The man who can down a huge bottle of ketchup in just 39 seconds

Speed is the word for Guinness Rishi as he powers his way through a giant 490 gram bottle of ketchup in just 39 seconds.Guinness believes he holds the fastest time for drinking the world’s favourite condiment, which he sups through a straw.

His brand of choice is a toss up between Maggi or the more traditional Heinz.

And 67-year-old Guinness, from Delhi, India, doesn’t confine his talents to the world of tomato sauce.

He claims to hold 19 world titles and even changed his name – from Har Parkash to Guinness Rishi – in a bid to win over official record-keepers.

But so far none of his bizarre stunts have been recognised in the Guinness Book of Records.

Guinness puts his motivation down to the need to stand out in a country of over 1 billion people.

‘People consider me an extraordinary person, not an ordinary person,’ he said.

His records include ‘taking on the world’s oldest adoptee’, after he legally took custody of his 61-year-old brother-in-law.

Guiness also built the tallest sugar cube tower in the world, which stands at 64 inches.

He took his new name in 1991, after keeping a motor scooter in continuous motion for 1,001 hours for another bizarre record.

‘Persons who have no money wish to do something in their lives, so the poor people try to break records by their strength or their will,’ said Guinness, who is joint owner of an auto-parts factory.

The ketchup-crazed pensioner said he will continue to find new records to break until he achieves his dream of official recognition.

‘I hope to make my family proud,’ he said

‘My children feel they are more important in the field of business and money-making.

‘I have to show the family and the community that I am a professional person.’

Now Guinness is trying to find a way of combining eating chips with his ketchup-drinking record in the hope of attracting the attention of judges.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1103854/Pictured-The-man-huge-bottle-ketchup-just-39-seconds.html

Michigan twins born on different days, months, years

ROCHESTER, Mich. – They’re twins, all right, despite what their spanking new birth certificates say. Tariq Griffin entered the world at 12:17 a.m. on New Year’s Day at Crittenton Hospital in Rochester, Mich. Twin brother Tarrance was born a bit earlier – 26 minutes to be exact.That means the boys have the unique distinction of having been born on different days, months and years.

Their dad, Tarrance Sr., is also a twin. The parents say the boys are doing well, which is their main concern.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090102/ap_on_fe_st/odd_new_year_s_twins

400 dress as Jesus to put Christ back in Christmas

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) – Dressed in flowing robes and thorny crowns, about 400 churchgoers promised their pastor they’d dress like Jesus as a hard-to-miss reminder of the holiday’s religious roots.

Members of Praise Chapel Christian Fellowship began showing up that way last week at jobs, shopping malls and restaurants. The demonstration wrapped up Wednesday.

“I know it’s a crazy idea,” said pastor Kelly Lohrke, whose 600 members attend services in Kansas City, Kan., and nearby Lee’s Summit, Mo. “I know it’s a radical idea. Christians can have fun with their faith and sharing their faith.”

Lohrke said he came up with the idea out of frustration over the removal of crosses, nativity scenes and other religious symbols from public view.

Several groups have pushed the issue this year, with the American Humanist Association plastering ads on Washington, D.C., buses that proclaim “Why believe in god? Just be good for goodness’ sake.” That story motivated Lohrke protest.

Lohrke, whose church is part of Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.-based Praise Chapel Fellowship of Churches and Ministers International, isn’t convinced the founding fathers intended separation of church and state to mean the end of Jesus displayed publicly for holidays.

“It’s just absurd,” he said, “that Jesus is taken out.”

Lohrke brought up the idea at services on Dec. 14, telling parishioners: “We aren’t going to preach.” If asked about their attire, he said, participants are free to share their faith.

“We’ve gotten nothing but positives,” said Lohrke, who has dressed like Jesus at a Starbucks, a Target store and a post office.

Lohrke posted a video on YouTube declaring “Jesus is Back” and showing a participant in long gown and crown of thorns strolling through a mall, sitting on Santa’s lap and averting his eyes as he strolls past a Victoria’s Secret store.

“Next year, we are going to make this a big deal,” he said.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D95980KG1

Fast-food worker laughs, tells robber to get a job

SAN ANTONIO – A San Antonio fast-food restaurant cashier laughed at a robbery suspect and told him to get a job if he wanted money during a failed holdup on Tuesday evening.

Police said the suspect approached the worker and demanded money, but the cashier laughed and apparently didn’t realize the man was trying to hold up the place.

