And Finally...

US woman goes on highway shooting spree: There were many things American officials were gearing up to face amid the solar eclipse - traffic jams, accidents, eye injuries and more. But this one definitely wasn't on their list.

In a bizarre incident, a woman suddenly shot at two drivers on a Florida interstate and claimed that she was asked by "God" to do so via the solar eclipse, as per the police.

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Strangely, the Sunshine State was not even close to the path of totality and hence, was supposed to be the least affected by the astronomical phenomenon.

cross-posted from: https://fedia.io/m/nottheonion@lemmy.world/t/671841

Turns out, even just a little bit of exercise can indeed help break up that bloated feeling: A post-meal stroll kick-starts digestion. “When you are moving, your GI tract is also moving,” Dr. Ganjhu tells SELF. This helps trigger gut motility, or movement of your intestines, which is essential for properly breaking down food. “There needs to be motion to help move the food along,” she says. “When you’re walking and moving around, you’re basically helping the motility part of the digestive tract.” (That might explain why you often feel so damn bloated after eating on an airplane or a train, where you can’t move around freely.)

And research backs this up: Post-meal activity has been shown to speed stomach emptying and colon transit, and, according to a separate study in the American Journal of Gastroenterology, even mild activity after a meal was enough to significantly reduce bloating. What’s more, boosting your gut motility and moving the food out quickly can also help with heartburn or gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), Dr. Ganjhu says—there’s simply less time for the digestive acids to do their thing.

As for the claim that a fart walk can protect against diabetes? Any type of exercise can help keep your blood sugar in check, Dr. Ganjhu says. And an after-dinner stroll might just be a great way to do it: A study in the journal Nutrients found that a walk after eating can help stabilize your blood sugar levels. That’s important, since repeated spikes over time can make your body less sensitive to insulin, which can increase your risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

Earlier this year, Germany's environment ministry suggested there should be stricter limits on importing trophies from hunting animals.

Botswana's President Mokgweetsi Masisi told German media this would only impoverish people in his country.

He said elephant numbers had exploded as a result of conservation efforts, and hunting helped keep them in check.

Germans should "live together with the animals, in the way you are trying to tell us to", Mr Masisi told German newspaper Bild. "This is no joke."

Botswana is home to about a third of the world's elephant population - over 130,000 - more than it has space for.

Herds were causing damage to property, eating crops and trampling residents, Mr Masisi said.

Botswana has previously given 8,000 elephants to neighbouring Angola, and has offered hundreds more to Mozambique, as a means of bringing the population down.

"We would like to offer such a gift to Germany," Mr Masisi said, adding that he would not take no for an answer.

Botswana's Wildlife Minister Dumezweni Mthimkhulu last month threatened to send 10,000 elephants to London's Hyde Park so British people could "have a taste of living alongside" them.

In March, UK MPs voted to support a ban on importing hunting trophies, but the legislation has further scrutiny to pass before becoming law.

Hundreds of people have taken part in the annual World Coal Carrying Championships in West Yorkshire.

The event in Gawthorpe, near Ossett, sees runners haul sacks of coal across a distance of 3,320ft (1,012m).

Gawthorpe Maypole Committee, which organises the championships, said more than 400 people had signed up this year, including 200 children.

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Traditionally, men carried 7st 12lb (50kg) sacks of coal and women carried 3st 2lb (20kg) from the Royal Oak pub to the village's Maypole Green.

However, this year Mr Smith said organisers had to make the switch to anthracite coal as house coal was banned from sale for environmental reasons.

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Among those in the crowd this year was Gladiators star Jodie Ounsley, known to fans of the BBC One show as Fury.

She was there in support of her father Phil, a former winner of the men's open race in 2007.

Speaking after the event, he told BBC Look North: "I'd love to say I enjoyed it but I hated every minute of it.

"It was absolutely brutal and I remember now why I hadn't done it in the last 16 years."

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This year's women's race was won by Danielle Sidebottom from Dewsbury, who took the title for the third time after completing the course in four minutes 45 seconds.

Andrew Corrigan from Driffield claimed his sixth win in the men's race, finishing in 04:22.

The women's veterans winner was Nicola Marr with a time of 05:19, while men's veterans winner Matthew Gillard crossed the finish line in 05:53.

The oldest contestant was 77-year-old David Page who finished the race to huge applause.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/12861354

Despite today’s date, this is not an April Fool’s prank. At a press conference in Tokyo last weekend, professor Hiroshi Yoshida from the Tohoku University Research Center for Aged Economy and Society, sounded the alarm bell for a looming crisis. By the year 2531, everyone in Japan will have the surname Sato.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/18606125

This spring, an unusual cicada double dose is about to invade a couple parts of the United States in what University of Connecticut cicada expert John Cooley called “cicada-geddon.” The last time these two broods came out together in 1803 Thomas Jefferson, who wrote about cicadas in his Garden Book but mistakenly called them locusts, was president.

