Archive for March, 2008
Monday, March 31st, 2008
Heathrow’s New Terminal: More Disruption For BA Passengers At T5
The Terminal 5 fiasco at Heathrow has led to a reported 19,000 bags being placed in temporary storage – and it could take up to a week to get them back to their owners.
British Airways Chief Executive Willie Walsh told the Jeff Randall Live programme on Sky News he accepted “full responsibility” for the chaos.
But Mr Walsh said the terminal’s travel disruptions were “easing”.
Earlier, Aviation Minister Jim Fitzpatrick told MPs that passengers using the new £4.3bn terminal had suffered “an unacceptably poor experience”.
Passengers should get the assistance and compensation to which they were entitled, he declared.
Mr Fitzpatrick was speaking after BA cancelled a further 54 flights at T5, with a further 50 being axed on Tuesday.
Posted in Idiot Authorities, Politico Follies | Comments Off
Monday, March 31st, 2008
UTSA students commit sin they’re trying to halt
It seemed like an honorable goal: Draft an honor code for University of Texas at San Antonio students to follow, exhorting them not to cheat or plagiarize.
But when students threw a draft of the new honor code onto the Internet for feedback, some noticed a problem: Parts of the code appeared to have been lifted word for word from another school’s honor code, without attribution. Even the definition of plagiarism was, well, plagiarized.
Akshay Thusu, the student in charge of the honor code effort, said it was an oversight, the result of a draft that was crafted five years ago and passed through different students and faculty advisers before landing in his lap.
Posted in Bad Parents, End of the World Update, Idiot Authorities, Uncategorized | Comments Off
Monday, March 31st, 2008
Drinker almost crushed by binmen
A man in Indiana had a brush with death after sleeping off a heavy drinking session in a rubbish bin.
A dustbin van driver emptied the bin into the compactor before hearing William Bowen stir, and was able to stop the machine from crushing him.
Larry Green, market safety supervisor for the Rumpke waste disposal company, said the only thing Bowen said to the driver was that he was cold.
He said: “This gentleman was extremely intoxicated.”
Posted in Concentrated Stupidity, Fun with Alcohol, You lucky bastard | Comments Off
Monday, March 31st, 2008
N.Y. Teen’s Donated Organs Lead To Cancer Deaths
They thought they were helping others by donating their son’s organs. Instead those organs spread a rare, undiagnosed form of cancer.
Alex Koehne passed away a year ago from lymphoma. Since then, two of the 15-year-old donor’s recipients have died and two others are battling the same disease.
…
The Koehne’s had demanded an autopsy. One month later they found out Alex actually died of a rare lymphoma. It was too late. The organs were already donated.
“(The doctor) said, ‘Jim I don’t want to upset you, but we’ve heard something from the recipients that two of them had died from cancer,’” Jim Koehne said.
Posted in Medical Monstrosities, Unintended Consequences | Comments Off
Monday, March 31st, 2008
Zimbabwe on a knife edge as fears deepen that result is being rigged
From the deserted streets of Bulawayo to the fetid slums of Mbare, Zimbabwe was waiting on tenterhooks last night to discover the fate of President Mugabe as he appeared to be heading towards election defeat.
With official counts trickling out of Harare, the clamour grew for the authorities to tell the people what they already knew from their own polling stations: that for the old tyrant, the writing was on the wall.
Lists posted outside each station announced the scale of the swing to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which scooped up the figures from teams of observers to declare that it was bound for a landslide victory in parliamentary and presidential polls.
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, Crazed Dictatorships | Comments Off
Monday, March 31st, 2008
Mile-high tower: Saudi prince promises £5bn desert spire TWICE as tall as nearest rival being built
On a clear day, the view from the top will take in the Middle East, North Africa and the Indian Ocean – providing you’ve a head for heights.
Plans for a mile-high tower in the Saudi Arabian desert have been unveiled by the billionaire owner of London’s Savoy Hotel.
At 5,250ft, the £5billion project, masterminded by two British engineering consultancies, will be twice as high as its nearest rivals, skyscrapers under construction in Dubai and Kuwait, and almost seven times as high as the Canary Wharf tower in London’s Docklands.
Posted in Greed is Good, Mega Engineering | Comments Off
Monday, March 31st, 2008
Hackers Flood Epilepsy Web Forum With Flashing Lights
Web-site hacking has reached a new low, both morally and technically.
Unknown miscreants had a good time two weekends ago when they posted hundreds of flashing animated images onto discussion boards hosted by the Landover, Md.-based Epilepsy Foundation.
Flashing lights or bold moving patterns can trigger often violent seizures among 3 percent of the estimated 50 million epileptics worldwide.
“I was on the phone when it happened, and I couldn’t move and couldn’t speak,” RyAnne Fultz, who has epilepsy, told Wired News about her reaction to viewing one of the images on March 23.
Fultz’s 11-year-old son walked over and closed the browser window after about 10 seconds. Fortunately, she suffered nothing more than a bad headache.
By then, the second day of vandalism on EpilepsyFoundation.org, the jerks had moved on to hijacking the browsers of anyone who clicked on certain forum posts, filling the screens with bright, flashing colors.
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, Hackers and Hacking, Medical Monstrosities | Comments Off
Monday, March 31st, 2008
Max Mosley faces calls to quit as Formula One chief after ‘Nazi’ orgy
Max Mosley, one of the most powerful men in world sport, was under pressure to resign as boss of Formula One’s governing body last night after he was exposed enjoying a Nazi-style orgy with five prostitutes.
Jewish groups condemned the behaviour of Mosley, 67, whose father, Sir Oswald, was the leader of the British Union of Fascists and a friend of Adolf Hitler.
Mr Mosley was caught on video by the News of the World with five women in an underground “torture chamber” in Chelsea, where he spent several hours allegedly indulging in sado-masochistic sex.
The Oxford-educated former barrister, who is president of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), reenacted a concentration camp scene in which he played the role of both guard and inmate.
Speaking in German and brandishing a leather whip, he beat the women after allowing himself to be subjected to a humiliating inspection for lice and an interrogation in chains.
Posted in Idiot Celebrities, Nazis, Politically Incorrect, Sexual Deviants | Comments Off
Monday, March 31st, 2008
Marine threw himself onto grenade
A Royal Marine who threw himself onto an exploding grenade to save the lives of his patrol has been put forward for the UK’s highest military honour.
Lance Corporal Matt Croucher, 24, a reservist from Birmingham, survived because his rucksack and body armour took the force of the blast.
He was part of a reconnaissance troop in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, in February, when the incident happened.
The Ministry of Defence said he could be considered for the Victoria Cross.
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Crazy is as Crazy Does, War, You lucky bastard | Comments Off
Monday, March 31st, 2008
Asking a Judge to Save the World, and Maybe a Whole Lot More
More fighting in Iraq. Somalia in chaos. People in this country can’t afford their mortgages and in some places now they can’t even afford rice.
None of this nor the rest of the grimness on the front page today will matter a bit, though, if two men pursuing a lawsuit in federal court in Hawaii turn out to be right. They think a giant particle accelerator that will begin smashing protons together outside Geneva this summer might produce a black hole or something else that will spell the end of the Earth — and maybe the universe.
Scientists say that is very unlikely — though they have done some checking just to make sure.
The world’s physicists have spent 14 years and $8 billion building the Large Hadron Collider, in which the colliding protons will recreate energies and conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Researchers will sift the debris from these primordial recreations for clues to the nature of mass and new forces and symmetries of nature.
Posted in End of the World Update, Mega Engineering, Weird Science | Comments Off
Thursday, March 27th, 2008
Police Shut Down Italian Circus After Woman Forced to Swim in Piranha Tank
Police have closed down a circus in southern Italy after a terrified 19-year-old woman was forced to swim in a tank full of piranha fish while her younger sister endured the company of snakes and tarantulas.
Three men have been arrested and charged with holding the Bulgarian women in slavery and breaching international human rights conventions.
The trio, who are accused of running a “circus of horrors,” were named as Enrico Raffaele Ingrassia, 57, the owner, his son William Ingrassia, 33, and his son-in-law Gaetano Belfiore, 25.
The Marino Circus has been offering shows at Petina, south of Naples in southern Italy, in a tent with 200 plastic seats inside it.
Posted in Bad Parents, Concentrated Criminality, Hard Core! | Comments Off
Thursday, March 27th, 2008
Big Phat Liar
Last week’s bombshell Los Angeles Times report claiming that the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur in the lobby of a Manhattan recording studio was carried out by associates of Sean “Diddy” Combs and that the rap impresario knew of the plot beforehand was based largely on fabricated FBI reports, The Smoking Gun has learned.
