According to The Daily Sentinel, the sticker campaign was the brainchild of Steve and Denise Hight who quietly circulated the stickers which read “WTF” in bold lettering and “Welcome To Fruita” in smaller lettering below, to local businesses. Within days, all of the distributed stickers had been eagerly picked up by customers and stuck to car bumpers. The Hights even placed an order for 1,500 more stickers, but due to some “overwhelmingly dismayed residents” a majority of council members have voted to not use the “WTF” campaign in any city-funded tourism advertising.

The campaign had the support of some Fruita residents as well as City Manager Clint Kinney who wanted to post the ads, but the more traditional city council did not think the stickers represented the city appropriately, CBS4 reports.

The WTF slogan was being considered by the city for a large-scale tourism ad campaign that would have run on bumper stickers, billboards and in magazines along with a “Hell Yeah” alternative ad in order to attract younger tourists to the area, according to Fruita.org….

The Hights plan on giving away the last of the 1,500 bumper stickers and don’t plan on printing any further stickers.

LOOK [via Fruita.org...]: Image of Fruita’s ‘WTF’ sticker:

Huffington Post www.huffingtonpost.com…

Perhaps no one has taken that phrase to heart or more literally than Canadian Doug McManaman.

He has set more than 436 world records with Recordsetter.com…, many of them for balancing things like a 22-pound vacuum on his chin, and a bowling ball, hockey puck and golf club on his head at the same time.

McManaman, 68, a resident of Cumberland County, Nova Scotia, currently holds 340 records including his most recent one: Longest Time To Balance A Surfboard On Chin While Standing, which he did for 51.47 seconds.

It’s possible McManaman has balanced everything on his head, but the kitchen sink — except he did that trick back in 2008.

“I first noticed my ability when I was 12,” he told HuffPost Weird News. “I was able to balance baseball bats on my finger.”

It took former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau to make McManaman take his balancing act seriously.

“I never did anything with my ability until I saw a photo of Trudeau balancing a golf club on his chin,” McManaman said. “I did it with a golf ball on top of the club.”

From there, he has worked his way through various feats, but says his hardest stunt was the time he balanced four clubs on his chin at once.

“Golf clubs are round and it makes it harder for them to balance on something,” he explained.

Although McManaman calls himself the Balance King, not every record he holds involves balancing something.

He also holds offbeat records like Most Grapes Detached From Stem In One Minute (121), Most Nails Picked Up From A Bucket Using A Magnet (65), and Longest Distance To Shoot A Rubber Band Using Only Hands (427 feet).

McManaman says he won’t stop until he gets 500 world records under his belt, and often sets many records in a single day using Recordsetter.com…, an adjudicating agency that has earned a niche in the competitive world record recording business by allowing people to submit their own wacky world records for consideration.

He has tried getting the attention of Guinness World Records, but says he was confounded by “the red tape and bureaucracy” he says was required to get a record considered.

Very few people own one world record, much less 340, but, amazingly, McManaman’s number of world records is only the second most in Recordsetter history.

Juggler Brian Pankey is No. 1 with 2,140, including Most Starbursts Held In One Hand (118) and Most Hats Put On In Fifteen Seconds (17).

Still, Recordsetter.com… spokesman Dan Rollman says McManaman has a special place in his heart.

“Whenever one of his records comes in, our team likes to gather around to check out his newest feat,” Rollman told HuffPost Weird News. “He’s one of my favorite Canadians ever, right up there with Wayne Gretzky, John Candy, Joni Mitchell and the cast of ‘Degrassi Junior High.’”

Huffington Post www.huffingtonpost.com…

Hosted by the Pacers Showgirls International gentlemen’s club in San Diego, Caifornia, it’s an utterly bonkers, utterly incredible night out that mixes the awkwardness of wailing your guts out in front of total strangers with the awkwardness of standing near a gyrating, undressing woman.

In other words: it’s party time, people, and it’s only a eight-hour flight away! Get in!

For bizarre proof of this extraordinary event, allow us to point you in the direction of the night’s flyer, with summarises the evening simply and effectively: “It’s like karaoke. You pick the song. You sing. The stripper strips.” You can’t say fairer than that, now can you?

For more information on the strange Frankenstein’s monster of a night out, check out stripperaoke’s Facebook page here as well as their website, where you can book in dates and ask the organisers questions. Ideally through song lyrics, and while stripping, of course.

