`A German man who unsuccessfully tried to kill himself by jumping in front of a train must pay compensation for the damage he caused, a court in the southern city of Munich ruled on Tuesday.
A spokesman for the court said the 47-year-old man leapt too late to land under the train and instead crashed through the side window of the driver’s cabin. He suffered head wounds but no other lasting physical injuries, the court said.
The driver of the metro train suffered shock and was unable to work for several weeks.’
`Japanese police are trying to identify cremated human remains that were mailed to the headquarters of a TV station by a viewer who was incensed at missing a cartoon.
A plastic bag containing ashes and shards of bone was delivered to TV Tokyo along with a note protesting TV Tokyo’s decision to extend live coverage of the world table-tennis championships.
The viewer wrote that he had set his video to record the popular “Inu Kami” cartoon.’
`An 18-year-old Singaporean student committed suicide last month because he was convinced his penis was too small, a report said on Wednesday. [..]
The teenager, who was not named, jumped from a building on March 3. A suicide note explained why, an investigation to determine the cause of death said.
“He said it was not due to the stress of his examination, but it was more about his physical development… He still knew there was something wrong with his body parts,” said the report quoted by the newspaper.
It said the teenager had confided in his mother in October 2005 that he was worried about the size of his penis. She took him to a clinic where a doctor said it was normal for an Asian man and prescribed multi-vitamins.’
`The Norwegian coastguard Tuesday found the body of a 67-year-old adventurer roped to the keel of his overturned and wrecked boat two days after he had set off from the North Cape to row the length of Norway’s coastline.
Without protection a man can survive for only a few hours in the cold Arctic waters around the Cape, but before his departure Richard Horntvedt told a local newspaper he was not taking a life raft or a survival suit as he did not have enough space.
“We found his body at about 5.30 a.m. (0330 GMT) this morning drifting about 10 miles east of the Cape,” emergency services spokesman Erlang Herstad said.
“He was tied to the keel of the boat by a rope, but I don’t know if he had tied himself or became entangled.”‘
`A high school teacher in Belleville, Ill., was arrested and charged with breaking the neck of a 17-year-old student and then leaving her to die in some woods, according to police.
Investigators said Samson Shelton, 26, who is a teacher at Columbia High School, tried to strangle Ashley Reeves and then left her to die.
Shelton was with St. Clair County detectives when they found Reeves in a park in Belleville. She survived in the woods for 30 hours before she was found.’
`A man underwent an intensive parachute course so that he could throw himself out of a plane in the UK and commit suicide.
The 27-year-old, who has not been named, died on Saturday afternoon after cutting through the lines of his parachute on his first jump and plunging to the ground.
He died two weeks after doing seven hours of training and seemed ready and able to take his first jump over Old Buckenham airfield, near Attleborough, Norfolk.
But, after jumping at 3,500ft and after his fixed-line parachute was seen to open normally, he threw away the helmet, which had a built-in radio to speak to his instructor on the ground, then used a pair of scissors or gardening secateurs to cut the cords of his parachute.’
`Police in Sierra Leone are on the hunt for a group of chimpanzees, who escaped from their wildlife sanctuary after a fatal attack on construction workers.
Armed reinforcements are combing the area after a Sierra Leonean died and two Americans were seriously injured. [..]
A worker at Tacugama told the BBC that some 24 chimpanzees had escaped, and six had already returned.
Armed police arrived after the attack and fired shots which caused panic among local people.’
`In an odd twist of fate, a sister caught her sister’s last minutes alive – without even knowing.
Maria Ramoutar and her sister were in separate cars on their way back from Miami Beach when Maria saw a fiery car crash. She decided to videotape it with her cell phone.
Four people inside that burning car died, including Maria’s sister.
Maria didn’t find out it was her sister till the next day. Now she says she wishes she would have done something to save her.’
`A hospital patient died when he became engulfed in flames as he lit a cigarette after being treated with an inflammable gel for a skin complaint.
