They include the Basket Tree, Giant Sequoias of California, Circus Tree, Chapel-Oak. Tule Tree and Baobab Trees – including one with a toilet built inside it.

If you have any other weird and wonderful tree shapes email them to us at admin@youmesupport.org

A teenage man recently turned himself in to police officers, after stealing an ambulance that was out on an emergency call in Atlanta, Georgia.

Investigators said 18-year old Frank Howard jumped in the driver’s seat and stole the vehicle while its crew was responding to a call in southeast Atlanta.

The paramedics had left the ambulance unlocked and the motor running, while attending to a call at an apartment complex.

The teenage allegedly stole the ambulance, dressed up in ambulance gear and drove the ambulance 2 blocks, before crashing it and running it off the road. The ambulance was found soon afterwards in a ditch on the side of the road.

Howard was being held in the Fulton County Jail and will be charged with auto theft.

In May 2010 two drunks jumped into an ambulance that was standing outside Upstate University Hospital.

21 year old driver, Brandon Ray, then drove the ambulance at a high rate of speed along Walnut Avenue, near Syracuse University, before police were able to stop him.

In April 2009 a Houston ambulance was stolen while paramedics were on duty. The driver hit a number of vehicles, including a police car and another ambulance, which had been blocking traffic for a police vice bust at a club.

Stolen and Wrecked Ambulance

In March 2009 the driver of a stolen ambulance caused a six-car crash in Everston, Chicago, when it ran a red light. Eight people were injured. The ambulance had been stolen from outside a nursing home.

In 1996 an ambulance was taken by vandals, from outside a house in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, and driven into a car-park wall. The joyriders also vandalized life-saving equipment.

The ambulance had been about to pick up a pregnant woman and rush her to hospital. She was forced to wait a further 20 minutes before a replacement ambulance arrived.

A fully equipped ambulance costs around $175,000. The loss of an ambulance in rural areas in particular, puts the public at significant risk, often taking months to have a replacement back in service.

Funding of ambulances is also another deep concern for the community.

It shows BP’s ‘Command Centre’ in Houston, where ever-vigilant BP employees appear to sit in a dark room, monitoring a ten-screen display of oil-spill footage.

However, the photo on the website was allegedly Photoshpped by adding three extra images to it. The question is why was it necessary?

BP's Photoshopped images

The metadata on the superimposed photograph indicates that the image was photographed in March of 2001, which would point to BP ‘covering up’, once again. The company blames its photographer for any confusion.

In the meantime scientists are attempting to analyze date from the sea floor as to whether or not a leaking well cap is a sign of BP’s broken oil well is buckling. Oil and gas are once again seeping into the Gulf, though more slowly this time.

Seepage was also detected 2 miles from the Deepwater Horizon site. This may have nothing to do with the broken oil well, as oil and gas are known to ooze naturally from fissures in sea floor of the Gulf.

BP and the government had been at loggerheads over the company’s desire to leave the cap in place, until a relief well can be used to plug it permanently.

Governent point men on the disaster, Thad Allan, said his initial preference was to pipe oil through the cap to tankers on the surface, in order to reduce the chance that the buildup of pressure inside the well would cause a new blowout. That plan would require releasing millions more gallons of oil into the ocean for a few days during the transition.

However, with lower pressure readings from the well than expected, speculation is that either the reservoir of oil is dwindling, or there is an undiscovered leak somewhere in the well.

Both BP and the Coast Guard initially said no oil was leaking from the oil rig, after it exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers. Next the company and its federal overseers, drastically underestimated the size of the spill. Somewhere between 94m and 184m gallons have gushed into the Gulf.

Ronald Sepulvado, a BP drilling supervisor, has testified that he reported a leak of hydraulic fluid in a critical safety device, weeks prior to the explosion. This report could have diverted the worst U.S. ecological disaster ever.

Was it this report that nudged BP CEO, Tony Hayward, to sell his 1.4 million pound of shares in BP just a month before the Gulf spill?

