Paralysed stuntman completes London marathon

LONDON: The 51-year-old, paralysed and brain-damaged after a motorbike crash in 1996, completed the 42km (26 mile) route and raised £75,000 for charities Children with Leukaemia and The Eddie Kidd Foundation.

‘I’m lost for words,’ said his wife, Sam, 42. 'It's the best thing he has ever done. I'm so proud of him.

'It's amazing. He'd done it, he's done it! The one thing I would say to anyone out there who's disabled, injured or sick: get some perspective. If Eddie can do it, so can you.'

As a beaming Eddie walked the last steps of the marathon on a special frame, helped by Sam, actor Ray Winstone and former The Bill star Graham Cole, crowds of supporters erupted in jubilation.

His wife, a former model, cried with joy as her husband was sprayed with the drink by family and friends in celebration.

Dancing police cop in Philippine

MANILA: A 54-year-old Filipino traffic officer has become a street sensation as he delights drivers and pedestrians with his unique dance moves when directing traffic in Metro Manila.

Ramiro is an ordinary traffic police working on the crossing of Edessa Street and Macapagal Street in Pasay City, he is now famous among traffic police in the area.

Waving his hands for drivers to pass through, rotating his body while observing the vehicles passing, and sometimes a wiggle of the hips. With his dance moves he always keeps the traffic in order.

At 54 years old, Ramiro has worked as a traffic policeman for 6 years. Without fail he goes to work at 7:00 every morning, Monday to Friday, for 7 hours. Though very strenuous, he says he will always love his job and hopes to help those in need.

Twin friars die on same day at age 92

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Identical twins Julian and Adrian Riester were born seconds apart 92 years ago. They died hours apart this week. The Buffalo-born brothers were also brothers in the Roman Catholic Order of Friars Minor. Professed friars for 65 years, they spent much of that time working together at St. Bonaventure University, doing carpentry work, gardening and driving visitors to and from the airport and around town.

"It was fun to see them, just quiet, gentle souls," Yvonne Peace, who worked at the St. Bonaventure Friary for nearly 21 years, said Friday.

They died Wednesday at St. Anthony Hospital in St. Petersburg, Fla., Brother Julian in the morning and Brother Adrian in the evening.

Both died of heart failure, said Father James Toal, guardian of St. Anthony Friary in St. Petersburg, where the inseparable twins lived since moving from western New York in 2008.

"It really is almost a poetic ending to the remarkable story of their lives," St. Bonaventure spokesman Tom Missel said. "Stunning when you hear it, but hardly surprising given that they did almost everything together."

Julian and Adrian Riester were born Jerome and Irving on March 27, 1919, to a couple who already had five daughters. They took the names of saints upon their ordination in the Catholic church.

"Dad was a doctor and he said a prayer for a boy," Adrian once said, according to St. Bonaventure. "The Lord fooled him and sent two."

After attending St. Joseph's Collegiate Institute, the brothers were turned away by the military because of their eyesight, the university said. One had a bad left eye, the other a bad right eye.

Eventually they joined the friars of Holy Name Province in New York City. They received separate assignments before reuniting at the seminary at St. Bonaventure from 1951 to 1956. After serving parishes in Buffalo for 17 years, they returned to St. Bonaventure in 1973 and spent the next 35 years there.

They had separate rooms in the friary but one telephone extension that rang into both, Peace recalled. It was usually the more talkative Adrian who answered, though Julian possessed a quiet authority. They never said who was born first.

"Brother Julian was like the big brother. Brother Adrian would defer to him," Peace said. "They picked up one of our friars at the airport one time and the friar said, `Can I take you to dinner?'

"Brother Adrian looked at Brother Julian and said, `We aren't going to dinner?' `No, we'll go home,'" Peace said. "So that was it. No discussion, no contradicting. `No, we aren't going today.'"

Smuggled turtles seized in Bangkok

BANGKOK: Thai customs has found 451 turtles worth 1 million baht ($33,000) stashed in suitcases offloaded from a passenger flight from Bangladesh, the latest seizure of live creatures at Bangkok's bustling Suvarnabhumi airport.

Turtles of varying sizes worth around 2,000 baht apiece in Thai markets, and seven false gavials, a type of freshwater crocodile worth 10,000 baht each, were found on Thursday in small bags packed into cases after authorities received a tip off that a known trafficker was on his way to Thailand.

The alleged trafficker, a Bangladeshi national, did not collect the luggage and fled on arrival in Bangkok, customs officials said.

The discovery was the biggest since September last year, when 1,140 turtles were found by customs on a single day. A further 218 were seized a month later.

