Mother Of Autistic Child Plans To Sue United Airlines

The crew refused to allow Donna to buy something from the first class, despite her explaining that Juliette was a special needs child.

Mother Of Autistic Child Plans To Sue United Airlines

Wingnut spurns Obamacare and insurance ...

The 49-year-old Lang, a self-employed handyman and Republican who works with banks and the federal government to maintain foreclosed properties, has never purchased insurance and always prided himself on paying his own medical bills.

... but blames Obama now that he’s going broke and blind

Bus company pulls topless 'ride me all day for £3' posters following controversy

A bus company came under fire for promoting a new route with posters on the back of its vehicles showing an apparently topless woman holding a sign saying “ride me all day for £3”. The adverts, by Cardiff-based New Adventure Travel, prompted outrage in the city.

The company, which runs services in Cardiff and elsewhere in Wales, including school buses, was promoting the launch of a fleet of new buses for a cross-city service in Cardiff. At 11.30am on Monday, just a few hours after the campaign first appeared, the company said the adverts would be withdrawn.
While the posters feature both female and male models, the female versions came in for particular criticism. The company was apologetic. “Firstly we have stated that our objectives have been to make catching the bus attractive to the younger generation. We therefore developed an internal advertising campaign featuring males and females to hold boards to promote the cost of our daily tickets.

“The slogan of ‘ride me all day for £3’ whilst being a little tongue in cheek was in no way intended to cause offense to either men or women and, if the advert has done so then we apologize unreservedly. There has certainly been no intention to objectify either men or women. Given the volume of negativity received we have decided to remove the pictures from the back of the buses within the next 24 hours.”

Drunk man saved by emergency crews after falling 10ft over a wall snored throughout rescue

A drunk 20-stone (280lbs, 127kg) man fell 10ft over a wall and snored the whole time during his rescue by a fire crew and paramedics, oblivious to his ordeal.

Huddersfield Fire Station crew commander Shane Byrne said the drama began at midnight on Saturday in a wooded area near to the Dusty Miller pub in the Longwood area of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.
He said: "It was amazing, he didn't open his eyes the whole time and just carried on snoring during the rescue which took around half an hour. A passer by raised the alarm and when we got there we had to cut down a number of trees and force a really old iron gate open.
"The man was in his mid to late 30s and around 6ft tall. Eventually we managed to extricate him and place him on a board so an ambulance could take him to Huddersfield Royal Infirmary for a check up. I don't think he had suffered any injury."

The Dire Consequences of Texas' Stupidity

The Family Planning Cuts That The Texas Legislature Forced Through Are Having Dire Consequences

How The FDA’s Revised Blood Ban Caters To Religio-Wingnut Anti-Gay Beliefs

Limiting the blood donation ban to just one year for gay and bi men shames gay sex just like religio-wingnuts do.

Flakka is more addictive than meth

Flakka is more addictive than meth: study

There are drugs that you can understand the appeal of, and then there’s flakka.

Florida Woman Testifies Deputy Raped And Threatened Her

A Florida woman testified on Tuesday that Lake County Deputy Sheriff Matthew Vernon Donnelly raped her, and then threatened to jail her boyfriend unless she kept it a secret.  

Deputy Raped And Threatened Woman

Washington woman says she was ‘well within her rights’ to shoot at husband for not doing chores

Police spoke to Roth and she admitted that she “blew up” at her husband, and that her anger was “too far gone to resist” using the gun.

Washington woman you are wrong

Mugger who left phone at scene of crime caught after asking police if it had been handed in

A mugger who dropped his mobile phone at the scene of a frightening street attack was caught when he rang the police to try and get it back. Paul Knight had grabbed his victim’s handbag strap as she walked in Farringdon, Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, with her husband at night and dragged her to the ground, leaving her bruised and scared.

