Sex robots soon to give women stiff competition

The ultimate in sex toys is what innovative inventors are trying to create to be sold at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas. The place continues to be hot for all kinds of high-tech sex gizmos and gadgetries of all shapes and sizes.

One such creator is Douglas Hines, who unveiled his latest and the world’s first sex robot invention – Roxxxy.

Roxxxy was conceptualized by Hines with the help of expert artists and engineers from three countries who came up with a design that would allow the sex robot to “deliver the best in robot sex.”

Hines is an electrical engineer and computer scientist who used to work on artificial intelligence at AT&T Bell Laboratories. It took him and his associates two and a half years to come up with Roxxxy, which is being marketed by Truecompanion.com with a price tag between $500,000 and $1 million.

According to True Companion’s Web site, Roxxxy “can carry on a discussion and express her love to you and be your loving friend. She can talk to you, listen to you and feel your touch”.

A Japanese company, Honey Dolls, makes life-size sex dolls that can play recorded sounds, but Roxxxy’s sensors and speech capabilities appear to be more sophisticated. Hines’ goals are certainly more far-reaching.

“Sex only goes so far – then you want to be able to talk to the person,” Hines said.

Buyer pays $3.7 million for 1913 U.S. coin

A rare 1913 U.S. coin dubbed the Liberty Head nickel was sold “in spirited bidding” to a private coin collector, who wished to remain anonymous, in a public auction in Orlando, Florida.

The buyer paid over $3.7 million for a rare coin which, once, formed part of the coin collection of Egypt’s King Farouk, who was overthrown in 1952. Since then, it has changed hands several times and even appeared as part of the story line in a 1973 episode of the famed CBS TV series “Hawaii Five-O.”

The Liberty Head nickel which was made at the Philadelphia Mint with the Miss Liberty figure is said to be one of only five known having that specific date and design. I

“It is probably the most famous United States rare coin,” Greg Rohan, president of Dallas, Texas-based Heritage Auctions said in a statement, knowing that even in 2003, it already surpassed the million dollar price.

Swiss millionaire gets record speeding fine

A court in the eastern Swiss canton of St. Gallen has imposed a world record speeding fine of $290,000 (£180,000) on a Swiss millionaire-motorist driving a Ferrari Testarossa.

A statement on the court’s Web site says the driver — a repeat offender — drove up to 35 miles an hour (57 kilometers an hour) faster than the 50-mile-an-hour (80-kilometer-an-hour) limit.

Judges at the cantonal court in St. Gallen, in eastern Switzerland, based the record-breaking fine on the unnamed motorists estimated wealth of over $20 million.

“The accused ignored elementary traffic rules with a powerful vehicle out of a pure desire for speed,” the court said in its decision.

The fine reportedly far exceeds the previous record, imposed on a Porsche driver in Zurich in 2008.

‘Male-only’ Orthodox ceremony broken by Albanian girl

Diving for a metallic cross is an annual event observed by several Orthodox countries to celebrate Theophany, also known in the Christian world as the feast of Epiphany. It refers to the manifestation of God to man and normally celebrated in January.

In Albania it is an event traditionally participated only by the male population.

Well, not anymore.

A 16-year-old Albanian girl named Katerina Munguli broke with tradition by joining and competing with the boys and men in diving for the metallic cross thrown into the bottom of the chilly Ionian Sea.

What was remarkable, however, about Munguli’s break with tradition is that she surfaced with the cross in her hand, beating her male rivals, to the surprise and amusement of the crowd and the priests!

“We were all happy a girl got it. She is the youngest of four sisters and behaves a bit like a boy,” Vladimir Kumi, the chairman of the local council, who co-organized the ceremony, said.

Munguli received from the council the prize of 10,000 leks (80 euros). The priests is said to have given her also an extra prize.

Australian star hurdler removes implants in preparation for 2012 Olympics

Aussie athlete Jana Rawlinson has revealed that she has had her highly publicized and much wanted breast implants taken out to enhance her chances of winning a medal for Australia at the 2012 Olympics.

“I absolutely loved having bigger boobs, but finally I’ve grown up enough to know myself; to be honest about who I am when I look in the mirror,” Rawlinson told the Woman’s Day magazine.

“I don’t want to short-change Australia either — I want to feel the most athletic I can, to know that I’m standing on the track in London the fittest I can be.”

Rawlinson, 27, who recently announced plans to remarry her estranged husband and manager Chris Rawlinson, had admitted she spent 13,000 dollars in the past 14 months to get the surgery done, but she is now taking the implants out as they are affecting her performance on track.

But she has not ruled out going back under the knife and having the fake breasts re-implanted once her track career is over.

