WhiteBoard News for Friday, June 30, 2000

Oslo, Norway (Reuters):

A bare-breasted blonde mermaid perched atop a rock is
making tourists gape in disbelief along a Norwegian
fjord.

"One man once jumped off a boat and swam over to me,"
Line Oexnevad, 37 and mother of two children, told
Reuters Tuesday of her unorthodox job as a professional
siren. "Most people just look and cheer."

Oexnevad, naked except for a long blonde wig and a
costume fish-tail, said she has sat five times on a
rock along the Lyse fjord in West Norway in the past
three summers, hired as a surprise attraction for
tourist boat trips and parties.

"The last time it was a bit cold," she said.

"The mermaid in Copenhagen and me are the only mermaids
I know of," she said. The "Little Mermaid" in
Copenhagen is a statue inspired by a Hans Christian
Andersen fairy tale.

Oexnevad, who also works at a hospital in nearby
Stavanger, said she was no good at singing -- in
legend, sirens sang to lure sailors. "Maybe next time
I'll take along a cassette player," she said.
==========

Bucharest, Romania (Reuters):

Romanian prostitutes, their business hit by economic
recession, are trying to lure clients by offering to do
household chores for them after having sex, a newspaper
reported Wednesday.

The daily National quoted a "sexual agent" in Bucharest
as saying that many women in the sex business had added
cooking and house-cleaning to the repertoire of the
world's oldest profession.

"We had to invent something because people don't have
money and clients are rare. After solving the (sexual)
problem, the girls clean and cook, for free. All on the
house," he said.

"Men are happy because many of them live alone and the
girls help them get rid of the three things which
torment their lives: sex, cleaning and cooking," the
agent said.

Prostitution is illegal in Romania but media reports
suggest there are many prostitution rings operating
across the country.
==========

Morton, Illinois (AP):

This story about seven dwarfs features a cast renamed
to fit a new plot line: There's Stolen, Pilfered,
Snitched, Mooched, Burgled, Looted and Plundered.

Despite the circumstances, police in this bedroom
community about 14 miles east of Peoria hope for a
happy ending to the story of these garden gnomes.

Police have been holding the abandoned gnomes since
early May, when some were found dumped in an empty lot
and others were left in a downtown parking area.

Three gnomes have since been spoken for after a story
on their plight ran in the Journal Star of Peoria over
the weekend.

"I've still got some more gnomes I can't find a home
for," Police Chief Nick Graff said Tuesday.

Graff suspects the gnomes were kidnapped by roving
teen-agers who grabbed them as a prank, and then dumped
them either in a panic or simply because they got
bored.

The gnomes are about a 4½ feet tall but astonishingly
heavy for their size, not surprising since most are
solid concrete.

"It is among the more humorous things I've seen," Graff
said. "Nothing really surprises me anymore after being
in law enforcement for 25 years."
==========

Chicago, Illinois (Reuters):

The first broadcast on the Internet of
penile-pump-implant surgery drew relatively few Web
surfers on Wednesday.

The Webcast of the procedure, which claims the highest
satisfaction rating of any therapy for serious erectile
dysfunction, attracted only a few thousand viewers at
the start of the program, a spokesman for the Web site
said.

Previous operations of other sorts have attracted as
many as 70,000 viewers each.

The Webcast coincided with Men's Health Month and was
meant to increase public understanding of the
procedure, which normally requires only a 23-hour
hospital stay.

Roughly 30 million U.S. men suffer from some form of
impotence. Although oral medication such as Viagra has
proved effective for many, the pills are of no benefit
in about one-third of all cases, according to American
Medical Systems Inc., which developed the first penile
prosthesis.

The company, which manufactures the pumps and provided
a grant to Healthology.com for the Webcast, said 30,000
implant procedures were performed each year.

The inflatable penile prosthesis used in the surgery is
a hydraulic device consisting of collapsible cylinders
placed in the penis and a fluid reservoir and pump
placed in the pelvis and scrotum, respectively.
Squeezing the pump sends fluid into the cylinders,
creating an erection on demand.

The surgery aired on Wednesday involved a man in his
50s who was taped undergoing the 40-minute procedure
earlier this week in New York.
==========

Ringwood, England (Electronic Telegraph):

A former tax officer who sneezed several hundred times
each day for 35 years has been cured after discovering
that he is allergic to his home-made muesli.

