INSANITY OF THE WEEK
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March 26, 2007

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MISSOURI WOMAN SAYS MONKEY A 'SERVICE ANIMAL'

Friday, September 15, 2006 (09-15) 12:23 PDT Springfield, Mo. (AP) --
A southwest Missouri woman has asked the Springfield-Greene County Health Department to allow her to take her pet monkey into local restaurants as a service animal.Debby Rose, of Springfield, says Richard, her bonnet macaque monkey, provides emotional support that allows her to overcome an anxiety disorder and go out in public places such as restaurants. Rose said the federal Americans With Disabilities Act should allow the practice.Health department officials met Friday with a local service agency, the Southwest Center for Independent Living, which is acting as an agent for Rose. The health department told the agency that Rose must produce some kind of federal ruling or certification that the monkey is a service animal under the ADA before it will consider allowing her to take the money into public places, said Kevin Gipson, director of health.Officials from the Southwest Center were not immediately available for comment.The health department had earlier allowed the monkey but advised restaurants in a Sept. 5 letter that Richard does not meet service-animal requirements and cannot be allowed into food establishments.Recent complaints from patrons at one restaurant sparked further research, and the department decided that the practice was not covered by ADA, said Ron Boyer, assistant director of the health department."Bottom line is, the monkey performs no service for her (Rose) under the definition of government regulations and cannot be classified, and therefore, cannot go into a food establishment," Boyer wrote in a Sept. 5 letter sent to area restaurants. A copy also was sent to Rose.Family members said Rose's anxiety is disabling. Without her monkey, she's less able to manage normal tasks, such as grocery shopping and dining out because of severe anxiety.Rose said she was aware that the monkey's presence upset at least one customer at a recent outing at a buffet-style restaurant.Jodi Daniel was the health inspector who received complaints from that outing, prompting her to call the federal ADA hot line."What they consider a service animal is that the animal is trained by someone to perform a specific task," said Daniel, who did not get the name of the woman who answered the ADA hot line.Cynthia Magnuson, a spokeswoman from the Justice Department in Washington, told the Springfield News-Leader that while the law is somewhat vague regarding emotional support animals, they are covered."We have actually prosecuted cases where people have had emotional support animals," she said. "It's kind of a fine line, but the law errs on the side of protecting individuals that are disabled."

