Heather Swain - Artist, Portland Oregon

A man who believed he bore the "mark of the beast" used a circular saw to
cut off one hand, then he cooked it in the microwave and called 911,
authorities said.

The man, in his mid-20s, was calm when Kootenai County sheriff's deputies
arrived Saturday in this northern Idaho town. He was in protective custody
in the mental health unit of Kootenai Medical Center.

"It had been somewhat cooked by the time the deputy arrived," sheriff's
Capt. Ben Wolfinger said. "He put a tourniquet on his arm before, so he
didn't bleed to death. That kind of mental illness is just sad."

It was not immediately clear whether the man has a history of mental
illness. Hospital spokeswoman Lisa Johnson would not say whether an attempt
was made to reattach the hand, citing patient confidentiality.

The Book of Revelation in the New Testament contains a passage in which an
angel is quoted as saying: "If anyone worships the beast and his image and
receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, he, too, will drink the
wine of God's fury."

The book of Matthew also contains the passage: "And if your right hand
causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to
lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell."

By KRISTEN ALLEN, Associated Press Writer
(08-07) 07:14 PDT BERLIN, Germany (AP) --

After being plagued for 55 years with the torment of a pencil lodged in her head, a German woman has finally had it removed.

Margaret Wegner, now 59, was 4 years old when she fell while carrying the 3.15 inch-long pencil, which went through her cheek and into her brain.

"It bored right through the skin and disappeared into my head," Wegner told Germany's best-selling newspaper, Bild. "It hurt like crazy."

At the time the technology did not exist to safely remove the pencil, so Wegner had to live with it — and the chronic headaches and nosebleeds that it brought — for the next five-and-a-half decades.

But on Friday, Dr. Hans Behrbohm, an ear, nose and throat specialist at Berlin's Park-Klinik Weissensee, was able to use modern techniques to identify the exact location of the pencil so that he could accurately determine that the risks of removing it, and then take most of it out.

The operation was particularly difficult because of the way the pencil had shifted as Wegner grew, Behrbohm told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

"This was something unique because the trauma was so old," said Behrbohm, who has also operated to remove bullets from the brains of shooting victims, and glass from the brains of people involved in car accidents.

Though a 0.79-inch piece of the pencil could not be removed, Behrbohm said it does not present a danger.

And now Wegner, the wife of German boxing coach Ulli Wegner, will no longer have the headaches and nosebleeds, and her sense of smell should also return soon, Behrbohm said.

BEST PLACE TO FIND SLIP-ONS
from the Duluth (Minn.) News-Tribune
A Swedish couple hunting on a mountain in Sweden's far north stumbled onto 70 pairs of shoes - all filled with butter.
"If we knew who did this, we could make them clean this mess up," declared Alf Kjaellstroem, a spokesman for Jaemtland province. "It's not going to be pretty when the butter starts to rot. And we have to wait for the snow so we can get up there with the snowmobile."
He siad there were shoes of all kinds-sneakers, high heels, boots and tap shoes-each stuffed about a pound of butter and spread out over the landscape.

A 13-year-old boy fatally stabbed his brother with a steak knife after the 16-year-old refused to turn over a video game controller, authorities said.

Jahmir Ricks was charged with first-degree murder in the death of Antwan Ricks at their home outside Philadelphia. The older boy died of a single stab wound to the chest, police said, and a bent and bloody knife was recovered from the home.

Lansdowne police said the younger boy told them, "I just stabbed my brother," when they arrived at the home Sunday.

Police believe the argument started when Antwan Ricks would not turn over the game controller after losing a game to his brother. Police Chief Daniel Kortan said the rules of the house were that the person who lost had to give someone else a chance to play.

The argument escalated into a brawl, and the younger boy grabbed the knife, Kortan said.

Jahmir Ricks, who was charged as an adult, was being held without bail. It was not immediately known if he had obtained an attorney. He faces charges of third-degree murder, assault, recklessly endangering another person and possession of instruments of crime.

WOMAN JAILED FOR TESTICLE ATTACK
A woman who ripped off her ex-boyfriend's testicle with her bare hands has been sent to prison.

Amanda Monti, 24, flew into a rage when Geoffrey Jones, 37, rejected her advances at the end of a house party, Liverpool Crown Court heard.

She pulled off his left testicle and tried to swallow it, before spitting it out. A friend handed it back to Mr Jones saying: "That's yours."