When the 25-year-old later realized he had dropped his phone during the struggle, he called the police to see if he could get it back. As a result of his call, Knight, of Sunderland, was arrested. At Newcastle Crown Court on Friday he was jailed for two years and four months after pleading guilty to robbery. During the hearing Knight was branded “stupid”, “incompetent” and “unsophisticated”.
Judge Edward Bindloss told him: “You dropped your mobile phone and in a rather unsophisticated act you telephoned the police and inquired if someone had handed it in. That is how you came to be arrested.” The judge said he was satisfied Knight, who had been trying to raise money to pay off a £500 cocaine debt, was sorry for what he did to his victim. Knight has previous convictions, but has never been to prison before.
His barrister, Tony Hawks, told the court: “The defendant attacked a woman who was with her husband, he didn’t disguise his identity, he had no weapon, he was incompetent enough to drop his mobile phone, and then sufficiently stupid to go and inquire with the police where his mobile phone might be. It does not suggest someone likely to make a successful career as a street robber.” The court heard the victim, who lost more than £530 in property and cash, has been left “wary” of even being at home after her ordeal, and lives in fear of being confronted again.

A giant man-made hole in Earth's atmosphere is finally closing up

by Jessica Orwig

Now that summer is here, you'll likely be slathering up with sunscreen.

Earth, it turns out, is doing the same, according to an encouraging study recently published by a team of scientists at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Goddard Earth Sciences Technology and Research at the Universities Space Research Association.

Earth has its own layer of sunscreen called the ozone layer, or ozone shield, which makes up part of the stratosphere and absorbs most of the sun's ultra-violet (UV) radiation. But it doesn't absorb all of the UV light, and what gets through can cause skin cancer and cataracts in humans as well as reproductive problems in fish, crabs, and frogs.

the hole should finally, permanently shrink below 8 million square miles by 2040 and could even be fully recovered by the end of the century

Since 1983, scientists have observed a scary phenomenon: Earth's ozone was extremely weak over parts of Antarctica, letting in bouts of harmful UV radiation. The reason, in part, was because a series of man-made chemicals — namely chlorine and bromine — were eating away the planet's protective, sunscreen-like layer.

They called this weaker region Antarctica's ozone hole. Although the hole's size varies each year, it has been consistently larger than 8 million square miles since 1990 — more than twice the size of the entire United States!

In recent years, scientific reports have noted that the hole is slowly healing — thanks to a decrease in ozone-depleting chemicals in the atmosphere — but scientists were not sure when the hole would be completely regenerated.

Now, according to a study published in journal Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, the hole should finally, permanently shrink below 8 million square miles by 2040s and could even be fully recovered by the end of the century.

The source of the problem

For the middle half of the 20th Century, companies used ozone-depleting chemicals, called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), in refrigerators and aerosol sprays that, through use, were getting released into the atmosphere. By the early '80s scientists were beginning to understand the damage that these chemicals were doing to the planet.

When CFCs float up to the troposphere, above the ozone, they interact with UV radiation from the sun releasing chlorine, which destroys ozone. As a result of this discovery, an international treaty called the Montreal Protocol was enacted in 1989 that began phasing out the production and subsequent emission of ozone-depleting chemicals.

By that point, however, the damage had been done.

These chemicals can hang out in the atmosphere for years after they've entered the atmosphere. Like a series of dominoes, the ozone hole continued to grow even after CFCs were banned. Here's a chart showing the size of the ozone hole, in blue, from 1979 through 2012:

Ozone depletion above the planet's north and south poles was exceptionally bad because Earth's wind currents were sweeping the chemicals toward either end of the planet.

Once these chemicals reached the poles, a large-scale cyclone, called the polar vortex, was trapping the chemicals where they accumulated over time to high concentrations, ravenously eating away the ozone (see the GIF below). This led to the Antarctic ozone hole as well as the Arctic ozone hole, which in 2011 reportedly had half the ozone it used to.

Using NASA'S Aura satellite — an instrument orbiting Earth that sniffs out certain chemicals, including chlorine — the team of scientists studied the amount of ozone-eating chemicals above Antarctica from 2004 to 2012. From that, they identified a clear relation between the level of chlorine in the atmosphere and the size of the ozone hole.

They then looked at ozone hole sizes from 1979 through 2013 and predicted what future hole sizes will be based on how quickly chlorine levels are decreasing in the atmosphere above the Antarctic.