NEW "BIONIC" ARM MOVE IN RESPONSE TO AMPUTEES' THOUGHTS, MUSCLES, NERVES REWIRED TO GIVE FEEDBACK TO DEVICE

David Brown, Washington PostFriday, September 15, 2006
(09-15) 04:00 PDT Washington --
The first time Claudia Mitchell peeled a banana one-handed, she cried.It was several months after she lost her left arm at the shoulder in a motorcycle accident. She used her feet to hold the banana and peeled it with her right hand. She felt like a monkey."It was not a good day," Mitchell, 26, recalled this week. "Although I accomplished the mission, emotionally it was something to be reckoned with."Now, Mitchell can peel a banana in a less-simian posture. All she has to do is place her prosthetic left arm next to the banana and think about grabbing it. The mechanical hand closes around the fruit and she's ready to peel.Mitchell, who lives in Ellicott City, Md., is the fourth person -- and first woman -- to receive a "bionic" arm, which allows her to control parts of the device by her thoughts alone. The device, designed by physicians and engineers at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, works by detecting the movements of a chest muscle that has been rewired to the stumps of nerves that once went to her now-missing limb.Mitchell and the first person to get a bionic arm -- a power-line technician who lost both arms to a severe electric shock -- demonstrated their prostheses Thursday. The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago is part of a multi-lab effort, funded with nearly $50 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, to create more useful and natural artificial limbs for amputees.Someday Mitchell hopes to upgrade to a prosthesis, still under development, that will allow her also to "feel" with an artificial hand. She is ready for it now.Last summer, surgeons took the first step by rewiring the skin above her left breast so that when the area is stimulated by impulses from the bionic arm, the skin sends a message to the region of her brain that feels "hand."Future arms will also be able to perform more complicated motions. She recently spent time at the Chicago hospital trying out a prototype with six motors, instead of the three of her current prosthesis. It will theoretically allow her to reach for things over her head.But even the first-generation device "has changed my life dramatically," she said. "I use it to help with cooking, for holding a laundry basket, for folding clothes -- all kinds of daily tasks."For Todd Kuiken, 46, a physician and biomedical engineer, this is the latest step in his 20-year effort to make a better artificial arm. Over that time, his laboratory has spent about $3 million on research and development, with more than $2 million provided by the National Institutes of Health.The particular achievement with Mitchell is that her prosthesis works with her breast intact. With previous versions, surgeons removed some chest tissue so that electrodes in the arm could better detect twitches in the rewired chest muscles. But that would have been particularly disfiguring.The bionic arm makes use of several features of the human body that would be impossible to create from scratch. Luckily, a person still has them even after suffering an injury as grievous as the loss of an arm at the shoulder.One feature is the "motor cortex" of the brain, where cells that control voluntary muscles reside. The millions of nerve cells that "drive" the arm and hand remain after amputation. When an amputee pretends to move his missing hand, those cells fire and send impulses down the spinal cord and out to nerves that terminate at the stump.Those nerves are huge electrical conduits filled with tens of thousands of fibers carrying a wide assortment of information. Some are motor nerves telling muscles to move. Some are sensory nerves, carrying impulses back from the hand to the brain, where the information will be interpreted as touch, temperature, pressure and pain.In preparation for the bionic arm, Kuiken and his surgical colleagues first re-create a biological control panel for a hand on the amputee's chest. They use muscle and skin that can be sacrificed -- or, more precisely, hijacked -- for that purpose.They cut the nerves to two chest muscles, the pectoralis and serratus, at a point where those nerves have branched to go to different parts of the muscles, but far "upstream" from the point where the nerves divide into tiny fibers that attach to individual bundles of muscle fiber.They then sew the stumps of the large nerves that once went to the arm and hand to the cut ends of the chest-muscle nerves. In the same operation, the nerves carrying sensation from the skin over the pectoral muscle are also sewn into the arm nerves.Over several months, the arm nerves grow down the sheaths of the motor fibers and attach to the muscles. (The amputee assists this process by mentally "exercising" the missing hand, which helps promote a firm nerve-muscle connection.) Simultaneously, the sensory nerves grow down the sensory sheaths and into the skin.If all goes well, a person is left with chest muscles that twitch in different places in response to such thoughts as "bend the wrist back," "move the thumb" and "clench the fingers." The person also ends up with a patch of skin about the width of a baseball that, when stroked, warmed or pricked, feels like a hand rather than part of the chest.The bionic arm makes use of this feat of anatomical alchemy.The prosthesis is strapped onto the shoulder stump and torso in a way that positions electrodes over the regions of the chest muscles that are responding to different "hand instructions." Those electrodes, in turn, are wired to a computer and then on to motors in the forearm and hand of the device.When the amputee tells the fingers to close, the designated part of the pectoral or serratus muscle twitches and the electrode over it detects the signal, activating the appropriate motor.In the future, electrodes in the hand will send touch signals up the arm to the chest skin, which will send them on to the brain, where they will be perceived as sensation.

MINNESOTA WOMAN AVOIDS PRISON FOR NOSE BITE
By The Associated Press
Published: September 15, 2006Filed at 10:58 a.m. ETST. CLOUD, Minn. (AP) --

