TurkmenPost

A Frenchman made a 686-kilometre (426-mile) round-trip from Paris to London and then back again purely to place a 10,000-euro (6,900-pound, 12,600-dollar) bet on Brazil to win the World Cup, bookmaker William Hill has said.

The mystery punter is said to have been "hopping up and down" outside the chain’s branch at Waterloo station, where Eurostar trains linking London and Paris start and terminate, waiting for staff to open up.

He then handed over a stash of Euros before rushing off to catch the train back to France, leaving the manager to chase him with the betting slip.

"The man was clearly in a hurry to catch the train back. He told us that he would be back on July 10 (when the World Cup final is held) to collect the winnings," said William Hill spokesman Rupert Adams Tuesday.

"We didn’t have the heart to tell him that he could have placed the bet on either the telephone or on the Internet."

The man staked 10,000 euros at odds of 11 to four and will collect 37,500 euros if Brazil lift the trophy.

Unlike Britain, where wagers can be placed at a number of privately-owned chains, betting in France is more tightly controlled with two franchises, one running bets on horseracing, the other lottery and scratchcard games.

British popster James Blunt’s song You’re Beautiful has taken a beating of late, with even the singer himself referring to it as "overplayed".

But Britain’s Daily Mail has revealed that the song might have miracle powers.

Five-year-old Claudia De’Alwis, had been a coma for 10 days following a head-first plunge from a five-metre balcony. She began to awake after her favourite song came over the hospital radio - it was Blunt’s You’re Beautiful.

Claudia’s father, Paul D’Alwis, 40 told the newspaper he was convinced it was the song that brought her around.

"Claudia loves You’re Beautiful and she used to sing it all the time. It was like her theme tune," he said.

"Following the accident, the doctors warned us she might not make it, and after 10 days in a coma we were desperately worried that she wasn’t going to recover.

"But then the song came on the radio and she started to move for the first time, and we could tell she was starting to wake up.

"It was an unforgettable moment when she opened her eyes and acknowledged us at last."

Claudia, an only child, was playing on the balcony at a friend’s house when the accident occurred. Her father said that, as the family lived in a single-storey house, she might have been unaware of the dangers of such heights.

Her family hope that she will be well enough to go home in time for her sixth birthday next month.

via smh.

When a competition goes prime time, the gambling industry cannot be far behind, even when the participants are little kids spelling big words.

Will the winner be wearing glasses? Will it be a boy or girl? Will the final word have an “e'’ in it? Those were just some of the betting propositions available online Thursday as the Scripps National Spelling Bee produced its usual anxious moments on the way to its first-ever evening finish.

“This is the first time we have offered it proper,'’ said Simon Noble, CEO of PinnacleSports.com, an offshore betting Web site. “We had so many requests from customers. We scratched our heads and asked, ‘Is it something we can do or not?”’

Noble said his company had received about $70,000 in bets on seven propositions as of noon Thursday, when the final day of competition began. That is far short of the haul for, say, “American Idol,'’ but comparable to the wagers received for this week’s first-round matches at the French Open tennis tournament.

“We’re surprised it is that much, to be honest,'’ Noble said.

Gamblers’ interest was inevitable in a competition that has been televised on ESPN for 13 years and has spawned at least three movies and a Broadway play. ABC planned to broadcast the finals in a two-hour prime-time special, a first.

The influence of money was evident throughout the hotel where the competition was held. Sponsors had booths in the lobby, and the competition itself was interrupted frequently with announcements such as, “We’re out one minute and 30 seconds'’ - a delicate way of saying it was time for yet another commercial break.

The bee’s winner was to receive more than $42,000 in cash and prizes.

via guardian.

Ireland may be enjoying stellar economic growth and seen as one of the best places in the world to live, but its inhabitants are apparently also the globe’s loneliest.

Google Trends, which works out how many searches have been done via the Internet search engine on particular terms, showed the word "lonely" was entered most frequently by Internet users in Ireland.

The Irish, enjoying new-found wealth and a flood of immigration following more than a century of economic decline, are followed in the misery stakes by residents of Singapore and New Zealand — although Singaporeans are the most frequent searchers of "happiness."

Google Trends calculates the ratio of searches for a given term coming from each city, region or language divided by total Google searches coming from the same area.

Ireland’s capital, Dublin, topped the city list for "lonely" searches, followed by Melbourne, Australia and Auckland, New Zealand.

In 2004, the Economist magazine named Ireland the best place to live in the world in a "quality of life" assessment.

Reuters

 A 62-year-old retired schoolteacher is fighting with a cable company over a hefty bill for porn and gangsta rap programming she says she never ordered.

The charges of more than $1,000 appeared on Claudia Lee’s February Cablevision bill, shortly after she bundled her cable TV, computer and phone services.

"They are harassing me and trying to make me pay for something I didn’t do," said Lee, who lives alone.

She said she has been forced to pay $779 to the company and was told to pay $652 more or face having her services cut off.

"Every time I call, somebody tells me something different. They’re not on the same page," she said Thursday.

Cablevision spokesman Bill Powers said Lee may not have ordered the pay-per-view programming, but someone in her home did. Lee claimed someone pirated her connection. Powers said the company did not find theft of service.

On Friday, however, Cablevision issued a statement saying, "We are suspending these charges pending a full investigation and we are going to work with our customer to ensure that this matter is appropriately resolved."

Lee said the only regular visitor to her house is her 81-year-old mother, "and I don’t think she wants to watch porn."

The Associated Press