North Carolina lost jobs at a record pace last month, pushing unemployment to a 25-year high as the outlook for the state darkened amid a deepening recession.
Employers slashed 46,000 jobs in November, more than in any state except Florida, according to data released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Those job cuts pushed the unemployment rate to 7.9 percent from 7.1 percent in October, according to figures from the N.C. Employment Security Commission. The jobless rate is now the highest since October 1983.
Experts project double-digit unemployment in the Carolinas next year.
Factor in startup companies and the self-employed, and total employment in North Carolina dipped by 58,621 – the biggest monthly decline in records dating to January 1976.
“These are shocking numbers,” said Mike Walden, an economist at N.C. State University who has written extensively about the state’s economy. “In case anyone missed it, this really tells us the recession is here in full force. … This was just shocking.”
This is just the beginning. Some have said they expect a turnaround in late Spring 2009 for North Carolina, but I don't see that happening. It will be more like a Summer of 2010 turnaround ... if we get lucky. We are in a better position for a recovery than other areas of the country, who will most likely not see a turnaround until at least 2011 ... it will be a rough 2 years for everyone.
Alone among major Western nations, the United States has refused to sign a declaration presented Thursday at the United Nations calling for worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality.In all, 66 of the U.N.’s 192 member countries signed the nonbinding declaration — which backers called a historic step to push the General Assembly to deal more forthrightly with any-gay discrimination. More than 70 U.N. members outlaw homosexuality, and in several of them homosexual acts can be punished by execution.
Co-sponsored by France and the Netherlands, the declaration was signed by all 27 European Union members, as well as Japan, Australia, Mexico and three dozen other countries. There was broad opposition from Muslim nations, and the United States refused to sign, indicating that some parts of the declaration raised legal questions that needed further review.
“It’s disappointing,” said Rama Yade, France’s human rights minister, of the U.S. position — which she described as in contradiction with America’s long tradition as a defender of human rights.
Their work, which is detailed in a newly published paper in the journal Zygon, builds on that of researchers such as Dr. Andrew Newberg, who conducted MRI scans of meditating Buddhist monks and Catholic nuns engaging in contemplative prayer. As Miller-McCune reported in October, such activity is associated with increased activity in the frontal lobe, combined with decreased activity in another part of the brain, the parietal lobe.
The Missouri researchers approached the issue from another angle altogether, studying the spiritual experiences of people who suffered traumatic brain injuries. They asked 26 adults who had suffered such injuries about their personal spiritual experiences, the amount of time they devote to spiritual or religious practices and the degree to which they feel close to God or some other spiritual entity.”
Atoms are just atoms, but the story about a particular conglomeration of atoms makes it desirable to people who enjoy the story. Case in point: this not-particularly pretty hunk of rock, which most people would walk by without a second glance if they happened to see it on the ground. It just so happens that this rock is a piece of the planet Mars.
Two decades before Edison, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville recorded sound waves on soot blackened paper with no facility to listen to the recording. It seems Scott considered the technology as a sort of new written language that had more in common with stenography than listening to music. 148 years later, Lawrence Berkeley researchers have played back the track by scanning the original recording and interpreting the sound waves with an "optical stylus."
From Barbara Israel Garden Antiques:
A Spanish Sweet Chestnut tree root from the reign of William and Mary, ca. 1700, from the southeast of England, near Wells. Diameter of root base 11 ft., estimated weight, 5 tons.
When most people think of a horned ceratopsian dinosaur, only the common three-horned Triceratops comes to mind. This could be because triceratops is such a frequently-encountered and wide-ranging dinosaur, or because its long history of discovery gives it better press in children's dinosaur books.
But this would be a real disservice to the exciting, but less common, cousins in the centrosaurinae (short frilled) branch of the ceratopsian family.
One rare member of that subfamily is the Sioux 'buffalo lizard' or Einiosaurus, intriguing enough to merit inclusion in the 1997 USA 'World of Dinosaurs' postage stamp issue.
Einiosaurus has a very unusual morphology, with a tall and laterally-compressed skull and a frill with a somewhat inward curve that gives it a distinctly vertical appearance.
