Bizarre News - November 22, 2014

Greetings fellow Bizarros:

I have heard of worse reasons to eat a species to extinction. Suffering from stress? Not feeling sexy? High in the Andean mountains of Peru, some locals believe putting frogs in a blender is the answer.

Unfortunately, there is no scientific evidence confirming any medicinal benefits from frog juice. And the frogs that Peruvians use are from the Telmatobius culeus species, a water frog from remote Lake Titicaca that is listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Entire frogs are the main ingredient in a juice blend some people in Peru and Bolivia believe can cure asthma, bronchitis, sluggishness and a low sex drive. To make the mix at her food stand in Peru's capital, vendor Maria Elena Cruz grabs a frog from a small aquarium, and whacks its head on the countertop until it's dead.

Then she peels off its skin and drops the frog into a blender with carrots, the Peruvian maca root and honey.

The juice comes out light green in color. Cruz serves it in glasses to her customers.

"Frog juice is good for anemia, bronchitis, bones, the brain, fatigue, stress and it is mostly children, adults, persons with anemia, respiratory issues and sometimes tuberculosis" who come to her stand, Cruz claims.

Customer Cecilia Cahuana, 35, believes this.

"I always come here to drink frog juice because it's good for the children, for anemia, bronchitis and also for older persons, it's extremely good," she said.

Dr. Tomy Villanueva, dean of the Medical College of Lima, says there is "no scientific evidence" that frog juice is a cure for anything, even though it has a place in Andean culture.

Bizarrely,
Lewis

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*-- Polish city bans Winnie-the-Pooh at playgrounds, claiming 'dubious' sexuality --*
TUSZYN, Poland (UPI) - Winnie-the-Pooh is being run out of town, and it's not for taking all the honey. The cartoon bear's image was banned from a playground in the small Polish city of Tuszyn because members of the town council believe him to be a hermaphrodite. The issue came up when it was proposed that Pooh be the patron of the playground. But the more conservative members of the council took issue with the fact he was only half-dressed. "It doesn't wear underpants because it doesn't have a sex. It's a hermaphrodite," said one Councillor. They had an explanation for why poor Pooh is of "dubious sexuality" and it's through no fault of his own but rather due to the cruelty of his author, A.A. Milne. "This is very disturbing but can you imagine! The author was over 60 and cut his [Pooh's] testicles off with a razor blade because he had a problem with his identity," said Councillor Hanna Jachimska. The patron of the playground has yet to be decided but Winnie-the-Pooh has been scratched off the list.


* Boy says electric shock turned him into magnet *
OMSK, Russia (UPI) - A Russian 12-year-old may become the first real-life X-Men hero after an electric shock apparently magnetized his body. Nikolai Kryaglyachenko, 12, said he leaned on a lamppost with faulty wiring on his way home from school one day and the resulting electric shock turned him into a living magnet that attracts metal objects. "When I woke up the next day and got out of bed, I found some coins that had been lying on the mattress had stuck to my body. Then when I was having breakfast and dropped my spoon, it stuck to my chest," the boy told Omsk TV and Radio Company. Kryaglyachenko, who has been compared to X-Men villain Magneto, said he doesn't have much control over the magnetism. "I can do things I couldn't do before, but I don't have a lot of control over it. Even when I do not want to do it, I still attract things. Once I even attracted a glass -- it just moved towards me," he said. Stories of human magnets stretch back to the 19th century, with one woman being recorded in 1990 supporting 15 pounds of weight with her palm held vertically. However, some scientists have said stories of human magnetism can be attributed to nothing more than unusually sticky skin.


*-- READER COMMENTS --*
Hey Lewis; It's a good thing that they allow drugs in jail, otherwise the suspect might become bored.
[We'd have a lot fewer riots if we just whack the prisoners out on drugs every day until they are released.]

Urban centers naturally control population. China actually has the reverse problem now. They have far too few kids. The problem is they are afraid of removing the one child policy because of backlash from citizens. The one child policy was brutally enforced and the reality was it was never required. That doesn't make the victims of it happy. -John
[Why not have 2 billion Chinese? When the food runs out they can just eat each other.]

Lewis, I wish Bizarre News had a Like Button or Thumbs Up like that Facespace thingy or whatever it's called has. There many times I'd like to give you a pat on the back or an "attaboy" for Your response to a readers email. And a few times I'd like to give that Attaboy to the reader. -herman
[You know Herman, we used to have a Facespace-type thingy at bizarrenews.com but when traffic to the site went way down we stopped maintaining it. But emails like this help, so thanks for writing them!]

*-- END OF READER COMMENTS --*
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