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Idaho man completed his goal of breaking 52 world records in a single year

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Idaho man completed his goal of breaking 52 world records in a single year

David Rush of Idaho set out to break one Guinness World Record every week of 2021, according to NPR.  

The challenge was simultaneously no small feat and nothing out of the ordinary for Rush, an author, speaker and entertainer who describes himself on his website as “one of the most prolific Guinness World Records title holders on the planet.” He says he’s broken more than 150 records promoting STEM since late 2015. 

“He is the world’s fastest juggler, the world’s slowest juggler, and has the record for most bowling balls juggled, most consecutive ax juggling catches, and longest duration balancing a bicycle on the chin,” according to his bio.

Rush started the year off on Jan. 4 by stacking wet bars of soap with his neighbor, he explained in a blog post last week. From there, his missions included bouncing ping pong balls, catching fruit and marshmallows in his mouth, juggling and doing various tasks very quickly.

“I crossed the 200 Guinness World Records broken milestone with one of the 5 hardest for the most kiwis sliced in one minute using a samurai sword while standing on a swiss ball,” he wrote. “I revisited my very first record – longest duration blindfolded juggling, this time extended the record from 22 minutes 7 seconds to 32 minutes 7 seconds.”

Some of his tasks involved partners. Rush said he broke a couple of records with his wife, and put a bow on the year by wrapping his neighbor in wrapping paper with the help of an accomplice, becoming the fastest pair to do so.

A spokesperson for Guinness World Records told NPR over email that Rush achieved a total of 43 Guinness World Records titles over the 52 weeks of 2021. 

While it’s not clear which ones fell short, here are the titles Guinness confirms Rush can officially add to his resume: 

  1. Fastest time to wrap a person with wrapping paper (team of two)
  2. Fastest 100 m joggling with three objects whilst blindfolded (male)
  3. Fastest 100 m blindfolded
  4. Most consecutive axe juggling catches
  5. Most passes of a beach ball in one minute (team of two)
  6. Most marshmallows caught by mouth in one minute
  7. Most apples thrown and caught in mouth in one minute
  8. Fastest 10 m balancing a balloon on the face
  9. Farthest distance travelled on an electric unicycle while juggling three objects
  10. Most juggling catches while on a balance board (blindfolded)
  11. Most passes of a giant inflatable ball in three minutes (team)
  12. Fastest time to wrap a person in cling film/plastic wrap
  13. Most thumbtacks inserted into a cork board in one minute
  14. Fastest time to complete a 10 m shuttle run pushing a pram
  15. Most toilet paper rolls balanced on the head
  16. Fastest time to burst ten balloons (team of six)
  17. Most table tennis balls caught in shaving foam on the head in 30 seconds (team of two)
  18. Farthest distance walked balancing a baseball bat on the chin
  19. Most behind-the-back flying disc (frisbee) catches in one minute
  20. Fastest flying disc relay (20 m course)
  21. Most passes of a giant inflatable ball in three minutes
  22. Longest duration balancing a chair on the chin
  23. Most consecutive passes of a giant inflatable ball
  24. Most kiwis sliced on a balance board in one minute
  25. Most grapes thrown and caught in the mouth while juggling in one minute (team of two)
  26. Most consecutive catches of a spinning basketball
  27. Fastest time to flip three water bottles
  28. Most kiwifruits sliced in the air with a sword whilst standing on a Swiss ball in one minute
  29. Longest duration balancing an object on the head
  30. Most juggling catches while on a balance board (blindfolded)
  31. Fastest time to arrange a chess set
  32. Fastest time to arrange a chess set (team of two)
  33. Longest duration juggling three objects whilst on a balance board
  34. Most glasses balanced on a stick held in the mouth
  35. Most T-shirts put on in 30 seconds (team of two)
  36. Most T-shirts put on in one minute (team of two)
  37. Longest duration juggling three objects whilst on a Swiss ball
  38. Most grapes sliced in the air with a sword whilst standing on a Swiss ball in one minute
  39. Most juggling catches on a Swiss ball in one minute (three balls)
  40. Fastest time to bounce a ping pong ball into five cups (team of two)
  41. Most football (soccer) arm rolls in 30 seconds
  42. Most bars of soap stacked in one minute (team of two)
  43. Most drum stick flips in 30 seconds

A woman drove across the country to stalk Apple CEO Tim Cook for more than a year

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A woman drove across the country to stalk Apple CEO Tim Cook for more than a year

A Virginia woman drove across the country to stalk Apple CEO Tim Cook for more than a year by sending him photos of a loaded pistol and claiming to be the mother of his twins, according to explosive court documents.

