The Austrian Times reports that 14-year-old boy, Dan Banciu, shot his six-year-old neighbour after hours of playing violent games.

When police arrived on the scene they were shocked to hear the murderer had shot his victim so that he could “watch him die”.

Using his dad’s hunting rifle, Bachiu loaded it and shot the child, who has not been named by police, at point blank range as they played together in the garden at Tatulesti, southern Romania.

Police spokesman Claudia Radu said: “The 14-year-old knew where his father kept the keys to the gun cabinet. He is now undergoing psychiatric tests.”

No news on what game they were allegedly playing, but expect a serious backlash against it over the next few days.

The title was released on the Xbox 360 console back in November, with the title landing on the PS3 and PS2 on March 27, with the Wii version arriving on April 24.

Good news for those who don’t have the necessary peripherals too, as Harmonix has announced lower RRP’s for the guitar (£39.99), drums (£49.99) and instrument packs with a microphone included (£89.99).

The game and peripherals packages come in at £119 for the PS3 version and £109 for the Wii and PS2.

The woman, called Teresa, made a complaint about the suspension of the account and the daily harassment from other Xbox Live users. The woman claims to have been hounded by people who gave her abuse and told other players to avoid her. One user also said that they don’t want to see “that crap or their kids to see that crap”.

Microsoft has upheld its decision to ban her account saying that in the Xbox Live T&C no gamer is allowed to use text or comments that indicate the sexual orientation of the gamer.

The company says that those in breech of the T&C will have to make the changes to their profile, otherwise they will continue to be suspended until they do.

The LG 37LG3000 is a fantastic midrange option. At 37” it’s no cinema screen, but it’s more than enough for the standard living room, or large bedroom.

Here are its basic features:
Size: 37”
HDTV ready: yes
Colour of product: Black
Connections: 3 HDMI, 2 SCART S-Video, PC Input Composite
Display resolution: 1366 x 768 pixels
Contrast Ratio: 15000:1
Dynamic Display brightness: 500 cd/m2
Response time: 5 ms
Dimensions: W x D x H919.6 x 88 x 610.3 mm

The LG 37LG3000 model has a number of features that enhance the value of this great television.

AV Mode
The LG 37LG3000 has 3 preset AV Modes – Director, Games Mode & Sports Mode – which provide the best image and sound quality for specific types of content.

Director mode allows the user to view movies the way that the director intended by managing the white balance and colour to film industry standards. Games mode brings the best out of your Xbox360 or PS3 by enhancing the graphics by constantly assessing the image colour depth while you play. Sports mode optimises the television to handle fast moving football players of racing cars, bringing out the colours in a more vivid and lively way.

Invisible Speaker
The front bezel of the LG 37LG3000, works as a speaker replacing the normal speaker grill. With the Invisible Speaker system, the speakers are embedded in strategic spots underneath and around the front bezel. This new speaker system provides a clean and fashionable design compared with traditional side or bottom speaker designs.

Clear Voice
Sometimes when watching films it is difficult to hear human voices over the background sounds of their environment, due to the down-mixing that occurs to push 5.1 surround-sound through a TV’s 2 channel speaker system. The Clear Voice feature alters the sound balance to emphasise human voices and reducing the background noise All input source (RF/AV/Component/HDMI) as well as Stereo and Mono broadcast can be controlled by Clear Voice.

Simplink
LG’s SIMPLINK system can control all the connected AV devices with one remote control. By pressing the SIMPLINK remote control key, you can switch on and control all devices connected by HDMI. When the TV is switched off, all connected AV devices are automatically switched off as well.

All of this, with Freeview included, comes in at a great low price of around £490.00.

1. Think you want to have kids? Well maybe this will put you off: A new baby will result in around 400-750 hours of lost sleep for the parents in the first year alone.

2. You think that staying up all night after a long day is tough? If your anything like me your asleep five minutes after sitting on the couch. So its quite remarkable that the word record for the longest period without sleep is a staggering 18 days, 12 hours and 490 minutes during a rocking chair marathon. The exhausted winner reported hallucinations, paranoia, blurred vision, slurred speech and memory and concentration lapses.