Huffington Post www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/02/22/stripping-and-karaoke-stripperaoke_n_1293333.html…

In 2000, a documentary called Dark Days, filmed by Mark Singer, was released. Mark is from London, but after moving to New York in the 1990′s and seeing the degradation of our homeless population and meeting many who lived on the streets, he decided the make a film about it. The film was incredibly beautiful yet eerie, as it was filmed solely in black and white. Never before have I seen something which so genuinely humanizes our homeless population, depicting a real networked community.

Still today, many thrive below our subway system. On February 6, 2012, I read an article in the New York Times by Christine Haughney entitled “The Fiery End to a Life Lived Beneath the City,” about a man named Anthony Horton who died in a fire in his underground home. His body was found deep in the subway station by the F Line, just north of 63rd and Lexington, which was shocking to me to think that he was just a mile from my own home. After his death, firefighters uncovered all of this art that Horton had been making during his lifetime. He was even the co-author of a novel called “Pitch Black,” written about his experiences underground. The artwork in his graphic novel was so interesting and had such a Basquiat quality to them. In the novel, Horton gave advice like “Remember, anything you need can be found in the garbage” and “With all the juice down there, there should be electricity for everyone.” This wasn’t some illiterate substance abuser. Horton, like many of his underground mates, makes up a group of intelligent people who call the tracks home, a life without the judgment from those above ground.

In AP History this year, we learned all about the Gilded Age — the huge disparity between the wealthy robber barons who owned the railroad companies and the poor people who actually built them that was apparent during the late 1800′s. But I am certain that we are still very much in a Gilded Age when I think about the image of myself heading on the subway to some party and only few feet below me as I ride, hundreds of people struggling to simply survive. My family gives to organizations that help homeless people receive food, but, and I know this makes me sound incredibly snobby, when I actually encounter a homeless person on the street or on the subway, so often I turn away, unsure if their intentions are earnest. But recently, I have become obsessed with learning about the people below our city, and it’s really hard for me now not to think about it when I ride the subway. To say we must all help this people isn’t exactly an easy fix to the problem. Many of the subway’s homeless population tried living above ground for a while with friends that they had made and found life below ground much easier. What I do think though is that the homeless population in our city is simply not represented enough if at all. Our city has so many abandoned subway stations that could be turned into legal and safe spaces for these people to live that I see no reason why they’ve stayed closed and out of use for so many years. I hope the next time you take the subway you’ll think about what’s going on below you.

Huffington Post www.huffingtonpost.com…

By Reuters feeds.reuters.com…

Government denies it is intending to shut Dadaab camp at London conference

The Kenyan government has denied it is planning to close the world’s largest refugee camp, playing down suggestions that President Mwai Kibaki might do so during his visit to London.

Kibaki is currently in the UK for a three-day conference with David Cameron.

Almost half a million Somalis live in the Dadaab camp, 60 miles from the Somalian border. Numbers in the camp grew steadily last year as famine gripped the region.

Aid workers say any return of refugees to Somalia must be voluntary, and that some people have already gone back to their farms after good rains, hoping to rebuild lives devastated by last year’s drought and famine and by decades of conflict.

Ahead of the London conference, there had been some speculation that Kibaki might make an announcement about Dadaab at the meeting.

One aid official in Nairobi, speaking anonymously, said there was concern a statement might be “unpalatable” to the humanitarian community.

In January, the permanent secretary to Kenya’s ministry of internal security said the country intended to begin preparing to relocate refugees to Somalia.

Dadaab has long been a drain on Kenya’s resources and government officials, including Kibaki, have previously called for refugees to be resettled in Somalia or elsewhere.

But a Kenyan government spokesman denied there were plans to close Dadaab, home to about 463,000 mainly Somali refugees.

Spokesman Alfred Mutua said any returns would be voluntary and carried out with the UN high commission for refugees (UNHCR).

He said the refugees were just a symptom of a wider problem, which Kenya wanted to treat. “We don’t want to deal with the symptoms. We want to deal with the problem and the problem is an unstable Somalia,” he said.

Dadaab, which was set up in 1991 when civil war and drought ravaged Somalia, is the only home some refugees have ever known: they were born in the camp and their children have also been born there.

The camp is on the frontline of the war between Kenya, which has sent troops into Somalia to push back the al-Shabaab militia.