The Times appears to have been hoaxed by an imprisoned con man and accomplished document forger, an audacious swindler who has created a fantasy world in which he managed hip-hop luminaries, conducted business with Combs, Shakur, Busta Rhymes, and The Notorious B.I.G., and even served as Combs’s trusted emissary to Death Row Records boss Marion “Suge” Knight during the outset of hostilities in the bloody East Coast-West Coast rap feud.
Posted in Career Limiting Move, Concentrated Stupidity, Corrupt Journos | No Comments »
Thursday, March 27th, 2008
Weekly Piracy Report
17.03.2008: 0230 LT: Enroute Cagbalite, Mituban and Balisen, Polilio Island, Philippines.
A passenger boat with ten passenger including five crewmembers was returning to Polilio Island after discharging her cargo on the mainland. Two passengers who had earlier boarded after asking for a ride to Polilio Island took control of the boat and shot dead three crewmembers including the captain. The pirates then tied them to the anchor and threw them overboard. The pirates shot the remaining two-crew members and injured them. One of the injured jumped into the sea and is still missing. The other injured crew is recuperating in the hospital. Three other passengers including a child were unharmed. The coast guard has mounted a search for the missing and dead crewmembers and the pirates who fled in a motor boat.
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Concentrated Criminality, Pirate Update | Comments Off
Thursday, March 27th, 2008
AND THERE HE HO’S AGAIN
Disgraced former Gov. Eliot Spitzer has been identified as a long-standing client of a second high-priced call-girl ring, The Post has learned.
The ex-governor regularly patronized Wicked Models, the Manhattan-based operation taken down Tuesday, according to financial documents and other evidence unearthed in a yearlong prostitution in vestigation, law-enforcement sources said.
Posted in Career Limiting Move, Concentrated Criminality, Concentrated Stupidity, Idiot Authorities | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
Big money in politics – sign of excess?
With eight months to go before the U.S. presidential election, the candidates have raised almost $1 billion to fund their campaigns — more than the size of the economies of several African countries.
The unusually long race for the White House — which began in earnest more than a year ago — has been a cash bonanza, especially for Democrats who are breaking all records.
Republicans lag behind but still rake in tens of millions and have time to make up ground in the money game between now and the November 4 national election.
Between January 2007 and February, the candidates raised a record $814 million. By the end of this month, analysts expect the total taken in and spent by the candidates and interest groups will reach $1 billion.
Posted in Greed is Good, Idiot Activists, Idiot Authorities, Politico Follies | Comments Off
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
Prosectors Say Saddam Officials Arranged Secret Pre-War Iraq Trip for U.S. Lawmakers
Saddam Hussein’s intelligence agency secretly financed a trip to Iraq for three U.S. lawmakers during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
An indictment unsealed in Detroit accuses Muthanna Al-Hanooti, a member of a Michigan nonprofit group, of arranging for three members of Congress to travel to Iraq in October 2002 at the behest of Saddam’s regime. Prosecutors say Iraqi intelligence officials paid for the trip through an intermediary.
At the time, the Bush administration was trying to persuade Congress to authorize military action against Iraq.
The lawmakers are not named in the indictment but the dates correspond to a trip by Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, David Bonior of Michigan and Mike Thompson of California. There was no indication the three lawmakers knew the trip was underwritten by Saddam.
Posted in Idiot Authorities, Politico Follies, Treason is as Treason Does | Comments Off
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008
Simple Justice: Settlement Demands Have Their Risks
Daniel Hynes was a newly minted lawyer, only one month in, when he apparently came up with a bright idea, according to this report in the New York Lawyer.
Fifteen months ago, Daniel Hynes of Manchester told a Concord hair salon to pay him $1,000 or face a lawsuit because its different prices for men and women were discriminatory. In one court document, he said the unequal prices at Claudia Lambert’s salon caused him mental anguish. That’s even though the salon charged women more than men.
Well, how is a young lawyer supposed to make a living when he’s got no clients and needs a haircut?
Unfortunately, a jury was unimpressed by Hynes’ career move, and convicted him of misdemeanor theft by extortion.
Hynes, apparently relying on his vast legal experience, disagreed with the jury.
“The conviction goes against the First Amendment,” he said. “People have a right to petition the courts.”
Posted in Career Limiting Move, Concentrated Criminality, Divine Vengeance | Comments Off
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008
Russian doomsday cultists fire on police
Members of a doomsday cult who have shut themselves up in caves beneath a Russian hillside to await the end of the world shot at police to drive them away, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Around 30 people, including some children, have barricaded themselves into the caves dug out of a hill in the Penza region of central Russia. They say the world will end on May 28.
The Kommersant newspaper quoted a policeman as saying the shots were fired after he had tried to help cave dwellers who said melt water had dislodged earth in the caves and they were afraid of being buried alive.
Posted in Concentrated Stupidity, Crazy is as Crazy Does, End of the World Update, Uncategorized | Comments Off
Monday, March 24th, 2008
21-Year-Old Message In a Bottle Drifts 1,735 Miles
Merle Brandell and his black lab Slapsey were beachcombing along the Bering Sea when he spied a plastic bottle among the Japanese glass floats he often finds along the shore of his tiny Alaskan fishing village.
He walked over and saw an envelope tucked inside. After slicing the bottle open, Brandell found a message from an elementary school student in a suburb of Seattle. The fact that the letter traveled 1,735 miles without any help from the U.S. postal service is unusual, but that’s only the beginning of the mystery.
About 21 years passed between the time Emily Hwaung put the message in a soda bottle and Merle Brandell picked it up on the beach.
“This letter is part of our science project to study oceans and learn about people in distant lands,” she wrote. “Please send the date and location of the bottle with your address. I will send you my picture and tell you when and where the bottle was placed in the ocean. Your friend, Emily Hwaung.”
Posted in Most Mysterious, Restless Earth | Comments Off
Sunday, March 23rd, 2008
Man Charged After Gun Hidden in Oven Goes Off, Injuring 2 Boys
Chicago police say two children were injured when a loaded handgun hidden inside an oven discharged when the stove was heated for cooking.
Twenty-four-year-old Anthony Smith of Chicago has been charged with two counts of endangering the life of a child.
Police spokesman Marcel Bright says Smith apparently had hidden the gun in the oven.
The injured children’s sister was cooking Friday afternoon when the gun went off. A 4-year-old boy is in stable condition with a gunshot wound to the leg. His 12-year-old brother was struck on the forehead by a fragment from the gun. He has been treated and released.
Posted in Concentrated Stupidity, Idiot Criminals | Comments Off
Sunday, March 23rd, 2008
Hospital to Visitor: No Horsing Around
A horse is a horse, of course, of course, but the one brought to visit a patient at Wilcox Memorial Hospital was the wrong horse.
Hospital spokeswoman Lani Yukimura says a drunken man brought the horse to visit an ailing relative earlier this month, thinking it would cheer up the patient to see his stallion.
Yukimura says the man and the horse rode an elevator up to the third floor, where they were met and stopped by security personnel.
Posted in Animal Weirdness, Fun with Alcohol | Comments Off
Sunday, March 23rd, 2008
A Stellar Explosion You Could See on Earth!
Astronomers are familiar with seeing amazing things through their telescopes. But nothing prepared them for an incredible explosion detected early Wednesday morning by NASA’s Swift satellite. At 2:12 a.m. EDT, Swift detected an explosion from deep space that was so powerful that its afterglow was briefly visible to the naked eye. Even more astonishing, the explosion itself took place halfway across the visible universe!
Never before has anything so far away come even close to naked-eye visibility. The explosion was so far away that it took its light 7,500,000,000 (7.5 billion) years to reach Earth! In fact, the explosion took place so long ago that Earth had not yet come into existence.
Posted in Space, Weird Science | Comments Off
Sunday, March 23rd, 2008
KGB plot fears as London oligarch vanishes and traces of blood are found in his mansion
An international manhunt was launched last night for a Russian-born British media magnate whose mysterious disappearance has possible links to the murder of former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko.
Jet-setting billionaire Leonid Rozhetskin, an outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, vanished from his £1 million home just outside the Latvian capital Riga a week ago.
Last night, Latvian authorities expressed fears that Mr Rozhetskin, one of the co-founders and major shareholders in British business newspaper City AM, may have been murdered.
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Anarchy, Concentrated Criminality, Crazed Dictatorships | Comments Off
Sunday, March 23rd, 2008
Woman, 57, thought she had cancer – until doctors told her she was 30 weeks pregnant. Now she’ll give birth in days
A woman of 57 with suspected ovarian cancer was in fact expecting her first baby.
