latest weird news from the Daily Rotten:

F'book Internationalization Scheme Subverted »
The Register | Submitted by: ditchley"Miscreants abused the official Facebook Translate interface, a crowdsourcing method for improving the linguistic accuracy of the social network site, to vote up alternative and erroneous translations... A group of Turkish pranksters banded together to submit bogus translations so that a Facebook IM error message was rendered in Turkish as "Your message could not be sent because of your tiny penis." Discuss...

OSS Rival, Proto-CIA: "The Pond" »
Center for the Study of Intelligence | Submitted by: ditchley"Sadly, most of the Pond's 13-year history is lost. This obscurity was intentional. When the Pond was created in early 1942, the United States had very little experience with intelligence, and the notion of a spy agency which would be not only officially unacknowledged, but actually unknown, appealed to some people in Washington. These people were repelled by the larger-than-life publicity hound William Donovan and his "Oh So Social...

Morocco's Marijuana Economy Up In Smoke »
Global Post | Submitted by: anonymous"Although growing cannabis was officially illegal, authorities turned a blind eye and farmers had fields of the leafy green weed. But now farmers are angry that they are being forced to pay bribes to local police to continue growing the crop. In this village, in the heart of the Rif Mountains, thousands of farmers protested while the police and the army watched helplessly." Discuss...

Flyer Bumped By Teenage Melon »
Sacramento Bee | Submitted by: anonymous"The local woman was flying standby, paid full fare for the last available seat, got on board, stowed her bags and sat down – only to be told she would have to deplane immediately. The reason? A late-arriving passenger required two seats because of her girth... Why the extra concern? The person requiring two seats was just 14 years old." Discuss...

Phallometry Specialists Stymied »
CTV British Columbia | Submitted by: furpo"The penile plethysmography tests, or "phallometry," require boys as young as 13 in sex offence treatment programs to view pictures of nude and semi-clad children and listen to audio descriptions of forced sexual scenarios while their arousal levels are measured." Discuss...

Happy Eleventy-First Bonesday »
Australian Broadcasting | Submitted by: JJA home visit by Tokyo officials to a local resident to congratulate him on his 111th birthday instead led to a police search that uncovered his three-decade-old skeleton... His relatives told police that he had "confined himself in his room more than 30 years ago and became a living Buddha." Discuss...

Crooked Pharmacist Venges On Medical Board »
Arkansas News | Submitted by: Cornelius, Lord FudgePackus"Pierce walked to his car and found a spare tire leaning on the bumper of his vehicle. When he picked up the tire, a grenade, which had been taped to the tire, exploded. Pierce also testified about his relationship with Mann, who in 2003 appeared before the state Medical Board on allegations of over-prescribing narcotics... Also today, a federal prisoner testified that Dr. Randeep Mann offered him $50,000 to kill Pierce." [Photo on seco...

Freon Huff: Wrong Way To Beat Heat »
WPLG Local 10 | Submitted by: gargoyle1"15-year-old Gray, was found slumped over the air conditioning compressor outside their home. He died after huffing or inhaling the refrigerant right out of the AC compressor, investigators said. The refrigerant had displaced the air in his lungs, and Gray suffocated." Discuss...

Zoo's Endangered Panda Gassed »
Now Public | Submitted by: Hubito Machogrande"Quan Quan, a 21-year-old giant panda kept at China's Jinan Zoo, died in the hospital after getting gassed with carbon monoxide and chlorine... The mixture of gases caused Quan Quan's lungs to collapse. The gas ended up in Quan Quan's living area because the zoo shares a ventilation system with a former air raid shelter, which the gas was meant to disinfect." Discuss...

88-yo Nazi Could Be Tried As Minor »
Wire Services | Submitted by: Veggie"Kunz was 20 years old when he allegedly started working as a guard at Belzec in January 1942. According to German law, people between 18 and 21 can be brought to trial either as minors or adults... While Kunz ranked fairly low in the Nazi hierarchy, he is among the top most wanted due to the large number of Jews he is accused of having a role in killing -- which the prosecutor's office in Dortmund puts at 430,000." [Gives new meaning to that lousy old 88/1...