The suspect then allegedly pulled out a box cutter and demanded the cashier’s wallet. The employee complied, but had no money in his billfold.

The suspect fled, but was caught by police who responded to the robbery call.

San Antonio police said the suspect is expected to be charged with aggravated robbery.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081218/ap_on_fe_st/odd_get_a_job

Man sprays ‘toilet-papering’ teens with fox urine

WILLMAR, Minn. (AP) – A 50-year-old man who told authorities he was fed up with teens toilet-papering his house decided to defend his property-with a squirt gun filled with fox urine. Now, Scott Wagar is in trouble with the law.

Wagar pleaded not guilty on Wednesday in Kandiyohi County District Court to misdemeanor assault and other charges. He was released on personal recognizance.

According to police, Wagar was on his property Sept. 16 when he used night vision goggles to see 15-20 people running toward his place. He told police that he told them to leave, swore at them and sprayed them with the fox urine. He also allegedly struggled with one of the teens.

A phone message left at a home listing for a Scott Wagar was not immediately returned to The Associated Press.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D950SCC00

Actor Portraying Suicide Slits Own Throat on Stage in Prop Mix-up

An actor portraying a suicide bid in an Austrian play accidentally slashed his own throat on-stage following a prop mix-up.

Daniel Hoevels, 30, collapsed with blood pouring from his neck after using a real blade instead of the blunt stage knife.

He was taken to the hospital after the dramatic scene at Vienna’s Burgtheater.

The audience had been raptured, unaware the actor was facing his own demise for real.

But when he failed to greet their applause for the show’s spectacular special effects with a bow they separated fact from fiction.

Police are now investigating whether the mix-up was murderous.

Officers have refused to rule out the possibility that a jealous rival may have switched the blades.

The knife had been bought at a local store and police are asking if props staff forgot to blunt the blade for the performance of Friedrich Schiller’s play Mary Stuart, about Mary Queen of Scots.

“The knife even still had the price tag on it,” said a police investigator.

The theater’s props manager has been quizzed by police about the weapon, Austrian daily Osterreich reported.

The actor recovered after emergency treatment and even appeared on stage the next night with a bandage around his neck.

“If Hoevels had hit an artery or cut only slightly deeper, he would have died on stage,” a doctor said.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,464904,00.html

GPS, hidden cameras watching over Baby Jesus

When Baby Jesus disappeared last year from a Nativity scene on the lawn of the Wellington, Fla., community center, village officials didn’t follow a star to locate him.

A GPS device mounted inside the life-size ceramic figurine led sheriff’s deputies to a nearby apartment, where it was found face down on the carpet. An 18-year-old woman was arrested in the theft.

Giving up on old-fashioned padlocks and trust, a number of churches, synagogues, governments and ordinary citizens are turning to technology to protect holiday displays from pranks or prejudice.

About 70 churches and synagogues eager to avoid the December police blotter jumped at a security company’s offer of free use of GPS systems and hidden cameras this month to guard their mangers and menorahs.

Others, like the Herrera family of Richland Hills, Texas, took matters into their own hands. Upset after their teeter-totter was stolen, the family trained surveillance cameras on their yard and was surprised when footage showed a teenage girl stealing a baby Jesus worth almost $500. Police have obtained the tape.

“They took the family Jesus,” said Gloria Herrera, 48, a Catholic. “How can anybody do that?”

For two consecutive years, thieves made off with the baby Jesus figurine in Wellington, a well-off village of 60,000 in Palm Beach County, Fla. The ceramic original, donated by a local merchant, was made in Italy and worth about $1,800, said John Bonde, Wellington’s director of operations.

So last year, officials took a GPS unit normally used to track the application of mosquito spray and implanted it in the latest replacement figurine. After that one disappeared, sheriff’s deputies quickly tracked it down.

Sensing opportunity in that kind of success story, New York-based BrickHouse Security is offering up to 200 nonprofit religious institutions a free month’s use of security cameras and LightningGPS products it distributes.

Chief executive officer Todd Morris said the idea was born after a few churches asked about one-month rentals instead of longer contracts that are the norm. The first 20 or so applications came from synagogues, he said.

Rabbi Yochonon Goldman of Lubavitch of Center City, a Philadelphia-area branch of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, signed up even though his previous biggest scare involved the wind knocking down a menorah.

“People are very security conscious, and this is simply a precaution,” said Goldman, who will put a GPS on one menorah and a camera on another. “It’s sad … but it’s the reality we’re faced with.”

