Asle Helgelien didn't believe Belle Gunness' claims that his brother, missing for months after answering the widow's lonely hearts ad, had left her northern Indiana farm for Chicago or maybe their native Norway.
Suspicious after a bank said his brother, Andrew, had cashed a $3,000 check - a large sum in 1908 - the South Dakota farmer came to LaPorte and discovered his brother's remains in a pit of household waste.
A century later, modern forensic scientists hope to solve once and for all what appears to have been a web of multiple murders, deceit, sex and money orchestrated by a woman dubbed Lady Bluebeard, after the fairy tale character who killed multiple wives and left their bodies in his castle.
Many locals believed Gunness staged her death in a farmhouse fire, 100 years ago Monday, before Asle Helgelien's arrival to cover up years spent poisoning and dismembering more than two dozen people.
Forensic anthropologist Andi Simmons grew up in the area east of Chicago hearing tales of the LaPorte black widow.
"There was always a sense of, what if she's still out there? What if she's lurking around," said Simmons, who decided to explore the case as part of her thesis.
Gunness probably killed at least 25 people and possibly as many as 33, Simmons said. The exact number isn't known because authorities never thoroughly searched the farm property after Helgelien found his brother's remains.
"When you look at the numbers, she should be a household name," Simmons said.
The official account was that Gunness died in the fire at age 48, along with three foster children and another woman who has not been identified.
Bruce Johnson, chairman of LaPorte's Gunness 100th Anniversary Committee, said some residents wish the story would fade away. But programs leading up to the anniversary of her death have drawn many who are eager to share their own tales.
John Olsen, 87, of nearby Schererville, said at a recent anniversary program that Gunness, a Norwegian immigrant, had a reputation among Norwegian families as a great foster mother.
He said Gunness took in his aunt, Jennie Olsen, at 7 months old after her mother died. Jennie decided to stay with Gunness when she got older, even after her father remarried.
"Jennie had many opportunities to come and join her siblings ... and went back to Belle because Belle was the only mother she had ever known," Olsen said. "And Belle gave her an excellent home."
However, Jennie Olsen's body was the second discovered when authorities began digging after the 1908 fire, and many believe she had been killed two years earlier because she uncovered her foster mother's secrets.
The woman arrived in Chicago from Norway in 1881 at age 21, and married three years later. After her first husband died, Gunness moved to LaPorte, where she met Peter Gunness. They married in April 1902, but he died later that year when a sausage grinder and jar of hot water fell on him.
In both cases, family members believed the husbands' deaths were suspicious, Johnson said. And in both cases, Gunness collected thousands in insurance money.
After Peter Gunness' death, his widow advertised in Midwestern Norwegian-language newspapers for a potential mate. One read: "A woman who owns a beautifully located and valuable farm in first class condition, wants a good and reliable man as partner in same. Some little cash is required and will be furnished first class security."
Though Gunness was a plain, 5-foot-8 woman who weighed as much as 280 pounds, her letters were eloquent, Johnson said.
"She wrote wonderful letters, very encouraging," he said. "She would tell them about how lovely LaPorte was."
The coroner declared Gunness dead after her dentures were found in the fire debris two weeks later. But many believe she paid someone to plant the dentures - which Simmons said were found intact and not burned.
When authorities determined the fire was arson, suspicion turned to a handyman who had worked for Gunness and had been her lover. He was convicted of arson but acquitted of murder.
For a quarter of a century, Gunness sightings were reported all over the country.
The last came in 1931, when a woman named Esther Carlson died in Los Angeles while awaiting trial on charges she killed her employer. Carlson resembled Gunness, was about the same age, and there was no record of her before 1908, Simmons said.
Simmons' team exhumed a body believed to be Gunness' from a Chicago-area cemetery in November. The casket contained body parts from two children - but they did not belong to the foster children reported to have died in the fire. They could be remains of other victims whose remains had been buried in the basement and were inadvertently scooped up in the ashes, Simmons said.
"Now we don't know whether we're adding two more people to our body count," she said.
*****
Makes you wonder, doesn't it?
Budapest, November 1944: Another German train has loaded its cargo of Jews bound for Auschwitz. A young Swedish diplomat pushes past the SS guard and scrambles onto the roof of a cattle car.
Ignoring shots fired over his head, he reaches through the open door to outstretched hands, passing out dozens of bogus "passports" that extended Sweden's protection to the bearers. He orders everyone with a document off the train and into his caravan of vehicles. The guards look on, dumbfounded.
Raoul Wallenberg was a minor official of a neutral country, with an unimposing appearance and gentle manner. Recruited and financed by the U.S., he was sent into Hungary to save Jews. He bullied, bluffed and bribed powerful Nazis to prevent the deportation of 20,000 Hungarian Jews to concentration camps, and averted the massacre of 70,000 more people in Budapest's ghetto by threatening to have the Nazi commander hanged as a war criminal.
Then, on Jan. 17, 1945, days after the Soviets moved into Budapest, the 32-year-old Wallenberg and his Hungarian driver, Vilmos Langfelder, drove off under a Russian security escort, and vanished forever.
And because he was a rare flicker of humanity in the man-made hell of the Holocaust, the world has celebrated him ever since. Streets have been named after him and his face has been on postage stamps. And researchers have wrestled with two enduring mysteries: Why was Wallenberg arrested, and did he really die in Soviet custody in 1947?
Researchers have sifted through hundreds of purported sightings of Wallenberg into the 1980s, right down to plotting his movements from cell to cell while in custody. And fresh documents are to become public which might cast light on another puzzle: Whether Wallenberg was connected, directly or indirectly, to a super-secret wartime U.S. intelligence agency known as "the Pond," operating as World War II was drawing to a close and the Soviets were growing increasingly suspicious of Western intentions in eastern Europe.
Speculation that Wallenberg was engaged in espionage has been rife since the Central Intelligence Agency acknowledged in the 1990s that he had been recruited for his rescue mission by an agent of the Office of Strategic Services, the OSS, which later became the CIA.
