What's the value of a pint of beer? Let the market decide, says a new restaurant in Manhattan where prices for food and beverages will fluctuate like stock prices in increments according to demand.
The Exchange Bar & Grill, in Grammercy Park neighbourhood, is replete with a ticker tape flashing menu prices in red lettering as demand forces them to fluctuate. Customers can move prices for beverages and bar snacks and the prices will fluctuate in $.25 cent increments, but will most likely plateau at a $2 change in either direction.
If one drink is in heavy demand, its price will rise, causing the cost of other equivalent drinks to drop. A rush on a particular beer would increase its price, and cause other beers to drop. The owners admit the stock exchange theme is a gimmick but hope a good deal on drinks and their hamburger's tastiness will win over customers.
The restaurant opens on April 1. (Reuters)
15 years for prison break-in
A Florida man has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for trying to break back into the jail where he had been held following his conviction in a manslaughter case, local media reported yesterday.
A judge sentenced Sylvester Jiles, 25, to the maximum 15-year penalty on Monday after his conviction earlier this year for the attempted break-in at the Brevard County Detention Center.
He apparently feared violent reprisals from family members of the manslaughter victim and suffered severe cuts when he tried scaling a 3.65-metre barbed wire fence to break into the jail.
Mr Jiles had been released on probation from the jail a week before he tried to force his way back inside. (Reuters)
Leaps to death, kills passer-by
A Belgian woman who committed suicide by jumping from her twelfth-floor apartment killed a pedestrian in the street below, police said yesterday.
The woman, 67, leapt from her balcony in Brussels and hit a 72-year-old man as he was entering the apartment building on Monday. The woman was reported to have suffered depression since the death of her husband three years ago. (Reuters)
Tiger feat
Three tigers escaped from their cage in a zoo on Gran Canaria after a mistake by a worker and had to be shot by police.
Cocodrilo Park said the man cleaning outside the cage before opening time mistakenly pushed a button which opened its door.
No-one was injured and there were no visitors in the zoo at the time. (PA)
Books get 3-D treatment
Pop-up is so passe: South Korean scientists have developed 3-D technology for books that makes characters literally leap off the page.
The popularity of 3-D entertainment has been given a boost by a slew of recent films, including sci-fi blockbuster Avatar and Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland.
Several companies are also offering 3-D televisions and a 3-D video game console will be launched soon.
At South Korea's Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, researchers used 3-D technology to animate two children's books of Korean folk tales, complete with writhing dragons and heroes bounding over mountains.
Pictures in the books have cues that trigger the 3-D animation for readers wearing computer-screen goggles. As the reader turns and tilts the book, the 3-D animation moves accordingly. (Reuters)
Pensioner gangsters
Four elderly Germans were handed jail sentences for kidnapping their financial adviser and holding him prisoner in a basement in an attempt to recover around €2.5 million in lost savings.
The two men and two women, aged between 61 and 80, seized the banker outside his apartment, bound and gagged him and bundled him into the boot of a car before driving him some 500 kilometres across Germany.
Dubbed "pensioner gangsters" by the German media, they held the 57-year-old man for days in a basement, trying to force him to transfer large sums of money to them. In one remittance order the banker included the message "Sell 100 Call Pol.ICE today please!" A bank employee notified police and the banker was freed by an elite commando group.
The court in Traunstein sentenced the two men to six and four years in jail, while the two women were given suspended sentences of 21 and 18 months. (Reuters)