Archive Category: Odd News
Lion Opens Car Door with Teeth
Lion Safari Park in Johannesburg, South Africa allows cars to drive through the lion enclosure so people can see the animals up close. A family in a white Toyota drove through with the doors closed, but apparently failed to lock at least one back door.
Thier glee turned to horror as the 300lb lion firmly took the rear door handle with his teeth and pulled it open in one deft movement.
For several seconds the car remained still while the occupants digested the shock of what had happened before finally hitting the accelerator and driving off.
As they fled, the lion followed in pursuit until it reached the gates of the enclosure. There it was finally held back by a warden who hurled stones to shoo it back.
Richard Holden was in a car behind the Toyota and managed to take pictures of the incident. Link -via Arbroath
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New Zealanders Drilling for Whiskey in Antarctica
A group of explorers from New Zealand are traveling to a campsite of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s 1909 Antarctic expedition in the hopes of finding whiskey left behind beneath the floorboards of a shelter:
Among the supplies British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton abandoned on his unsuccessful 1909 expedition to the pole were two crates of the now extinct rare old brand of McKinlay and Co whisky.
Now Whyte & Mackay, the drinks giant that owns McKinlay and Co, has asked for a sample of the drink for a series of experiments, the Telegraph newspaper reported in London.
The New Zealanders will use special drills to free the trapped crates and rescue a bottle from the crates, discarded near the Cape Royds hut used by the Nimrod expedition, or at least draw off a sample using a syringe.
The crates were discovered in January 2006, but the bottle couldn’t be removed as they were too deeply embedded.
Link via Discover | Image: NASA
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Man Uses Crane and Lawn Mower to Trim His Hedges
Well, if he didn’t have hedge clippers, then he had no alternative. Two men (who prefer that their names be kept confidential) in Cambridge, New Zealand hauled a lawnmower into the sky with a crane in order to trim a hedge:
The man had expected a real hedge trimmer to turn up on Sunday to mow the hedge, but when he didn’t his mate arrived with his crane and a ride-on mower.
The next thing he knew he was being hoisted up on top of the two-metre high hedge.
“We were supposed to get all dressed up in our Mooloo gear and show people that this is how the Waikato boys mow their hedges.”
The unusual sight bemused passing motorists. One passer-by, Bart Dinger, said it was a classic case of Kiwi ingenuity.
“A kiwi classic – jandals and all,” he said.
One of the pair is being treated for a broken hand that resulted from the stunt.
Link via Geekologie | Image: Bart Dinger
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Hammered Guy Hammered 8-Inch Nail Into Own Skull
Someone tell Lin Ma that being hammered doesn’t mean that he should literally hammer his own skull:
Hard-headed husband Lin Ma hammered a nail into his own skull after a bust up with his wife over his boozing.
Lin, 66, of Yuyi, southern China, pounded the eight inch nail into his head when wife Su, 60, read him the riot act over a drinking session.
Amazingly, he survived which yet another confirmation that alcohol is good for people with head injury: Link (Photo: europics.at)
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Alfie the Canine Arsonist
A hungry dog in Llanfairfechan, Wales set fire to a home and caused £6,000 in damage. Paul Gregson, his wife, and two sons escaped the burning house just after midnight Tuesday.
John Morgan, of North Wales Fire and Rescue Service, said: “The family’s pet dog appears to have started the fire by turning on the griddle in the middle of the night. This is why all electrical items not designed to be left on should be switched off at the mains when not in use or overnight.
“The smoke alarm activated and gave this family the opportunity to escape safely. It demonstrates once again that smoke alarms really do save lives.”
The kitchen was badly damaged and there was heat and smoke damage to the rest of the house.
Three-year-old Alfie is a flat-coated retriever, a breed Gregson says is “slow to mature”. Link -via Arbroath
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Food Fight? You're Under Arrest!
A spontaneous lunchtime food fight broke out at a Chicago middle school, and by the time the last bell rang, 25 students aged 11 to 15 were arrested for reckless conduct. Parents told the local news they are furious.
“My children have to appear in court,” Erica Russell, the mother of two eighth-grade girls who spent eight hours in jail, said Tuesday. “They were handcuffed, slammed in a wagon, had their mug shots taken and treated like real criminals.”
“They’re all scared,” Ms. Russell said of the two dozen arrested students. “You never know how children will be impacted by that. I was all for some other kind of punishment, but not jail. Who hasn’t had a food fight?”
