Archive for July, 2007
Tuesday, July 31st, 2007
Transplant surgeon, allegedly seeking organs, is charged with trying to hasten patient’s death
A San Francisco transplant surgeon was criminally charged Monday with excessively prescribing drugs to a 25-year-old disabled man last year in order to hasten his death and harvest his organs sooner.
The felony charges are believed to be the first in the nation against a physician for his role in a transplant.
Experts said the case is likely to raise uneasiness among potential organ donors and could prompt doctors to shy away from a somewhat controversial practice of retrieving organs before a patient is brain dead.
The San Luis Obispo County district attorney’s office accused Dr. Hootan Roozrokh, 33, of dependent adult abuse, administering a harmful substance and prescribing controlled substances without a legitimate medical purpose.
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, Medical Monstrosities | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 31st, 2007
Police: Car dealer killed 2 employees who asked for raises
The owner of a car dealership has been accused of killing two employees because they kept asking for pay raises.
Rolandas Milinavicius, a native of the eastern European nation of Lithuania, has been charged with two counts of murder in the shooting deaths of Inga Contreras, 25, and Martynas Simokaitis, 28, both also from Lithuania but had been living in Atlanta, authorities said.
Milinavicius, who was having financial problems, told police he shot the two Thursday after they kept asking for more pay, said police in East Point, which is just outside Atlanta.
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Concentrated Criminality | No Comments »
Sunday, July 29th, 2007
Sinkholes threaten Mexican capital
As if life-shortening pollution, hours-long traffic jams and kidnappings weren’t bad enough, Mexico City residents now have to worry about the earth opening up and swallowing them.
As the summer rainy season hits, concern is growing that hundreds of cracks, holes and fractures that line this city could open up with disastrous consequences in a metropolitan area of 20 million people.
The fear became reality this month in a Mexico City slum when heavy rainfall ruptured a fissure in the street, swallowing a car and an onlooker, who was killed when he tumbled into the muddy depths more than 60 feet below.
Mexico City’s latest urban ill stems from its geography and history. Built on a drained lake bed after the Spanish destroyed the Venice-like city of Tenochtitlan, Mexico City has been sinking steadily for centuries, falling the equivalent of a three-story building since 1900.
Posted in Restless Earth | No Comments »
Sunday, July 29th, 2007
Wartime flying bomb found in British capital
Police closed streets near London’s Canary Wharf financial district on Saturday after an unexploded German flying bomb from World War Two was found on a construction site.
Bomb disposal experts were called in to make the V1 missile safe after it was unearthed close to the east London complex that houses 80,000 office workers during the working week, police said. At weekends the area is busy with shoppers and visitors.
Posted in Historical Oddities, War | No Comments »
Sunday, July 29th, 2007
Who the fuck is Kim Yong Nam (and should we care?) and what the hell happened to Kim Jong Il?
Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the DPRK Supreme People’s Assembly, Thursday left Algiers after winding up his official goodwill visit to Algeria.
Kim Yong Nam and his party were seen off at the airport by President of the Council of the Nation Abdelkader Bensalah, Minister of Commerce El Hachemi Djaaboub, Minister of Health, Population and Hospital Reform Amar Tou, Delegate Minister of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Abdelkader Mesahel, officials concerned and DPRK Ambassador to Algeria Kim Tong Je.
Kim Yong Nam Arrives in Cairo
Cairo, July 26 (KCNA Correspondent) — Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the DPRK Supreme People’s Assembly, and his party arrived in Cairo Thursday.
They were greeted at the airport by Prime Minister of the Egyptian Cabinet Ahmed Najef, officials concerned and DPRK Ambassador to Egypt Jang Myong Son.
Talks between Kim Yong Nam and Mohamed Hosni Mubarak Held
Cairo, July 26 (KCNA Correspondent) — Talks between Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the DPRK Supreme People’s Assembly, and Mohamed Hosni Mubarak, President of Egypt, were held at the Presidential Palace Thursday.
At the talks both sides exchanged views on the issue of boosting the friendly and cooperative relations between the two countries and other issues of mutual concern and reached consensus of views on all issues discussed.
Kim Yong Nam Feted
Cairo, July 26 (KCNA Correspondent) — Egyptian President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak hosted a banquet in honor of Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the DPRK Supreme People’s Assembly, at the Presidential Palace on July 26.
Present there on invitation were Kim Yong Nam, his party and DPRK Ambassador to Egypt Jang Myong Son.
Also present there were the Egyptian president, Prime Minister Ahmed Najef, Defence Minister Muhammad Hussein Tantawi, Foreign Minister Ahmed Abu al-Gheit and officials concerned.
Posted in Crazed Dictatorships, N. Korea | No Comments »
Sunday, July 29th, 2007
Vietnam man handles three decades without sleep
As songbirds awaken the early risers at dawn on the farm, one resident is already up; in fact, he never slept – not once in the past 33 years.
You’d think going without sleep for that long may have its drawbacks, but not for the man in central Quang Nam province who has never been ill after decades of insomnia.
His inability to sleep has not only made him famous, but also represents a “miraculous” phenomenon worthy of scientific study.
Sixty-four-year-old Thai Ngoc, known as Hai Ngoc, said he could not sleep at night after getting a fever in 1973, and has counted infinite numbers of sheep during more than 11,700 consecutive sleepless nights.
“I don’t know whether the insomnia has impacted my health or not. But I’m still healthy and can farm normally like others,” Ngoc said.
Proving his health, the elderly resident of Que Trung commune, Que Son district said he can carry two 50kg bags of fertilizer down 4km of road to return home every day.
His wife said, “My husband used to sleep well, but these days, even liquor cannot put him down.”
Posted in Human Oddities | No Comments »
Saturday, July 28th, 2007
K-WHAT? Unbuilt Maui TV station lands questionable call letters
THE call letters KUNT have landed at a yet-unbuilt low-power digital television station in Wailuku, Maui.
Alarmingly similar to a word the dictionary says is obscene, the call letters were among a 15-page list of new call letters issued by the Federal Communications Commission and released this week.
The same station owner also received KWTF for a station in Arizona.
From Skokie, Ill., comes a sincere apology “to anyone that was offended,” said Kevin Bae, vice president of KM Communications Inc., who requested and received KUNT and KWTF. It is “extremely embarrassing for me and my company and we will file to change those call letters immediately.”
Posted in Doh!, Idiot Authorities | No Comments »
Saturday, July 28th, 2007
Pilot killed in collision at Wisconsin air show
Two single-engine war planes at an experimental air show collided while landing Friday, killing one of the pilots and injuring the other, officials said.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the collision between the two P-51 Mustangs happened at 3:17 p.m. after the planes finished a performance at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s annual AirVenture show.
Posted in Oops | No Comments »
Saturday, July 28th, 2007
News helicopters collide; 4 dead
A police chase through the streets of downtown Phoenix turned into a midair tragedy Friday afternoon when two television news helicopters covering the action collided and crashed to the ground in smoke and flame, killing all four people on board.
KTVK-TV said photojournalist Jim Cox and pilot Scott Bowerback were killed. KNXV-TV identified its crew as photographer Rick Krolak and pilot Craig Smith.
The helicopters collided as the stations were covering the police pursuit of a stolen white truck towing a trailer. Assistant Chief Mark Angle of the Phoenix Fire Department said wreckage from both helicopters then landed in a downtown park.
Aerial footage from another station covering the chase, KPNX-TV, showed large plumes of black smoke and flames coming from the wreckage.
