Globally 1 in 5 believe in aliens

Aliens exist and they live in our midst disguised as humans — at least, that’s what 20 per cent of people polled in a global survey believe.

The Reuters Ipsos poll of 23,000 adults in 22 countries showed that more than 40 per cent of people from India and China believe that aliens walk among us disguised as humans, while those least likely to believe in this are from Belgium, Sweden and the Netherlands (8 per cent each).

However, the majority of people polled, or 80 per cent, don’t believe aliens in our midst.

“It would appear that that there’s a modest correlation between the most populated countries and those more likely to indicate there may be aliens disguised amongst them compared with those countries with the smaller populations,” said John Wright, Senior Vice President of market research firm Ipsos.

“Maybe it’s a simple case that in a less populated country you are more likely to know your next door neighbour better,” he said.

More men than women — 22 percent versus 17 percent — believe that alien beings are on earth.

Most of those believers are under the age of 35, and across all income classes, the survey showed. Of those who do not believe, most are women.

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[tags : unusual wierd bizzare]

Jailed for Kissing in Public

A Dubai court Sunday upheld a one-month jail sentence given to a British pair for kissing in public, media reports said.

The British man living in Dubai and a female friend were arrested in November on charges of kissing intimately in public and consuming alcohol. An Emirati mother had complained her child had seen their indiscretion.

The case is the third time in under two years that Britons have fallen foul of indecency laws in Dubai, a Muslim emirate popular with sun-seeking Western tourists and expatriates.

The defendants are consulting their lawyer on whether to appeal Sunday's ruling before a cassation court, the website of the daily Gulf News reported.

The pair, who had been free on bail, are also to pay a fine of 1,000 dirhams ($272) for illegal consumption of alcohol and will be deported after serving their jail term, the website said.

Dubai's foreign population expanded rapidly in recent years as expatriates flocked to the Gulf Arab trade and tourism hub for its tax-free earnings and year-round sunshine.

The changes have challenged the Emirati population, now vastly outnumbered by foreigners, raising concerns that the rapid pace of growth is a threat to their social and religious identity in what remains a deeply conservative region.

In 2008, a British couple narrowly escaped jail after a court found them guilty of engaging in drunken sexual activity out of wedlock and in public on a beach in the emirate.

They were sentenced to three months in prison followed by deportation, but had their jail terms overturned on appeal.

In another case this year, a British couple who shared a hotel room managed to escape trial in Dubai for having sex out of wedlock by producing a marriage certificate.

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[tags : unusual wierd bizzare]

Man sent by Jesus Rams Car into Parked Plane

A man who claimed to have been sent by Jesus to punish sinners rammed his car into a parked plane at an airport in southeastern Nigeria , an aviation spokesman said Thursday.

No one was hurt in the incident Wednesday and the spokesman said Nigeria had no problem with security.

The United States put Nigeria on a list of countries needing to improve security after Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was arrested on suspicion of trying to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner in December using explosives hidden in his underwear.

"There is no problem at all at our airports, no cause for alarm, as we have the necessary security on the ground," said Akin Olukunle, spokesman for the Federal Airport Authority.

He said the driver had broken through two security gates at Calabar international airport and rammed his car into the Arik Air plane before soldiers arrested him.

The suspect was heard yelling that all Nigerians were sinners and must repent or perish, a reporter who was at the airport said. The man, who is from Nigeria's southeastern state of Akwa Ibom, said he had been sent by Jesus Christ.

Authorities were questioning him in Calabar.

The crew of the plane, which had arrived from Lagos and was on its way to the capital Abuja, were not injured and no passengers were on board at the time.

"Our men rushed to the scene and evacuated crew members on board," Olukunle said. "We have beefed up security."

A bomb squad found no explosives in the car and flights continued despite the incident.

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[tags : unusual wierd bizzare]

Super-sizing the "Last Supper"

We've been overeating our way through ever-larger portions over the past 1,000 years, a U.S. study revealed after studying more than 50 paintings of the Biblical Last Supper.

The study, by a Cornell University professor and his brother who is a Presbyterian minister and a religious studies professor, showed that the sizes of the portions and plates in the artworks, which were painted over the past millennium, have gradually grown by between 23 and 69 percent.

This finding suggests that the phenomenon of serving bigger portions on bigger plates, which pushes people to overeat, has also occurred gradually over the same time period, said Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab.

"The last thousand years have witnessed dramatic increases in the production, availability, safety, abundance and affordability of food," Wansink, author of "Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think," said in a statement.

"We think that as art imitates life, these changes have been reflected in paintings of history's most famous dinner."

The researchers analyzed 52 paintings depicting the Last Supper which were featured in the 2000 book "Last Supper" by Phaidon Press, and used computer-aided design technology to analyze the size of the main meals, or entrees, bread and the plates relative to the average size of the disciples' heads.

The study found that, over the past 1,000 years, the size of the main meal has progressively grown 69 percent; plate size has increased 66 percent and bread size by about 23 percent.

The research, conducted with Wansink's brother, Craig Wansink, a professor of religious studies at Virginia Wesleyan College, was published in the April edition of The International Journal of Obesity.

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[tags : unusual wierd bizzare]