About the Pond, little is known. But later this year the CIA is to release a stash of Pond-related papers accidentally discovered in a Virginia barn in 2001. These are the papers of John Grombach, who headed the Pond from its creation in 1942. CIA officials say they should be turned over to the National Archives in College Park, Md.
In February, the Swedish government posted an online database of 1,000 documents and testimonies related to Wallenberg's disappearance. In a few months, independent investigators plan to launch a Web site with their nearly 20-year research into Russian archives and prison records. Russia is building a Museum of Tolerance that will feature once-classified documents on Wallenberg. And the CIA last year relaxed its guidelines to reveal details of its sources and intelligence-gathering methods in the case.
Despite dozens of books and hundreds of documents on Wallenberg, much remains hidden. The Kremlin has failed to find or deliver dozens of files, Sweden has declined to open all its books, and The Associated Press has learned as many as 100,000 pages of declassified OSS documents await processing at the National Archives.
The Russians say Wallenberg died in prison in 1947, but never produced a proper death certificate or his remains.
But independent research suggests he may have lived many years - perhaps until the late 1980s. If true, he likely was held in isolation, stripped of his identity, known only by a number or a false name and moving like a phantom among Soviet prisons, labor camps and psychiatric institutions.
In 1991, the Russian government assigned Vyacheslav Nikonov, deputy head of the KGB intelligence service, to spend months searching classified archives about Wallenberg.
"I think I found all the existing documents," Nikonov e-mailed The Associated Press last month. The Soviets believed Wallenberg had been a spy, he said, but unlike many political detainees he never had a trial.
Nikonov's conclusion: "Shot in 1947."
Later in 1991, Russia and Sweden launched a joint investigation that lasted 10 years but failed to reach a joint conclusion.
The 2001 Swedish report said: "There is no fully reliable proof of what happened to Raoul Wallenberg," and listed 17 unanswered questions.
The Russian report bluntly said, "Wallenberg died, or most likely was killed, on July 17, 1947." It named Viktor Abakumov, the head of the "Smersh" counterintelligence agency, as responsible for the execution and cover-up. It said the Russians consider the Wallenberg case "resolved."
Unsatisfied, independent consultants and academics have kept digging, analyzing, reassessing old information and pressing for the Kremlin to release missing files.
___
Wallenberg arrived in Budapest in July 1944. With the knowledge of his government, his task as first secretary to the Swedish diplomatic legation was a cover for his true mission as secret emissary of the U.S. War Refugee Board, created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a belated attempt to stem the annihilation of Europe's Jews.
In the previous two months, 440,000 Hungarian Jews had been shipped to Auschwitz for extermination. They were among the last of six million Jews slaughtered in the Holocaust.
Of the 230,000 who remained in the Hungarian capital in mid-1944, 100,000 survived the war.
After the Red Army arrived in January, Wallenberg went to see the Russian military commander to discuss postwar reconstruction and restitution of Jewish property. Two days later he returned under Russian escort to collect some personal effects, then was never seen in public again.
And what did his country - or his influential cousins - do about it?
Looking back a half century later, the Swedish government acknowledged that its own passive response to the detention of one of its diplomats was astounding, and that it had missed several chances to win his freedom.
"The worst mistakes were done in the first two years," said Hans Magnusson, the Swedish co-chairman of the 10-year investigation with the Russians. Sweden felt intimidated by the mighty Soviets and unwilling to challenge them, he said.
In the mid-1950s, the Swedes pursued the case more aggressively, prompting a memorandum from Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in 1957 that Wallenberg had died of heart failure in detention 10 years earlier - at age 34.
As more testimony came in that Wallenberg was still alive, Stockholm periodically raised the issue with Moscow - but without results, said Magnusson, interviewed in the Netherlands where he is now ambassador.
Sweden could have pushed harder, he said, "but I doubt it would have achieved more."
"It is inconceivable," says Wallenberg's half-sister, Nina Lagergren. "Here is a man sent out by the Swedish government to risk his life. He saved thousands of people - and he was left to rot."
___
Some time around 1994, Susan Mesinai, who had by then been researching the Wallenberg case for five years, visited Lucette Colvin Kelsey, Wallenberg's cousin, at her home in Connecticut. After lunch, Kelsey caught up with Mesinai as she got into the car and told her: "Raoul was working for the highest levels of government."
"So I said to her, 'How high? Do you mean the president?' And she nodded her head," Mesinai said, disclosing to AP a conversation she had kept confidential for 14 years.
Kelsey's father, Col. William Colvin, had been the U.S. military attache in the Swedish capital around the time of World War I. Wallenberg spent vacations in the 1930s with the Colvin family while he earned a degree in architecture at the University of Michigan. Kelsey, who was a year younger than her cousin, died in 1996.
Rather than clarify anything, Kelsey's cryptic remark only deepened the fog.
Wallenberg's rescue mission inevitably placed him in a vortex of intrigue and espionage involving the Hungarian resistance, the Jewish underground, communists working for the Soviets, and British, U.S. and Swedish intelligence operations. He also had regular contact with Adolf Eichmann and other Nazis running the deportation of Jews.
Whether or not he himself was passing on intelligence, Russia had plenty of reason to suspect him of spying, either for the Allies or Germany - or both.
"Wallenberg had ties to all the major actors in Hungary," says Susanne Berger, a German researcher who collaborated with the Swedish-Russian research project.
The Stockholm chief of the War Refugee Board, Iver C. Olsen, was also a key member of the 35-man OSS station in the Swedish capital, and it was he who recruited Wallenberg, who in turn kept the U.S. connection secret by sending his communications through Swedish diplomatic channels.
Olsen's OSS personnel file - unpublished until the AP viewed it at the National Archives - revealed that the American was cited for using his position at the War Refugee Board "in gathering important information for the OSS and for the State Department."
In 1955 Olsen denied to the CIA that Wallenberg ever spied for the OSS, and Mesinai and Berger offer a different likelihood: that the Swede was a source for the Pond, which was a rival to the OSS known only to Roosevelt and a few insiders in the War and State Departments.
A small clandestine intelligence-gathering operation, the Pond relied on contacts in private corporations and hand-picked embassy personnel. It worked closely with the Dutch electronics company N.V. Philips, "which had access to 'enemy' territory as well as a far-flung corporation intelligence apparatus in its own right," said former CIA analyst Mark Stout who wrote a brief unofficial history of the Pond.