BP says the cost of the clean-up has now reached $4billion, with around 300 law suits and 116,000 claims being made against the company.

Adam Dillon, once contracted as a BP liaison officer was fired after taking photos that he believes were related to the use of dispersants and to the cleanup of the oil. Dillon was not even sure what he had photographed, but after passing the photographs on to his superiors, he was interrogated for nearly an hour, then within 12 hours he was fired.

Dillion had been instrumental in blatantly rebuffing reporters’ attempts, on his superiors’ instructions, to observe cleanup operations in Grand Isle.

“Money is the bottom line,” said Dillon. “What BP is doing to America is wrong.”

According to Gulf resident Kindra Arnesen, who turned full-time activist when she saw how many people were put out of work by the spill, BP will deduct money from individual payments on claims for lost income, if the claimant refuses to work in assisting the spill response.

Kindra Arnesen’s husband opted to work for BP in the clean up. She believes he was one of many who were sickened by the toxic vapours from the spilt oil. BP CEO Tony Hayward tried to pass off the multiple boats full of sick fishermen as ‘food poisoning’.

The company has since discouraged use of respirators because they don’t want the task to appear dangerous. However, RFK Center President Kerry Kennedy traveled to the Gulf Coast to talk to cleanup workers and found that BP’s active denial of proper safety equipment was having a serious health effect.

“In all three states that I’ve visited, fishermen said when they went out to work on the cleanup, that if they tried to bring respirators they were told it was unnecessary equipment and would only spread hysteria,” said Kennedy.

“When I went out with eleven people, we had respirators on and within half an hour, all of our eyes were burning and our throats were closing and we all had headaches,” she explained.

Tony Hayward has been sent to the Arabic states to raise funds for BP in order to stave off a takeover bid.

Russian Submersible

In the meanwhile BP reports it has had 120,000 different solutions presented to them by a wide variety of people. “We are looking through all of these to see which are viable.”

The skipper of one of two Russian owned Mir submersibles, which can dive to 6,000m, claims that there is still time for the subs to assist BP with the disaster.

A BP spokesman told BBC News “If the Russians want to contact us, or may have done so through some other channel, we can evaluate their idea.”

American Dr Jayant Patel was sentenced to seven years in jail in Australia, for causing the deaths of three patients and grievous bodily harm to another. Patel has also been linked to up to a total of 17 deaths between 2003 and 2005. He is believed to have performed the wrong surgery on the wrong people. Patel was disciplined for ‘gross negligence’ in the United States. He will be able to apply for parole in three-and-a-half years.

Doctors in Vienna amputated the wrong leg of a 91 year-old woman, then were forced to cut off her other leg also. The hospital refused to say if the doctor was still working for them. An investigation is under way.

Peruvian doctors amputated the healthy leg from an 86 year-old man in error, in January 2010. The man had a badly ulcerated leg, which required amputation. He too lost his other leg.

In 2008 a 48 year-old woman, Sithy Nazeera, woke to find her healthy leg had been removed by surgeons at the Negombo General Hospital. Nazeera had been booked in to clean a wound in the sole of her foot. The patient waiting for amputation was the next in line for surgery.

The authorities tried to hush the incident up, according to the Asian Human Rights Commission, as no report had been made to the police and no investigation done.

In 1995 51 year-old, diabetic Willie King, woke up to find that surgeons in a Florida hospital had accidentally amputated his healthy foot instead of the one with gangrene.

In 2006 a report revealed that medical blunders were on the increase, with wrong body parts being removed, that ranged from the wrong leg, the wrong hips being taken, a wrong set of lungs transplanted, a child mistakenly circumcised, to a wrong testicle being removed and a woman given a hysterectomy in error.

According to a Sentinel Event Report 90 patients died, or experienced serious harm, as a result of care they received in public or private hospitals during the 2008/09 period, in West Australian hospitals. This was double the errors reported two years before. Health Minister Daniel Andrews,  said work had started on an appropriate monitoring system to be in place by 2010.