What do you guys think? Link (Image from aggrotech’s Photobucket album)
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Grizzly Bear Eats Airplane
An unnamed Alaskan bush pilot went on a fishing trip and neglected to wash down his plane afterward. The 1958 Piper Cub was just too much temptation for a bear to bear.
The fishy aroma attracted a passing grizzly bear who, clearly frustrated at not being able to see the lovely “noms” it could smell, took the plane apart in an effort to find it. Aircraft fabric is no match for bear claws. The bear also chomped both tyres for good measure, then departed the scene.
Alaskans are a hardy bunch, however – as tough as the aircraft they fly. The pilot radioed for two new tyres, three cases of duct tape and a couple of rolls of cellophane to be flown in so he could repair his craft and get home.
Duct tape: is there anything it can’t do? The story includes a picture of the plane after repair. Link -via Fark
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Suspect Provides a Better Mugshot
Matthew Maynard of Swansea, UK thought he could make himself look a bit better in the newspaper. At least better than the police mugshot that was printed, along with seven other people who police were looking for regarding a burglary. So the 23-year-old suspect took a picture with his cell phone and sent it to the newspaper office, requesting they use it instead of the police mug shot!
Police declined to comment on the provocative picture, taken on Mr Maynard’s mobile phone and texted to the newspaper offices, but said that their recent drive to catch criminals was working.
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Shark Caesarean Section
The New Zealand Herald is reporting on a strange occurence at Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater World. Eloise Gibson writes that a shark was bit open at the stomach by another shark, which freed her young that were due to be born that night. Since the staff was unaware of the pregnancy, they were shocked and speculated that the sharks feared predator attacks if she birthed during the night; the likes of stingrays could be lethal.
The young sharks have been taken to a “nursery” tank with some baby eagle rays, where visitors can see them before they are released into the wild.
Link (Photo: Richard Robinson)
Update (11/11/2009): The mother and her eight babies are all doing fine. Link to Daily Mail story with video.
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Human-Shaped Root
Farmer Zheng Dexun of Langzhong, China dug up a fleeceflower root that looks like a human being right down to the arms, legs, and facial features. It is 62 centimeters tall and weights 5.8 kilograms. Zeng, worried about the consequences of digging it up, put it back in the ground, saying ” don’t know whether it is good or bad to dig out a Chinese knotweed that looks like a human. I’d better put it back in the earth!” Full-sized image at the link.
Link via Urlesque | Image: WENN
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Invisible Lion Cages
It looks like a lioins has jumped up on the hood of an open vehicle! Look closely, though -it’s an illusion, as the front of the car and the passenger area are separated by a sheet of glass. Invisible lion cages are the mane attraction Werribee Open Range Zoo, in Melbourne, Australia. VERY strong glass is used in place of other enclosure types more familiar in zoos – the result is stunning shots of the lions and a unique visitor experience.
This incredible Lions on the Edge exhibit, which puts you just inches from a lion’s jaws, is one of the biggest attractions at the zoo.
Kings of the jungle Tombo and Tonyi are joined by two lionesses in the exhibit. Though it has been open since 2006, the male lions were added just last month – leading to some startling photo opportunities.
Link – via cakeheadlovesevil
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Bird Drops Bread, LHC Shuts Down
You can’t make stuff like this up. A piece of a baguette dropped by a passing bird caused a shutdown at the CERN Large Hadron Collider.
The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident, but the spike produced so much heat that had the beam been on, automatic failsafes would have shut down the machine.
The LHC is scheduled to be reactivated later this month. The bread incident won’t affect those plans. Link -via Boing Boing
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You Must Drive to the Recycling Center
David and Katie France of Dorset County, England thought they were being eco-friendly when they walked to dump to dispose of their recyclables. But they were met at the gate by an employee who told them they would have to bring their bags in by car! He cited safety concerns and warned the couple they may be hit by a vehicle. David France walked the 400 yards back to their home, got the car, and drove to the gate where they loaded their bags of scrap metal and took them into the center.
Mr France said: “It was farcical. I thought we were being doubly green by taking our recycling there on foot.
“But whatever good we did in recycling our waste was probably counteracted by the CO2 emissions we used up in our car.”
The council responsible for tip said that because there is no “dedicated pedestrian access point” it was unsafe for people to walk there.
Link -via Arbroath
(image credit: Flickr user hugovk)
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Man Shows Up at His Funeral
The family of 59-year-old Ademir Jorge Goncalves of Santo Antonio da Platina, Brazil identified his body after a fatal traffic accident. The funeral was held the next day, which is customary in Brazil. Imagine their shock when Goncalves himself appeared at the funeral service!
