A surveillance video of the incident, which had been posted to YouTube, was taken down after McDonald's charged copyright infringement (AKA, they wanted it pulled because of bad PR). However, TV station KARK has posted video that is not subject to copyright infringement. It's obvious from the video that Nigel Haskett, then aged 21, was a hero.
Read the rest at SNAFU'ed.
Stone tools found in Boulder, Colorado were used to butcher camels and horses 13,000 years ago, before the beasts became extinct in the region.
A new biochemical analysis of a rare Clovis-era stone tools was done at the University of Colorado at Boulder. It is the first study to identify protein residue from extinct camels on North American stone tools and only the second to identify horse protein residue on a Clovis-age tool, said CU-Boulder Anthropology Professor Douglas Bamforth, who led the work.
The Clovis culture is believed by many archaeologists to coincide with the time the first Americans arrived on the continent from Asia via the Bering Land Bridge, about 13,000 to 13,500 years ago.Police in Gastonia say the three people who stole clothing from a store Tuesday afternoon at Westfield Eastridge Mall managed to cause quite a ruckus before they fled.
The three became involved in a series of fights with employees at the Hollister Co. clothing store in the mall.
It happened about 3:45 p.m., police say.
A 26-year-old male employee of the store, which sells clothing aimed at teens and young adults, said two men and a woman entered Hollister Co., started a fight with him, and then grabbed 20 T-shirts.
Another employee, a 25-year-old man, saw what was happening and came to help. He got involved in a fight with one of the suspects. Police say that when a third employee, a 26-year-old woman, tried to call mall security, the female suspect jumped on her and began fighting.
Then a fourth employee, a 25-year-old woman, returned to the store after a break, spotted the ruckus, and also tried to call mall security. That woman told police that the female suspect then assaulted her.
The three suspects got away with clothing valued at $485, police say.
Fifteen suspected members and associates of the “Bloods” gang have been indicted on federal firearms, drug and robbery charges – the third time in two years that authorities have targeted gangs and their criminal activities in Charlotte.
The 41-count indictment, unsealed Wednesday, alleges that the gang members were selling cocaine, heroin and marijuana, operating a “crack house” on Dundeen Street in Charlotte, committing robberies and illegally using and possessing firearms.
Thirteen of the 15 suspects, with nick names like “Dawg,” “Wad,” “Brother Man,” “B-Dog” and “Monk,” were rounded up Wednesday morning and are in federal custody.
The indictment followed a six-month investigation by the FBI and Charlotte-Mecklenburg police.
“Today's indictment underscores our ongoing commitment to eradicate violent drug gangs,” U.S. Attorney Gretchen Shappert said. “Law enforcement partnerships are critical to our success.”
It's the third time since 2007 that federal prosecutors have sought similar indictments against gang members in Charlotte.
In March of 2007, members of the Hidden Valley Kings, Charlotte's most notorious home-grown gang, were indicted in federal court. The gang members were sentenced to long prison terms in December.
Last June, members of MS-13, a violent gang with roots in El Salvador, were indicted. The case is scheduled for trial in June.
“We have shown that when agencies work together, we have the power to bring down entire gangs,” Nathan Gray, who heads the FBI in North Carolina, said. “We will continue to do all we can to make sure people walk through their neighborhoods and not fear gang violence.”
The indictment identified the defendants as members or associates of the Bloods or narcotics suppliers of the gang.
The gang members are accused of conducting the bulk of their drug trafficking and other criminal activity in the area along Beatties Ford Road, between Capps Hill Mine Road and Brookshire Boulevard. They bought and sold narcotics in and around dwellings often referred to by the defendants as “the Spot,” “the Trap,” “Daddy's House,” and “the Dungeon,” according to the indictment.
Another source of the gang's income, the indictment alleges, came from robberies of other drug dealers where both drugs and drug proceeds were obtained by violence and intimidation.
“Today's operation impacts the entire city,” Policed Chief Rodney Monroe said. “The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, and all of its law enforcement partners, will continue to work extremely hard to remove the fear and intimidation caused by gangs in our neighborhoods. Our strategy is to root out this type of criminal activity.”
The house is in upscale Marin County, just north of San Francisco. The couple already own a home in Danville, a suburb south of San Francisco, and if they don't want to move they have the option of $1.2 million in cash.