The move means that President Barack Obama and brand new interior secretary nominee Ken Salazar -- a Democratic senator from Colorado -- will have to jump feet-first into the decades-old debate over offshore oil drilling. It's an issue where the two disagreed at one point.
Wait. Virginia?
The state is ground zero for the drilling debate because of possible reserves off the coast and what energy experts see as a friendlier government than elsewhere.
The U.S. Interior Department has completed the first step, closing a public comment period on the proposal to lease 2.9 million acres of ocean to natural gas and oil companies. The pie-shaped area begins 50 miles off Virginia's coast, straight out from Virginia Beach on the south and across from Virginia's boundary on the Delmarva peninsula to the north.
"The East Coast really has not been looked at for 30 years," said Randall Luthi, who heads up the drilling plan as director of Interior's Minerals Management Service.
"Our best guess is that area could contain about 130 million barrels of oil and 1.14 trillion cubic feet of natural gas," he said.
Such an oil find would be small compared with the estimated 40 billion barrels in the Gulf Coast. The natural gas is more substantial. But both are symbolic of a rare window of opportunity for the energy industry.
A two-fold ban on Outer Continental Shelf drilling ended in just the past two months.
*****
They are still trying to keep on fucking us, folks!
This has got to stop - and with enough force and suddenness to give them all the most severe case of whip-lash that it is possible to get!
These weren't your typical ballplayers.
Once a year, supporters of the ancient sports of Mexico stage an exhibition of games like pash pash, corozo, garabato and kuachancaca.
This past November they gathered in Villahermosa, the hot, humid lowland capital of the Mexican state of Tabasco.
Which was the homeland of the Olmec civilization that predated the Maya civilization to show off their sports.
Read the rest here.
A California man is trying to convince the FBI that his stepfather, who died in the Olympia area about two-and-a-half years ago, was the San Francisco Bay Area's notorious Zodiac killer.
Dennis Kaufman, 41, of Pollock Pines, Calif., said his stepfather, Jack Tarrance, died in Thurston County in August 2006 at the age of 78.
Read the rest here.
Zodiac killer's crimes
The following are among the slayings that the Zodiac killer is suspected of ...
• On Dec. 20, 1968, Betty Lou Jensen, 16, and David Faraday, 17, were found shot to death on Lake Herman Road, near Vallejo, Calif., outside Faraday's mother's station wagon.
• On July 5, 1969, Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau were shot repeatedly while in Ferrin's vehicle parked at the Blue Rock Springs Golf Course in Vallejo by a man who shone a light on the car before opening fire on the occupants. Ferrin was killed. Mageau survived, despite being shot three times. Minutes after the shooting, an anonymous man placed a call from a pay phone to the Vallejo Police Department "to report a double murder." The man also claimed credit for the Jensen and Faraday homicides.
In letters to the San Francisco Chronicle and other Bay Area newspapers in late July 1969, the Zodiac killer claimed responsibility for the Jensen and Faraday murders, as well at the shooting that killed Ferrin and wounded Mageau, giving details known only to police. Ciphers sent to the newspapers were decoded and read in part: "I like killing people because it is so much fun it is more fun than killing wild game in the forrest because man is the most dangeroue anamal of all to kill."
• On Sept. 27, 1969, Bryan Hartnell and Cecilia Shepherd were stabbed repeatedly by a man dressed in black and wearing a black hood while picnicking at California's Lake Berryessa. Shepherd died, and Hartnell survived. He reportedly is a lawyer now in Southern California.
• On Oct. 11, 1969, San Francisco cab driver Paul Stine was shot and killed in his car by a passenger in the back seat on Washington Street in San Francisco. On Oct. 14, Zodiac sent the San Francisco Chronicle a letter claiming responsibility for the murder. The letter contained a bloody piece of Stine's shirt.
In one of his last letters to the San Francisco Chronicle, Zodiac claimed responsibility for 37 murders.
John Goodge and a colleague collecting specimens in the Transantarctic Mountains.
A lone granite boulder found against all odds high atop a glacier in Antarctica may provide additional key evidence to support a theory that parts of the southernmost continent once were connected to North America hundreds of millions of years ago.