The largest geographic brood in the nation -- called Brood XIX and coming out every 13 years -- is about to march through the Southeast, having already created countless boreholes in the red Georgia clay.

Soon after the insects appear in large numbers in Georgia and the rest of the Southeast, cicada cousins that come out every 17 years will inundate Illinois. They are Brood XIII.

An even bigger adjacent joint emergence will be when the two largest broods, XIX and XIV, come out together in 2076, Cooley said: “That is the cicada-palooza.”

cross-posted from: https://real.lemmy.fan/post/2041592

Spider Lamb, Spider Lamb, doing whatever a Spider Lamb can.

Michelangelo’s David has been a towering figure in Italy since its completion in 1504. But in the current era of the quick buck, curators worry the marble statue’s religious and political significance is being diminished by the thousands of refrigerator magnets and other souvenirs sold around Florence focusing on David’s genitalia.

The Galleria dell’Accademia director, Cecilie Hollberg, has positioned herself as David’s defender since her arrival at the museum in 2015, taking swift aim at those profiteering from his image, often in ways she finds “debasing”.

In that way, she is a bit of a David herself, up against the Goliath of unfettered capitalism with its army of street vendors and souvenir shop operators hawking aprons of the statue’s nude figure, T-shirts of it engaged in obscene gestures, and ubiquitous figurines, often in Pop Art neon.

At Hollberg’s behest, the state’s attorney office in Florence has launched a series of court cases invoking Italy’s landmark cultural heritage code, which protects artistic treasures from disparaging and unauthorised commercial use. The Accademia has won hundreds of thousands of euros in damages since 2017, according to Hollberg.

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The decisions challenge a widely held practice that intellectual property rights are protected for a specified period before entering the public domain – the artist’s lifetime plus 70 years, according to the Berne Convention signed by more than 180 countries, including Italy.

More broadly, the decisions raise the question of whether institutions should be the arbiters of taste, and to what extent freedom of expression is being limited.

“It raises not just legal issues, but also philosophical issues. What does cultural patrimony mean? How much of a stranglehold do you want to give institutions over ideas and images that are in the public domain?’’ said Thomas C. Danziger, an art market lawyer based in New York.

A grandmother was left dangling upside down after her coat got caught in a shop's security shutters.

Anne Hughes, 71, was seen on CCTV being lifted 7ft into the air outside a convenience store in Rhondda Cynon Taf.

She has been dubbed "SuperAnne" in her home village in Wales and said the incident "could only happen to me".

Speaking at her home near the Best One shop in Tonteg, near Pontypridd, Ms Hughes said her thought at the time was "flipping heck".

The footage

Half of a beloved Lanarkshire garden centre's mascot named Gary the gorilla has returned home after 10 months.

The 8ft statue was nabbed from from his home outside Reynard's Nursery near Carluke in May last year. CCTV footage showed brazen crooks unbolting the huge fibreglass mascot before fleeing the scene with it in the back of a van.

At the time the owners were desperate for Gary to be returned and they have now partially got their wish.

On March 21, they received a message stating that the rear half of the silverback was discovered on the A92 between Dundee and Arbroath.

Gary's back has now been returned home, however, the search for the rest of the gorilla still continues.

In a TikTok posted on the centre's account, staff stated that they "have Gary's 'back' back" but they needed more help to solve the 'monkey puzzle'.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/13642360

The decision to find a “respectful final disposition” for human remains used for a 19th-century book comes amid growing scrutiny of their presence in museum collections.

Of the roughly 20 million books in Harvard University’s libraries, one has long exerted a unique dark fascination, not for its contents, but for the material it was reputedly bound in: human skin.

For years, the volume — a 19th-century French treatise on the human soul — was brought out for show and tell, and sometimes, according to library lore, used to haze new employees. In 2014, the university drew jokey news coverage around the world with the announcement that it had used new technology to confirm that the binding was in fact human skin.

But on Wednesday, after years of criticism and debate, the university announced that it had removed the binding and would be exploring options for “a final respectful disposition of these human remains.”

Non-paywall link

A robotic dog is being thanked by state police in Massachusetts for helping avert a tragedy involving a person barricaded in a home.

The robotic dog named Roscoe was part of the Massachusetts state police bomb squad and deployed on 6 March in a Barnstable house after police were fired upon. Police sent in two other robots often used for bomb disposal into the house to find the suspect along with the robotic dog.

Controlled remotely by state troopers, it first checked the two main floors before finding someone in the basement. The person, armed with a rifle, twice knocked over the robotic dog before shooting it three times and disabling its communication.

The person then shot at one of the other robots and an outdoor swimming pool before police deployed teargas and arrested them.

“The incident provided a stark example of the benefits of mobile platforms capable of opening doors and ascending stairs in tactical missions involving armed suspects,” state police said in a statement. “In addition to providing critically important room clearance and situational awareness capabilities, the insertion of Roscoe into the suspect residence prevented the need, at that stage of response, from inserting human operators, and may have prevented a police officer from being involved in an exchange of gunfire.”