A California judge on Friday granted a restraining order against the woman after lawyers for Apple said she had trespassed onto Cook’s property in Palo Alto on two occasions last year.

The accused stalker had exhibited “erratic, threatening, and bizarre behavior” toward Cook, whom she claimed was the father of her twin children, according to court documents.

According to NYPOST, On her Twitter feed, she bragged several times about their supposed relationship — this despite the fact that Cook is gay. On Halloween, she posted a dozen tweets stating that she was Cook’s wife. She is also alleged to have emailed Cook 200 times.

“I have to take mental medicine because of you,” one of the emails is alleged to have read.

In another email, she is alleged to have written: “what you have done is criminal defense, murdered.”

On her Twitter account, she refers to the Apple CEO as “my hubby.

In November 2020, the accused stalker allegedly sent Cook a photograph of a pistol that was loaded with ammunition. She is alleged to have written that she had just purchased the weapon.

“My new gun will never return it at this time before I shoot!” read one email.

In another email, she allegedly writes: “I warned and told you stop trying to kill me. You made me to buy this instead of going for Christmas. I will NEVER forget forgive you.”

Apple claims that the woman “may be armed and is still in the South Bay Area and intends to return to (Cook’s) residence or locate him otherwise in the near future.”

The court documents were unsealed on Monday by Santa Clara County Superior Court.

On Oct. 21, the woman allegedly trespassed onto Cook’s property, prompting the police to be notified.

Cook first learned of her after he noticed on Twitter that she began claiming he was father to her twins. She also changed her last name to “Cook,” according to court documents.

The emails indicated a “significant escalation in tone, becoming threatening and highly disturbing,” according to Apple lawyers. In one email, she allegedly said she wanted to have sex with Cook and warned that her patience was “almost done.”

Apple has also alleged that the woman opened fraudulent companies with highly offensive and homophobic names in which she would list Cook as a corporate officer or a director. The companies, which were listed in California, New York, and Virgina, had names like “TIMOTHYLO & VEJULIA FOREVERMORE PHILANCLUB CORPORATION.”

The woman has been ordered to stay away from Cook, Apple employees, and the company. She is also barred from owning a firearm.

This is the second time in the last two years that Apple has gotten a restraining order against someone who was said to be stalking Cook.

In February 2020, a judge ordered Rakesh “Rocky” Sharma to stay away from Cook after he allegedly left flowers and champagne at Cook’s Silicon Valley property and tried to show him racy photos on Twitter.

‘Twice abandoned’ China teen has died

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‘Twice abandoned’ China teen has died

Liu Xuezhou apparently took his own life in Hainan province on Monday morning, according to reports.

Mr Liu’s Weibo page has since been flooded with sympathetic comments, with many expressing anger towards the cyberbullies. 

“The cyberbullying he endured was too much to bear for an adult, let alone a child,” one said.

Others said they hoped he would find a good family “in his next life”.

“I hope in your next life you find parents who protect you, brothers and sisters who love you and live a life without worries.”

His story has gripped China and prompted an outpouring of sympathy.

The 17-year-old’s story first came to national attention after he posted a video asking for help finding his biological family.

According to media reports, Liu was sold by his biological parents in 2005 and was taken in by another family. 

However, his adoptive parents later died in an accident, and he spent most of his life with his grandparents and other relatives. 

In December last year the 17-year-old managed to track down his birth parents, who had since divorced and remarried, after he started an online search. 

