Watercooler Stories

Sex act goes live on stage

KRISTIANSAND, Norway, July 7 (UPI) -- An all-ages audience got more than it expected during a music festival in Norway when two environmentalists performed a live sex act on the stage.

The unscheduled performance at the Kristiansand festival Tuesday night has created a furor among politicians, who are calling for criminal charges to be filed, Aftenposten reported Wednesday.

Organizers of the Quart Festival in Kristiansand said they were shocked by the lewd performance and said they did not know it was going to happen.

"At first, I laughed, but then I choked a bit too," a festival spokesman said, noting there were children in the audience.

The coupling occurred during a set by The Cumshots, a band known for its attempts to shock and outrage the public.

The copulating couple are known for donating revenues from their Internet porn site to save rainforests, Aftenposten said.

Philly rounds up wild cats

PHILADELPHIA, July 7 (UPI) -- Cat lovers spent Wednesday at a construction site in Philadelphia trying to round up a colony of feral cats that has been living there for some 40 years.

About 70 cats and kittens are believed to be living in the overgrown thicket, WCAU-TV, Philadelphia reported.

A woman who has been setting out food for her furry friends for five years says the overgrown lot is their home.

"It's a labor of love. It's a compulsion," she said.

She and other rescuers said they fear the cats will be killed or plowed under by the construction crew. The activists also say the cats have been fed for so long most would die if they were relocated to the wild.

Greg Reaves a spokesman for the company behind the development, told WCAU his firm will assist in the unusual roundup.

Frequent-flyer prescreening begins

MINNEAPOLIS, July 7 (UPI) -- A Minneapolis airport has become the first U.S. airport to allow registered frequent flyers to bypass some security checks.

To register for the program, frequent flyers at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport had to submit biometric information -- either an electronic fingerprint or an iris scan -- and undergo a background check. About 2,400 people registered for the program, American Business Journals reported.

Registered travelers must still go through personal and luggage checks before they are allowed onto airport concourses, but can use a special express lane. They are also exempt from random second security checks.

The program is being tested at the Minneapolis airport. The program will also be tested in airports in Boston, Los Angeles, Houston and Washington, D.C. in coming weeks.

County clerks sued over same sex marriage

BALTIMORE, July 7 (UPI) -- The ACLU Wednesday sued Maryland county clerks, alleging a state law denying same-sex couples the right to marry violates the Maryland Constitution.

"Lesbian and gay couples make the same commitments to each other and their children that straight couples do," said David Rocah, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. "Their families need and deserve the same protections. Excluding lesbian and gay couples from marriage denies them and their children important safeguards and discriminates against families when they are most vulnerable."

The lawsuit, filed in state court in Baltimore, said the law violates Maryland's constitutional guarantees of equality.

Similar suits have been filed by the ACLU in New York, Oregon, California and Washington State.

Pamplona rumbles: bulls injure 8 runners

PAMPLONA, Spain, July 7 (UPI) -- Fighting bulls charged half a mile through Spain's Pamplona Wednesday as thousands of white-and-red clad runners sought to escape their horns and hoofs.

All but eight men succeeded, and none of those eight were seriously injured by any of the five bulls, the BBC reported.

Known as the festival of San Fermin, it continues for a week, with morning bull runs each day, afternoon bullfights and all-night parties.

The festival, held since 1591 as part of a religious celebration, was made internationally popular by Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel "The Sun Also Rises."

Since record keeping began in 1924, at least 13 people have been killed.