WhiteBoard News for Friday, May 23, 2003

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Ananova):

A Brazilian policeman has been dubbed 'Steel Forehead' after he survived being shot in the head at close range.

Sergio Moreira Santos, 43, was trying to make an arrest at a power station when he was shot from less than five feet.

The bullet ended up trapped between his skin and his skull but did not damage the bone, reports Jornal da Tarde.

"I saw the trigger being pulled and the gun powder coming out of the gun, you have no idea how that felt," Mr Santos told the newspaper.

Weapons experts say they cannot come up with an explanation as to why the bullet didn't penetrate his forehead.

Roberto Godoy said: "The only likely explanation is that the bullet was smaller than it should have been and homemade, but still I'd say that the best explanation is that he is a very lucky person."
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Edam, The Netherlands (Ananova):

The Dutch town of Edam is planning to make a church entirely from its famous cheese.

The model chapel will be a tenth of the size of the town's 15th century church.

Residents came up with the idea to help raise funds for renovations for the church, including a new bell.

Edam's 7,500 inhabitants have been asked to purchase bricks for about £7 each.

Organiser Bart van Dillen said: "We hope to enter the Guinness Book of World Records."

The cheese church will be built with more than 10,000 Edam bricks and will be nine metres long and four metres wide.

It will go on display inside the real church from July 1 and will also be shown at the traditional Edam cheese market later this year.
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Buenos Aires, Argentina 

An Argentinian women's magazine had to publish an apology after issuing advice which led more than 100 microwave ovens to explode.

Claudia magazine said women could restore old bottles of nail varnish by putting them in a microwave oven for three minutes.

But many of the women who tried it found the chemical reaction caused their microwave ovens to explode.

The magazine received more than 100 complaints.
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Burlington, Vermont (AP):

Syllepsis, eudaemonic, smaragdine. Odontalgia, staphylococci, antipyretic. 

It's words like these that delight Jacques Bailly, a University of Vermont classics professor who will serve as official pronouncer at the annual Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee in Washington on Wednesday and Thursday. 

The pronouncer's job is to stand on stage with the spellers and recite the word properly; give its definition, language of origin, and part of speech; and use the word in a sentence. 

Bailly (pronounced like "Bailey") brings to the job a knowledge of Latin, Greek, French and German. He has studied Arabic as well and can read some Italian. 

The 37-year-old Bailly is also a former National Spelling Bee champion himself; he won as a Denver eighth-grader in 1980 with "elucubrate" a word meaning "to work far into the night," or "to work studiously." 

Officials of the spelling bee work all year on compiling the 800-word spelling list, and Bailly gets a top-secret copy in early spring so that he can start studying and practicing. 

This is Bailly's first year as the lead pronouncer; he was associate pronouncer for 12 years. He served at the elbow of longtime pronouncer Alex J. Cameron, making sure Cameron said each word correctly. 

Cameron, who died in February, mispronounced words a few times over the years but immediately corrected himself, said Paige Kimble, the director of the bee and the 1981 champion. 

Bailly said that a pronouncer has to be careful not to "overpronounce" a word that is, enunciate with an artificial emphasis that gives away too much about the way the word is spelled. 

For example, if the word were "unutterable," he said, "I am not allowed to pronounce that word in a way that makes it clear to you that it ends in `able' and not `ible.' Basically, I am supposed to give only the pronunciations in the dictionary, and no others." 

In the days before the national bee, Bailly will meet with bee officials to go over every word again, and remove any that fail last-minute tests including one that Bailly calls "the giggle factor." 

"A word like `titillation' might cause a sixth-, seventh- or eighth-grader to giggle," he said. 

The winner this year will take home more than $12,000, an engraved cup and other prizes. 

Bailly advises spellers to relax, enjoy themselves and, if they don't know the word, keep the spelling simple. 

"If you get fancy, you just explode the possibilities," he said. "There's an infinite number of ways to screw up a word." 
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Berlin, Germany (Reuters):

A German flasher exposing himself to a woman in a forest was forced to run for cover when she set her three small pug dogs on him, police said on Friday. 

Police in the southern town of Straubing said the man, who was about 30, was naked when he surprised the 55-year-old woman with the dogs. 

"He had Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt in one hand and his private parts in the other," said police spokesman Klaus Pickel. 

The woman spurred the lap dogs into action, one of which bit the man on the calf before he fled through the trees. "The dog was too small to bite him anywhere else," said Pickel. The man is still on the loose. 
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Bacau, Romania (Ananova):

Doctors say a prolonged erection almost certainly saved the life of a Romanian hospital patient.

Mihai Tancau. 44, from Bacau, was being treated for concussion and several fractures after a road crash.

But doctors missed the fact that his spinal cord was also damaged - until they investigated why he could not get rid of his erection.

The patient was taken for tests, where his spinal injury was quickly diagnosed.

Doctors said Mr Tancau would almost certainly have died if his injury had remained undiagnosed.
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