3. For many years British Ministry of Defence researchers have used a system that resents a soldier’s body clock so that they can go without sleep for up to 36 hours. The system involves tiny optical fibres that are embedded inside a pair of goggles. The fibres project a ring of bright light with the same spectrum as a sunrise around the soldier’s retina fooling then in to believing they have just woken up.

4. How often have you forgotten to do something when you’re tired? You’re not the only one. The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off the coast of Alaska, the challenger space shuttle disaster and the Chernobyl nuclear accident have all been blamed on human error due to sleep deprivation.

5. How long do you sleep for? The NHS recommend at least 8 hours sleep a night, but on average we sleep up to three hours less that other primates including, chimps, rhesus monkeys and baboons who all sleep for ten hours.

6. If you snore you can keep your partner wide awake for hours, but what you may not realise is that ten percent of snorers suffer from sleep apnoea, a disorder that causes the sufferer to stop breathing up to 300 times a night, significantly increasing the chance of a heart attack or stroke.

7. Put the mouse down, and step away from the keyboard… According to research, 18 to 24 years olds kept awake for long periods are actually far more impaired than older people kept awake for the same length of time. Experts claim this is down to the internet’s 24/7 accessibility.

Sleeptight.

What an arse

I laughed when I heard today that some dude from Nebraska, affectionately known as the “Butt Bandit” has been put in the one place you shouldn’t expose your rear – jail…

The 35 year old was given a 13 and a half month sentence after he exposed his flabby cheeks no less than eight times last year.

Monkey Business

A women tried to smuggle a monkey down her top on a flight from Thailand to LA after pretending she was pregnant, however she was busted and has been convicted with smuggling.

What’s worrying about this is that the woman, accompanied by her mother, managed to smuggle the primate through the ‘top notch’ Los Angeles customs.

Amazingly the monkey smuggler was busted when she explained her daring act to a clothing store assistant. The monkey is now living in a primate rescue centre in Oregon.

Baaaad luck

A mechanic who repairs tractors for a living has had his £275,000 workshop burned to the ground by a sheep.

Yes…a sheep.

The man said that a sheep from a nearby paddock broke a waterline to a pressure pump in his workshop, causing the pump to run dry, overheat then catch fire.
He told the paper: “My whole life is tied up in this business, not only my ability to earn a living. It’s left a huge hole which is indescribable.”

Dumb Ass commits crime, tries to escape. Fails.

Every good criminal knows that you should really run as far away from the police after you’ve committed a crime, but one complete dumbass decided to hide in the local Police Academy.

The man robbed a petrol station in Ohio with his mate before fleeing in a pick-up truck (what else). A police officer saw the vehicle and pulled it over only for the passenger to make a run for it. Unfortunately for him he ran right up to the Academy, and after coming face to face with a locked door, surrendered like a sissy girl. His hapless mate surrendered without a fight.

“That is a little comical,” said Columbus police Sgt. Greg Bodker.

“One of the officers was directly behind the suspect who fled on foot so I don’t believe he would have gotten in there, but he did get to the porch and attempt to open the doors.”

What a tool.

I’ve had a scout around the net and I’ve came up with the three presents you need to ask for this Xmas.

3. Rolerball

Ever felt the need to encase yourself in a big plastic bubble, and launch yourself down a hill? I hadn’t until I saw this beauty, and now I HAVE to do exactly that. The three metre high see through ball looks like something from outer space, but I’m assured its relatively safe. The ball comes with two harnesses inside too, so you can share the ride with a mate, your girlfriend, or someone you want to make sick.

The ball comes with a rather handy puncture repair kit, but I don’t know what you’d be able to do if it bust half way down a massive slope. My guess is that it would either deflate slowly, gently lowering you to the ground, or it would burst like a balloon, leaving you with skinned knees and an utter sense of deflation (pun entirely intended).