Posted in Oops | No Comments »
Saturday, July 28th, 2007
A career ruined: Man’s sentence follows long-distance Internet squabble, arson
Two years ago, Russell Tavares was a clean-cut 25-year-old entrusted with “very high clearance” in missile and fire control in the U.S. Navy, officials say.
Now he’s the subject of a bizarre, tragic story — one that McLennan County investigators say would be a fitting plot for a television crime drama about short tempers, long-distance vendettas and the Internet’s ability to bring various personalities into conflict.
On Russell Tavares (above): “I’ve worked plenty of arson cases, but never one as bizarre as this one. Most are committed for money or getting back at somebody. This one, he blames on the computer.” — James Pack, McLennan County Sheriff’s Office detective
Tavares was involved in an Internet chat room squabble with John Anderson, a 59-year-old Elm Mott resident. Anderson said he called Tavares “a nerd.”
Tavares’ response: He took a leave of absence from the Navy. Drove from Virginia to Waco. Set fire to Anderson’s trailer home.
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, Idiot Criminals, Technological Travesties | No Comments »
Saturday, July 28th, 2007
Accused grave robbers dodge sex charges
Three men who dug up a young woman’s corpse to have sex with it after seeing her obituary photo cannot be charged with attempted sexual assault because Wisconsin has no law against necrophilia, an appeals court ruled Thursday.
A judge was correct to dismiss the charges against twin brothers Nicholas and Alexander Grunke and Dustin Radke, all 21, because lawmakers never intended to criminalize sex with a corpse, the District 4 Court of Appeals said in a 3-0 ruling.
The three men went to a cemetery in Cassville in southwestern Wisconsin on Sept. 2 to remove the body of Laura Tennessen, 20, who had been killed the week before in a motorcycle crash.
Posted in Sexual Deviants | No Comments »
Saturday, July 28th, 2007
Diana was ‘devious, slow and disturbingly neurotic,’ mocks Germaine Greer
Feminist Germaine Greer has caused outrage in Australia for calling the late Princess of Wales, “slow”, “devious” and “disturbingly neurotic”.
The controversial academic claims Diana is partly responsible for the car accident that killed her almost a decade ago – by initiating a love triangle between herself, Dodi Fayed and heart surgeon Hasnat Khan.
“The saddest thought of all is that Diana’s death may have resulted indirectly from another of her hack-handed manipulations; it is said that she only went to Paris with (her late lover) Dodi Fayed in order to make heart surgeon Hasnat Khan jealous,” writes Greer in an essay published in Weekend Australian Magazine.
Posted in Idiot Celebrities, Politically Incorrect | No Comments »
Friday, July 27th, 2007
Falling Ice Chunks a Mystery in Iowa Town
Large chunks of ice, one of them reportedly about 50 pounds, fell from the sky Thursday in this northeast Iowa city, smashing through a woman’s roof and tearing through nearby trees.
Authorities are unsure of the ice’s origin but have theorized the chunks either fell from an airplane or naturally accumulated high in the atmosphere — both rare occurrences.
“It sounded like a bomb!” said 78-year-old Jan Kenkel, who was standing in her kitchen when an ice chunk crashed through her roof at about 5:30 a.m. “I jumped about a foot!”
Posted in Most Mysterious, Restless Earth | No Comments »
Thursday, July 26th, 2007
Drunk astronauts allowed to fly, admits panel
A PANEL has found that astronauts were allowed to fly on at least two occasions despite warnings they were so drunk they posed a flight risk, Aviation Week reported today on its website.
The publication said the panel set up by NASA to study astronaut health issues reported “heavy use of alcohol” within 12 hours of launch.
It said flight surgeons and other astronauts warned that the drunken astronauts posed a flight risk when they flew on the two known occasions.
Posted in Career Limiting Move, Fun with Alcohol, Space | No Comments »
Thursday, July 26th, 2007
NASA Reports Sabotage of Flight Computer
A space program worker deliberately damaged a computer that is supposed to fly aboard shuttle Endeavour in less than two weeks, an act of sabotage that was caught before the equipment was loaded onto the spaceship, NASA said Thursday.
The unidentified employee, who works for a NASA subcontractor, cut wires inside the computer that is supposed to be delivered to the international space station by Endeavour, said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA’s space operations chief. The worker also damaged a similar computer that was not meant to fly to space.
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, Space | No Comments »
Thursday, July 26th, 2007
Sherborn teen charged with bestiality
A Sherborn teen was charged yesterday with having sex with sheep at a farm near his home, and police reports suggest the encounters may have gone on for nearly a year.
Roger Henderson II, 18, was arraigned yesterday in Natick District Court on charges of bestiality, cruelty to animals and breaking and entering in connection with an incident police say took place at Boggastow Farm on June 27.
According to a police report, the farm’s barn had been the target of at least a dozen break-ins between August 2006 and June 2007, prompting the property owner to install surveillance cameras.
Posted in Sexual Deviants | No Comments »
Thursday, July 26th, 2007
US cat ‘predicts patient deaths’
A US cat that is reportedly able to sense when a nursing home’s residents are about to die is baffling doctors.
Oscar has a habit of curling up next to patients at the home in Providence, Rhode Island, in their final hours.
According to the author of a study in the New England Journal of Medicine, the two-year-old cat has been observed to be correct in 25 cases so far.
Staff now alert the families of residents when he sits down next to their ailing loved one.
Posted in Animal Weirdness | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007
UFO sightings bring town to a standstill
A crowd of 100 stunned stargazers brought a town centre to a standstill when five mysterious UFOs were spotted hovering in the sky.
Drinkers spilled out of pubs, motorists stopped to gawp and camera phones were aimed upwards as the five orbs, in a seeming formation, hovered above Stratford-Upon-Avon for half an hour.
The unidentified flying objects lit up the otherwise clear night sky above Shakespeare’s birthplace in Warwickshire on Saturday.
Posted in Aliens | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007
Flood crisis operation launched
Residents of flood-hit areas in England have been told not to panic as a massive operation takes place to get clean water to those left stranded.
Emergency services have been battling to deliver supplies to the 350,000 people across Gloucestershire without running water since Sunday.
Police urged calm, saying there was enough water for everyone.
Meanwhile, homes in west Oxford have begun to flood and water is being pumped from an electricity substation.
Whenever authorities tell you not to panic, it’s time to panic…
Posted in Idiot Authorities, Restless Earth | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007
Breakdowns: A drunk employee kills all of the websites you care about
365 Main, a datacenter on the edge of San Francisco’s Financial District, is popular with Soma startups for its proximity and its state-of-the-art facilities. Or it used to be, anyway, until a power outage took down sites including Craigslist, Six Apart’s TypePad and LiveJournal blogging sites, local listings site Yelp, and blog search engine Technorati. The cause? You won’t believe it.
A source close to the company says:
Someone came in shitfaced drunk, got angry, went berserk, and fucked up a lot of stuff. There’s an outage on 40 or so racks at minimum.
Whoever it is, while we like how you roll in theory, in practice, we’d appreciate it if you laid off the servers running websites we actually use.
Posted in Fun with Alcohol | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007
Mirror reporters held over fake bomb attempt
Two Daily Mirror journalists were arrested yesterday after attempting to plant a fake bomb on a train in what the newspaper called a “legitimate and justified journalistic exercise”.
The reporters were arrested at Stonebridge Park depot in north-west London after railway staff noticed the men carrying fake equipment and approached them to ask what they were doing on the site before contacting the British Transport police to report the trespass.
