Woman Finds Wrong Body in Her Mother’s Casket

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Photo Credit: chris.corwin/flickr

Photo Credit: chris.corwin/flickr

A woman wants answers after discovering the wrong body in a casket that should have contained her mother, who died unexpectedly while on vacation in St. Maarten.

Lisa Kondvar, of Warwick, and her family discovered another woman’s body in the casket at a New Jersey funeral home last month. The body of her mother, Margaret Porkka, had been prepared at a funeral home on the island.

“I looked up, and I was like, `Good God, are you kidding me?’ I was stunned,” Kondvar said by telephone Friday.

The family proceeded with the wake, with the casket closed, because they discovered the mistake just before calling hours were about to begin.

The relatives believe a hospital or funeral home confused Porkka’s body with that of a Canadian woman who died on the island around the same time. They also think Porkka’s body was cremated in Ottawa.

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‘Hand of God’ Spotted by NASA Space Telescope

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Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-CALTECH/MCGILL

Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-CALTECH/MCGILL

Religion and astronomy may not overlap often, but a new NASA X-ray image captures a celestial object that resembles the “Hand of God.”

The cosmic “hand of God” photo was produced when a star exploded and ejected an enormous cloud of material, which NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, glimpsed in high-energy X-rays, shown in blue in the photo. NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory had imaged the green and red parts previously, using lower-energy X-rays.

“NuSTAR’s unique viewpoint, in seeing the highest-energy X-rays, is showing us well-studied objects and regions in a whole new light,” NuSTAR telescope principal investigator Fiona Harrison, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said in a statement.

The new image depicts a pulsar wind nebula, produced by the dense remnant of a star that exploded in a supernova. What’s left behind is a pulsar, called PSR B1509-58 (B1509 for short), which spins around 7 times per second blowing a wind of particles into material ejected during the star’s death throes.

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‘Sticky Balls’ May Stop Cancer Spreading

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Photo Credit: SPL

Photo Credit: SPL

The most dangerous and deadly stage of a tumour is when it spreads around the body.

Scientists at Cornell University, in the US, have designed nanoparticles that stay in the bloodstream and kill migrating cancer cells on contact.

They said the impact was “dramatic” but there was “a lot more work to be done”.

One of the biggest factors in life expectancy after being diagnosed with cancer is whether the tumour has spread to become a metastatic cancer.

“About 90% of cancer deaths are related to metastases,” said lead researcher Prof Michael King.

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Egyptian Puppet Allegedly Sending Coded Instructions to Islamist Terrorists (+video)

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Photo Credit: New York Times

Photo Credit: New York Times

Egypt’s crackdown on support for the Muslim Brotherhood turned surreal this week as prosecutors agreed to investigate the allegation that a puppet that babbles nonsensically in an advertisement for a multinational phone company was in fact sending coded instructions to Islamist terrorists.

Prosecutors said in a statement that officials from Vodafone Egypt, the local branch of a phone company based in Britain, were summoned to respond to a complaint about the ad filed by a counterrevolutionary video-blogger and singer who calls himself Ahmed Spider. In an appearance on Egyptian television on Tuesday, the little-known blogger spent nearly an hour dissecting what he called the secret codes embedded in the ad, in which a puppet widow named Abla Fahita tries to reactivate the phone line used by her late husband.

The ad shows the Muppet-like Abla Fahita babbling to a friend on the phone while her daughter, Karkoura, looks for her dead father’s SIM card. The company explained in a statement that the ad, first broadcast and posted on YouTube last week, was part of a marketing campaign “aiming at explaining how to reactivate a Vodafone SIM card.” The blogger’s reading, the company said, was “irrational” and based on “mere imagination.”

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2014 Rings in the Weird: New Laws Cover Placentas, ‘Transgender’ Kids, Drones and More

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

You may have heard that Colorado residents will be able to legally buy pot next year.

But did you know that in Oregon, mothers will be able to take their placentas home after giving birth? And in Illinois, it will be illegal for police to use a surveillance drone in most cases without a warrant.

