‘A grim-faced George AuClair Jr. wandered his 25-acre patch of desert looking every inch the broken man.
“I’m ashamed of what happened here, but you can’t lie about it,” said the Torres Martinez tribal member. “You have to own up when you do wrong.”
Not far away, bulldozers piled up mountains of junk from AuClair’s illegal dump, a dump so toxic it has been declared a Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency. He now faces millions of dollars in fines. [..]
AuClair’s biggest mistake was burning thousands of toxic wooden grape stakes.
“How could we have known grape stakes were treated with arsenic and chromium?” he asked. “There was no sign saying, ‘This is hazardous to your health.’ ”
And he insists his own health wasn’t damaged.
“I lost my hair, but I think that was a thyroid problem,” he said, “and I get headaches, but that could be anything.”‘
‘A gay gang that allegedly raped victims lured on the internet, drugged them and infected them with the AIDS virus has shocked the Netherlands and raised questions over its liberal sex culture.
A date rape drug known as “Easy Lay” and ecstasy were allegedly involved.
Health Minister Ab Klink called the case “horrible”, as the press splashed the news across its front pages today.
The matter came to light yesterday, when police said they had arrested three men two weeks ago after four victims, men aged 25 to 50, accused them of rape and premeditated bodily harm. [..]
The three suspects – one of whom is a male nurse – were said to have raped the men, and even injected some of them with a mix of their contaminated blood.’
‘Brian Conant stood alongside his fellow National Guardsmen during a training session about eight years ago in Hawaii. He was wearing a heavy chemical warfare suit lined with charcoal.
“Any time I expelled gas in the suit, I realized nobody could smell it,” Conant, 48, says. “It was amazing.”
According to the American College of Gastroenterology, 58 million Americans suffer from one or more medical disorders that cause excessive gas. To treat it, doctors usually recommend a change in diet. Sometimes they recommend medication, such as Gas-X or Bean-O, which alters the bacteria that may be causing the foul odor. But with Conant’s invention, the Flatulence Deodorizer, also known as Flat-D, there is an alternative way to limit the embarrassment.
The long, narrow washable pad, lined thinly with charcoal, absorbs chemicals, including hydrogen sulfide, a byproduct of the bacteria that causes odorous gas. The pad, at $12.95, curves with the contour of the body, and one size fits most.’
‘It was just six inches.
That was what made the difference at 4:40 a.m. yesterday as Gilberto Cantu, a truck driver from Texas, approached the New Jersey entrance of the Lincoln Tunnel in his big rig, loaded with bathtubs, toilets and plumbing fixtures. The truck was 13 feet 6 inches high. The tunnel has a height limit of 13 feet. Six inches can make a big difference.
Mr. Cantu drove the entire 1.5 miles of the tunnel from Weehawken, N.J., to Manhattan, tearing his way under the Hudson River in the tunnel’s center tube and peeling back the roof of his tractor-trailer as if it were a tin can. No one was injured, but an undetermined number of decorative tunnel ceiling tiles were ripped off.’
‘Sometimes I have some challenging ideas, or crazy like some other people would say. This time I thought about our cat who is the whole day out, returning sometimes hungry sometimes not, sometimes with traces of fights, sometimes he stay also the night out.
When he finally returns, I wonder where he was and what he did during his day. This brought me to the idea to equip the cat with a camera. The plan was to put a little camera around his neck which takes every few minutes a picture. After he is returning, the camera would show his day.’
The images are here.
‘Four people billed a health insurance company for 20 brain operations that were never performed on them, sometimes for the same person on multiple occasions, authorities said.
One 36-year-old man from New York City claimed nine brain surgeries for himself, along with his wife and two sons, receiving reimbursements from New York-based Group Health Incorporated totaling $142,268, federal investigators said Friday.
GHI paid out more than $300,000 in reimbursements to all four defendants, based on the claims.’
‘A 26-year-old woman from Johnstown stands to face several charges for a spree Thursday involving a hammer, several broken windows and a small poodle.
Kathie Mercado started out her afternoon at her sister’s mother-in-law’s house in the 200 block of Tartan Drive in Johnstown.
She is said to have hurled the mother-in-law’s poodle at the window twice in an attempt to break the window, according to Johnstown Police Chief Reggie Mayes.
Mercado was unsuccessful, so she moved on to a hammer and began breaking several of the windows at the ground level and the basement. In the process, she suffered cuts to her arms and hands.
After breaking those windows, Mercado moved to a home across the street, where she broke out several of the windows there. No one was home at the time and Mayes said he doesn’t think Mercado knew the people who lived there.
“We are still not sure why she did it,” Mayes said. “She was very unstable.”‘
‘Council meetings in Reus could take a turn for the bizarre after the northern Spanish town voted in a councillor who promised to turn up dressed as Elvis Presley and wants to turn the square into a nudist pool.
Ariel Santamaria, a former postman, stood for a small independent party dressed in full Elvis regalia complete with sideburns and won enough votes last weekend to take a council seat.
It remains to be seen how other parties will take his proposals for Reus, a town of 100,000 people near Barcelona.