A police spokesman said the men were arrested at the depot yesterday afternoon and taken to a police station nearby. The matter was still being investigated and no charges had yet been laid, police said.
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, Corrupt Journos | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007
Princess says she talks to angels | Metro.co.uk
In a move that makes the misadventures of our own beloved Royal Family look positively amateurish, Princess Martha Louise of Norway has announced that she is clairvoyant, and wants to help people by teaching them how to talk to angels.
The 35-year-old Princess – the daughter of King Harald and Queen Sonja, and a trained physical therapist – said on a Web site for her alternative education centre that she has been communicating with angels since childhood.
Posted in Crazy is as Crazy Does | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007
Oxygen tank lightning strike kills diver
A 36-year-old diver was killed off a Florida beach after lightning struck his oxygen tank, authorities have said.
The man, whose name was not immediately released, was diving with three others off a boat near Deerfield Beach on Sunday.
When he surfaced, ‘lighting struck his tank,’ said Deerfield Beach fire Chief Gary Fernaays. ‘He was approximately 30 feet from the boat at the time.’
Posted in Divine Vengeance, I hate it when that happens | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007
Weekly Piracy Report
Things heating up, with 9 incidents last week, including:
20.07.2007: 0635 LT: Khorramshahr terminal, Iraq.
While underway to the pilot station, with pilot onboard, a container ship had to pass over fishing nets. The Iraq fishermen opened fire on the vessel. Bullets hit the accommodation. Pilot notified the incident to the Iranian coast guard and port security officer. No casualties.
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Pirate Update | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007
US wants trucks mounted with frikkin’ laser beams
US arms and aerospace manufacturer Boeing announced on Friday that it had landed a contract to develop truck-mounted laser cannons for the US Army.
As part of the Army’s High Energy Laser Technology Demonstrator (HEL TD) project, Boeing will produce a “rugged beam control system”, which will be mounted on a monstrous 20 tonne Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck.
The HEL TD is intended to shoot down incoming enemy artillery shells, rockets, or mortar bombs. Laser systems which can actually blast stuff, as opposed to merely lighting targets up for other weapons to hit, are big and bulky items – hence the big carrying vehicle (though the HEL TD is a mere peashooter compared to Boeing’s other famous blaster-cannon programme, the jumbo-jet mounted Airborne Laser).
Posted in Technological Travesties, Toys!, War | No Comments »
Monday, July 23rd, 2007
India’s Robin Hood is shot dead after 30 years on run
Police shot dead India’s most wanted bandit yesterday, ending the 30-year reign of a criminal hailed by poor villagers in the north as the country’s modern-day Robin Hood.
Shiv Kumar, known by the alias Dadua, had ruled the forests and ravines of the central states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh since the late 1970s, when he first appeared on the official list of feared outlaws. He was wanted for more than 200 cases of murder, extortion and kidnapping and had a bounty of 500,000 rupees (£6,000) on his head.
After a fierce two-day gun battle in the Chitrakoot region, about 185 miles (300km) southwest of Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, he was killed by a special task force along with four of his accomplices, Inspector-General A. K. Jain said.
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Concentrated Criminality | No Comments »
Sunday, July 22nd, 2007
Mystic leads Mugabe on fake fuel hunt
ZIMBABWE police are hunting a traditional spirit medium who led President Robert Mugabe’s Government on a fruitless search for much-needed fuel she said was mysteriously oozing out of a rock.
The southern African state is battling with acute fuel shortages amid an economic crisis many blame on Mugabe’s policies.
A Zimbabwean government newspaper today reported a 35-year-old traditional healer and spirit medium claimed to have discovered diesel streaming from a rock in the northwest around Chinhoyi Caves, protected by locals as a traditional shrine.
Rotina Mavhunga had said “the diesel was a gift from ancestral spirits who saw that their children were suffering because of the fuel shortage” and was pictured by a local newspaper holding a hosepipe stuck into a rock, “spewing the oil”, the Sunday Mail said.
Mr Mugabe’s governing ZANU-PF dispatched an investigation team, including three senior cabinet ministers, which established there were no oil fields, the Sunday Mail quoted the party’s information secretary Nathan Shamuyarira as saying.
Posted in Crazed Dictatorships, Idiot Authorities | No Comments »
Sunday, July 22nd, 2007
Seagull becomes crisp shoplifter
A seagull has turned shoplifter by wandering into a shop and helping itself to crisps.
The bird walks into the RS McColl newsagents in Aberdeen when the door is open and makes off with cheese Doritos.
The seagull, nicknamed Sam, has now become so popular that locals have started paying for his crisps.
Shop assistant Sriaram Nagarajan said: “Everyone is amazed by the seagull. For some reason he only takes that one particular kind of crisps.”
Posted in Animal Rebellion Update | No Comments »
Sunday, July 22nd, 2007
No Silence Here
It’s a bad idea to burglarize a place marked “K-9 training facility.“
Police dog handlers arriving Wednesday at the abandoned nursing home where they hold training sessions discovered two men and a woman dismantling the building’s copper pipes and wiring, Hall County Sheriff’s Sgt. Kiley Sargent said.
When the officers arrived, the three dropped their tools and ran. That was their second mistake.
“For anyone to try to run from a whole unit of canines, it’s just a no-win situation,“ Sargent said.
Posted in Idiot Criminals | No Comments »
Sunday, July 22nd, 2007
Enraged Circus Elephant Stomps Man To Death
Police in Thailand said a circus elephant stomped a man to death after the man apparently angered him.
Police say the 6-year-old elephant was resting in an open field when the man struck him. The elephant picked up the man with his trunk and hurled him on to the ground before stomping on him.
Police say the elephant kept rescuers back, running toward them in a threatening manner. The man was eventually taken to a hospital but died there from a cracked skull.
Hat tip to Kara!
Posted in Animal Rebellion Update, Kara's Classics | No Comments »
Friday, July 20th, 2007
Fisherman Nets Skull Fragment of Friend
A North Sea fisherman has netted a gruesome catch: a piece of skull belonging to his missing friend.
Barry Hunter picked the skull fragment out of his net in December while trawling near the mouth of the River Tyne, about 280 miles (450 kilometers) north of London, Northumbria police said in a statement.
Posted in I hate it when that happens, Nautical Nightmares | No Comments »
Friday, July 20th, 2007
The World’s Stupidest Fatwas
No central authority controls doctrine in Islam, one of the world’s great religions. The result? A proliferation of bizarre religious edicts against targets ranging from Salman Rushdie to polio vaccinations. FP collects some of the worst examples here.
Posted in Idiot Authorities | No Comments »
Friday, July 20th, 2007
Eight killed in feud over fungus harvest
A FEUD between two southwestern Chinese towns over access to valuable wild fungus erupted into a gun battle that left eight people dead and 44 wounded.
The violence occurred in the Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of mountainous Sichuan province yesterday.
“A county government official said around 200 residents from Danba and Sumdo townships clashed in a dispute over access to wild fungus and firewood,” the Xinhua news agency said.
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Concentrated Criminality | No Comments »
Friday, July 20th, 2007
Tug of war over Noriega release
AN international legal tussle has broken out over the fate of deposed Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega as he prepares for his release from a Florida prison.
Authorities in France, backed by the US Justice Department, are demanding that the inmate, known as Pineapple Face because of his pockmarked features, be extradited to Paris, where he allegedly bought three flats using illegal drug money.
