N.J. disc jockey to part with Jenny's number

After five years fielding thousands of calls to one of rock 'n' roll's most celebrated phone numbers, disc jockey Spencer Potter is hanging up on Jenny.

Her seven digits are familiar to anyone who paid attention to pop music in the early 1980s: 867-5309, immortalized by the band Tommy Tutone.

Potter and his roommates requested the number on a lark for their home phone in northern New Jersey. They got it, along with about 30 to 40 calls a day...

--Yahoo! News

Welsh operators keep it English

Telephone operators in Wales are being told not to greet callers in the country's native tongue because the language may damage vocal chords.

Union officials say operators who speak primarily English could cause harm to their vocal chords if forced by bosses to offer a traditional "bore da" -- which translates as "good morning" -- or "prynhawn da" -- good afternoon -- to callers, The Times of London reported Tuesday.

The unions were successful in getting the greetings banned in the Vale of Glamorgan council, where officials justified the move by saying it goes along with the Health and Safety Executive's recommendation that call center workers limit their phone time to preserve their vocal chords...

--UPI

Winnie the Pooh causes bomb scare

A man who went to a Missouri post office to pick up a novelty phone he ordered over the Internet was alarmed that the package was ticking; it subsequently created a bomb scare.

It turned out that the phone — shaped like Winnie the Pooh — had a feature the customer did not know about: An incoming call causes Winnie's head to spin, and the feature apparently had been activated during shipping.

The ticking that prompted evacuation of the Wright City post office Thursday morning was Winnie's head repeatedly hitting the side of the package, Missouri Highway Patrol spokeswoman Cpl. Julie Scerine said...

--USA Today

Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?

Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees

It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.

They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up...

--The Independent