Man backs car through parking tower wall

TULSA, Okla. (AP) — A 67-year-old Oklahoma man had quite a fright after backing his car at high speed through a seventh-floor exterior wall of a parking garage.

Ralph Hudson says his foot got stuck between his Mercedes’ brake and gas pedal as he was backing up in a towering parking garage in downtown Tulsa on Wednesday.

The car burst through the building’s exterior wall and sprayed debris on a parking lot below before stopping just in time. The car’s trunk and part of its back wheels were left hanging precariously out of the building but officials were able to safely drive it back inside.

No injuries were reported. Police officer Jason Willingham says Hudson was not



ticketed over the incident.

Italian Police Fines Woman 500 Euro's For Wearing Face Veil

Rome, Italy (AHN) -- Police in the northwestern Italian city of Novara stopped and fined a woman wearing a face veil or burqa while inside the post office.

The 500 euro fine was imposed as the woman violated an ordinance prohibiting wearing of masks inside public buildings, schools and hospitals, according to police chief Paolo Cortese.

The purpose of the ordinance introduced by Mayor Massimo Giordano in January was to comply with a 1975 anti-terrorism law that prohibits wearing of anything that prevents identification of people.

The woman, who was born in Tunisia and accompanied by her husband, was identified by a female police officer, regardless the fine may still be imposed.

Giordano said the ordinance also intends to easily integrate foreign immigrants into Italian society.

Vampires that really do drink blood!

Vampire bats really do drink blood. They feed on the blood of birds, cattle, horses, and pigs ... and the occasional sleeping human.

They need to consume a few tablespoons of blood every day. If the vampire bat doesn't eat for more than a few days it will starve. They can only be found in Central and South America.

Irish writer of horror tales Bram Stoker was so fascinated by these bats that drink blood, that he incorporated them in his book 'Dracula.'

The man with no face - medical science offers new hope to face-eating tumor man

Above: Jose Mestre and his sister Guida in London. Pictures below show Jose aged 14 when the tumor was still small, and as he is now.

A victim of horrific facial disfigurement - known as "the man with no face" - has been given new hope by the advancement of medical science.

Jose Mestre, from Lisbon, Portugal, has been losing his face to a huge growth for the past 35 years, distorting it out of all recognition - and it's still growing.

The tumor on 51-year-old Jose's face is a collection of blood vessels that have expanded, producing a raised red area on the skin.

Jose was born with a strawberry-coloured birthmark on his upper lip. At puberty it began growing, eventually smothering his lips, nose and one of his eyes. Now it is 33cm long and weighs 3kg.

But Jose's religious faith - as a Jehovah's Witness he refuses to accept a blood transfusion - has prevented him from having surgery to remove the growth.

Jose's rare condition was the subject of a Discovery Channel TV documentary 'The Man With No Face', part of the 'My Shocking Story' series.

It reveals how top medical experts in London have now held out hope of helping Jose, a well-known figure around the streets of Lisbon.

A leading British surgeon has offered to treat Jose using ultrasound waves to coagulate the blood before the operation.

This should remove the risk of heavy bleeding - satisfying his religious beliefs about blood transfusions in the process.

Dr Iain Hutchison, of St Bartholomew's in London, is confident an operation with a harmonic scalpel could make him look a lot more normal.

Discovery Channel said: "Surrounded by a loving family, it seems incredible that he has not been treated and his face was allowed to grow so big. However, through years of medical misinformation, some misdiagnosis, lack of finances, and reluctance to undergo treatment due to religious beliefs, the growth has continued to obliterate his face."

My Shocking Story follows Jose on a journey through Europe to seek medical advice for one last chance to stop his face from suffocating him.

In this journey of a lifetime he travels by train, via Paris, to Britain, to meet the top experts in London. He goes through a series of tests, consultations, and meets other patients with a similar affliction. In London he also spends time with his sister Guida and the rest of his family, enjoys being a tourist in London, while making the biggest decision of his life.