Susan Tollefsen feared the worst when she was sent to hospital for a scan on her growing bump.
But the sonographer told her: “Congratulations, you’re almost 30 weeks pregnant.”
She will become one of Britain’s oldest mothers when she has a caesarean section next week.
The remarkable story, which she describes as an Easter miracle, follows-several years of attempts to have a baby by IVF treatment at foreign clinics.
Posted in Concentrated Stupidity, Human Oddities, Sex | Comments Off
Saturday, March 22nd, 2008
‘Hypnotist’ thief hunted in Italy
Police in Italy have issued footage of a man who is suspected of hypnotising supermarket checkout staff to hand over money from their cash registers.
In every case, the last thing staff reportedly remember is the thief leaning over and saying: “Look into my eyes”, before finding the till empty.
In the latest incident captured on CCTV, he targeted a bank at Ancona in northern Italy, then calmly walked out.
A female bank clerk reportedly handed over nearly 800 euros (£630).
The cashier who was shown the video footage has no memory of the incident, according to Italian media, and only realised what had happened when she saw the money missing.
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, Greed is Good, Most Mysterious | Comments Off
Saturday, March 22nd, 2008
Disabled pregnant woman used as target practice
Banished to the basement, the 29-year-old mother with a childlike mind and another baby on the way had little more than a thin rug and a mattress to call her own on the chilly concrete floor.
Dorothy Dixon ate what she could forage from the refrigerator upstairs, where housemates used her for target practice with BBs, burned her with a glue gun and doused her with scalding liquid that peeled away her skin.
They torched what few clothes she had, so she walked around naked. They often pummeled her with an aluminum bat or metal handle.
Dixon — six months pregnant — died after weeks of abuse. Police have charged two adults, three teenagers and a 12-year-old boy with murder in the case that has repulsed many in this Mississippi River town.
“This is heartbreaking,” police Lt. David Hayes said. “It was almost as though they were making fun of the abuse they were administering. This woman was almost like living in a prison.”
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Concentrated Criminality, Conspiracies | Comments Off
Friday, March 21st, 2008
Spring Breakers Arrested After Dynamite Explodes On Hotel Sundeck
Three spring breakers were arrested after an explosion rocked two hotel guests from their bed and shattered the windows of their Daytona Beach Shores hotel room around 2:30am Friday.
Officers patrolling the Oceanside Inn on South Atlantic Avenue in Daytona Beach Shores (see satellite map of location) heard a loud explosion early Friday morning. Several witnesses said the explosion came from the sundeck, located on the second floor of the hotel.
When officers first arrived, they found three safety windows had been shattered, along with a metal light pole that had been destroyed. They also noticed metal and glass debris scattered across a 100-foot area.
Police said surveillance video from the hotel showed three hotel guests running from the scene. The guests, three college students, were identified as 21-year-old Timothy Bechtel of La Grange, Illinois, 21-year-old Christopher Romano of Dayton, Ohio, and 21-year-old Michael Bolt, also from La Grange. When officers contacted Bechtel, he was found to have a cut on his arm and he admitted to being involved in the incident.
Posted in College Antics, Concentrated Criminality, Fun with Chemistry | Comments Off
Friday, March 21st, 2008
Stingray Leaps Onto Boat, Kills Woman
A 75-pound stingray killed a Michigan woman Thursday when it flew out of the water and struck her face as she rode a boat in the Florida Keys, officials said.
Judy Kay Zagorski, of Pigeon, Mich., was sitting in the front seat of a boat going 25 mph when the spotted eagle ray, with a wingspan of 5 to 6 feet, leaped out of the water, said Jorge Pino, spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
“It’s a bizarre accident,” Pino told Reuters.
The 57-year-old woman’s father was driving the boat on the Atlantic Ocean side of Vaca Key, Pino said.
“He had absolutely no warning. It just happened instantaneously,” Pino said.
Human-hunting season seems to have opened a bit early this year.
Hat tip to Kara!
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Animal Rebellion Update, Kara's Classics | Comments Off
Friday, March 21st, 2008
Starbucks Ordered to Pay More Than $100 Million in Back Tips
A Superior Court judge on Thursday ordered Starbucks Corp. to pay its California baristas more than $100 million in back tips and interest that the coffee chain paid to shift supervisors.
San Diego Superior Court Judge Patricia Cowett also issued an injunction that prevents Starbucks’ shift supervisors from sharing in future tips, saying state law prohibits managers and supervisors from sharing in employee gratuities.
Starbucks spokeswoman Valerie O’Neil said the company planned an immediate appeal of the ruling, calling it “fundamentally unfair and beyond all common sense and reason.”
The lawsuit was filed in October 2004 by Jou Chou, a former Starbucks barista in La Jolla, who complained shift supervisors were sharing in employee tips.
Posted in Greed is Good, Idiot Authorities | Comments Off
Thursday, March 20th, 2008
Woman Goes for Leg Operation, Gets New Anus Instead
A German retiree is taking a hospital to court after she went in for a leg operation and got a new anus instead, the Daily Telegraph is reporting.
The woman woke up to find she had been mixed up with another patient suffering from incontinence who was to have surgery on her sphincter.
Posted in Medical Monstrosities | Comments Off
Tuesday, March 18th, 2008
Wife denies gay ex-governor’s claims of three-way trysts
Former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey says he and his wife Dina Matos McGreevey used to engage in three-way sex with his ex-aide and driver.
Dina Matos McGreevey has denied the allegation.
The former aide, Teddy Pedersen, told the New York Post and New Jersey’s Star-Ledger he began having threesomes with the McGreeveys — a routine “hard-core consensual sex orgy” they called the “Friday Night Special” — in the late 1990s during Dina and Jim’s courtship, and that the trysts continued after the couple’s marriage in 2000, the papers reported online Sunday.
Pedersen described regularly sharing a hotel room with the McGreeveys during out-of-town business trips.
“In my opinion, me being a part of their sexual relationship enhanced it for both of them,” he told the Post.
Posted in Crazy is as Crazy Does, Politico Follies, Sexual Deviants | Comments Off
Tuesday, March 18th, 2008
Gov. Paterson admits to sex with other woman for years
The thunderous applause was still ringing in his ears when the state’s new governor, David Paterson, told the Daily News that he and his wife had extramarital affairs.
In a stunning revelation, both Paterson, 53, and his wife, Michelle, 46, acknowledged in a joint interview they each had intimate relationships with others during a rocky period in their marriage several years ago.
In the course of several interviews in the past few days, Paterson said he maintained a relationship for two or three years with “a woman other than my wife,” beginning in 1999.
As part of that relationship, Paterson said, he and the other woman sometimes stayed at an upper West Side hotel — the Days Inn at Broadway and W. 94th St.
Posted in Concentrated Stupidity, Politico Follies, Sexual Deviants | Comments Off
Monday, March 17th, 2008
Millions of Bees Loose on Calif. Highway
Millions of swarming honey bees are on the loose after a truck carrying crates of the insects flipped over on a California highway.
The California Highway Patrol says 8-to-12 million bees escaped Sunday from the crates in which they were stored and swarmed over an area of Highway 99 and stung officers, firefighters and tow truck drivers trying to clear the accident.
CHP Officer Michael Bradley says a tractor trailer flipped over while entering the highway on its way to Yakima, Wash. The flatbed was carrying bee crates each filled with up to 30,000 bees.
Posted in Animal Rebellion Update, Yuck! | Comments Off
Monday, March 17th, 2008
Naked Man Creates Havoc in Vandalism Spree in Pennsylvania
A hotel and store in Lancaster County are assessing the damage after a naked man ran amok and allegedly did thousands of dollars worth of damage to two businesses.
West Lampeter Township police said they were dispatched to the Willow Valley Resort, and later Darrenkamp’s Market, on Friday amid reports of a naked man on a rampage.
Some office space at the resort was trashed and a forklift was driven into an interior wall, also damaging an overhead sewer pipe, authorities said.
Police said the man, whom they identified as Nicholas Hadzick, 28, of Freeland, then crossed the street and entered Darrenkamp’s in the Willow Valley Shopping Center, causing more destruction.
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, Human Oddities | Comments Off
Monday, March 17th, 2008
Brother: Man Hospitalized in Vegas Says He Was Sickened by Ricin
A man who has been hospitalized since Valentine’s Day with respiratory ailments and failing kidneys told his brother he believes he was contaminated by the deadly ricin poison found in his Las Vegas motel room.
Roger Bergendorff regained consciousness on Wednesday but remains in critical condition at a Las Vegas medical center.
