The 28 year-old suffered severe burns after attacking the arachnid with an aerosol can at his home in Clacton in Essex. The man was summoned by his wife to deal with a spider she had seen scuttling behind the lavatory on Bank Holiday Monday. Not being able to reach it, the man decided to kill it by spraying it with the can. However he was unable to see whether it was dead because the bulb in the bathroom light had blown. At this point he turned to a cigarette lighter to illuminate the room, but in the process ignited the gas fumes and caused an explosion. The blast was so strong it blew the man off his feet and lifted the loft door off its hinges. He suffered flash burns to his head, legs and torso and was rushed by ambulance to hospital after dousing himself in cold water.

Now, in his upcoming book, according to an excerpt of the introduction released by the London Times which isn't getting any traffic from this because of their pay wall), Hawking declares that the Big Bang can be explained without God. "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing," Hawking and his co-author, Caltech physicist Leonard Mlodinow, write in "The Grand Design," which is due to be issued next week. "Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper [British way of saying light the fuse] and set the universe going."

There are probably tens of planets that work for each state, I picked either the first one that I came to or the best fit. Planets were assigned based on partial terrain, landmarks that correlate with the planet and state, types of people in the state and planet, famous landmarks, or slightly randomly selected (but loosely based on facts) from my brother and myself.

The eggs in this story range in diameter from 0.7 to 2 millimeters. 'The scanning process is actually quite interesting. It is not the same as photography where if you capture an image where all pixels will be captured at the time. 'In scanning you have to capture one pixel at a time.' The images were made with a scanning electron microscope, which uses beams of electrons to trace the surfaces of objects. The resulting black-and-white images were then colored to reflect the eggs' natural appearance. Each image takes about a day to fix into position and then another day to microscope and then about 40 hours to colour.

I am a photographer from the Netherlands, specializing in high speed photography. I use a normal flash to achieve very short illuminations. The most critical parameter in this kind of photography is timing, which is achieved by computer control of shutter, flash, valve, gun or whatever other device is used. These kind of images require a lot of experimentation, dedication, patience and willingness to endlessly clean spill of liquids and debris from objects shot to pieces. Several hundreds of trial shots may be needed to get timing correct. After that, the process is pretty well controlled, and often half of the shots will be usable, with 1 out of 10 really interesting.

Carstache & lashes so loud Truck nuts swangin' They hopin' that they gon catch me ridin' tranny Oh my gosh I'm ridin' tranny Oh my gosh I'm ridin' tranny Oh my gosh I'm on the sidewalk Now we're in a building

[Kyle] Dubois (18) and his parents claim teacher Thomas Kelley did not tell him and other students of the dangers of the demonstration power cords in their electrical trades class. They are seeking compensation for medical expenses, lost income due to time away from work and other damages related to the incident, which occurred on March 11. Dubois attached an electrical clamp to one nipple while another student attached another clamp to the other. A third student plugged in the cord. Dubois was critically injured and his legal team claim he has suffered permanent brain damage.

But why would abstaining from alcohol lead to a shorter life? It's true that those who abstain from alcohol tend to be from lower socioeconomic classes, since drinking can be expensive. And people of lower socioeconomic status have more life stressors -- job and child-care worries that might not only keep them from the bottle but also cause stress-related illnesses over long periods. (They also don't get the stress-reducing benefits of a drink or two after work.) But even after controlling for nearly all imaginable variables -- socioeconomic status, level of physical activity, number of close friends, quality of social support and so on -- the researchers (a six-member team led by psychologist Charles Holahan of the University of Texas at Austin) found that over a 20-year period, mortality rates were highest for those who were not current drinkers, regardless of whether they used to be alcoholics, second highest for heavy drinkers and lowest for moderate drinkers.

The idea itself is adopted from German cities like Essen and Cologne, and will be a way for prostitution to continue on behind closed, uh, doors. The boxes will serve as quickie drive-throughs, so-to-speak, and will free up city streets from unsightly acts that haunt Zurich residents whose homes overlook the city's red light district. "They get up to all sorts in broad daylight - and we're sick to death of looking at it," one resident told the U.K.'s Metro.

The tiny amphibians - catchily dubbed Microhyla nepenthicola - measure between 10.6-to-12.8mm long and were found in the Kubah National Park. While specimens are already held by many museums around the world, they have previously been misidentified as juveniles of other species. Now scientists say the frogs are a distinct micro-species and the smallest frogs found anywhere in found in Asia, Africa or Europe.