth of hiring managers report seeing more unconventional tactics this year, compared with 12 percent who said so last year, according to the study by CareerBuilder.com, an online jobs site.
Faced with the highest unemployment in 25 years, candidates are trying a variety of tricks, including:
* handing out resumes at stoplights
* washing cars in a company parking lot
* staging a sit-in in a company lobby to demand a meeting with a director
* sending a cake designed as a business card with the candidate's picture
* handing out personalized coffee cups
* going to the same barber as the company chairman to have the barber speak on his behalf
One job-seeker attached a shoe to a resume as "a way to get my foot in the door," a respondent told the survey.
"The search for employment is taking longer and is more competitive than it has been in past years," said Jason Ferrara, senior career adviser at CareerBuilder, in a statement. "To compensate, some candidates have turned to extreme tactics."
But he cautioned: "While unusual job search antics may attract the attention of hiring managers, they need to be done with care and professionalism so that candidates are remembered for the right reasons."
The online survey was conducted for CareerBuilder by Harris Interactive among 2,543 full-time hiring managers and human resource professionals between February 20 and March 11, 2009. The overall results have a margin of error of plus or minus 1.94 percentage points.
CareerBuilder is owned by Gannett Co Inc, Tribune Co, McClatchy Co and Microsoft.
(Editing by Alan Elsner and Michelle Nichols)
