Free-wheelin’ dandy arrested for DUI
CANBERRA: Police in Australia have charged a man for DUI: driving under influence, in a motorized wheelchair after he was found to be six times over the legal alcohol limit.
Police in the Queensland city of Cairns said the man had a blood alcohol reading of 0.31, and was so drunk he was asleep at the controls of his motorized wheelchair in a turning lane of a major highway.
“It beggars belief,” Police Inspector Bob Walters told the Cairns Post, adding wheelchairs, bicycles, horses and skateboards were all considered to be vehicles under the state’s road laws.”It’s unlawful, it is unacceptable and people should realise it could lead to a fatality,” he said. Other motorists on the four-lane highway had to swerve to avoid the wheelchair, police said.

Drugs in rugs
BEIJING: Drug traffickers in China’s far west are smuggling heroin into the country woven into carpets imported from Afghanistan and Pakistan, the official newspaper China Daily said on Tuesday.Customs officials in Xinjiang, which borders both countries, have seized more than 30 carpets containing some 50 kg (110 lb) of heroin in the last several months. “Traffickers first inject heroin into plastic tubes of 1-2 mm diameter and wrap them with colorful natural or synthetic fibers to make them look like yarn. They then weave them into the carpet along with normal yarn,” the report said.The new smuggling method was making detection harder as equipment normally used by customs’ officers was not up to the task, the newspaper added.“Drugs smuggled into China are in turn sent to other destinations. Heroin and cocaine usually go to Australia and Europe, while new drugs such as Ecstasy are more likely to be smuggled into South Korea and Japan,” the report added.

Thing-a-mobile-jig
LONDON: What do you do if you are stuck in a field at a pop festival but there’s trouble ahead because your mobile phone’s battery is about to run out? Thanks to a new gizmo, you now just need to face the music and dance. Mobile phone operator Orange has teamed up with GotWind, a firm specializing in renewable energy, to produce a recharger powered by dance energy alone.The portable kinetic energy chargers will be given a test run at this year’s Glastonbury Festival, the world’s biggest greenfield music and arts celebration that begins in Somerset on Friday.The prototype chargers weigh the same as a phone and are about the size of a pack of cards. Attached to the user’s arm, they employ a system of weights and magnets, which provide an electric current to top up charge in a storage battery. This can then later be used to recharge the phone.
-Reuters

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