#Ban zeez hashtags: French bid to outlaw English phrases

Ooh l@ l@: Twitter logo

The French language gendarmes have decreed the nation must now refer to the global social network icon as mot-diese

In a continuing battle to stop English words violating their mother tongue, the language gendarmes have decreed the nation must now refer to the global social network icon as mot-diese.

Teachers and the media are under orders to adopt it – and steer clear of using the English word.

The outlawing of hashtag is the latest in a stream of desperate bids by the nation’s stuffy Académie française authority to keep the language pure.

Already, the French culture ministry has a huge list of English words on its website which it fears are in danger of slipping into common French usage.

These include: email, blog, supermodel, take-away, parking, weekend and low-cost airline.

The site also features obscure terms that nobody would want to steal, such as detachable motor caravan and multifunctional industrial building.

The blacklist of vocabulary runs for 65 pages.

Scientists are told to no longer refer to “serial analysis of gene expression” and “suppression subtractive hybridization”.

Television sports commentators are even urged to stop using the words coach or corner during football matches, despite the fact that all its terms were invented in English by English speakers. They should instead say entraineur and coup de pied de coin.

The Official Journal, which publishes the French edicts, now says: “The English term hashtag should wherever possible be replaced with the French term mot-diese.”

Officials went into meltdown after a government report said Anglo-Saxon culture’s trend towards global domination had caused a “deep crisis”.

For the list see http://franceterme.culture.fr and click “rechercher”.

Source

Chicago Warehouse Covered In Ice After Fire

About 200 fire-fighters battled to put out a massive fire at an empty warehouse in Chicago as glacial temperatures turned water to ice.

Fire department officials said the blaze on Tuesday evening was among the biggest in recent years.

About a third of the city’s fire-fighters were at the scene at one point or another.

The cause of the blaze in the vacant building is still being investigated.

The efforts to tame the fire, which threatened an adjacent building, were made difficult by temperatures that were well below zero, encasing fire trucks and the building into ice.

Water froze on the fire fighters’ uniforms and gloves. After several hours, the fire was put out, with ice sheets covering the remains of the building.

The American Midwest has been experiencing a cold snap since the weekend, with freezing Arctic air coming from Canada.

source

What an absolute whopper! Angler wins fishing contest with monster fish he STOLE from aquarium

He took the first prize and proudly posed for photos clutching the 13lb whopper that he had pinched on the final day of the competition

As far as lies go, this one is an absolute whopper.

For this slippery angler stole a huge bass from an aquarium – before pretending he had caught to win a sea fishing contest.

Cheating Matthew Clark, 29, took the first prize, worth £800, and proudly posed for photos clutching the 13lb whopper that he had pinched on the final day of the competition.

But a rival angler recognised the monster fish following a trip to the aquarium in Guernsey and police were called in to investigate.

Clark was yesterday given 100 hours’ community service after admitting burglary and fraud.

He was allowed to walk free after taking a two-year oath of good behaviour. He will face jail if he breaks the terms.

Clark owed the manager of the island’s St Peter Port Aquarium £1,500 so hatched a plan to break into the aquarium, steal the bass and then return it while paying off some of his debt.

In July last year, on the last day of the Bailiwick Bass Club Open Competition, Clark scaled cliffs, climbed a rope ladder and snuck into the aquarium through a back door.

He dropped and injured the fish while racing to get his “catch” to the 8pm weigh-in at a nearby fishing shop.

The bass tipped the scales at 13lb 13oz – easily beating the runner-up which weighed 10lb 3oz.

Clark, of St Sampson, Guernsey, was congratulated by beaten anglers and was due to pick up his winnings later in the week.

But fellow competitor Shane Bentley, 38, was convinced he had seen the bass somewhere before.

He said: “My wife and I took the kids to the aquarium and saw the bass in a tank – it stood out because it had some very distinct markings on its head.

“It wasn’t until the winning fish was lifted for the photo that I thought, ‘That’s the fish from the aquarium’.

“Next morning, I went to the aquarium and asked to see the bass with the markings. But neither myself or the owner could find it anywhere.”

Mr Bentley told the contest organisers, who alerted the police. Meanwhile, the thief had panicked and sold the bass to a fishmonger.

But police matched the head of the fish carcass to the missing bass and then arrested Clark.

After failing to reel in officers with a story about catching the fish at a nearby spot, he confessed in full.

 

Original Article: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/angler-wins-fishing-contest-with-stolen-1528833

Fire crews rescue grey squirrel from Watford pond

A firefighter coaxed the stranded squirrel on to a ladder being used as a makeshift bridge

Three fire crews were called in to rescue a marooned squirrel after it got stuck on an island in a pond.