Thailand, which borders four countries, has seen its fair share of illegal wildlife trafficking and customs officials at Suvarnabhumi often seize reptiles and small animals in luggage.

They found a two-month old tiger cub in a bag last August, which was concealed by stuffed tiger toys and bound for Iran.

Prasong Poontaneat, director-general of Thailand's customs department, said it was likely the turtles were destined for Bangkok's Chatujak Market, a sprawling mass of 11,000 stalls and shops that has a dedicated pet section where endangered species are sometimes sold.

The market, which operates on weekends only, generates as much as 1 billion baht ($33 million) a month from some 350,000 foreign and local shoppers, according to the State Railway of Thailand, which owns the land.

The meteoric fall of Atlantic City

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. – Four years ago, some Atlantic City casino customers were shelling out $1,000 for a brownie sprinkled with edible gold dust in a Baccarat crystal they could take home.

Nowadays, some wait until 11 p.m. to eat so they can get a steak dinner for $2.99.

At the beginning of 2007, Atlantic City's 11 casinos were at the top of a wave of prosperity. Starting with the 1978 opening of Resorts, the nation's first casino outside Nevada, Atlantic City for years was the only place to play slots, cards, dice or roulette in the eastern half of the United States. The cash kept pouring in, the busloads of visitors kept coming and the revenue charts went one way: straight up.

And then, they didn't. Now, battered by competition from casinos all around it, Atlantic City is in a fight for its very survival.

The resort is furiously trying to remake itself into a vacation destination that happens to have gambling, but with no guarantee it has a winning hand even as other threats loom, including the possible expansion of casinos to north Jersey racetracks and a growing push for online gambling.

Intoxicated by years of success, Atlantic City missed numerous opportunities to diversify its offerings, widen its customer base and fend off competition that clearly was on its way even 20 years ago.

"The atmosphere was a total irrational exuberance; it truly was," said Robert Griffin, CEO of Trump Entertainment Resorts, who worked at Trump properties here in the 1980s and 1990s. "There was a feeling that there was no end to the good times and that the money would never end."

Then, disaster struck the nation's second-largest gambling market. A perfect storm of competition right on its doorstep in Pennsylvania, New York and Delaware, coupled with the recession, pummeled Atlantic City worse than any other casino market. In four years, a billion and a half dollars vanished, along with thousands of jobs and tourists. Pennsylvania, with its 10 casinos, is poised to knock Atlantic City into third place at some point next year.

How did things go so wrong so fast?

___

Cars streamed into Atlantic City on May 26, 1978, and people lined the Boardwalk for blocks, waiting to get inside Resorts on the first day it was legal to gamble there.

People bought tickets for buffets they had no intention of eating, just to sneak inside the casino earlier than the rest. Men relieved themselves into plastic coin cups to avoid losing their spot at the tables by going to restrooms. And cash — more than anyone had ever seen and more than management could imagine — flooded into the counting room, to the point that it took nearly an entire day to count it.

"It was euphoria," said Steve Norton, who was Resorts' executive vice president when it opened and now runs a casino consulting firm in Indiana. "I mean, it was an unbelievable time."

One after another in the 1980s, casinos kept coming. Revenues reached a high point of $5.2 billion in 2006.

And then the Pocono Downs harness racing track in Luzerne County, Pa., added slot machines and opened them to the public on Nov. 14, 2006. Suddenly, people in the heart of one of Atlantic City's key feeder markets could drive 10 or 20 minutes to play the slots instead of making a three-hour round trip to Atlantic City. In less than four years, there would be 10 casinos in Pennsylvania, all of which now offer table games, too.

They took in nearly $2.5 billion last year, approaching Atlantic City's $3.6 billion. So far this year, they are running neck-and-neck: $996 million for Pennsylvania, and $1.1 billion for Atlantic City.

"If you didn't anticipate this competition coming, you were asleep at the wheel," said Israel Posner, executive director of the Lloyd Levenson Institute of Gaming at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.

David Schwartz, director of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas Center for Gaming Research, said Atlantic City can be successful again, "but it's going to require a reinvention."

"Basically, the city needs to stop looking backward and start looking ahead," he said.

A look back reveals many missteps and lost opportunities. The most obvious: a failure to reinvent the resort as a place to go for more than gambling. Atlantic City belatedly jumped on the bandwagon, adding non-gambling amenities over the past eight years like celebrity restaurants, spas, shopping and top-name entertainment. The Borgata even built a stand-alone luxury hotel called the Water Club, and Harrah's indoor pool has become a cash cow, doubling as one of the city's hottest nightspots.