"With this new information we can look into the future and say with confidence that ozone holes will be consistently smaller than 8 million square miles by 2040," said Susan Strahan, a senior research scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, in a video about the study. "And that will really be a milestone that we're finally past the era of big ozone holes."

Check out the full video below:

Brazilian Ranchers Aren’t Cutting Down As Much Forest Anymore

  Breaking the cycle of deforestation in the Amazon is critical to fighting climate change.

Here’s Why.

Lobsters 'liberated' from Dublin restaurant fish tank before being released back into the sea

A group of animal rights activists say they "liberated" lobsters after taking them from a restaurant in Dublin, Ireland, on Friday.

It is understood members of the National Animal Rights Association took nine lobsters from a tank at the restaurant on Wicklow Street in the city center at around 8pm. The lobsters were later released into the sea in Clontarf.

YouTube link.

Founder of NARA Laura Broxson said the lobsters were liberated because it was a "life or death situation" for them. She said the lobsters were going to be boiled alive and that the association stands by its actions, despite any possible legal consequences. She said that they have been informed by the gardaí that charges are being brought against those involved.

She said: "If it was cats and dogs in a tank in a restaurant people would have a problem with it." Ms Broxson added: "For us it was act of compassion and we are willing to face any legal consequences brought to us because now these lobsters have a chance of living instead of being boiled alive and eaten." Ms Broxson said it was the "first open rescue in Ireland", but that there are no plans to do it again.

Wild boar smashed through ceiling of Hong Kong clothing store

A wild boar strayed from its usual rural haunt and into a Chai Wan shopping mall on Sunday night, leading to a four-hour stand-off with police and animal control officers.

The incident began at about 6.30pm, when the 90cm beast was spotted wandering into the Paradise Mall in Heng Fa Chuen and entering a children's clothing store. Two staff members fled as the 25kg animal, said to be a juvenile female, climbed above the store's false ceiling, before punching through it.
Then the creature jumped to the floor and knocked down and bit a mannequin by the door before getting trapped in a changing room. "It just came in out of nowhere, and turned around at the show window," the shop manager said. "It also pushed open the fitting room door and got in ... Pigs are actually not stupid."

YouTube link.

About 10 police officers approached and stood on alert. A vet eventually managed to inject the pig with a tranquillizer. It was taken to an animal management center for observation. Many wild boars roam Hong Kong's countryside. They can grow up to two meters in length and have been known to attack humans.

Baby kangaroo snatched from mother’s pouch at zoo

A baby kangaroo and four baby goats were stolen from a zoo in Greenville, Wisconsin, last week. Donna Wheeler, owner of the Special Memories Zoo, said the baby kangaroo, called a joey, and the goats had been at their winter home about six to eight miles away from the zoo, in a large, insulated shed.

The babies were bottle fed on Tuesday night, but when workers went to the shed around midday on Wednesday to start moving animals to the zoo in anticipation of Thursday's opening day, the five baby animals were gone, Wheeler said. She said the facility was not locked. "Whoever took [the joey] pulled it out of the mother's pouch," Wheeler said. Animal caretaker Gretchen Crowe said she realized the joey was gone when its mother's pouch was hanging out.
"I knew that somebody had to have taken them because there's no way that they can get out of the building," said Crowe. According to the Outagamie County Sheriff's Office, which responded to the stolen animals report, the joey was 5 months old, and baby kangaroos must stay with their mother for the first year of life. "I believe the baby kangaroo is dead," Wheeler said. "It cannot live without its mother, it cannot live without special formula, it cannot live without heat.

YouTube link.

"You can't just feed it anything," she said. "I'm thinking by now ... if a person took it who knew what they were doing it probably has a chance of living. But if somebody didn't ... I know we've got high school kids around, if someone did it as a joke, I'm sure by now it's probably dead. I feel absolutely horrible. We do everything in our power to keep animals alive," Wheeler said. "Right now my stomach is just turning to think somebody would do that. Whoever has them, if you would just bring them back," Crowe said. "We just want them back."

Boat owner surprised to find baby sea lion snoring and sneezing on the bunk next to him

A San Diego boat owner got the surprise of a lifetime when he woke up early on Sunday to find a baby sea lion sleeping on the bunk next to him. “I woke up at 2:30 in the morning to the sounds of snoring and sneezing that were not my own, and I looked around the boat and I didn’t see anything, and it went away,” Michael Duffy said.