However, the Government in Panama wants him returned to his homeland to face punishment for the torture and murder in 1985 of a dissident leader whose severed head was discovered in a mailbag.
Noriega, meanwhile, is also fighting to go home, hopeful thatsympathetic elements in the Panamanian leadership will allow him to live out his old age with his family as a free man.
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, Drugs, War | No Comments »
Friday, July 20th, 2007
Larvae Grow Under Man’s Scalp
Doctors thought the strange, bleeding bumps on Aaron Dallas’ head might be from gnat bites or shingles. Then the bumps started moving.
A doctor found five active bot fly larvae living beneath the skin atop Dallas’ head.
“I’d put my hand back there and feel them moving. I thought it was blood coursing through my head,” Dallas told the (Glenwood Springs) Post Independent.
“I could hear them. I actually thought I was going crazy.”
Posted in Medical Monstrosities, Yuck! | No Comments »
Friday, July 20th, 2007
Firefighter’s Helmet Deflects Flying Rod
A firefighter is counting his luck after a red-hot steel rod was fired into his helmet from an exploding vehicle, local media reported Thursday.
The steel rod was traveling at such speed it punched a hole through a steel door before hitting 41-year-old Gary Wright’s Kevlar fire helmet, The New Zealand Herald said.
Wright was getting ready to fight a blaze earlier this month that had engulfed a garage full of vehicles in a suburb of Auckland, New Zealand’s biggest city, when the steel rod fired out of an exploding van 62 feet away.
Posted in You lucky bastard | No Comments »
Friday, July 20th, 2007
Dear Piece Of Trash
Incensed by the most recent arrest of an alleged drug dealer, a Cleveland politician wrote the perp a scathing, profanity-filled letter that referred to the man as a “crack dealing piece of trash” who should “go to jail or the cemetery soon.” In a July 12 letter, a copy of which you’ll find below, Councilman Michael Polensek, 57, tore into Arsenio Winston, 18, after learning of the teenager’s arrest earlier this month on a felony drug trafficking rap.
Posted in Career Limiting Move, Concentrated Criminality | 1 Comment »
Thursday, July 19th, 2007
Former Broadcom CEO Accused of Building Secret Lair Under Estate for Sex and Drugs
The co-founder of semiconductor maker Broadcom Corp., under scrutiny in a federal stock options probe, was accused seven years ago of building an underground hideaway at his estate to indulge in drugs and sex with prostitutes, according to court documents.
In a draft complaint made against Henry T. Nicholas III, a construction crew claimed the billionaire failed to pay them millions of dollars for work performed between 1998 and 2002, and used “manipulation, lies, intimidation, and even death threats” when anyone threatened to quit.
The illegal network of tunnels and rooms underneath Nicholas’ Laguna Hills estate was kept secret from his wife and city officials, the documents said.
Hat tip to Kara!
Posted in Kara's Classics, Sexual Deviants | No Comments »
Thursday, July 19th, 2007
Mom charged with beating kids on plane
A California mother was charged with beating her children, ages 2 and 4, on a commercial aircraft and interfering with the flight crew.
Tamera Freeman, 38, who appeared in court on Wednesday, was arrested on Monday at Denver International Airport upon her arrival on a Frontier Airlines flight from San Francisco, California.
An FBI affidavit quotes passengers as saying Freeman appeared intoxicated, was abusive with her children before she boarded the plane and repeatedly hit and yelled at them during the flight.
The affidavit also alleges Freeman threw a drink at the feet of a flight attendant and followed her into an aisle yelling and pointing her finger, causing the attendant, who had intervened on the children’s behalf, to feel threatened.
Posted in Bad Parents | No Comments »
Thursday, July 19th, 2007
I Was an eBay Voldemort
Wednesday evening, Atlanta — It all started about 24 hours ago, when I found a plain cardboard box on my doorstep. I was surprised to see my name on the label, as I wasn’t expecting anything this week. My surprise increased exponentially when I opened the package to find a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows within.
With no disrespect meant to J. K. Rowling’s innumerable devotees, I’m not a particularly big Harry Potter fan. But I’d read two or three of the early books, and being as susceptible as the next guy to the hype for the last book in the series, I placed an order a few weeks ago at DeepDiscount.com, the store that was offering the lowest price. Ironically, I didn’t even spring for expedited shipping.
Posted in Oops | No Comments »
Thursday, July 19th, 2007
In Braintree, firefighters cut holes in wrong house
Town firefighters learned a different kind of lesson when they punched holes in a house as part of a training exercise: Make sure you have the right address.
And now the owners of the house they damaged want the Fire Department to pay up.
“They made the mistake,” said Clayton Luu, whose family had lived in the four-bedroom white Victorian since the 1980s until an electrical fire last year heavily damaged it. “They will have to pay for it.”
Posted in Idiot Authorities, Oops | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 18th, 2007
Man Convicted of Leaving Child to Be Eaten by Alligators
A man who had been released from prison early for good behavior was convicted Tuesday of trying to kill a young mother and leaving her 5-year-old daughter to be eaten alive by alligators in the Everglades.
Harrel Franklin Braddy had befriended Shandelle Maycock and her daughter Quatisha. Maycock testified that Braddy went to her home in November 1998 and grew enraged when she asked him to leave.
He choked Maycock until she was unconscious and then forced her and Quatisha into his car, the woman testified. At one point, Maycock gained consciousness, grabbed the child and jumped out of the moving vehicle.
Braddy stopped, choked the woman again and put her in the trunk, she testified. Maycock never saw her daughter again. Prosecutors said Braddy then drove to a section of Interstate 75 in the Everglades known as Alligator Alley and dropped Quatisha in the water beside the road.
She was alive when alligators bit her on the head and stomach, a medical examiner said.
Hat tip to Kara!
Posted in Bad Parents, Concentrated Criminality, Kara's Classics | Comments Off
Wednesday, July 18th, 2007
Security services ‘foil plot to kill Berezovsky at the London Hilton’
Boris Berezovsky fled Britain three weeks ago on the advice of Scotland Yard, amid reports that he was the target of an assassination attempt by a suspected Russian hitman.
The exiled tycoon and fierce critic of President Putin of Russia told The Times last night that he had been warned that it was not safe for him to remain in London, where he had been living since being granted asylum in Britain.
“I was informed by Scotland Yard that my life was in danger and they recommended that I leave the country,” he said. “I left three weeks ago but have now returned.”
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, Crazed Dictatorships | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 17th, 2007
Cops save teen stuck in mailbox
A teenage boy climbed into a mailbox in Brooklyn yesterday and had to be rescued by police when the large green bin locked behind him, cops and neighbors said.
Rising to the challenge of a dare, the 16-year-old climbed into the box about 4:45 p.m. after his pals had shimmied it open at Avenue W and E. 27th St. in Sheepshead Bay.
Police freed him from the mailbox – used only by the U.S. Postal Service for storage – some 15 minutes later, police said. No charges were leveled against the teenagers.
Posted in Teen Antics | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 17th, 2007
Former Judge Faces 20 Years In Prison For Mafia Dealings – Investigations News Story
A former Nassau County judge pleaded guilty Friday to trying to launder more than $400,000 for members of the Genovese crime family.
David Gross, 45, admitted he agreed to try to launder the cash he knew was the result of a jewelry heist. What Gross did not know is that one of the men he was making the deal with was an undercover FBI agent.