The ball is inflated in 15 minutes with a powerful pump, but you need to be prepared to carry it up a hill as it weighs a hefty 70kg.

2. A007 Watch Mobile

Want to feel like James Bond, the A007 Watch Mobile should do the trick. It’s a bit like that really awesome Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles watch you got when you were five, but this one features a Bluetooth, MP3, MP4, GPRS and WAP capabilities.

This is a pretty cool gadget. In addition to the stuff above its got a 1.3 Megapixel camera, and a full colour LCD touch screen. You can even expand the memory with a card slot. If anything this watch/phone combo will give you a laugh down the pub, and will be something your mid-life crisis uncle will want desperately, but you can’t take away the fact that it’s pretty exciting.

1. JVC DLA-HD1 HD Projector

One thing I’ve always bee desperate to do is play my Xbox360 (and any console that I’ve previously owned) on a cinema screen. It’s like a childhood ambition. Just imaging Gears of War 2 on a 30 foot screen…

Back in reality, I found this little beauty: the JVC DLA-HD1 HD Projector. The device gives a native contrast ratio of 15,000:1, giving you amazing black reproduction without sacrificing picture brightness since there is no iris mechanism. This is achieved by a new 0.7-inch full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) D-ILA device and a new optical engine. The projector has a 2x zoom lens, an will project a screen 100” wide from just 3 metres away. Awesome.

If  you are, then you probably don’t realise it but games companies think your being a bit rude. Think about the amount of times you’ve been into your local swap-shop and the friendly chap behind the counter says to you, as you walk toward the counter with a brand new box, “Do you know we’ve got a pre-owned version for £32 instead of £45?”

“I’ve been in a shop where I’ve tried to buy a copy of a relatively recent game, and I’ve taken an empty box off the shelf and they’ve given me a pre-owned copy. That, I think, is disgraceful,” said Elite Founder David Braben recently in an interview.

But is he right? Are games companies the ones getting harmed? The way i understand it, is that retailers buy directly from the publishers, in bulk and at trade value, so they are still getting the money they rightly deserve. Surely the only ones losing money are the retailers themselves.

Well, not so, the idea from a retailers point of view is that they encourage you to buy pre-owned as they make more money on them than brand new. Think about it. Lets say the a retailer buys the game at trade value, say £25 (i’m guesstimating). Customer A buys the brand new game in 2007 for £40. He trades it back to the store in early 2008, and gets about £12 from the shop, which he instantly spends back in the store (if you imagine most retailers give you credit notes as opposed to cold hard cash). Customer B wanders in and sees the now pre-owned title, and buys it for say £25. So now the shop has made £52 from these two exchanges. Now i’m no mathematician but that’s much more than if customer A had walked in, bought the game and never came back. If he’d have done that the shop makes £15, and customer B won’t exist.

Its just a simple case of win win…er…win. The publisher wins from the cash from the retailers. The Retailer wins, due to the infinite selling capabilities, and the customers win because we have the right to choose to buy a low cost game if we want to.

Developers have started using sneeky tactics to force gamers to buy brand new games. For example, if you want to play the extra multi-player level on Gears of War 2, you’d better buy it at full price, as it comes with a one-time download. And you can expect a whole lot more of that, as developers try to fill their pockets in the middle of the global credit crisis.

1. Terry Kath

When the seventies were drawing to a close, Terry Kath, guitarist with soft rockers Chicago, was at home polishing his guns. A self-confessed firearm fan, Kath was cleaning pistol when his safe thinking roadie asked if it was loaded. As if to prove some kind of idiotic point, Kath pointed the gun at his own head and pulled the trigger. Reportedly his final words were, “Don’t worry, it’s not loaded”…

2. Steve Took

A founding member of cock-rockers T-Rex, Steve Took spent his final years wandering around the streets in a drug fueled haze. Blowing any money he had on various drugs, Steve forgot the one thing that would ensure his survival – chewing his food before swallowing. Steve Took choked to death on a cocktail cherry in 1980.