Philip Hoe, 60, is believed to have sneaked out of a ward and on to a fire escape stairwell to get around a smoking ban.
It is believed that as he lit the cigarette it ignited fumes from a paraffin and kerosene wax cream used on large areas of his body.
The gel is thought to have soaked into his nightclothes which burst into flames, causing him to scream in agony.’
`An intruder has been found dead and naked in the house he broke into after apparently overdosing on prescription drugs he had found inside.
The 60-year-old resident of an Adelaide property found the body yesterday after being away for two days.
Police said the dead man appeared to have taken the resident’s diabetes tablets, vomited in the toilet and then used the shower before collapsing.
Detective Senior Sergeant Brian Kimber, of Elizabeth, said the intruder, aged in his 20s, had been known to police.’
`Two people who police say conspired to get off of work for a few days by filing a fake obituary with a newspaper have been arrested.
James Ralph Snyder, 36, and Mary Jo Elizabeth Jensen, 33, both of Waterloo, participated in the scam by filing an obituary saying Jensen’s 17-year-old son had died, police said.
Snyder was charged with tampering with records. Jensen was charged with being an accessory after the fact.
Snyder, claiming he was Daniel Reddout’s father, submitted the obituary to the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier in December, police said.
Snyder, who is Jensen’s boyfriend, said Reddout died at the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minn., after a lengthy illness, police said.
Later in the week, people who know the family and the teenager saw him at a downtown restaurant and called authorities, police said.’
`Federal investigators said Friday they are preparing to file charges against a Santa Cruz couple suspected of taking a two-day-old harbor seal pup from the beach back to their home.
The pup was found by a volunteer rescuer in the pair’s backyard late last month. The pup died hours later after an unsuccessful attempt to reunite it with its mother, said Doug Ross, a volunteer with the Marine Mammal Center.
Ross believes the pair carried the pup to their Seabright home after spotting it beside the San Lorenzo River mouth. Ross said he found the pup in a dog crate after receiving an early-morning emergency call the couple made to a 24-hour seal rescue hot line.’
`A 5-year-old boy called 911 to report that his mother had collapsed in their apartment, but an operator told him he should not be playing on the phone, and she died before help arrived. [..]
Turner’s son, Robert, placed two calls to 911 after his mother collapsed Feb. 20 on the kitchen floor. During one of the calls, an operator said: “You shouldn’t be playing on the phone.”
In a tape of the call, parts of which were broadcast by Detroit-area television stations, the operator said: “Now put her on the phone before I send the police out there to knock on the door and you gonna be in trouble.”‘
`The parents of a man who hanged himself took their own lives after hearing of his death an inquest has heard.
Neil Powell, 27, from Bridgend, was found hanging from a tree in a field in July 2005.
Hours after being told by police, his father Robert, 56, hanged himself at home in Llandeilo and his mother Mary, 56, drowned herself at a reservoir.
The coroner said it was one of the most tragic family cases he had come across in 30 years.’
`Two local teens face murder charges after they allegedly chased a man who mooned them and bludgeoned him to death.
Martin Malone, 47, of Clifton Heights, Pa., died Friday night in the attack in Upper Darby, Pa. [..]
Investigators said Malone was sifting through trash at a Dumpster when Christopher McEneaney, 16, and Andre Mark, 18, started calling Malone names.
People who knew Malone said he was looking for objects to resell.
Investigators said the pair threw rocks at Malone and he mooned the teens, and they became upset.’
`Only three things are certain in life. MySpace, Taxes, and Death.
If you have a MySpace account and you die, this is where you will end up.
MyDeathSpace.com memorializes deceased MySpace users and picks up where a regular obituary leaves off.
Click the MySpace Deaths link at the top to view the latest MySpace Deaths!’
`Reebok is recalling 300 000 children’s charm bracelets after a four-year-old died from lead poisoning after swallowing a piece of the jewellery, the US government said.
The silver-coloured bracelets, bearing heart-shaped charms engraved with the “Reebok” name, were given away with the purchase of children’s shoes in major shoe stores across the country.