So far, no evidence has emerged that Wallenberg worked for the Pond, and Stout said in an interview he had not seen Wallenberg mentioned in any papers he has reviewed.
But their circles of contacts intersected at several points, including members of the Hungarian resistance and possibly the Philips connection.
"The Pond was centered around President Roosevelt's office and rumors of a special mission, intelligence or otherwise, for Raoul Wallenberg have persisted through the years," said Berger, who suspects the Soviets knew about the agency.
It may have been just one more reason for Stalin to order his arrest, she said. Regardless of whether Wallenberg was involved, "the Pond's activities clearly would have served to enhance Soviet paranoia about Allied activities and aims in Hungary."
Hungarian historian Laszlo Ritter, of the Institute of History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, said the Philips company also was providing cover for Britain's MI6 intelligence service. One of its crucial agents in the Balkans was Lolle Smit, who was knighted after the war by both Britain and his native Holland.
One month before Wallenberg arrived, Smit fled Budapest for Romania, from where he continued to control his network, Ritter said, but he left his family behind.
Smit's daughter, Berber Smit, worked with Wallenberg in his rescue efforts - and "had a romance with him," according to her son, Alan Hogg.
Ritter said Hungarian war files show no direct tie between Wallenberg and Smit, or between the diplomat and British intelligence. At the same time, MI6 used the Swedish legation at least twice to smuggle out information, and helped give false papers to Jews and the anti-fascist resistance, he said.
When the OSS wanted to dispatch a radio to the Hungarian underground leader Geza Soos, it sent the transmitter with a Swedish intelligence officer and told him Wallenberg would know how to contact Soos.
Wallenberg's very name may have been enough to arouse Russian distrust. Throughout the war, his cousins Marcus and Jacob Wallenberg, the czars of a banking and industrial empire, had done business in Germany, producing the ball bearings that kept its army on the move.
The Wallenbergs also were involved in discreet, unsuccessful peace efforts between the Allies and Germany, which Stalin feared would leave him excluded - a foretaste of global realignment that would lead to the Cold War.
___
In December 1993, investigator Marvin Makinen of the University of Chicago interviewed Varvara Larina, a retired orderly at Moscow's Vladimir Prison since 1946. She remembered a foreigner who was kept in solitary confinement on the third floor of Korpus 2, a building used both as a hospital and isolation ward.
Though it was decades earlier, the prisoner stood out in Larina's memory. He spoke Russian with an accent and "complained about everything," she said. He repeatedly griped that the soup was cold by the time Larina delivered it. Prison authorities ordered her to serve him first.
"This is very unusual," Makinen said in an interview. Normally, such complaints would condemn an inmate to a punishment cell. "The fact that he wasn't means he was a very special prisoner."
When shown a gallery of photographs, Larina immediately picked out Wallenberg's - one never published before, Makinen said.
She recalled he was in the opposite cell when another prisoner, Kirill Osmak, died in May 1960.
That was enough for Makinen and Chicago colleague Ari Kaplan to roughly pinpoint the cell of Larina's foreigner. Creating a database of cell occupancy from the prison's registration cards, they found two units opposite Osmak's that were reported empty for 243 and 717 days respectively.
Normally, cells were left vacant for a week at most, Makinen said. The researchers concluded that those two cells likely held special prisoners, namelessly concealed in the gulag.
Mesinai and others reviewed hundreds of accounts over the decades of people who claimed to have seen or heard of someone who could have been Wallenberg. They established a pattern of sightings, even though many individual reports were considered unreliable, uncorroborated, deliberate hoaxes or cases of mistaken identity with other Swedish prisoners.
Some stories, like Larina's, ring particularly true.
One compelling account came in 1961. Swedish physician Nanna Svartz asked an eminent Russian scientist about Wallenberg during a medical congress in Moscow. Lowering his voice, the Russian told her that Wallenberg was at a psychiatric hospital and "not in very good shape."
The Russian, Alexandr Myasnikov, later claimed he had been misunderstood, but Svartz stood firm. His remark, she later reported, "came spontaneously. He went pale as soon as he said it, and appeared to understand that he had said too much."
A few years later the Soviets sent out feelers for a possible spy swap. Envoys indicated Moscow was ready to "compensate" Sweden if it freed Stig Wennerstromm, a Swedish air force officer who had spied for the Kremlin for 15 years.
Though Wallenberg's name was never mentioned, he was considered the only prize worth exchanging for such a high-value spy. The intermediary was Wolfgang Vogel, an East German lawyer who engineered many Cold War prisoner exchanges. But years of halfhearted negotiation ended in no deal.
___
Nina Lagergren keeps a small wooden box in the cellar of her comfortable Stockholm home. The Russians gave it to her in 1989 when she visited Moscow. It contains her half-brother's diplomatic passport, a stack of currency, a Swedish license for the pistol he bought but never used, and two telephone diaries. Among the entries are Eichmann and Berber Smit, the daughter of the Dutch spy.
They also gave the family a copy of Wallenberg's "death certificate," handwritten and unstamped.
"They anticipated that I would get very moved and understand there was no more hope," Lagergren said.
Instead it reinforced her belief that Wallenberg had lived beyond 1947 and perhaps was even then alive. "This proved we could go on," she said. Today he would be 95, and she concedes he must be dead.
If indeed Wallenberg's death in 1947 was a lie, the question remains: Why was he never freed?
The 2001 Swedish report speculated that the longer he was held, the harder it was for the Soviets to release him. Still, "it would have been exceptional to order the execution of a diplomat from a neutral country. It might have appeared simpler to keep him in isolation," the report said.
The search continues.
Berger, the independent researcher, has submitted a new, detailed request to Moscow to release files on prisoners who shared cells with the missing diplomat and on other foreigners in the gulag; Mesinai hopes to study psychiatric facilities where Wallenberg may have been confined; Ritter, the Hungarian researcher, is tracing the British spy network of Lolle Smit; and historians are awaiting the release of the Pond papers.
