The Finnish government said it regretted sponsoring a book giving detailed examples of how to bribe Russian officials and businessmen published by the Finnish-Russian Chamber of Commerce.

“We would say that the book really encourages bribing, and we are absolutely of the opinion that one must not allow instructions on bribing to be published in an instruction manual we are supporting financially,” Bo Goeran Eriksson, head of the trade department of the Trade and Industry Ministry, told AFP.

His department contributes 430,000 euros (557,000 dollars) annually to the Finnish-Russian Chamber of Commerce, set up to foster trade relations between the two neighboring countries.

The book is doubly embarrassing as Finland is considered the least corrupt nation in the world, and both bribing and incitement to bribery are strictly illegal.

The content of the book, originally published two years ago, only became widely known Friday when the leading daily Helsingin Sanomat highlighted a chapter in which Finnish companies give examples of how they bribed Russian officials.

When contacted, the trade body denied any wrongdoing. “These are examples, not instructions. I don’t feel that we should feel remorse because companies have given examples of their experiences in Russia,” Mirja Azeem, chief executive of the chamber, told AFP. “The book is a description about how real life is in Russia.”

An Italian restaurant that sold a pizza with a human tooth baked into the crust has been fined nearly $4,000 for a lack of hygiene.

“It’s insanity,” cried defense lawyer Massimiliano Manzo, who represented the Florence pizzeria. “How is the owner of the pizzeria going to force employees to go to the dentist every day or strap a lid over their mouths?” he told Reuters by telephone.

The owner of the tooth was never identified and Manzo refused to discuss how it got into the pizza in the first place…

A Czech man is being taken to court after he hid in a restaurant washroom until the employees had left and then hooked up beer kegs directly to his mouth.

Cleaning staff found him drunk and lying on the floor of the bar at the restaurant in the city of Brno, about 200km (120 miles) east of Prague, the CTK news agency reported on Thursday.

“He had broken the door of the cooling mechanism … and detached the hoses leading from the keg, squashed them in his mouth and literally filled himself up with beer,” CTK quoted a police official as saying.

The man will be charged with damaging property because he caused 8,000 crown ($340) damage to the beer cooling box.

A 50-year-old Reno man who was hospitalized after he castrated himself told police he learned of the procedure on the Internet and did so to lower his libido. The man, whose name was not released, called 911 at about 1:30 a.m. Monday and asked for help because he could not stop the bleeding from a self-castration operation, police said.

“The man obviously needs some sort of counseling,” Reno police Lt. Ron Donnelly told the Reno Gazette-Journal.

Pagyaru, schoolgirls who hang out on the streets of places like Tokyo’s minor Mecca Shibuya while decked out in stuffed animal suits, are the latest “breed” of trendy teen in Japan, but their burning yearning to be accepted is also making them vulnerable conniving kid capitalists…

Pagyaru derive their name from chuto hanpa, the Japanese word for “half measures,” and gyaru, the local rendition of the English “girl.”

“Pagyaru are those birds who hang out in Shibuya. They get around in stuffed toy suits and dress up a little bit like the old yamanba, but haven’t quite got it right, which is why they’re chuto hanpa,” Weekly Playboy hears from Takuya, an 18-year-old guy who spends his spare time knocking around in Shibuya’s Center Gai district, the womb of most Japanese teen trends. “There’re younger pagyaru, too. They’re like junior high school girls who dress up in these really gaudy outfits.”

Acting as the magnet for the pagyaru are the huge schoolgirl party clubs that are most active in Shibuya and make money putting on tacky variety performances. Pagyaru apparently head into Shibuya from the sticks, then walk up and down along the few hundred meters of sidewalk between Center Gai and 109 department store, the area’s other main symbol of youth fashion. They’re hoping that one of the many street side touts active there will try and pick them up and pave their way for membership into one of the clubs.

Nanpashi, the Japanese word for the touts, are delighted with the pagyaru’s appearance.

“They’re the easiest targets out there. We belong to a club that’s pretty well known, so as soon as we tell them the name, they just melt. We take ‘em out drinking after big shows and then have our way with them after they get drunk. If they resist, we just do it anyway,” gushes Takashi, a 17-year-old pick-up professional, unashamed that his group is effectively mimicking Waseda University’s vile Super Free gang rapists club. “We don’t do anything to ruin the good name of our club, though. We give the pagyaru one of our guy’s phone numbers and make him work on her until she falls in love with him. The pagyaru bring in new friends and the more people that take part in our shows, the more money we make. Pagyaru have packed the audiences at most of our recent shows…”

Simulated moon dust has been used to make a key component of a working solar cell, giving an unexpected boost to President George W. Bush’s project of setting up a colony on the moon.

(Pay article, but I only need the top line.)

Like any other toddler, Ben Whittaker has had his fair share of bumps and bruises. The difference is he doesn’t feel any pain.

The 17-month-old from Royston, Yorkshire, is only the 33rd person ever to be diagnosed with the condition.

After a series of tests at Sheffield Children’s Hospital, Ben was diagnosed as having congenital indifference to pain, an incredibly rare condition. Experts have suggested it could be caused by the failure of a substance called betaendorphin, which occurs naturally in the body and modulates pain sensations…

My friends at Night Shade Books have acquired the US rights to the excellent Iain Banks’ THE ALGEBRAIST. And they would like you to know..