Abuser Feeds Hungry Offspring »
New York Daily News | Submitted by: scarred 4 life"Santiago turned the Dallas bathroom into his own torture chamber last summer, beating the children with broomsticks and belts, denying them food and sexually assaulting the girl. She testified that he forced her to put her brother's feces in her mouth and continuously raped her and beat her brothers... When the children were found, their ribs and spines poked through their skin. The youngest boy weighed less than 30 pounds." Discuss...

Overboard With Happy Slapping »
CNN | Submitted by: foreplay (Mandatory)"The fatal beating occurred on the evening of Sunday, July 17, the prosecutor's office said. Mazariego was sitting on a bench in an upscale neighborhood park area in Summit, New Jersey, when he was approached by the teenagers. The three allegedly attacked Mazariego and recorded the assault with a cell phone camera." Discuss...

NBA Player Shot Dead In Memphis »
Memphis Commercial Appeal | Submitted by: anonymous"Lorenzen Wright, a former NBA center, has been found dead in the woods in south Memphis... The 911 dispatcher heard a garbled male voice utter an expletive, then at least 10 gunshots. "Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?" the dispatcher asked. Then the phone went dead." Discuss...

Too Many Bodies Litter Desert »
New York Times | Submitted by: emptyhead"The Pima County morgue is running out of space as the number of immigrants found dead in the deserts around Tucson has soared this year during a heat wave... "We can store about 200 full-sized individuals, but we have over 300 people here now, and most of those are border crossers. We keep hoping we have seen the worst of this, of these migration deaths. Yet we still see a lot of remains." Discuss...

Dude: Tech Support Plunders Porno Pics »
San Francisco Chronicle | Submitted by: Veggie"She first called Dell's toll-free support hotline in late December 2008 after realizing she couldn't locate a number of erotic pictures of herself she thought she had saved... "I couldn't find them on my computer and that made me nervous. I didn't know where they went... I trusted him. I trusted him because he was a Dell technician. I watched him take the pictures out of my e-mail. I watched him." Thus: "She was later informed that the racy photo...

Boy's Fancy Turns To Duck Death »
Toronto Sun | Submitted by: pundit"An eight-year-old boy in Newfoundland and Labrador has admitted to killing a neighbour's pet ducks and hens about a month after the same boy admitted to killing another neighbour's pet dog... Hodder went to check on the birds and found some of them dead and injured in the yard where garden tools, including rakes, snow shovels and spades were strewn about." Discuss...

Baby Bird Learns To Fly »
Baltimore Sun | Submitted by: Anne_Ecdote"A 21-year-old Reisterstown woman threw her newborn baby out of a window last week, only for it to land safely in the bushes... When officers arrived at the house, they found blood all over the bathroom." Discuss...

Constable Abuses Escort Perquisites »
Jefferson City News-Tribune | Submitted by: cyran0Pullen, 32, of Foley, scoured online advertisements posted by the escorts, then pretended to be a customer... Once with the escorts, Pullen would identify himself as an officer, then demand money, sex or both by threatening arrest or the implicit threat of violence... Pullen told D.S. to give him all her money or get naked. When she offered money, Pullen told her, "That was the wrong answer." Discuss...

From The Gulf of Mexico to Kalamazoo »
Detroit News | Submitted by: traditionology"Wednesday night, the EPA said it believes more than 1 million gallons of oil may have leaked into the river -- 181,000 more than Enbridge Energy has estimated... Enbridge has a history of problems with the pipeline and has been cited by the federal government for numerous compliance and safety violations in the past eight years." [Map, photos] Discuss...