Mr Liu said on social media that it had been a happy reunion at first – but things took a turn after he reportedly claimed he needed financial help. 

He said he had asked his parents if he could live with them, or to buy or rent a home for him as he did not have one of his own. 

However, he alleged that his parents cut him off instead, with his mother even blocking him on messaging platform WeChat. 

His parents have disputed this, with his mother saying Mr Liu tried to force her into buying him a home, which she could not afford. 

Mr Liu later said he would sue his birth parents for abandonment, saying in a Weibo post that he would “see them in court”. 

The teenager was then reportedly cyberbullied, with many saying that he had only wanted a house from his parents and that he was trying to gain sympathy. 

Just after midnight on Monday, Mr Liu posted a long essay on Weibo, in which he detailed the events of his life and how he was attacked online. 

“I have endured being called many names,” he said, saying he had been effectively “abandoned twice” by his biological parents.

In the final lines of his note he said he was “ending this life of mine”. The post triggered frantic comments urging him not to take his own life, and calls for those in the nearby vicinity to find him.

His aunt later confirmed his death with local media, saying he was later found hours after the note was published and taken to a hospital where he died in the early hours of Monday.

Central bank signals likely to raise rates in March

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Central bank signals likely to raise rates in March

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday signaled it is likely to raise U.S. interest rates in March and reaffirmed plans to end its bond purchases that month as well before launching what was characterized as a significant reduction in its asset holdings, according to Reuters.

The combined moves will complete the Fed’s pivot away from the loose monetary policy that has defined the coronavirus pandemic era and toward a more urgent fight against inflation.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell, speaking in a news conference after the end of a two-day policy meeting, said the U.S. central bank will be open-minded as it adjusts monetary policy to keep persistently high inflation from becoming entrenched.

“At this time, we haven’t made any decisions about the path of policy,” Powell said. “I stress again that we’ll be humble and nimble.”

The Fed chief said policymakers have “quite a bit of room to raise interest rates without threatening the labor market” as they remove the extraordinary support provided during the pandemic. “The economy is quite different this time,” Powell said.

“With inflation well above 2 percent and a strong labor market, the Committee expects it will soon be appropriate to raise the target range for the federal funds rate,” the Fed’s rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee said in a unanimous statement after the end of its two-day meeting.

Investors widely expect the Fed to raise its benchmark overnight interest rate from the current near-zero level at the March 15-16 meeting. Federal funds futures have priced in another three rate hikes in 2022 after the March liftoff.

FOMC members also agreed at this week’s meeting on a set of principles for “significantly reducing” the size of the Fed’s massive asset holdings. Officials said they will shrink holdings “primarily” by limiting how much of the principal from maturing bonds it would reinvest each month. That plan would start after the liftoff in interest rates, the Fed said, without yet setting a specific date, pace or final size.

Over time the Fed’s nearly $9 trillion balance sheet would not only be pared down, but shifted away from mortgage-backed securities and weighted towards U.S. Treasuries, “thereby minimizing the effect of Federal Reserve holdings on the allocation of credit across sectors of the economy,” the central bank said.

Powell said policymakers will be ready to change their approach as needed when the Fed begins to shrink its bond holdings.

Free N95 masks are arriving at pharmacies and grocery stores

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Free N95 masks are arriving at pharmacies and grocery stores

Nearly a week after the Biden administration announced it will deploy 400 million free N95 masks to the public, the high-quality face coverings are starting to arrive at pharmacies and grocery stores, according to NPR.

“Every person is allowed up to 3 free masks pending availability,” the Department of Health and Human Services states.

Kroger stores with pharmacies will also be doling out the masks throughout the chain’s Midwest and Southwest locations. Spokeswoman Kristal Howard said the first allotment of masks is expected to arrive on Thursday. 

Walgreens is also participating in the distribution program, and on Tuesday, spokesman Scott Goldberg told NPR the masks will be made available for free while supplies last.

Similarly, CVS Pharmacy locations will also be offering free N95 masks in the coming weeks, spokesman Matt Blanchette told NPR.

