‘A man beat and slashed his mother because he feared she would have him arrested for taking her computer, then read the Bible to her as he watched her die, state police said.
Jesse James Campbell told friends that he wanted to kill his mother, Cindy Jo Coleman, because she demanded that he return a computer he stole from her by 8 a.m. Thursday, police said.
Campbell went to his mother’s home before the deadline, grabbed a five-pound plastic weight and hit Coleman repeatedly in the face with it, police said. He also choked his mother and then grabbed a steak knife and stabbed her, police said.
Campbell later told his girlfriend things “got messy” when he confronted his mother about the computer and that he read his mother the Bible as she lay dying, police said.’
‘The Church of Scientology tried to stop protesters from returning to the sidewalks outside its headquarters this week by filing a type of petition in court usually used by women in fear for their safety.
And in large part because of that approach, a Pinellas-Pasco circuit judge denied it late this afternoon.
In a petition filed Tuesday, the church claimed the Internet-based group Anonymous wants to harm the church and its leaders – in particular the Rev. Heber Jentzsch, the president of the Church of Scientology International. The church also claims Anonymous has tried to harm the church in the past.
The church’s court maneuver comes a month after about 180 members of Anonymous gathered outside Scientology’s headquarters Feb. 10 and conducted a peaceful protest. Members of the group vowed to return.
In court lingo, the church was asking for an injunction for protection against repeat violence, which is more typically filed by women who say they are being beaten.’
‘An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida terrorist network.
The Pentagon-sponsored study, scheduled for release later this week, did confirm that Saddam’s regime provided some support to other terrorist groups, particularly in the Middle East, U.S. officials told McClatchy. However, his security services were directed primarily against Iraqi exiles, Shiite Muslims, Kurds and others he considered enemies of his regime.
The new study of the Iraqi regime’s archives found no documents indicating a “direct operational link” between Hussein’s Iraq and al Qaida before the invasion, according to a U.S. official familiar with the report. [..]
Then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld claimed in September 2002 that the United States had “bulletproof” evidence of cooperation between the radical Islamist terror group and Saddam’s secular dictatorship.’
‘People who have been injured while walking and texting on their cell phones may be in luck.
A London street is experimenting with padded lampposts to protect those not paying attention from banging into them, ITN reports.
A study conducted by 118 118, a phone directory service, found that one in 10 people has been hurt while focusing on their cell phone instead of where they were walking, ITN reports.
The test lampposts will be given a trial run in London’s East End on Brick Lane. If the trial is successful it will be rolled out in Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool.
The survey found that almost two thirds of respondents lost peripheral vision while texting, and more than a quarter wanted lines on the pavement to create routes for texters to walk while using their phones.’
‘North Korea has executed 22 fishermen who strayed out of the country’s waters by mistake, it was claimed yesterday.
The group were apparently gunned down once they returned to the Stalinist state.
Having drifted into South Korean territory, they had the opportunity to seek asylum, but insisted they never had any intention of doing so.
They told South Korean officials they had strayed accidentally while fishing for clams and oysters, so were sent back to North Korea – and to their deaths.
A South Korean newspaper reported yesterday that all the drifters were immediately shot dead in a secret location by agents of North Korea’s national security agency.
It was another alleged incident supporting claims that North Korea has a “no tolerance” policy against anyone suspected of trying to leave the country – even in error.’
‘For law enforcement, fear and the politics of fear have entwined to create a radical new paradigm. Even the term “law enforcement” has been rendered quaint by the Bush administration. These days, the term of art is “lawfare” — the confluence of police work and military tactics. With Joint Terrorism Task Forces set up across the country to coordinate the work of federal agencies and local cops, the FBI now devotes nearly two-thirds of its resources — some $4 billion — to waging war on terrorism. The approach today is not the traditional police work of investigating actual crimes but the far more slippery goal of preventing terrorist attacks before they occur.
To hear the Bush administration tell it, the JTTFs have been an unqualified success. [..]
