Waiting room news 13 june 3 by Nick Moore

H FRES

Waiting Room News

World SUPER FIND: A US man found a rare Action Comics No. 1 from 1938, featuring Superman, in a wall while renovating a house in a small Minnesota town. But the back cover was ripped in a row with a relative so the value was cut dramatically from a possible $2 million-plus.

Australia TREE CHANGE: Brisbane residents would be allowed to prune trees on the street for the first time in 20 years under a proposed council plan, Nine News reported. At present, residents faced court action if they trimmed trees outside their property even if the branches blocked access or looked untidy. A permit would be needed, and only branches up to 2.5cm thick covered.

MAIL POISONED: Two letters that contained threats to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (pictured) — one addressed to him, the other to a lobbyist who works on his gun control campaign — tested positive for the deadly poison ricin, the authorities said.

Fun Fact THE world’s oldest person, Jiroemon Kimura, 116, retired in 1962 at the age of 65 after working 45 years in the Japanese post office. Source: Business Standard

SPY CLAIMS: Chinese cyber spies had reportedly obtained top-secret US weapons information. The Washington Post said a Pentagon report revealed more than two dozen weapons systems were compromised, including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which Australia is buying from the US.

Volume 13 June 3

Entertainment COLLETTE LOSS: A Sydney couple won their court case against actress Toni Collette for backing out of buying their $6.35 million home. Nick and Susan Kelly sued Collette and her musician husband Dave Galafassi for failing to proceed with buying their Paddington terrace in 2011. MICHAEL OUT: George Michael, 49, left hospital nearly two weeks after injuring his head in a single-vehicle crash in the UK, BBC News reported. The former Wham frontman was a passenger in a Range Rover when he fell out and on to a motorway.

BIN ESCAPE: A garbage collector stopped his truck’s compactors seconds before it crushed a nine-year-old boy who had hidden inside a bin on collection day. Dylan Jones said he was “horrified” when he spotted Connor’s hands clinging to the rim of a recycling bin as he picked it up on his morning run at Yarrawonga in rural Victoria, News Ltd reported. DEATH SENTENCES: Almost half the 105 people shot dead by police in the past 22 years were mentally ill, a study by the Australian Institute of Criminology revealed. Of those fatally shot, 44 (42%) had some form of mental illness, with psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia the most common with 26 cases, News Ltd reported. Of the 44, 25 had consumed drugs or alcohol.

Did You Know? FEDERAL backbenchers’ salaries increased twice last year - once by $44,000 and again by $5500 on average - taking their annual salary to $190,550. Source: Fairfax

HALF MEASURE: Two and a Half Men was set to become Two Men and a Little Lady. The hit sitcom was looking to introduce a female series regular to replace Angus T. Jones, who played Jake before leaving the show after 10 seasons, Us Weekly reported.

C BE KIND: Please place me back neatly for the next person to enjoy. THANK YOU! World SORCERY ACTION: PNG repealed its Sorcery Act and reinstated the death penalty in certain cases to help stem a rise in violence against people accused of black magic, The New York Times reported. A rise in public killings of accused sorcerers had prompted international condemnation.

Australia BOY SAVAGED: An 18-month-old boy underwent surgery in Brisbane after a Rottweiler mauled his head, face and neck in Ipswich. The toddler was walking into his grandmother’s home at Springfield Lakes with his grandmother when the dog lunged through a screen door and attacked him, ABC News reported. The dog was put down.

LAST ONE: The world's oldest person, a 116-year-old Japanese man, had also become the last male alive born in the 19th century. Jiroemon Kimura gained the distinction upon the death in Barbados in May of James Emmanuel 'Doc' Sisnett, at the age of 113 years and 90 days.

Entertainment ELVIS FIRST: Paul McCartney made his first visit Graceland, the one-time home of the King of Rock’n’Roll and left a gift. According to the official Twitter account of the former Beatle, McCartney dropped a guitar pick on Elvis Presley’s grave and said it was “so Elvis can play in heaven”. OLIVIA GRIEVES: Olivia Newton-John’s older sister, Rona, died in LA, California, Newton-John revealed in a Facebook post. The 70-year-old model and actress was diagnosed with brain cancer last month. From 1980-1985 Rona was married to Jeff Conaway who played Kenickie in Grease.

A CAMERA-shy Belorussian beaver killed a fisherman, biting into an artery in his leg and causing him to bleed to death. The 60-year-old was trying to photograph the critter when it attacked.

OZ HAPPIEST: Australia was the happiest nation based on criteria including income, jobs, housing and health, the international economic organisation OECD said. Australia led Sweden and Canada, the Paris-based group’s Better Life Index showed, when each of 11 categories surveyed in 36 nations is given equal weight, Bloomberg reported.

WHALE TREATS: Meat from endangered whales caught by Icelandic hunters was being sold in Japan as luxury dog treats. Michinoku Farm was selling chews made from North Atlantic fin whales, with the meat described as a “low calorie, low fat, high protein” snack, Fairfax reported.