Whatever any of this reveals, a 1979 State Department memo puts these questions into perspective: "Whether or not Wallenberg was involved in espionage during World War II is a moot point at this stage in history. His obvious humanitarian acts certainly outweigh any conceivable 'spy' mission he may have been on."
*****
Humanity not forgotten ... although sometime we forget we have not forgotten.
At first glance, this seems like a sensible and obvious approach—to work with the foot, not against it. But it represents a fundamental break from the dominant philosophy of shoe design. For decades, the guiding principle of shoe design has been to compensate for the perceived deficiencies of the human foot. Since it hurts to strike your heel on the ground, nearly all shoes provide a structure to lift the heel. And because walking on hard surfaces can be painful, we wrap our feet in padding. Many people suffer from flat feet or fallen arches, so we wear shoes with built-in arch supports, to help hold our arches up...Admittedly, there’s something counterintuitive about the idea that less padding on your foot equals less shock on your body. But that’s only if we continue to think of our feet as lifeless blocks of flesh that hold us upright. The sole of your foot has over 200,000 nerve endings in it, one of the highest concentrations anywhere in the body. Our feet are designed to act as earthward antennae, helping us balance and transmitting information to us about the ground we’re walking on.
But (you might say) if you walk or run with no padding, it’s murder on your heels—which is precisely the point. Your heels hurt when you walk that way because you’re not supposed to walk that way. Wrapping your heels in padding so they don’t hurt is like stuffing a gag in someone’s mouth so they’ll stop screaming—you’re basically telling your heels to shut up.
And your heels aren’t just screaming; they’re trying to tell you something. In 2006, a group of rheumatologists at Chicago’s Rush Medical College studied the force of the “knee adduction moment”—basically, the force of torque on the medial chamber of the knee joint where arthritis occurs. For years, rheumatologists have advised patients with osteoarthritis of the knees to wear padded walking shoes, to reduce stress on their joints. As for the knee-adduction moment, they’ve attempted to address it with braces and orthotics that immobilize the knee, but with inconsistent results. So the researchers at Rush tried something different: They had people walk in their walking shoes, then barefoot, and each time measured the stress on their knees. They found, to their surprise, that the impact on the knees was 12 percent less when people walked barefoot than it was when people wore the padded shoes.
*****
Now, this is interesting!
Rolling swiftly down highways on ten oversize balloon tires, a revolutionary airport-in-miniature for use by passenger air lines and military air forces now provides quick and complete assistance to stranded airplanes.
This curious “twelve-ton tool box” is the invention of Kibbey W. Couse, of East Orange, N. J.
It is capable of turning any level cow pasture into an airport complete with machine shop, repair parts, floodlights, and radio.
The Korean Customs Service unveiled Thursday seven cloned Labrador retrievers being trained near Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul. The dogs were born five to six months ago after being separately cloned from a skilled drug-sniffing canine in active service.
Due to the difficulties in finding dogs who are up to snuff for the critical jobs, officials said using clones could help reduce costs.
The cloning work was conducted by a team of Seoul National University scientists who in 2005 successfully created the world's first known dog clone, an Afghan hound named Snuppy.
The team is led by Professor Lee Byeong-chun, who was a key aide to disgraced scientist Hwang Woo-suk. Hwang's purported breakthroughs in stem cell research were revealed as false, but independent tests proved the team's dog cloning was genuine.
The seven new cloned male dogs are all healthy, though one was sent to a university laboratory a few days ago for a minor foot injury it received during training, according to training center head Lim Jae-ryoung. For now, the dogs all share the same name: "Toppy" - a combination of the words "tomorrow" and "puppy."
"They have a superior nature. They are active and excel in accepting the training," said Kim Nak-seung, a trainer at the Customs Service-affiliated dog training center.
In February, all seven dogs passed a behavior test aimed at finding whether they are genetically qualified to work as sniffing dogs. Only 10 percent to 15 percent of naturally born dogs typically pass the test.
If the cloned dogs succeed in other tests for physical strength, concentration and sniffing ability, they will be put to work by July next year at airports and harbors across South Korea, according to the training center.
The agency says the cloned dogs could also save money.
"We came up with the idea of dog cloning after thinking about how we can possess a superior breed at a cheaper cost," said agency head Hur Yong-suk.
Normally, only about three out every 10 naturally born dogs it trains - at a cost of about $40,140 each - ends up qualifying for the job.
Lee of Seoul National University said it cost approximately $100,000 to $150,000 to clone each of the seven golden Labrador retrievers.
He said the seven are the world's first cloned drug-sniffing dogs.
The university team did not ask for payment from the customs authorities because it created the clones for academic purposes with government funds, Lee said.
He said his team has so far cloned 20 dogs and five wolves.
On Thursday the dogs frolicked with trainer Kim, running together and chasing a red rubber ball he threw across a playground - a part of training aimed at bolstering their stamina.
"If I look at them very carefully, there are now some small differences in their facial features," said Kim, who has been training the dogs since they were born. "But it's still hard to tell."
In a nutshell: don't.
Bad situations to wait until the last minute:
The Ether says;
I thought you'd like this story from Feminsting.comHere's the email sent by the now-ex-public relations officer for for Southern Illinois University College Republicans:Feministing recently received some really badly written hate mail, something which is not in itself unusual. This time, however, it was sent from a school address, and it turns out that it had come from the public relations officer of the Southern Illinois University College Republicans. That's right: a public relations officer. He's obviously not very good at his job.
In the comments section the secretary of the organization (who seems like a very decent person) came in and apologized profusely, and even made the culprit do the same. He has resigned from his post.
Some people might argue that there's a right to privacy here, but when you send extremely hateful mail over the internet from your school address, and especially when you're a public relations officer, you pretty much give up that right.
The internet is full of real bastards who posts hateful things all the time, and seemingly takes pleasure in hurting people. It's nice to see this one get his comeuppance.
"Men are better than women look at the comparison in IQ men are scientifically proven to have a higher IQ by roughly 5 points, or 5% you cannot dispute science sorry and if you want a much better website than your shitty one you might want to go to [redacted]. I think you would gain a lot more knowledge from that website and you might learn about the truth that way you would not be so stupid and ignorant you stupid cunts."