What family members didn’t know was that Goncalves had spent the night at a truck stop talking with friends over drinks of a sugarcane liquor known as cachaca, his niece Rosa Sampaio told the O Globo newspaper. He did not get word about his own funeral until it was already happening Monday morning.
A police spokesman in the town of Santo Antonio da Platina said Goncalves rushed to the funeral to let family members know he was not dead.
“The corpse was badly disfigured, but dressed in similar clothing,” said the police spokesman, who talked on condition of anonymity as he wasn’t authorized to discuss the case. “People are afraid to look for very long when they identify bodies, and I think that is what happened in this case.”
The victim has since been identified and the remains sent to the correct family. Link -via reddit
(image credit: Flickr user Hipolito Luiz)
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Woman Reports Herself Driving Drunk
Mary Strey called police in Clark County, Wisconsin to report a drunk driver. What made this call so unusual was that she was reporting on herself!
“Somebody’s really drunk driving down Granton Road,” she told the 911 dispatcher.
The dispatcher asked if the Strey was behind the drunk driver, to which she replied “No, I am them.”
The dispatcher asked, “Okay, so you’re calling to report you’re driving drunk?”
“Yes,” Strey said.
Strey pulled over and waited for the responding officer, who gave her a Breathalyzer test which showed her blood alcohol level was .19. Strey is due in court over the matter in December. Link -via Arbroath
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Lost Luggage
Remember Dave Carroll of the group Sons of Maxwell who wrote the song United Breaks Guitars after seeing his guitar abused? He flew United Airline again on Sunday on his way to speak to a group of customer service executives. Then he spent an hour at the baggage claim because United lost his luggage!
In an interview, Mr. Carroll said that for more than an hour on Sunday, he was told he could not leave the international baggage claim area at Denver International Airport, where he had flown from Saskatchewan. He said he had been told to stay because his bag was delayed, not lost, and he had to be there to claim it when it came down the conveyor belt.
“I’m the only person pacing around this room,” Mr. Carroll said, recalling how he was caught between an order from United staff members to stay and collect his bag, and a federal customs official telling him he had to leave the baggage claim area. The bag never showed.
Carroll got his bag back on Wednesday. Link -via YesButNoButYes
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Company Forgets Court Date, Loses $1.26 Billion in Default Judgment
A legal secretary at PepsiCo forgot to deal with a lawsuit notice that came across her desk. Consequently, PepsiCo’s lawyers did not show up to court when expected. The presiding judge summarily handed down a $1.26 billion judgment against the corporation. Lynne Marek writes in The National Law Journal:
In court papers, PepsiCo claims it first received a legal document related to the case from the North Carolina agent on Sept. 15 when a copy of a co-defendant’s letter was forwarded to Deputy General Counsel Tom Tamoney in PepsiCo’s law department. Tamoney’s secretary, Kathy Henry, put the letter aside and didn’t tell anyone about it because she was “so busy preparing for a board meeting,” PepsiCo said in its Oct. 13 motion to vacate.
Link | Image: FBI
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Man Recreates Pan Am Jetliner Cabin in His Garage
Since he was a young boy, Anthony Toth has seen the first class cabin of an old Pan Am 747 as the very quintessence of luxury. So he has spent the past twenty years building a simulation of that environment in his garage. In addition to spending $50,000 on the project, he’s traveled widely just to find vintage equipment. Candace Jackson writes in The Wall Street Journal:
To find artifacts from the airline, which ceased operation in 1991, Mr. Toth spends his vacations trekking out to an area in the Mojave Desert known as the airplane boneyard, where retired aircraft are stripped for parts. When he can’t buy an original Pan Am item in good condition, like seat covers, he recruits professionals to create suitable stand-ins.
Julie Fisher, a friend of Mr. Toth’s, says one time she got a call from Mr. Toth saying he’d heard about a source for headsets in Bangkok. A few days later, the two of them hopped a plane to Thailand for the weekend to track them down. (As an airline employee, Mr. Toth can usually fly himself and a friend for free if space is available.)
There’s a slideshow of Toth’s work at the link.
Link via Gizmodo | Photo: Brian L. Frank for the WSJ
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The Secret of a Successful Marriage: Trophy Wife!
Researchers have finally unlocked the secret of a happy marriage: trophy wife!
No, seriously. The study found that marrying smarter and younger women results in less fewer divorces and greater marriage bliss:
The researchers studied interviews of more than 1,500 couples who were married or in a serious relationship. Five years later, they followed up 1,000 of the couples to see which had lasted.