The White House launched its latest effort to combat COVID-19 following new recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC now says cloth masks are no longer as effective in preventing the spread of the highly contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus and that people should wear an N95 or KN95 mask.

The coveted nonsurgical N95 masks are coming from the Strategic National Stockpile, which has more than 750 million of them on hand. The program, which is also distributing the free masks to community health centers around the country, is ramping up in coming days and should be up and fully operational by early February.

Thailand expects to decide on guidelines for improved crypto tax

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Thailand expects to decide on guidelines for improved crypto tax

According to AP, Thailand expects to decide on more guidelines soon for a cryptocurrency tax that was introduced in 2018, in an effort to make it fairer and more simple, the finance minister said on Wednesday, following a surge in digital asset trading.

On Tuesday, Thailand said it would not allow use of digital assets as a means of payment due to risks.

Cryptocurrencies have gained momentum in Thailand, which saw as much as 251 billion baht ($7.62 billion) in digital asset trading transactions in November, data from the Securities and Exchange Commission showed.

(The story has been refiled to fix headline typo in “FinMin”)

($1 = 32.93 baht)

The government has supported utilising digital assets to help build the economy without affecting the country’s financial stability, Finance Minister Arkhom Termpittayapaisith told a business seminar.

N.Korea internet hit by suspected cyber attacks

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N.Korea internet hit by suspected cyber attacks

North Korea’s internet appears to have been hit by a second wave of outages in as many weeks, possibly caused by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, researchers said on Wednesday.

The simultaneous nature of the server outages suggested a DDoS attack, in which hackers try to flood a network with unusually high volumes of data traffic in order to paralyse it, Ali said.

“It’s common for one server to go offline for some periods of time, but these incidents have seen all web properties go offline concurrently. It isn’t common to see their entire internet dropped offline.”

During the incidents, operational degradation would build up first with network timeouts, then individual servers going offline and then their key routers dropping off the internet, Ali said. “This indicates to me that this is the result of some form of network stress rather than something like a power cut.”

According to Reuters, the latest incident took place for about six hours on Wednesday morning local time, and came a day after North Korea conducted its fifth missile testthis month.

Junade Ali, a cybersecurity researcher in Britain who monitors a range of different North Korean web and email servers, said that at the height of the apparent attack, all traffic to and from North Korea was taken down.

“When someone would try to connect to an IP address in North Korea, the internet would literally be unable to route their data into the country,” he told Reuters.

Hours later, servers that handle email were accessible, but some individual web servers of institutions such as the Air Koryo airline, North Korea’s ministry of foreign affairs, and Naenara, which is the official portal for the North Korean government, continued to experience stress and downtime.

Internet access is strictly limited in North Korea. It is not known how many people there have direct access to the global internet, but estimates generally place the figure at a small fraction of one percent of the population of about 25 million.

Seoul-based NK Pro, a news site that monitors North Korea, reported that log files and network records showed websites on North Korean web domains were largely unreachable because North Korea’s Domain Name System (DNS) stopped communicating the routes that data packets should take.

A similar incident was observed on Jan. 14, NK Pro reported.

Biden picks former sanctions enforcer as South Korea ambassador

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Biden picks former sanctions enforcer as South Korea ambassador

U.S. President Joe Biden has picked a longtime career diplomat and former North Korea sanctions enforcer as ambassador to South Korea, a diplomatic source in Seoul said on Wednesday.

According to Reuters, Philip Goldberg, serving since 2019 as ambassador to Colombia, will be nominated to the post in Seoul, the source said, speaking on condition on anonymity.

Goldberg, who recently served as ambassador to the Philippines and Bolivia, among other posts, also worked as coordinator for the implementation of United Nations sanctions on North Korea from 2009 to 2010.

The Chosun Ilbo newspaper, citing multiple unnamed diplomatic sources, reported that the United States has asked for Seoul’s agreement after deciding to nominate Goldberg late last year and that an official announcement was imminent.

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Seoul said they had no announcements to make at this time, and that any formal notification would come from the White House.

South Korea’s foreign ministry said it could not confirm the reports.