Jose's dream is to live a long and normal life. Following the showing of the Discovery documentary he continues to adhere to his 'no blood transfusion' religious principles. But he has agreed to go back to the London hospital in 2008, when doctors hope to carry out specialist surgery to begin removing parts of his tumor, without the need for blood transfusions.

Tree Man who grew 'roots' offered hope of new life by doctor

Above: Dr Anthony Gaspari believes that he has diagnosed Dede's rare condition. Below: Dede with his teenage daughter. He fears that his children may also become infected

An Indonesian fisherman who is "half man half tree" has been offered new hope of recovery by an American doctor - and Vitamin A.

32-year-old Dede, who lives in a remote village in Indonesia with his two children, feared that he would be killed by the tree-like growths that cover his body.

Known locally as 'Tree Man' his condition has baffled local doctors for 20 years.

He has root like structures growing out of his body - branches that can grow up to 5cm a year and which protrude from his hands and feet, and welts covering his whole body.

In an attempt to earn a living to support his family, he is part of a circus troupe, displaying his Tree Man limbs along with others afflicted with skin deformities in 'freak' shows.

The former fisherman was the subject of a documentary "Half Man Half Tree", part of the "My Shocking Story" series on Discovery Channel TV.

Dede's story began when wart-like "roots" started growing out of his arms and feet after he cut his knee in a teenage accident. The medical world was completely baffled.

The welts spread rapidly across his body and soon he was not able to carry out ordinary household tasks.

Dede was sacked from his job and deserted by his wife. He has been raising two children, now in their late teens, in poverty. He is resigned to the fact that local doctors have no cure for his condition.

To try to support his family he even joined a local "freak show", parading in front of a paying audience along with victims of other peculiar diseases.

While he has the support of his extended family, he has frequently been a target of ridicule and abuse in rural fishing village where he lives.

But now new hope has emerged for Dede after an American dermatology expert flew out to his home village south of the capital Jakarta.

Dr. Anthony Gaspari of the University of Maryland claims to have identified Dede's condition, and has proposed a treatment that could completely change his life.

Following the testing of samples of the lesions and Dede's blood, Dr. Gaspari says his condition is caused by the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV). This is a fairly common infection that usually causes small warts to develop on sufferers.

Dede's problem is that he has a rare genetic fault that impedes his immune system. This means his body is unable to contain the warts.

According to Dr. Gaspari, the virus was able to "hijack the cellular machinery of his skin cells", instructing them to produce huge amounts of the substance that caused the tree-like growths known as "cutaneous horns" on both his hands and feet.

The doctor became involved in the case through the Discovery Channel documentary, and he is convinced that Dede's condition can be largely cleared up by a daily doses of a synthetic form of Vitamin A, which has been demonstrated to stop the growth of warts in severe cases of HPV.

Dr. Gaspari said that Dede's warts should reduce in size to the point where he can use his hands. He said he had never seen anything like this in his entire career.

Slim or die man sheds 44 stone

Lose weight or die!

That's the stark ultimatum doctors delivered to a 39-year-old Englishman, who grew to a colossal 60 stone.

Colin Corfield's battle for survival was the subject of a poignant and moving ITV television documentary.

Filmed over two-and-a-half years, 'Lose 30 Stone or Die' depicts his bid to reclaim his life after drug and alcohol problems in his early 20s sent his weight spiraling out of control.

The Runcorn pub landlord in Cheshire was warned two years ago that his own body fat could suffocate him.

So he decided to take drastic action and have risky gastric surgery. It has proved such a success that he has now shrunk to 16 stone!

In the TV program screened in December 2007 he said life was "fantastic" and he was looking forward to his first real Christmas in decades.

"I won't be stuck in a corner watching everyone else, feeling like I'm putting people out. It's my first Christmas as the new me."

While Colin has a new appetite for life and can walk everywhere, work properly, socialise and feels good about myself, it wasn't always that way.

As a teenager he found it hard to deal with a drinking domineering father and he turned to food for comfort.

