By CHRIS KAHN

AP - PHOENIX - It sounds like science fiction but it’s true: A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die.

Even though encounters with the microscopic bug are extraordinarily rare, it’s killed six boys and young men this year. The spike in cases has health officials concerned, and they are predicting more cases in the future.

“This is definitely something we need to track,” said Michael Beach, a specialist in recreational waterborne illnesses for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“This is a heat-loving amoeba. As water temperatures go up, it does better,” Beach said. “In future decades, as temperatures rise, we’d expect to see more cases.”

jay: like i don’t have enough shit to worry about? now i have to add brain-eating amoeba to the list? global warming, if i didn’t hate you before, i fully hate you now!

AP - PORTLAND - Snake collector Matt Wilkinson of Portland grabbed a 20-inch rattler from the highway near Maupin, and three weeks later, to impress his ex-girlfriend, he stuck the serpent in his mouth.

He was soon near death with a swollen tongue that blocked his throat. Trauma doctors at the Oregon Health and Science University saved his life.

“You can assume alcohol was involved,” he said. Actually, not just beer. It was something he called a “mixture of stupid stuff.”

It happened at a barbecue with friends.

Wilkinson, 23, had downed a six-pack and his ex-girlfriend asked him for a beer. He handed her one, not realizing the snake was also in his hand.

“She said, ‘Get that thing out of my face,”‘ Wilkinson said. “I told her it was a nice snake. ‘Nothing can happen. Watch.”‘

So he stuck the snake in his mouth.

“It got a hold of my tongue,” he said.

He was having breathing problems when his ex-girlfriend drove him to the hospital. “She was the only one sober,” Wilkinson said.

jay: i’m not buying this ’sometimes a snake is just a snake’ malarkey. also, sux that the ap doesn’t mention whether or not she took him back.

By KERY MURAKAMI

Seattle P-I — There’s a story going around South Lake Union, but a spokeswoman for Vulcan, Paul Allen’s development company, says it’s just an urban legend.

That aside, the story that the neighborhood’s streetcar line now under construction was called the South Lake Union Trolley until the powers that be realized the unfortunate acronym — SLUT — seems here to stay.

Officially, it’s now the South Lake Union Streetcar. But the trolley name already has caught on, and in the old Cascade neighborhood in South Lake Union, they’re waiting for the SLUT.

At the Kapow! Coffee house on Harrison Street, they’re selling T-shirts that read “Ride the SLUT.”

“We’re welcoming the SLUT into the neighborhood,” said Jerry Johnson, 29, a part-time barista.

jay: i’m sorry, what? his company is called ‘vulcan’? dork. oh, and the slut thing is funny.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Music, books and Hollywood films… China can now add testimonies of regret by corrupt officials to its exhaustive list of copyright violations.

Zhang Shaocang, former Communist Party chief of state-owned power company Anhui Province Energy Group Co Ltd, wept as he read a four-page “letter of apology” during his corruption trial at a court in Fuyang, Anhui, according to a Procuratorial Daily report reproduced in Wednesday’s Beijing News.

But Zhang’s sentiments were later found to be strikingly similar to those of Zhu Fuzhong, a disgraced former party chief of Tongan village in southwestern Sichuan province, whose apology letter was printed in the Procuratorial Daily less than two weeks before.

“Before working, I never gave much thought to money and regarded achievement as the starting point and end result of my work,” the paper quoted both of the letters as saying.

“I gradually lost my bearings and the scope of my position,” Zhang said at his trial, an exact copy of Fu’s own wording.

Apart from using whole sentences word for word, Zhang also — more craftily — made “slight changes” in other areas.

The Procuratorial Daily, the official paper of China’s top prosecutions office, is distributed as reading material at many “supervision venues,” the paper said, referring to the often secret locations where Communist Party officials are held for questioning.

It was possible that Zhang, while being investigated for charges of bribe-taking, had drawn inspiration from Zhu’s apology in the hope of gaining leniency from the court, the paper said.

“Because of this, Zhang’s apology was dismissed as ’show-boating,’” the paper said.

rob: i’m not sure how “crafty” the subtle word changes were in the context of entire sentences being lifted intact, but still: bonus points for weeping.