*****Would that they all receive their comeuppance!
The wingnuts howl and bray at the moon, attacking and reviling everything and everyone who does not toe the dogmatic line - then whine that they are the 'victims' of 'attack' when someone stands up to them and says ... NO.
It has begun to change ... people are tired of the wingnuts and more and more are standing up to say ... NO and doing so in a very loud voice - too bad the wingnuts are deaf.
In Warner v. Berry, where the RIAA was suing a man who lives in a homeless shelter, the Magistrate Judge -- Hon. Kevin Nathaniel Fox -- recommended that the plaintiffs' application for a default judgment be denied, and that the plaintiffs be ordered to show cause why they should not be sanctioned under Rule 11. The Judge agreed that the default judgment should be denied, but chose not to sanction plaintiffs' attorneys...We can only hope that this won't prejudice the court in the matter of Warner, Electra et al Versus Charitable Hospice for Dying, Helpless, Starving Children Who Rescue Puppies From Burning Buildings and Volunteer at the Old Folks Home.The Magistrate Judge found that "[b]y affixing the summons on April 9, 2007, the plaintiffs demonstrated they never intended to conduct 'a thorough address investigation ...' because they employed the 'affix and mail' method of service without exercising due diligence to effect personal service pursuant to CPLR s 308(1) and (2)." Magistrate Judge Fox concluded that Plaintiffs' representation to this Court to the effect that they intended to conduct an investigation to locate Defendant's current address implicated Fed.R.Civ.P. 11(b) because it was made for the improper purpose of unnecessary delay.
The official says Chief Juan Muniz will be flown to Mexico City on Thursday to be questioned by organized crime investigators.
Muniz has been arrested by federal agents in Reynosa, across from McAllen, Texas, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss the case.
Reynosa city officials have issued a news release saying Muniz was arrested Thursday afternoon. Muniz could not be immediately reach for comment and it was unclear if he had a lawyer.
The Gulf cartel is based in Tamaulipas state, where Reynosa is located.Jesus "Jesse" Carrizales, a 17-year-old sophomore, died Wednesday of a single bullet to the chest, fired by a school resources officer, Junus Perry, whom police said Carrizales had ambushed in a crowded outdoor corridor of Roosevelt High School. Officers found a small knife protruding from Carrizales' pocket, police said.
Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer said Thursday that the 6-foot-tall, 250-pound teen sought out the violent confrontation, which he called "a case of suicide by cop."
It wasn't the first time Carrizales had a run-in with police. In 2005, while in middle school, the student was cited for concealing a small knife in his backpack, Dyer said. Relatives said the knife belonged to a friend.
The next year, however, Carrizales' 10 brothers and sisters noticed he had become withdrawn, and the family decided he would do better at an alternative school where he could pursue independent study. He was prescribed Lexapro and Geodon, drugs used to treat depression and bipolar disorder, and in January he transferred to Roosevelt High, said his sister Elisa Ortega.
"He was a boy who needed help," said Ortega, 27. "He was depressed and he was on medication and the school knew it, so maybe they could have treated things differently."
Carrizales' family said the officer didn't have to shoot the teen, and questioned authorities' version of events.
"He never said he wanted to die or anything close to that," Ortega said. "They didn't have to kill him. The Taser guns, the batons they have, that should have been enough to calm the situation down."
Dyer said after Carrizales surprised the officer from behind and struck him in the head with the 21-inch bat, Perry feared for his life.
The officer fell down dazed, and reached for the gun in his hip holster, but the clip fell out.
As the student came at him again, yelling obscenities and raising the bat above his head, Perry grabbed a semiautomatic handgun he carried as backup in an ankle holster. He fired one round, Dyer said.
"It is unfortunate that the officer was put in a position where he had to take a student's life," Dyer told reporters Thursday. "Had he not defended himself there could have been further tragedy."
At least five students and a probation officer on campus witnessed the incident, police said. No one else was injured.
Fresno Unified School District spokeswoman Susan Bedi said a confidentiality agreement kept her from commenting on Carrizales' history in local schools.
Acting Superintendent Ruth Quinto said in a statement that the district was proud of how staff and students handled the situation.
"They have shown great strength and maturity," Quinto said. "We are continuing and will continue for as long as necessary to support them in any way that we can."
Carrizales' siblings described him as a lighthearted aspiring chef who preferred to play video games with his young cousins rather than take part in adult conversations.
"He was more of a kid himself. He was a momma's boy," said another sister, Irene Ortega, 25, speaking outside her mother's modest Fresno home. "We just want to know what happened before that incident to see what made him do what police say he did."
Perry is recovering at home after being treated for a 2-inch gash on the right side of his head, Dyer said. He is on administrative leave while the department reviews his conduct in Fresno's fifth officer-involved shooting this year.
*****
Ok, I am no wingnut fundie but come on people sometime it is not the boogey-man and sometime it is, but the continuous stream of he was - depressed, sick, slow, retarded, high, drunk, etc., ad infinitum - (take your pick), is getting a bit thin.
Which is making legitimate cases of depression, illness, retardation, etc., fall to the wayside as when the boy cried wolf twice and the men came to kill the wolf carrying off the boy's sheep and there was no wolf, so when the boy cried wolf the third time the men ignored him and the wolf ate all the boy's sheep.
A cluster of 25 Barbary apes - a species of monkey usually weighing about 15-25 pounds - moved to a popular beach-side area some months ago where they have been stealing food, entering rooms through open windows and harassing tourists, officials said.
The territory's tourism minister, Ernest Britto, has decided to kill the beach dwelling group, government spokesman Francis Cantos said.
"I can confirm that tourism minister Britto has decided to issue a license for a cull," said Cantos.
"The decision was not taken lightly. It is a last resort," Britto told the Gibraltar Chronicle newspaper.
The newspaper said two monkeys have already been captured and given lethal injections.
The pack, part of the territory's population of around 200, invaded a sandy beach area called Catalan Bay where they remained because they were able to rummage for food. The area is popular with tourists and has a luxury hotel.
Britto said he determined that the monkeys posed a danger to public health.
