Edwin Gallart: The Most Cursed Man of the Week.
Man Stuck In Train Toilet Delays Thousands Of Commuters

A man who dropped his cell phone in a Metro-North train toilet Thursday managed to get his arm stuck in the toilet trying to fish it out.

Edwin Gallart, 41, also managed to back up the entire Metro-North schedule, delaying thousands of commuters on dozens of trains.

According to reports, Gallert dropped his cell phone in the toilet of his train shortly after it left Grand Central Terminal during rush hour Thursday night. The train was held at the Fordham Station after a passenger heard Gallart's cries for help.

The train was held for about 90 minutes at the station while train workers tried to pry him loose. After some struggles, police and firefighters blowtorched the stainless steel toilet apart.

Meanwhile, all 600 passengers aboard the train had to be put on other trains and all northbound trains had to be rerouted, causing significant delays and thousands of dollars in additional costs for Metro-North, which might seek damages from Gallart, according to an Associated Press report.

He did not get his cell phone back.

Respect For the Dead Or Keeping The Spotlight off the Fatalities?
Curtains Ordered for Media Coverage of Returning Coffins

Since the end of the Vietnam War, presidents have worried that their military actions would lose support once the public glimpsed the remains of U.S. soldiers arriving at air bases in flag-draped caskets.

To this problem, the Bush administration has found a simple solution: It has ended the public dissemination of such images by banning news coverage and photography of dead soldiers' homecomings on all military bases.

In March, on the eve of the Iraq war, a directive arrived from the Pentagon at U.S. military bases. "There will be no arrival ceremonies for, or media coverage of, deceased military personnel returning to or departing from Ramstein [Germany] airbase or Dover [Del.] base, to include interim stops," the Defense Department said, referring to the major ports for the returning remains.

Stop Listening to your Priest ( Or any "Holy" person for that matter)
Vatican: condoms don't stop Aids

The Catholic Church is telling people in countries stricken by Aids not to use condoms because they have tiny holes in them through which the HIV virus can pass - potentially exposing thousands of people to risk.
The church is making the claims across four continents despite a widespread scientific consensus that condoms are impermeable to the HIV virus.

A senior Vatican spokesman backs the claims about permeable condoms, despite assurances by the World Health Organisation that they are untrue.

The church's claims are revealed in a BBC1 Panorama programme, Sex and the Holy City, to be broadcast on Sunday. The president of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, told the programme: "The Aids virus is roughly 450 times smaller than the spermatozoon. The spermatozoon can easily pass through the 'net' that is formed by the condom.

"These margins of uncertainty... should represent an obligation on the part of the health ministries and all these campaigns to act in the same way as they do with regard to cigarettes, which they state to be a danger."

The WHO has condemned the Vatican's views, saying: "These incorrect statements about condoms and HIV are dangerous when we are facing a global pandemic which has already killed more than 20 million people, and currently affects at least 42 million."

The organisation says "consistent and correct" condom use reduces the risk of HIV infection by 90%. There may be breakage or slippage of condoms - but not, the WHO says, holes through which the virus can pass.

What the heck are these guys at the Vatican smoking?

Navy Sonar Affecting Whales

High-powered sonar from Navy ships appears to be giving whales and other marine mammals a version of the bends, causing them to develop dangerous gas bubbles in some vital organs and blood vessels, to beach themselves and die, according to a study published today in the journal Nature.

Reporting on beaked whales that were stranded in the Canary Islands soon after an international naval exercise last year, researchers for the first time found a condition similar to decompression sickness in 10 of 14 dead animals.

The new data begins to explain how and why high decibel mid-frequency sonar used by the U.S. Navy and other military fleets appears to cause some deep-diving marine mammals to die. Although the bends was previously unheard of in whales, dolphins and porpoises, the British and Spanish researchers concluded that a marine mammal version of decompression sickness was "the most likely cause" of the Canary Island strandings.