His platform included plans to paint the town hall pink, plant marijuana in the parks and give the town police global positioning systems to find people who might need a light while rolling a joint.’
‘A suspected burglar in Miami was found dangling from a large ventilation fan after he apparently stepped on the on switch while his body was inside the machine and killed himself, according to police.
Miami investigators said a “known burglar” in the area was found dead in the powerful fan at the Maranatha Used Clothing store Thursday when the store opened up for business.
A witness said an employee of the store noticed feet dangling from the fan and called police.’
‘It began with a line of plastic bags ghosting the surface, followed by an ugly tangle of junk: nets and ropes and bottles, motor-oil jugs and cracked bath toys, a mangled tarp. Tires. A traffic cone. Moore could not believe his eyes. Out here in this desolate place, the water was a stew of plastic crap. It was as though someone had taken the pristine seascape of his youth and swapped it for a landfill.
How did all the plastic end up here? How did this trash tsunami begin? What did it mean? If the questions seemed overwhelming, Moore would soon learn that the answers were even more so, and that his discovery had dire implications for human–and planetary–health. As Alguita glided through the area that scientists now refer to as the “Eastern Garbage Patch,” Moore realized that the trail of plastic went on for hundreds of miles. Depressed and stunned, he sailed for a week through bobbing, toxic debris trapped in a purgatory of circling currents. To his horror, he had stumbled across the 21st-century Leviathan. It had no head, no tail. Just an endless body.’
‘Jackass star Johnny Knoxville is being sued by for £5.3million by an actor who had his penis clamped in a mousetrap for a stunt.
Perry Caravello says he was severely injured when the trap crushed his manhood as he appeared on a radio talkshow with Knoxville.
He claims Knoxville promised to pay him £5million for agreeing to the prank.
Mr Caravello has filed legal documents in a US court alleging fraud and negligence. He says he was further humiliated when footage of the stunt was videotaped and posted on the Internet without his permission.’
This kid paints better than I can. :) With his fingers no less.
(6.8meg Windows media)
see it here »
‘Police in Bihar, one of India’s poorest states, are investigating claims that an eight-year-old boy has killed in cold blood three babies — including his eight-month-old sister and nine-month-old cousin.
The case came to light when a mother could not find her six-month-old daughter after leaving her asleep at a school in Musahari village. After a police search the child’s body was found buried nearby.
A few hours later, Amarjeet Sada, who police claim suffers from psychiatric disorders, apparently admitted that he had strangled her and led villagers to the spot where he had disposed of the body.’
‘A U.S. scientist and a small band of believers are planning a journey to the Canadian Arctic for what they call “the greatest geological expedition in history.”
Are they searching for Arctic oil reserves? Documenting evidence of climate change?
Not quite. They’re looking for a fog-shrouded hole in the Arctic Ocean that leads — they say — to the centre of the Earth, where an unknown civilization is lurking inside the hollow core of the planet.
This time next year, Kentucky based physicist and futurist Brooks Agnew hopes to board the commercially owned Russian icebreaker Yamal in the port of Murmansk, and to sail into the polar sea just beyond Canada’s Arctic islands. [..]
Mr. Agnew is the latest in a long line of people to peddle the nutty, yet persistent, theory that humans live on the surface of a hollow planet, in which two undiscovered openings, near the North and South poles, connect the outer Earth with an interior realm.’
‘A Newcastle family claim they have been forced from two homes by thugs who have targeted them over their ginger hair.
Kevin and Barbara Chapman say they and their four children, aged between 10 and 13, have endured years of taunts, smashed windows and violence. [..]
Son Kevin, 11, said he was recently punched in a street attack. Newcastle Council is “discussing the situation”. [..]
Mr Chapman said: “The abuse we get is unbelievable. It started more than three years ago, when the kids started getting bullied by lads over the colour of their hair.
“They’ve been punched and kicked and thrown over a hedge. Every time they go out these gangs get to them.”
He added that the family now wanted to move again.’
It seems a bit stupid to be claiming this is an alternative energy source, ’cause thermodynamics dictate you’ll be putting more energy into the system than you can recover from the combustion. But, it’s a neat little trick anyway. :)
see it here »
‘When thinking of technologically advanced societies pushing the envelope on alternative energy, the Amish of rural Middle America are about the last group that come to mind. Yet the conservative Christian religious sect known for their plain dress and abhorrence for modern conveniences such as automobiles and electricity is embracing solar power.
In Holmes County, Ohio, home to the world’s largest Amish community, an estimated 80% of Amish families now have photovoltaic panels. They use solar power for basic electrical needs like home lighting, powering sewing machines, and charging batteries for lights on horse-drawn buggies. The Amish have gone solar partly for safety concerns – gas lamps are a fire hazard – and partly out of legal requirements – transportation codes require electric lights on horse-drawn buggies. Another reason they are embracing solar power is to avoid connecting to the electric grid, something they feel would endanger their efforts to remain separated from the rest of American society.’
