CAROLINA NATURALLY

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Son made mother live in shed so he could rent out her room

A man was charged with abusing and neglecting his mother after deputies found the malnourished, sick woman living in a tool shed behind his property. Deputies arrested Pastro Jang-Sung Park, 54, on Sunday after they discovered his mother, Sei Hee Park, 84, living in dangerous conditions in a shed behind a multi-unit building in Dania, Florida, according to a Broward Sheriff's Office complaint affidavit.

Pastro Park was charged with abuse of the elderly or disabled with bodily injury. At a court hearing on Monday, Broward County Judge John "Jay" Hurley set bond at $5,000 and ordered him to have no contact with his mother. According to the affidavit, deputies responded on Sunday evening to a call about a landlord-tenant dispute involving Pastro Park.

The tenant told deputies that an elderly woman was living in the shed, apparently without food, water, air conditioning or toiletries, and that she needed medical attention. The deputies found Sei Park lying on a bed in the shed, "With injury to her head, worm burrowing into her neck, malnourished and dehydrated," the affidavit said.

Pastro Park later told investigators he put his mother in the shed so he could rent out her room. Rescuers took Sei Park to Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood. At Monday's bond hearing, Pastro Park told Hurley he emigrated from Korea in 1997. He said he holds a part-time security position and works as a tutor at Broward College.

There's a news video here.

Talk about Sardines

513 Mexican migrants found in two US-bound trailer trucks

Police in Mexico's southern Chiapas state have found 513 migrants inside two trailer trucks bound for the US, and said they had been transported in dangerously crowded conditions. Some of the immigrants were suffering from dehydration after traveling for hours clinging to cargo ropes strung inside the containers to keep them upright and to allow more migrants to be more crammed in on the floor.

The trucks had air holes punched in the tops of the containers, but migrants interviewed at the state prosecutors' office said they lacked air and water. The trucks were bound for the central city of Puebla, where the migrants said they had been told they would be loaded onto a second set of vehicles for the trip to the US border.

YouTube link.

None of the migrants would say whether any drug gangs had been involved in the mass smuggling scheme broken up early on Tuesday when Chiapas state police discovered the migrants while using x-ray equipment on the trucks at a checkpoint in the outskirts of city of Tuxtla Gutiérrez.

The migrants said the smugglers were charging them about $7,000 (£4,303) apiece to get them into the US. The immigration institute said in a statement that 410 of the migrants were from Guatemala, 47 from El Salvador, 32 from Ecuador, 12 from India, six from Nepal, three from China and one each from Japan, the Dominican Republic and Honduras. There were 32 women and four children among them.

Russian undertakers 'pay bribes' for tips on the seriously ill

Paramedics working in league with undertakers are among abuses reported by Russian prosecutors in a report on emergency healthcare violations. The chief prosecutor's office said abuses of the free ambulance service existed across the country and it called for tighter monitoring.

In one city, undertakers turned up instead of an ambulance at the home of a seriously ill patient. All Russian citizens are entitled to free emergency healthcare regardless of their circumstances.

The chief prosecutor's office found that in "a number of cities", paramedics had taken payments from undertakers for tipping them off about dead or seriously ill patients, thereby violating citizens' right to privacy.

A criminal investigation is under way in Yekaterinburg, the city where undertakers turned up to offer their services in place of an ambulance.

Thief steals £3,000 bicycle from man as he chatted to three police officers

A cyclist had his £3000 mountain bike stolen as he stood chatting to three police officers. Kevin Jager, 47, from Durham, was paying his first ever visit to Manchester when the bike was taken from under their noses. He had been working as a security marshal in the elite women’s race in the Great Manchester Run on Sunday.

After seeing the runners home, Kevin stood near the finish line on Deansgate chatting to three police officers as they waited for the end of the men’s race. While Kevin’s back was turned, a thief swiped his high-tech S-Works bike which was resting against a wall just a few feet away.

Kevin said: “The police officers and I were all looking towards the finish line and waiting to see Haile Gebrselassie win. I took my eye off the bike for a matter of moments. The first thing I knew about the theft was when one of the police officers handed me my gloves which had been resting on the bike saddle but had fallen on the floor.

“I think the officers were amazed that someone would have the audacity to steal something from under their noses.” Supt Jim Liggett said: “It was audacious of the offender to steal the bike when the victim himself was not very far away. However, there were thousands of people near the finishing line at the time and it can become easy to lose sight of property or people.”

Spectacular Cog Railways

Cog railways can travel up steep hills and mountains because of an extra rail underneath with teeth. Cogwheels on the train itself fit into those teeth and keep it pushing upward. Some of these railways have been in service over a hundred years in the Alps and the Rockies!

Take a closer look at how they work and see some spectacular photographs at Dark Roasted Blend.

Rare Color Photographs Of The Great Depression

It was an era that defined a generation. The Great Depression marked the bitter and abrupt end to the post-World War 1 bubble that left America giddy with promise in the 1920s. Near the end of the 1930s the country was beginning to recover from the crash, but many in small towns and rural areas were still poverty-stricken.