The bracelets contain high levels of lead, the Consumer Product Safety Commission said.’
`State senators are considering a proposal that would allow South Carolina to execute those convicted two or more times of sexually assaulting children.
The amendment came as the Senate took up sexual offender legislation crafted in response to a Florida girl kidnapped and killed last year and a week after a Hartsville man was charged with abducting two girls to an underground shelter and assaulting them.
Currently, South Carolina prosecutors can only seek the death penalty for murder with aggravating circumstances. If the proposed amendment by Sen. Kevin Bryant of Anderson passes, South Carolina would join Louisiana as the only other state to allow the death penalty for an offense other than murder, senators said.’
`The incident seemed like so many others from this war, the kind of tragedy that has become numbingly routine amid the daily reports of violence in Iraq. On the morning of Nov. 19, 2005, a roadside bomb struck a humvee carrying Marines from Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, on a road near Haditha, a restive town in western Iraq. The bomb killed Lance Corporal Miguel (T.J.) Terrazas, 20, from El Paso, Texas. The next day a Marine communique from Camp Blue Diamond in Ramadi reported that Terrazas and 15 Iraqi civilians were killed by the blast and that “gunmen attacked the convoy with small-arms fire,” prompting the Marines to return fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding one other. The Marines from Kilo Company held a memorial service for Terrazas at their camp in Haditha. They wrote messages like “T.J., you were a great friend. I’m going to miss seeing you around” on smooth stones and piled them in a funeral mound. And the war moved on.
But the details of what happened that morning in Haditha are more disturbing, disputed and horrific than the military initially reported. According to eyewitnesses and local officials interviewed over the past 10 weeks, the civilians who died in Haditha on Nov. 19 were killed not by a roadside bomb but by the Marines themselves, who went on a rampage in the village after the attack, killing 15 unarmed Iraqis in their homes, including seven women and three children. Human-rights activists say that if the accusations are true, the incident ranks as the worst case of deliberate killing of Iraqi civilians by U.S. service members since the war began.’
`Hundreds of well-off Japanese and other nationals are turning to China’s burgeoning human organ transplant industry, paying tens of thousands of pounds for livers and kidneys, which in some cases have been harvested from executed prisoners and sold to hospitals.
When Kenichiro Hokamura’s kidneys failed, he faced a choice: wait for a transplant or go online to check out rumours of organs for sale. As a native of Japan, where just 40 human organs for transplant have been donated since 1997, the businessman, 62, says it was no contest. “There are 100 people waiting in this prefecture alone. I would have died before getting a donor.” Still, he was astonished by just how easy it was.
Ten days after contacting a Japanese broker in China two months ago, he was lying on an operating table in a Shanghai hospital receiving a new kidney. “It was so fast, I was scared,” he says. The “e-donor” was an executed man; the price: 6.8m yen (about £33,000).’
Related to Witness Confirms Existence of Chinese Concentration Camp.
`North Korea has no people with physical disabilities because they are killed almost as soon as they are born, a physician who defected from the communist state said on Wednesday.
Ri Kwang-chol, who fled to the South last year, told a forum of rights activists that the practice of killing newborns was widespread but denied he himself took part in it.
“There are no people with physical defects in North Korea,” Ri told members of the New Right Union, which groups local activists and North Korean refugees.
He said babies born with physical disabilities were killed in infancy in hospitals or in homes and were quickly buried.
The practice is encouraged by the state, Ri said, as a way of purifying the masses and eliminating people who might be considered “different”.’
`A man running from a routine traffic stop early Tuesday sank waist-deep in mud and apparently died of exhaustion and cold while authorities tried to pull him out.
Deputies stopped Shawn E. Leflore, 33, for having an outdated registration sticker, sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Don Peritz said.