The animals mainly inhabit the high ground of Gibraltar, a British colony off Spain's southern tip.
The British Army, which is responsible for their care, has in the past often had to replenish Gibraltar's population with monkeys from Africa. Barbary apes also live in Morocco and north Algeria.
The case - clearly one of the biggest, most convoluted child-custody hearings in U.S. history - presented an extraordinary tableau: big-city lawyers in suits and mothers in 19th-century, pioneer-style dresses, all packed into a courtroom and a nearby auditorium connected by video.
At issue was an attempt by the state of Texas to strip the parents of custody and place the children in foster homes because of evidence they were being physically and sexually abused by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a renegade Mormon splinter group suspected of forcing underage girls into marriage with older men.
As many feared, the proceedings turned into something of a circus - and a painfully slow one.
By midafternoon only two witnesses had testified, and both only to lay the foundation for documents to be admitted. One witness, a state trooper, was cross-examined by dozens of attorneys, each of them asking the same question of a behalf of a child or parent.
As the afternoon dragged on, no decisions had been made on any of the youngsters' fate.
Texas District Judge Barbara Walther struggled to maintain order as she faced 100 lawyers in her 80-year-old Tom Green County courtroom and several hundred more participating over a grainy video feed from an ornate City Hall auditorium two blocks away.
The hearing disintegrated quickly into a barrage of shouted objections and attempts to file motions, with lawyers for the children objecting to objections made by the parents' attorneys. When the judge sustained an objection to the prolonged questioning the state trooper, the lawyers cheered.
Upon another objection about the proper admission of medical records of the children, the judge threw up her hands.
"I assume most of you want to make the same objection. Can I have a universal, `Yes, Judge'?" she said.
In both buildings, the hundreds of lawyers stood and responded in unison: "Yes, Judge."
But she added to the chaos as well.
Walther refused to put medical records and other evidence in electronic form, which could be e-mailed among the lawyers, because it contained personal information. A courier had to run from the courthouse to the auditorium delivering one document at a time.
"We're going to handle this the best we can, one client at a time," Walther said.
Little evidence had been admitted by midafternoon. The first attempt to admit evidence resulted in an hourlong recess while all the lawyers examined it. The rest of the morning was spent in arguments about whether to admit the medical records of three girls, two 17-year-olds and one 18-year-old.
Department of Public Safety Sgt. Danny Crawford testified to DPS's discovery of a church bishop's records taken from a safe at the ranch that listed about 38 families, some of them polygamous and some that included wives 16 or 17 years old. But under repeated cross-examination, Crawford acknowledged the records contained no evidence of sexual abuse.
State officials asked the judge for permission to conduct genetic testing on the children and adults because of difficulty sorting out the sect's tangled family relationships and matching youngsters with their parents. The judge did not immediately rule.
Amid the shouting and chaos among the lawyers, who came from around Texas to represent the children and parents free of charge, dozens of mothers sat timidly in their long cotton dresses, long underwear even in the spring heat, and braided upswept hair.
In the satellite courtroom, about 175 people strained to see and hear a large projector set up on the auditorium's stage. But the feed was blurry and barely audible.
"I'm not in a position to advocate for anything," complained Susan Hays, the appointed attorney for a 2-year-old sect member.
Outside, where TV satellite trucks lined the street in front of the courthouse's columned facade, a man who said he was an FLDS father waved a photo of himself surrounded by his four children, ranging from a baby to a child of about 9.
"Look, look, look," the father said. "These children are all smiling, we're happy."
Walther signed an emergency order nearly two weeks ago giving the state custody of the children after a 16-year-old girl called an abuse hot line claiming her husband, a 50-year-old member of the sect, beat and raped her. The girl has yet to be identified.
Authorities raided their compound April 3 in the nearby town of Eldorado - a 1,700-acre ranch with a blindingly white limestone temple and log cabin-style houses - and began collecting documents and disk drives that might provide evidence of underage girls being married to adults.
The children, who are being kept in a domed coliseum in San Angelo, range in age from 6 months to 17 years in age. Roughly 100 of them are under 4.
FLDS members deny children were abused and say the state is persecuting them for their faith.
The judge must weigh the allegations of abuse and also decide whether it is in the children's best interest to be placed into mainstream society after they have been told all their lives that the outside world is hostile and immoral.
If the judge gives the state permanent custody of the children, the Texas child services agency will face the enormous task of finding suitable homes. It will also have to decipher brother-sister relationships so that it can try to preserve them.
Over the past two weeks, the agency has relied on volunteers to help feed the children, do their laundry and provide crafts and games for them.
Gov. Rick Perry would not say how much the case is costing the state, but said: "Does the state of Texas have the resources? Absolutely we do."
The sect came to West Texas in 2003, relocating some members from the church's traditional home along the Utah-Arizona state line. Its prophet and spiritual leader, Warren Jeffs, is in prison for forcing an underage girl into marriage in Utah.
*****
P.T. was right! This whole thing is a badly written TV movie (and you know it will be). Barnum wherever you are try not to laugh too hard.
From TreeHugger.com:
Dangers of Bisphenol A (BPA) From canned food
According to the FDA, 17% of the American diet comes out of cans, and many of those have an epoxy liner made with Bisphenol A, a chemical which can mimic human estrogen and which is linked to breast cancer and early puberty in women. While the leaching of BPA from Nalgene water bottles and other polycarbonate bottles is a concern, the danger from canned food may be greater. The Environmental Working Group tested canned food bought across America and found BPA in more than half of them, at levels they call "200 times the government's traditional safe level of exposure for industrial chemicals." There are no standards for BPA; it is allowed to be put in anything, and billions of pounds are produced each year. EWG found:
Of all foods tested, chicken soup, infant formula, and ravioli had BPA levels of highest concern. Just one to three servings of foods with these concentrations could expose a woman or child to BPA at levels that caused serious adverse effects in animal tests.
To the barricades! That's the message of language purists aghast that the lyrics of France's entry in a hugely popular European song contest are - mon Dieu! - in English.
Critics, including the French government, are adamant: Sebastien Tellier should not perform "Divine" at Eurovision - unless it is in French.