But back then, anything customers couldn't bet on was seen as a waste of money.

"Nobody wanted to build anything other than casinos," Norton said. "The property values shot up so high, it didn't make sense to build anything else."

There's plenty of blame to go around. Casino owners focused only on their own properties instead of the market as a whole, a habit that Atlantic City is only recently shaking off. Competing against each other instead of Las Vegas was the city's playbook for decades.

Now, the casinos are banding together for joint marketing efforts, and will chip in to help sponsor the biggest names in entertainment, rather than letting one casino pay the whole cost of a Britney Spears or Lady Gaga show, or a rodeo. And three casinos are even thinking of jointly funding a new convention or trade show center in Atlantic City to draw badly needed midweek business.

New Jersey also erred by failing to approve legalized sports betting in 1991 when it was given the chance to do so ahead of a nationwide ban, gambling experts say. A state senator sued the federal government in 2009 to overturn the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, but the suit was dismissed by a federal judge last month.

___

When Griffin, the Trump CEO, lays his head on the pillow at night, he worries that New Jersey will one day succumb to political pressure from lawmakers in the more populous northern part of the state to expand casino gambling to the Meadowlands racetrack, 10 minutes from New York City. Analysts expect it would instantly become a $1 billion market. State law now allows casino gambling only in Atlantic City.

"That would devastate us," he said. "This would become a two-casino town; it wouldn't even take five years. That's what keeps me up at night."

Maddie Downey, a bartender at the Showboat, has her own worries. The single mom has already lost one casino job when the Sands closed in 2006, and worries that gas prices will stay near $4 a gallon, keeping people away from Atlantic City.

"I'm just glad to have this job," she said. "I just hope it doesn't get any worse, and I hope the price of gas comes down."

When the Indian-run Foxwoods casino opened in Connecticut in 1992, it was the closest casino to Atlantic City — and a sure sign that more were to come. Mohegan Sun, another tribal casino, opened in Connecticut four years later. The resort responded by allowing its casinos to stay open 24 hours a day; they formerly had to close for a few hours in the wee hours of the morning. It also introduced new games like poker, keno and racing simulcasts.

But the money kept coming in, and the two Connecticut casinos didn't prove to be a major problem for Atlantic City, which sat on its cards. No new casinos opened until the Borgata in 2003, which would usher in a new era of grand dreams — very few of which would ever come true.

The Borgata touched off a casino arms race, with companies from across the country vying to build the next mega-resort here. At the start of 2008, there were plans for as many as four new casinos; MGM Mirage unveiled a $5 billion, three-tower casino project that would have been the largest ever built here.

Pinnacle Entertainment blew up the Sands to make way for its own $2 billion casino resort, modeled on a beach house. Before setting off the explosives that would bring it down, then-CEO Dan Lee spoke of the importance of keeping the market fresh, new and exciting. The challenge, he said, is "to compete in this new world, or be the next implosion."

Yet by the end of 2008, Pinnacle and MGM's projects imploded on their own, and Revel, the first of the new projects to actually put shovels in the ground, was limping along. It would run out of money in 2009 and halt construction on the interior. Morgan Stanley, its major financer, walked away from the project, deciding it was better to take a nearly $1 billion bath on the deal than to stay in Atlantic City.

After scouring the globe for financing, including asking the Chinese government, Revel CEO Kevin DeSanctis finally secured new financing in February 2011 that allowed the project to resume, with some state tax incentives.

"Every market got hit, but nobody faced the amount of new competition coming online as much as Atlantic City did," said Larry Mullin, who was president of the Borgata at the time and now runs an Australian casino company. "We were just exposed. Nothing was going to stop the convenience customer from trying a product that was closer to them. I just don't think there was any silver, magic bullet. It was a very tough situation."

___

Torn between demands from the New Jersey casino and horse racing industries, New Jersey's incoming governor, Republican Chris Christie, sided in 2010 with the casinos, which provided more tax revenue to the state's coffers. He refused to allow slot machines at the racetracks — something the racing industry has long wanted to keep pace with its competitors in other states.

New Jersey staged a quasi-takeover of Atlantic City's casino and tourist zones; Christie called it "a partnership." But the new tourism zone is run by the state and takes charge of many functions Atlantic City's often dysfunctional municipal government had long struggled with, including safety, cleanliness and economic development. (At one point just a few years ago, four of the previous eight mayors of Atlantic City had been arrested on corruption charges.)