A St. Cloud woman avoided going to prison Thursday when she was sentenced for biting off a large chunk of another woman's nose.Crystal Malmanger, 20, had been facing more than seven years in prison after pleading guilty to first-degree assault.But Stearns County District Judge Kris Davick-Halfen gave her credit for the six months she already has spent in jail, and ordered her to perform 120 hours of community service and pay a fine and restitution.Malmanger's attorney, Matt Holson, argued that Malmanger was amenable to probation and shouldn't be sent to prison.The judge stayed the seven-year, two-month sentence recommended under the state's sentencing guidelines, meaning that if Malmanger violates the terms of her probation, she could be sent to prison for the full term.The victim's father was in court and told Davick-Halfen his daughter has forgiven Malmanger, Holson said.''I think Crystal realizes that this is something that's going to affect (the victim) the rest of her life,'' Holson said. ''They were good friends, and Crystal feels absolutely horrendous.''Malmanger told investigators she was drunk and couldn't remember any details about the Feb. 17 fight because she blacked out. Police needed a search warrant to enter the house where the fight happened to recover the victim's piece of nose.Holson said Malmanger has completed treatment, has been living at a halfway house and has found a job.

WEDDING OFF, JILTED BRIDE TURNS PARTY INTO A BENNEFIT
By STEPHANIE STROM

Published: September 8, 2006Six weeks before Kyle Paxman’s scheduled wedding, a stranger walked into her office with e-mail messages and other evidence that Ms. Paxman’s fiancé was cheating on her — with the stranger’s girlfriend.
Skip to next paragraphKyle Paxman won’t be saying ‘I do’ as planned, but heartbreak or not, the reception will go on , with a new focus: philanthropy.“The dress had arrived, the flowers were done, the menus were chosen,” said Ms. Paxman, manager of two food and beverage outlets at La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, Calif. “One hundred and eighty guests had tickets from all over the country and the Virgin Islands to come and make a weekend of my wedding.”But rather than cancel the reception, planned for this Saturday in Vermont, Ms. Paxman, 29, has turned it into a charity benefit, at which strong women will be celebrated. “How do you turn something so awful around?” she said. “We needed to turn this into something positive and start the healing process.”Right after getting the bad news on July 28, her mother, Patricia Carbee, began canceling reservations and events like a golf outing, but she learned that the family was still on the hook for the reception costs, a block of rooms at the Basin Harbor Club on Lake Champlain, in Vergennes, Vt., and other expenses.“We had already spent the money, and I started trying to think of other ways we might be able to put the things we’d bought to use,” Mrs. Carbee said.Ms. Paxman and her parents have invited 125 women, only some of whom were among the original invitees, to enjoy the cocktails and four-course dinner and, in return, she hopes they will write checks to two charities she has chosen, the Vermont Children’s Aid Society and CARE USA, the American affiliate of the international relief group.“If you think about it, she’s not only empowering herself, she’s reaching out and helping to empower other women,” said Bibiana Betancourt, a fund-raising executive at CARE. She said Ms. Paxman’s plans were the most unusual she had encountered in her seven years raising money for CARE.Ms. Paxman and her parents came up with the plan over dinner one night, she said, and quickly hit upon the Vermont Children’s Aid Society as one beneficiary. “We had supported things like the March of Dimes in the past, but this had to be something Kyle could embrace and support,” Mrs. Carbee said.The next morning, as she and Ms. Paxman were mulling other possibilities over coffee, they were distracted by an advertisement for CARE on television. It shows hundreds of women from various countries striding across a desert, then zeroes in on four who stare straight into the camera and declare, “I am powerful.”It ends as a narrator says: “She has the power to change her world. You have the power to help her,” and it spoke to Ms. Paxman. “It was the most powerful commercial I’ve ever seen,” she said. “I knew then that I had found my other cause.”She said she did not know whether her former fiancé, whom she declined to name, knew what she was doing, but said his parents were aware of the benefit. They have not been invited. “It would just be too hard to have them there on the day I was supposed to be marrying their son,” she said.After the event, she and her mother will head for Tahiti and the honeymoon trip she planned.“It’s going to be hard, of course,” she said of appearing before her guests. “But the end of my story now isn’t so awful.”