He was obese by the time he reached 30 and when he began running his own pub, his weight spiraled out of control. "I was a big fella so I could drink 20, 30 pints in a day and not get drunk," he recalled.

He ate takeaways at 2am. He snacked on crisps, chocolates and diners all day.
He tried diets and several times managed to lose 10 stone, but then he would put it back on again.

By the autumn of 2005, Colin was so big he couldn't leave his bed and simple tasks like going to the toilet and getting washed were impossible for him.

"I'd never let anyone weigh me. But I must have been 60 stone. I couldn't walk more than a few steps or go out," he remembered.

Whenever I could, he would go up on the roof and hose myself down with a hosepipe "like an animal" and he would use a bucket for a toilet.

Nights were especially dangerous. Colin needed an oxygen mask so his weight wouldn't crush his lungs.

"It was degrading. I was so depressed. I couldn't see the point of going on," he said, admitting he had contemplated suicide.

Then he saw a TV programme about gastric surgery and thought it would work for him.

His family found a surgeon willing to cut away most of his stomach and his mother sold her bungalow to raise the necessary £32,000.

But despite Colin cutting down on alcohol and food, and slimming to 48 stone, the surgeons' instruments were too small to cope with his size when they tried an operation in November 2005.

"I was distraught," Colin said, told he had to lose another 10 stone.

He went back to his diet and hired out a local pool to swim in private.

He reached his target weight of 38 stone in November 2006 and the drastic surgery finally went ahead.

The doctors had warned him that one in 19 people die during the procedure but Colin was happy to take the risk. If I hadn't he would have died anyway, he believed.

Colin has now been left with a stomach the size of an egg, enough for him to survive on. Instead of a large cooked breakfast, he now begins his day with a single Weetabix. He has also replaced the pints with an occasional Southern Comfort.

"Food isn't a big deal for me anymore. I was addicted but now I am full after my small meal. Now I feel fantastic.

"I was very, very sad at the time I was heavy. But I'm not sad anymore - I've got my life back.

"I can go back and watch the match at Everton. I used to do it all the time before I got too big to get through the turnstile," said Colin.

Thumbelina the world's smallest horse

She may be small, a mere 17 inches and weighing only 60 pounds. But she is all horse.

Born as a dwarf to a miniature horse, Thumbelina is officially the world’s smallest horse.

She may never aspire to be a champion show-jumper – she is so tiny she would find it hard to jump over a bucket.

But these things matter little to the feisty Thumbelina, who has been officially recognized as the world’s smallest horse.

That title was conferred on her in 2006 when the five-year-old entered the Guinness Book of Records.

The real-life My Little Pony was born on an American farm to a couple who specialize in breeding miniature horses.

Normally these horses weight about 250lb and rise to a height of 34 inches when they are fully grown.

But from the day she was born it was clear that tiny Thumbelina would never grow to that size.

She weighed in at only 8lb – the size of a new-born baby - when she was born. Eventually she grew to just 60lb.

Her amazing size has been explained as dwarfism. This makes her a miniature of a miniature.

She may be a mini-horse, but small means beautiful as far as her owners, the Goessling family in Goose Creek farm in St. Louis, are concerned.

She likes to hang out with the cocker spaniels rather than the other horses on their 150-acre farm.

“When she was born, she was so small we thought she wasn’t going to make it. She looked very ill. We feared the worse.

“Because her legs are proportionally smaller than her body and her head, she has to wear orthopaedic fittings to straighten them out a lot of the time.

“But we love her and wouldn’t want her any other way,” said Michael Goessling, whose parents Kay and Paul bred the miniature horses.

She only measures up to the shins of the normal-sized horses in the paddock.

Michael’s parents have bred hundreds of miniature horses, but they have never had one as small as Thumbelina. She has become something of a celebrity in her home town in America.

She lives on a cup of grain and a handful of hay, served twice a day.

She is expected to live to the age of 17 years because of her size – normal horses live for about 35 years.