Terrified pandas in China living normal life again

Nineteen months ago a dozen pandas at the Wolong Panda Reserve in Wenchuan County in China were traumatized when the place was hit by an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.9.

It was said that six pandas fled right after the walls fall down around the Wolong Reserve. There were those that were taken to a safe place for healing, but were still in shock that they would just hold on to one another and won’t answer the calls nor eat the food given by the caretakers. The slightest of noise would cause them to scamper.

Recent story on Chinese state television, however, reported a happy turn around for the pandas. It appears that the pandas at the sanctuary are once more living a normal life, playful as ever, and is back breeding and defying the low fertility rate among pandas.

Ten of the endearing pandas rescued, six females and four males, have arrived in Shanghai for the World Expo.

‘Fatties’ have no room in BeautifulPeople.com

Dating and social network site BeautifulPeople.com has axed some 5,000 members following complaints that they had gained weight over the holiday period.

The members were thrown out after posting photos of themselves clearly revealing the pounds put on after the holidays.

“As a business, we mourn the loss of any member, but the fact remains that our members demand the high standard of beauty be upheld,” said Robert Hintze, founder of BeautifulPeople.com. “Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded.”

BeautifulPeople.com is said to be “the largest network of attractive people in the world,” where members themselves police the membership of the site to maintain a high – if highly subjective – standard of attractiveness.

The US, the UK, and Canada topped the list of excluded members.

Liberal Party’s ‘yellow army’

There is nothing more sensible and clever election strategy by the Liberal Party for the Noynoy-Mar tandem than to have 600,000-strong “Yellow Army” scattered all over the country to make sure they win in the presidential and vice-presidential race in the May elections.

This is a brilliant idea and we owe it to LP campaign manager Florencio Abad, former Defense secretary Avelino Cruz, ex-Integrated Bar of the Philippines president Joel Cadiz and a host of other top legal defenders who believes not only in the ability, capability, and leadership of Noynoy and Mar, but most of all in having faith in the integrity of these two youthful candidates who will make us proud of them as our leaders.

Let us not allow this defining moment, where the chance, the option and the destiny of this nation is left to our own free will and accord to elect whom we think are the most competent to lead us and give us back the glory this country has lost.

2010 is a year like no other.

Let us not allow ourselves to get frustrated, ever again.

We have a clear choice of honest, reliable and selfless presidential team-up who are pedigrees of honorable and respected names in politics and public service.

Let us shun away from controversial presidential bets, who most likely than not, will continue to generate controversy to the detriment of this nation’s progress.

Let us spurn those presidential aspirants who have been there before and have left us nothing but bitter taste in our palates.

Let us turn away from presidential candidates whose ticket to the presidency is their fame and fortune.

Let us avoid voting into office presidential timbers whose allegiance and duty is to continue serving that to whom he has been beholden to, at the expense of the of the populace.

The Filipino people deserve a better government.

We, therefore, wish the “Yellow Army” the very best of luck in successfully indoctrinating and convincing the electorate in every nook and corner of this country, most especially the younger ones that they will not go wrong voting for the Aquino-Roxas team.

Hackers post Mr. Bean photo in place of look-alike Spanish Prime Minister

Hackers posted a smiling photo of Mr. Bean, the TV and movie character played by actor Rowan Atkinson, on Spain’s official government website replacing a photo of the country’s prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

According to newspaper El Mundo, Mr. Bean appeared on the official webpage as Zapatero greeting the visitors to the site with a cheerful “Hi there!”

An official at Mr. Zapatero’s office confirmed a security breach had affected the page specifically set up to mark Spain’s six-month presidency of the European Union.

“The alleged attack exploited a vulnerability called cross-site scripting,” it said. This happens when a screenshot of the homepage is taken to make a photo mosaic.

Apparently, the close resemblance between Spain’s prime minister and the TV’s bumbling comedy buffoon has been a running joke in the country for years now.

Heroin found amongst bananas distributed for sale in Lidl stores in Madrid

Spanish police was reported by El Mundo newspaper to have recovered 25 kilos of heroin hidden in boxes of plantains intended to be sold at Madrid supermarkets.

Plantains are a member of the banana family. They are a starchy, low in sugar variety that is cooked before serving as it is unsuitable raw. It is usually fried or baked.

The alarm was raised when staff at Lidl supermarkets unpacked the boxes of bananas which had been distributed from Mercamadrid to the company’s stores in the city, and discovered one-kilo packages of heroin hidden beneath the fruit.

The cargo of bananas came from Ivory Coast and Ecuador and believed to have been used to smuggle the illegal drug into the country but was delivered by error to the Spanish capital’s central wholesale market.