INDIANA: MAN KILLED BY PET PYTHON

A 14-foot python crushed its owner to death, the authorities said. The man, Patrick Von Allmen, 23, was found dead Monday evening in a backyard shed near Lanesville, about 15 miles west of Louisville, Ky. A medical examiner determined that the death was consistent with asphyxiation caused by compression of the neck and chest, said Conservation Officer Mark Farmer. Indiana law does not restrict ownership of snakes, and the python was returned to Mr. Von Allmen’s family. (AP)

HITLER RESTAURANT IN BOMBAY IRKS JEWS

By AIJAZ ANSARI, Associated Press WriterWednesday, August 23, 2006 (08-23) 17:15 PDT BOMBAY, India (AP) --When a restaurant called "Hitler's Cross" opened four days ago in a Bombay suburb, the city's small Jewish community was outraged, but there were few other objections.Owner Puneet Sablok insisted then — and still does — that the name and theme of his new eatery is only meant to attract attention, with its posters of Adolf Hitler and swastikas."There is no intention to hurt anyone," Sablok said of his spacious restaurant, which serves pastries, pizza and salad in Navi Mumbai, a northern suburb of Bombay, which is also known as Mumbai.Holocaust awareness in India is limited. Hitler is regarded by many as just another historical figure. The swastika, reviled in many parts of the world, is also an ancient Hindu symbol and displayed all over to bring luck.There are just 5,500 Jews in India, and all but 1,000 live in Bombay."It's really made people very upset that a person responsible for the massacre of 6 million Jews can be glorified," Elijah Jacob, one of the community's leaders, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.Those objecting to the restaurant plan to ask the local government to force a name change, said Daniel Zonshine, Israel's consul general in Bombay."Instead of Hitler's name being an example of extreme evil, this is like giving legitimacy to Hitler. It's not right to advertise his name in public," Zonshine said.But while India is ordinarily sensitive to causing religious offense — it recently took action to bar "The Da Vinci Code" movie and cartoon drawings of the prophet Muhammad — at least one local leader said the name Hitler didn't bother him."People are unnecessarily making this into an issue," said Sudhir Jadhav, a local ruling party leader. "We have no plans to protest outside the restaurant or ask him to change the name."Diners at Hitler's Cross also had no objections."Hitler was a bad man, but what's wrong with having food here?" said Ashwini Phadnis, 22, a microbiology student as she ate a piece of chocolate cake.Engineering student Anand Dhillon sat with friends, sipping soft drinks. "I think the name is quite interesting. Tomorrow if someone keeps a name like 'Saddam Mutton Shop' or 'George Bush Footwear,' there's nothing wrong with that, is there?" he asked..........................'Hitler' Restaurant to Change NameThursday, August 24, 2006 (08-24) 06:54 PDT BOMBAY, India (AP) --The owner of a restaurant named after Adolf Hitler said Thursday he will change its name because it angered so many people.Puneet Sablok said he would remove Hitler's name and the Nazi swastika from billboards and the menu. He had said the restaurant's name — "Hitler's Cross" — and symbols were only meant to attract attention.Sablok made the decision after meeting with members of Bombay's small Jewish community."Once they told me how upset they were with the name, I decided to change it," he said. "I don't want to do business by hurting people."Sablok said he had not yet decided on a new name.Hitler's Cross opened five days ago and serves pizza, salad and pastries in Navi Mumbai, a suburb of Bombay, also known as Mumbai.On Thursday, Bombay's Jewish community welcomed Sablok's decision to rename his restaurant."He realized he made a mistake and listened to reason," said Elijah Jacob, a community leader. "Some people have wrong conceptions of history and he realized it was not appropriate."Bombay's Jews had called the theme of the restaurant offensive and demanded a name change. There are about 5,500 Jews in India, with about 4,500 of them living in Bombay."I never wanted to hurt people's feelings," said Sablok.Some Indians regard Hitler as just another historical figure and have little knowledge about the Holocaust, in which 6 million European Jews were systematically killed during World War II.The swastika symbol, which was appropriated by the Nazis, was originally an ancient Hindu symbol and it is displayed all over India to bring luck.