Federal prosecutors said Gross planned to keep up to 20 percent of all cash he agreed to launder. He also agreed to try to sell more than $280,000 worth of stolen diamonds.
“Sworn to do justice, a sitting judge violated his oath as well as the law when he partnered with a member of organized crime to launder proceeds of criminal activity,” U.S. attorney Roslynn Mauskopf said.
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, Idiot Authorities | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 17th, 2007
Wish for rain to wash away Homer
Pagans have pledged to perform “rain magic” to wash away a cartoon character painted next to their famous fertility symbol – the Cerne Abbas giant.
A doughnut-brandishing Homer Simpson was painted next to the giant on the hill above Cerne Abbas, Dorset, to promote the new Simpsons film.
Many believe the ancient chalk outline of the naked, sexually aroused giant to be a symbol of ancient spirituality.
Many couples also believe the 180ft carving aids fertility.
Posted in Doh! | No Comments »
Monday, July 16th, 2007
Found: the giant lion-eating chimps of the magic forest
Deep in the Congolese jungle is a band of apes that, according to local legend, kill lions, catch fish and even howl at the moon. Local hunters speak of massive creatures that seem to be some sort of hybrid between a chimp and a gorilla.
Their location at the centre of one of the bloodiest conflicts on the planet, the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has meant that the mystery apes have been little studied by western scientists. Reaching the region means negotiating the shifting fortunes of warring rebel factions, and the heart of the animals’ range is deep in impenetrable forest.
Article continues
But despite the difficulties, a handful of scientists have succeeded in studying the animals. Early speculation that the apes may be some yeti-like new species or a chimp/gorilla hybrid proved unfounded, but the truth has turned out to be in many ways even more fascinating. They are actually a population of super-sized chimps with a unique culture – and it seems, a taste for big cat flesh.
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Animal Weirdness | No Comments »
Monday, July 16th, 2007
Ohio Man Dies in Attempt to Steal Copper From Power Line; Body Found in Wires
A man trying to take down a power line to steal and sell the copper inside was electrocuted Monday, the Butler County sheriff’s office said.
Deputies found Brandon Reed, 22, of Hamilton, tangled in lines about 3 a.m., Lt. Marian Olivas said. Utility crews recovered the body, Olivas said.
Another man, Josh Snyder, 24, of Hamilton, told investigators that he left Reed about 20 miles north of Cincinnati and was supposed to pick him up after Reed had cut down the wire, Olivas said.
Posted in Darwin Award, Idiot Criminals | No Comments »
Monday, July 16th, 2007
Copper thieves die trying
Firefighters weren’t sure what was causing the smoke rising from a former discount store in this Baltimore suburb. The place had been abandoned for years, the interior stripped to the walls.
When they got inside July 2, they found only one thing burning: a 41-year-old man who became engulfed in flames and died after cutting through a high-voltage line.
Sean Phelps became another ghastly casualty of what authorities say is a deadly national trend: copper wiring thefts.
Posted in Darwin Award, Idiot Criminals | No Comments »
Monday, July 16th, 2007
Man shot in US governor’s office
An unidentified man armed with a gun has been shot dead at the offices of Colorado Governor Bill Ritter.
The incident occurred at about 1415 (2015 GMT) in the office foyer, Gov Ritter’s spokesman told the BBC.
He said the man was ordered repeatedly to put down his firearm before he was shot by state troopers, who provide security at the Denver state capitol.
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Concentrated Criminality, Darwin Award, Idiot Criminals | No Comments »
Sunday, July 15th, 2007
Woman Dies Doing Handstand on Balcony
An Alabama woman died after she fell 15 feet from an apartment balcony, according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.
Jessica Ashley Hawkins, 20, asked two friends to take her to the hospital after she struck the ground headfirst Thursday evening. Hawkins was attempting a handstand from the balcony when she fell.
Hawkins lost consciousness in the car on the way to the hospital, according to a sheriff’s incident report. She was taken to Winter Park Hospital, transferred to the Orlando Regional Medical Center and died at 11:35 p.m., according to the report.
“This really is a tragedy,” sheriff’s spokesman Jim Solomons said. “Both of the young lady’s friends were very, very distraught.”
Posted in Darwin Award | No Comments »
Sunday, July 15th, 2007
Tiger mauls zookeeper
A tiger at the San Antonio Zoo attacked a keeper Saturday, critically injuring him, the zoo said.
art.tiger.ap.jpg
Rescue workers wheel a zookeeper injured by a tiger to a medical helicopter Saturday in San Antonio, Texas.
The zookeeper, a man in his 20s, was attacked about 2:30 p.m. out of view of the public, said zoo spokeswoman Dawn Campos. The man, who specializes in large cats, was flown to a hospital and was in critical condition, a hospital spokeswoman said.
Posted in Animal Rebellion Update | No Comments »
Saturday, July 14th, 2007
Testing Video Games Can’t Possibly Be Harder Than an Afternoon With Xbox, Right?
…
The “dream job” of being a video game tester may sound like a way to get paid for doing exactly what you’d choose to do in the middle of the afternoon on your own living-room sofa, but the reality is very different. To find out how different, I spent a couple of weeks at Volt, a Redmond company that is the country’s largest independent video game tester. Hundreds of testers work at Nintendo and Microsoft during crunch times. More than 50 smaller Seattle-area video game developers—like Surreal, Valve, and Zipper—employ anywhere from five to 20 testers each. But when it’s time to contract out some of the most grunt-worthy testing tasks, companies call Volt.
Posted in Technological Travesties | No Comments »
Saturday, July 14th, 2007
Indian kids at graveyard school face nightmares
Scores of Indian children attending a school located in a graveyard were having recurring nightmares about ghosts and have appealed to authorities to shift them from the site, officials and residents said.
“I have stopped going to school after many dead people walked out of their graves and came into my dreams, ordering me to reach school on time,” said six-year-old Raqib Ansari.
This week, hundreds of children at the school in the eastern state of Bihar, accompanied by their parents, marched to the office of a senior district official, asking for the school to be shifted away from the Muslim graveyard.
Posted in Spooky | No Comments »
Saturday, July 14th, 2007
Man goes on rampage with tank in suburbs
A MAN has been arrested after an armoured personnel carrier (APC) was taken on a rampage in Sydney’s western suburbs.
Mt Druitt police on patrol discovered the armoured vehicle destroying an electricity substation in Sterling Road, Minchinbury, at about 2am (AEST) today.
They followed the APC through several suburbs, including Mt Druitt, Dharruk, Emerton, Glendenning and Plumpton.
The APC left a path of destruction, bringing down a number of mobile phone towers and relay sheds, police said.
The pursuit ended in Dean Park after about 90 minutes, when the vehicle stalled as it was being driven towards another mobile phone tower.
Posted in Concentrated Criminality | No Comments »
Friday, July 13th, 2007
“Two Billion” Rats Invade China Lake Towns
For the past two weeks residents living around China’s second largest lake have been able to smell a rat—make that two billion rats.
When the Yangtze River flooded on June 23, the water level rose in Dongting Lake, which sits along the river south of Wuhan in central China’s Hunan Province
The flooding began flushing out rat holes around the lake, triggering a literal rat race for higher ground.
Since then farming communities in more than 20 counties near Dongting have been overrun, observers say.
“For the past week, the situation has been very serious,” Tan Lulu, who works for the international conservation group WWF, told National Geographic News from WWF’s Hunan office in Changsha.
