Artist unveils $98M diamond skull

POSTED: 5:00 p.m. EDT, June 1, 2007

LONDON, England (Reuters) — Damien Hirst, former BritArt bad boy whose works infuriate and inspire in equal measure, did it again on Friday with a diamond-encrusted platinum cast of a human skull priced at a cool $98 million.The skull, cast from a 35-year-old 18th-century European male, is coated with 8,601 diamonds, including a large pink diamond worth more than $8 million in the center of its forehead.

“It shows we are not going to live for ever. But it also has a feeling of victory over death,” Hirst said as the sparkling skull was unveiled to the public for the first time amid tight security at central London’s White Cube gallery.

Hirst, who has a preoccupation with blood and death and whose works range from diced and pickled quadrupeds to bloody depictions of birth, said he was inspired by similarly bejeweled Aztec skulls. While the skull is platinum and the diamonds flawless — and ethically sourced, Hirst stressed — the teeth are real.

“It was very important to put the real teeth back. Like the animals in formaldehyde you have got an actual animal in there. It is not a representation. I wanted it to be real,” he said.

The skull is missing one tooth, which Hirst initially replaced with a gold one and then decided to leave out.

“We felt we didn’t need it, so we took it out. It feels sort of human and quirky,” he said.

Hirst, whose works regularly fetch millions of pounds, said he hoped the skull would not be snapped up by a private buyer and taken away from public view.

“It would be sad it it ends up in a vault somewhere that nobody sees. Obviously I would like it to be on display.

“If anybody buys it, I would make that part of the conditions,” he said.

He rejected suggestions that his works were more a standing joke against the art establishment than real works of art.

“I’ve stopped worrying about what art is. There is good art, bad art, indifferent art. It is art but it is more timeless than contemporary art,” he said.

Other works in the new exhibition include pickled creatures, a flying dove suspended in mid-air, a flayed human statue holding its own skin and a series of pictures of an operation being carried out.

As an indication of the wealth he has amassed since being spotted in 1991 by BritArt mogul Charles Saatchi, Hirst, who financed the skull himself, said he couldn’t remember whether it had cost £10-15 million pounds ($20-30 million).

“I hope this work gives people hope — uplifting, take your breath away,” he said in response to a question on what he expected the public to get from the skull.

FDA: Throw away toothpaste made in China

POSTED: 7:21 p.m. EDT, June 1, 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government warned consumers on Friday to avoid using toothpaste made in China because it may contain a poisonous chemical used in antifreeze.

Out of caution, the Food and Drug Administration said, people should throw away toothpaste with labeling that says it was made in China. The FDA is concerned that these products may contain diethylene glycol.

The agency is not aware of any poisoning from toothpaste in the United States, but it did find the antifreeze ingredient in a shipment at the U.S. border and at two retail stores: a Dollar Plus store in Miami and a Todo A Peso store in Puerto Rico.

Officials said they are primarily concerned about toothpaste sold at bargain retail outlets. The ingredient in question, called DEG, is used as a lower-cost sweetener and thickening agent. The highest concentration of the chemical found in toothpaste so far was between 3 percent and 4 percent of the product’s overall weight.

“It does not belong in toothpaste even in small concentrations,” said the FDA’s Deborah M. Autor.

The FDA increased its scrutiny of toothpaste made in China because of reports of contamination in several countries, including Panama.

The agency is particularly concerned about chronic exposure to DEG in children and in people with kidney or liver disease.

Agency officials said they had no estimate of how many tubes of tainted toothpaste might have made it into the United States.

“Our concern today is potentially about all toothpaste that comes in from China,” Autor said. “Our estimate is that China makes up about $3.3 million of the $2 billion U.S. toothpaste market.”

The agency also issued an import alert Friday for all dental products containing DEG. The alert means toothpaste from China will be stopped at the border, she said.

Companies that make brands previously found with DEG will have to prove the toothpaste is free of the chemical before it’s allowed into the country. Meanwhile, all other brands of Chinese-made toothpaste will be stopped for testing, something the agency has been doing since May 23.

The import alert posted by the government says DEG has been improperly used in a variety of sedatives, syrups and cough medicines worldwide. Most recently, a cough syrup containing DEG resulted in more than 40 deaths in Panama last September.

The alert says the agency found DEG in three products manufactured by Goldcredit International Trading in China. The products are Cooldent Fluoride, Cooldent Spearmint and Cooldent ICE. Analysis of the products revealed they contained between 3 percent and 4 percent DEG.

The agency also found the chemical in one product manufactured by Suzhou City Jinmao Daily Chemical Co. in China. Analysis of that product, Shir Fresh Mint Fluoride Paste, found it contained about 1 percent DEG.

China’s food safety problems have in recent months become a matter of international concern, a situation reflected in trade talks between Chinese and U.S. officials in Washington last week.

Most notably, on March 15, FDA learned that certain pet foods were sickening and killing cats and dogs. FDA found contaminants in vegetable proteins imported into the United States from China and used as ingredients in pet food.

Tourist Says He’s Shot Video of Loch Ness Monster

Here we go with another sighting of “Nessie” the Loch Ness Monster. Tis someone reporting as having captured video footage of what is believed to be a mythical creature living beneath Scotland’s mysterious lake.