Animal Pictures

The Daily Drift

These animals and more need our help ...!

 

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Today in History

756   Abd-al-Rahman is proclaimed emir of Cordoba, Spain.  
1213   King John submits to the Pope, offering to make England and Ireland papal fiefs. Pope Innocent III lifts the interdict of 1208.  
1602   English navigator Bartholomew Gosnold discovers Cape Cod.  
1614   An aristocratic uprising in France ends with treaty of St. Menehould.  
1618   Johannes Kepler discovers his harmonics law.  
1702   The War of Spanish Succession begins.  
1730   Following the resignation of Lord Townshend, Robert Walpole becomes the sole minister in the English cabinet.  
1768   By the Treaty of Versailles, France purchases Corsica from Genoa.  
1795   Napoleon enters the Lombardian capital of Milan in triumph.  
1820   The U.S. Congress designates the slave trade a form of piracy.  
1849   Neapolitan troops enter Palermo, Sicily.  
1862   The Union ironclad Monitor and the gunboat Galena fire on Confederate troops at the Battle of Drewry's Bluff, Virginia.  
1864   At the Battle of New Market, Virginia Military Institute cadets repel a Union attack.  
1886   Emily Dickinson dies in Amherst, Mass., where she had lived in seclusion for the previous 24 years.  
1916   U.S. Marines land in Santo Domingo to quell civil disorder.
1918   Pfc. Henry Johnson and Pfc. Needham Roberts receive the Croix de Guerre for their services in World War I. They are the first Americans to win France's highest military medal.  
1930   Ellen Church becomes the first airline stewardess.  
1942   The United States begins rationing gasoline.  
1958   Sputnik III is launched by the Soviet Union.  
1963   The last Project Mercury space flight, carrying Gordon Cooper, is launched.
1968   U.S. Marines relieve army troops in Nhi Ha, South Vietnam after a fourteen-day battle.  
1972   George Wallace is shot by Arthur Bremer in Laurel, Maryland.
1975   The merchant ship Mayaguez is recaptured from Cambodia's Khmer Rouge.  
1988   Soviets forces begin their withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Worst Censorship

Which Countries Have the Worst Censorship?

Countries with the worst human rights abuses tend to prohibit the publication of dissenting views. Only 14 percent of the world's population live in a country with a truly free press.

Chinese Company Gives More Than Half of Its 12,000 Employees a Vacation in France

To create a collegial atmosphere, some companies provide free coffee for the office coffee pot. Others don't dock your time for restroom breaks. Similarly, the Tiens Group gives its employees vacations in France.
The Chinese firm employees about 12,000 people. It recently gave 6,400 of them a vacation in France, including a mass tour of the Louvre in Paris before a visit to the lovely Riviera city of Nice. The Guardian reports:

A huge Chinese company, Tiens Group, is treating more than half of its 12,000 employees to a four-day holiday in France and has booked up 140 hotels in the capital Paris as part of the package, a French foreign ministry spokeswoman said on Thursday.
According to Le Parisien newspaper, the trip by the 6,400-strong group includes a mass visit to the Louvre museum, and they are expected to spend €13m euros (US$15m) in total.

This is a forward-thinking move by billionaire company chairman Li Jinyuan that will no doubt enhance the performance of his employees and therefore massively increase profits. Surely other enterprising and visionary corporate leaders could do likewise to benefit their companies ...

Walmart makes over $600 for every $1 they spend on drought-stricken California water

Walmart makes over $600 for every $1 they spend on drought-stricken California water — and it’s legal

How Health Insurers Rip Off You And Your Employer

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan added hidden fees to hospital claims

Court Case Shows How Health Insurers Rip Off You And Your Employer

Towels covered in massage oils caused fire at launderette

Towels soaked in massage oils sparked a fire at a launderette in Crawley, West Sussex, last Saturday night.