His younger brother, Erich Bergendorff, told The Associated Press that they spoke briefly on the telephone Sunday for the first time since the ricin was found, and said Roger claimed he had never had any intention of endangering anyone with the toxin.
“He did mention that he would have never done anything to anybody,” said Erich Bergendorff. “He himself is under the impression he was contaminated by it — he did mention the ricin and seemed to say something like, ‘Gee, it sure worked on me.”‘
Erich Bergendorff said his brother told him the ricin was easy to make. But he added that his brother, who was on a ventilator until last week, still had a hard time speaking clearly, so it was not clear whether Roger Bergendorff made it himself or watched someone else manufacture the powder.
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, Concentrated Stupidity, Crazy is as Crazy Does, Mad Scientists, Medical Monstrosities | Comments Off
Monday, March 17th, 2008
Searchers find possible graves at Manson compound
Bone-white stretches of salt, leached up from the lifeless soil, lay like a shroud over the high desert where a paranoid Charles Manson holed up after an orgy of murder nearly four decades ago.
Now, as then, few venture into this alkaline wilderness — gold-diggers, outlaws, loners content to live and let live.
But a determined group of outsiders recently made the trek. They were leading forensic investigators searching for new evidence of death — clues pointing to possible decades-old clandestine graves.
And the results of just-completed followup tests suggest bodies could indeed be lying beneath the parched ground. The test findings — described in detail to The Associated Press, which had accompanied the site search — conclude there are two likely clandestine grave sites at Barker Ranch, and one additional site that merits further investigation.
Next step, the ad hoc investigators urge: Dig.
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Concentrated Criminality | Comments Off
Sunday, March 16th, 2008
Callgirl Ashley Alexandra Dupre linked to Charlie Sheen
HOLLYWOOD actor Charlie Sheen allegedly hired the same callgirl involved in the Eliot Spitzer scandal for a fantasy themed threesome.
Pimp Jason Itzler, 41, claims he sent Ashley Alexander Dupre under the name of Victoria and another girl, Cheryl to Sheen more than two years ago, the Daily Record reported.
He claims Sheen paid $20,000 for a threesome with the girls dressed up as cheerleaders.
“They loved Charlie. They said he was a great guy. A great lover.
“One time he had them dressed up like cheerleaders, chanting ‘Charlie! Charlie! He’s our man. If he can’t do it, nobody can!’”
Itzler also claims Sheen pretended he was a porn film director and asked the women to act out lesbian scenes for him.
Posted in Greed is Good, Idiot Celebrities, Sexual Deviants | Comments Off
Sunday, March 16th, 2008
Tibet Protests Spread to Other Provinces
Violence in Tibet spilled over into neighboring provinces Sunday where Tibetan protesters defied a Chinese government crackdown. The Dalai Lama warned Tibet faced “cultural genocide” and appealed to the world for help.
Protests against Chinese rule of Tibet were reported in neighboring Sichuan and Qinghai provinces and also in western Gansu province. All are home to sizable Tibetan populations.
The demonstrations come after protests in the Tibetan capital Lhasa escalated into violence Friday, with Buddhist monks and others torching police cars and shops in the fiercest challenge to Beijing’s rule over the region in nearly two decades.
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Commies, Crazed Dictatorships, War | Comments Off
Sunday, March 16th, 2008
Oklahoma Rep. Sally Kern on YouTube Clip: Homosexuality Bigger Threat Than Terrorism
A YouTube audio clip of a state lawmaker’s screed against homosexuality, which she called a bigger threat than terrorism, has outraged gay activists and brought death threats rolling in.
“The homosexual agenda is destroying this nation, OK, it’s just a fact,” Rep. Sally Kern said recently to a gathering of fellow Republicans outside the Capitol.
“Studies show no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted, you know, more than a few decades. So it’s the death knell in this country.
“I honestly think it’s the biggest threat that our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam, which I think is a big threat,” she said.
Posted in Politically Incorrect | Comments Off
Saturday, March 15th, 2008
Dolphin rescues stranded whales
A dolphin swam up to two distressed whales that appeared headed for death in a beach stranding in New Zealand and guided them to safety, witnesses said Wednesday.
The actions of the bottlenose dolphin — named Moko by residents who said it spends much of its time swimming playfully with humans at the beach — amazed would-be rescuers and an expert who said they were evidence of the species’ friendly nature.
The two pygmy sperm whales, a mother and her calf, were found stranded on Mahia Beach, about 500 kilometers (300 miles) northeast of the capital of Wellington, on Monday morning, said Conservation Department worker Malcolm Smith.
Rescuers worked for more than one hour to get the whales back into the water, only to see them strand themselves four times on a sandbar slightly out to sea. It looked likely the whales would have to be euthanized to prevent them suffering a prolonged death, Smith said.
“They kept getting disorientated and stranding again,” said Smith, who was among the rescuers. “They obviously couldn’t find their way back past (the sandbar) to the sea.”
Along came Moko, who approached the whales and led them 200 meters (yards) along the beach and through a channel out to the open sea.
Posted in Animal Weirdness | Comments Off
Saturday, March 15th, 2008
Taxman may come for Wake s cats, dogs
Wake County wants to put a tax on dogs and cats of up to $30 a year — an idea that is making some veterinarians, pet owners and animal advocates bristle.
Under a proposal that county commissioners still must approve, the annual tax would start in July and be levied on every dog and cat. The licensing tax would be $15 for a dog or cat that had been spayed or neutered; $30 for non-fixed canines and felines. Residents could get a bargain on three-year licenses — $40 for fixed animals; $80 for those not spayed or neutered.
If all of the estimated 86,000 county pets were licensed, Wake would take in $2.5 million annually and the tax would replace pet license fees in Raleigh, Cary and Garner.
Posted in Greed is Good, Idiot Authorities | Comments Off
Saturday, March 15th, 2008
‘Fight club’ busted at Fairview High School
A group of Fairview High School students is suspected of organizing an after-school “fight club” that involved at least 12 students and as many as 60 spectators.
Boulder police spokeswoman Sarah Huntley said Thursday that 10 Fairview students, all boys, have been ticketed on suspicion of public brawling. Police think they were part of a club of friends that regularly met near the South Boulder Recreation Center for public “street fighting.”
“Apparently, they were gathering in the field after school hours … where they were engaging in fights,” Huntley said. “They see this as sort of a recreational, spectator-type sport where they just wanted to go out and fight.”
Huntley said police started receiving calls about the fights in February but were never able to catch anyone in the act — until a female Fairview teacher broke up one of the fights March 6, which resulted in two teens being ticketed.
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Teen Antics | Comments Off
Friday, March 14th, 2008
Chewed Up and Spitzed Out: How to Lose a Governor in 3 Days
A U.S. attorney announced the bust of The Emperors’ Club last Thursday. We noted that the Duke of Westminster was allegedly linked, back in the day, but otherwise the story seemed mostly innocuous, as the only people named were in brothel management, not customers. Except to the Times reporters who realized that a government official was involved. They learned it was Spitzer by Friday, and they amazingly held on to that news until the following Monday, when they went live with it at 2 p.m. and immediately caused all sorts of media hell to break loose.
Everyone’s initial reaction: OMG. The most jaded of observers couldn’t conceal their shock. We who have seen everything were still stunned at how this came seemingly out of absolutely nowhere. AIM windows across the city lit up.
Posted in Career Limiting Move, Concentrated Stupidity, Sex | Comments Off
Friday, March 14th, 2008
Backyard Body Count Up To 33 In Mexico
Mexican investigators found 19 more bodies buried in the backyard of a house in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, increasing the tally of corpses found there to 33, officials said Thursday.
Federal agents began digging in the yard in the La Cuesta neighborhood on March 1, initially finding six dismembered bodies, Mexico’s federal attorney general’s office said in a statement.
The remains date back about five years and all but three apparently are males, the statement said.
Click here to find out more!
The attorney general’s office did not say how the victims died or who may have buried the bodies. In the initial raid, authorities found 3,740 pounds of marijuana in the house.
Ciudad Juarez has been plagued by violence as Mexico’s crackdown on powerful drug cartels stokes turf wars among traffickers that have been linked to hundreds of killings in the past two years.
Hat tip to Kara!
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Anarchy, Concentrated Criminality, Drugs, Kara's Classics | Comments Off
Friday, March 14th, 2008
Harvard student database hacked, posted on BitTorrent
Harvard University says about 10,000 of last year’s applicants may have had their personal information compromised.
At least 6,600 Social Security numbers were exposed. Worse, a compressed 125 M-byte file containing the stolen student data is currently available via BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer network.
