‘Early on the morning of Dec. 13, police officers responding to a 911 call arrived at a house in Hull, Mass., a seaside town near Boston, and found a 4-year-old girl on the floor of her parents’ bedroom, dead.
She was lying on her side, in a pink diaper, the police said, sprawled across some discarded magazines and a stuffed brown bear.
Last week, prosecutors in Plymouth County charged the parents, Michael and Carolyn Riley, with deliberately poisoning their daughter Rebecca by giving her overdoses of prescription drugs to sedate her.
The police said the girl had been taking a potent cocktail of psychiatric drugs since age 2, when she was given a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder and bipolar disorder, which is characterized by mood swings.
The parents have pleaded not guilty, with their lawyers questioning whether the child should have been prescribed such powerful drugs.’
‘My friend, all I can say is that you are clearly insane. We’ve recieved word from him since that he has been suspended from school for 30 days as well as being charged with sexual harrassment by the teacher in the photo above. I’m actually speechless. I don’t know what to say. Let this be a lesson to all, kids- the C&H world and reality do not mix well. Our poor friend here found that out the hard way. Unlucky, soldier!’
‘The state troopers in Rhinebeck realized that they were dealing with a specialist. The burglar left no fingerprints or clues. There wasn’t much to do except alert the antiques publications, the auction houses, and the Times, which ran a brief article about the burglaries. [..]
Mason and Abruzzini had warned me that Nordahl always talked about changing his ways. “Blane couldn’t go straight if you snapped a chalk line for him,” Abruzzini said. Luanne, his ex-girlfriend, had also told me that he would never stop. “He’ll be seventy-eight with a goddam cane, walking down the street stealing silver,” she said.’
‘Researchers who wanted to find out why it is not only taboo to kiss your sister, but also disgusting, said on Wednesday they have discovered why in a discovery that challenges some basic tenets of Freudian theory.
The instinct evolved naturally and cannot be taught, John Tooby and Leda Cosmides of the University of California Santa Barbara wrote in their report in the journal Nature. [..]
“This data shows that the degree to which we feel those things is governed by these cues that, for hunter-gatherers, predict whether somebody is a sibling. And it works regardless of your beliefs — who you are told who your siblings are,” she said.’
Full House was a silly show.
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‘A man who allegedly faked his own kidnapping to keep his wife from finding out he crashed her new car could face criminal charges, police said.
Jorge Alberto Mejia, 35, told police two kidnappers held him up at gunpoint at a San Rafael bar Saturday and ordered him to drive to Santa Rosa, California, where he purposely crashed the car into a wall to escape. Under questioning Monday, Mejia admitted to investigators he made the story up, including detailed descriptions of the nonexistent kidnappers.’
‘Anni Sheriffius said she was trying to wash off what she thought was dirt on her dog Jasmine’s ear when the ear fell off.
Sheriffius rushed her dog to the veterinarian to learn that the dog’s ear had been cut off by a dog groomer and super-glued back on.
“And I saw the ear float away, and it freaked me out,” Sheriffius said.’
see it here »
This is a pretty cool little animation.
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‘In a unanimous opinion, a three-judge panel for the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an Alabama statute banning the commercial distribution of sex toys, saying that there is no fundamental right to privacy raised by the plaintiff’s case against the law.
According to the statute, it is “unlawful for any person to knowingly distribute any obscene material or any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.”’
‘A Russian court has thrown out a case against a village headmaster from the Ural mountains region who allegedly used pirated Windows software. [..]
But Mr Ponosov said he did not know that the software was pirated and his campaign attracted high-profile support, including from Russian officials and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. [..]
The case was closed “due to the minimal damage inflicted” on Microsoft, Elvira Mosheva, a judge at the court in the Perm region of the Urals.
Asked about the case at a press conference earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin said: “Catching someone just because he bought a computer and threatening him with prison – that’s crap.”‘
‘These guys pour gasoline down the barrel of a pneumatic potato gun and shoot it at small fire pit. The resulting explosion is pretty insane.’
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‘A Chinese man has been sentenced to death for conning people out of 3 billion yuan ($387 million) in a giant scam to breed ants, local media said on Thursday.
Wang Zhendong, from the northeastern province of Liaoning, fabricated a business purported to be making wine, tea and medical elixirs using mature ants, the Beijing News said. [..]
More than 10,000 people, lured by the promise of returns of up to 60 percent, signed 100,000 contracts with Wang’s bogus company before the case came under investigation in June 2005. [..]
In his defense, Wang said he did not know the first thing about raising ants and was “quite unclear” about the costs, the Beijing News said.’
‘It sounds as if someone just dropped a tricycle into a meat grinder. I’m sitting inside a narrow conference room at a research facility in Bristol, Connecticut, chatting with Joseph Longo, the founder and CEO of Startech Environmental Corporation. As we munch on takeout Subway sandwiches, a plate-glass window is the only thing separating us from the adjacent lab, which contains a glowing caldera of “plasma” three times as hot as the surface of the sun. Every few minutes there’s a horrific clanking noise—grinding followed by a thunderous voomp, like the sound a gas barbecue makes when it first ignites.