Police vehicles have been blown up and several officers killed inside the camp and in surrounding areas. Arms caches have also been found among the tents, and Human Rights Watch has accused Kenyan police of beating, raping and detaining refugees and ethnic Somalis in the area.

Many NGOs have pulled staff out of Dadaab and conditions are now “inhumane”, aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said in a report last week. Two Spanish doctors working for MSF were kidnapped from Dadaab last October.

MSF said: “While longer term solutions should be considered, today’s reality is that hundreds of thousands of refugees depend on the aid system and the host government to ensure their human rights are respected.

“Until this happens, the health of the refugees will continue to deteriorate with life-threatening consequences, with aid organisations helplessly watching this situation.”

Somali refugees in Dadaab might be forgiven for not expecting much from the London conference – just the latest attempt by the international community to stabilise a country described by British officials as “the world’s most failed state”.

Some are taking matters into their own hands: UNHCR says about 7,000 have returned home in recent months from camps in Kenya and Ethiopia.

Most of those leaving are men, with women and children staying behind, waiting for the certainty of a security that has so long eluded their country.

Guardian News www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/22/kenya-denies-plan-to-close-refugee-camp…

Violence spreads across Afghanistan in second day of protests against burning of holy book by foreign troops at Bagram airbase

Seven people have been killed in Afghanistan as violence spread across the country in a second day of protests against the burning of copies of the Qur’an by foreign troops.

In Kabul an enraged crowd armed with stones and petrol bombs attacked a military base and a nearby compound housing foreign workers, shouting “Death to America”.

Police fired into the air and used water cannon to try and control the protesters; security guards in the compound also used their rifles.

Eleven men were taken to hospital in the capital, Kabul, with gunshot wounds and one later died from his injuries, said Kabir Amiri, spokesman for the city’s hospitals.

Four others were shot dead when police opened fire on protests in Parwan province, where authorities said demonstrations were infiltrated by insurgents and became extremely destructive. Thirteen were injured. Two others were killed at protests in Jalalabad and central Logar province.

“The constitution gives them the right to peaceful protests, but they were violent and destroying anything in their way, including government buildings,” said provincial police chief General Mohammad Akram Bekzad.

“There were some militants among the protesters, who joined them and tried to use this as an opportunity.”

Parwan is home to the sprawling Bagram airbase, where foreign troops on Monday evening sent religious documents, including copies of the Qur’an, for incineration.

The books were spotted by Afghan workers, who extinguished the flames and left with some of the damaged Qur’ans, which had been taken from prisoners in a detention centre on the base.

A military official, who asked not to be named, said the books had been removed from the jail library because some had added inscriptions that appeared to be in use to “facilitate extremist communications” or were extremist “in and of themselves”.

Nato-led forces rushed to apologise for the burning, which the commander of foreign forces in Afghanistan, General John Allen, described as “not intentional”.

The US defence secretary, Leon Panetta, also issued an apology for “inappropriate treatment” of copies of the Qur’an to try to contain fury over the incident.

But damage to the Qur’an is a highly sensitive issue in Afghanistan and protests began almost immediately.

“When the Americans insult us to this degree, we will join the insurgents,” said Ajmal, an 18-year-old protester in Kabul told Reuters.

Kabul’s police chief, Ayoub Salangi, came to the most violent protest in the city to appeal for calm. “I am with you, please cool your temper, I am with you,” he told the crowd. But protesters turned on him and started throwing stones at his car.

Salangi later told the Guardian that one officer had been injured by protesters who threw stones.

The US embassy ordered all staff to stay inside their compound, and the UN and many other embassies and foreign aid groups halted movements across Kabul.

“The embassy is on lockdown; all travel suspended. Please, everyone, be safe out there,” the embassy’s official Twitter feed said.

Hundreds of people took to the streets in other parts of Afghanistan to denounce the burning, including at Kabul University, central Logar province, and eastern Jalalabad city, where another five people were injured.

The southern city of Kandahar, the Taliban’s homeland, remained peaceful, local officials said. It was the site of some of the deadliest violence last April, when news that a US pastor had burned a Qur’an in Florida reached Afghanistan. Seven foreign UN workers and at least 13 Afghans were killed during protests that raged across the country for three days.

Guardian News www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/22/afghanistan-quran-burning-protesters-dead…

Christian Post www.christianpost.com…