Is this the real Loch Ness Monster, you be the judge!!

Friday, June 01, 2007

EDINBURGH, Scotland — The Loch Ness monster is back — and there’s video.

A man has captured what Nessie watchers say is possible footage of the supposed mythical creature beneath Scotland’s most mysterious lake.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this jet-black thing, about 45 feet long, moving fairly fast in the water,” said Gordon Holmes, the 55-year-old lab technician from Shipley, Yorkshire, who took the video Saturday.

Nessie watcher and marine biologist Adrian Shine viewed the video and hoped to properly analyze it in the coming months.

“I see myself as a skeptical interpreter of what happens in the loch, but I do keep an open mind about these things and there is no doubt this is some of the best footage I have seen,” said Shine, of the Loch Ness 2000 center in Drumnadrochit, on the shores of the lake.

He said the video is particularly useful because Holmes panned back to get the background shore into the shot. That means it was less likely to be a fake and provided geographical bearings allowing one to calculate how big the creature was and how fast it was traveling.

Holmes said whatever it was moved at about 6 mph and kept a fairly straight course.

“My initial thought is it could be a very big eel — they have serpent-like features and they may explain all the sightings in Loch Ness over the years.”

Loch Ness is surrounded by myth. It’s the largest inland body of water in Britain, and at about 750 feet to the bottom, it’s even deeper than the North Sea.

“There are a number of possible explanations to the sightings in the loch. It could be some biological creature, it could just be the waves of the loch or it could some psychological phenomenon in as much as we see what we want to see,” Shine said.

While many sightings can be attributed to a drop of the local whisky, legends of Scottish monsters date back to one of the founders of the Christian church in Scotland, St. Columba, who wrote of them in about 565 A.D.

More recently, there have been more than 4,000 purported Nessie sightings since she was first caught on camera by a surgeon on vacation in the 1930s. [That famous photograph was revealed 60 years later to have been a hoax involving a sculpted head mounted on a toy submarine.]

Since then, the faithful have speculated about it is a completely unknown species, a sturgeon — even though they have not been native to Scotland’s waters for many years — or even a plesiosaur, a long-necked aquatic reptile that went extinct with the dinosaurs.

Real or imagined, Nessie has long been a Scottish emblem. She has been the muse for cuddly toys and immortalized on T-shirts and posters showing her classic three-humped image.

On Thursday, a group of Scottish business owners launched a bid to nominate Loch Ness for World Heritage site status — though they cited its natural beauty, not Nessie.

The Destination Loch Ness consortium must submit the nomination to the British government, which would decide whether to forward it to UNESCO.

The Scottish media is skeptical of Nessie stories but Holmes’ footage is of such good quality that even the normally reticent BBC Scotland aired the video on its main news program Tuesday.

Salmonella cases linked to peanut butter top 600

POSTED: 4:56 p.m. EDT, June 1, 2007

OMAHA, Nebraska (AP) — The number of people sickened since August by peanut butter tainted with salmonella has grown by more than 200, according to a new federal report.

The outbreak, first reported in February, now includes 628 cases in 47 states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday. It is the first update on the number of cases linked to the outbreak since early March, when officials said 425 cases had been confirmed in 44 states.

ConAgra Foods Inc. recalled all its peanut butter after government investigators linked the bacteria outbreak to the Omaha, Nebraska-based company’s Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter.

The CDC said the number of new salmonella cases dropped substantially after the peanut butter was recalled.

The states with no illnesses reported are Hawaii, New Hampshire and Utah, the CDC said.

Wal-Mart has continued selling Great Value peanut butter — its store brand — that is made by different suppliers, but Peter Pan has yet to return to stores.

ConAgra plans to reintroduce Peter Pan in July. Initially, another company will produce the peanut butter because ConAgra does not expect to be able to resume production at its Sylvester, Georgia, plant until sometime in August, after renovations.

ConAgra officials have said they believe moisture in the plant most likely helped bacteria to grow and later infect the finished product.

Consumers who had jars of Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter with a product code on the lid beginning with “2111″ were urged to throw out the peanut butter. The jars or their lids can be returned to the store where they were purchased for a refund.

Kidney-donor TV show a hoax, producers admit

POSTED: 5:38 p.m. EDT, June 1, 2007

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (Reuters) — A Dutch reality television show in which a supposedly dying woman had to pick one of three contestants to whom she would donate a kidney was revealed as an elaborate hoax on Friday.

The show, which the broadcaster had said aimed to focus attention on a shortage of donor organs in the Netherlands, was condemned by Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende before broadcast Friday night and sparked controversy worldwide.

Identified only as “Lisa,” the 37-year-old woman who had been said to be suffering from a brain tumor was to base her selection on the person’s history and conversations with the candidates’ families and friends.

In the last minutes of the program, she was revealed as a healthy actress and producers stunned viewers by saying “The Big Donorshow” was a hoax.

The contestants were also part of the deception, although all three are genuine kidney patients.

“Their life is bitter reality,” the host said after revealing the deception, just at the moment at which Lisa was to have stated her choice.