The grey squirrel was coaxed from the pond in Watford High Street, on a ladder used as a makeshift bridge.

Fire crews were sent because it was believed that members of the public had been trying to rescue the animal.

Hertfordshire Fire and Rescue insisted its response, on Sunday, was “appropriate” as it initially thought people could have been in danger.

When it became clear no-one was at risk, two of the crews, including one in a water rescue vehicle, were stood down.

The operation took about 10 minutes, the service confirmed.

Area commander Ian Parkhouse said: “We received a call indicating that an animal was stuck on the island in the middle of the pond in Watford High Street and that people were trying to rescue the animal from the island.

“We sent the appropriate response to that for a risk to life because we believed members of the public were trying to enter the water.”

A service spokesman said had it been made clear during the first 999 call that no-one was in the water, they would have left the squirrel to the RSPCA.

He said it was not known how the squirrel had got in the water and that after the rescue, the animal ran off.

 

The grey squirrel

• Grey squirrels were introduced to Europe from the US in the late 1800s and are notorious for displacing native red squirrels
• Bigger and bolder, they out-compete the native reds for food and can digest acorns, which the reds cannot
• Greys also carry a pox virus that does not affect them – but is deadly to reds

Source: BBC Nature

• Great squirrel: Bill Oddie’s defence of greys
• How ‘criminal’ greys steal from the reds

Original Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-20942801

Are The Los Roques Islands The New Bermuda Triangle?

Last week a plane carrying six people disappeared, seemingly into thin air, above the Caribbean sea.

Speculation as to what happened to the craft, which happened to be carrying Italian fashion mogul Vittorio Missoni, has so far ranged from mechanical failure to kidnapping by drug smugglers.

But a new theory is emerging – one which points towards the “Los Roques Curse” – a phenomenon linked to the Bermuda Triangle.

Venezuelan authorities have said the twin-engine plane had enough fuel on board for a three-hour flight when it took off on Friday morning from Venezuela’s Los Roques islands, where the party had been vacationing, the Associated Press reports.

The flight was supposed to take 42 minutes, but the civil aviation agency said the authorities declared an alert after the plane didn’t make contact with the control tower at the Caracas airport.

“The last position registered in radar data and those supplied by a system on board the aircraft” was about 11 miles (18 kilometres) south of Los Roques, the National Civil Aviation Institute said in a statement over the weekend.

According to The Guardian, there have been at least 15 reported incidents since the mid-90s in which small aircraft have crashed, disappeared or declared emergencies while travelling through the area.

Most recently, a plane carrying 14 people disappeared over the Caribbean after taking off from Los Roques in 2008.

Only the pilot’s body washed ashore, The Daily Beast reported, with no traces of the other passengers or plane debris ever recovered.

The lore of the Bermuda triangle – a triangular cut of ocean from Miami to Bermuda to Puerto Rico –  began in 1945 when five aircraft disappeared on a training mission in the region.

Since then, Wikipedia lists nine other disappearances, on land, sea and air related to the region.

Yet the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration points out the somewhat more plausible reasons of “ocean flatulence” (methane gas erupting from the ocean sediments) and disruptions in geomagnetic lines of flux.

It adds that the US Board of Geographic Names does not recognise the Bermuda Triangle as an official name and does not maintain an official file on the area.

Referring to the Los Roques curse, Nick Wall, editor of Pilot, told The Guardian: “There’s always some explanation for these things – even if it takes many years to uncover the answer. Pilots prefer to concentrate on the things that genuinely will help them live longer such as fuel gauges, weather reports and engine inspections.

“They are increasingly aware of previously unknown meteorological phenomena such as coastal wind shearing and mountain waves, which can cause sudden turbulence. But it is too early to know for sure what caused this latest incident.”

Live Science points out other mysterious waterways linked with doom include the so-called Michigan Triangle in Lake Michigan and the Saragossa Sea.

It reports:

Several ships have been found drifting sans any crew through the calm Sargasso Sea. And, legend has it that in 1840, after sailing through the Sargasso Sea, the French merchant ship “Rosalie” was discovered with its sails set but without any crew members on board. The Michigan Triangle has been blamed for the mysterious disappearances of ship crews and entire aircraft. Another, the Devil’s Sea (also called the Pacific Bermuda Triangle) sits in the Pacific around Miyake Island, south of Tokyo. Ancient legends have it dragons lived off the coast of Japan there, also giving the area the “Dragon’s Triangle” moniker.

Original Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/01/08/los-roques-islands-bermuda-triangle-missoni-missing-plane-_n_2430149.html