In a statement published Monday night Harvard officials said the database containing summaries of GSAS applicant data for entry to the Fall 2007 academic year, summaries of GSAS housing applicant data for the 2007-08 and 2006-07 academic years, and administrator information had been compromised. The server had been taken offline for several days last month to investigate the extent of the problem.
Most troubling are the 6,600 summaries from admissions candidates from the United States that were copied. Harvard officials said the data includes the applicant’s name, Social Security number, date of birth, address, e-mail address, phone numbers, test scores, previous school attended, and school records.
Posted in Hackers and Hacking, Idiot Authorities | Comments Off
Thursday, March 13th, 2008
Penthouse Wants Call Girl For Cover
Fox News reports that a million people have paid as much as $.98 apiece to download her song from MySpace, and now Penthouse is calling.
The woman at the center of the Eliot Spitzer call-girl scandal will have no problem cashing in on her notoriety.
Publisher Diane Silberstein says Penthouse would “love to have her in the magazine” and would consider offering her a cover shot.
Posted in Politico Follies, Sex | Comments Off
Thursday, March 13th, 2008
Bulgaria’s WWII tanks to go under hammer
Bulgaria is to auction off World War II Panzer tanks thought to be worth millions of dollars, the country’s defence ministry said Thursday.
“People from all over the world, from America to Jordan, have declared an interest in these rare German tanks,” the deputy director of Sofia’s military history museum, Blagoy Milenov, told a press conference.
Six Panzer IV tanks will go under the hammer on March 19 “to gauge their value,” with another 41 going on the market in May, according to Emil Petrov, a defence ministry heritage official.
A Russian collector has already offered five million leva (2.5 million euros, 3.6 million dollars) to buy one such model held by the museum, Milenov has said.
Posted in Toys! | Comments Off
Thursday, March 13th, 2008
Top aide testifies Taylor ordered soldiers to eat victims
Grim tales of cannibalism highlighting the brutality of West Africa’s civil wars emerged in testimony Thursday at the war crimes trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor.
Joseph “Zigzag” Marzah, who described himself as Taylor’s chief of operations and head of the death squad before Taylor became president, said African peacekeepers and even United Nations personnel were killed and eaten on the battlefield by Taylor’s militiamen.
Prosecutors described Marzah as a key witness with inside knowledge of the former Liberian president’s operations in Liberia and neighboring Sierra Leone, where he is accused of responsibility for the widespread murder, rape and amputations committed by soldiers loyal to him.
Taylor, 59, has pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He is accused of orchestrating violence in Sierra Leone’s civil war, which ended in 2002, and trading in illegally mined diamonds to finance the conflict.
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Cannibal Update, Crazy is as Crazy Does, Idiot Authorities, War | Comments Off
Thursday, March 13th, 2008
Youth aged 15 ‘kicked a woman to death because she was a Goth’
A drunken 15-year-old boy stamped to death a young student because she was dressed in the distinctive fashion of a ‘Goth’, a court was told yesterday.
Sophie Lancaster, 20, and her boyfriend Robert Maltby, 21, had been meandering home through a skate park late on a Friday night when they were set upon by a gang of teenagers in a savage and unprovoked attack, the jury heard.
The five-strong gang acted “like a pack of wild animals”, first targeting their violence on Mr Maltby, an arts student also dressed in the style of a Goth or mosher, raining punches and kicks on his head as Miss Lancaster pleaded with them to stop, it was alleged. It was as Miss Lancaster was kneeling down cradling her boyfriend’s head that the accused, along with another teenager who has already pleaded guilty to murder, are said to have turned their attention to her.
The two teenagers kicked and stamped on her head, the jury at Preston Crown Court was told.
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Concentrated Criminality, Teen Antics | Comments Off
Thursday, March 13th, 2008
Honey Drips Out Of Calif. Family’s Home
The situation at the Stathatos house on Virginia Road is getting sticky. So many bees live in the walls of the stately Tudor home that honey drips out of the walls, discoloring the wallpaper in the dining room.
The bees had been good tenants, peacefully coexisting for years with the home’s human residents, Helen and Jerry Stathatos.
But lately the house has become a hive of activity, with bees buzzing around an upstairs bedroom, said Dustin Mackey, a bee removal expert with Bee Specialist.
Mackey made a house call in late February to vacuum the busy insects from a window frame and seal the floor in the bedroom.
Posted in Animal Rebellion Update, Yuck! | Comments Off
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008
Weekly Piracy Report
02.03.2008: 2315 LT: Posn 06:18.3N – 003:20.54E, Lagos light house anchorage, Nigeria.
Two robbers armed with knives attacked, injured and robbed the duty watchman onboard an anchored tanker. Other watchman, nearby, informed the bridge and tried to assist the watchman. Alarm raised and the robbers jumped overboard and escaped. Facial injuries tended to by onboard medical officer. Arrangements made for injured AB to visit the doctor the next day. Masters’ attempt to contact port control was futile.
…
04.04.2008: 0100 LT: Chittagong Ruby cement jetty: Bangladesh.
Three robbers armed with long knives boarded a berthed general cargo ship. They assaulted and grievously injured the shore-based security guard, by cutting his face. Alarm raised and crew mustered. Robbers jumped overboard and escaped with ship’s stores. Injured security guard later received medical treatment ashore.
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Pirate Update | Comments Off
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008
Race flap forces Clinton supporter to quit
A high-profile supporter quit Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign on Wednesday after a remark about black Democratic rival Barack Obama was interpreted as racist.
Geraldine Ferraro, the only woman to run on a major U.S. party’s White House ticket, had said Obama was leading Clinton in the race for the Democratic party nomination for November’s presidential election because he was black.
Ferraro, the trailblazing 1984 Democratic vice presidential candidate, was a member of Clinton’s finance committee and raised funds for the New York senator and former first lady before stepping down, a campaign spokesman said.
Posted in Career Limiting Move, Politically Incorrect, Uncategorized | Comments Off
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008
Nerve-tapping neckband allows ‘telepathic’ chat
A neckband that translates thought into speech by picking up nerve signals has been used to demonstrate a “voiceless” phone call for the first time.
With careful training a person can send nerve signals to their vocal cords without making a sound. These signals are picked up by the neckband and relayed wirelessly to a computer that converts them into words spoken by a computerised voice.
A video (right) shows the system being used to place the first public voiceless phone call on stage at a recent conference held by microchip manufacturer Texas Instruments. Michael Callahan, co-founder of Ambient Corporation, which developed the neckband, demonstrates the device, called the Audeo.
Users needn’t worry about that the system voicing their inner thoughts though. Callahan says producing signals for the Audeo to decipher requires “a level above thinking”. Users must think specifically about voicing words for them to be picked up by the equipment.
Posted in Weird Science | Comments Off
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008
Court Drops Case of ‘Peeping Tom’ in Target; Says Victim Was Not in Private Place
A man accused of using a camera to take pictures under the skirt of an unsuspecting 16-year-old girl at a Tulsa store did not commit a crime, a state appeals court has ruled.
The state Court of Criminal Appeals voted 4-1 in favor of Riccardo Gino Ferrante, who was arrested in 2006 for situating a camera underneath the girl’s skirt at a Target store and taking photographs.
Ferrante, now 34, was charged under a “Peeping Tom” statute that requires the victim to be “in a place where there is a right to a reasonable expectation of privacy.” Testimony indicated he followed the girl, knelt down behind her and placed the camera under her skirt.
In January 2007, Tulsa County District Judge Tom Gillert ordered Ferrante’s felony charge dismissed. That was based upon a determination that “the person photographed was not in a place where she had a reasonable expectation of privacy,” according to the appellate ruling issued last week.
Posted in Idiot Authorities, Sexual Deviants | Comments Off
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008
Woman sits on boyfriend’s toilet for 2 years
Deputies said a woman in western Kansas sat on her boyfriend’s toilet for two years, and they’re investigating whether she was mistreated.
Ness County Sheriff Bryan Whipple said a man called his office last month to report that something was wrong with his girlfriend.
Whipple said it appeared the 35-year-old Ness City woman’s skin had grown around the seat. She initially refused emergency medical services but was finally convinced by responders and her boyfriend that she needed to be checked out at a hospital.
Hat tip to Kara!
Posted in Human Oddities, Kara's Classics, Yuck! | Comments Off
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008
Probers check to see if Eliot Spitzer used tax dollars for trysts
As Gov. Spitzer held the state hostage to negotiate a sweet plea deal Tuesday night, probers looked to see if he used tax dollars for trysts with high-priced hookers totaling up to $80,000.