But a closer inspection of the cases brought by JTTFs reveals that most of the prosecutions had one thing in common: The defendants posed little if any demonstrable threat to anyone or anything. According to a study by the Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law, only ten percent of the 619 “terrorist” cases brought by the federal government have resulted in convictions on “terrorism-related” charges — a category so broad as to be meaningless. In the past year, none of the convictions involved jihadist terror plots targeting America. “The government releases selective figures,” says Karen Greenberg, director of the center. “They have never even defined ‘terrorism.’ They keep us in the dark over statistics.”‘
People seem to insist on doing obviously stupid things. It’s grand. 🙂
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Jumping from one roof to another.. What could go wrong? 🙂
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‘A Camarillo High School employee has been jailed for stealing snack money from a disabled student.
Ventura County Superior Court Judge James Cloninger sentenced Kristen Rene Santoyo on Tuesday to six months in jail, followed by three years’ probation. She was also pay $285 restitution to the student.
The student’s parents put $5 a day in her lunch box along with her food. The money was for snacks, but her parents say she came home from school hungry.
The 37-year-old Oxnard woman earlier pleaded guilty to felony petty theft and misdemeanor cruelty to a child by inflicting injury. Defense attorney James Harmon says Santoyo took the money to feed a methamphetamine habit.’
‘You know you don’t have to do this, right?’
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‘A primary school has been accused of being alarmist for covering up the faces of pupils on its website – apparently to protect them from paedophiles.
Bizarrely, the images have been altered with the type of smiley faces popular during the Acid House dance craze of the 1980s.
The decision was taken at Cann Hall Primary School in Clacton, Essex. [..]
Headmistress Clare Reece said yesterday: “The public nature of the internet is an issue we feel strongly about.
“Not all parents want their children’s picture on there.
“You can’t say what is going to happen with any of those pictures.”‘
‘PGA tour golfer Tripp Isenhour has been charged in Orlando with intentionally killing a protected bird with a golf shot from about 75 yards away.
The incident happened in December at Grand Cypress Golf Club while Isenhour, 39, was filming a video segment for his television show “Shoot Like A Pro.”
Prosecutors said a red-shouldered hawk was making noise, forcing a video crew to film another take.
Isenhour, who earned nearly $500,000 on the PGA tour in 2007, initially attempted to hit the bird from about 300 yards away, according to a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission report obtained by Web site The Smoking Gun.
Those attempts failed, but the hawk flew to a tree closer to Isenhour and again began chirping, prompting Isenhour to say, “I’ll get him now,” according to the report.’
A truck is on a trailer, being towed down the highway. Apparently such things wobble like maniacs if you change lanes too quickly.
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‘The Australian Federal Police (AFP) is under fire after raiding the homes of two Victorians suffering from terminal illnesses.
Controversial euthanasia campaigner Doctor Philip Nitschke says AFP officers executed search warrants on 78-year-old Don Flounders of Warragul, and 54-year-old Angie Belecciu of Hastings on Wednesday after the pair announced on television they planned to end their own lives.
Mr Flounders suffers from the asbestos-related disease mesothelioma and Ms Belecciu is terminally ill with breast cancer.
Dr Nitschke says he received a panicked phone call from Mr Flounders this morning as the AFP raids were taking place.
“He called me saying ‘there are people in my house, what do I do’,” Dr Nitschke said.’
When you can’t reach the ticket machine at the parking garage, this is a good a way as any of getting closer. Getting out of the car is for losers. 🙂
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‘A monster crocodile came within a metre of making a meal of a fisherman on a Northern Territory river.
The saltie came alongside the small boat – probably looking for a free feed of fish – and suddenly exploded out of the water.
It almost got its jaws around 27-year-old Israeli tourist Novon Mashiah, who was leaning over the back of a dinghy posing for a photo. [..]
“I was shocked – the animal clearly wanted to kill me,” Mr Mashiah told the Northern Territory News.
“One minute I was leaning over the boat teasing it for a picture. The next minute it burst out of the water with incredible speed … its jaws fully open. [..]
“I was pointing at it when it suddenly jumped up at me – I didn’t realise that crocs were so aggressive.”’
‘A website promoting the town of Mildenhall has been shut down after it unintentionally became the recipient of hundreds of classified emails, including messages detailing the planned flight path of President Bush.
Over more than a decade, www.mildenhall.com received emails detailing all kinds of secret military information that were intended for official Air Force personnel. One detailed where Air Force One could be found in the air during a planned visit to the region by President Bush. Others included battlefield strategy and passwords.
“I was being sent everything from banal chat and jokes, to videos up to 15mb in size,” Gary Sinnott, owner of mildenhall.com, said in this article in EDP 24. “Some were classified, some were personal. A lot had some really sensitive information in them.” [..]
