News around the world

Oldest living man passes away

Alexander Imich, the world's oldest living man, passed away on Monday at the age of 111, four months after earning that title.

Imich emigrated to the United States from Poland in the 1950s and settled down in New York.

He worked as a chemist, had a doctorate in zoology, and was an expert on paranormal activity.

"It was his work that he was most proud of, and he was happiest when the attention included his scientific work," his longtime friend Michael Mannion said.His wife, an artist and therapist named Wela, passed away in 1986 and his apartment was filled with her artwork. Imich credits his good genes for his long life -his father lived to his 90s- but Mannion says his curiosity and passion for life were the real keys."He had such an ability to turn adversity into something positive. That intense curiosity was there until the last days," said Mannion. However, Imich was not the oldest living person-there are 66 women older than him!

Internet
 

1,000 people eat world's hottest pepper

Think you can handle spicy food? The 1,000 people who gathered in Copenhagen, Denmark to eat the world's hottest pepper thought they could but they were wrong.

Just how hot are ghost peppers? On the Scoville scale of hotness, a fiery jalapeño pepper ranks between 3,500 and 4,000 SHUs. The favourite condiment of spice-lovers, Tabasco sauce, ranks between 30,000 and 50,000 SHUs. The ghost pepper ranges between an incredible 800,000 to over one million SHUs! You would have to put more than 230 jalapeño peppers in your mouth to pack the same spicy punch as one small ghost pepper! It is so hot that India's Defence Research and Development Organization has been researching how to make it into a weapon similar to tear gas. Tear gas is a very effective weapon that police often use it to subdue people who may be dangerous. Just one small spray to the eyes will make anyone unable to move because of the burning pain it causes.

The idea to gather 1,000 brave, daredevils in one place and have them eat ghost peppers was the idea of pepper enthusiast Claus Pilgaard who made a name for himself by eating hot peppers on YouTube.

There wasn't a dry eye in the house during the challenge, not because everyone was sad but because the peppers were so hot they made everyone's eyes water. Some people even threw up!

There was plenty of milk on hand for people who couldn't take the heat anymore. (Did you know that milk is much more effective at cooling down your mouth after eating spicy foods than water?) -

Internet

Posessed girl's laughing caused by tumour

A six-year-old girl in Bolivia can't stop laughing, but it isn't because someone told a funny joke.

The girl, whose name is not known, randomly starts laughing and can't control herself.

She has visited many doctors, most of whom diagnosed her with "misbehaviour" or said she was crazy, spoiled, or even possessed! "It's not necessarily 'hahaha' laughing," said Dr. Solomon Moshé, pediatric surgeon at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

"There's no happiness in this. Some of the children may be very scared." Dr. José Liders Burgos Zuleta decided to take an MRI scan of her brain to see if he could pinpoint the uncontrollable laughter to something in her brain. They discovered she had a small, non-cancerous tumour pressing against the temporal lobe of her brain, the part that involves understanding language, memories, emotions and processing input from all senses.

The laughing bouts she was experiencing were called galactic seizures. They are a very rare form of epilepsy that is usually caused by tumours in the hypothalamus in children, an almond-sized section of the brain responsible for hormone production that regulates body temperature, emotion, hunger, thirst and sleep. Now, the tumour has been removed and the girl no longer laughs uncontrollably - only when she wants to!

- Internet