Writing in the July 11 edition of the journal Science, an international team of U.S. and Australian investigators describe their findings, which were made in the Transantarctic Mountains, and their significance to the problem of piecing together what an ancient supercontinent, called Rodinia, looked like. The U.S. investigators were funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Previous lines of scientific evidence led researchers to theorise that about 600-800 million years ago a portion of Rodinia broke away from what is now the southwestern United States and eventually drifted southward to become eastern Antarctica and Australia.
The team’s find, they argue, provides physical evidence that confirms the so-called southwestern United States and East Antarctica (SWEAT) hypothesis.
Find out more at the National Science Federation
"People learning about Milgram's work often wonder whether results would be any different today," said Burger, a professor at Santa Clara University. "Many point to the lessons of the Holocaust and argue that there is greater societal awareness of the dangers of blind obedience. But what I found is the same situational factors that affected obedience in Milgram's experiments still operate today."
Besides making an international celebrity out of Iraqi reporter Muntadar al-Zeidi, the now infamous shoe-throwing incident is cropping up in surprising ways across Iraq, where a population beaten and exhausted from years of war is once again finding its voice against the US military presence and the Iraqi government seen as its enablers.
The city of Fallujah was one of the hardest hit in all of Iraq, nearly destroyed earlier in the war. When students at the city’s university held an impromptu rally in support of the jailed Zeidi, US soldiers were quick on the scene. The students raised shoes and some of them threw rocks, prompting the troops to open fire in an attempt to disperse the crowd. One student was wounded, shot in the foot according to his doctorOver the past few weeks, Vice President-Elect Biden and I have announced some of the leaders who will advise us as we seek to meet America’s twenty-first century challenges, from strengthening our security, to rebuilding our economy, to preserving our planet for our children and grandchildren. Today, I am pleased to announce members of my science and technology team whose work will be critical to these efforts.
Whether it’s the science to slow global warming; the technology to protect our troops and confront bioterror and weapons of mass destruction; the research to find life-saving cures; or the innovations to remake our industries and create twenty-first century jobs—today, more than ever before, science holds the key to our survival as a planet and our security and prosperity as a nation. It is time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and worked to restore America’s place as the world leader in science and technology.
Right now, in labs, classrooms and companies across America, our leading minds are hard at work chasing the next big idea, on the cusp of breakthroughs that could revolutionize our lives. But history tells us that they cannot do it alone. From landing on the moon, to sequencing the human genome, to inventing the Internet, America has been the first to cross that new frontier because we had leaders who paved the way: leaders like President Kennedy, who inspired us to push the boundaries of the known world and achieve the impossible; leaders who not only invested in our scientists, but who respected the integrity of the scientific process.
Because the truth is that promoting science isn’t just about providing resources—it’s about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It’s about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it’s inconvenient—especially when it’s inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us. That will be my goal as President of the United States—and I could not have a better team to guide me in this work.
Dr. John Holdren has agreed to serve as Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. John is a professor and Director of the Program on Science, Technology, and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, as well as President and Director of the Woods Hole Research Center. A physicist renowned for his work on climate and energy, he’s received numerous honors and awards for his contributions and has been one of the most passionate and persistent voices of our time about the growing threat of climate change. I look forward to his wise counsel in the years ahead.
John will also serve as a Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology—or PCAST—as will Dr. Harold Varmus and Dr. Eric Lander. Together, they will work to remake PCAST into a vigorous external advisory council that will shape my thinking on the scientific aspects of my policy priorities.
Dr. Varmus is no stranger to this work. He is not just a path-breaking scientist, having won a Nobel Prize for his research on the causes of cancer—he also served as Director of the National Institutes of Health during the Clinton Administration. I am grateful he has answered the call to serve once again.
Dr. Eric Lander is the Founding Director of the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard and was one of the driving forces behind mapping the human genome—one of the greatest scientific achievements in history. I know he will be a powerful voice in my Administration as we seek to find the causes and cures of our most devastating diseases.
Finally, Dr. Jane Lubchenco has accepted my nomination as the Administrator of NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is devoted to conserving our marine and coastal resources and monitoring our weather. An internationally known environmental scientist and ecologist and former President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Jane has advised the President and Congress on scientific matters, and I am confident she will provide passionate and dedicated leadership at NOAA.