“He thought he was wanted. That is why he ran,” Peritz said. “But it turns out he wasn’t wanted for anything, except his driver’s license was expired.”‘
`The human death toll from the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu reached 103 after five people died from the disease in Azerbaijan, the World Health Organization said Tuesday. WHO said seven of 11 patients from Azerbaijan had tested positive for H5N1 in samples checked at a major laboratory in Britain. Five of those cases were fatal.
The sources of infection were still under investigation, but officials suspected a connection to the feathers of dead swans.’
‘A man who neighbors say was devoted to his meticulously kept lawn is charged with murder in the shooting of a 15-year-old boy who apparently walked across his yard.
Charles Martin, 66, of Union Township, near this city about 20 miles east of Cincinnati, shot next-door neighbor Larry Mugrage in the chest with a shotgun around 3:30 p.m. Sunday, police said. The youth was pronounced dead at a hospital. [..]
Martin called 911 on Sunday, saying in a calm voice: “I just killed a kid.”
He also tells the dispatcher: “It’s been going on for five years … I’ve been harassed by him and his parents for five years. Today just blew it up.”‘
Update: now with 911 call audio and video.
(1.5meg Flash video)
see it here »
`A man is being held by German police after walking into a petrol station with his wife’s severed head in a bag.
The 40-year-old man, of Turkish origin, was covered in blood when he approached the night counter at about 0400 GMT and asked the attendant to call the police.
Hamburg police said officers found the head in a bag on a grass verge and arrested the man, who was in a confused state and admitted killing his wife.’
`A macabre scandal in which corpses were plundered for body parts could be even bigger than previously disclosed, with one company alone saying it has distributed thousands of pieces of human tissue that authorities fear could be tainted with disease.
In addition, three other companies have reported quarantining or destroying more than $5 million in tissue from Biomedical Tissue Services — the now-defunct New Jersey supply house at the center of the scandal.
While the exact number of pieces distributed and used in operations has not been revealed, hospitals in recent weeks have spoken of contacting hundreds of patients who may have received tainted tissue.’
`A runaway train killed seven people and injured at least 11, severing some of their limbs, during the filming of a TV show in Uruguay, police said. [..]
Participants in the programme, called A Challenge to the Heart, raise funds for local charities by completing difficult tasks set by the network – in this case manoeuvring a train a certain distance down railway tracks.
The Associated Press news agency quoted Ana Portela as telling local radio station El Espectador that the train was moving when “somebody slipped and fell under the locomotive, and others were falling alongside it.
“There were shouts and somebody said ‘my arm!'” Ms Portela said.’
`A former employee of Liaoning Provincial Thrombosis Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine told The Epoch Times during a recent interview that the Sujiatun Concentration Camp in China was actually a part of a hospital. The concentration camp has engaged in taking organs from Falun Gong practitioners when they were still alive and selling the organs. Since 2001, the concentration camp has secretly detained approximately 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners, none of whom have been able to leave the camp alive. The hospital removed many kidneys, livers, and corneas from the practitioners. After the organ removal, the practitioners were thrown into an incinerator, which was converted from a boiler. Their ashes were dumped together with burned charcoal.’
`Last week, the press reported that Merrill Keiser, a Democratic candidate United States Senate from Ohio, believes that homosexuality should be punishable by death. Kaiser’s opposition for the Democratic nomination is US Rep. Sherrod Brown.
PageOneQ has obtained a portion of an audio interview in which Keiser says that singer/performer Elton John should be put to death and insinuates that the same should happen to Mary Cheney, the daughter of Vice President Richard B. Cheney.’
`Want to buy a head? On the American body-part market, the going price is between $500 and $900, plus another $50 if you’d like the brain, too. A torso will set you back as much as $3,000, while a single foot could cost $650.
At these prices, there’s plenty of temptation for people to take advantage of the dead. But as a disturbing new book reveals, the burgeoning trade in human remains is largely unmonitored. Universities, mortuaries and medical companies routinely buy and sell arms, legs and elbows with virtually no oversight.
The inevitable result? Crooked deals, stolen corpses and lots of looking the other way.’