They're still deciding what do, but Brad Wells, who had been a sales executive for a Silicon Valley high-tech company, said the winnings are definitely a boost.
"I got laid off on Wednesday and the company went bankrupt on Friday," he said. The couple got word of their win on Saturday. "It's been a really rough ride for the last year. This gives us an unbelievable lift."
The raffle was held by Community Action Marin, which netted about $1.3 million, down from $2 million last year, the first time the event was held.
"In this economy, we're still very pleased," said Russ Hamel, director of development for the group, a private social services organization.
There were 29,000 tickets sold and prizes in addition to the dream house included $200,000 in cash.
Susan Wells said the couple is celebrating by having dinner with their neighbors.
"We're bringing a very good bottle of champagne," she said.
The Kalamazoo County sheriff's department says the trio stole a safe containing antique money from one of the youth's parents.
The Kalamazoo Gazette and the Birmingham News say they drove a stolen van to Birmingham, Ala., where an 18-year-old tried to exchange the $1,000 bill Thursday at a Service First Bank branch.
The U.S. Treasury stopped printing $1,000 bills in 1945, so the bank called police. Officers arrested the teen and two 15-year-old companions.
They remained in custody Tuesday in Birmingham awaiting return to Michigan. They're from Texas Township, about 135 miles west of Detroit.
The men entered Brunei's waters from a neighboring nation Tuesday but tried to flee when they realized they had been spotted, the Borneo Bulletin newspaper reported. It did not identify the neighboring country, but Brunei shares borders with two Malaysian states on Borneo island.
Customs authorities foiled the escape after a high-speed chase, making their biggest seizure of alcohol this year, the report added.
Brunei's laws ban the public sale and consumption of alcohol, though non-Muslim visitors are allowed to bring in limited amounts for private consumption.
Representatives of Brunei's Royal Customs Department could not immediately be reached. The men are expected to be charged with alcohol smuggling, which is typically punished by a fine.
He called a DNR warden, bought a $75 tag from the agency and decided to have his "trophy" bear mounted. But, at the taxidermy, bullets holes were found in the hide.
A man from West Fargo, N.D., later admitted shooting the bear out of season while hunting on land his family owned previously. Charges are pending.
The DNR seized the bear as evidence. But Schlough wants it back. He said the carcass was legally sold to him. He's hired an attorney and plans to sue the DNR for ownership.
A good Samaritan who pushed three people out of the path of a pickup before he was struck and injured has been ticketed for jaywalking. Family members say 58-year-old Jim Moffett and another man were helping two elderly women cross a busy Denver street in a snowstorm.
Moffett suffered bleeding in the brain, broken bones, a dislocated shoulder and a possible ruptured spleen. He was in serious condition Wednesday.
The State Patrol issued the citation. Trooper Ryan Sullivan told the Rocky Mountain News that despite Moffett's intentions, jaywalking caused the accident.
The other good Samaritan was also cited for jaywalking. The pickup driver was cited for careless driving causing injury.
It's not clear if the women were cited. The patrol didn't return calls.
No, this thief was after bottles that go for $30 or $40 a pop. "Thieves with good taste." That's how owner Rudy Dory explains them.
The store figured out what was going on when the order writer noticed he was buying a lot more balsamic vinegar than what the store was actually selling. The market has quite a large balsamic collection, but the thefts were noticeable.
So the sign went up.
A couple months ago, workers caught someone who they think may have been the balsamic bandit. The market didn't press charges, just banned the alleged thief from the store. Dory wouldn't say much about the suspect, just that it was a she.
So we are left to speculate. Maybe she needed that that last little ingredient for her many dinner parties. Maybe she was selling it on some sort of gourmet black market.
Whatever it is, Dory said, "it really irritates you."
"We don't know if we got the person or not," he added. The store has seen a slowdown in balsamic loss, but it hasn't stopped.
For now, the sign stays.
Shoplifting, of course, is a problem not limited to this market. Even so, Steve Esselstyn, community liaison for the Bend Police Department, says the police don't get many calls from grocery stores, and when they do it's typically something along the lines of a kid trying to score beer.
But balsamic vinegar?
"Well," Esselstyn said, "they must be a vegetarian."
This photograph released by the Etowah County Sheriff's Department in Gadsden, Ala., shows funeral director Harold Watson Sr. following his arrest on a charge of corpse abuse on Tuesday, February 24, 2009. Watson is accused of leaving a woman's body to decay in a parked hearse after her relatives failed to pay the bill.
