The Night Note: 7/28/09

News you need to know

The following stories are brought to you by the fine folks on the News4 assignment desk.

iPHONE + HILL STAFFERS = AWESOME
Let's see, we can use our iPhones to post trivial updates to Facebook, play a rousing game of Scramble and to make sure our desks at the office are level. Nothing like good ergonomics!  Hmmm... what's missing?  How about being able to open high-level, security-encrypted Congressional e-mails while drunk at Jumbo Slice at 3 a.m.?  Brilliant!  Patience, preppy young grasshopper, patience. Your time is near. (NBC Washington)

IT HAS BEGUN: ROBOT ATTACKS MAN
A Swedish company has been fined 25,000 kronor ($3,000) after a malfunctioning robot attacked and almost killed one of its workers at a factory north of Stockholm. Public prosecutor Leif Johansson mulled pressing charges against the firm but eventually opted to settle for a fine.  "I've never heard of a robot attacking somebody like this," he told news agency TT. (The Local)

SHATNER DOES PALIN
On Monday night William Shatner, the actor who carved out a sideline in the 1970s as a sort of proto-rapper, delivering spoken lyrics over music, appeared on NBC’s “Tonight Show” to apply his vocal stylings to part of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s farewell speech. Video of that performance is embedded above.  Having gotten the Shatner treatment, Ms. Palin has joined John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan and Bernie Taupin as writers whose words have been reimagined as poetry by the actor. On the Web site Last.fm you can hear Mr. Shatner’s unforgettable takes on both “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” and “Mr. Tambourine Man.” (The Lede)

BIKINI-CLAD CARJACKER ARRESTED
Police in Mississippi say a woman was carjacked by a bikini-clad suspect, who they say later tried to rob an RV dealership.  Southaven Police Chief Tom Long said the 24-year-old suspect, identified as Morgan Haley, approached another woman in her driveway and demanded the car on Thursday.  The woman gave up the car without a fight, asking only for time to remove her young children from inside. (MSNBC)

CHINESE ARE CHI MI WITH MAGICIANS
Sweating under stage lights, magician Wang Xianbo takes six metal rings, bumps them together one by one and then links the rings into shapes: a flower, a rickshaw, an airplane.  For at least 2,000 years — and long before modern aviation — Chinese entertainers like Wang have performed the well-known "linking rings" trick.  Baofeng, the self-proclaimed home of magic in China, is enjoying a boom as the whole country has gone magic-mad. (USA Today)
 

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