QUIRKY WORLD: Railway cameras to keep drunks off the tracks
West Japan Railways (JR West) has installed nearly 50 closed-circuit television cameras at its Kyobashi train station in Osaka to stop accidents that frequently involve legions of late-drinking “salarymen”.
The suited city workers are well-served by extensive urban train networks that whisk them back home at the end of the night.
While the worst that happens to most corporate warriors is nodding off and missing their stop, a small number are hurt or killed in stations every year by plunging onto the tracks.
“The cameras are meant to detect passengers behaving abnormally — including those who are feeling ill — as quickly as possible so that plunging accidents can be prevented,” the spokesman said.
The new system would automatically detect odd movements, such as unsteady walking or passengers sitting on a bench for an unusually long time, and set off an alarm to prevent potential trouble.
JR West said it would consider expanding the pilot project to other stations.
An internal company study found most people who had fallen onto the tracks had done so after waking up from an alcohol-infused slumber on benches and then walking straight over the platform’s edge.
About 60 percent of some 3,000 annual cases involving passengers falling onto train tracks were due to alcohol, according to Japan’s transport ministry.
Cake mistake
A 21st birthday cake came decorated with a blind girl after an autocorrect phone error. Marie Seggie accidentally texted her friend to make a cake for her daughter with a “wee blind girl” on top, instead of a “wee blonde girl”.
Her daughter Emily tweeted a picture of the cake, saying: “My mum ordered a cake for my sister’s birthday and asked for a blond girl on top but it autocorrected to blind and we got this.”
My mum ordered a cake for my sisters bd n asked for a blond girl on top but it autocorrected to blind n we got this pic.twitter.com/SeAoETigfw
— Emily (@emilyseggie_) August 16, 2015
Milk teeth
Adding milk to tea actually stops teeth becoming stained. It was even more effective than whitening toothpastes, and as good as some bleaching products, UK researchers found.
“Tea is the second most consumed drink in the world, and the way it’s processed affects how teeth are stained,” said Dr Ava Chow, of University of Alberta’s School of Dentistry.
Siri saviour
A Tennessee teenager is alive, thanks to Siri. Sam Ray, 18, says the voice recognition service on his iPhone - famously named Siri - called emergency dispatchers after his truck fell on him while he tried to make repairs.
Mr Ray told said a jack collapsed, pinning him under nearly 5,000 pounds of metal in a location where he could not be easily seen or heard. He said he was trying to get free when he heard Siri activate. He said: “I said ‘Call 911,’ and that was all it said.”
Rutherford County dispatcher Christina Lee said she first thought it was a mistaken pocket-dial, but then she heard his screams for help and sent crews, who rescued him. Mr Ray and Ms Lee have met for the first time after the incident.
Popes plagiarised
A leading Peruvian newspaper says it will no longer publish columns by Roman Catholic Cardinal Luis Cipriani after he was caught plagiarising two popes. The unattributed texts were found last week in two columns that El Comercio published, one earlier this month and the other in May. They were discovered by reporters at the news website Utero.pe, which determined that Peru’s cardinal had lifted texts from Paul VI and Benedict XVI.
El Comercio ratified the findings, saying on its website that Cipriani had penned his last column for the paper. It deleted the two columns from its website. The conservative 71-year-old cardinal apologised on a radio programme and asked listeners to “pray that we pastors are always true to the teachings of the church”.
Wild week
A 70-year-old man survived a week in the woods after he fell while out for a walk in western New York. Donald Farrell was found on Sunday morning amid trees and tall weeds about two miles from his home in the Livingston County village of Avon, 20 miles south of Rochester. He was found by his cousin on the cousin’s property, officials said. Mr Farrell had last been seen going for a walk on Sunday, August 9. He was taken to a Rochester hospital and treated for dehydration. Police said he is in “excellent condition” considering he had been exposed to the elements for a week.
Mid-air collision
A flying instructor and his pupil were left shaken after a buzzard crashed through the windshield of their Cessna.
Ian Weston, 52, who was supervising qualified pilot Simon Edwards on a refresher course, said: “It all happened in a nanosecond.
‘We felt a rush of air and loads of feathers with bits of broken Perspex. Then we looked up and saw a gaping hole in the cockpit and a buzzard lying on the parcel shelf behind us. It was quite frightening really.”
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