A funeral director accused of leaving a woman's body to decay in a parked hearse after her relatives failed to pay the bill was arrested on a felony charge of abusing a corpse, police said Wednesday. Watson and Sons Funeral Home embalmed the remains of Edna Kathleen Woods, 52, after she died of natural causes in November 2007, said Gadsden police Sgt. Jeff Wright. Relatives wanted the body cremated but failed to sign the necessary paperwork or pay owner Harold Watson Sr., he said.
After storing the corpse at his funeral home for more than a year, Wright said, the 76-year-old Watson decided to move it because he couldn't reach the woman's family.
Someone complained about a foul smell near downtown Gadsden, about 60 miles northeast of Birmingham, and officers on Tuesday found the woman's remains in a cardboard box that was inside a locked hearse parked on a piece of property that Watson owns.
Watson was arrested after officers tracked the hearse to him. The body apparently was in the hearse for about two months, and the battery had been removed so no one could move the vehicle, Wright said.
Funeral directors with unclaimed bodies can file a petition to have counties dispose of remains.
"He knows better. The family wouldn't pay him, so he just got rid of it," Wright said.
Watson was free on bond and did not immediately return a message left at his funeral home. It was not immediately known if he had an attorney.
The head of the state office that regulates Alabama's funeral industry said Watson could lose his director's license if convicted.
"We don't have many cases this bizarre," said Warren Higgins, executive secretary of the Alabama Board of Funeral Service. "We're just waiting to hear more from the authorities in Gadsden."
Police didn't know how much the woman's relatives owed, and it wasn't clear who notified officers about the hearse.
Higgins said the funeral agency had not received any complaints about Watson's work since the early 1980s, when questions arose about whether he could use the name "Watson and Sons" for the business because his sons were not licensed morticians.
Watson was allowed to continue using the name provided he hired a licensed embalmer, Higgins said. Watson is not licensed to embalm bodies.
Researchers once believed that the melting was limited to the Antarctic Peninsula, a narrow tongue of land pointing toward South America. But satellite data and automated weather stations now indicate it is more widespread.
The melting "also extends all the way down to what is called west Antarctica," said Colin Summerhayes, executive director of the Britain-based Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.
"That's unusual and unexpected," he said.
"More than 75% of people in a new poll say they are optimistic about the next four years with Obama. I don't believe that! That's not possible! I don't know anybody who's optimistic. Do you?"
Slate has just published a special series from Timothy Noah about why America hasn’t been attacked since 9/11.
For over six weeks, Noah studied literature and interviewed terrorism experts about why the dire predictions of a 9/11 sequel proved untrue.
He concludes that it’s impossible to answer with certainty, but he comes up with eight theories — ranging from mildly mundane to deeply disturbing — on why we haven’t been attacked.Beginning today and over the next seven days, Noah will explain one theory a day. Today he examines the “Terrorists-Are-Dumb” theory.
... in 10 minutes, read a series of ideas on a computer screen at a brisk pace or watch an I Love Lucy video clip on fast-forward. Other participants performed similar tasks at a relaxed speed.
Results suggested that thinking fast made participants feel more elated, creative and, to a lesser degree, energetic and powerful. Activities that promote fast thinking, then, such as whipping through an easy crossword puzzle or brain-storming quickly about an idea, can boost energy and mood, says psychologist Emily Pronin, the study’s lead author.
"I know the jokes are going to be coming, but this is not a frivolous issue," said Ammiano, a Democrat elected in November after more than a dozen years as a San Francisco supervisor. "California always takes the lead -- on gay marriage, the sanctuary movement, medical marijuana..."
Ammiano's measure, AB 390, would essentially replicate the regulatory structure used for beer, wine and hard liquor, with taxed sales barred to anyone under 21.
The natural world would benefit, too, from the uprooting of environmentally destructive backcountry pot plantations that denude fragile ecosystems, Ammiano said.
But the biggest boon might be to the bottom line. By some estimates, California's pot crop is a $14-billion industry, putting it above vegetables ($5.7 billion) and grapes ($2.6 billion). If so, that could mean upward of $1 billion in tax revenue for the state each year.
Vassalboro, Maine's newest coffee shop is garnering national attention for something other than its $3 a cup coffee. At the Grand View Topless Coffee Shop, the waitresses are, well, topless.