The $30 million in annual payments that the casinos had to pony up to the horse racing industry, in return for keeping slots out of the tracks, will now be used to market Atlantic City nationally. The state rewrote many of its famously strict regulations for casinos, removing, among other things, minimum staffing requirements. They even allowed casinos to keep some jackpots that had built up on progressive slot machine games that they decide to cancel.

State-mandated economic redevelopment funds collected from each casino will now be used solely for projects within Atlantic City; before, the money was spread around the state.

The help cannot come too soon. Casinos are selling at fire-sale prices. Within the past year, The Tropicana, Resorts and Trump Marina have all sold for about 10 cents on the dollar from their values of just a few years ago. The Atlantic City Hilton stopped paying its mortgage in 2009 and is looking for a buyer. The casinos have shed nearly 15,000 jobs since 1997, with more layoffs to come.

Crocodile sinks teeth into Aussie dentist

PERTH: An Australian dentist has survived an attack by a large saltwater crocodile after it leapt into his boat and clamped its teeth around his shoulder.

Bruce Rudeforth was fishing at Secure Bay in the north of Western Australia when the croc pounced, the West Australian newspaper reported Tuesday.

"Out of the corner of my eye, this thing came at me," Rudeforth said.

"It bit into my shoulder and I stood up and gave it one in the throat with my free elbow. I presume that's what made it let go."

The crocodile disappeared underwater but returned again, forcing the dentist and his fishing mate to fend it off with an oar.

Rudeforth, who suffered puncture wounds from the reptile's teeth, said he had fished in the area for years and often saw crocodiles, but they never attacked.

Toy tiger sparks armed police alert

LONDON: UK Police were trying to trace the owner of a toy life-size tiger which sparked a major operation involving armed officers and a force helicopter.

The alert was raised by several members of the public when they spotted what they believed to be a live white tiger in a field near Hampshire.

The police helicopter was scrambled and a golf course cleared after police arrived at the scene and confirmed the sighting.

But as police officers carefully approached the ''wild animal'' they realised it was not moving and the helicopter crew, using thermal imaging equipment, realised there was no heat source coming from it.

Spinning with dolphins!

ROME: Diver Simone Arrigoni completed 13 circuits under dolphin power - and broke his own record - using the dynamic apnea technique, which involves holding your breath.

The attempt took place at a marine centre in the Italian town of Tovaianica, south of Rome.

As he is pushed along underwater, this diver shows how he is in perfect tune with two dolphins.

Arrigoni completed the circuits, or 'voltas' as he calls them, in one minute 53 seconds - and travelled 657 metres.

'Voltas' is a Portuguese term used by the diver to define the circles that he constructs as he is pushed along by the dolphins - in this case, Paco and Marco.

The task is made more difficult as it requires absolute synchronisation with the animals.

'Super Sherpa' scales Mount Everest for record 21st time

KATHMANDU: A 51-year-old Nepali mountaineer, nicknamed "Super Sherpa", climbed Mount Everest for a record 21st time on Wednesday, breaking his own record for the most summits of the world's highest mountain, hiking officials said.

Apa Sherpa, who lives in the United States, reached the 8,850-metre (29,035-foot) peak of the mountain along the Southeast Ridge route, pioneered by New Zealand's Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, who were the first to reach the top of the world in 1953.

"It takes a lot of will power to do something as difficult and needing a lot of strength at very high altitude over and over and over again," climbing historian Elizabeth Hawley said. "It is really a remarkable achievement."

Apa, whose 21st ascent was dedicated to the impact of climate change, was accompanied by American Chris Shumate, Bruno Gremior of Switzerland and four other Sherpa climbers, Ang Tshering Sherpa, chief of the Asian Trekking Agency, said.

Environmental activists say the Himalayan glaciers are rapidly shrinking due to climate change, threatening the lives of millions of people who depend on them for water.

Apa's Eco Everest Expedition team is made from climbers from different countries that set out to pick about five tonnes of decades-old old garbage - discarded oxygen cylinders, gas canisters, torn tents, ropes and plastic dumped by climbers on the mountain's slopes in the past.

"This expedition is focussed on climbing in an eco-sensitive manner to keep Everest clean and collect garbage, debris and waste left by past expedition groups," team leader Dawa Steven Sherpa said.

Apa first climbed the summit of Everest in 1990. He was born in Solukhumbhu district, home to Everest, but now lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Two-ton Gayle makes IPL history

BANGALORE: Chris Gayle became the first batsman to hit two centuries in the Indian Premier League when he smashed a 49-ball 107 in Royal Challengers Bangalore's 85-run win over Kings XI Punjab on Friday.