While Seoul and Washington insist their alliance is “iron-clad,” the sanctions have been a source of controversy as they blocked South Korea’s plans for more economic engagement with the North.

The post in one of the United States’ key allies has been filled by a charge d’affaires ad interim for more than a year since the last ambassador to South Korea, former navy admiral Harry Harris, stepped down as Biden took office in January 2021.

Harris’ tenure was marked by tension in the alliance as then-President Donald Trump pressed Seoul to pay billions of dollars more toward supporting the roughly 28,500 U.S. troops stationed there, while South Korea chafed at the United State’s push for strict sanctions enforcement.

S. Korea presidential candidate’s wife threatens to jail critical reporters

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S. Korea presidential candidate’s wife threatens to jail critical reporters

A South Korean opposition party was struggling Monday to contain the fallout after the wife of its presidential candidate threatened to “jail all reporters” who criticised her husband.

It is the second scandal to hit People Power Party candidate Yoon Suk-yeol since taped recordings and court transcriptions of his wife speaking to a journalist became public last week following a court battle, according to FRANCE24.

Yoon is locked in a tight race with Democratic Party candidate Lee Jae-myung ahead of the March presidential election, with recent polls falling within the margin for error.

Yoon’s campaign manager on Monday said the party was “trying to find the best way forward” after the would-be first lady’s most recent remarks were made public.

Kim’s comments have touched a raw nerve in South Korea, a robust democracy where strong libel laws can result in reporters facing jail time over their work.

South Korea is ranked 42nd in the World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters without Borders.

In a poll by the Korea Economic Daily released Monday, more than half of respondents said that the comments by Yoon’s wife would negatively affect his approval.

The party had lodged multiple injunctions in a bid to keep the recordings out of the public domain, but all were rejected by the courts.

The comments by a woman who could become the country’s next first lady “reflect her views… and thus are subject to public interest and inspection”, the Seoul Central District Court ruled last week.

“If I make it to the Blue House, I will put them all in jail,” said Kim Keon-hee, referring to the presidential office, in the latest comments.

She said critical media outlets would likely be prosecuted under her husband’s future administration.

“Police will charge them whether we order them to or not,” she told a journalist in recorded comments.

Last Tuesday, Yoon’s party was forced to distance itself from remarks in which Kim expressed strong support for a former politician now jailed for rape and was dismissive of the country’s #MeToo movement.

Yoon Suk-yeol, presidential candidate for South Korea’s People Power Party, is locked in a neck-and-neck race ahead of a March election Ahn Young-joon POOL/AFP

6-month-old boy has died in crossfire of Atlanta drive-by shooting

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6-month-old boy has died in crossfire of Atlanta drive-by shooting

According to NYPOST, a 6-month-old boy in Atlanta has died after he was caught in the crossfire of a drive-by shooting, authorities said.

The infant, Grayson Matthew, was sitting in the backseat when the bullet went through the car and struck him around 2:39 p.m. Monday on Anderson Avenue, his mother told news station WSB-TV.

Police said the shooter remained at large Monday and released footage of a light gray or white Jeep SUV “of interest” in the case.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp called the boy’s death an “unfathomable tragedy.”

“This kind of lawlessness must end, & these criminals must be held accountable,” Kemp wrote on Twitter.

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens called for justice for the boy, noting that his death was the second murder and third shooting of a child in the city so far this year.

“The children are bearing this burden with their lives. I’m here to ask and demand that it stop right now,” Dickens said.

He said the city has seen 12 murders this year, 11 of which were the result of shootings.

The child was rushed to the hospital after the shooting, where he was pronounced dead, authorities said. 

Atlanta Police Chief Rodney Bryant said the child was not the intended target. 

Before the deadly shooting, two people nearby had been invovled in an altercation that led to gunfire erupting.

“This one hurts for a … 6-month-old to be riding down the street and become a victim to gun violence — random gun violence — between two people who can’t resolve a simple issue,” Bryant said at a press conference.

Grayson Matthew
Grayson Matthew was pronounced dead at a hospital.Courtesy of Everloved.com

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