Working with these leaders, we will seek to draw on the power of science to both meet our challenges across the globe and revitalize our economy here at home. And I’ll be speaking more after the New Year about how my Administration will engage leaders in the technology community and harness technology and innovation to create jobs, enhance America’s competitiveness and advance our national priorities.
I am confident that if we recommit ourselves to discovery; if we support science education to create the next generation of scientists and engineers right here in America; if we have the vision to believe and invest in things unseen, then we can lead the world into a new future of peace and prosperity.
Thank you.
*****
Just a note here -I think that it was Friday the 19th not the 17th as the text shows (everyone has typos you know).
Oymyakon/Ojmjakon/Oimyakon is the coldest permanently inhabited place on earth. The lowest recorded temperature here is -71.2 degrees Celsius. Some authorities say this is the lowest officially recorded temperature in the northern hemisphere.
The village has a population of around 800 and is located 690 meters above sea level and lies in a valley between two mountain ranges (the reason for the low temperatures). The name Oymyakon means "non-freezing water" because of the natural hot spring close to the village.
Most Americans have long known that the horrors of Abu Ghraib were not the work of a few low-ranking sociopaths. All but President Bush’s most unquestioning supporters recognized the chain of unprincipled decisions that led to the abuse, torture and death in prisons run by the American military and intelligence services.Now, a bipartisan report by the Senate Armed Services Committee has made what amounts to a strong case for bringing criminal charges against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; his legal counsel, William J. Haynes; and potentially other top officials, including the former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff.
The report shows how actions by these men “led directly” to what happened at Abu Ghraib, in Afghanistan, in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in secret C.I.A. prisons.
It said these top officials, charged with defending the Constitution and America’s standing in the world, methodically introduced interrogation practices based on illegal tortures devised by Chinese agents during the Korean War. Until the Bush administration, their only use in the United States was to train soldiers to resist what might be done to them if they were captured by a lawless enemy.
The officials then issued legally and morally bankrupt documents to justify their actions, starting with a presidential order saying that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to prisoners of the “war on terror” — the first time any democratic nation had unilaterally reinterpreted the conventions.
The postal worker sold the gold on November 7th to G&S Brokers pawn shop for $320. Authorities told The Detroit News that jeweler James Zelinske recognized the gold because he had melted and mailed it to a business in Ann Arbor.
Zelinske had insured the parcel of gold for $1,000.
The postal worker has been charged with embezzling mail from the Mount Clemens post office. He appeared Thursday in federal court in Detroit.But now we're at the point where all those challenges are resolved - in other words, he can't hide behind these tricks anymore.
This one might be the worst of all. The Coleman campaign tried to get a vote for Franken thrown out because the voter had written on the ballot. What'd they write?
Thank you for counting my vote!
Is there anything more that needs to be said?
Burger King Corp. may have just the thing. The home of the Whopper has launched a new men's body spray called "Flame." The company describes the spray as "the scent of seduction with a hint of flame-broiled meat."
The fragrance is on sale at New York City retailer Ricky's NYC in stores and online for a limited time for $3.99.
Burger King is marketing the product through a Web site featuring a photo of its King character reclining fireside and naked but for an animal fur strategically placed to not offend.
The marketing ploy is the latest in a string of viral ad campaigns by the company. Burger King is also in the midst of its Whopper Virgins campaign that features an taste test with fast-food "virgins" pitting the Whopper against McDonald's Corp.'s Big Mac.
*****
Has anyone else seen the way passed ridiculous sign as ways back? Obviously the folks at Burger King missed it!
Officials said the domesticated Dutch rabbits that were discovered during a recent eviction, and the female tenant told animal control workers her financial situation had overwhelmed her.
Authorities would not identify the woman nor the location of her apartment.
Center executive director Kerry Vinkler called it a typical pet-hoarding situation, but she said all the rabbits but one were in good shape when they were found.
Vinkler estimates the oldest rabbits to be about 18 months old and said Dutch rabbits have a life span of eight to 12 years.
But not a drug raid. A prostitution raid.