Compensation payouts to victims rose 100% in 2005/2006 alone. Studies place the direct and indirect costs of malpractice as between 5-10% of total medical costs. Payouts range from $100,000 to several million.

Juilia Gillard won a stunning leadership contest against Kevin Rudd, in an historic decision. Mr Rudd will go down in history as the first Prime Minister ever to be thrown out by his party within his first term of office. Mr Rudd’s defeat represents the most stunning political turnaround ever, for a leader who just a few months ago was rivaling Bob Hawke in popularity stakes.

Ms Gillard was confident when she entered the Caucus, flanked by the Treasurer, Mr Swan, her would-be deputy, that she had the numbers to defeat Mr Rudd. Senior factional members claimed Ms Gillard had at least 70 votes out of a possible 112.

Mr Rudd, who won power in 2007 with a popular Kevin 07 campaign, bowed to pressure from his colleagues and withdrew from the contest, assuring Ms Gillard’s ascension to the leadership.

Senators David Feeney and Don Farrell are not household names in Australia, yet they led the push that brought down a Prime Minister. Along with Victorian MP Bill Shorten, they initiated the move that ousted Mr Rudd.

Senator Farrell is a powerbroker who has long been feared in his native South Australia. A former long-time state secretary of the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association, he is a kingmaker in the Right faction. He formed an alliance with the Left faction in SA in the mid-1990s. Known as ”the Machine”, it set about crushing the remnants of the once-powerful Centre Left, including the then senator Chris Schacht.

Senator Farrell entered the Senate at the last election, as did Senator Feeney, a right-wing powerbroker from Melbourne. A controversial character, Senator Feeney was formerly the Victorian Labor state secretary.

Senator Feeney, along with Senator Farrell, were verbally abused by Mr Rudd last year when they met him to protest at the paring back of MPs’ entitlements.

Mp Bill Shorten entered Parliament at the last election. He and Mr Rudd did not get along and his relatively junior position as a parliamentary secretary was regarded as Mr Rudd snubbing him.

Associate Professor Haydon Manning of Flinders University says Australia can expect a remarkable time before the federal election now that Ms Gillard is Prime Minister. “Now we find a woman Prime Minister, a scholar from Unley High in Adelaide, with a momentous job to try and reverse this slippage in the polls and to tackle this powerful [Tony] Abbott who’s come on very strongly and surprisingly as Opposition Leader,” he said.

It is felt Mr Rudd’s ditching of the emissions trading scheme and a new 40% ‘super’ profits tax on the mining sector, saw Mr Rudd’s collapse in the Labour vote, but ultimately it was the men Kevin Rudd spurned, who brought him down.

It is also said that Julia Gillard, a proven parliamentary performer, knows how to get out of tough spots.

Ever felt someone was watching you while you were in the bath?

Or wandered in the forest to see a tree in shock, or stumbled upon a hungry looking house, or spied a very angry kayak.

Unexpected Faces

Masked Barbecue

We have all heard of the classic film ‘Man in the Iron Mask, but not too many have seen the iron mask barbecue.

There was a time when telephones used to look like this. These phones are now antiques and collectors items.

Antique Telephone

Smiley Kitchenware

When it comes to kitchen ware, you can’t beat having a Smiley Face coffee pot to greet you first thing in the morning, and a cheese grater wondering if you ‘Are being served’.

Ghostly Tower

As children we have all listened to ghostly stories and loved to watch cartoons such as Casper the Ghost. The tower looks as if it had some ghostly stories of its own to tell.

Sad Food

Now not everything that comes from the oven can be declared a rip roaring success. This cup cake tells a very sad story, as does the anry green pepper.

Scarey Hands

But the best of all goes to these wonderful hands, that have been created into a really scarey face.

Police detained the man and fined him for ‘driving a vehicle of an unknown type without relevant permission’, the police press service said.

The detainee, who had both legs and one arm amputated, said he was simply testing his new invention.