These rare photographs are some of the few documenting those iconic years in color. The photographs and captions are the property of the Library of Congress and were included in a 2006 exhibit Bound for Glory: America in Color. The images, by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, shed a bleak new light on a world now gone with the wind.

Most expensive art photo ever

This is the most expensive photograph ever purchased. Art dealer Philippe Segalot purchased Cindy Sherman's "Untitled #96" (1981) for $3.89 million at a Christie's auction last week.

"Cindy Sherman Print Sells For $3.9 Million At Auction, The Highest Ever For A Photograph"

Is It Time to Destroy the Last Smallpox Stores?

Scientists and health officials are pretty certain that the smallpox virus exists in only two places in the world: at the CDC in Atlanta and in a government laboratory in Russia. The World Health Organization declared the disease eradicated in 1979, and the two remaining supplies are for research only. This week, the 64th World Health Assembly will take up the question of whether these two stores of the virus should be destroyed.

Now, public health officials are divided on how to ensure that the disease stays eradicated. Some say our best bet is to keep the remaining samples of the virus safe and continue to study them, then destroy them at a later date; others say the safest course is to destroy them now, once and for all.

A list of pros and cons for keeping smallpox around are listed at 80beats.

Silly and Accidental

Are these the world's silliest inventions?

A gallery of bizarre creations includes a portable sauna and glasses that would make Kanye West happy.

Photos

Also:

Favorite products invented by accident

A melting candy bar led to the first microwave oven, which was 5 feet tall.

Strange origin of Kellogg's corn flakes

Also:

Virgin's Enterprise Makes First Feathering Flight

Virgin-Galactics-SpaceShip-Two-First-Feathered-Flight

Virgin Galactic’s experimental SpaceShipTwo, dubbed the VSS Enterprise, recently performed its first flight using “feathering”. That means that the rear of the craft bent far backwards to slow it down during re-entry. Popular Science’s Clay Dillow explained its significance:

“Feathering,” as it is known, is probably the biggest innovation integrated into SpaceShipTwo’s design. In the feathered position, the entire tail section of the plane rotates upward about 65 degrees, creating a different aerodynamic shape that is highly stable yet creates tremendous drag to slow the aircraft down during re-entry. Though that drag is pretty significant, the light weight of the aircraft keeps the skin temperature from rising too high, circumventing the need for heat shields and other thermal protection.
Moreover, when feathered correctly the aircraft is so stable that the pilot can more or less take his hands off the sticks and let the aircraft work its way through the atmosphere naturally, based purely on its aerodynamic shape. That’s a huge safety feature, as the pilot doesn’t have to maintain a specific degree of entry or rely on a sophisticated fly-by-wire computer.

At the link, you can watch a video of the flight. Skip ahead to 2:30 to see the feathering.

Full Story

Awesome Pictures

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Late storms add to historic flood worries in West

Late winter storms are packing a punch to the Rockies, piling snowpack on top of already record levels across the West where officials are concerned about historic flooding, avalanches and mudslides.

Full Story

New Area 51 theory

New Area 51 theory creates Web buzz

A new book claims to expose the true source of the mystery spacecraft that crashed in Roswell.

What 'aliens' were

Also:

The Earth's core is melting

... and freezing

The inner core of the Earth is simultaneously melting and freezing due to circulation of heat in the overlying rocky mantle, according to new research

Full Story

Rogue Planet

Galaxy may be filled with 'rogue' worlds

Excited scientists have found signs of a new class of planet: Massive gas giants that drift through space.

Failed stars?

Also:

'Exciting' find: Possible planets without orbits

Are these planets without orbits? Astronomers have found 10 potential planets as massive as Jupiter wandering through a slice of the Milky Way galaxy, following either very wide orbits or no orbit at all.

Full Story

B.C.

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Noodling Illegal in Texas

... For Now

Noodling is a fishing technique that consists of grabbing a fish with your bare hands and tossing it up on the shore. But here in Texas we do it a bit differently. Noodling consists of shoving one’s fist into the water. Then, when a big ol’ catfish clamps its jaws around your hand, fling it out of the water.

Currently and sadly, noodling is illegal. But that may change. The Wall Street Journal spoke to expert noodler Brady Knowlton:
Nothing beats “the heebie-jeebies you get underwater, in the dark, with this little sea monster biting you,” he says. He recalls that his arm looked like “the first stage of a chili recipe” after his first noodling experience about 15 years ago. Catfish are equipped with bands of small but very abrasive teeth.
The bill swam easily through the state house, but now rod-and-reel anglers are speaking up against the proposed law, currently in the state Senate.
They say noodling is unfair to the fish, since they’re grabbed in their burrows without a chance to swim away.

Full Story

The Red-crested tree rat is adorable ... not extinct

The last red-crested tree rat was spotted in 1898. After 113 years, and several searches, the species was assumed to be extinct. That is, until this one showed up on a public handrail at 9:30 pm on May 4, in Colombia's El Dorado Nature Reserve. Cute! And not dead!