‘A teenage spectator was bludgeoned to death by a cricketer during a local match near the eastern Indian city of Kolkata, police and witnesses said.
Rabinath Ash, 17, was battered to death with a stump when he tried to shield his younger brother from attack Friday at a cricket ground in a suburb of Kolkata, they said.
“A scuffle broke when the batting side on the verge of winning the match insisted on carrying on with the game despite fading daylight,” police inspector general Raj Kanojia said.’
‘Kurt Vonnegut, the satirical novelist who captured the absurdity of war and questioned the advances of science in darkly humorous works such as “Slaughterhouse-Five” and “Cat’s Cradle,” died Wednesday. He was 84. [..]
Vonnegut once said that of all the ways to die, he’d prefer to go out in an airplane crash on the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. He often joked about the difficulties of old age.
“When Hemingway killed himself he put a period at the end of his life; old age is more like a semicolon,” Vonnegut told The Associated Press in 2005.
“My father, like Hemingway, was a gun nut and was very unhappy late in life. But he was proud of not committing suicide. And I’ll do the same, so as not to set a bad example for my children.”‘
‘Vampire Killing Kit
The accoutrements for the destruction of the Vampire
This box contains the items considered necessary for the protection of persons who travel into certain little known countries in Easter Europe where the populace are plagued with a peculiar manifestation of evil, known as Vampires… Professor Ernst Blomberg respectfully requests that the purchaser of this kit carefully studies his book. Should evil manifestations become apparent, he is then equiped to deal with them efficiently… Professor Blomberg wishes to announce his grateful thanks to that well known gunmaker of Liege, Nicholas Plombeur, whose help in compiling of the special items, the silver bullets,etc., has been most efficient. The items enclosed are as follows…
1. An efficient pistol with its usual accoutrements
2. A quantity of bullets of the finest silver
3. Powdered flowers of garlic (one phial)
4. Flour of Brimstone (one phial)
5. Wooden stake (Oak)
6. Ivory crucifix
7. Holy Water (one phial)
8. Professer Blomberg’s New Serum’
‘A young Argentine zookeeper who worked on a giant anteater conservation project died on Thursday after she was attacked by an anteater who mauled her abdomen and legs with its sharp front claws.
“Her injuries were very serious and when she was admitted she was already in critical condition,” Jose Potito, director of the hospital, told Reuters.
Potito said Melisa Casco, 19, died after an operation to amputate one of her legs. [..]
Anteaters, which can measure up to 9.2 feet long and weigh as much as 110 pounds (50 kg), are native to Latin America and have toothless snouts.
They are usually not aggressive, but their long, knife-like claws can do serious damage to predators when they defend themselves.’
‘A teenager in Fayette County died after a very unusual accident.
Police say 18-year-old Brandon Buster was a passenger in a car Sunday.
Officials say Buster felt ill and was leaning out the car door to vomit, when he hit a mailbox.
The car was going about 15 miles per hour at the time because the driver was slowing down to let Buster out.
Buster was pronounced dead at Piedmont-Fayette hospital.
Police say their investigation will continue.
No charges have been filed.’
‘Staffing was so inadequate at a California senior center that a rat crawled into an Alzheimer’s patient’s mouth and died there before staff noticed, a lawsuit claims. [..]
“The facility so literally ignored the needs of their residents … as to allow vermin in the form of a rat to become lodged in the mouth of Sigmund Bock and die therein,” the lawsuit alleges.
Melody Chatelle, a spokeswoman for Sunwest Management Inc., the Oregon-based company that operates Paragon, denied the allegations.
“We take care of our residents, and find this negative publicity to be a disheartening affront to our professional caregivers and most especially to our residents and their loved ones,” she said.’
‘A tour guide in southwest China stabbed 20 tourists and locals in an attack blamed on a row over kickbacks from souvenir shops and possibly linked to an unhappy childhood, Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday.
Xu Minchao, 25, was leading 40 tourists through Lijiang, a World Heritage-listed tourist destination in mountainous Yunnan province, on Sunday when he suddenly ran into a souvenir shop and demanded a knife, Xinhua said.
“Not realising the man was ready to kill, a girl in the shop gave him one and was stabbed immediately in the arm,” Xinhua said.’
I was a few percent away at the end of the clock.
‘It’s the coldest of cold cases, and yet it keeps warming to life. Seventy years after Amelia Earhart disappeared, clues are still turning up. Long-dismissed notes taken of a shortwave distress call beginning, “This is Amelia Earhart…,” are getting another look.
The previously unknown diary of an Associated Press reporter reveals a new perspective.
A team that has already found aircraft parts and pieces of a woman’s shoe on a remote South Pacific atoll hopes to return there this year to search for more evidence, maybe even DNA.
