He set fire to an electric guitar alone onstage in front of a stunned crowd at the opening of Clarion Hotel Union Brygge in Drammen. (The newest addition to his empire opens Wednesday in Oslo, a luxurious art hotel named The Thief.) In Britain in 2002 he chained himself to the gate of a waste treatment plant to protest nuclear power.

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In another incident in Bala, Gwynedd, a fire was started after water dripped into an electric heater used to defrost pipes.

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By using an electric drive of the sort that is purring away in Leicestershire, ships can fire up their engines one at a time and run each at its most economical throttle setting.

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Divisional Officer Jim Boyd of the Northern Ireland Fire Service, who was at the scene, said the elderly couple did have an electric powered smoke alarm but it was turned off.

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