“Is it supposed to do that?” I ask Longo nervously. “Yup,” he says. “That’s normal.”’
Why the fuck are they driving around throwing grenades at sheep? Right in front of the farmer too. Idiots.
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‘An Italian judge has ordered 26 Americans and five Italians to stand trial for the kidnapping of a terror suspect in Milan in 2003, in what will be the first criminal court case over the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme.
The decision, which indicts a number of senior intelligence officials from the US and Italy, concerns the abduction of a radical imam known as Abu Omar, who was flown to Egypt where he claims he was tortured under questioning on February 17 2003. Prosecutors say that five Italian intelligence officials worked with the CIA to abduct the Egyptian cleric.
All but one of the American suspects have been identified as CIA agents. [..]’
‘Two women are accused of soaking a homeless, drug-addicted prostitute with gasoline and burning her to death after she reported that one of them had robbed her.
Leslie “Jill” May, 49, was abducted from the street and killed at Candlestick Park the day she told the police that Mia Sagote, 30, robbed and beat her over a debt May’s boyfriend owed, authorities said.
Sagote and Leslie Siliga, 29, have pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and kidnapping.’
‘An Italian teacher has been suspended after this cell phone video surfaced of her allowing her male students to fondle her during class.’
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‘Still, only aficionados have paid much attention – which is where Gramercy Tavern comes in. A few months ago, the three-star Manhattan restaurant (the “most popular” in New York, according to the Zagat Survey) gave beer-by-the-year its big-league, fine-dining debut with a select 25-bottle list of vintage suds from Europe, Japan and North America. The response, says assistant beverage director Kevin Garry, has been “amazing” – and it could mean more mainstream acceptance to come. “Based on how our guests have reacted, I can totally see vintage beer catching on at other places,” says Garry, who pairs his bottles with cheeses and desserts. “I’d love to see it become the next cool thing in the fine-dining world.”’
‘In an apparent acknowledgment of the plummeting standard of public scientific education in the West, the UN’s nuclear tentacle today unveiled a new danger sign for radiation which must approach the nadir of literalism. [..]
Spokeswoman Caroline MacKenzie summed up the new stance against Darwinian natural selection, and in favour of Homer Simpson: “We can’t teach the world about radiation, but we can warn people about dangerous sources for the price of sticker.”
So, as well as the traditional exclamation mark trefoil, a skull and crossbones is there to belt and braces the fact that radiation isn’t nice. Any dunderheads then unsure of what to do in such circumstances are further helped out by the addition of the image of a running stick man.’
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‘we didn’t start the website
no we didn’t code it but we’re gonna load it
we didn’t start the website
no we didn’t make it but we’re here to break it’
‘ELEANOR HALL: Now to South Australia, and a warning about this story: don’t try this at home.
It’s about a shark fisherman who uses his hands to catch a 1.3 metre shark.
Phillip Kerkhof from Louth Bay on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula is the talk of the town, after wrestling the bronze whaler shark up onto a jetty, as Tim Jeanes reports.
TIM JEANES: It’s well-known people’s judgement can be somewhat clouded when under the influence of alcohol. [..]’
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‘A 5-year-old girl fended for herself for days while she was left home alone with the body of her mother, who was found dead on her couch after apparently succumbing to bacterial meningitis, authorities said.
The body of Tina Tietz, 39, was discovered Sunday afternoon after a concerned longtime friend called 911.
Police had to force their way into her rural home in Muskegon County’s Fruitland Township, about 45 miles northwest of Grand Rapids. There they also found the woman’s daughter, Marissa, who had rummaged the house for food for an unknown number of days, and the family dog, which had been tied up inside.
Police found the cupboards open, rice and cereal spilled all over and the bathroom sink overflowing.’
‘Grocery store shopping cart handles have more germs than public restrooms, making them one of the worst public places for germs, according to researchers.
It’s a problem that at least one state, Arkansas, is trying to address, by passing a law forcing stores to clean up their carts.
How germy could shopping carts really be? Very, according to researchers at the University of Arizona who tested all kinds of public surfaces. They found that shopping carts were loaded with more saliva, bacteria and even fecal matter than escalators, public telephones, and even public bathrooms.
The only surfaces that had more germs were playground equipment and bus rails.’
‘The British start-up Quietrevolution developed a vertical axis wind turbine which is not only more aesthetic but is also better at gathering wind near and around buildings, which frequently vary in direction. The Helical wind turbine is also quieter because the blade tip speed is lower. [..]
According to quietrevolution the QR5 will generate around 10,000 kWh per year in a site with an average wind of 5.9m/s. This is equivalent to about five low-energy houses’ electricity demand, or the electrical needs of a twenty man office. Unlike other turbines which are usually noisy the unique shape of the quietrevolution turbine allows it to operate in near silent which is ideal for operating close to residential areas. [..]’