3. Keith Relf

This is actually a surprisingly common death, and also the main reason bands employ roadies. The Yardbirds frontman was laying down some tunes in his home studio on day in 1976. He decided it was time to blast some sweet riffage so grabbed his guitar. What he failed to notice that his guitar was plugged in and was not grounded. When Relf touch the strings he created a circuit and lit up the studio like a May Day parade.

4. Jeff Poraco

Drummers. The know the difference between a drummer and a drum machine, right? You only have to beat the information in to a drum machine once…ahem… Mr Poraco, sticksman for the band named after the crappy little dog in the Wizard of Oz – Toto, was in is garden one fine day in 1992, when he decided to apply some pesticide to the lawn. Sadly for Jeff, he used the wrong type of pesticide, that triggered an allergy causing a fatal heart attack.

5. Johnny Ace

When your filming a TV show in Belgium, i’d imagine it gets pretty dull. Dull enough to play Russian Roulette? Well for Johnny Ace it was. Sometime in the 1950’s a clearly mental Ace was frolicking (?) with a gun backstage during a five-minute commercial break. He started by pointing the gun at his girlfriend, then at his friend. Unsatisfied with the lack of death, Johnny decided it would be a great idea to point the gun at himself. I expect the last thing he heard was, “And were on in 5…”

Well my friends, I’ve decided to put two leviathans of martial arts to the test, who’ll come out victorious, and who’ll be picking their teeth up off of the floor?

Who are they?

Jean-Claude Van Damme: Otherwise known as the “muscles from Brussels”. The now 49-years-old Van Damme is one 5′ 9″, kick ass, fighting machine – oh and he’s a fully trained ballet dancer…

Steven Segal: This former bodyguard of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Segal has played a pony-tailed ex-marine/cop in more movies than I can remember. Also kicks ass, and seems to land a girl at least half of his 56 years of age, in every film.

Where did they start?

Van Damme’s classic film Bloodsport (1988) was his first starring one, and made him pretty damn famous in the world of macho man fighting other man fans. Although it could easily go down as one of the most homoerotic movies ever made, there is no denying that its also mega tough. Like Freddie Mercury was. Probably.

Segal started his ‘big screen’ movie career in 1988 in Above the Law, sadly for Steve the media hype could not fully capture how great his receding hairline, and pony tail was, and the next big A-list action star, became a B/C movie star – probably for all eternity.

They must have made one great film right?

Well yes, Van Damme did make the awesome Universal Soldier where he and fellow meat head Dolph Lundgren, went at it like hammer and tong’s. Segal came right back at him with Under Seige, described by many as “Die Hard on a Boat”, which featured Segal as and ex-Navy SEAL chef, who was pretty good at chopping up some terrorist ass, as well as a mean salad.

Tell me something I never knew

Well OK then. Did you know that Segal has released two blues albums, and has toured the world with his band? Or how about that the be-pony-tailed tool was also married to that hot chick from Weird Science, Kelly LeBrock until 1996.

Don’t worry, Van Damme has some other…er…interesting claims to fame? The Johnny Cage character from Mortal Kombat was modelled on the kickboxing god, oh and he also got a boner when he was dancing with a mildly attractive woman live on Belgian TV…brilliant…

Are these guys rich?

You may well find it hard to believe, but holy crap! yes they are loaded. Van Damme’s movies have reportedly made over $1bn, so he must have a pretty nice house. Segal, loses out slightly here, in that he’s ‘only’ made $750m dollars worth of box office money – but i reckon he’s got a better car than me.

So who would win in a fight then?

Now if we take the fact that Segal is Taller than Van Damme that gives him reach, but Segal is older than ‘ole JCVD – so that evens things up a bit. Van Damme has been in far better movies, but Segal has a ponytail…man this is tough…i’m going to have to give the victory to Van Damme for not only ‘rockin a hard on on live TV, but for continuing to make films in spite of that fact. Also, Segal’s fashion sense should have died in feudal Japan.