It was a little before 8 at night when the breaker went out at Emily Milburn’s home in Galveston. She was busy preparing her children for school the next day, so she asked her 12-year-old daughter, Dymond, to pop outside and turn the switch back on.
As Dymond headed toward the breaker, a blue van drove up and three men jumped out rushing toward her. One of them grabbed her saying, “You’re a prostitute. You’re coming with me.”
Dymond grabbed onto a tree and started screaming, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.” One of the men covered her mouth. Two of the men beat her about the face and throat.
As it turned out, the three men were plain-clothed Galveston police officers who had been called to the area regarding three white prostitutes soliciting a white man and a black drug dealer.
All this is according to a lawsuit filed in Galveston federal court by Milburn against the officers. The lawsuit alleges that the officers thought Dymond, an African-American, was a hooker due to the “tight shorts” she was wearing, despite not fitting the racial description of any of the female suspects. The police went to the wrong house, two blocks away from the area of the reported illegal activity…
So you’d think that after the police figured out they had the wrong house, they’d apologize, and possibly even compensate the girl and her family. According to the lawsuit, you’d be wrong:
After the incident, Dymond was hospitalized and suffered black eyes as well as throat and ear drum injuries.
Three weeks later, according to the lawsuit, police went to Dymond’s school, where she was an honor student, and arrested her for assaulting a public servant. Griffin says the allegations stem from when Dymond fought back against the three men who were trying to take her from her home. The case went to trial, but the judge declared it a mistrial on the first day, says Griffin. The new trial is set for February.
I have a call into the Galveston district attorney and with Dymond Milburn’s lawyer. We’re going on a press account of one side of a lawsuit, here. So it’s possible—and I would hope—that there are some important details missing.
Otherwise, a police mistake leads to an innocent 12-year-old getting violently snatched up and roughed up by a group of plainclothes cops jumping out of a van . . . and they charge her for resisting?
A pediatric brain surgeon Colorado Springs, Colorado was operating on a 3-day-old baby and found a foot growing in his brain.
"The foot literally popped out of the brain," Grabb told TheDenverChannel Wednesday.The appendage threatened the newborn's life.
When [Dr. Paul] Grabb performed the life-saving surgery at Memorial Hospital for Children in Colorado Springs, he was in for another surprise: he also found what appeared to be parts of an intestine in the folds of the infant's tiny brain, in addition to another developing foot, hand and thigh.
First a sumo wrestler, then an actor, now students at elite universities and a tennis player — the list of people caught using marijuana has sparked fears of reefer madness in Japan.
More than 2,000 people were arrested on dope charges between January and October this year, a 19 percent increase on the same period last year, according to the National Police Agency.
“(The) increase in marijuana abusers, as well as tightening regulations, are both factors that pushed up the number of arrests,” Shingo Katsuno, vice president and an expert on Japan’s drug issues at Hyogo University of Teacher Education, told Reuters in a telephone interview.
“Japan is now highly interested in the issue because it is spreading in places like colleges, where it hardly existed before,” he added.
Read more from Marijuana “epidemic” shows Japan’s drug allergy
Public Works Administrator Al Olson said the company donated 18,000 pounds of garlic salt to use on its 400 miles of roads.
Olson doesn't have details, but he said the salt would have ended up in the landfill, so the company donated it. A telephone call Wednesday to Tone Brothers wasn't immediately returned.
Olson said the city mixed the garlic salt with regular road salt and it works fine. He said some road workers say it makes them hungry, but Olson doesn't recommend it to spice up lunch or dinner.
Police said the suspect approached the worker and demanded money, but the cashier laughed and apparently didn't realize the man was trying to hold up the place.
The suspect then allegedly pulled out a box cutter and demanded the cashier's wallet. The employee complied, but had no money in his billfold.
The suspect fled, but was caught by police who responded to the robbery call.
San Antonio police said the suspect is expected to be charged with aggravated robbery.
Santa Claus has added a New York City traffic agent to his naughty list after she gave him a ticket while delivering gifts to children.
Chip Cafiero says he'll fight the $115 ticket he received in Brooklyn on Black Friday when he was dressed as Santa.