Boston Dynamics, the company that made the robotic dog known as a Spot robot, said in a statement that it was the first time one of them had been shot.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/16803418

An Australian man has been freed after spending 36 hours trapped in a drain network.

He first entered a drain in Brisbane on Saturday "while trying to retrieve his phone", according to authorities.

A leading doctor who has urged people not to eat an entire Easter egg 'in one go' has been branded "silly" for his remarks. Dr Andrew Kelso, medical director of a large NHS services provider, said people should enjoy their treats this Easter but warned them "Don't over do it."

He urged people to 'resist the urge to eat a whole egg in one go.' He issued the advice as part of his role as medical director at the NHS Suffolk and North East Essex Integrated Care Board.

The former consultant neurologist said: “Many people don’t realise that an average Easter egg contains around three-quarters of an adult’s recommended daily calorie intake. At a time like this when we are seeing significant increases in cases of obesity and Type 2 diabetes, as well as tooth decay, I urge people to enjoy their Easter eggs in moderation and resist the urge to eat a whole egg in one go.

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He also warned that GP surgeries were closed over Easter weekend for those who may need help with their chocolate intake. Dr Kelso's remarks were met with criticism online by those who believed the comments were misguided and smacked of the 'nanny state.'

One posted on Facebook: "This doctor has obviously got to much time on his hands to be given such a silly interview. We all know that surgeries will be shut over Easter, they always have been.

"And we all know too much chocolate can lead to diabetes, being fat and tooth decay. Maybe if people could actually get into a doctors or dentist, there wouldn't be half so many problems."

Another said they were "sick of this country becoming a nanny state". The tradition of chocolate eggs on Easter Sunday, which is on March 31 this year, is from Christians exchanging eggs as a symbol of rebirth after Christ's resurrection.

His calm demeanour and wholesome vocation have apparently endeared him to one of the most authoritarian regimes in the world. But there is something about Alan Titchmarsh that North Korea’s censors can’t quite forgive – his jeans.

The green-fingered broadcaster and author of raunchy novels has been a fixture on state television since 2022, albeit with the addition of a blurred effect from the waist down.

By wearing jeans to potter about in Britain’s gardens in his BBC TV series Garden Secrets, Titchmarsh, 74, fell foul of a North Korean ban on the garments, which the regime has forbidden since the early 1990s because they are seen as a symbol of US imperialism.

Luton Town fans have called for Coldplay to change the lyrics of their song Yellow to match the football club’s orange home kit.

The plea came after the band were confirmed as headliners for Radio 1’s Big Weekend festival taking place at Stockwood Park, a 10-minute drive from the club’s ground, Kenilworth Road, in May.

Local people want the band to put a Lutonian spin on their hit song from 2000, saying it would honour the club and fans. Luton play in orange, navy and white. Just down the M1, Luton’s rivals Watford play in yellow.

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Kev Harper, of the Luton Town supporters’ trust, said it would be an honour for the team and town if the band made the change.

“The crowd would love it,” he told the BBC, joking that Coldplay “should have called it Orange in the first place, it’s a superior colour”.

A Texas man has legally changed his name to Literally Anybody Else and announced he is running for US president in the 2024 election.

Formerly known as Dustin Ebey, the 35-year-old is a US army veteran and seventh-grade math teacher in the suburbs of Dallas, and now has a Texas driver’s license to prove his name change.

He said he wanted to change his name because he was unsatisfied with this year’s presidential candidates, Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

“Three hundred million people can do better,” he said in reference to the two frontrunners for the nation’s highest office. “There really should be some outlet for people like me who are just so fed up with this constant power grab between the two parties that just has no benefit to the common person.

While arguing against a proposal for safe storage requirements for firearms, Minnesota state Sen. Warren Limmer (R-Maple Grove) contended that rural citizens need guns readily available to deal with cows.

“You even walk too close to a cow, and it’ll take you down and trample you into dust,” Limmer said. “Fumbling around with a lock while a cow or a bull or any other animal is going after your daughter or your son — you can’t fumble around with a key or try and find the lockbox or put your thumb on a biometric key of some sort in your home while the danger is outside. This bill puts those individuals in even more danger.”

cross-posted from: https://real.lemmy.fan/post/1938213

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/13543662

WASCO, Calif. (KBAK) — A man has been arrested after being suspected of taking the leg of a pedestrian who was struck by an Amtrak train in California and eating it.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/18068891

Possible intoxication and a shot of irony came together Thursday night when a suspected drunk motorist crashed into a “Report Impaired Drivers” sign in View Royal and was arrested soon after.

West Shore RCMP say they discovered the downed sign after responding about 9:55 p.m. to a report of a Dodge Ram pickup involved in an incident near Craigflower and Admirals roads.

A witness told police the truck was travelling at a high speed when it went up onto the sidewalk and struck the sign.

The driver had already taken off by the time a traffic officer arrived, but escape was unlikely since the debris left behind included one of the truck’s licence plates.

Archive: https://archive.ph/1aMJb

Not, as I read, "Swan and Paedo"