Three fire engines were called to the launderette on Tilgate Parade at about 10.15pm. It is unclear exactly how the fire started but it is believed to have been accidental and caused by the towels combusting due to the oil becoming hot.
The crews used four sets of breathing apparatus and two hose reels to tackle the blaze before leaving the scene at 10.50pm. A spokeswoman for West Sussex Fire & Rescue Service said: "The circumstances of this fire are unusual, but certainly not unheard of.
"If materials with oil residue are heated and then left in a tumble dryer, or are folded into piles or stacks before they are cool, there is a risk of self-combustion. It is really important to wash materials that have absorbed oil at a high temperature and to use the right detergent."

Mother unhappy that daughter is required to perform naked in order to pass art class final

A professor at the University of California, San Diego, is having his students take their final exam completely in the nude, and he says he's been doing it for years. A mother of one student in the class is completely outraged that her daughter is asked to perform naked.

“It's just wrong. Is this the memory that my daughter's going to carry with her for the rest of her life? It bothers me. I’m not sending her to school for this. How terrible. This sucks. This is just wrong. And to blanketly say you must be naked in order to pass my class, it makes me sick to my stomach,” the unidentified mother says.
Students are required to create “a gesture that traces, outlines or speaks about your ‘erotic self(s),'” according to the Art Visual course syllabus. In the performance, all of the students are naked, along with the professor, Roberto Dominguez, who has taught the class for 11 years.

YouTube link.

“It’s the standard canvas for performance art and body art,” Dominguez says. “It is all very controlled. If they are uncomfortable with this gesture, they should not take the class.” Professor Dominguez adds that he has never before received a complaint.

Man compared neighbor's Hindu statue with Nazi swastika

A religious spat has broken out between two neighbors in rural Auckland, New Zealand, after one erected a 6.4m (21-feet) statue of the Hindu god Shiva. Ravin Chand says he installed the 30-tonne religious effigy so that he and his family could pray to it. But neighbor Bryce Watts, a Catholic, said the marble statue was "bizarre" and "offensive". "Religiously and culturally it's a bit insensitive to us and I can't believe they're able to do this. Part of our property looks at it and it's part of a religion we don't agree with," he said. "I don't see why we should have it poked down our throats in such a big way."

It took Chand more than a week to assemble the statue and he defended it saying it was part of Hindu culture. "It's just that the size is a bit bigger," he said. Asked why he had mounted the giant deity, Chand said: "Do you need a reason to pray? I don't think so." He would not reveal what the statue cost, saying only "it cost me an arm and a leg. I don't want to put a price on god", he said. Chand said he commissioned the carving of the marble statue from a sculptor in China in June last year. It arrived in New Zealand in April, and had been sitting in a container on his Clevedon property before being erected this week. It was so large it had to be mounted on solid concrete foundations.
Chand said the correct council consent and geo-technical inspections were completed beforehand. But Watts said he was not informed about the proposed statue, and said it was "bizarre" it could be erected without any consultation with neighboring properties. "They've let it go ahead to be built without consulting us, and we're probably the most affected here because everywhere we go on our property it's kind of there." Watts said he had complained to Chand but there was little else he could do because the Auckland Council had already consented to it being built. "I've been to the council and asked about it and evidently it was within their rights to do it and it doesn't need a permit, even though it's a 6.4m-high concrete statue.
"It's 10m from our boundary which is within the rules where you can build a building. It's like, 'bad luck, if you don't like it, it's your problem'. I find it really hard to believe in this day and age that this can happen." Chand said Watts had phoned his wife, but was the only person to complain. "Everybody else who has gone past has stopped and admired it," he said. "[Watts] compared it with 'me putting up a [Nazi] swastika next door to you'. I said, 'Well if you want to put it up, feel free to put it up. Nobody can stop you from doing that, it's your property.' I'm not bothered. I haven't got time for people like that. I think it's just because it's something different, that's why [Watts is complaining]. People aren't used to it," he said.
There's a short video here.

Man broke into home and ate family's chicken

George Leverous Bennett, 24, of Sylacauga, Alabama, is currently in the Talladega County Metro Jail on a charge of burglary in the second degree. According to Talladega police Chief Jason Busby, a patrol officer was transporting a prisoner to the jail on Tuesday when he spotted Bennett wearing only a pair of tennis shoes.

