‘A special education teacher from Frost Junior High School in this northwestern Chicago suburb has been released on $500,000 bond on criminal charges stemming from alleged incidents involving three autistic boys who were his students.
Patrick E. McCarthy, 30, of Palatine, is charged with three counts of aggravated battery and one count of unlawful restraint and appeared Friday in Rolling Meadows bond court.
At the bond hearing before Cook County Circuit Court Judge Kay Hanlon, prosecutors said McCarthy appeared to lose control during the first month of school. They said he slammed one autistic boy into a brick wall and forced another to jump on a trampoline for more than half an hour while wearing a weighted vest. They also said he pushed one student into a metal filing cabinet and tied another one to a chair.’
‘The RPG that had plowed into Moss’ lower abdomen stretched from one hip to the other. If the RPG went off, it would kill everyone within 30 feet of him. Yet Angell stayed close, bandaging his wounds and stabilizing the weapon so that movement wouldn’t cause it to explode.
Moss was still fully conscious, so Angell ordered him to not look down at the injury. He didn’t want Moss to panic.
“I’m gonna do everything I can,” Angell said to Moss. “You keep fighting with me and I’ll keep fighting with you.” [..]
Reports of injuries had been radioed to the medical evacuation helicopter (MEDEVAC) base in Salerno, Afghanistan — minus one crucial piece of information.
“We didn’t tell them that, you know, Moss had live ordnance in him,” Mariani said, “because there was that possibility that, you know, they might not want to transport him with live ordnance in him.”‘
‘Bavaria’s most glamorous politician — a flame-haired motorcyclist who helped bring down state premier Edmund Stoiber — has shocked the Catholic state in Germany by suggesting marriage should last just 7 years.
Gabriele Pauli, who poses on her web site in motorcycle leathers, is standing for the leadership of Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU) — sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) — in a vote next week.
She told reporters at the launch of her campaign manifesto Wednesday she wanted marriage to expire after seven years and accused the CSU, which promotes traditional family values, of nurturing ideals of marriage which are wide of the mark.
“The basic approach is wrong … many marriages last just because people believe they are safe,” she told reporters. “My suggestion is that marriages expire after seven years.”‘
‘A Pentagon group has encouraged some U.S. military snipers in Iraq to target suspected insurgents by scattering pieces of “bait,” such as detonation cords, plastic explosives and ammunition, and then killing Iraqis who pick up the items, according to military court documents.
The classified program was described in investigative documents related to recently filed murder charges against three snipers who are accused of planting evidence on Iraqis they killed.
“Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy,” Capt. Matthew P. Didier, the leader of an elite sniper scout platoon attached to the 1st Battalion of the 501st Infantry Regiment, said in a sworn statement. “Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against U.S. Forces.”‘
‘Ever since I was a little girl, I have periodically played a game I like to call ‘What would happen if…’
The very first time I played this game I was 5 years old and riding in the car with my Mother. She had allowed me to sit in the front seat, but the novelty of that wore off rather quickly and I got bored. Almost immediately after we merged onto the expressway, I spied the car door handle. I thought to myself, I wonder what would happen if I opened the car door right now? [..]
This past Friday evening, I found myself inadvertently playing another game of ‘What would happen if…’’
‘A child’s joke about sleeping with another friend’s mother led to a child abuse investigation.
An investigator with the Department of Children and Family went to Destin Middle School on Sept. 19 to look into an allegation that a child had been having sex with an adult, according to an Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office report.
The investigation revealed that the story started during P.E. class while a few boys were joking around.
Upon questioning, one of the boys involved said he “made up the story about a friend having sex with (the) mother,” the report stated.
The case was ruled as unfounded.’
A four year old kid calls 911 to ask for some maths help.
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‘A Pythagorean cup (also known as a Pythagoras cup) is a form of drinking cup which forces its user to imbibe only in moderation. Credited as an invention to Pythagoras of Samos, it allows the user to fill the cup with wine (a popular beverage in Pythagoras’ time) up to a certain level. If the user fills the cup no further than that level he may enjoy his drink in peace. If he exhibits gluttony however, the cup wreaks instant retribution by spilling its contents out the bottom (the intention being: onto the lap of the immodest drinker).’
‘The Soviet engineers gazed into the abandoned tunnel with dismay. It was 1974 and work was scheduled to resume on the construction of the Baikal-Amur Magistral (BAM), a railway line in north-eastern Siberia. The Dusse-Alin Tunnel had been completed in an earlier phase of the undertaking, as evidenced by the inscription “1947-1950” over the entrance and the busts of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin that earlier workers had hewn out of the nearby rock. But the harsh climate and intervening years had not been kind to the permafrost-piercing passage. Peering into the gaping hole, the worried workers could see something glinting inside. The BAM project, perhaps the greatest civil engineering endeavour the world has ever seen, had encountered yet another problem.’
‘The state’s public health department asked parents Thursday to toss certain Chinese-made lunchboxes potentially containing dangerous levels of lead – the same ones it distributed in a campaign to promote healthy eating.
The department distributed more than 350,000 of the canvas lunchboxes, only to find out that at least three that were tested in a batch of 56,000 contained “significant” levels of lead.