You can read the local paper's report here. The most interesting piece of news is not near the top of the story--it's not the news that many local residents are unhappy, or that other locals are already stopping by (as many as 60 customers on Monday).
The Kennebec Journal reports that the shop's owner Donald Crabtree said that he interviewed 150 people for the positions, "and narrowed the field to 10."
Further evidence that this is a rough job market.
The shop is located in what is described by a local government council as a "rural residential suburb"--population 4,500 or so. It opens at 6 a.m. to serve hot coffee and doughnuts.
One waitress explains her interest to the Journal:
Topless waitress Susie Wiley, 23, of Farmingdale, said she went for the job because it's "something different" and said she's worked in coffee shops since she was a teenager.
Asked whether the shop is degrading to women, Wiley said, "No, I love it. I find it very empowering, not degrading."
We have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election. A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn’t afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day.
Well that day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here.
Now is the time to act boldly and wisely – to not only revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity. Now is the time to jumpstart job creation, re-start lending, and invest in areas like energy, health care, and education that will grow our economy, even as we make hard choices to bring our deficit down. That is what my economic agenda is designed to do, and that’s what I’d like to talk to you about tonight.
The recovery plan and the financial stability plan are the immediate steps we’re taking to revive our economy in the short-term. But the only way to fully restore America’s economic strength is to make the long-term investments that will lead to new jobs, new industries, and a renewed ability to compete with the rest of the world. The only way this century will be another American century is if we confront at last the price of our dependence on oil and the high cost of health care; the schools that aren’t preparing our children and the mountain of debt they stand to inherit. That is our responsibility.
In the next few days, I will submit a budget to Congress. So often, we have come to view these documents as simply numbers on a page or laundry lists of programs. I see this document differently. I see it as a vision for America – as a blueprint for our future.
My budget does not attempt to solve every problem or address every issue. It reflects the stark reality of what we’ve inherited – a trillion dollar deficit, a financial crisis, and a costly recession.
Given these realities, everyone in this chamber – Democrats and Republicans – will have to sacrifice some worthy priorities for which there are no dollars. And that includes me.
But that does not mean we can afford to ignore our long-term challenges. I reject the view that says our problems will simply take care of themselves; that says government has no role in laying the foundation for our common prosperity.
Yesterday, I held a fiscal summit where I pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term in office. My administration has also begun to go line by line through the federal budget in order to eliminate wasteful and ineffective programs. As you can imagine, this is a process that will take some time. But we’re starting with the biggest lines. We have already identified two trillion dollars in savings over the next decade.
In this budget, we will end education programs that don’t work and end direct payments to large agribusinesses that don’t need them. We’ll eliminate the no-bid contracts that have wasted billions in Iraq, and reform our defense budget so that we’re not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don’t use. We will root out the waste, fraud, and abuse in our Medicare program that doesn’t make our seniors any healthier, and we will restore a sense of fairness and balance to our tax code by finally ending the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas.
I know that we haven’t agreed on every issue thus far, and there are surely times in the future when we will part ways. But I also know that every American who is sitting here tonight loves this country and wants it to succeed. That must be the starting point for every debate we have in the coming months, and where we return after those debates are done. That is the foundation on which the American people expect us to build common ground.
But in my life, I have also learned that hope is found in unlikely places; that inspiration often comes not from those with the most power or celebrity, but from the dreams and aspirations of Americans who are anything but ordinary.
I think about Leonard Abess, the bank president from Miami who reportedly cashed out of his company, took a $60 million bonus, and gave it out to all 399 people who worked for him, plus another 72 who used to work for him. He didn’t tell anyone, but when the local newspaper found out, he simply said, ''I knew some of these people since I was 7 years old. I didn't feel right getting the money myself."
I think about Greensburg, Kansas, a town that was completely destroyed by a tornado, but is being rebuilt by its residents as a global example of how clean energy can power an entire community – how it can bring jobs and businesses to a place where piles of bricks and rubble once lay. "The tragedy was terrible," said one of the men who helped them rebuild. "But the folks here know that it also provided an incredible opportunity."
And I think about Ty’Sheoma Bethea, the young girl from that school I visited in Dillon, South Carolina – a place where the ceilings leak, the paint peels off the walls, and they have to stop teaching six times a day because the train barrels by their classroom. She has been told that her school is hopeless, but the other day after class she went to the public library and typed up a letter to the people sitting in this room. She even asked her principal for the money to buy a stamp. The letter asks us for help, and says, "We are just students trying to become lawyers, doctors, congressmen like yourself and one day president, so we can make a change to not just the state of South Carolina but also the world. We are not quitters.