A source familiar with the probe said IRS and FBI investigators found at least nine instances going back 18 months in which Spitzer made multiple cash transfers linked to Emperors Club VIP, a high-priced prostitution ring.
Although the cash used to pay for a $4,300 prostitute named “Kristen” apparently came from Spitzer’s account, he used taxpayer dollars to fly to and from his .illicit rendezvous.
Investigators are looking to see whether he used state money for the hotel rooms.
Posted in Career Limiting Move, Concentrated Criminality, Politico Follies, Uncategorized | Comments Off
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008
Is salvia the next marijuana?
On Web sites touting the mind-blowing powers of Salvia divinorum, come-ons to buy the hallucinogenic herb are accompanied by warnings: “Time is running out!” and “stock up while you still can.”
That’s because salvia is being targeted by lawmakers concerned that the inexpensive and easy-to-obtain plant could become the next marijuana. Eight states have already placed restrictions on salvia, and 16 others, including Florida, are considering a ban or have previously.
Posted in Drugs, Idiot Authorities, Uncategorized | Comments Off
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008
Spitzer Escort: Governor Was a Nice Guy, Good Tipper
A 22-year-old escort found on another call-girl Web site claimed to ABC News in a phone interview that Gov. Eliot Spitzer had been one of her customers two years ago when he was New York attorney general and that he was a nice guy who tipped well.
“He didn’t do anything that wasn’t clean,” she said, adding that she knew who he was because he had made calls from the attorney general’s office in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Federal investigators say there is no evidence Spitzer used state money or campaign funds to pay the prostitutes, but that the way he moved an estimated $40,000 through various accounts violated federal money laundering laws.
Posted in Concentrated Stupidity, Politico Follies, Sex | Comments Off
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008
Spitzer May Have Spent Tens of Thousands
With pressure mounting on Gov. Eliot Spitzer to resign over a call-girl scandal, investigators said Tuesday he was clearly a repeat customer who spent tens of thousands of dollars — perhaps as much as $80,000 — with the high-priced prostitution service over an extended period of time.
Spitzer and his family, meanwhile, remained secluded in their Fifth Avenue apartment, while Republicans began talking impeachment, and few if any fellow Democrats came forward to defend him. A death watch of sorts began at the state Capitol, where whispers of “What have you heard?” echoed through nearly every hallway of the ornate, 109-year-old building.
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, Concentrated Stupidity, Sexual Deviants | Comments Off
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008
Rampaging ostrich attacks family
Austrian police shot an escaped ostrich as it was attacking a family in their garden, authorities said on Tuesday.
The ostrich escaped from a nearby breeding farm in Upper Austria province on Monday, found its way into the yard of a house, and then started to attack the owners.
A 31-year-old woman stood up to the violently pecking 90kg bird using a wooden board to defend herself and her two small children, police said.
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Animal Rebellion Update | Comments Off
Monday, March 10th, 2008
Spitzer Is Linked to Prostitution Ring
Gov. Eliot Spitzer has informed his most senior administration officials that he had been involved in a prostitution ring, an administration official said this morning.
Mr. Spitzer, who was huddled with his top aides inside his Fifth Avenue apartment early this afternoon, had hours earlier abruptly canceled his scheduled public events for the day. He scheduled an announcement for 2:15 after inquiries from the Times.
Mr. Spitzer, a first term Democrat who pledged to bring ethics reform an end the often seamy ways of Albany, is married with three children.
Just last week, federal prosecutors arrested four people in connection with an expensive prostitution operation. Administration officials would not say that this was the ring with which the governor had become involved.
Posted in Career Limiting Move, Concentrated Stupidity, Politico Follies | Comments Off
Monday, March 10th, 2008
Black Civil Rights Activist Battles to Close ‘Redneck Shop’ That Sells KKK Paraphernalia
A black civil rights activist is fighting to close a store that sells KKK robes and T-shirts emblazoned with racial slurs. David Kennedy is confident he can make it happen. After all, he says he owns the building.
Since 1996, the Redneck Shop has operated in an old movie theater that, according to court records, was transferred in 1997 to Kennedy and the Baptist church he leads.
“Our ownership puts an end to that history as far as violence and hatred, racism being practiced in that place and also the recruiting of the Klan,” Kennedy said. “This is the same place that we had to go up into the balcony to go to the movies before the Klan took it. So there’s a lot of history there.”
But legal documents also indicate that the man who runs the store, 62-year-old John Howard, is entitled to operate his business in the building until he dies. Now the dispute may go to court.
Posted in Politically Incorrect | Comments Off
Monday, March 10th, 2008
The FARC Files
Colombia’s precision air strike 10 days ago, on a guerrilla camp across the border in Ecuador, killed rebel leader Raúl Reyes. That was big. But the capture of his computer may turn out to be a far more important development in Colombia’s struggle to preserve its democracy.
Reyes was the No. 2 leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which has been at war with the Colombian government for more than four decades. His violent demise is a fitting end to a life devoted to masterminding atrocities against civilians. But the computer records expose new details of the terrorist strategy to bring down the government of Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, including a far greater degree of collaboration between the FARC and four Latin heads of government than had been previously known. In addition to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, they are President Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega and Bolivian President Evo Morales.
Mr. Chávez is said to have been visibly distressed when told of the death of Reyes, a man he clearly admired. He also may have realized that he played a role in his hero’s death, since it was later reported that the Colombian military had located the camp by intercepting a phone call to Reyes from the Venezuelan president.
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Concentrated Criminality, Conspiracies, Crazed Dictatorships, Drugs, Idiot Activists, Idiot Authorities, War | Comments Off
Sunday, March 9th, 2008
John Denver karaoke sparks Thai killing spree
A gunman in Thailand shot-dead eight neighbours, including his brother-in-law, after tiring of their karaoke versions of popular songs, including John Denver’s Country Roads.
Weenus Chumkamnerd, 52, put his gun to the head of a respected female doctor and seven of her guests as they partied at her home in Songkhla Province, South Thailand.
“When I began shooting nobody pleaded for his life because they were all drunk,” he said after his arrest.
He said he was so furious with their awful singing that he did not notice he had murdered his own brother-in-law.
“I warned these people about their noisy karaoke parties. I said if they carried on I would go down and shoot them. I had told them if I couldn’t talk sense into them I would come back and finish them off,” he added.
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Concentrated Criminality | Comments Off
Sunday, March 9th, 2008
Soccer Riot Injures At Least 78
Violence among soccer fans in Colombia injured at least 78 people Saturday.
Emergency officials said 18 of those hurt in Saturday night’s brawl at the Cali stadium were stabbed.
The fights involved both fans and players from fiercely rival teams, and spread quickly on the field and in the stands.
The violence was sparked by a referee’s decision to not call a penalty kick against one of the teams. Players and the two coaches got into it, elbowing and punching each other. Fans set off firecrackers and tried to tear down the fencing. Riot police fired tear gas to try to calm things down.
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Anarchy | Comments Off
Sunday, March 9th, 2008
Olympics clean up Chinese style: Inside Beijing’s shocking death camp for cats
Thousands of pet cats in Beijing are being abandoned by their owners and sent to die in secretive government pounds as China mounts an aggressive drive to clean up the capital in preparation for the Olympic Games.
Hundreds of cats a day are being rounded and crammed into cages so small they cannot even turn around.
Then they are trucked to what animal welfare groups describe as death camps on the edges of the city.
The cull comes in the wake of a government campaign warning of the diseases cats carry and ordering residents to help clear the streets of them.
Cat owners, terrified by the disease warning, are dumping their pets in the streets to be picked up by special collection teams.
Paranoia is so intense that six stray cats -including two pregnant females – were beaten to death with sticks by teachers at a Beijing kindergarten, who feared they might pass illnesses to the children.
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Crazed Dictatorships, Cultural Oddities, Idiot Authorities | Comments Off
Saturday, March 8th, 2008
Police Rescue Naked Florida ManFrom Alligator-Infested Waters … Again
Bit once by an alligator, blame the gator.
Go wading through alligator-infested Florida waters another time? Police say blame the naked, dazed risk-taker who seems to have a fatalistic attachment to the scaly beasts, according to a report by MyFOXTampaBay.com.
The gator-lover, Adrian Apgar, was naked and high on crack one night a little over a year ago when he lost an arm to a 12-foot alligator, the TV station reports. Then on Thursday, police found him naked again wading in Saddle Creek with a gator only about 50 feet away.
Posted in Animal Rebellion Update, Concentrated Stupidity, Crazy is as Crazy Does | Comments Off
Saturday, March 8th, 2008
Russian tank rams house on vodka run
An apparently drunk Russian tank driver rammed his 25-tonne fighting machine into a remote village cottage while on a vodka run, footage aired on Friday on state television showed.
