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OFF BEAT: Greek slap, dead boy awaking, Gates Porche...
Rediff.com brings for you a collection of off-beat stories in the past 24 hours that often fail to make it in the print media.
We start off with the shocking case of two Greek MPs getting assaulted during a television chat show by a fellow politician in the midst of a heated debate.
Kasidiaris, the spokesman of the extreme-right Golden Dawn party, after trading insults of 'commie' and 'fascist', lunged at two female left-wing politicians on a mainstream morning talk show, throwing water at one and smacking the other three times across the face, the Huffington Post reported.
Kasidiaris is said to have taken offense when Dourou mentioned a court case pending against him, relating to his alleged involvement in an armed robbery in 2007.
Kasidiaris, whose party entered parliament for the first time on May 6, was locked in a room at the TV studio but broke down a door and escaped, the TV host said.
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He jumped off the Himalayas into record books
Russian BASE (buildings, antenna, span and earth) jumper Valery Rozov has set a new world jump record with a leap from the top of Shivling, a 6543 metre mountain in the Indian part of the Himalayas.
After a 30-day expedition, including a six-day ascent, Rozov (47) took off, hit speeds of 200km/h within seconds as he sped through the air and landed 7218 feet (2200 m) further down on the glacier just 90 seconds later.
The other expedition members took three days to complete the descent.
"This was my first project in the Himalayas," said the two-time skydiving world champion after his record-breaking flight. "We had a few difficulties along the way, so I am really pleased that we were able to complete the jump successfully."
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'Dead' boy sits up in coffin, asks for water and dies again
A two-year-old Brazilian boy, who was declared dead, sat up in his coffin and asked for water before laying back down again lifeless.
According to website ORM, Kelvin Santos stopped breathing during treatment for pneumonia at a hospital in Belem, northern Brazil, News.com.au reported.
The boy was declared dead at 7.40pm on Friday and his body was handed over to his family in a plastic bag. The child's devastated family took him home where grieving relatives held a wake throughout the night as the boy's body laid in an open coffin. But just an hour before his funeral was to take place on Saturday, the boy apparently sat up in his coffin and said asked his father for water.
"Daddy, can I have some water," the child said.
"Everybody started to scream, we couldn't believe our eyes. Then we thought a miracle had taken place and our boy had come back to life," the boy's father, Antonio Santos said, adding, "Then Kelvin just laid back down, the way he was. We couldn't wake him. He was dead again."
Santos rushed his son back to the Aberlardo Santos hospital in Belem, where the doctors re-examined the boy and confirmed that he had no signs of life.
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SOLD! The Porche that Bill Gates drove
A classic Porsche once owned by Bill Gates has sold at auction in Europe for $81,000.
The 1979 turbocharged sportscar was the computer whiz's first reward to himself just four years after establishing Microsoft, on his way to becoming the world's wealthiest man.
Gates is no longer the richest person on the planet having given about one-third of his wealth to charity in 2010. But Gates is estimated to still have about $61 billion, making the sale price of the car equivalent to 0.00013 per cent of his net worth.
The light blue 930 Turbo came with letters to and from Microsoft and Porsche and the original Washington State registration papers, the Austrian Times reported.
The auction house in Vienna had expected the Gates Porsche to fetch between 39,000 and 50,000 Euros, but it passed initial estimates and went to a telephone bidder for 64,000 Euros ($81,000).
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Bush back in news. No, he is not getting a Nobel
More than half of Americans view former President George W Bush unfavourably, making him the most unpopular living US president, according to a CNN poll released on Thursday.
Just 43 per cent of people questioned said they have a favorable opinion of Bush, while 54 per cent said they view him unfavorably. Two-thirds of Americans, in contrast, said they have a positive view of Bush's predecessor, former President Bill Clinton.
Of the other living former presidents, Jimmy Carter is viewed favourably by 54 per cent of people questioned and George H.W. Bush gets a 59 per cent rating.
Bush's 43-per cent favorable rating is roughly the same as it was in 2010. It is higher than it was immediately following his tenure in the White House in 2009, when his favorable rating bottomed out in the high 20s.
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Earth may be nearing tipping point!
A group of international scientists is sounding a global alarm, warning that population growth, climate change and environmental destruction are pushing Earth toward calamitous -- and irreversible -- biological changes.
In a paper published in Thursday's edition of the journal Nature, 22 researchers from a variety of fields liken the human impact to global events eons ago that caused mass extinctions, permanently altering Earth's biosphere.
"Humans are now forcing another such transition, with the potential to transform Earth rapidly and irreversibly into a state unknown in human experience," wrote the authors, who are from the U.S., Europe, Canada and South America.
If current trends continue -- exploding global population, rapidly rising temperatures and the clearance of more than 40% of Earth's surface for urban development or agriculture -- the planet could reach a tipping point, they say.
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Top PHOTO features of the week
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