If what’s known now had been conveyed to searchers then, might Earhart and her navigator have been found alive? It’s one of a thousand questions that keep the case from being declared dead, as Earhart herself was a year and a half after she vanished.’
‘When Adolf Hitler was awarded German citizenship, he abruptly brushed off the congratulations: “You should congratulate Germany, not me!”
It was Feb. 25, 1932 and Hitler had just been naturalized after being appointed as a civil servant in the then-free state of Braunschweig — a crucial step for the continuation of his political career.
Three quarters of a century later, Isolde Saalmann, a Social Democratic member of Lower Saxony’s regional parliament, would like nothing better than to rescind this momentous bureaucratic act. [..]’
‘Darrell Roberson came home from a card game late one night to find his wife rolling around with another man in a pickup truck in the driveway.
Caught in the act with her lover, Tracy Denise Roberson — thinking quickly, if not clearly — cried rape, authorities say. Her husband pulled a gun and killed the other man with a shot to the head.
On Thursday, a grand jury handed up a manslaughter indictment — against the wife, not the husband. [..]
Mark Osler, a Baylor University law school professor and a former federal prosecutor, said the grand jurors evidently put themselves in the husband’s place: “I can see one of them saying, ‘I would have shot the guy, too. I was just protecting my wife.'”‘
‘Desperate mothers are being urged to drop their unwanted babies through hatches at hospitals in an effort to halt a spate of infanticides that has shocked Germany.
At least 23 babies have been killed so far this year, many of them beaten to death or strangled by their mothers before being dumped on wasteland and in dustbins.
Police investigating the murders are at a loss to explain the sudden surge in such cases, which have involved mothers of all ages all over the country.’
‘A man who spent 18 years in prison for a rape he didn’t commit was convicted Sunday of murdering a photographer, whose charred bones were found in a burn pit outside his home.
Steven Avery, 44, shook his head when the verdict was read. He faces a mandatory life prison term for killing Teresa Halbach, 25, on Halloween 2005 near his family’s salvage yard.
Halbach disappeared Oct. 31, 2005, after going to the yard in rural Manitowoc County to photograph a minivan that Avery’s sister had for sale through Auto Trader Magazine. Avery had called that morning to request the photo, testimony showed.’
‘Pet owners were worried Saturday that the pet food in their cupboards could be deadly after millions of containers of dog and cat food sold at major retailers across North America were recalled.
Menu Foods — a major manufacturer of dog and cat food sold under Wal-Mart, Safeway, Kroger and other store brands — recalled 60 million containers of wet pet food Friday after reports of kidney failure and deaths.
An unknown number of cats and dogs suffered kidney failure and about 10 died after eating the affected pet food, the company said in announcing the North American recall.’
‘A British Airways passenger was refused compensation and told by the airline to “get over it” after a corpse was placed in the row where he was sitting last week.
Paul Trinder, 54, a businessman from Brackley, Northamptonshire, spent more than £3,000 for a first-class ticket from Delhi. He awoke during the flight to find that cabin staff were propping up a dead woman almost next to him. “The stewards just plonked down this body without saying a thing,” he said. “I remember looking at this thin, sparrow-like woman and thinking she was very ill.”
The woman had been in economy class when she died soon after the plane left Delhi. “She kept slipping under the seat belt and moving about with the motion of the plane,” Mr Trinder said. “When I asked what was going on, I was shocked to hear she was dead.”‘
I believe this is another Balls of Steel segment.
(25.9meg Windows media)
see it here »
‘A mentally troubled woman accused of drowning her 6-year-old daughter, cutting off her head and throwing the remains off a bridge has pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. [..]
Spann told investigators she was using drugs heavily at the time of the killing, officials have said.
Spann’s father, Gary Spann, told The Sacramento Bee in 2005 his daughter routinely called the girl a “devil child,” and she belonged to a cult that worshipped the late rapper Tupac Shakur as the reincarnation of the 16th century political philosopher Machiavelli.’
‘Marine veteran Jonathan Schulze survived the war in Iraq but almost two years after he came home, it ended up killing him, reports The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith. [..]
“She asked, ‘Why do you want to be seen?’ and I was standing behind him and he was sitting in a chair, his shoulders were slumped and Jim was standing in the doorway and he said, ‘I feel suicidal,’ ” Marianne Schulze said.
His parents say the VA told Jonathan they couldn’t admit him that day and asked if he would call back the next day. He did but was told he was number 26 on a waiting-list and the VA didn’t have enough beds for him. Four days later he hung himself.’
‘A 17-year-old girl who spent weeks looking for her missing dog unwrapped a box left on her doorstep and found the pet’s severed head inside, authorities said.