‘US officials said Saturday the suspects nabbed in a foiled Islamic terrorist plot to blow up New York’s main international airport courted support in South America and the Caribbean, including from Jamaat Al Muslimeen, which failed at a bold 1990 coup bid in Trinidad.
Four suspected Islamic extremists, including Abdul Kadir, a former member of Guyana’s parliament, were charged with conspiring to blow up jet-fuel supply tanks and pipelines at John F. Kennedy airport, the US Department of Justice said.
The plot had links to international terrorist cells in the Caribbean as well as South America, but was foiled well before it could be carried out, US Justice officials added.’
That’s not a three year old you wanna mess with. She means business. :)
(2.0meg Flash video)
see it here »
‘The phrase “Verschärfte Vernehmung” is German for “enhanced interrogation”. Other translations include “intensified interrogation” or “sharpened interrogation”. It’s a phrase that appears to have been concocted in 1937, to describe a form of torture that would leave no marks, and hence save the embarrassment pre-war Nazi officials were experiencing as their wounded torture victims ended up in court. The methods, as you can see above, are indistinguishable from those described as “enhanced interrogation techniques” by the president. As you can see from the Gestapo memo, moreover, the Nazis were adamant that their “enhanced interrogation techniques” would be carefully restricted and controlled, monitored by an elite professional staff, of the kind recommended by Charles Krauthammer, and strictly reserved for certain categories of prisoner. At least, that was the original plan. [..]
In Norway, we actually have a 1948 court case that weighs whether “enhanced interrogation” using the methods approved by president Bush amounted to torture. The proceedings are fascinating, with specific reference to the hypothermia used in Gitmo, and throughout interrogation centers across the field of conflict. The Nazi defense of the techniques is almost verbatim that of the Bush administration…’
‘The mayor has ordered the city’s firefighters to cut grass and trim shrubs while on duty to help the service department care for parks and other public areas.
“We have 54 firefighters, and they have a lot of downtime,” Mayor Eric Brewer said Thursday. “Instead of sitting around the station, they’ll be assisting us as we beautify the city.”
The firefighters’ union opposes the plan, arguing that noise from city lawnmowers and protective headphones worn by firefighters might prevent them from hearing their radios when an emergency call comes in.
“We’re firefighters, not service workers,” union vice president Rick Razek said. “It jeopardizes our citizens and will absolutely hinder our response time.”
The mayor’s plan calls for firefighters to travel in a fire truck to their assigned work site and to keep their firefighting gear with them so they can proceed directly to the scene of a fire if called.’
In this video they apply some liquid to a guy’s face and all these little worms start to crawl out of his skin.
Erk.
see it here »
‘Detailed plans for the new U.S. Embassy under construction in Baghdad appeared online Thursday in a breach of the tight security surrounding the sensitive project.
Computer-generated projections of the soon-to-be completed, heavily fortified compound were posted on the Web site of the Kansas City, Mo.-based architectural firm that was contracted to design the massive facility in the Iraqi capital.
The images were removed by Berger Devine Yaeger Inc. shortly after the company was contacted by the State Department.
“We work very hard to ensure the safety and security of our employees overseas,” said Gonzalo Gallegos, a department spokesman. “This kind of information out in the public domain detracts from that effort.”‘
‘US officials have warned consumers to avoid using toothpaste made in China after a shipment was found to contain a poisonous chemical used in anti-freeze.
The Food and Drug Administration said it could contain diethylene glycol, which has been blamed for the deaths of at least 50 people in Panama last year.
The brands affected are usually sold at “bargain” retail outlets, the FDA said.
The warning comes amid a series of contamination scandals involving Chinese exports to the Americas.
On Thursday, Nicaraguan health authorities seized 40,000 tubes of Chinese-made toothpaste after they were found to contain diethylene glycol (DEG).
The Dominican Republic, Panama and Costa Rica had already removed thousands of tubes of toothpaste from store shelves. ‘
‘Authorities in Arkansas said an 18-month-old boy died inside a dishwasher that turned on automatically when its door closed.
Officials are still investigating, but said the boy’s death appears to be accidental. They said the likely cause of death was heat exposure.
Authorities said the boy’s 13-year-old brother found him inside the dishwasher Wednesday. It was still running. Authorities said the toddler’s brother opened the dishwasher after noticing the child’s blanket lying on the ground on front of the appliance.
The child died before paramedics arrived.’
‘[..] Peter William Eaves contacted Last Word to tell us that, while the surface of a long-established sand/gravel drive (laid in the 1920s or 30s) was being improved, a very strange phenomenon was discovered.
Beneath the drive, at a depth of 25 centimetres, were least 13 live crabs (all being around 7 cm in width). See a video of the crustaceans, courtesy of Mark Leitch. One had a barnacle its back, so it seems that it must have at one time lived near the sea. The nearest sea water is an estuary around 4km, and the sea itself considerably further.
Peter has owned the land next to the drive for around 40 years and reports there have been no repairs or excavations there during that period. We’re hoping that there’s some one out there than can tell us what on earth is going on here.’
(984kB Flash video)
see it here »