They found that if the wife was five or more years older than her husband, they were more than three times as likely to divorce than if they were the same age.
If the age gap is reversed, and the man is older than the woman, the odds of marital bliss are higher.
Link (Image: a Halloween costume from BuyCostumes)
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Chihuahua Smuggled in Luggage
Customs officials at the Dublin Airport at first thought the x-ray showed a toy dog in the suitcase, but they opened it up and out popped a live puppy! A Bulgarian man on a flight from Madrid was trying to smuggle the young chihuahua.
It is understood the dog was being smuggled in as a gift for someone.
Legally, dogs must have clearance and a health certificate before being brought into the country.
The animal, which Mr Broni said seemed tired but unharmed, was handed over to Department of Agriculture officials where it was placed in quarantine.
The man was not detained, but a file is being compiled on the case. Link -via Unique Daily
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Top Ten Weirdest Halloween Handouts
Candy is dandy, but some folks aren’t prepared for trick-or-treaters (or else they’re just mean). We all know the neighborhood dentist who gives out toothbrushes instead of candy. Here’s a selection of alternative “treats” people have been known to disappoint trick-or-treaters with on Halloween.
8. Condiments and Cutlery
Probably from bachelor types who forgot it was Halloween – answered the door because they thought it was the pizza guy – and then mined their condiment stash so as not to disappoint. Though little containers of peanut butter and jam are passable, plastic packs of soya sauce, ketchup, relish, mustard, and plastic fork and knife sets really don’t do the trick for a treat!
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Coyote Struck, Travels to California
Daniel East and his sister, Tevyn were traveling on Interstate 80 near the Utah-Nevada border when a coyote ran in front of the car. They hit the animal, but kept driving as they assumed it was dead. Eight to ten hours later, they stopped in California and noticed the coyote was stuck in the car’s grill! They called the Wildlife Rehabilitation and Release office in Penn Valley, which sent a volunteer.
Jan Crowell, a rehabilitation center volunteer, said she brought a catch pole, an animal carrier, gloves and blankets.
When she arrived, East and his sister were taking the screws out of the car’s grill in an effort to get the animal out. Once the grill was pulled forward, the coyote poked its head out.
“No broken bones, no internal injuries — nothing,” Daniel East said, adding that the animal only had a few scrapes on one of his paws.
The coyote was kept at the center until it escaped on its own. Link -via Arbroath
(image credit: David Lovere)
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Leech Convicts Australian Robber
Police found a leech at the scene of a robbery in Tasmania eight years ago. They took a sample of the blood the leech had consumed. In 2008, Peter Alec Cannon was arrested on an unrelated drug charge. The DNA from his blood matched the blood from the leech!
Cannon would probably have got away with the crime had he not been charged with drug offences late last year, and asked to give a DNA sample – which matched that from the crime scene.
Detective Inspector Mick Johnston, who was involved in the police investigation from the start, said Cannon’s conviction validated the use of DNA technology.
“It’s a testament to DNA evidence and the legislation that allows us to keep such evidence in relation to unsolved crimes – this is a fantastic result,” he said.
Link -via Boing Boing
(image credit: BBC)
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Brothel Offers Discounts to Eco-Friendly Customers
It seems like everyone is getting into the green lifestyle movement, even a (legal) bordello in Berlin. Mary MacPherson Lane writes for the Associated Press:
One bordello, hoping to stave off falling demand in the economic crisis, has begun offering discounts to customers who pedal bicycles to the door.
“It’s very difficult to find parking around here, and this option is better for our environment,” said Thomas Goetz, who owns the brothel Maison d’Envie, or House of Desire.[...]
To qualify, customers must show the receptionist either a bicycle padlock key or proof they used public transit to get to the neighborhood. That knocks the price for 45 minutes in a room, for example, to euro65 from euro70.
Link via Ace of Spades HQ | Image: flickr user keepwaddling1
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Cat in a Freezer for 19 Hours
A cat named Krillen survived 19 hours in a freezer in Te Kuiti, New Zealand. Sarah Crombie heard a faint meow when she approached the freezer, which hadn’t been used since her partner Sid Sisson shut it the night before. He didn’t realize that Krillem had jumped inside. The freezer was set to -18C, the coldest possible setting. She opened the lid and saw him on a bag of dog food.
“I raced inside to get Sid and as I came out, Krillen rolled off the bag in an attempt to get out, but he was that frozen he just rolled to the bottom of the freezer on his back,” she said.
