Odd news

US presidential hopeful Rick Perry saw his campaign for office ripped into tatters on Wednesday night after he made an extraordinary gaffe – forgetting his own policies during a live debate.

SAO PAULO — Thousands of flesh-eating piranhas have infested a river beach popular with tourists in western Brazil and have bitten at least 15 unwary swimmers, authorities said Wednesday. "People have got to be very careful. If they're bitten, they've got to get out of the water rapidly and not allow the blood to spread," firefighter Raul Castro de Oliveira told Globo TV's G1 website.
Elson de Campos Pinto, 22, was bitten Sunday.
"I took a dip in the river and when I stood up, I felt pain in my foot," Pinto told G1. "I saw that I had lost the tip of my toe. I took off running out of the river, afraid that I would be further attacked because of the blood. I'm not going back in for a long time."

Officials have put up large signs warning swimmers about the piranhas, reading in blood red letters: "Attention swimmers. Area at risk of piranha attacks. Danger!"
Local fisherman Hildegard Galeno Alves said that when he throws out a fishing net near the beach of late he catches numerous piranhas.
"I come here with my kids and I always see blood on the river banks," he told G1. "The worst is that the attacks are in shallow water, next to the bank."
Despite making his living off the river, Alves left no doubt about his feelings for the water.
"I would never even think of going in there," he said.

A pilot who accidentally locked himself in the bathroom of his LaGuardia-bound plane caused a terror scare last night when a helpful passenger with an accent tried to come to his rescue by banging on the cockpit door.
The embarrassing comedy of errors began when the captain of a Chatauqua Airlines flight from Asheville, N.C., decided to take a bathroom break before landing.
But when he tried to get out of the men’s room, the door jammed, trapping him in the tight quarters

Some of the Silicon Valley's most important companies, including Intel, Google, and Yahoo, were cofounded by immigrants. Yet America's creaky immigration system makes it difficult for talented young people born outside of the United States to come to the Bay Area. There have been various proposals to make it easier for immigrant entrepreneurs to come to the United States, but they've made no progress in Congress.

So a new company called Blueseed is seeking to bypass the political process and solve the problem directly. Blueseed plans to buy a ship and turn it into a floating incubator anchored in international waters off the coast of California.

A luxury sports car outing in Japan has ended in what may be one of the most expensive car crashes in history.

Eight Ferraris, three Mercedes-Benz, a Lamborghini and two other vehicles were involved in the pile-up in the southern prefecture of Yamaguchi. No one was seriously hurt, but the highway was closed for six hours after the accident.

Media reports estimate the damaged cars are worth at least 300m yen ($3.85m; £2.46m) in total.

Well, they did at least show up and stand by as the house burned to the ground; I expect they were bound to make sure it didn't spread and that nobody actually died in the fire.

As the article mentions, the point is that there is no incentive to pay the fees until your house is on fire, if they come and put it out when you call. It sucks but it's tough love, they can't afford to be on-call around the clock for 75 bucks a pop. You want protection, you have to pay, whether it's your house that's on fire or not.