“She was just a complete fluke and we call her a mini mini. She is too precious to sell. I think my parents would sell me before they part with Thumbelina. She has that special Wow factor, which you only get when you see how small she really is,” said Michael.

While she has the ability to get pregnant and give birth, the Goessling family have decided not to allow this to happen.

There could be complications during the pregnancy, they believe, so it is better to avoid the risks. And also they don‘t feel it is right that the gene which creates dwarfism in horses be carried on through future generations.

Man with big hole in head

WARNING: This a most amazing video, but be advised it's not for the faint of heart.

A man is interviewed after having surgery which leaves him with giant hole in his face. The surgery removed his eye and part of his cheek bone, as you will ses.

He now lives with a massive hole in his head, but amazingly seems to have gotten used to it. Unbelievable.

If anything qualifies for a weird but true story, this is it.

Funny Toilet

They are enough to make you wet yourself laughing.

Bet you thought going to do the business was just another unpleasant chore people just had to get on with.

When you gotta go, you gotta go, as they say. But some people, like the owners of these funny toilets, like to do with style, with imagination, with a flourish.

Don't these zany toilets make the dready job of relieving yourself a whole lotta extra fun!

Burj Al Arab Hotel - world's most luxurious and only 7-star hotel

Burj Al Arab Hotel, Dubai, which was opened in 1999, is unofficially billed as a 7-star hotel and is the world's most luxurious and tallest hotel.

Designed to resemble a billowing sail, the hotel soars to a height of 321 metres, dominating the Dubai coastline. The hotel's own website describes it as the best in the world. With your chauffeur driven Rolls Royce, discreet in-suite check in, private reception desk on every floor and a brigade of highly trained butlers who provide around-the-clock attention, this hotel promises the finest the world has to offer.

Werewolf boy appeals to doctors to find a cure

An 11-year-old "werewolf" boy who desperately seeks a cure for his condition is baffling medical experts.

Pruthviraj Patil is one of 50 in the world who suffers from hypertrichosis, a rare genetic condition known as Werewolf Syndrome.

As a result his face and body is covered in thick, matted hair.

But he is hoping doctors will one day find a cure for his ailment.

Born in the Indian district of Sangli, near Bombey, he hardly ever leaves his village because of his fear of being traunted by strangers.

The only parts of his body that are not covered with hair are the palms of his hands and soles of his feet.

The son of a well off farmer, his parents have tried homeopathy, traditional Ayurvedic remedies and laser surgery. But none of them have worked.

It is believe his genetic condition was caused by a flaw during pregnancy.

"Why did God do this to us," his 32-year-old mother Anita pleads. "He looks so odd and whever we go people throng to see him."

Plastic surgeon Vinay6 Saoji has examined the boy and confirms that the condition is very rare.

"Hairy nevus, where a person has patches of excess growth, or hirsurism, is not uncommon, but hair persisting all over the body is very rare," he added.

Pruthviraj says he is anxious to get the hair removed but even after laser treatment it simply grows back.

The doctors don't have any answers to his predicament.

When he first went to school he said he got bullied and the other children laughed at him. But now they have got used to him and they treat him like normal.

He appealed to the doctors to help find him a permanent cure.

Yoda - the cat with four ears

Meet Yoda, a household pet born with an extra pair of ears.

Chicago, Illinois, couple Valerie and Ted Rock took the cat in two years ago after they visited a local bar, where a group of drinkers were handing the animal around and making fun of him.

Since being adopted by the Rocks and after getting his picture posted on the Internet, the two-year-old feline has become an international media celebrity.

The Rocks have received calls from Good Morning America, Fox News and The Tyra Banks Show. The moggy's mugshot has graced the pages of the London Guardian and British tabloids.

Despite his strange appearance, Yoda - named after the pointy-eared Star Wars character (pictured below) - is a perfectly normal and affectionate cat and a delight to have around.

His extra ears are thought to be the result of a genetic mutation.

But Yoda's owners are keeping a close watch on their much-loved pet. They are concerned he could be catnapped because he is so different.