The West Indies opener, who scored an unbeaten hundred against Kolkata Knight Riders last month, cracked nine sixes and 10 fours in a superb display of power-hitting to help Bangalore post a challenging 205-6.

Bangalore, with Gayle taking 3-21 with his off-spinners, then restricted Punjab to 120-9 for their fifth win in nine matches of the Twenty20 tournament.

Seamer Sreenath Aravind took 4-14.

Punjab could never recover after losing four wickets, including those of hard-hitting Australians Adam Gilchrist and Shaun Marsh, for 34 runs in the opening six overs.

South African Ryan McLaren (28), Paul Valthaty (21) and Dinesh Karthik (20) were the main scorers in Punjab's dismal batting performance.

Mumbai currently lead the 10-team league table with 14 points, followed by Kolkata (12), Chennai (12), Bangalore (11), Rajasthan (11), Kochi (10), Delhi (eight), Deccan (six), Punjab (six) and Pune (four).

Gayle went for big shots early in his innings, hitting Australian paceman Ryan Harris for two sixes in an over. His best came in the eighth over when he smashed two sixes and as many fours off seamer Praveen Kumar.

The opener, who raced to his half-century off just 28 balls, dominated a 111-run stand for the second wicket with Virat Kohli (27) before falling in the 15th over, caught at deep mid-wicket off leg-spinner Piyush Chawla.

South African AB de Villiers then hit an unbeaten 27 off 14 balls to help Bangalore cross the 200-mark.

Harris was the most successful bowler with 3-38, including two wickets off successive balls, while Chawla finished with 2-37.

Now calculate calories through photos!

NEW YORK: Worried about how many calories you are going to consume in that slice of pizza, chocolate cake or bag of fries? A new iPhone application may help.

After taking a picture of the meal with the phone, the app gives a calorie read-out almost instantly.

The app, called MealSnap, was developed by DailyBurn, a fitness social network that has created several other fitness and diet-related iPhone applications.

Within minutes of taking a picture of a meal and matching it to a database of some 500,000 food items, the app sends users an alert with a range of calories for the meal that was photographed.

"The database can quickly help identity the food, how many calories there are, proteins, fat, carbs, vitamins, whatever you may want to know," said DailyBurn CEO Andy Smith. "Users can then choose to share what they've eaten on Twitter or FourSquare, leading to social accountability."

Smith added that calorie counting can be a very time consuming process. But the app makes it easier to track the calories in food.

"The pure act of tracking something can cause a psychological change that can help people on their health and fitness journey," he explained. "Just the simple fact of logging it makes me more aware of what I'm eating."

Additionally, MealSnap can serve as a food diary, allowing users to keep a visual log of the meals they have eaten.

Cat with 5 ears

MOSCOW: A Russian cat has set a record for having the most ears, with 3 ears on the right and 2 ears on the left for a total of five.

The cat was discovered by Vladimir Obryvkov of the Voronezh State University of Agriculture who studies animals with physical deformities. The scientist found the cat in the city of Voronezh, Russia and had planned on running tests on the cat including x-ray's, to gain more information about the recessive gene that causes this deformity.

Pillow Fight Day observed across the world

NEW YORK: Thousands of people came out (pillow) fighting today as the world celebrated International Pillow Fight Day.

From Australia to Brazil, dozens of cities around the globe saw pillows brought into public squares for the fourth annual feather-fest.

New York's Union Square became a bedding battleground as thousands gathered to smack each other about, and hundreds of thousands were expected to join in worldwide for the event, which was started by The Urban Playground Movement.

New Yorkers didn't let the world down. A MailOnline reporter who joined in the action said that many fighters came in costume - with some dressed a ninjas and two lads dressed as Spartan warriors, who stood back to back and took on all comers.
American pillow fighters also gathered in front of Washington's Capital Hill and in Pershing Square in Los Angeles.

Naturally, the weather was perfect for pillow fighting in LA, as large numbers gathered underneath palm trees to do their bit.

Dog rescued from floating house weeks after tsunami

TOKYO: A dog that survived in a house swept away to sea three weeks ago by the devastating Japan tsunami was saved on Friday by a coast guard rescue team flying over an island of debris.

Local television showed an aerial view of a brown medium-sized dog trotting around the roof of the house -- the only part of it floating above water -- before disappearing inside through a broken section of the roof.

The coast guard rescuers, thinking there might also be people alive inside the house, lowered one of their team onto the roof. He tried to coax the dog out, but then went in after tearing a wider opening. He came out with the dog in his arms and they were transported back to safety by boat.