The officer notified the jail staff, who sent deputies to look for Bennett. As the deputies and police officers began looking, Bennett allegedly kicked in the back door of a residence and went inside. The residence was occupied by a woman and three children, Busby said.
Bennett allegedly made his way to the kitchen, where he ate Zaxby’s chicken valued at $13.98, according to the incident and offense report. The woman who lived in the house gathered up the children, called 911 and fled. By this time, probation officers and jail staff had also joined the chase. Bennett was eventually located and restrained without further incident. His clothes were recovered at a different location.
According to jail records, Bennett had been arrested for disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace the day before and had only been out of jail for about an hour when the chase began. The burglary charge stems from his breaking into the house. He has not been charged with any other offenses. Burglary in the second degree is a class B felony in Alabama, punishable upon conviction by two to 20 years in prison.

Mummy Incest

Signs of Incest in Famous Mummies: Photos

Incestuous marriages were common among ancient Egyptian royalty and now a study shows there's physical evidence of the practice.

Mummies' Height Reveals Incest

The pharaohs believed they descended from the gods so inbreeding was seen as a way to retain the sacred bloodline. 

Has there ever been a women-only army?

The Ministry of Defense has long debated whether women should fight for the nation’s armed forces, but King Gezo of Dahomey had no such reservations

by: Jonny Wilkes

19th-century illustration of a Dahomey warrior

The Kings of Dahomey (modern-day Benin) had used women as palace guards back in the 18th century, but by 1850, Gezo had thousands of all-female regiments in his army. The Dahomeans were fighting enemies who greatly outnumbered them, so it was decided to bolster their forces with fierce female warriors, known as the Mino.
They were skilled and deadly opponents, thanks in part to their often brutal training. The Mino climbed thorn hedges to get used to pain, and executed prisoners in order to hone killer instincts.
Although they were equipped with firearms, their specialty was hand-to-hand combat and they went into action wielding razor sharp machetes. Their last battles were in the 1890s, when they found themselves up against the French who were colonizing West Africa.
The undoubted bravery of Dahomey’s soldiers, both male and female, was no match for the modern weaponry of the French and they were eventually, and bloodily, defeated.

Ziggy

Sea Level Rise

Sea Level Rise Is On the Up and Up

Sea level rise is accelerating, putting millions along the coast at risk of flooding.

Producing More Than Expected

The World’s First Solar Road Is Producing More Energy Than Expected

11 Super-Cool Science Photos From The Past Decade

This picture looks like some tube-shaped creatures caressing a ball. They are caressing, alright, but they aren’t even living things!

An electron microscope photograph shows self-assembling hair-like polymers around a polystyrene sphere, about two micrometers in diameter. It won first place in the National Science Foundation's 2009 International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge.

Self-assembling plastic is a pretty far out concept, but the detail and color in a microscopic image is amazing in itself. This is just one of a collection of fascinating scientific images, one for each year going back to 2005, covering a wide variety of disciplines, at HuffPo. Some you' ve seen here before, but are worth a second look.

Mounted police officer hailed a hero after reviving dog with mouth to mouth

Pam Curry from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, can't describe how thankful she is that Mounted Patrol Sgt. Jon Levi saved and revived her dog, Abby, from their smoke-filled home on Wednesday. Abby, a Bichon, is owned by Timothy and Pam Curry. Abby was in her kennel inside the garage when smoke filled the home. Sheriff's deputies responded where Timothy's mother asked Sgt. Levi, who was backup supervisor, to rescue the dog inside the garage.

