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9K nearly naked men seek sacred wood

OKAYAMA, Japan, Feb. 23 (UPI) -- About 9,000 men clad only in loincloths joined in a free-for-all at a Buddhist temple in Japan Sunday, trying to secure two pieces of sacred wood.

The event at Saidaiji Temple in Okayama was part of the 500th anniversary of Saidaiji Eyo, described as "one of Japan's three oddest festivals," Kyodo reported.

Whoever got out with the two chunks of wood, if not his "fundoshi" or white loincloth, was to be proclaimed by the temple's monks as "the man of fortune for the year."

The ceremony began about 10 p.m. Saturday with a purification ritual in which the men poured cold water on themselves. Then, at midnight, the monks turned off the lights and dropped the two 8-inch sticks among them and the struggle began.

There was no word on who turned out to be the lucky guy.

Police say man reports own drunken driving

PITTSBURGH, Feb. 23 (UPI) -- A Pennsylvania man called 911 to inform authorities he was too drunk to drive and was pulling his car over as a precaution, state police said.

An unidentified state police trooper said in a report that John Wilson, 26, of Knox, was arrested in the parking lot of a gas station in Sligo at 12:45 a.m. Saturday, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.

"(Mr.Wilson) related that he had left the bar and was on his way home when he realized he was too drunk to make it home," the state trooper alleged.

The Post-Gazette said police were awaiting the results of a blood-alcohol test before officially charging Wilson with driving under the influence.

Yo-yo skills front and center in Seattle

SEATTLE, Feb. 23 (UPI) -- Competitors in the Pacific Northwest Regional Yo-Yo Championships in Seattle say their skills vary from awful to comparable to those of superheroes.

University of San Francisco finance student Joseph Harris, who took part in this weekend's Seattle Center event, said he has yo-yo skills "that make me look like Spiderman," The Seattle Times reported.

While Harris is clearly proud of his various double yo-yo tricks, Saturday's lone female competitor was a bit more critical of the skills she showed off.

Liz Spain, who runs the Voodoo Bunny Rope yo-yo string business, said while yo-yoing can be meditative for her, she is not very talented with the children's toys.

Saturday's event may have only offered top prizes of $150, but the top finishers among the 50 competitors captured spots in this fall's national yo-yo championship, which will take place in Chico, Calif.

Are photographs of giant snake faked?

LONDON, Feb. 23 (UPI) -- A grainy photograph of a 100-foot snake in a river in Borneo may be as real as similar shots of Big Foot or the Loch Ness monster, a computer expert says.

The photo ran Thursday in The Telegraph, a London newspaper that did not claim it is authentic. The Guardian said the picture was supposedly taken by a member of a disaster team surveying potential flood areas in Indonesia who spotted the snake from a helicopter flying over the Baleh River.

Another shot was supposedly taken from the bank of the river.

Hany Farid, a computer science professor at Dartmouth in New Hampshire, told Scientific American the low resolution of the photographs is one reason to be suspicious. Another is that in both, the giant is out in the middle of the water, not interacting with any other animals or objects -- which would be harder to fake.

Farid refused to label the photographs as definitely faked. But he has a rule of thumb: "When you look at images, you should think about, 'How hard would this be to do?'"