PM PELTED: For the second time in a month, a sandwich was thrown towards the PM during a visit to a school. A salami sandwich was launched towards Julia Gillard as she visited the Lyneham High School in Canberra on Thursday last week and earlier in May a student at Logan, south of Brisbane, threw a Vegemite sandwich at Ms Gillard.

GAGA ROW: Kelly Osbourne added fuel to the fire of her feud with pop singer Lady Gaga, calling the star a “big hypocrite” who was “feeding on the freaks and geeks” for her own success, the Huffington Post reported online. Kelly is the daughter of Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne.

Odd Spot

Fun Fact

Did You Know?

$US6 BILLION - that’s how much tax the world’s richest man, Bill Gates, says he’s paid in total. He has given $28 billion to charity and was still worth $56 billion. His three kids will inherit ‘just’ $10 million each.

ACCORDING to Aboriginal legend, there is a cave on the Wessel Islands off Australia’s north filled with doubloons and weaponry of an ancient era. African 1000-year-old coins had been found on the islands, News Ltd reported.

Odd Spot

BRITISH women spent 59 days of their lives shaving their legs, a study found. And 35% of women polled said it was their least favourite beauty chore. The second most detested was hairstyling, with eyebrow plucking third.

“

Source: Guardian, Fairfax

A decision to allow machines to be deployed to kill human beings worldwide – whatever weapons they use – deserves a collective pause.”

Fun Fact EARTH’S beaches contain roughly 5000 billion billion (5 sextillion) grains of sand. And there is 1,386,000,000 cubic kilometres of water on the planet. Sources: The Math Dude; US Geological Survey

— UN special rapporteur Christof Heyns on a global moratorium on the development and use of armed robots.

C BE KIND: Please place me back neatly for the next person to enjoy. THANK YOU! Health COFFEE HARM: Drinking five coffees a day was linked to obesity and chronic disease, WA researchers found. The first study in the world to look at higher doses of coffee found five coffees doubled the fat around organs in the abdomen - a type of fat that causes deadly conditions.

Technology GRAFFITI DRONE: Germany’s national railway company, Deutsche Bahn, planned to test small drones (like the one below) to try to cut the amount of graffiti sprayed on its property. The idea was to use airborne infrared cameras to collect evidence, which could then be used to prosecute vandals who deface property at night, BBC News reported.

Business NET SURGE: For the year to April 2013, Australians spent $13.5 billion online – equivalent to about 6% of traditional retail spending, up from 5.2% last year. Online continued to grow at a “vastly stronger” rate than traditional retail, said this quarter’s NAB Online Retails Sales Index. SALES SLOW: There had been little uptick in retail conditions this year, Westfield Group chairman Frank Lowy said. “Retail sales growth in Australia was subdued in 2012 and that trend is continuing in 2013 given the lower level of consumer confidence which has existed for some time,” he said.

PENCIL PAIN: An Afghan man, 24, who for years suffered headaches, a runny nose and eyesight problems was found to have a 10cm pencil in his head, German doctors said. When asked how it got there he recalled as a boy he had fallen and had a serious nosebleed, BBC News reported.

ANXIETY, or excessive worrying, is the most common psychological problem in Australia and affects 14% of the population, according to the Bureau of Statistics.

START AGAIN: Microsoft confirmed a Start button was returning to the desktop mode’s taskbar of its Windows 8 operating system. The lack of the facility - which had been in every previous version since Windows 95 - had triggered controversy. But on return it would not offer all the functionality previously associated with the feature, BBC News reported.

AT some point, genes from at least eight retroviruses became incorporated into human DNA. They now perform important functions in reproduction, yet are entirely alien to our genetic ancestry.

STROKE HOPE: Cheap inflatable leg wraps might save the lives of patients after a stroke, Scottish research said. The devices squeezed the legs to keep blood flowing and prevent fatal blood clots. A trial with 2876 patients showed there were fewer clots with the wraps, BBC News reported.

WHITE ON: The new white Google Nexus 4 smartphone would be sold exclusively through Harvey Norman from the middle of this month, it was announced. The white Nexus 4, which is made by LG, would bear the model number E960W but retain identical specifications to the black model, tech news websites reported. The 16GB model would be sold outright for $419.

GROWTH SLOWS: Australia’s economic growth slowed in March but continued to track above trend, according to the Westpac-Melbourne Institute Leading Index which fell to 3.9% in March, from 4.1% in February, easily eclipsing the long-term trend of 2.8%.

Odd Spot

Fun Fact

Did You Know?

THE sun’s core is so hot that a piece of it the size of a pinhead would give off enough heat to kill a person 160km away.

THE antioxidant concentration in hot cocoa was almost twice as strong as red wine, two to three times stronger than green tea and four to five times stronger than black tea, a study at Cornell University determined.

Did You Know?

A RECORD-setting 5.7m Burmese python was killed with a knife in a rural US county, after it wrapped itself around the leg of the man trying to capture it. It beat the previous record by more than 30cm, Fairfax reported.