The soldier was filmed driving the tank, armed with an anti-aircraft gun, through a tiny street in Oktyabrskaya, in the Ural mountains’ Sverdlovsk region.
He clambered unsteadily into his vehicle with two freshly purchased bottles, then rammed a fence and a house while attempting to leave.
Video can be seen here.
Posted in Career Limiting Move, Fun with Alcohol | Comments Off
Saturday, March 8th, 2008
Woman gets 2 years for breakup-bomb hoax
A woman who called in a bomb threat to an airport in an attempt to break up with her boyfriend was sentenced to two years in prison, the U.S. attorney’s office said Wednesday.
April Wormly, 36, of Hobbs, N.M., also was ordered to pay $19,761 in restitution for phoning in the threat to San Antonio International Airport.
Federal prosecutors say she admitted calling the airport several times April 21 to claim there was a bomb aboard a Southwest Airlines flight bound for Dallas. Five of the 36 phone calls were recorded, prosecutors said in a statement.
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, Concentrated Stupidity, Idiot Criminals | Comments Off
Saturday, March 8th, 2008
Police Find Woman’s Body on Ice in California Hotel Room
Police discovered the body of a woman packed in a large container with dry ice in a hotel room as they were serving a search warrant in a cocaine investigation, authorities said.
Detectives found the fully clothed and “well preserved” body late Thursday after arresting a guest at the Fairmont Newport Beach for investigation of selling and possessing cocaine on the hotel grounds, police Sgt. Evan Sailor said Friday.
When they searched Stephen David Royds’ room, they found the body inside a Rubbermaid container filled with dry ice, he said.
“It’s definitely weird,” Sailor said.
Posted in Concentrated Criminality | Comments Off
Saturday, March 8th, 2008
The world of real party animals: The internet gatecrashers who drug dogs, have group sex and trash homes
The tour of Julia Anscomb’s once beautiful home on the Sussex coast began in the kitchen.
“This is where we found Bailey,” she explained. Bailey is a lovable, shaggy-haired mongrel puppy and much loved family pet.
When Mrs Anscomb and her husband returned from a weekend away recently, Bailey was lying unconscious on the floor.
He’d been drugged. The incriminating evidence was left at the scene: discarded ecstasy tablets.
“He did eventually wake up, but for days he was very quiet, hardly moved and wouldn’t eat his food,” revealed a visibly distressed Mrs Anscomb yesterday.
Near the spot where the “comatose” canine was spreadeagled – and where Mrs Anscomb was now speaking – is a brand new luxury fridge. At least it used to be. Someone has vandalised it with a knife.
“It cost £600 and, as you can see, it is now covered in scratches,” said Mrs Anscomb. “It’s ruined.”
As for what happened to the washing machine (or, to be more accurate, on top of it), Mrs Anscomb, 37, could barely bring herself to say; she has been told it was where “group sex” had taken place.
Posted in Anarchy, Fun with Alcohol, Idiot Parents, Teen Antics | Comments Off
Friday, March 7th, 2008
Mayor Resigns, Claims Abduction By Satan Worshippers
The mayor of an Arkansas town resigned on Wednesday, claiming he was abducted and brainwashed by Satan worshippers nearly three decades ago.
Centerton Mayor Ken Williams said he has been living under an assumed name for nearly 30 years. He had been mayor since 2001.
Williams told authorities he was born Don LaRose and that in the mid-1970s, he was a preacher in Indiana. He said he was abducted and brainwashed into forgetting all about his life as Don LaRose.
Posted in Career Limiting Move, Crazy is as Crazy Does | Comments Off
Friday, March 7th, 2008
Report: Sadistic Killer Lesbians Shared Blood Lust
They drugged, bludgeoned and strangled their 16-year-old victim to death then they knelt over her lifeless, bloody body to kiss before dumping her in a wheelbarrow.
The horrific murder of Stacey Mitchell has attracted national headlines in Australia but questions remain as to why her roommates of only four days, Valerie Page Parashumti and Jessica Ellen Stasinowsky, violently attacked and killed the former Leeming High schoolgirl.
Supreme Court justice Peter Blaxell sentenced Parashumti, 19, and Stasinowsky, 21, to 24 years in jail each.
Blaxell said the “particularly horrifying and shocking” crime was devoid of a substantial motive.
“You have each had more than a year in custody to reflect upon the evilness of your crime yet you still lack remorse and obviously place no value on the sanctity of human life,” he said. “There is also the added problem that you each enjoy being sexually aroused by the infliction of violence.”
Stasinowsky and Parashumti, who had been together just a month, have offered no explanation or motive for the killing other than that Stacey “annoyed” them.
Hat tip to Kara!
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Kara's Classics, Se7en Deadly Sins, Sexual Deviants | Comments Off
Friday, March 7th, 2008
Demons ‘possess’ Ugandan kids
More than 100 students in a western Ugandan school become possessed by demonic spirits, Uganda’s state-run newspaper reported on Tuesday.
The New Vision said that authorities at Sir Tito Winyi Primary School in the western district Hoima described the “hysterical” students as suffering from a demonic attack.
“The situation is bad. About 100 pupils are totally mad. They are chasing everybody including teachers and fellow pupils, throwing stones, banging doors and windows,” the paper quoted headmaster Vincent Kitende as saying.
Hat tip to Kara!
Posted in Cthulhu Fhtagn, Cultural Oddities, Kara's Classics, Most Mysterious | Comments Off
Friday, March 7th, 2008
Driving Instructor Accused of Being Drunk While Giving Lesson
A driving instructor accused of being drunk while teaching a lesson in Ipswich pleads not guilty.
Daniel Winsky of Salem was arraigned on a drunken driving charge today in district court.
Court documents say the 52-year-old had a blood alcohol level of .233 after he was stopped by police in December. That’s nearly three times the legal limit.
Witnesses called police while Winsky was instructing a student because he allegedly appeared drunk. Winsky wasn’t driving the car, but instructors have a brake on the passenger side.
Posted in Career Limiting Move, Concentrated Stupidity, Fun with Alcohol, Idiot Authorities | Comments Off
Friday, March 7th, 2008
‘Death Star’ Gamma-Ray Gun Pointed Straight at Earth
Earth could be in for a neighborhood dispute with a death star, according to an Australian astronomer.
A spectacular rotating pinwheel system just down the astronomical road from Earth — 8,000 light years away — includes an unstable Wolf-Rayet star that could explode.
Eight years ago, WR104 was discovered in the constellation Sagittarius by Sydney University astronomer Peter Tuthill.
A Wolf-Rayet star is the last step on the way to a supernova — the explosion of a star at the end of its life.
Images from the Mauna Kea in Hawaii telescope show that every eight months the two stars at the centre of the pinwheel orbit each other, leaving a trail of hot gas, carbon and dust.
“Viewed from Earth, the rotating tail appears to be laid out on the sky in an almost perfect spiral,” Tuthill said. “It could only appear like that if we are looking nearly exactly down on the axis of the binary system.”
Posted in End of the World Update, Space | Comments Off
Friday, March 7th, 2008
Cemetery Trampled During Tuesday Caucus
The cemetery next to the Flower Mound Presbyterian Church was a peaceful, well-kept place until Tuesday night. An overflow of voters trying to join the caucus next door ended up leaving muddy tire tracks through the cemetery. One vehicle’s tire actually got stuck in a recently filled grave.
Many voters parked on the shoulder of a gravel road winding through the cemetery, right next door to the church where the voting was taking place. One witness says motorists either didn’t notice — or didn’t care — they were parking just a few feet from buried bodies.
To make matters worse, recent rains left the ground soft, and the tires kicked up plenty of mud. Carved angels, flowers, mementos and other decorations on some of the graves were splattered with grit and dirt clods.
Posted in Concentrated Stupidity, Idiot Activists, Sinners in the hands of an angry God | Comments Off
Friday, March 7th, 2008
Man suspected of stealing copper lines electrocuted
Sheriff’s deputies checking out a report of downed power lines early Thursday morning found the body of a man who had apparently been electrocuted.
Authorities suspect the man was trying to steal copper wire contained in the energized transmission cables.
The body was discovered just after 1 a.m. in an unincorporated area east of Oceanside near state Route 76 and Holly Lane, sheriff’s officials said.
When deputies arrived they found that two power lines had been cut and one of them was touching the man’s body, which was lying on the ground.
A ladder was leaning against the utility pole and several tools were also found.
