Here’s how you can feel better about eating french fries:

Philadelphia Fry-o-Diesel LLC is a Pennsylvania company dedicated to producing renewable, cleaner burning fuel from waste grease.

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TOKYO (Reuters) - Firemen in a small Japanese town were left red-faced after a party to mark the end of a fire awareness promotional event ended in a blaze that badly damaged their station.

The two-story, wooden fire station in Shimohetsugi, southern Japan, was extensively damaged by the Sunday blaze, a spokesman for the Oita prefectural fire department said.

No one was injured in the fire, which is thought to have been started either by a gas canister used for the firemen’s barbecue or by a kerosene heater.

“It’s very embarrassing that this should happen to people whose job it is to go and put out fires,” the spokesman said.

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TORONTO (Reuters) - A Toronto woman, not content with having merely a dusty demise, has become the first Canadian to donate her body for public display after she dies.

The 30-year-old mutual fund worker said the “Body Worlds” exhibition at the Ontario Science Center, which displays real human bodies, would fulfill her desire to have a posthumous purpose.

“I wanted to donate my body to science, but do something a little bit different, so this was perfect,” said Stephanie Chapu.

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JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Attacks on humans by man-eating lions are on the rise in Tanzania and Mozambique, raising the stakes in the conservation game as environmentalists strive to save the big cats from extinction.

Lions in the area have developed a taste for human flesh because people have been sleeping outdoors to protect their crops from raiding bushpigs, which the cats follow onto croplands, a leading expert said.

“In Tanzania in the early 1990s there were about 40 recorded lion attacks a year. In the past couple of years they have risen to over 100 and about 70 percent are fatal,” said Craig Packer, an ecologist at the University of Minnesota.

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An Ohio man who claims that he was humiliated by two other participants in an AOL chatroom has sued the two men for causing emotional distress and the ISP for failing to stop the alleged abuse.

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Minnesota voters, who eight years ago elected a former professional wrestler as their governor, may find a self-proclaimed vampire on the ballot for the office this year.

“Politics is a cut-throat business,” said Jonathan “The Impaler” Sharkey, who said he plans to announce his bid for governor on Friday on the ticket of the Vampyres, Witches and Pagans Party.

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More than 30 manhole covers have been snatched from Marion County streets in the past week.

Authorities point to the high price of scrap metal as the incentive for thieves, but the missing covers leave caverns as much as 30 feet deep yawning in ambush for drivers and pedestrians.
A replacement can cost from $300 to $2,000, according to officials with the Department of Public Works. Crews are putting up barricades around any hole they find missing a cover and are telling area scrapyards to reject offers to buy a cover.

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NORTH VERNON, Ind. — Members of a southern Indiana church say they believe a wooden door there bears the image of Jesus.

People from across Indiana have come to the Reigning Light of the Healing Chapel in North Vernon to see the door. Congregation members say they can see a likeness of Jesus in the wood’s patterns.

Congregation members said the image is similar to that of the Shroud of Turin, a cloth that many throughout the world believe has a likeness of Jesus.

The church’s pastor, Charlotte Pahls, said she sees the image as a sign.

“I asked, ‘Why, Lord, a door?’ And he said, ‘I am the door. If anyone knock, I will come in and sup with them.’ “

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - A Michigan environmental group is charging that at least part of the so-called “new car smell” is toxic, and that the interior of an automobile has dangerous levels of various chemicals.

The report, “Toxic at any speed,” comes from The Ecology Center, an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based group. It reports that PBDEs, used as fire retardants, and phthalates, used primarily to soften PVC plastics, are found in dangerous amounts in dust and windshield film samples.

It called for tougher regulations to phase out the use of the chemicals as well as voluntary moves by the auto manufacturers to stop using the products inside of new vehicles.

It also suggested that car owners take steps to reduce the release and breakdown of these chemicals by using solar reflectors, ventilating car interiors, and parking outside of sunlight whenever possible.

The group says that phthalates are partly responsible for the smell associated with new cars.

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