Posted in Animal Rebellion Update | Comments Off
Friday, July 13th, 2007
Songun Policy Lauded
The Songun policy pursued by the Workers’ Party of Korea serves as an all-powerful treasured sword which makes it possible to smoothly settle all the difficult and complicated problems arising in the revolution and construction in the present times. One of the major secrets of it is that the Songun policy is most skillfully combined with the revolutionary principle, creativity and subtlety.
Rodong Sinmun Wednesday observes this in a signed article.
The WPK’s Songun policy is a prestigious one as it is run through with the transparent revolutionary principle, the article says, and goes on:
The WPK laid it down as a firm revolutionary principle to give priority to the military affairs, reinforce the revolutionary armed forces in every way and uncompromisingly fight against imperialism long ago and has steadfastly adhered to it since then.
It is the unshakable principled stand of the WPK to resolutely react to the high-handed policy of the enemies with the toughest policy and shatter their crafty strategy to destabilize the DPRK with a merciless revolutionary ideological offensive.
Posted in Crazed Dictatorships, N. Korea | No Comments »
Friday, July 13th, 2007
Pensioners take cash and points to keep speeding drivers on the road
It is the latest ruse on the roads of France: drivers are avoiding disqualification by trading licence points on the internet.
Complete strangers are taking the rap for speeding offences in return for up to €1,500 (£1,000), and police admit they are powerless to intervene. Even pensioners who have not driven for many years are getting in on the act.
The online scam is also popular in Spain and other European countries, and authorities believe it may soon be introduced in Britain. It threatens to make a mockery of a French crackdown on road safety and embarrass President Sarkozy over his promise of a “zero tolerance” on law and order.
…
The technique is simple. In return for money, the seller provides his or her name and licence number in response to the speed camera ticket. The notice that is automatically sent to the owner of the offending vehicle includes a form for identifying another driver. Checks are extremely rare.
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, Unintended Consequences | No Comments »
Friday, July 13th, 2007
Kidnap gangs target ‘white gold’
IN NIGERIA’S oil-rich south, foreign workers are known as “white gold” among the gangs who kidnap them for ransom.
“Ah, the whites are coming,” chuckled one young gang member as a heavily-guarded oil company convoy sped throughPort Harcourt, sirens blaring. “It’s like ice cream vans in your country.”
Nigeria is Africa’s largest producer of crude oil, or “black gold”. But the country is in the grip of a kidnapping epidemic, with more than 150 foreigners seized so far this year, including many Britons and a woman and child – nearly double the total for all of last year.
The attacks have contributed to a drop in production of about 25 per cent, driving up oil prices worldwide with no end to the kidnappings in sight.
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Concentrated Criminality | No Comments »
Friday, July 13th, 2007
Elephants on the loose cause a circus in Ontario
In the no-nonsense parlance of York Regional Police, they were described as “elephants outstanding.”
In fact there were elephants out standing in the middle of downtown Newmarket, Ont., just north of Toronto, early Thursday morning – munching on tree leaves, stress-testing the concrete, freaking out the local population, and doing what escaped circus elephants do.
Suzy, Bunny and Minny, weighing in at a combined 11,000 kilograms, managed to escape from the confines of their Garden Brothers Circus pen around 3 a.m. Thursday. An electric fence, the sole guard against such pachydermic freedom, had been accidentally disabled earlier in the evening.
And so Suzy and Bunny made a break for it. Minny, too, got out of the pen, but then promptly fell asleep.
Posted in Animal Rebellion Update | No Comments »
Thursday, July 12th, 2007
Iranian Police Smash Squirrel Spy Ring
Police in Iran are reported to have taken 14 squirrels into custody – because they are suspected of spying.
The rodents were found near the Iranian border allegedly equipped with eavesdropping devices.
The reports have come from the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).
Posted in Animal Rebellion Update, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Thursday, July 12th, 2007
Cardboard key to Beijing street food?
Chopped cardboard, softened with an industrial chemical and made tasty with pork flavoring, is a main ingredient in batches of steamed buns sold in one Beijing neighborhood, state television said.
The report, aired late Wednesday on China Central Television, highlights the country’s problems with food safety despite government efforts to improve the situation.
Countless small, often illegally run operations exist across China and make money cutting corners by using inexpensive ingredients or unsavory substitutes. They are almost impossible to regulate.
Hat tip to Kara!
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, Crazed Dictatorships, Idiot Authorities, Kara's Classics | No Comments »
Thursday, July 12th, 2007
Lightning Strikes Reported by IPod Users
Listen to an iPod during a storm and you may get more than electrifying tunes. A Canadian jogger suffered wishbone-shaped chest and neck burns, ruptured eardrums and a broken jaw when lightning traveled through his music player’s wires.
Last summer, a Colorado teen ended up with similar injuries when lightning struck nearby as he was listening to his iPod while mowing the lawn.
Emergency physicians report treating other patients with burns from freak accidents while using personal electronic devices such as beepers, Walkman players and laptop computers outdoors during storms.
Michael Utley, a former stockbroker from West Yarmouth, Mass., who survived being struck by lightning while golfing, has tracked 13 cases since 2004 of people hit while talking on cell phones. They are described on his Web site,
Contrary to some urban legends and media reports, electronic devices don’t attract lightning the way a tall tree or a lightning rod does.
Posted in Sinners in the hands of an angry God, Technological Travesties | No Comments »
Thursday, July 12th, 2007
NKorea silences its karaoke bars
North Korea will close its karaoke bars in an attempt to stem foreign influences on the isolated communist country, a South Korean civic group said Wednesday.
Separately, the North’s Ministry of People’s Security conducted house-to-house overnight inspections near the Chinese border earlier this month to search for cell phones and illegal video CDs, the Good Friends aid agency said in a newsletter.
The ministry said in a directive last week that silencing the karaoke outlets was a “mopping-up operation to prevent the ideological and cultural permeation of anti-socialism,” according to the aid group.
Posted in Crazed Dictatorships, N. Korea | No Comments »
Thursday, July 12th, 2007
Online Help Sought to Organize Galaxies
Scientists need help sorting through an unusual digital photo album: pictures of about 1 million galaxies.
They are asking volunteers on the Internet to help classify the galaxies as either elliptical or spiral and note, where possible, in which direction they rotate. It would be the largest galactic census ever compiled, something scientists say would provide new insight into the structure of the universe.
”We’re in the golden era of astronomy,” said Bob Nichol, an astronomer at the University of Portsmouth in southern England. ”We have more data than we can assimilate, and we need help.”
If you are down for the cause, click here: Galaxy Zoo
Posted in Space | No Comments »
Thursday, July 12th, 2007
Man tries to save $54M pants lawsuit
A customer who sued a dry cleaner for $54 million over a missing pair of pants has asked the judge who threw out the widely mocked case to reconsider, saying she committed a “fundamental legal error.”
Roy L. Pearson, a local administrative law judge, argued Wednesday that District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Judith Bartnoff failed to address his legal claims. Bartnoff had ruled that the business owners did not violate the city’s consumer protection law by failing to live up to his expectations of a “Satisfaction Guaranteed” sign once displayed in the store.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Thursday, July 12th, 2007
Two-year-old boy beheaded
A TWO-year-old boy was beheaded and chopped up in a Kenyan capital slum today, police said, amid a fierce crackdown on an illegal sect blamed for a string of murders and decapitations.
The boy’s mutilated torso was discovered in a maize farm and his head 500m away at a river bank in capital’s Nairobi’s crime-prone Korogocho slums, police commander Paul Ruto said.