“At first we thought his eyeballs were frozen. I’ve never seen a cat with such big eyes.”
Fortunately, Sid, 28, knew it was essential to raise the body temperature of hypothermia sufferers slowly. So he put the cat under his shirt and got into bed with him.
It took three hours under the covers for the cat to stop shaking. Krillen appears to have recovered without frostbite. Link -via Arbroath
(image credit: Bruce Mercer)
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Vanity Plate Proves Costly
That’s Scottie Roberson, whose nickname is “Racer X” and favorite number is seven. He combined the two for his vanity plate: XXXXXXX.
Turns out that decision flagged his car for over $19,000 in parking tickets.
When Birmingham parking patrols find cars without license plates parked illegally or at expired meters, they enter seven X’s in place of the plate number, city officials said. The parking citation form calls for a plate number, and the practice is to use X’s when no number is available.
City officials are working to change the entry system to keep Roberson from receiving any additional tickets, Odom said.
“Maybe we need to go with nine X’s, or maybe we just need to leave that part blank altogether,” Dawkins said.
Link via The Obscure Store & Reading Room.
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The Frugal Polygamist
Just because you’re a polygamist, it doesn’t mean that you can’t also be frugal. South African Milton Mbhele just got married to 4 brides the frugal way: he did it all at once!
The four brides, dressed in flowing white gowns, walked down the aisle together, before saying “We do” to the 44-year-old groom.
Mr Mbhele says he didn’t marry them purely for the spectacle but because it also made financial sense. “I don’t know how much four different weddings would have cost me but I know doing it all at once saved money,” he explains.
“For example I only needed one tent, I needed to hire one caterer and one photographer for the entire ceremony.”
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7 Fascinating Love Letters
Have you ever written a love letter? How did it turn out? Sappy or clever?
I betcha it’s not as awesome as this one sent about 100 years ago by William Weightman. He wrote the entire thing in rebus (for example, the word "dearest" is formed using a picture of a deer followed by the letters "est.")
That’s just one of 7 fascinating love letters in this post by Shaun Usher (the guy behind deputy dog and Letters of Note blogs)
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The History of the Barcode
Google’s doodle for today is a barcode, in honor of the 57th anniversary of its invention. Nick Collins writes in The Daily Telegraph about the history of this label:
Granted to American inventors Norman Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver three years after it was filed, patent number 2,612,994 was for a pattern of concentric circles, rather than the set of straight lines used today.
Their research began in 1948 after Mr Silver, a graduate student at the Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia, overheard a local food chain boss asking one of the institute’s deans to design a system for reading product data automatically.
Mr Silver and Mr Woodland, a fellow graduate student and teacher at Drexel, first tried using patterns of ink that glowed under ultraviolet light, but it proved too expensive and unreliable.
Mr Woodland then came up with the linear bar code, and later replaced the lines with circles so that they could be scanned from any angle. The pair patented their “bull’s eye” design the next year.
The barcode became widely used in UPC (universal price product code) format, and the first UPC-labeled item scanned by a reader was a packet of Wrigley’s chewing gum at a grocery store in Troy, Ohio in 1974.
You can create your own personalized barcode with a tool in the links below.
Barcode Generator via Urlesque | History of the Barcode
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Thugs' Intended Victims Turned Out To Be ... Cross-Dressing Cage Fighters!
If you think the Somali pirate had a bad case of mistaken identity, check this one out: when two thugs decided to attack a pair of transvestites, they found out the hard way that their intended victims were cross-dressing cage fighters!
The Daily Mail has the story:
Dean Gardener, 19, and Jason Fender, 22, singled out the two men walking along a street in wigs, short skirts and high heels.
Bare-chested Gardener was caught on CCTV confronting one of the men in a pink wig, black skirt and boob tube – then seen swinging a punch, a court heard.
But the other cage fighter, wearing a sparkling black dress and matching long wig, sprang to his friend’s help, delivering two lightning-quick punches to the two stunned yobs.
The defense attorney for the two remarked:
Mark Davies, defending, said: ‘You know it cannot have been a good night when you get into a fight with two cross-dressing men.
No words on why the cage fighters were out wearing such lovely dresses in the first place: Link (CCTV still image: Wales News Service)
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Why settle for a boring computer mouse when you can surft in style with Road Mice, a wireless cool computer mouse that looks just like the car of your dreams? Road Mice is available in various Chevy, Chrysler, Dodge, and Ford models including the popular Corvette shown to the left. It's the perfect gift for the auto-enthusiast in your life! |
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