SEC Exempted From Disclosure Laws »
Fox Business Network | Submitted by: anonymous"The law exempts the SEC from disclosing records or information derived from "surveillance, risk assessments, or other regulatory and oversight activities." Given that the SEC is a regulatory body, the provision covers almost every action by the agency, lawyers say. Congress and federal agencies can request information, but the public cannot." Discuss...

National Security Letter Expansion Sought »
Washington Post | Submitted by: ditchley"The administration wants to add just four words -- "electronic communication transactional records" -- to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge's approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user's browser history... What officials portray as a technical clarification strikes pri...

Make Me The Happiest Man In The World »
WMTW | Submitted by: cyran0"Emery said that when his ex-wife opened her mouth to scream, Roberts held her mouth open, shoved his wedding ring into her mouth, and held her mouth and nose until she swallowed the ring. Emery said Roberts proceeded to punch her in the neck and head and threatened to kill her if she told police." Discuss...

DoD Loses Track Of Reconstruction Monies »
BBC News | Submitted by: fear death by water"The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction says the US Department of Defence is unable to account properly for 96% of the money... Out of just over $9B, $8.7B is unaccounted for... The money was in a special fund administered by the US Department of Defense, the Development Fund for Iraq, and was earmarked for reconstruction projects... The funds are separate from the $53B allocated by the US Congress for rebuilding Iraq." Discuss...

Catalonia Bans Bullfighting »
Wire Services | Submitted by: vicblower"The ban on the sport sparked by a citizen's petition of 180,000, passed 68 to 55 in the legislature of Catalonia in northeast Spain. It came days after the famed annual running of the bulls through the streets of Pamplona, always an ecstatic local festival though one viewed with increasing skepticism in the rest of Europe." Discuss...

Sanctity of Olive Oil Questioned »
Los Angeles Times | Submitted by: Bort"The US has been a dumping ground for cheap olive oil for years... A lot of the stores didn't care what was in the bottles, said Antoinette Addison, whose Figueroa Farms has struggled to break even. All they cared about was the fact that the label said extra virgin." Discuss...

Anglican Priest Feeds Host To Dog »
BBC | Submitted by: Phatlor"Reverend Rea of St Peter's Anglican Church, in Toronto, received complaints from Christians all over Canada after she fed communion bread to a German Shepherd cross named Trapper... "This has blown me away. The church is even getting e-mails from Catholics." Discuss...

Mystery Explosion Knocks Oil Tanker »
Wire Services | Submitted by: War IS good for 'us' (?!)"A crew member saw light on the horizon just before the explosion, so ship owner Mitsui O.S.K. believes there is a possibility it was caused by an outside attack... The tanker bound for Chiba, near Tokyo, was carrying around 2.3 million barrels of Qatar Land and Abu Dhabi Lower Zakum crudes, industry sources said." Discuss...

Camwhore She-Ogre Molests Own Kids »
KXLY-TV 4 Spokane | Submitted by: Anne_Ecdote"Ortega also forced her children to sexually stimulate her and said that those acts were watched by "two or three other guys on the internet at the time." She also sexually abused a two-week-old infant at the behest of a man watching on a webcam but stopped when the baby began crying." Discuss...

The Body Behind The Door »
Chicago Sun-Times | Submitted by: t0llyb0ng"It wasn't until police came back for a third time that officers smelled an odor of decay and Sadler refused to let the officers search the home... Officers found the woman's body behind an interior door beyond the front porch. Sadler then admitted that he had an argument with his wife ten days ago and struck her in the head with a hammer and left her there." Discuss...

Magic Carpet Seen A Safer Option »
Guardian | Submitted by: 'Staffa"A domestic passenger flight has crashed near Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, killing all 152 people on board in what is thought to be the country's deadliest civil aviation accident... The wreckage of the aircraft, which had taken off from Karachi earlier in the day, was spread across a wide area. Most of the dead are thought to be Pakistani, while two US citizens were also among the victims." Discuss...