Great granny wins $2M playing fortune cookie lotto numbers
New York: A great grandmother from Bronx won 2 million dollars after playing the fortune cookie lotto numbers.
75-year-old Emma Duvoll, who collected the big payout on Thursday, decided to use the numbers that came inside her dessert as she had read that it had paid off for others in the past. The grandmother of eight and great-grandmother of one had earlier tried family birthdays and anniversaries but had no luck. Her good fortune came from a Chinese food order that she and her sons ordered at Sammy’s Noodle Shop and Grill in Greenwich Village. Duvoll kept the fortune cookie slip, and played the numbers at a Hanneford’s grocery store.
She hit the numbers 5, 12, 15, 27 and 38, but missed out on the Powerball, 7. Matching five numbers won 1 million dollars but as Duvoll shelled out an extra 1 dollar for the Power Play option, her payout increased to 2 million dollars. (ANI)
Blind man survives track fall as LA train arrives
Los Angeles: A blind man fell onto the tracks at a subway station as a train was arriving today, but he escaped unharmed by lying flat as the cars screeched to a halt above him, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority said.
The train “ran over the man but didn’t touch him, thank God,” LA Metro spokesman Paul Gonzales said. “In my view this is a miraculous occurrence. The man is exceedingly lucky to be alive.”
The 47-year-old Los Angeles man fell from the platform at the Wilshire and Vermont station in the city’s Koreatown neighbourhood as a Red Line train was approaching. The train operator blew its horn, but by the time he could stop the train, the second car had passed over the man, Gonzales said.
The man, whose identity was not released, had “no obvious injuries” and was not touched by the train, but he was taken to a hospital as a precaution, Los Angeles Fire Department spokeswoman Katherine Main said.
This is at least the third time since September 2012 that a train on the Red Line has passed over a person. In the other two instances, the people were seriously injured. (AP)
Girl bitten 100 times in New Zealand dog attack
Auckland: New Zealand doctors said today that a 7-year-old Japanese girl was bitten about 100 times during a dog mauling that has horrified many in the South Pacific nation.
Zac Moaveni, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon at Auckland’s Middlemore Hospital, told reporters that the girl, Sakurako Uehara, would likely need repeated surgeries until she was a grown woman.
He said she would have been conscious throughout the attack and the bites were all over her body. “Any one of those would make you wince,” he said, adding that “it’s not just the bite with a dog, but it’s the crush and the force that’s behind it.
It’s a very different injury than to say a stab wound, or a cat bite.” Hospital officials said today the girl remained in a critical but stable condition. According to police, the girl was attacked on Monday by four Staffordshire bull terrier-cross dogs in the North Island town of Murupara while her family was visiting friends who owned the animals.
The dogs have been euthanized. A social worker read reporters a statement from the girl’s family, in which they said they worked in the food industry in Japan and that Sakurako was their only daughter. (AP)
British widow wins battle for husband’s frozen sperm
London: A British woman won a High Court battle on Friday to preserve her late husband’s sperm for at least another decade so that she can bear his children.
Beth Warren, 28, had challenged a ruling by fertility regulators that the sperm stored by her husband Warren Brewer before his death in 2012 should be destroyed next year. Judge Mary Hogg said in a written ruling: “I am satisfied it was his wish that Mrs Warren should have the opportunity to have the use of his sperm after his death in order to have his child or children if she so wanted.”
Brewer, a ski instructor who was 32 when he died, had frozen his sperm in April 2005 before receiving radiotherapy for a brain tumour, a treatment which risked making him infertile.
He named Warren as his partner and made clear he wanted her to use his sperm after he died, the judge said. But he failed to give legal consent for it to be preserved beyond the statutory ten years, meaning Warren must use it before April 2015 or see it destroyed.
Still grieving and trying to rebuild her life, Warren argued at the High Court that she was not ready to start a family. She asked for the sperm to be stored for the maximum 55 years allowed under the law — until April 2060 — so she could choose to have his children later.
The judge approved her request, extending the storage period to at least April 2023 and then until April 2060 pending regular procedural reviews. Warren, who took her husband’s first name as her surname, said she was “elated” at the ruling. She said her husband “was my life. I know we didn’t get that life we wanted. So we made this plan”. “Now I feel I can just move on in my life. With what I want to do. With this chance Warren left me.”
However, the judge later granted the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) the right to appeal, a decision which Warren’s lawyer said left her “downhearted”. (AFP)
UK schoolboy youngest to build nuclear fusion reactor
London: A 13-year-old schoolboy in the UK has become the youngest person in the world to build a nuclear fusion reactor.
Jamie Edwards, a pupil at Penwortham Priory Academy, in Lancashire created the reactor from scratch with help from his school, breaking the record of US student Taylor Wilson, who was 14 when he created nuclear fusion in 2008. Jamie, who started work in October in an under-used school science laboratory, recreated a process known as ‘inertial electrostatic confinement’ which dates back to the 1960s.
“One day, I was looking on the internet for radiation or other aspects of nuclear energy and I came across Taylor Wilson,” said the junior scientist who faced a race against time to complete the project before his 14th birthday this week. Jamie, along with friend George Barker, set about trying to create nuclear fusion by consulting an open source website for amateur physicists.
His application for funds was rejected by various nuclear laboratories and universities. Jamie then turned to his head teacher Jim Hourigan. “I was a bit stunned and I have to say a little nervous when Jamie suggested this but he reassured me he wouldn’t blow the school up,” said Priory head Hourigan, who agreed to give 2,000 pounds to the project. Jamie ordered parts and equipment from Lithuania, the US and UK, working on the project every break and lunchtime as well as after school. He has now become the youngest person in the world to achieve nuclear fusion, using high energy to smash two hydrogen atoms together to make helium. “It’s magnificent really. I can’t quite believe it – even though all my friends think I am mad,” Jamie said. (PTI)
Woman found ‘sleeping’ in Justin Bieber’s rented Atlanta home arrested
Washington: A woman who was found sleeping in a bedroom at a home in suburban Atlanta rented by Justin Bieber, has been arrested by the police.
Cops said that Qianying Zhao of nearby Doraville was found at the home, owned by music producer Dallas Austin, the Hollywood Reporter reported.
The 23-year-old had, who has been charged with criminal trespassing, told the officials that she had come to attend Bieber”s birthday party and entered the unoccupied home through an unlocked door, but the cops said that the party was earlier in the week at another location.
She had even said that she was one of the ‘Baby’ hitmaker’s friend, though police have found that she is one millions of fans who follow the singer on Twitter. (ANI)