“It certainly is unfortunate that an item we’re using to promote healthy behavior is discovered to be in itself a health hazard,” said Mark Horton, the director of the Department of Public Health. “We will be reassessing our policy on the distribution of our promotional products.”‘
‘Thanks to the email-leakage from MediaDefender-Defenders we now have proof of the things we’ve been suspecting for a long time; the big record and movie labels are paying professional hackers, saboteurs and ddosers to destroy our trackers.
While browsing through the email we identified the companies that are also active in Sweden and we have tonight reported these incidents to the police. The charges are infrastructural sabotage, denial of service attacks, hacking and spamming, all of these on a commercial level.
The companies that are being reported are the following:
* Twentieth Century Fox, Sweden AB
* Emi Music Sweden AB
* Universal Music Group Sweden AB
* Universal Pictures Nordic AB
* Paramount Home Entertainment (Sweden) AB
* Atari Nordic AB
* Activision Nordic Filial Till Activision (Uk) Ltd
* Ubisoft Sweden AB
* Sony Bmg Music Entertainment (Sweden) AB
* Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Nordic AB
Stay tuned for updates.’
‘We’ve really been struggling to find something that could challenge the Total Blender’s blending capabilities. What could we blend that’s stronger than anything we’ve ever blended? Then it hit us like a roundhouse kick to the face…Chuck Norris!’
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‘Ernie Vesie says he needs his weed. He and his wife Roni have a legal prescription to use the medicinal marijuana. Ernie suffered a painful stroke, and Roni is recovering from major stomach surgery. The two say it eases their pain.
The Vessies grow the marijuana in their south Sacramento backyard. During happier times, a bumper crop blossomed and it was something Ernie’s became proud of. But, after three armed suspects forced their way into their home, the plants are now gone.
“He told me if I opened my mouth, he’d put a bullet in my head,” said Ernie.
It is the second time they’ve been robbed and it is believed to be the same three suspects. [..]
There is not much left of Ernie and Roni’s stash, so they’re smoking what they can.
“Breaks my heart they took all the good stuff,” said Ernie.’
‘A 5-year-old girl abducted out of Arizona earlier this month has been found in Aurora. [..]
The Mohave County Sheriff’s Office said Jade Dunn was picked up by Patricia Sanford, who is a friend of the little girl’s former stepfather, on Sep. 6, in Kingman, Ariz.
The FBI from Arizona said Sanford, the woman who kidnapped Jade, was on the contact list to pick up the child but was not authorized or expected to pick her up on the date she was taken from her school.
Sanford contacted Jade’s grandmother Sunday, allegedly telling her Virgil Kosmicki was demanding two ounces of methamphetamine for the return of Jade, authorities said.’
‘The building is protected by access codes, cameras and even tornado-proof walls. So what’s inside?
The answer is plant seeds. Billions of them. In fact, there are around 370,000 different species accounted for in the vault.
For each species, 3,000 seeds are placed in a sac.
“All the storage sacs are bar coded. Also, they’re labeled with the name of the type of plant material that’s in each of these sacs,” said Harvey Blackburn, who is the acting director of the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation.
The next question might be, why? The answer has to do with national security.’
A hostess of a gameshow vomits live on TV whilst talking to a contestant who has phoned in.
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‘Sergei Zimov bends down, picks up a handful of treacly mud and holds it up to his nose. It smells like a cow pat, but he knows better.
“It smells like mammoth dung,” he says.
This is more than just another symptom of global warming.
For millennia, layers of animal waste and other organic matter left behind by the creatures that used to roam the Arctic tundra have been sealed inside the frozen permafrost. Now climate change is thawing the permafrost and lifting this prehistoric ooze from suspended animation.
But Zimov, a scientist who for almost 30 years has studied climate change in Russia’s Arctic, believes that as this organic matter becomes exposed to the air it will accelerate global warming faster than even some of the most pessimistic forecasts.’
‘A barber who shares a name and birthday with an imprisoned man is asking for $1 million in damages after he said he was wrongly arrested three times in 17 years due to mistaken identity.
“Every day of my life, it’s as though I could be locked up at any moment at any time,” Keith Lamont Johnson said. “I keep talking and keep talking and no one listens and I end up in jail.”
Johnson, 47, shares his name with a known felon who is now in a state prison for armed robbery, among other crimes.
The federal lawsuit filed names in the cities of Detroit, Woodhaven and Trenton and the counties of Wayne and Macomb as defendants, along with several named and unnamed law enforcement officials in each community.’
Scientists have known for more than 70 years that the one surefire way to extend the lives of animals was to cut calories by an average of 30 to 40 percent. The question was: Why?
Now a new study begins to unravel the mystery and the mechanism by which reducing food intake protects cells against aging and age-related diseases. [..]