Patrick Webster now believes that his years of misery
could easily have been avoided and is considering legal
action against his local health authority because, he
claims, 60 doctors failed to diagnose the allergy. Mr
Webster, 52, was forced into early retirement because
he was so exhausted by sneezing non-stop since the age
of 17, an estimated four million times.

He says he was told by one doctor that he was probably
allergic to himself. A private clinic placed him on an
elimination diet which caused him to lose half a stone
but did not stop the sneezing. He can no longer smell
or taste anything. For 20 years he has been taking
steroids in a futile attempt to combat his permanent
nasal congestion and chronic rhinitis.

The drugs' side-effects include osteoporosis, and he is
now taking 40 vitamin and mineral supplements every
day. The cause of his allergy was not traced until he
read an article in The Sunday Telegraph last year about
food sensitivity testing. He contacted the York
Nutritional Laboratory and was sent a simple blood-test
kit. The laboratory tested a pinprick sample against a
range of foods.

It found that Mr Webster, who has made his own muesli
for years, was allergic to oats, almonds and hazelnuts.
The tests also showed reactions to egg yolk, tomato,
cheese and milk. Mr Webster, from Ringwood, Hampshire,
said yesterday: "As soon as I gave up eating the foods
the lab indicated, the sneezing stopped. It is now more
than six months since the test and it is only too clear
that avoiding and rotating foods has made a dramatic
difference to my health.

"I have reduced in weight from 10st 4lb to 9st 7lb but
feel none the worse for it. I have been eating muesli
and cereal for breakfast every day for as long as I can
remember. I make my own cereal based on oats, dried
fruit, hazelnuts and brazil nuts. I also prefer milk to
water and eat a great deal of Cheddar cheese." He said
his life had been a continuous struggle since he was a
teenager. He never married and lives with his mother,
Elizabeth.

He said: "I have just had to try to struggle through
life against the background of constant sneezing. I got
through my A-levels and my degree and worked in a tax
office in Bournemouth. My colleagues were very
supportive and they were a very understanding bunch but
I often had to go home early because I was so tired
with it all.

"Eventually, I was forced to give up work on medical
advice because it was getting too much." Mr Webster is
appalled that NHS doctors were not more aware of food
allergies. He said: "I sneezed several hundred times a
day all year round, it was absolutely exhausting. I was
so desperate to try to sort it out that I took six
months off work and ended up in three different
hospitals.

"I had skin tests for allergies but they were negative,
so the doctor wouldn't give me any other sort of
allergy test. One doctor even said I was allergic to
myself. It's no wonder that I never got any better. The
best treatment they could offer me was steroids and for
20 years I practically lived on them but it was an
utter waste of time and they did more harm than good."

John Graham, managing director of the laboratory in
Osbaldwick, York, said Mr Webster's blood had been
tested against 93 foodstuffs. Mr Graham said: "We
identified where he had a problem with foods, told him
what those foods were, he eliminated them from his diet
and the sneezing has stopped."

He said allergic reactions to foods could take up to
seven days to emerge. He said: "A lot of doctors do not
recognise delayed allergies and rather ridicule
patients." A spokesman for Southampton and South West
Hampshire Health Authority said: "We are unable to
comment on individual cases. However, we successfully
treat thousands of people a year for allergies and are
engaged in leading research in that field."
==========

Sacramento, California (Reuters):

A 17-year-old boy who allegedly sought to emulate an
infamous "rooftop robber" was caught flatfooted after
he crashed through the ceilings of not one but two
stores, police said.

"It sounds like one of those 'America's Dumbest Crooks'
stories," Placer County Sheriff's Department Lt. Rick
Armstrong told Thursday's Sacramento Bee.

"The first store had bars on the doors and windows, and
he couldn't get out. So he went onto the ceiling of the
next store and fell 20 feet (6.6 meters) to the floor."

The youth, who was not named because of his age, was
arrested on suspicion of burglary Wednesday in the town
of Loomis, about 10 miles (16 km) northeast of
Sacramento.

Anderson said the attempted burglary bore the hallmarks
of work by the "Rooftop Robber", who is believed to
have committed more than 40 crimes in California and
other states before a suspect was arrested in North
Carolina last week.
==========

Chow
SuperChef
WhiteBoard News Service Bureau Chef
www.joeha.com/whiteboard