Bin Laden's Mistress Reveals Whitney Houston Obsession

Osama Bin Laden once had the hots for Whitney Houston, according to a woman who says she had been Bin Laden's mistress against her will in the 1990s.Sudanese writer and activist Kola Boof, 37, claims she was intimate with Bin Laden years before he masterminded the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and in her autobiography, "Diary of a Lost Girl," she claims the world's most wanted man fantasized about pop star Houston.In her book, Boof alleges Bin Laden joked about killing Houston's husband, Bobby Brown, and then inviting Houston to join his harem.She says, "He had a paramount desire for Whitney Houston."He mentioned her constantly, how beautiful she is, what a nice smile, how truly Islamic she is, but just brainwashed by American culture and her husband."

WOODS DUMPS YOUNG GIRLFRIEND

Veteran actor James Woods has dumped his 20-year-old girlfriend, Ashley Madison, after the stress from the May-December relationship sent him to the emergency room.The 59-year-old star was distraught after his brother Michael died unexpectedly of a heart attack last month and was shocked by Madison's insensitivity during his funeral.Woods' friend Scott Sandler tells the New York Daily News that Madison showed up for the service dressed inappropriately "in a 3-inch miniskirt and chain-smoking."He explains, "At the funeral she was concerned about the amount of magazines she was in. Jimmy was on his knees with tears staining his shirt, and she was showing pictures of herself."Jimmy was so overcome by grief his blood pressure went through the roof early last week, and he had to go to the hospital. When he came out, it was like he had seen the light."The actor has known Madison, the pal of a golfing buddy, since she was 5-years-old.Adds Sandler, "She's the anti-Christ. She truly has the soul of a moth and the brain of a dead trout."

ANGRY WOMAN ALLEGEDLY HITS TWO WITH CAR

Monday, August 14, 2006
(08-14) 13:40 PDT Athens, Ga. (AP) --Police have been looking for a disgruntled McDonald's customer who ran into two other customers with her car after a dispute over who was next in line.Melinda Ann Thomas, 34, and Linda Ann Thomas, 51, were standing in a crowded line around 8:30 a.m. Saturday as they waited to order breakfast, police said. A cashier opened a new line and they stepped to the front of it — a move that angered another customer who was waiting to order.According to the report, the unidentified woman started yelling at them and threatened to kill them.The woman then left the restaurant before the Thomases and stayed in the parking lot, sitting in her dark blue Jeep Cherokee, witnesses told police. As the Thomases made their way to their car, witnesses said the woman pulled out of her parking space and sped toward the women, striking them both with the passenger side of the Jeep.Neither woman was badly injured, the police report said.The woman is being sought by police on charges of aggravated assault.

‘NONE OF THE ABOVE ’ STRIKEN FROM BALLOT

Published: August 13, 2006NASHVILLE, Aug. 12 (AP) — A man running for governor and the United States Senate does not have the right to use his middle name, None of the Above, on the November ballot, a court ruled Friday.
The candidate, David Gatchell, filed a lawsuit in Davidson County Chancery Court after the State Election Commission voted to bar his middle name from the ballot. The court handles lawsuits against state agencies.Chancellor Carol McCoy also ruled that Mr. Gatchell’s effort to add an issue-oriented notification on the ballot was against state law. And Ms. McCoy said the state had no constitutional requirement to place candidates’ full names on ballots.Mr. Gatchell, who changed his middle name from Leroy, said he would appeal. He argued that several state candidates, like Walt Combat Ward and Carl Twofeathers Whitaker, had been allowed to include their nicknames on ballots, and that his middle name was widely known.
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UNMARRIED COUPLE SUES FOR HOUSING PERMIT