The remains had no limbs, the chest was lacerated and the genitals chopped off, raising speculation that the body parts might be used in rites by the politically-linked Mungiki sect.
“The boy has been identified positively by his father who says he went missing two days ago,” Mr Ruto said.
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Concentrated Criminality | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 11th, 2007
Scientists find signs of water beyond solar system
Astronomers said on Wednesday they had discovered the best evidence yet of water outside our own solar system — in the atmosphere of a giant planet 60 light years from Earth.
Writing in the scientific journal Nature, researchers said the planet itself, HD 189733b, was unlikely to harbor life but evidence supported the search for life in other solar systems.
“We’re thrilled to have identified clear signs of water on a planet that is trillions of miles away,” Giovanna Tinetti, a European Space Agency fellow at the Institute d’Astrophysique de Paris in France who led the study, was quoted as saying in an accompanying news release.
Posted in Aliens, Space | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 11th, 2007
Canada Has the Most Pot Smokers in Industrialized World
Canada ranks fifth worldwide when it comes to marijuana usage, but ranks first among industrialized nations, according to the 2007 World Drug Report.
About 16.8 percent of Canadians ages 15 to 64 light up, compared to 12.6 percent of Americans in the same age bracket, according to the report. Canada’s usage is about four times the worldwide average of 3.8 percent, while the United States’ usage is about three times the average.
Marijuana, or cannabis, remains the most commonly used drug in the world with almost 160 million people ages 15 to 64 using it in 2005, said the report, which was put out by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Usage is down slightly from 162 million, according to last year’s World Drug Report, which reviewed data from 2004.
Posted in Drugs | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 11th, 2007
Giant ‘corpse-eating’ badgers terrorise Iraqi city
THE Iraqi port city of Basra, already prey to a nasty turf war between rival militia factions, has now been gripped by a scary rumour – giant badgers are stalking the streets by night, eating humans.
The animals were allegedly released into the area by British forces.
Local farmers have caught and killed several of the beasts, but this has done nothing to dispel the rumour.
Posted in Animal Rebellion Update, Conspiracies, War | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 11th, 2007
Dog Nurses Kitten Found in SUV’s Hood
By all accounts, Tahoe is a typical kitten: cute, sleepy and hungry. But his eating habits are far from typical, as the stray’s been nursing from a 3-year-old dog named Lillie.
Ever since the kitten was found under the hood of Eunice Collins’ running Chevrolet Tahoe a few weeks ago, he’s been feeding from the unusually cooperative longhaired dachshund. Tahoe feeds in the morning, at night and after naps, purring and pawing at the dog’s belly.
“That’s not going to happen very often,” said veterinarian John Beck, who added that the “kitten got lucky, basically” that he found a dog with those maternal instincts.
Posted in Animal Weirdness | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 11th, 2007
Sprint Cuts 1,000+ Customers For Excessive Complaining
Hundreds of cell phone customers are being given the boot, accused of being too high maintenance.
Sprint-Nextel is disconnecting more than 1,000 subscribers on grounds the clients call customer service too often and make “unreasonable requests.”
The 1,200 people getting dropped will have to find a new carrier by the end of the month.
A Sprint representative said the average customer calls customer service less than once a month, but the 1,200 clients getting the boot call 40-50 times as often.
Sprint said whatever the complaint, it has worked to resolve it but due to the volume of calls it’s obvious customers involved are not happy.
In a statement, the company said: “Rather than continue to operate in a situation that was unsatisfactory for Sprint and our subscribers, we chose to terminate our relationship with those customers to allow them to pursue other options.”
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 11th, 2007
People with moles age more slowly than others
People who seem to stay younger for longer are also likely to have more moles, research released yesterday suggests.
A study of twins found a striking correlation between high numbers of moles and a biological marker for slow ageing.
Goldie Hawn, people with moles age more slowly than others
Goldie Hawn: ageing well
As a result, people with a lot of moles might be expected to live longer than those who have very few, despite facing a greater risk of skin cancer.
Dr Veronique Bataille, from the Twin Research Unit at King’s College London, who led the study said: “The results are very exciting as they show, for the first time, that moley people who have a slightly increased risk of melanoma [skin cancer] may, on the other hand, have the benefit of a reduced rate of ageing.
“This could imply susceptibility to fewer age-related diseases such as heart disease or osteoporosis, for example. Further studies are needed.”
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 10th, 2007
Wrecking Ball Runs Amok In Pa. Town
A wrecking ball wreaked havoc on a small college town in northwest Pennsylvania on Monday.
Wrecking Ball Goes Wild
The 1,500-pound, 3-foot-wide ball broke loose from a crane cable and rolled nearly a mile downhill.
Click here to find out more!
It smashed more than a dozen vehicles and injured three people as it bounced from curb to curb.
Posted in I hate it when that happens | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 10th, 2007
Oregon man takes lawn chair up to 13,000 feet, travels 193 miles
Last weekend, Bend gas station owner Kent Couch settled down in his lawn chair with some drinks and snacks – and a parachute.
Attached to the lawn chair were 105 balloons of various colors, each 4 feet around. Bundled together, the balloons rise three stories high.
Couch carried a global positioning system device, a two-way radio, a digital camcorder and a cell phone. He also had instruments to measure his altitude and speed and about four plastic bags holding five gallons of water each to act as a ballast – he could turn a spigot, release water and rise.
Destination: Idaho.
Nearly nine hours later, Couch was short of Idaho. But he was 193 miles from home, in a farmer’s field near Union, having crossed much of Oregon at 11,000 feet and higher.
Posted in Doh!, Suicidal Tendencies | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 10th, 2007
New ‘Times’ Tower: ‘It’s Like the Dark Ages’
The soaring new New York Times tower — already known for its weird toilets (when flushed, they apparently sound like a kitten being strangled), its weirder elevators (no buttons, and no indication of what floor they’re on), a leak problem (editor Bill Keller’s office got soggy in a recent rainstorm), and a mouse problem (reported by Gawker) — still has a few more surprises between the floorboards: maggots. “It’s hard to put out a newspaper when you’re worried about what might fall on your head,” one Times staffer told us this week. “One of the photo editors was sitting at her desk and maggots started falling from the ceiling tile on to her head.”
Posted in Yuck! | Comments Off
Tuesday, July 10th, 2007
Study finds smoking wards off Parkinson’s disease
There is more evidence to back up a long-standing theory that smokers are less likely to develop Parkinson’s disease than people who do not use tobacco products, researchers reported on Monday.
The apparent protective effect of tobacco against the degenerative nerve disease has been observed for years but a University of California Los Angeles School of Public Health report said a new review of existing studies seems to confirm it, with long-term and current smokers at the lowest risk.
The review also found that the effect seems to extend beyond cigarettes to pipes and cigars, and possibly to chewing tobacco, and that it persisted among those who had stopped smoking years earlier.
Posted in Weird Science | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 10th, 2007
Weekly Piracy Report
30.06.2007: 0640 LT: Jakarta outer anchorage, Indonesia.
Around six armed robbers, from two boats, boarded an anchored container ship, from the port and stbd quarters. The duty AB was attacked and hit on the head with an axe, causing sever bleeding. Ships alarm raised and crew mustered, however robbers stole ships’ stores and escaped. Pilot and local agents informed. Injured crew taken ashore for medical treatment, in pilot boat, and later repatriated.
…
24.05.2007: Mogadishu, Somalia.