As members of a minority religion, Jews are probably hit harder when their religious symbols are vandalized, said Deborah Lauter, national civil rights director for the Anti-Defamation League.

“If Baby Jesus is removed, it tends to be seen as a prank,” Lauter said. “Vandalism or theft of a menorah is just more sensitive. You feel like you’re really being targeted for your religion.”

The ADL identified 699 incidents of anti-Semitic vandalism in 2007, consistent with recent years.

So far in 2008, Baby Jesus has appeared in several police reports. At First United Methodist Church in Kittanning, Pa., a baby Jesus was stolen and replaced with a pumpkin. In Eureka Springs, Ark., someone who absconded with a plastic baby Jesus from a public display last week also took the concrete block and chain that was supposed to act as a deterrent.

Previously, stolen Jesus figurines have also been defaced with profanity or Satanic symbols.

The incidents raise a question: Is stealing Baby Jesus harmless juvenile fun, or anti-Christian?

“I suspect most of it is childish pranks,” said attorney Mike Johnson of the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative Christian legal group. “Clearly, there are adults with an agenda to remove Christ from Christmas. But they tend to occupy themselves with the courts and courtroom of public opinion.”

Stephen Nissenbaum, a retired history professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of “The Battle for Christmas,” views the thefts as neither innocent vandalism nor religious hate crimes.

“What it means is that it’s OK to go around violating even pretty important norms, as long as real human harm isn’t being done,” he said. “It’s not exactly devaluing Christianity, but it is sort of a ritualized challenge to it. It could be Christian kids doing it – and on Jan. 2 they become good Christians again.”

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20081210/D94VRG980.html

Nagging wife, sausage help man win $4.2M lottery

WELLINGTON, New Zealand – A “nagging” wife who pushed her husband to buy a lottery ticket helped scoop the $4.2 million ($7.7 million New Zealand dollar) first prize — with only minutes to spare. The man from New Zealand’s biggest city, Auckland, bought his ticket just two minutes before ticket sales closed Saturday night.

“My wife had been nagging me all week to get a ticket, so I when saw the Lotto sign … I sprinted in to get the ticket before they closed,” said the man, who asked not to be identified — normal practice among lottery winners in New Zealand .

“I must have been their last customer of the night,” he said, adding that the young married couple had had a “rough” couple of years, reduced to one income after having children.

“I have never been so glad to listen to my wife’s nagging,” the man said Tuesday.

He discovered their newly won fortune Sunday thanks to his wife’s request for a barbecued sausage.

Out shopping for bargains, the man said he didn’t have enough money to buy his wife the sausage she’d asked him for. So he decided to check his Saturday lottery ticket in case he’d won a small prize.

“I could not believe it when they said I was actually the big winner,” he said.

When he showed the printout to his wife, she initially thought they had won $4,200 (NZ$7,700).

“When she realized how much it really was, she fell to the floor, and then said: ‘but all I wanted was a sausage.’”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081209/ap_on_fe_st/odd_nagged_husband

Frugal farmer leaves $2M to his tiny Pa. church

BLAIRSVILLE, Pa. – It’s like a gift from God. A tiny church in western Pennsylvania inherited more than $2 million from a farmer who lived in a mobile home. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported Sunday that John Ferguson left his entire estate to Hopewell United Methodist Church near the town of Black Lick.

The 71-year-old farmer attended the church before dying in January 2007. The gift has been in probate since then.

The church has just 80 members. Hopewell pastor Jason McQueen says a panel of congregation members will choose projects to be funded annually from the income generated by Ferguson’s estate.

Deer gets revenge after hunter shoots him

SEDALIA, Mo. (AP) – A hunter bagged a big buck on the second day of firearms season, but the kill caused him a lot of pain. Randy Goodman, 49, said he thought two well-placed shots with his .270-caliber rifle had killed the buck on Nov. 19. Goodman said the deer looked dead to him, but seconds later the nine-point, 240-pound animal came to life.The buck rose up, knocked Goodman down and attacked him with his antlers in what the veteran hunter called “15 seconds of hell.” The deer ran a short distance and went down, and died after Goodman fired two more shots.

Soon Goodman started feeling dizzy and noticed his vest was soaked in blood.

So he reached his truck and drove to a hospital, where he received seven staples in his scalp and was treated for a slight concussion and bruises.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D94Q4ENG5