Homicide investigators were looking into the case because of the “implied” terroristic threat, St. Paul Police Sgt. Jim Gray said. The Humane Society of the United States said Wednesday it was offering a reward of up to $2,500 for information leading to an arrest and conviction.
“This was extraordinarily heinous,” said Dale Bartlett, the Humane Society’s deputy manager for animal cruelty issues. “I deal with hundreds and hundreds of cruelty cases each year. When I read about this case, it took my breath away. It’s horrible.”‘
‘A 6-year-old boy stayed in an apartment with the body of his father for two days after the man died on their sofa, obeying instructions to never leave without permission, firefighters said.
The boy, whose name was not released, didn’t want to leave even after firefighters arrived, fearing punishment if he left, fire department Maj. Noble Lee said.
“He wasn’t as distraught as one might think,” Lee said. “I don’t think he understands the gravity of the past few days. He wasn’t as upset at the situation as he was about being outside the residence without permission.”‘
‘A woman whose doctor says marijuana is the only medicine keeping her alive can face federal prosecution on drug charges, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The ruling was the latest legal defeat for Angel Raich, a mother of two from Oakland suffering from scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea and other ailments who sued the federal government pre-emptively to avoid being arrested for using the drug. On her doctor’s advice, Raich eats or smokes marijuana every couple of hours to ease her pain and bolster her appetite. [..]
Raich, 41, began sobbing when she was told of the decision that she was not immune to prosecution and said she would continue using the drug.
“I’m sure not going to let them kill me,” she said. “Oh, my God.”‘
‘Six graves were disturbed by vandals who toppled headstones and placed candles, an animal heart, a gourd and a picture of a man among them, police said. [..]
The items left among the headstones included more than a dozen unlit black candles, black handkerchiefs and a photograph of an unidentified man wearing a suit and smiling. The animal heart had pins in it.
Nearby, police found a partially buried statue of a rooster, wrapped in a bandanna with a pair of underwear around its neck.’
‘British medics warned that a lack of donated dead bodies was damaging the quality of training for new doctors and surgeons, and possibly putting patients at risk.
The Royal College of Surgeons said there was a serious national shortage of cadavers which are needed to teach anatomy to medical students.
“Visual demonstration is not enough,” said Dick Rainsbury, RCS education director, adding that he had doubts about whether those who learnt by observation could perform operations with “any degree of competence or confidence”.
“There has been a noticeable and serious decline in the general level of applied anatomical knowledge displayed by junior doctors,” he said. [..]
The RCS said it estimated 1000 bodies a year were needed for medical teaching and that there was currently a 30 per cent shortfall, with particular problems in London.’
‘Scientists who questioned mankind’s impact on climate change have received death threats and claim to have been shunned by the scientific community.
They say the debate on global warming has been “hijacked” by a powerful alliance of politicians, scientists and environmentalists who have stifled all questioning about the true environmental impact of carbon dioxide emissions.
Timothy Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Canada, has received five deaths threats by email since raising concerns about the degree to which man was affecting climate change.
One of the emails warned that, if he continued to speak out, he would not live to see further global warming.’
‘An ex-con and former mental patient who won a landmark state Supreme Court decision in 2004 that allowed hundreds of mental patients to stop taking forced medication appeared in an Alameda courtroom Friday on charges that he killed his roommate in September.
Kanuri Qawi, 46, was charged with murder in the fatal stabbing of his roommate, John Laird Milton Sr., 59, whose body was found Sept. 13 in their home on Moonlight Terrace at Dignity Commons, a housing facility for veterans at Alameda Point, the site of the former Alameda Naval Air Station. [..]
The court said Qawi had been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic and had been medicated against his will between 1995 and 2004.’
‘After giving birth to a premature baby on an East Oakland street, police say the mother ripped the umbilical cord and walked away Friday afternoon, leaving the newborn boy dead or dying in a puddle of blood.
The 4:39 p.m. incident in the 1400 block of 65th Avenue left witnesses and veteran investigators stunned.
“It’s just crazy,” said Oakland police Sgt. Tony Jones of the homicide detail. “Once she started spitting out the baby, you have some obligation to get it some type of medical attention. She didn’t do that.”’
‘A Sikkim Police constable guarding the Dena Bank treasury at Daryaganj in central Delhi went berserk early Sunday morning, killing five of his mates after they allegedly tried to sodomise him while on night duty.
The police received a call at 4.52 am from constable Nari Lepcha, one of the guards deployed at the treasury, that his five colleagues had been murdered. After racking their brains for almost 12 hours, the police realised that it was Lepcha himself who had brutally murdered all of them.
After hours of questioning, Lepcha admitted that he killed his fellow guards because they tried to sexually assault him after consuming alcohol. [..]’