The Painting Horse

A museum of a working horse opened in the Yaroslavl Region, south-central European Russia, in mid-May on the basis of a shelter for horses. The main attraction among the sheltered animals will become an 18-month-old pony named Orlik, who can draw. However, the horse is too shy to draw in front of strangers.

Orlik was due to head for the ‘butcher’, when he was rescued by an animal shelter. One of the shelter owners noticed that Orlik liked to hold things in his mouth, so he trained the horse to hold a paint brush in his teeth and move it across the canvas.

Now the shelter has dozens of canvases painted by Orlik. Some have been purchased by visitors and the proceeds used to support other animals.

Surfing Alpaca

A citizen of the Latin American state, Domingo Pianezzi, 44, said “I’ve surfed with a dog, a parrot, a hamster and a cat, but when I was at a competition in Australia I saw people surfing with kangaroos and koalas”.

Peruvians raise alpacas, a species of South American camelid, primarily for their warm wool and occasionally for food.

“So I thought that as a Peruvian, it would be interesting to surf with a unique animal that represents Peru,” said Pianezzi.

Office Gardener, Japan

The trend of growing your own vegetables has become popular among Japanese workers.

In many Japanese offices employees grow cherry tomatoes and beans in flower pots right at their working places.

The plants have only a small harvest, but serve mostly to help an employee deal with stress from routine work.

Unlike flowers and usual office plants, growing vegetables helps the employee see all the stages and enjoy the result of his or her work.

Roof-gardens have proved an effective measure for aiding the cooling of buildings during the summer months. Tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, pumpkins and watermelons, can all be harvested on the rooftop.

Space Strawberries

A new variety of strawberries called ‘Seascape’ requires little maintenance and energy that makes them perfect for growing in space, in places such as the International Space Station.

Seascape strawberries are not sensitive to the length of available daylight, in order to flower and fruit and produce fruit constantly for around 6 months.

Most Stressful Jobs

Careercast.com, a U.S. job search portal, published the list of most stressful jobs for 2010. Firefighters were named as having the most stressful job, followed by senior corporate executives and taxi drivers.

These were followed by surgeon and police officer, commercial pilot and highway patrolman.

The top least stressful jobs were, musical instrument repairer, medical records technician, actuary and forklift operator.

Saudi Arabian spinster Khadidja asked a national committee for family solidarity for help. She promised to pay 60,000 Saudi Riyals (or $16,000) to the person who finds a decent fiance for her. Khadidja said the main qualities of her future husband are religion and morals.

Seeking Arab Husband

No North Pole Ice

Ecologists say the Arctic climate changes much quicker than on the planet in general in the next few decades ice in the Arctic could completely disappear in summer.

If it happens, it raises the prospect of the Arctic nations being able to exploit the valuable oil and mineral deposits below these a bed which have until now been impossible to extract because of the thick sea ice above.

Dr Ron Lindsay, a polar scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, says, “There’s a good chance that it will all melt away at the North Pole, it’s certainly feasible, but it’s not guaranteed,” Dr Lindsay said.

Inuit natives living near Baffin Bay between Canada and Greenland are also reporting that the sea ice there is starting to break up much earlier than normal and that they have seen wide cracks appearing in the ice where it normally remains stable. Satellite measurements collected over nearly 30 years show a significant decline in the extent of the Arctic sea ice, which has become more rapid in recent years.

Throw Out The Cat

The U.S. authorities have launched a criminal probe into the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

A giant plume of volcanic ash is disrupting flights in the Pacific and threatening villagers in Vanuatu, echoing similar problems which caused air traffic chaos in Europe. Forecasters in New Zealand say the cloud, spewing from Vanuatu’s Mount Yasur volcano, was about 18-hundred metres high, covering an area of about 200 square kilometres. Tourists have been urged to stay away from the volcano on Tanna island, which has disrupted domestic flights in neighbouring New Caledonia.

We contacted White Grass resort on the island of Tanna, where the majority of guests take the evening trip to Mt Yasur volcano.