Next-level genital horror in the mode of the infamous Arse Eels (WMV format).

If that isn’t enough warning for you, then fuck you, you’re doomed.

Brian Wood is throwing a pre-Valentine’s Day sale on his excellent Northern Boy t-shirts. Go and get some while they’re cheap.

He once described them to me as “trying to capture the vibe of the old tourist shirts I used to get as a kid, (from) places like Cape Cod and Myrtle Beach and the Adirondacks during the summers, but with a cleaner, more modern look… I only make shirts for places I’ve either lived in or visited a lot in the past.”

(Hey, Josh, you’d like this stuff.)

Found here:

Three researchers at the Boston University Medical Center fell ill in 2004 after being exposed a potentially deadly bacterium in a Level 2 biosecurity lab. Yet city and university officials kept the news quiet until after the centre’s application to build a more high-level biosecurity lab (Level 4) in a densely populated part of Boston was accepted by the city this January.

University officials blamed careless procedures in their existing Level 2 lab, and say the researchers were studying a strain of the bacterium which causes tularaemia, also known as “rabbit fever”, but had thought the strain was harmless.

A strikingly similar incident also occurred in 2004 when a new biodefence lab at Oakland Children’s Hospital in California, US, received live anthrax instead of dead germs…

Tularaemia is extremely infectious – inhaling less than 10 bacteria can cause the disease. That makes it a potential biowarfare agent, although it is not as deadly or fast-developing as anthrax…

[Related: The Virus Hunter.]

Everyone knows that falling into a black hole spells doom. Or does it? In the past few years, cracks have started to appear in the conventional picture. Researchers on the quest for a more complete understanding of our universe are finding that black holes are not so black, and perhaps not holes either…

Shot by Melinda Uden:

And I mean totally mental. A purebred fuckheadalist.

Totally. Nothing can be done for him.

Via Anthony Kaufman, some of the swag being tossed out to the great and glorious at this year’s Sundance:

$50,000 CELEBRITY GIFT BAGS TO PREMIERE AT THE UPCOMING SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL — Acclaimed Ultimate Comfort Bag to Benefit A Place Called Home Charity: “At this year’s Sundance Film Festival celebrities will get a lot more than great films and beautiful scenery. They will also be offered the most expensive, decadent gift bags ever distributed to celebrities at a luxurious suite at the Park City Marriott located in the heart of the festival, outdoing last years record setting giveaway.”

CHEFDANCE — “For ten days, ChefDance features an all-star line up of celebrity chefs and wine makers from across the country in a series of private dinners that are truly extraordinary in their breadth and range. Invited guests will have the opportunity to indulge in the very finest that the culinary world has to offer.”

Sundance… didn’t they used to, I don’t know, show films or something?

The American emergency management agency FEMA has released, I swear to god, a post-tsunami clean-up webgame for kids.

Defense attorney Leslie Ballin called it the “jury pool from hell.” The group of prospective jurors was summoned to listen to a case of Tennessee trailer park violence. Right after jury selection began last week, one man got up and left, announcing, “I’m on morphine and I’m higher than a kite.”

When the prosecutor asked if anyone had been convicted of a crime, a prospective juror said that he had been arrested and taken to a mental hospital after he almost shot his nephew. He said he was provoked because his nephew just would not come out from under the bed.

Another would-be juror said he had had alcohol problems and was arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover officer. “I should have known something was up,” he said. “She had all her teeth.”

Another prospect volunteered he probably should not be on the jury: “In my neighborhood, everyone knows that if you get Mr. Ballin (as your lawyer), you’re probably guilty.” He was not chosen.

The case involved a woman accused of hitting her brother’s girlfriend in the face with a brick. Ballin’s client was found not guilty.

The makers of the handy spray lubricant WD-40 proudly list 2,000 uses for their product, from unsticking rusty screws or squeaky bicycle chains to polishing frying pans. But British police have found another —

– keeping the public from snorting cocaine off toilet lids in bars.

Police in Bristol said Tuesday they have been advising pub and nightclub owners to spray the colorless lubricant on toilet seats and other flat surfaces in the lavatory that customers often use to snort drugs.

Apparently, cocaine and spray lube don’t mix. “A chemical reaction takes place with the cocaine that causes it to congeal and become a mess so it’s unusable,” a police spokesman said. “It’s one very small, very cheap way in which you can very seriously restrict the amount of drug use in your premises…”

Good piece of writing here on the ’88 faked acid house compilation JACK THE TAB:

The album has a DIY amauterish feel to it that seemed to reflect the initial idea that Acid House would become the new punk; meaning that previous structural/ musical limitations would be taken apart or ignored, leaving a clean slate for new forms to slime over. Even the fact that it was Psychic TV pretending to be various other bands – ‘Alligator Shear, Pearl Necklace (ho-hum), Wolves of the Sun, King Tubby etc’ – reflected an unconscious intent to establish the illusion of an ever growing pulsating worldwide network of synapse-spunked musicians, scrabbling for acid tabs amongst the Ballardian wreckage of abandoned geetar-band studios, broken Roland drum pads and swapped oscillator coils.