Posted in Concentrated Stupidity, Darwin Award | Comments Off
Friday, March 7th, 2008
Ikea walking all over us, say angry Danes
POWER games between Scandinavian neighbours are nothing new – generations of monarchs fought bitter battles over land for the best part of a millennium.
But now Sweden and Denmark are involved in a new spat – over the unlikely matter of floor coverings. And Sweden’s omnipresent homeware retailer, Ikea, is at the heart of the row.
The firm has been accused of “cultural imperialism”, for encouraging its customers to walk all over Denmark, by giving its mats and carpets Danish names.
In contrast, its top-end products, such as sofas and beds, are named after Swedish, Norwegian or Finnish cities.
Posted in Conspiracies, Cultural Oddities, Greed is Good | Comments Off
Thursday, March 6th, 2008
8 House Dems get letters, photo of New York recruiting station before bombing
Eight House Democrats were mailed a letter and photo of a Times Square recruiting station in Manhattan before it was bombed this morning, according to House insiders.
The letter did not contain any specific threats against the lawmakers or the site, but the U.S. Capitol Police and the FBI are now investigating the matter.
It was unclear which lawmakers received the letters or when, but House aides confirmed they were all Democrats.
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Most Mysterious, War | Comments Off
Thursday, March 6th, 2008
Minnesota Bars Skirt Smoking Ban by Declaring Patrons as ‘Actors’
All the world’s a stage at some of Minnesota’s bars.
A new state ban on smoking in restaurants and other nightspots contains an exception for performers in theatrical productions. So some bars are getting around the ban by printing up playbills, encouraging customers to come in costume, and pronouncing them “actors.”
The customers are playing right along, merrily puffing away — and sometimes speaking in funny accents and doing a little improvisation, too.
The state Health Department is threatening to bring the curtain down on these sham productions. But for now, it’s on with the show.
At The Rock, a hard-rock and heavy-metal bar in suburban St. Paul, the “actors” during “theater night” do little more than sit around, drink, smoke and listen to the earsplitting music.
“They’re playing themselves before Oct. 1. You know, before there was a smoking ban,” owner Brian Bauman explained. Shaping the words in the air with his hands, like a producer envisioning the marquee, he said: “We call the production, `Before the Ban!”‘
Hat tip to Kara!
Posted in Fun with Alcohol, Idiot Authorities, Kara's Classics, Unintended Consequences | Comments Off
Thursday, March 6th, 2008
Dad Who Burned Kids in Dryer: Thought They Could Have a Good Time Without Money
A Hutchinson man is on trial this week on charges he put his girlfriend’s 2-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son in a hot clothes dryer.
In a videotaped interview with detectives shown in court Wednesday, Aron Pritchard said he put the children in the dryer to show them they could have a good time without much money. An hour later, the dryer had become hot and the boy had second-degree burns.
Pritchard told the detective that he didn’t mean for the boy to get hurt.
Posted in Bad Parents, Concentrated Criminality, Concentrated Stupidity | Comments Off
Thursday, March 6th, 2008
Golfer Faces Charges in Hawk Killing
PGA Tour golfer Tripp Isenhour was charged with killing a hawk on purpose with a golf shot because it was making noise as he videotaped a TV show
Isenhour was with a film crew for “Shoot Like A Pro” on Dec. 12 at the Grand Cypress Golf course. The 39-year-old golfer, whose real name is John Henry Isenhour III, was charged Monday with cruelty to animals and killing a migratory bird.
According to court documents, Isenhour got upset when a red-shouldered hawk began making noise, forcing another take. He began hitting balls at the bird, then 300 yards away, but gave up.
Isenhour started again when the hawk moved within about 75 yards, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officer Brian Baine indicated in a report.
Isenhour allegedly said “I’ll get him now,” and aimed for the hawk.
“About the sixth ball came very near the bird’s head, and (Isenhour) was very excited that it was so close,” Baine wrote.
A few shots later, witnesses said he hit the hawk. The bird, protected as a migratory species, fell to the ground bleeding from both nostrils.
Hat tip to Kara!
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Animal Rebellion Update, Concentrated Criminality, Kara's Classics | Comments Off
Thursday, March 6th, 2008
French mayor bans dying
The mayor of a village in southwest France has threatened residents with severe punishment if they die, because there is no room left in the overcrowded cemetery to bury them.
In an ordinance posted in the council offices, Mayor Gerard Lalanne told the 260 residents of the village of Sarpourenx that ‘all persons not having a plot in the cemetery and wishing to be buried in Sarpourenx are forbidden from dying in the parish.’
It added: ‘Offenders will be severely punished.’
Posted in Idiot Authorities | Comments Off
Thursday, March 6th, 2008
Bungling cop spreads strawberry meth myth
A policeman alerted hundreds of families to the danger-drug Strawberry Meth – despite the fact it does not exist.
Pupils and parents at 80 schools in Oxfordshire were warned of the possible risks of the fruit-flavoured drug, also known as Strawberry Quick, by the unwitting officer.
The spurious alert came after the officer sent an email via a special system connecting police and schools without checking it with colleagues.
Posted in Concentrated Stupidity, Drugs, Idiot Activists | Comments Off
Thursday, March 6th, 2008
Woman jailed for worshipping teapot
A Malaysian court has jailed a woman for following a bizarre cult centred around a giant teapot.
She was sentenced on Monday for declaring herself an apostate while she was still a Muslim, news agency Bernama said.
Apostasy is a criminal offence in mainly Muslim Malaysia, whose state religion is Islam but which tolerates other major religions.
Kamariah Ali, a widow with four children, was arrested in 2005 along with 57 other followers of the cult built around a giant teapot.
Posted in Cultural Oddities | Comments Off
Thursday, March 6th, 2008
North Korea publicly executes 15 starving refugees fleeing to China in desperate search for food
North Korea has publicly executed 15 starving people, mostly women, for illegally entering neighbouring China in search of food, an aid group said yesterday.
The 13 women and two men were shot on a bridge in the north-eastern town of Onseong as local residents watched. It was the second mass execution to be reported this week.
The group of 15 were sentenced to death for illegally crossing the border into China or for helping others to do so, to ask for help, in money or food, from relatives living there
Posted in Commies, Concentrated Stupidity, Crazed Dictatorships, N. Korea, Uncategorized | Comments Off
Tuesday, March 4th, 2008
Gary Gygax, ‘Father of D&D,’ Dies at 69
Gary Gygax, one of the co-creators of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, died Tuesday morning at his home in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, according to Stephen Chenault, CEO of Troll Lord Games.
Gygax designed the original D&D game with Dave Arneson in 1974, and went on to create the Dangerous Journeys and Lejendary Adventure RPGs, as well as a number of board games. He also wrote several fantasy novels.
“I don’t think I’ve really grokked it yet,” said Mike Mearls, the lead developer of the upcoming 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. “He was like the cool uncle that every gamer had. He shaped an entire generation of gamers.”
Posted in Toys! | Comments Off
Tuesday, March 4th, 2008
Eight British soldiers sent home after stripping in bar
Eight British soldiers have been forced to return home from Norway after they reportedly stripped naked and urinated on each other in a bar during an Arctic training exercise, the defence ministry confirmed Tuesday.
“It’s being taken extremely seriously,” a spokesman for the defence ministry in London said.
He continued: “We can confirm that eight soldiers from 59 Commando Regiment Royal Engineers were arrested by the Norwegian police following inappropriate behaviour.
Posted in Career Limiting Move, Crazy is as Crazy Does, Fun with Alcohol | Comments Off
Tuesday, March 4th, 2008
This house was a steal
The new buyers of a rundown graystone on the South Side showed up Jan. 9 to look at the house they won at a foreclosure auction. They took the plywood off the front door and went inside to make sure the utilities had been shut off. Then they called the police.
Sitting upright in the corner of a bedroom off the kitchen was a human skeleton in a red tracksuit. Next to him lay a dead dog. Neighbors told police the corpse was almost certainly Randy Johnson, a middle-age man who lived alone in the North Kenwood house.
The cause of Johnson’s death has not yet been determined, but it is just one of the mysteries about 4578 S. Oakenwald Ave. Somehow, Johnson’s house was transferred three times to new owners without anyone noticing he was inside. It’s a story involving forged deeds, a corrupt title company and a South Side family that has been under investigation for mortgage fraud.
Left holding the bag is Countrywide Home Loans, the nation’s largest mortgage lender and a company whose practices are being scrutinized by the Illinois attorney general’s office. Countrywide made mortgages of $450,000 on the property. Now it is likely to lose it all because it financed the sale of a home whose rightful owner was in no condition to sell.
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, I hate it when that happens, Yuck! | Comments Off