"A song represents the soul of a country," said Marc Favre d'Echallens, who heads a group dedicated to defending French against the growing use of English.
"It appears logical that a song representing France be a French song sung in French," he said, denouncing cultural "uniformity" and the "hegemony" of the English language in the world today.
It's the latest battle in a war France has waged for decades to defend French against the encroachment - some call it the invasion - of the English language.
The televised May 24 Eurovision contest, with entries from Andorra to Russia, drew some 100 million viewers last year - when France placed 22 out of 24 finalists, with 19 points.
Serbia's Marija Serifovic won with 268 points and a heart-wrenching rendition of the ballad "Molitva," or "The Prayer" - sung in her native language.
France's losing entry mixed English and French, with the lyrics "L'amour a la francaise let's do it again, again, again, again."
Wildly popular in Europe, Eurovision has lifted artists from obscurity to celebrity. ABBA won in 1974 with a song that spoke of another French defeat - "Waterloo." And Celine Dion's win in 1988, singing "Ne Partez Pas Sans Moi" (Don't Leave Without Me), helped launch her career.
This year's contest features performers from 43 countries. Eurovision bills itself as one of the longest-running television shows in the world, with the first contest in 1956. France has won 14 times.
France's entry, "Divine," - with only two lines in French - was chosen by France-3, the public television station.
France's minister for cooperation and Francophonie, or French speakers, issued a strongly worded statement Wednesday reflecting his disapproval.
"When one has the honor of being selected to represent France, one sings in French," Alain Joyandet said. He has urged Tellier and France-3 to consider changing the song.
Joyandet was scheduled to meet Thursday with an official of Tellier's RecordMakers label, Stephane Elfassi.
Tellier was not immediately available to comment on the uproar. However, his producer, Marc Teissier du Cros of RecordMakers, said the singer "is quite amused."
After writing the song in English, Tellier "tried to adapt it in French but it didn't work out," du Cros said.
"For me, this is yesterday's debate," he said. "Today an artist ... has the right to choose the language in which he wants to sing."
Still, Eurovision statistics show English holds sway in the contest, in which viewers pick the winner by phone and text message. English or mostly English songs have won 22 times.
More than half of this year's Eurovision contestants - 25 - will sing in English.
Lawmaker Francois-Michel Gonnot of President Nicolas Sarkozy's governing conservative UMP party, set the nation's indignation in motion, asserting that he has received mail from French-speakers as far away as Vietnam and Africa, urging him to take a stand.
"'Be careful,' they wrote. 'If you, the French, don't defend the French language, who will?'" Gonnot told Associated Press Television News. "France has the will to be a great power, and it relies on its history, a culture and a language that today is spoken by 175 million people across the world."
But, he added, French is a "threatened language."
Ironically, English, too, may be losing ground if the lyrics of Tellier's "electro" tune are any indication. Their meaning may test the linguistic mettle of even some native English-speakers: "Oh oh oh / I'm alone in life to say / I love the Chivers anyway / 'Cause Chivers look divine." The meaning of Chivers is unclear.
In 2006, then-President Jacques Chirac stormed out of a European Union summit when a French industrialist spoke in English - and called it "the language of business."
"We fight for our language. It is in our international interest," Chirac said.
For years, English words have crept into the French language: le look, le weekend, le hotdog. But these days, everything from the soundtracks for television commercials to the lyrics of French pop songs are in English.
In France, some words have now been legislated into French, like "logiciel" for "software."
Indeed, kings and emperors preceded staid lawmakers in deciding how the French should talk. In 1510, Louis XII ordered that legal investigations be written in French.
Favre d'Echallens said one possible riposte to the "Divine" song would be withholding public funding for France-3 television. He said the broadcaster, by picking an English song, was failing in its public service missions, which he said include an obligation to promote French.
"It is the French who pay (the taxes) ... Maybe the French want to hear a song in French," Favre d'Echallens said.
Maybe.
Parisian Robert Tordjman, 73, said he just hopes Tellier wins for France.
"If it allows him to win the contest, then let him sing in English," Tordjman told APTN. "We'd accept it."
*****
File this under "Some need a life in a BAD way"!
Something from the wild that is good news for a change:
Borneo's pygmy elephants may be descendants of an extinct Javan elephant race, saved by chance by an 18th century ruler, according to a new study released Thursday.
The study suggests that a small number of opposite-sex elephants can produce a thriving progeny of thousands if left undisturbed on an island, giving fresh hope to conservationists trying to protect nearly extinct species of large mammals.
"If proven, this fascinating story would demonstrate that very small populations of large mammals can be saved from the brink of extinction (simply by) moving a few individuals, from a seemingly doomed population, to a different and safer habitat," the study published in the Sarawak Museum Journal says.
Study co-author Junaidi Payne said the Sultan of Java in Indonesia in the 18th century likely sent some pygmy elephants as gifts to the Sultan of Sulu in the Philippines. The Sultan of Sulu at some point apparently shipped them to Borneo and abandoned them there for unknown reasons.
"There are a number of historical records of elephants shipped between various places in Asia by rulers as gifts to impress others," Payne told The Associated Press.
Borneo pygmy elephants, which are genetically distinct from other subspecies, grow less than about 8 feet compared to about 10 feet in height of Asian ale elephants.
They also have babyish faces, large ears and longer tails. They are more rotund and less aggressive.
The pygmy elephants in Java were extinct by the end of the 18th century, but the few that were brought to Borneo thrived, the study found.
Historically, Borneo never had any elephants and the origins of pygmy elephants - a distinct subspecies of its mainland Asian cousin - remained shrouded in mystery until now.
Borneo is a large island shared by Indonesia, Malaysia and the sultanate of Brunei. It is separated by at least 250 miles of sea from Java, the main island in Indonesia. Sulu is much farther to the east.
Payne said just one fertile female and one fertile male elephant, if left undisturbed in enough good habitat, could in theory end up as a population of 2,000 elephants within less than 300 years.
"And that may be what happened in practice here," said Payne, who works for the global conservation group World Wildlife Fund.
There are about 1,000 pygmy elephants in the wild in Borneo today, mostly in the Malaysian state of Sabah.