These are just a few of the thousands of new laws and regulations going into effect next year — mostly on Wednesday.

They cover everything from the minimum wage to tanning beds to drones, some a bit more unusual than others. But residents might want to brush up on the changes — state lawmakers approved nearly 40,000 bills and resolutions this year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The placenta measure in Oregon was approved this past May.

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Coming in 2014: Extremely Smart Watches and Wearable TVs

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Photo Credit: Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press

Photo Credit: Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press

For technological innovation, 2013 was a remarkably boring year. Apple, often the hotbed of “new,” mostly just updated familiar devices in different colors and with crisper screens. Social media companies fought over who had better photo filters. And Silicon Valley start-ups offered more of less, with slight iterations on existing products.

But 2014 has a lot of promise.

Predicting the future is a lot more difficult than evaluating the past, but you could wake up on Jan. 1, 2015, in a different digital winter wonderland.

No, you won’t lie in bed while your humanoid robot helper makes you bacon and eggs and walks the dog — which is also possibly a robot, made by Google. That’s more of a 2035 prediction. But you might wake up to the call of a watch on your wrist — not your cellphone on your night table. This year we’ve seen some efforts at smartwatches, like those made by Pebble; next year, these gadgets could look a lot better.

“Smartwatches, which connect to your smartphone, are going to create an entirely new category of computing in the coming year,” said Sarah Rotman Epps, a former Forrester analyst who specializes in wearable computing. She noted that the long-awaited Apple smartwatch, which is expected to be announced in 2014, could change the way we engage with our wrist in the same way Apple changed the cellphone industry in 2007.

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Scientists Create the World’s First Glow-In-the-Dark PIGS After Injecting Them with Jellyfish DNA (+video)

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Photo Credit: University of Hawaii at Manoa

Photo Credit: University of Hawaii at Manoa

Chinese scientists have created the world’s first glow-in-the-dark pigs that emit a fluorescent green light.

The piglets acquired their bizarre ability to glow under ‘black’ or UVA light after their embryos were injected with DNA from a jellyfish.

Experts claim that the 10 young animals should live as long as any other pig and that the findings could help develop cheaper drugs for humans.

In a video accompanying the research, the pigs grunt when the lights are turned off and after a short while begin to squeal, perhaps hinting that they are a little scared of the dark.

The green tint indicates that the fluorescent genetic material injected into the pig embryos has been incorporated into the animal’s natural make-up.

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Sharks Use Twitter to Warn Swimmers

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Sharks in Western Australia swimming close to popular beaches are using Twitter to send warning messages to surfers and swimmers.

The unique project means beach goers can make an informed decision about whether to go in the water knowing a shark is nearby.

Scientists have attached transmitters to more than 320 sharks, including great whites, which monitor their movements up and down the coast.

When a tagged shark swims within about a half mile of a beach, it triggers an alert which is picked up by computer. That computer then instantly turns the shark’s signal into a short message on Surf Life Saving Western Australia’s (SLSWA) Twitter feed.

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Bizarre Radio Meltdown During NSA Interview (+video)

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Aaron Klein’s WABC Radio show experienced what the host called a “tech meltdown” while he was conducting a live, on-air interview with the lawyer who won an injunction against the National Security Agency’s collection of phone records.

Software used by the radio station dropped the guest, Larry Klayman, and listeners who had called in to ask Klayman questions were cut off in mid-sentence. Other callers could not be put on the air due to technical difficulties at the radio station.

Audio clips saved on an independent system played at the wrong time.

Klein’s headphones had massive feedback that could be heard on the air.

At one point, the WABC call screener said, “We lost control of the software. It’s all going nuts.”

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Soros Claims Broken Leg, Wants Delay in Court Tiff with Ex

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Due to a broken leg, George Soros has asked for a delay in giving a deposition in his long-running legal battle with his former Brazilian girlfriend.

The billionaire investor’s lawyers were in court Tuesday to seek a postponement in the case brought by Adriana Ferreyr, the former actress who is suing Soros for $50 million, claiming he reneged on a promise to buy her a $1.9 million apartment on the Upper East Side. ­

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