Sinnott says he brought the SNAFU to the attention of Air Force officials but was never able to get the problem fixed. At first, they didn’t seem to take the matter seriously, but eventually, they “went mental,” he said. Officials advised Sinnott to block unrecognizable addresses from his domain and set up an auto-reply reminding people of the address for the official air force base.’
My random image site has been doing quite nicely lately. Well fucken surprised am I. 🙂 There’s a fair few images on it now. I should be passing 10,000 in the near future. I like arbitrary milestones and your mother will confirm that.
I’ve had more than 2.5 million people visit the image site since I started it last year. Well more than 10 million page loads.
Also, I have a cunning plan to show my testicles to tens of thousands of people, and then claim they aren’t mine. Or maybe I will put someone else’s testicles up there and claim they are mine. You never know. 🙂 Never! [Anyone out there want their nuts on the web? Labia are fine too.] The point is, I would laugh heartily because I have a juvenile sense of humour.
In any case, this is the spot where I don’t love you anymore.
‘I cannot let the irony pass with out commenting. A religious state, Pakistan, identifies a content provider, YouTube, as the source of blasphemous, seditious content and orders, King Canute style, that the Internet tides be stopped. A zealous ISP ignorantly decides the best way to comply with the decree is to re-route all of YouTube’s IP addresses to whatever site they thought was more appropriate. The first repercussion was that YouTube disappeared from the Internet for almost an hour. I suspect the second repercussion was that Pakistan’s Internet access crawled to a halt as all of a sudden they were handling IP requests for one of the busiest sites in the world. As of this writing YouTube has announced more granular routes so that at least in the US they supercede the routes announced by PieNet. The rest of the world is still struggling. So, while working on a fix that will filter out the spurious route announcements, PCCW has found it necessary to shut down Pakistan’s Internet access. The leadership of Pakistan just created a massive Denial of Service on their own country.’
This cunning police man saves a woman from a burning house.
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‘bloodninja: You gotta do better than that!
bloodninja: Your picture was really bad.
sweet17: HARRRRRRRRRRRR’
This man runs in a treadmill whilst simultaneously painting, blending fruit in a blender, and taking phone calls from people.
The painting isn’t very good, the fruit drink probably isn’t going to be very tasty, and the calls are all abusive.
Funny. 🙂
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‘Reminiscent of the “good” Nachi worm unleashed in 2003, Microsoft researchers have touted the idea of “friendly worms” to issue software patches, which has been labelled “stupid” by security experts.
In a research paper entitled Microsoft’s Sampling Strategies for Epidemic-Style Information Dissemination, the software giant looks at optimising the dissemination of data over a large-scale network by sampling computers in a subnet or IP address block — a similar technique to that used by worms — to identify computers that contain a known vulnerability.
“My focus is fundamental research on improving the efficiency of data distribution of all types across networks, and isn’t limited to certain scenarios or types of data but investigating underlying networking techniques,” Milan Vojnovic, researcher at Microsoft UK, told ZDNet.com.au sister site ZDNet.co.uk. [..]
However security expert Bruce Schneier said the concept of using worm-like techniques to distribute software patches is “stupid”.
“Patching other people’s machines without annoying them is good; patching other people’s machines without their consent is not,” wrote Schneier in a blog post.’
‘Is nanotechnology morally acceptable? For a significant percentage of Americans, the answer is no, according to a recent survey of Americans’ attitudes about the science of the very small. [..]
“Our data show a much lower percentage of people who agree that nanotechnology is morally acceptable in the U.S. than in Europe,” says Scheufele, an expert on public opinion and science and technology. [..]
In a sample of 1,015 adult Americans, only 29.5 percent of respondents agreed that nanotechnology was morally acceptable.’
‘A police officer in Hazelwood will have to pay thousands of dollars for getting into it with a firefighter while he was trying to help an accident victim.
News 4 obtained police video that shows the Hazelwood police officer arresting a fire captain while he’s trying to move an injured driver.
It happened on Interstate 270 back in May of 2003.
Officer Todd Greeves wanted a fire truck moved to open up another lane of traffic.
The Robertson Fire Protection District Captain wanted the truck there to protect emergency workers.
Officer Greeves has been ordered to pay $18,000.’
