►WHIRLED GNUS◄: Sep 22, 2011

Thursday, September 22, 2011

GOT CAPTION? 9/23 v.2.0

The Arrogance of Obama is Displayed in a Wave of the Hand

Don't worry about the dude right behind you, Obama, just go ahead and be the only person to wave to the camera.

VIDEO: This Guys Cleans the Cobra Pit

VIDEO: Tiny Bear Cubs Wrestling

Two adorable tiny bear cubs battle in the road at Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park, California.

Italian parents bring in lawyers to evict 41-year-old stay at home son

An exasperated Italian couple has resorted to legal help to kick their 41-year-old son out of the house, in the latest case to highlight the phenomenon of Italy's stay-at-home "bamboccioni" or mummy's boys. The elderly couple's patience with their grown-up offspring has finally run out after what they say is years of cooking him meals and washing and ironing his clothes. They say the man has a perfectly good job and a steady income but has resisted all attempts to persuade him to fly the nest.

The couple, who have not been named, have taken their case to the legal department of an association for the defence of consumers' rights in Mestre, near Venice. Lawyers have given the middle-aged man, also unnamed, 10 days to find himself a flat, or have the case referred to court, with the prospect of more forceful action being taken to evict him. "We can no longer go on like this," the father said, according to Andrea Campi, a lawyer from the consumers association.

"My wife has developed stress-related problems and she's been in hospital recently. He has a good job but he continues to live at home and wants his clothes washed and ironed and his meals cooked for him. He never wants to leave." The couple took their case to the association after reading that it had experience in dealing with dozens of similar cases. Young Italians are renowned for their reluctance to leave home, with a study released last year showing that 48% of offspring between the ages of 18 and 39 still live under their parents' roofs.

Young male Italians known as "mammone", or mummy's boys, are particularly attached to their mother's apron strings. After the report was released, a cabinet minister came up with a drastic solution to the problem, proposing legislation which would make it compulsory for teenagers to leave home once they reached adulthood. Renato Brunetta, the minister in charge of streamlining the country's bureaucracy, admitted that in his youth he too was a "bamboccioni", which translates as "big baby", and that his mother made his bed for him until he was 30.

China bans dog-eating "carnival" after public uproar

The Chinese government has banned a traditional carnival in the east of the country in which dogs are eaten after being chopped up alive in the street following a public uproar that the festival was cruel. The tradition in Qianxi in the wealthy coastal province of Zhejiang dates back 600 years to celebrate a local military victory and is normally held every October.

"The ancient fair was replaced by a modern commodity fair in the 1980s, but dog-eating has been kept as a tradition. However, vendors began to butcher dogs in public a few years ago to show their dog meat is fresh and safe, as a way to ease buyers' worry that the meat may be refrigerator-preserved or even contaminated."

Pictures which circulated online via popular microblogging sites had such an impact that the government gave into demands the festival be banned. "The government's quick response should be encouraged. I hope eating dogs will not be a custom there anymore. It's not a carnival, but a massacre," one internet user said.

Despite once being banned as a bad bourgeois habit, dog ownership has become increasingly popular with China's growing middle class in the past few years, as has online activism. While the government has encouraged people to take to the internet to expose corruption and abuse of power, it keeps a tight reign on what can be said online, deleting comments it objects to and arresting those who criticise too much.