Pirates attacked and seized a dhow with 14 crewmembers. The hijacked dhow remained at anchor, off Haradhere, until negotiations with the owners were completed. The dhow was released on the 21 June 2007.
Before 15 May 2007; Somalia.
Verbal communication from the Taiwan Fisheries Dept confirms that a fishing vessel has been hijacked by Somali pirates and held at Haradhere.
Official notification from the owners is awaited
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Concentrated Criminality, Pirate Update | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 10th, 2007
China Executes Ex-Food and Drug Chief
China executed the former head of its food and drug watchdog on Tuesday for approving untested medicine in exchange for cash, the strongest signal yet from Beijing that it is serious about tackling its product safety crisis.
The execution of former State Food and Drug Administration director Zheng Xiaoyu was confirmed by state television and the official Xinhua News Agency.
During Zheng’s tenure from 1998 to 2005, his agency approved six medicines that turned out to be fake, and the drug-makers used falsified documents to apply for approvals, according to previous state media reports. One antibiotic caused the deaths of at least 10 people.
Posted in Career Limiting Move, Hard Core! | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 10th, 2007
Armoured Vehicle Joy Rider Is Banned
A man who took an armoured vehicle on a joy ride and flattened a car has been banned from driving.
Jack Carroll “gleefully” drove the 25-tonne Warrior at Catterick Garrison, North Yorkshire, in July last year.
A soldier captured the 22-year-old’s antics on a mobile phone video, which was then circulated on various websites, including YouTube.
Carroll, from Anfield, Merseyside, pleaded guilty to taking the vehicle without consent at Northallerton Magistrates’ Court.
Posted in Career Limiting Move, Concentrated Criminality | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 10th, 2007
“DC Madam” Posts Phone Records Online
In a move that will certainly set into motion hundreds of bloggers and journalists eager to unearth the next Washington sex scandal, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, aka the “DC Madam,” has posted 13 years worth of phone records on her website Monday afternoon. The records cover Palfrey’s time as head of “Pamela Martin & Associates,” a Washington, D.C.-based escort service. As Yeas & Nays noted last week, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler recently lifted the temporary restraining order prohibiting Deborah Jeane Palfrey from releasing those telephone records.
During an interview with Yeas & Nays last Thursday, Palfrey indicated that she had “every intention” of releasing her records to the public, but the move to post them on her website so quickly was not anticipated by many.
Posted in Career Limiting Move, Politico Follies, Sinners in the hands of an angry God | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, July 10th, 2007
U.S. warns citizens over Naples garbage crisis
The United States embassy in Rome has warned U.S citizens they may face a health risk in Italy’s southern Campania region due to a garbage crisis that has filled streets with piles of rubbish.
“U.S. citizens traveling to or through the area may encounter mounds of garbage, open fires with potentially toxic fumes, and/or sporadic public demonstrations by local residents attempting to block access to dumps,” the embassy said in an advisory note.
Posted in Idiot Activists, Idiot Authorities, Yuck! | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 10th, 2007
Bellevue man impaled near Coraopolis swimming hole
Police say a 46-year-old Bellevue man suffered what are believed to be life-threatening injuries when he was impaled near a swimming hole in Coraopolis.
Coraopolis police said Timothy Ray was trying to jump off an old bridge support when the incident occurred near where the Montour Creek flows into the Ohio River.
Police said Mr. Ray was pierced in the abdomen by a metal beam sticking out the of ground when he tried to jump into the water. He never made it in.
Posted in Yuck! | No Comments »
Monday, July 9th, 2007
Monroe v. Chewbacca?
On Sunday, a Marilyn Monroe look-alike called the cops on a Chewbacca character, reports and Elmo say.
Officers took a battery complaint from a Monroe impersonator Sunday at the Hollywood & Highland complex, the outdoor Hollywood mall that serves as home base for the Oscars, LAPD officer April Harding said on Monday.
The woman, whose name police declined to reveal, alleged someone touched her on her right shoulder “without her permission,” Harding said. She also told officers that about a month ago a man grabbed her hand and placed it on his genitals.
Posted in Aliens, Concentrated Criminality, Idiot Celebrities, Sexual Deviants | No Comments »
Monday, July 9th, 2007
Man dies after ‘tombstoning’ jump
A middle-aged man drowned and another was seriously injured when they jumped into the sea off a pier in Essex, in a stunt known as “tombstoning”.
The two men – both believed to be in their 40s – were found face-down in the sea by lifeboat crews after jumping off a pier at Clacton, Essex, on Saturday.
Posted in Darwin Award | No Comments »
Sunday, July 8th, 2007
Girl, 11, faces DUI charge after chase
Orange Beach police arrested an 11-year-old girl Tuesday night and charged her with driving under the influence of alcohol after a high-speed chase that ended when the child flipped the Chevrolet Monte Carlo she was driving.
Assistant Police Chief Greg Duck said a patrol officer noticed the Monte Carlo speeding west along Alabama 182 near the Phoenix V Condominium tower Tuesday night at about 10:30. When the officer flicked on his lights and tried to pull the car over, it sped up.
According to Duck: The Monte Carlo exceeded speeds of 100 mph in the ensuing chase, which flew west along the beach highway through Orange Beach, past Gulf State Park and into Gulf Shores — a distance of about 8 miles. The Monte Carlo eventually sideswiped another vehicle and then flipped over near the easternmost condo towers of Gulf Shore
Posted in Concentrated Criminality | No Comments »
Sunday, July 8th, 2007
China Debuts 1,000-Stall Public Restroom
They’re flush with pride in a southwestern Chinese city where a recently-opened porcelain palace features an Egyptian facade, soothing music and more than 1,000 toilets spread out over 32,290 square feet.
Officials in Chongqing are preparing to submit an application to Guinness World Records to have the free four-story public bathroom listed as the world’s largest, the state-run China Central Television reported Friday.
Posted in Cultural Oddities | No Comments »
Sunday, July 8th, 2007
UFO Believers Flock to Roswell to Celebrate 60th Anniversary of Supposed Flying Saucer Crash
If you truly believe a UFO and its crew of bug-eyed aliens came crashing down here 60 years ago, rest assured: You’re not alone.
At least 35,000 people have descended on Roswell this weekend for the 2007 Amazing Roswell UFO Festival to commemorate a purported flying saucer crash on a nearby ranch in July 1947. Participants have filled hotel rooms and nearly doubled the southeastern New Mexico town’s population for a few days.
The festival, which began Thursday, is a mixed bag that includes live concerts (one headlined by a band with a computer-generated ‘alien’ drummer), costume contests, a Main Street parade and a slew of lectures that ponder everything from body snatchers to “What Does NASA Really Know?”
Posted in Aliens, Conspiracies | No Comments »
Sunday, July 8th, 2007
Man Disguised as Tree Robs New Hampshire Bank
Police are on the hunt for a man who robbed a New Hampshire bank on Saturday disguised as a tree, according to MyFoxBoston.com.
The suspect walked into the Citizen’s Bank in Manchester with tree branches duct taped to his body and demanded money from the teller.
Posted in Human Oddities, Idiot Criminals | No Comments »
Saturday, July 7th, 2007
Concern over cult swastika poster
A poster advertising a cult UFO conference in Glastonbury was taken down after concerns that a swastika featured on it was causing offence.
The symbol is part of the logo for the Raelian movement which believes that humans are descendents of aliens.
Posted in Aliens, Idiot Activists, Politically Incorrect | No Comments »