"If they came from Java, this fascinating story demonstrates the value of efforts to save even small populations of certain species, often thought to be doomed," said Christy Williams, coordinator of WWF's Asian elephant and rhino program.
Augustine Tuuga, assistant director of the Sabah Wildlife Department, said the study confirms what many conservationists have long believed - that a small number of animals can flourish into large herds even though they may have multiplied by inbreeding.
"My own feeling is that as long as there is no continous hunting and there is no problem about diseases their numbers will multiply," he said.
California faces an almost certain risk of being rocked by a strong earthquake by 2037, scientists said in the first statewide temblor forecast.
New calculations reveal there is a 99.7 percent chance a magnitude 6.7 quake or larger will strike in the next 30 years. The odds of such an event are higher in Southern California than Northern California, 97 percent versus 93 percent.
"It basically guarantees it's going to happen," said Ned Field, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena and lead author of the report.
The 1994 Northridge earthquake under Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley was magnitude 6.7. It killed 72 people, injured more than 9,000 and caused $25 billion in damage in the metropolitan area.
The damage created by an earthquake depends greatly on where it hits. A 7.1 quake - much stronger than Northridge - hit the Mojave Desert in 1999 but caused only a few injuries and no deaths.
California is one of the world's most seismically active regions. More than 300 faults crisscross the state, which sits atop two of Earth's major tectonic plates, the Pacific and North American plates. About 10,000 quakes each year rattle Southern California alone, although most of them are too small to be felt.
The analysis is the first comprehensive effort by the USGS, Southern California Earthquake Center and California Geological Survey to calculate earthquake probabilities for the entire state using newly available data. Previous quake probabilities focused on specific regions and used various methodologies that made it difficult to compare.
For example, a 2003 report found the San Francisco Bay Area faced a 62 percent chance of being struck by a magnitude 6.7 quake by 2032. The new study increased the likelihood slightly to 63 percent by 2037. For the Los Angeles Basin, the probability is higher at 67 percent. There is no past comparison for the Los Angeles area.
Scientists still cannot predict exactly where in the state such a quake will occur or when. But they say the analysis should be a wake-up call for residents to prepare for a natural disaster in earthquake country.
Knowing the likelihood of a strong earthquake is the first step in allowing scientists to draw up hazard maps that show the potential severity of ground shaking in an area. The information can also help with updating building codes and emergency plans and setting earthquake insurance rates.
"A big earthquake can happen tomorrow or it can happen 10 years from now," said Tom Jordan, director of the earthquake center, which is headquartered at the University of Southern California.
Researchers also calculated the statewide probabilities for larger temblors over the same time period. Among their findings: There is a 94 percent chance of a magnitude 7 shock or larger; a 46 percent chance of a magnitude 7.5 and a 4.5 percent chance of a magnitude 8.
The odds are higher that a magnitude 7.5 quake will hit Southern California than Northern California - 37 percent versus 15 percent.
Of all the faults in the state, the southern San Andreas, which runs from Parkfield in central California southeast to the Salton Sea, appears most primed to break, scientists found. There is a 59 percent chance in the next three decades that a Northridge-size quake will occur on the fault compared to 21 percent for the northern section.
The northern San Andreas produced the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, but the southernmost segment has not popped in more than three centuries.
Scientists are also concerned about the Hayward and San Jacinto faults, which have a 31 percent chance of producing a Northridge-size temblor in the next 30 years. The Hayward fault runs through densely populated cities in the San Francisco Bay Area. The San Jacinto fault bisects the fast-growing city of San Bernardino east of Los Angeles.
___
If you are interested in more information and studies about California and the 'Big One' check out the following links.
On the Net:
U.S. Geological Survey: http://www.usgs.gov
Southern California Earthquake Center: http://www.scec.org
California Geological Survey: http://www.conservation.ca.gov/cgs/
The Yearning for Zion ranch is owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints that state authorities raided two weeks ago in search of a 16-year-old girl who claimed her husband beat and raped her.
Child welfare officials have removed all 416 children living there from the custody of their parents. The 16-year-old has yet to be found.
Members gave a few tours to show their lives - isolated from what they regard as a hostile and sinful outside world - center on family and faith.
A gleaming, white limestone temple is the center of the 1,700-acre ranch with large, log-style homes, a school, a dairy, a rock quarry and a community garden planted with vegetables, fruit trees and a grape arbor.
No one who lives here calls it a compound.
"All of us say the ranch. It's the ranch. It's home," said Rozie, a 23-year-old married member of the sect.
Each family begins and ends the day with prayer, said Dan, 24, whose wife remains housed in the San Angelo Colesium complex 45 miles to the north with their 4-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son.
"It is lifeless here without our kids around here" he said. Sect members won't allow their last names to be used because they worry about the effect on their children in state custody.
A custody hearing to begin to decide whether the children, who range in age from six months to 17 years, will be in permanent state custody begins Thursday.
*****
Not too sure what "normal" is but there is more to this than is known and it is not all the "church's" doings either.
The thing that troubles me about the whole thing is the original complainant that precipitated the 'raid' and the goings on that have followed has been 'identified' (though not named) and has not been found by the state authorities.
Two things ... one - is not the identity of an anonymous caller, anonymous; two - if they can't find the 16 year old female who they know the identity of, does she even exist?
If the answer to the first question is ... yes, then there are some people who have a lot of explaining to do.
If the answer is ... no, then we're screwed as a nation (as if we weren't already).
If the answer to the second question is ... yes, she does not exist, then there are some people that have a hell of a lot of explaining to do.
If the answer to the second question is ... no, she exists, then we are totally fucked as a nation ... they can't find their own informant - bad sign, a very bad sign.
Many of these critters live in "sort of nasty places" that are polluted, and gators probably eat all kinds of sick animals, comments Paul Klein, a reptile infectious disease specialist at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville. Fierce battles with prey and other gators can leave gaping flesh wounds—but the animals are fairly hardy. These peptides provide a first line of defense—important in the lower vertebrates, who have a slower antibody response than humans, says Klein.
This advertisement for an insurance company was put on the back of buses in Amsterdam