Goose a few newspaper journalists these days and they’re likely to exclaim something about why Americans should care about saving their industry. And it’s likely to sound something like this: “Without us protecting the public as investigative watchdogs, government corruption is going to run amok!”
Which might be a compelling point, were it not for five little things:
1. Watchdogging government is hardly the primary purpose of modern newspapers (it doesn’t even make the Top Three in most outfits), and if Watchdogging ever interferes with Job No. 1 (generating double-digit profit margins for shareholders), Watchdogging is right out;
2. Few newspaper “watchdog” reports are based primarily on original research;
3. Newspaper editors, for all their posturing about government openness, have roughly zero interest in opening up their own processes and decision-making to public inspection;
4. The amount of resources devoted to truly investigative, power-challenging, applecart-upsetting, potentially unpopular stories at the average American newspaper is likely dwarfed by the comics page budget;
5. And finally, this argument assumes without evidence that even if my objections were untrue, newspapers would still be the appropriate place for this important societal function. […]Ever wonder who does most of the public-policy grunt work in America? For the good guys, it’s typically underpaid crusaders at civic-minded non-profit groups, people who care about clean water and safe food and healthy children other such left-wing nonsense. Newspapers count on these scruffy muckrackers, even though they typically distance themselves from their “radical” agendas.
The bad guys, like the American Petroleum Institute, or, say Envron, hire platoons of well-groomed lobbyists, experts and public-relations specialists to sell their stories. And even though they are deliberately engaged in distorting the truth to protect their interests, these people are treated as respectable, credible media sources.
Much of what passes for watchdog investigative reporting is based on studies conducted by these pesky non-profits, or by anonymous government underlings in some state auditor’s office, or the federal GAO, and so on. They produce the proof, editors build stories around their findings, and each year on press awards night, some reporters get plaques that credit them with the whole enterprise.
Is there newspaper reporting, investigative or otherwise, that takes on a public-policy issue and challenges ruling orthodoxy without a boost from an interest group? Probably. But newspapers generally refuse to poke the status-quo without being able to cite some interest group for raising the issue. Wanna know why? Because the status quo is where the money and power are. Do the math.
One final thing about this weird dance of newspaper reporters and watchdog groups. In the old days, each benefited. Today, the only thing the newspaper gives the watchdog is greater exposure — not the ability to publish, not the credibility to contact influencers and decision-makers. What newspaper people won’t tell you is that their value to the original institutional watchdoggers is declining. Rapidly. […]
These systemic failures do nothing to limit government corruption. Rather, the first-hand knowledge of how easy it is to warp press coverage and spin public opinion has the opposite effect. Through our sloppy standards and the overarching greed of our corporate paymasters, my former profession has encouraged generations of corporate and governmental sleaze. We didn’t watchdog President Bush’s claims about WMDs. We didn’t take seriously the voices that had been warning for years about the impending collapse of the subprime mortgage market. If your local newspaper gives the mayor’s denials of proven but complex facts equal weight with the facts themselves, then your city hall is likely rife with sleek, smug injustice. And so on.
Newspaper have abdicated their position as have the broadcast media as 'watchdogs' in favor of becoming 'lapdogs' and as such should die as ignoble a death as possible along with their brethren in the broadcast media.
It is the bloggers who are serving as the 'watchdogs' now and are watching and reporting those who would do harm to mankind such as neo-cons, religio-fanatics, and the ilk - even those claiming to be 'bloggers' but are in fact syncophants of the neo-cons, religio-fanatics, and the ilk trying to obfuscate, distort and otherwise mislead and misinform.
Tall Periscope Aids Golfers (December 1933)A NOVEL “skyscraper” periscope shows golfers the blind fairway at the third hole at the Aberoovey golf course in Wales.
The unusual periscope is 30 feet tall. At the third hole of the course the fairway rises so abruptly from the driving tee that golfers can not see the green even though the hole is only 165 yards long. By peering through the periscope, waiting golfers can see in what direction to drive and also note when the putting green is clear.
The periscope is a hollow wood tube fastened to a pole. The top of the instrument is covered with a gabled roof to protect it from rain.
