Coffin Conversations - by dementia

A Dutch police station trying to help Muslim detainees face Mecca for their prayers painted arrows in cells pointing in the wrong direction.

The Segbroek police station in The Hague borrowed the idea of putting compass marks on ceilings from an Amsterdam hotel, the Dutch daily De Telegraaf reported on Friday.

Muslims pray five times a day, facing east in the direction of Mecca. But the arrows in Segbroek pointed west.

"This is a really gigantic, stupid blunder," a police spokesman told the De Telegraaf.


"The faulty compass marks have been immediately corrected. It is a mystery for us how this could have possibly happened."

All other police cells in the Dutch capital will soon get similar compass marks, the in-house newspaper of The Hague police said.

The Netherlands is home to 1 million Muslims out of a population of more than 16 million.

Immigration and the integration of newcomers have been hot topics since the rise and murder of populist politician Pim Fortuyn in 2002, who said the country could not absorb any more foreigners.

An oddball, elderly inventor in Tokyo recently lost his fourth attempt at becoming governor of the Japanese city, but vows he will run up to 16 more times and ultimately win.

"I'm going to live to 144, so I'm still only middle-aged," said 78-year-old Yoshiro Nakamatsu, who garnered only 1.6 percent of the total votes.

His platform included offering Tokyo residents an invention that purports to make North Korean missiles do U-turns if launched at them.

A Los Angeles man, who had been diagnosed with cancer in his left testicle, had to have it removed at a VA hospital. Unfortunately, surgeons accidentally removed his right, healthy testicle during the operation. They are suing the hospital for $200,000 in future healthcare costs.

Three Japanese naval officers who swapped pornography on their computers triggered a scandal over a possible leak of sensitive data linked to Japan's missile defense system, a newspaper said Thursday.

Police launched a probe last week after a navy officer married to a Chinese woman was found to have taken home a computer disk containing information about the high-tech Aegis radar system, domestic media said.

Aegis is used on Japanese destroyers that are to be fitted with SM-3 missile interceptors from this year as part of the missile defense program.

The officer told police he accidentally copied the confidential data onto his computer's hard disk when copying porn from a computer belonging to a crew member from another destroyer, the Yomiuri newspaper reported.

A third officer was also found to have copied data on the Aegis system alongside pornographic images, the Yomiuri said.

Police suspect senior officers were also involved in the swap because none of the three were authorized to access the confidential information, the Yomiuri said.

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School district officials are trying to identify who watched $250 worth of pay-per-view pornographic movies using a school cable television box, officials said.

Someone after business hours used one of the five cable boxes in the Board of Education building to order the films, priced between $4.95 and $9.95.

A British dentist was found guilty Thursday of urinating in his surgery sink and using dental tools meant for patients to clean his fingernails and ears.

A Wisconsin fire marshal has agreed to resign after he was accused of writing an online psychic and asking the spiritualist if he or others would be able to oust their chief.

Tom Weber, of Middleton, denied ever working against his boss, but admitted that he has written to psychics from his computer at work.

Recently William Davis filed a $1.5 million lawsuit against the Murfreesboro, Tenn., police because they seized and destroyed 114 dead cats and one dead dog that Davis kept in freezers and which had “emotional value” for him. In addition, according to the petition filed in Chancery Court for Rutherford County, the carcasses were potential business property; Davis was planning to start his own pet cemetery.

Authorities said a trio trying to open a locked door alerted a sleeping homeowner when one of them rang the doorbell.

Homeowner Samuel Sanchez, 35, confronted the burglars about 11:30 a.m. Monday. One of them was still trying to open the door with a pocket knife, Hillsborough County sheriff’s deputies said. The men ran, according to the St. Petersburg Times.

Police in Edmonton, Alberta, said officers were training with a dog at a business late Tuesday when they heard an alarm sound from the building next door.

A New Yorker claims he achieved a world record in Thailand on Thursday for doing the most squat-thrusts in one minute on the back of an elephant.

Ashrita Furman climbed onto the obliging elephant in Northern Thailand and powered through 40 squat thrusts.

A man, who was drunk, let his 14-year-old son drive them both home - the kid was also drunk.

James Vernon Holbert Jr., of Virginia faces up to five years in prison when he is sentenced in May.