Researchers report in the journal Cell that the phenomenon is likely linked to two enzymes—SIRT3 and SIRT4—in mitochondria (the cell’s powerhouse that, among other tasks, converts nutrients to energy). They found that a cascade of reactions triggered by lower caloric intake raises the levels of these enzymes, leading to an increase in the strength and efficiency of the cellular batteries. By invigorating the mitochondria, SIRT3 and SIRT4 extend the life of cells, by preventing flagging mitochondria from developing tiny holes (or pores) in their membranes that allow proteins that trigger apoptosis, or cell death, to seep out into the rest of the cell.’
‘On October 8th, 1871, the small Wisconsin logging town of Peshtigo was consumed by one of the most severe and woefully under-reported fires in human history.
After a hot and dry year, with a mere two inches of rain falling from July through September, churchgoers were praying for much-needed precipitation. The creeks had dried up, and the Peshtigo River, which many residents relied upon for transportation and water, was dangerously low.
In the midst of that quiet Sunday evening, the tiny township was totally annihilated – charred by a gigantic fire that engulfed the buildings, the countryside, and even the townsfolk themselves. Even today the little-known blaze holds the distinction of being the deadliest fire ever to occur in the US.’
‘On his 18th birthday this poor guy tries to take out his friend by sliding down the slide into his legs. Unfortunately he acted too quickly and did not see the slide divider.’
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‘A Colorado judge has sentenced people busted for noise pollution to one hour of listening to unpopular or unusual music.
Mostly young adult offenders were kept in a room and made to listen to Dolly Parton’s I Will Always Love You, Karen Carpenter and Barry Manilow with the volume up loud, CBS4Denver.com reported.
Most offenders, who were not allowed to eat, drink, read or sleep, found the punishment funny at first. But then the boredom set in.
“At about 20 minutes into it, I was trying not to fall a sleep,” offender Luis Cano said.’
‘A Rromanian priest charged with crucifying a nun he believed was possessed by the devil has had his 14-year prison sentence cut by half by an appeal court.
The court in the central town of Alba-Iulia also reduced from eight years to six the jail term imposed on one of four nuns found guilty of being accomplices to the exorism-turned-murder, while maintaing a five-year sentence for the other three.
The murdered nun, 23-year-old Irina Cornici of the Saint Trinity of Tanacu monastery in northeastern Romania, died after being gagged, chained to a cross and left without food or water for days.’
Followup to Priest jailed for exorcism death.
‘Two female students are demanding their rights after they were banned from bathing topless at a swimming pool in Uppsala. If girls are forced to wear bikinis, boys should be too, one of the women told The Local.
Ragnhild Karlsson, 22, and her friend Kristin Karlsson, 21, live on the same corridor in a student residence in the university town. On September 5th they took a trip to the Fyrishov leisure complex, where they decided to hop in for a swim without their bikini tops.
Though the pool was full of swimmers, a female lifeguard eventually caught sight of the bare-breasted women and reached for her whistle.’
‘The Roman Catholic bishop of Ibiza has demanded that a collage depicting the late Pope John Paul II being sodomised be removed from an exhibit held at a former church on the Spanish holiday island.
The work is one of three collages by Ivo Hendriks that are part of a showcase of art by 15 Dutch artists with ties to Ibiza made over the last 50 years that opened on September 7 and is due to run until the end of the month.
The other two collages also depict religious figures in homosexual positions.
Bishop Vicente Juan Segura said the works “offended Catholic sentiment” and he called for their “immediate and urgent withdrawal”.’
When your friends pass out, why not sticky tape their eyes, nose and mouth open and film it? 🙂
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‘A cop has quit after his web profile on Facebook exposed him as a gun-toting pervert.
Fellow officers were stunned when they logged on to the social networking site to see 29-year-old Simon Purcell proudly brandishing an MI6 semi-automatic rifle.
The police community support officer went on to list his hobbies as “making sex toys for all the ladies” and “spying on doggers”. Other interests included “women, masturbation, any order I don’t mind.” Among his favourite films he put simply: “Porn”.’
‘Three old bones from a left wrist offer a new twist in the long running debate about the so called hobbits of Indonesia, suggesting they were indeed a small and different kind of human species, rather than modern humans with a growth disorder.
Three years ago, Prof Mike Morwood, of the University of New England, in Armidale, Australia, and colleagues made headlines worldwide when they announced the discovery of 18,000-year-old remains of Homo floresiensis in the Liang Bua Cave on the Indonesian island of Flores. [..]
Today in the journal Science an analysis of three wrist bones of one of the fossil specimens (called LB1) led by Matthew Tocheri of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, and including Prof Morwood and colleagues in Indonesia and America shows that the bones are primitive and shaped differently compared to both the wrist bones of both humans and of Neanderthals, suggesting they do represent a different kind of human.’
Followup to Hobbits may be earliest Australians.
‘Welcome to the home of the Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Archives.
The Heinlein Archives is a cooperative project between The Heinlein Prize Trust and the UC Santa Cruz Archives.
The Heinlein Archives presents digital copies of the entire collections of Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein in downloadable form for research and academic purposes. Heinlein’s OPUS manuscripts is the first complete collection presented. These manuscript files include Heinlein’s files of all his published works with his notes, research, early drafts and edits of manuscripts, to the final published form. These files provide both a look at Heinlein’s creative process and add insights into his intent and the meaning in his stories.’