Published: August 11, 2006ST. LOUIS (AP) -- A couple with three children has sued a suburban town that refused to give them a housing permit because the parents are not married.The suit, filed on their behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday, claimed that the town of Black Jack's housing law violates the state and U.S. constitutions, as well as the Federal Fair Housing Act. It seeks unspecified damages.The ordinance prohibits more than three people from living together unless they are related by ''blood, marriage or adoption.''The ACLU said Foundray Loving, Olivia Shelltrack and their school-age children are facing fines of up to $500 per week for living in their five-bedroom home in the suburb of 6,800 because Loving is not the biological father of Shelltrack's oldest child, and the couple are not married.''The government has no business saying two consenting adults cannot live with their own children,'' said Tony Rothert, legal director for the ACLU of Eastern Missouri.City attorney Sheldon Stock declined comment. Mayor Norman McCourt did not return a phone call seeking comment. McCourt has previously said the ordinance was intended to prevent crowding and has nothing to do with morality.The city council voted to keep the ordinance earlier this year.Last month, a North Carolina judge struck down the state's 201-year-old law barring unmarried couples from living together, calling the law unconstitutional.The ACLU says Florida, Michigan, Mississippi, North Dakota, Virginia and West Virginia also have laws that prohibit cohabitation. Missouri does not have such a law.

POLICE: DRUKEN GERMAN HANDS OUT SAVINGS

Tuesday, August 8, 2006 (08-08) 08:27 PDT BERLIN, Germany (AP) --A drunken man withdrew more than $16,700 from his bank account and then started handing out the money to passers-by in a western German town Tuesday, police said.Police in Darmstadt said they were alerted at lunchtime to a man sitting on a bench in front of a bank and handing out notes. He had the money stuffed into plastic bags and his pockets, and some of it blew away.Officers took the 63-year-old back into the bank and counted the money.They said in a statement that he had handed out $1,935, but that he "didn't care because he had enough."Police decided to hold on to the rest of the money temporarily. They told the man, whose name was not released, to come back and collect it once he sobered up.

BOY GEORGE TO PICK UP TRASH IN AUG. HEAT

Monday, July 31, 2006 (07-31) 07:31 PDT New York (AP) --

Boy George will perform his court-ordered community service by picking up trash on city streets in the August heat, a sanitation spokesman said.The one-time Culture Club singer will be issued a shovel, broom, plastic bags and gloves when he reports Aug. 14 for five days of work, said department spokesman Vito Turso."This is the epitome of community service," Turso told the Daily News for Monday editions. "It's not like he's going to be working in an air-conditioned office."Born George O'Dowd, the 45-year-old singer has struggled with drug problems for years. He was ordered to do community service after pleading guilty in March to false reporting of an incident. He called police with a bogus report of a burglary at his lower Manhattan apartment in October, and the responding officers found cocaine inside.Turso's statement was the first indication of what sort of work the singer would be given. He could be assigned to pick up streets in Chinatown, Little Italy, Nolita or parts of the Lower East Side.O'Dowd became an '80s icon with his androgynous appearance and vocals on hits such as "Karma Chameleon" and "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" A Manhattan judge threatened the singer with jail time if he failed to complete his five days of community service before Aug. 28.