“There is no unusual activity from the volcano,” they said. “We sent guests up there last night and they reported back that it was magnificent. There is no huge plume of volcanic ash rising into the sky.”

When we asked where the report originally came from they said “It came from a meteorologist sitting hundreds of miles away in Efate, looking at satellite images. “He never came to check out the volcano personally.” The meteorologist was sent an email asking for an explanation of his report.

Mt Yassur volcano is believed to have been erupting for the past 500 years. It has become one of the major tourist attractions on the tropical island of Tanna, Vanuatu, in the South Pacific. Mt Yassur is one of the few places in the world where an everyday tourist can walk right on the lip of a live volcano and stare down into the awesome power below. A truly unforgettable experience.

This false volcano report comes hard on the heels of a false report on earthquakes on May 27^th. There it was reported that villages fled their village after a ‘disaster’, created by three serious earthquakes.

Considering that most Vanuatu residents didn’t even register the 7.2 earthquake, which struck 215 miles NNW of Luganville, Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu, at a depth of 36.1 km. This was followed by a two other tremors of 5.7 and 5.2. There was an initial tsunami warning issued, but it was soon cancelled.

It would be a tragedy to miss out on the best holiday of your life, because of some false reports that have been published.

The fact also remains, you simply cannot believe every report you hear. Wait until you find confirmation from a second or third source before you really believe all you read.

The following news report was published on a media site on the morning of the 31^st May,2010:

• Last May 27, residents of the northern town of Vanuatu ran into the streets when an earthquake rocked the area. The magnitude reached 7.2. on the Richter Scale. A few minutes after the earth shook, nearby countries issued a tsunami warning. The good news is that there are no reports of injury and property damage. According to the US Geological Survey, the disaster happened around 4:14 in the morning. Its epicenter was in Port Villa, the capital, in that northwest area.

• It was followed by three more aftershocks with intensities ranging from 5.7 to 6.4. These aftershocks happened three hours after the disaster. There were some people who ran out of their houses in the midst of the disaster, especially from those towns closest to the center. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a tsunami warning in nearby areas like Solomon Islands and New Caledonia. After an hour, the alert was canceled. The government of Vanuatu is still assessing the extent of damage caused by the earthquake.

• Lying in northeastern section of Australia, Vanuatu is series of several islands and part of Pacific ring of fire where volcanoes are active and part of the fault line. This is one of the best destinations during summer.

Was this put out as a joke, or by competitors for the tourist trade?

On 27^th May at 5.14 p.m., a 7.2 earthquake struck 215 miles NNW of Luganville, Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu. (That is 485 km NNW of Port Villa). At a depth of 36.1 km, the earthquake was barely registered by the residents of Vanautu.

It was followed by a 5.7 tremour at 5.24 p.m. and 5.2 quake at 5.45 p.m.

There was a tsunami warning issued for the surrounding countries, but very quickly withdrawn. No one actually left their homes, or ran out into the streets. Why would they, if they had not even registered the quakes?

The following day there was a 5.1 tremor at 3.14a.m. and a 5.7 at 4.25 a.m. Again very few locals registered these quakes.

The only way residents would have been aware of these tremours would be if they looked up Internet sites that record all earthquakes around the world, over point 5. Makes interesting reading, when you find Vanuatu listed among Southern Qunghai China, Guam, Alaska, Eastern Sichuan China, Chile, Savu Sea and Brazil.

As for the statement ‘This is one of the best destinations during summer,’ Vanuatu is an exciting place to visit any time of the year, with fabulous weather, though summers are cyclone season and February and March have high humidity, (telling it like it really is).

Vanuatu was voted the happiest country on earth, it has great people, easily accessible and a widely varying culture. Experience Ni-Vanuatu, French and English all in one top-choice tropical island holiday, in the South Pacific, that will leave you with a 1000 wonderful memories.

It also goes to prove that you need to check out information from more than one source.

The real events were are follows:

This all goes to prove that you need to check out information from more than one source.