“

Source: QI television show

Most people do not overeat because of a feeling of hunger emanating from the stomach; they are giving in to a desire to consume ...”

Q: Which singer had a hit with the 1988 dance track The Only Way is Up?

Q: Is Eimeo a seaside suburb of Mackay, Cairns or Bundaberg?

Did You Know?

— Australian doctor Karen Hitchcock, who wrote an article headlined “Fat City”, published in TheMonthly.com.au.

Q: In grammar, ‘the slimy snake slithered slowly’ is an example of what?

A: Yazz

A: Mackay

A: Alliteration

Q: What did Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb Everest, do for a

Q: Via lactea is the classical Latin name for which celestial body?

Q: Is Helsinki the capital city of Norway, Sweden or Finland?

A: The Milky Way

A: Finland

A: He was a beekeeper

C BE KIND: Please place me back neatly for the next person to enjoy. THANK YOU! Health MUM AT 60: Women might evolve out of menopause and bear children into their 50s and beyond, genetics expert Dr Aarathi Prasad said in the UK. She said since there were no longer any benefits associated with the menopause, it was now “not normal for nature”, the Deccan Chronicle reported.

Science MAMMOTH FIND: Scientists said they had found blood and muscle tissue - perfectly preserved in the ice - from a 10,000-year-old Siberian mammoth. It comes amid debate on whether scientists should try to recreate the extinct species using DNA. The find was made in temperatures of -10C on the New Siberian Islands, The Siberian Times reported.

GET READY: Australia was headed for a flu season to rival 2012, as well as severe gastro outbreaks, Nine News reported. It’s likely the Sydney 2012 gastro virus would return after spreading to Europe, the UK and US and causing a global pandemic, University of NSW warned.

Business TAX PUSH: A bill to force Australia’s 2000 biggest companies to disclose how much tax they paid would be introduced to Parliament. The proposal comes after revelations IT giant Apple had a tax structure allowing profits to be effectively “stateless” for taxation purposes. BOOM SWITCH: Australia was entering stage 3 of the resources boom. Mineral exports soared 11% in the March quarter, whereas imports of specialised construction machinery used for mining investment plummeted, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

SCROLL OLDEST: The University of Bologna in Italy had found what it said might be the oldest complete scroll of Judaism's most important text, the Torah. The scroll was in the uni library but had been mislabelled. After tests, the university said the text might be more than 850 years old, centuries older than thought, BBC news reported.

AT the Santa Rita do Sapucaí jail in Brazil, inmates can pedal to generate electricity in return for a cut in their sentences - a day off for every 16 hours of effort on bikes hooked up to batteries.

FLU FEAR: A bird flu that had killed 36 people in China could mutate to become resistant to antiviral drugs, Chinese researchers said. Shanghai doctors treating 14 sufferers of the H7N9 virus found that it had become resistant to Tamiflu in three of the patients, The Daily Mail reported.

STAR RISK: Earth might lie in the path of a lethal gamma-ray burst that could wipe out a quarter of our atmospheric ozone. Astronomers said a star about 8000 light years away could go supernova any day, which would generate rays that could hit Earth. “We could see it go supernova anywhere from tomorrow to 500,000 years from now,” an astronomer told Forbes.

COSTS RISE: Australia was becoming a less attractive place to invest in exploration, The Productivity Commission said. Its draft report on resource exploration found rates of discovery were falling while operating costs were rising, ABC News reported.

Odd Spot

Fun Fact

Did You Know?

IF YOU drilled a tunnel straight through the Earth and jumped in, it would take 42 minutes and 12 seconds to get to the other side.

AN original Apple-1 sold for $US640,000 at an auction in Germany in November. The computer was priced at $US666.66 (about $US2700 in current money) when made in 1976, The New York Times reported.

Fun Fact THERE are 200-400 billion stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way, and a German supercomputer calculated there were 500 billion galaxies in the universe. Source: BBC Schools online

PEOPLE’S closest friendships were formed with their colleagues – particularly if their workplace environment was stressful, research conducted by the Lancaster University in the UK concluded.

Source: QI television show

Did You Know?

ENJOY Waiting Room News anytime you like, not just at the doctor! Read it anytime at issuu.com/waiting-room-news. It’s updated every Monday. The best bits of the week’s news. Whenever you want it! Fresh, fascinating and FREE.

Q: Which sea captain commanded the First Fleet to Australia?

Q: Which is the only state in the US that begins with the letter ‘P’? Q: Is jujitsu a Japanese martial art or paperfolding craft? A: Martial art

A: Wilbur Smith A: Arthur Phillip

A: Paul Newman

Q: Cut, clarity. colour, and carat set the value of which gemstone?

Q: Who wrote the novels Rage, Monsoon, Warlock, and Men of Men?

A: Pennsylvania

Q: Who starred in movies The Hustler, Hud, Harper, and Harry and Son?

A: A diamond