MEL GIBSON APOLOGIZES FOR TIRADE AFTER ARREST

By Allison Hope Weiner
Published: July 30, 2006MALIBU, Calif., July 29 — The film star and director Mel Gibson apologized Saturday for belligerent behavior and for saying what he called “despicable” things that he does “not believe to be true” when he was arrested here on a drunken-driving charge early Friday.But Mr. Gibson, in a statement, stopped short of addressing claims that he made virulently anti-Semitic remarks to an arresting officer, as described on a Web site that posted several pages of the sheriff’s report.The sheriff’s report, carried on TMZ.com, a Web site owned by Time Warner, said Mr. Gibson had demanded to know if the officer, James Mee, was a Jew. During an obscenity-laced tirade, according to the report, Mr. Gibson also said “the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.”Steve Whitmore, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, declined to comment on the report. But he said the department would eventually disclose details of the arrest. “Nothing will be sanitized,” Mr. Whitmore said in a statement.People associated with the case privately acknowledged the report’s authenticity, but they agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.The report of Mr. Gibson’s outburst further disturbed some people who were already wary of what they saw as anti-Semitic overtones in his 2004 blockbuster “The Passion of the Christ,” and who believe that he has failed to disassociate himself clearly enough from remarks by his father denying the Holocaust.“If it’s true what’s reported, frequently hatred, bigotry and prejudice, which is controlled, explodes at moments of stress and crisis,” said Rabbi Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. “Liquor loosens the tongue of what’s in the mind and in the heart, and in his mind and in his heart is his conspiracy theory about Jews and hatred of Jews.”Late last year, Mr. Gibson began developing a four-hour miniseries on the Holocaust for ABC, in what was widely seen as an effort to patch up his relations with parts of the Jewish community. A spokesman for the Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC, had no immediate comment on the project’s status. Disney’s studio division is also expected to release Mr. Gibson’s film, “Apocalypto.”Mr. Gibson, who lives in Malibu, was arrested about 2:30 a.m. Friday on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol and released on $5,000 bail.In a one-paragraph statement issued Saturday through his publicist, Alan Nierob, Mr. Gibson said: “I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested, and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable. I am deeply ashamed of everything I said, and I apologize to anyone I may have offended.”Mr. Gibson acknowledged an ongoing battle with alcoholism and said he was taking “necessary steps to ensure my return to health.”

MAN ACCUSED of BLINDING WIFE WITH CARROT

Tuesday, July 18, 2006 (07-18) 13:10 PDT Monroe, Conn. (AP) --A 46-year-old man is accused of assaulting his wife with a carrot, causing her to lose sight in one eye. Roderick Vecsey is charged with second-degree assault and disorderly conduct.Pamela Vecsey, 46, underwent six hours of surgery after being hit in the left eye with the vegetable Saturday night, but doctors were not able to restore her vision, prosecutor Stephanie Damiani said.The couple was arguing when Roderick Vecsey tossed the carrot, Damiani said.Roderick Vecsey told Judge Patrick Carroll that it was a terrible accident, and was advised to remain silent.The judge set a hearing for Thursday. Vecsey is currently free after posting $500 bond.

CAMPBELL 'TRASHES YACHT FOLLOWING ARGUMENT'

Supermodel Naomi Campbell reportedly caused $54,000 worth of damage to her boyfriend's yacht following an argument with an Italian chef.The 36-year-old destroyed furniture and fittings on Badr Jafar's luxury boat, which was moored in Viareggio harbor in Italy, writes Britain's The Sun.She is alleged to have lost her temper when the chef's tomato, mozzarella and dried ham starter with white wine failed to please Campbell.And when the cook retaliated by shouting back at Campbell, she reportedly began throwing items around in a fury.An onlooker tells The Sun, "All hell seemed to break loose. All you could hear was shouting and screaming in English. There was the sound of plates being broken."Some of the crew later said the kitchen was a complete mess and the curtains and cushions had all been ripped apart."Campbell is currently fighting three lawsuits, all filed by former employees who claim the supermodel assaulted them.

CAMPBELL SUED BY ANOTHER MAID

AP / Stacie FreudenbergTroubled

Supermodel Naomi Campbell is facing a legal battle with another former maid, after Gaby Gibson filed a lawsuit in New York yesterday.Gibson, who worked for the British beauty until earlier this year, filed the suit in Manhattan Supreme Court, accusing Campbell of "personal injuries, employment discrimination, civil assault and civil battery."Gibson is seeking "actual, compensatory and punitive" damages relating to the alleged January 17 assault.In April, Gibson told British newspaper The Sun that Campbell had "assaulted me too -- and for the same reason as the other girl -- over a pair of jeans. She hit me with her hand on the back of the head when I couldn't find her Stella McCartney jeans."Meanwhile, the model appeared in a New York court today on assault charges relating to a separate incident in March, in which she allegedly hit servant Ana Scolavino with a phone, leaving the maid requiring stitches to the head. Campbell, 36, pleaded not guilty and her case has been adjourned until September 27. She did not speak at the hearing.Six years ago, the model pleaded guilty to hitting former assistant Georgina Galanis with a telephone and was ordered to take anger management classes.