The 60-year-old retired schoolteacher was riding a horse-drawn carriage and handing out toys and candy canes. An SUV carrying the toys and protecting the horse from traffic was double parked next to him.
Santa says he yelled "Ho! Ho! Ho!" to get the traffic agent's attention because the SUV wasn't blocking traffic. But in his words, "This grinch just went ahead and fined me."
Local politician Martin Golden calls the parking ticket "ridiculous."
Police won't comment on it.
Every day as many as four letters arrived at the West Texas ranch the pioneering quarterback called home.
Baugh, whose use of the forward pass took him to the Hall of Fame after a career with the Washington Redskins, died Wednesday night. He was 94.
Baugh, hampered by numerous health issues, died at Fisher County Hospital in Rotan.
Sammy Baugh was the last surviving member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame's inaugural class of 1963.
After starring at TCU, "Slingin' Sammy" played with the Redskins from 1937 to 1952, leading them to the NFL title in his rookie season and again in 1942.
Baugh was the best all-around player in an era when versatility was essential. In 1943, he led the league in passing, punting and interceptions. In one game, he threw four touchdowns and also intercepted four passes. He threw six touchdowns passes in a game twice. His 51.4-yard punting average in 1940 remains the NFL record.
Faced with the stark truth that the numbers of U.S. students pursuing careers in science are dwindling rapidly, the EPA and the City College of New York have announced a joint effort to encourage and produce environmental scientists of diverse backgrounds to pursue their dreams in the field of environmental science and potentially wind up working for the EPA.Of course, there’s always the reality that a career at the EPA may not fit the economic aspirations of such driven individuals, but there’s certainly cause for hope that the program through CCNY just may help fill the void at the EPA.
"The pitch pine woods on the right of the Corner road. A piercing cold afternoon, wading in the snow. R. Rice was going to Sudbury to put his bees into the cellar for fear they would freeze. He had a small hive; not enough to keep each other warm. The pitch pines hold the snow well. It lies now in balls on their plumes and in streaks on their branches, their low branches rising at a small angle and meeting each other. A certain dim religious light comes through this roof of pine leaves and snow. It is a somber twilight, yet in some places the sun streams in, producing the strongest contrasts of light and shade."
Scientists have discovered an average of two new species a week in Southeast Asia's Greater Mekong River region. Unusual animals found in this incredibly rich and diverse habitat include Desmoxytes purpurosea, a pink millipede that spews cyanide to defend itself, and Heteropoda maxima, a spider that may be the world's largest with a 12 inch legspan. Find out more on National Geographic's slideshow of the animals, and at the World Wildlife Fund Soheil Abedian, founder and president of Palazzo Versace, said he believed it is possible to design a refrigerated beach and make it sustainable. “We will suck the heat out of the sand to keep it cool enough to lie on,” he said. “This is the kind of luxury that top people want...”
Versace's plans have shocked environmentalists. Rachel Noble, the campaigns officer at Tourism Concern, which promotes sustainable tourism, said that the carbon generated by such projects would contribute to climate change, whose worst effects would be felt by the poor.
“Dubai is like a bubble world where the things that are worrying the rest of the world, like climate change, are simply ignored so that people can continue their destructive lifestyles,” she said.
Vixen Violette as Fozzie Bear stepped on stage wearing a brown, terrycloth hoop dress and matching knee-high boots, dancing to Elvis Presley's "Teddy Bear"; Scarlett Letter as Sam the Eagle took to a podium to rant about the topic of nudity ("Outrageous!"); Anastasia Von Teaserhausen as the Swedish Chef hand-crafted a giant hamburger consisting of the various meats and cheeses that made up her skirt (plus the heads of lettuce she wore as a bra); Red Snapper did her best Elton John to "Crocodile Rock" and was attacked by a giant stuffed crocodile; a corseted and velvet gloved Vixen Magdalene gothed things up a bit with her Dr. Steel Show; Isabella Star as Miss Piggy auditioned to be an Opera star; Lux La Croix as Rizzo the Rat kicked off her heels, got gangster and bumped her tail to Dr. Dre's "Rat Tat Tat"; Jewel of Denial rocked out and stripped down to Emmet Otter's Riverbottom Nightmare Band; and Dizzy Von Damn! as Gonzo the Great closed out the night with excellent pasty twirling technique and a Muppet version of Frank Sinatra's "I Did It My Way."