Sgt. Levi went inside to rescue Abby, who was unresponsive in her kennel. "The dog was seizing and couldn't breathe," Sgt. Levi said. "I grabbed the kennel and snatched the dog out of it. The dog was gasping. I grabbed the muzzle and gave breaths. I gave the dog more breaths," Sgt. Levi said. "She took a deep breath." Sgt. Pedigo and Deputy Nick Coble then put water on Abby to cool her down. "I gave more breaths," Sgt. Levi said, adding when Abby started panting he thought it was a good sign.
When Curry arrived, Abby was lying on the ground covered with soot and wet. "I was just glad I was there at the right time at the right place," Sgt. Levi said. "I would want somebody to do the same for me. I'm sure the dog is part of their family. I'm just glad it worked." The Currys took the dog to a veterinarian for treatment. "If it wasn't for Sgt. Levi's fast actions, the animal would not have survived," Sgt. Pedigo said.
Pam Curry said she was happy Sgt. Levi revived Abby. "He didn't have to do what he did," she said. "I thank him so much. Words just can't express how thankful my family is." Sheriff Robert Arnold said Sgt. Levi did an "awesome job" in saving the pet. "Sgt. Levi has a great love for animals and he showed that by going above and beyond to save Abby," Sheriff Arnold said. Sgt. Levi will receive a Letter of Commendation for saving the pet.

Pit PAC

Pit Bulls Now Have Their Own Political Action Committee

And no, “pit bulls” is not a euphemism. This PAC is for dogs.

Read full story

Foolish tourists chased by bear and cubs after getting too close at Yellowstone National Park

Tourists in Yellowstone National Park got a little too close to the wildlife last week, and one mother just couldn't bear it. A watchful black bear sow sent the curious onlookers running after they crowded her three cubs in a section of the park in Montana.

"Keep going! Go! Go!" Yellowstone Park Ranger John Kerr is heard yelling as the tourists scatter in a video. "These tourists were absolutely in danger," Bob Gibson, Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks Communication & Education Program Manager, said. "Black bears are usually shy of people. But you put them with their cubs and they get really protective.
"But you put them with their cubs and they get really protective. You never want to be between a bear and its cub." The cubs in the video are about 13 months old. A black bear cub spends the first year or so of its life learning survival skills from its mother before going off on its own. The mother becomes less protective as the cubs get closer to leaving her den.

YouTube link.

According to Gibson, this encounter could have been deadly. "Had they been the young of the year and 10 days old, the mom would have been all over the tourists." Gibson advises visitors to Yellowstone to stay as far away from the bears as possible, especially in the spring when cubs are born and in the fall when the bears are getting ready to hibernate and are more protective of their food sources.

Animal Pictures

The Daily Drift

True, oh, so true ...!

 

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Today in History

1264		King Henry III is captured by his brother-in-law, Simon de Montfort, at the Battle of Lewes.
1509		At the Battle of Agnadello, the French defeat the Venitians in Northern Italy.
1610		French King Henri IV (Henri de Navarre) is assassinated by François Ravillac, a fanatical monk.
1796		English physician Edward Jenner gives the first successful smallpox vaccination.
1804		Explorer William Clark sets off from St. Louis, Missouri.
1853		Gail Borden applies for a patent for condensed milk.
1863		Union General Nathanial Banks heads towards Port Hudson along the Mississippi River.
1897		Guglielmo Marconi sends first communication by wireless telegraph.
1897		"Stars and Stripes Forever" by John Phillip Sousa is performed for the first time in Philadelphia.
1935		A plebiscite in the Philippines ratifies an independence agreement.
1940		Holland surrenders to Germany.
1942		The British Army, in retreat from Burma, reach India.
1948		Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion establishes the State of Israel.
1961		A bus carrying black and white civil rights activists is bombed and burned in Alabama.
1969		Three companies of the 101st Airborne Division fail to push North Vietnamese forces off Hill 937 in South Vietnam.
1973		The U.S. space station Skylab is launched.
1991		In South Africa, Winnie Mandela is sentenced to six years in prison for her part in the kidnapping and beating of three black youths and the death of a fourth.

92-Year Old World War II Fighter Pilot Flies a Spitfire Again

Joy Lofthouse, 92, was a pilot with Britain's Air Transport Auxiliary during World War II. She flew the UK's legendary Spitfire fighter plane. A 2009 article in the Daily Mail describes her experiences. Women who flew for the ATA were known as the Attagirls. They transported aircraft and supplies throughout the UK during the war.
Lofthouse and her colleagues, which included her sister, flew many different types of aircraft, including the Spitfire. Recently, she got the chance to fly in one again (auto-start video) during ceremonies to mark the 70th anniversary of VE Day.

(Video Link)