Dutch Education Minister Ronald Plasterk hailed the show as a “fantastic stunt” and an intelligent way to draw attention to the shortage of donor organs.

Heated debate expected

The show is expected to set off heated debate between those who believe reality television has gone too far and others who believe the publicity was generated for a good cause.

Producers apologized to viewers and said they hoped “outrage” over the show would turn into anger over the lack of organs for transplant.

Viewers in the Netherlands were asked to give advice via text messages in the 80-minute show, and appeals ran throughout for people to donate their organs.

Early in the show Lisa was shown selecting three people from 25 candidate profiles who matched her blood group.

“It feels like playing God,” said a fraught-looking Lisa. “Think of it as playing Santa Claus,” replied the show’s host.

The show had set off a storm of criticism, both at home and abroad, though some kidney patients said ahead of the show that they approved of it because it drew attention to their plight.

Balkenende had said the show was detrimental to the whole business of organ donation and it would do the reputation of the Netherlands no good abroad, Dutch news agency ANP said.

Dutch embassies received complaints from people expressing their shock over the show.

Public broadcaster BNN, which came up with the idea, said it wanted to draw attention to the growing shortage of organ donors in the Netherlands.

“Money has never been part of this thing, and no money will be made from this,” said BNN Chairman Laurans Drillich.

Callers to a local radio station had suggested the whole thing could be a hoax by BNN to build up its ratings.

Farmers: ‘Monster Pig’ Not a Wild Hog, But Was Their Pet Pig ‘Fred

Oh no! Monster Pig turns out to be Pet Pig Fred!

FRUITHURST, Ala. — The Mystery of the Monster pig appears to have been solved.

The 1,051-pound hog, shot and killed by 11-year-old Jamison Stone and the subject of a world-wide Web firestorm over the photo’s authenticity, really is…

Fred.

That’s “Fred” the pig, and according to Rhonda and Phil Blissitt their humongous hog escaped on April 29, four days before it was killed, according to the Star newspaper.

Late Thursday evening, their claims were confirmed by Andy Howell, Game Warden for the Alabama Department of Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries.

“I didn’t want to stir up anything,” Rhonda Blissitt said. “I just wanted the truth to be told. That wasn’t a wild pig.”

Her husband agreed.

“If it went down in the record book, it would be deceiving, and we’d know that for the rest of our lives.”

The monster hog gained worldwide acclaim after he was bagged by 11-year-old Jamison Stone, a Pickensville native, with a .50-caliber pistol on May 3 at the Lost Creek Plantation, LLC, a hunting preserve in Delta. The big boar was hunted inside a large, low-fence enclosure and fired upon 16 times by Stone, who struck the animal nearly a half-dozen times during the three-hour hunt.

The saga of young Jamison’s hunt spread as the family posted the story and photos on their Web site, monsterpig.com.

The Blissitts said they were unaware that the hog generating all the media attention was once theirs. It wasn’t until Howell spoke with Phil Blissitt that the pieces of the puzzle came together.

Phil Blissitt recalled Howell asking him about the now-famous hog.

“Did you see that pig on TV?” Phil Blissitt recalled Howell asking him. “I said, ‘Yeah, I had one about that size.’ He said, ‘No, that one is yours.’

“That’s when I knew.”

Phil Blissitt purchased the pig for his wife as a Christmas gift in December of 2004. From 6 weeks old, they raised the pig as it grew to its enormous size.

Not long ago, they decided to sell off all of their pigs. Eddy Borden, owner of Lost Creek Plantation, purchased Fred.

Attempts by The Star to reach Borden were unsuccessful.

While Rhonda Blissitt was somewhat in the dark about the potential demise of her pet, Phil Blissitt said he was under the understanding that it would breed with other female pigs and then “probably be hunted.”

Many other of their former pigs — like their other farm animals — had been raised for the purpose of agricultural harvest.

As the Blissitts recounted the events of the last two days, they told stories and made many references to the gentleness of their former “pet.”

From his treats of canned sweet potatoes to how their grandchildren would play with him, their stories painted the picture of a gentle giant. They even talked about how their small Chihuahua would get in the pen with him and come out unscathed.

“But if they hadn’t fed him in a while,” Rhonda Blissitt said, “he could have gotten irate.”

Phil Blissitt said he became irritated when they learned about all the doubters who said photos of Fred were doctored.

“That was a big hog,” he said.

The information of the pig’s previous owner came out on the same day that officials from the Fish and Wildlife concluded their investigation of the hunt. They concluded that nothing illegal happened under the guidelines of Alabama law.

Allan Andress, enforcement chief for the Alabama Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Division, said they learned the hog’s origin as the investigation unfolded.

“We were able to determine that he came from a domesticated environment,” he said. “So, he was not feral to start with. Therefore, he would not violate our feral swine trapping and relocating rule.”

Mike Stone, Jamison’s father, contends that he was unaware of the origin of the pig. Before, during and after the hunt — and until late Thursday night, when contacted by The Star — Mike Stone was under the impression that the hog was feral.

“We were told that it was a feral hog,” Mike Stone said, “and we hunted it on the pretense that it was a feral hog.”