A suspicious surplus of Christmas spirit led to the arrest of a man in Southern California. Westminster police say officers responded to a disturbance call at the house of 48-year-old Vuong Pham, where they found rooms overflowing with wicker reindeer, plastic snowmen and inflatable Santas.
For weeks people in Pham's Orange County neighborhood had reported a steady disappearance of lights, figures and faux trees from their front yards.
Police say they connected the thefts to Pham after looking through his house and arrested him Monday on suspicion of grand theft and possession of stolen property.
Officer Cameron Knauerhaze says it took three trucks to take all the Christmas contraband to the station. Police weren't clear on the motive.
Two winning Hoosier Lottery tickets worth $1 million each were sold within a couple days of each other at the same central Indiana convenience store. John Hensley and his fiancee, Vanessa Mitchell, claimed the Cash Blizzard scratch-off prize on Tuesday, but the winner in Saturday's Hoosier Lotto drawing has not come forward, lottery spokesman Andrew Reed said.
"In the 18 years I've been with the Hoosier Lottery, I can't remember another time that we've had two $1 million winners from the same (retailer) in the same weekend," Reed said.
Both tickets were bought at the Dairyland convenience store on Main Street in Plainfield, a western suburb of Indianapolis.
Lottery officials confirmed Tuesday that the $1 million Hoosier Lotto ticket, likely bought on Thursday, Friday or Saturday, matched the winning numbers drawn Saturday night - 2, 14, 31, 32, 35 and 48. The $1 million winning Cash Blizzard scratch-off ticket was sold Saturday, Reed said.
Hensley, who works at a Plainfield distribution center, said he accepted an annual payout of $36,000 for 20 years, or about $720,000 after taxes, on the $1 million prize.
"It is a lot of money, but not so much that you can stop working," he told The Indianapolis Star.
More lottery tickets, however, are not in Hensley's future.
"I'll never play again unless somebody else is buying the tickets," he said. "The reason to play is that you might hit life-changing money. I don't really have that reason to play anymore. I won't push it."
It was a Big N' Tasty burger and one trip to jail to go for a woman suspected of DWI in St. Paul. Police said a 26-year-old woman pulled into a McDonald's drive-thru with squad car lights flashing and sirens blaring behind her. The woman had time to eat a couple of fries before police caught up to her and arrested her on suspicion of drunken driving Sunday.
The woman said says she saw the cruiser at the McDonald's, heard an officer honking the horn and figured she was getting pulled over because her driver's license was revoked. She told the St. Paul Pioneer Press in a jail interview: "I thought they were fixing to mess with me. ... I was fixing to get something to eat."
The woman said she couldn't get out of the drive-through because cars were behind and in front of her.
She's contesting the accuracy of a breath test she took.
It really must have been a special item. According to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, two men entered a man's home early Sunday and demanded his eggbeater. One suspect was holding a pistol while the other brandished a knife to the resident's neck.
Police caught the men outside the home and they are being held in Orient Road Jail. One suspect also faces a charge of aggravated assault.
Police found the eggbeater in the man's left pocket.
A Hampton man has won the Virginia Lottery's Cash 5 top prize of $100,000, and won it, and won it. Lottery officials said the man won $1.1 million after playing the same numbers on 11 tickets for the same drawing. Each winning ticket gives the man $100,000.
Lottery officials haven't identified the man, who was scheduled to claim his winnings Tuesday afternoon at the lottery service center in Hampton.
No damage or injuries were reported this morning in a minor earthquake near Charleston.
The quake was reported at 7:42 a.m., according to the National Earthquake Information Center at the Colorado-based U.S. Geological Survey. The center of the quake was about 10 miles east-southeast of Summerville, S.C., a Charleston suburb.
The quake was in the same area as the 1886 Charleston earthquake which killed more than 100 people and did $103 million damage (at today's prices).
Residents of the Charleston area reported feeling the earthquake this morning, but there were no reports of damage.