Sentencing Monti, Judge Charles James said it was "a very serious injury" and that Monti was not acting in self defence.

The court heard that Mr Jones had ended his long-term but "open relationship" with Monti towards the end of May last year.

The pair remained on good terms and on 30 May she picked him up from a party in Crosby and went back for drinks with friends at Mr Jones's house.

He added: "That caused my underpants to come off and I found I was completely naked and in excruciating pain."

The court heard that a friend saw Monti put Mr Jones's testicle into her mouth and try to swallow it.

She choked and spat it back into her hand before the friend grabbed it and gave it back to Mr Jones. Doctors were unable to re-attach the organ.

She said: "It was never my intention to cause harm to Geoff and the fact that I have caused him injury will live with me forever. I am in no way a violent person."

The letter added: "I have challenged myself to explain what has happened but still I just cannot remember. This has caused much anguish to me and will do for the rest of my life."

Donald Stephens spent more than half a century at the helm of this Chicago suburb. Now, less than two months after his death, some say an eerie likeness of the late mayor's face has appeared in the peeling bark of a 50-foot sycamore.

The image is fueling speculation and wonder in the village of 4,200 residents — the town Stephens is credited with transforming from a tiny enclave of just a few dozen people to a bustling community with one of the nation's largest convention centers.

"He told me, you screw things up, I'm gonna haunt you," said Bradley Stephens, the mayor's 44-year-old son who was appointed to complete his father's term. "When it starts talking, we're all in trouble."

The tree, outside a health club, was twice slated to be torn down. It was saved each time because Stephens intervened.

Now, it's guarded by a barricade, and a single candle placed by well-wishers stands nearby.

"I see Jesus," said Cathy Sansone, the membership director at the health club who says any resemblance to the late mayor is simply the "power of suggestion."

A thick cloud of bees was sucked into the engine of a passenger plane en route to Portugal, forcing the airline to abandon the trip and grounding passengers for 11 hours, a company executive said Saturday.

David Skillicorn, managing director of Palmair, said the swarm was spotted off Britain's Bournemouth coast shortly before the Boeing 737 left on Thursday. "Some witnesses claimed there were around 20,000 bees," he said.

"The pilot experienced an engine surge about an hour into the flight," Skillicorn said. "He returned to Bournemouth and we found what appeared to be a large number of bees smeared inside the engine."

Around 200 passengers were delayed while the company carried out repairs and eventually replaced the aircraft, Skillicorn said.

MAN APPARENTLY SHOT BY HIS 4-YEAR OLD SON
Jim Doyle, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, May 12, 2007
(05-12) 22:59 PDT -- A Vallejo man was accidentally shot dead Saturday afternoon by his 4-year-old son, according to a preliminary report that police are investigating.

Carol Sparks, the wife of the victim, who was identified as 32-year-old Brian Sparks, told the Vallejo Police Department that her husband was fatally shot by the boy, who was using a handgun, in their home on the 2900 block of Georgia Street.

Her husband was pronounced dead inside the small house, but it could not be immediately determined what had happened, police said.

The victim was described in the Vallejo Times-Herald as an electrician who was on disability leave due to a work-related injury.

Both the Times-Herald and Channel 2 TV news quoted a neighbor who said that Brian Sparks was a gun collector. They also quoted neighbors who said the Sparkses seemed like a happy couple with a normal child.

Police have assigned two detectives to the case. Carol Sparks was detained Saturday afternoon for questioning and was interviewed by police Saturday night.

"At this point they're still investigating," said Lt. Abel Tenorio of the Vallejo Police Department.

BABY BORN FROM FROZEN SPERM, FROZEN EGG
Friday, April 13, 2007

(04-13) 09:51 PDT Mission Viejo, Calif. (AP) --
A woman gave birth Wednesday to the first baby conceived in the U.S. by means of frozen sperm and a frozen egg, according to the fertility firm that sponsored the study in which she took part.
Adrienne Domasin, 36, decided to participate in the study by Extend Fertility after being told two years ago her fallopian tubes were blocked.
Domasin, who is single, was unable to afford in vitro fertilization but was determined to have a baby.
"When they told me my tubes were blocked, I was naturally devastated," she said. "Here I was, ready to finally have the baby of my dreams and I couldn't."
Egg freezing traditionally has been reserved for women who suffered from illnesses that might leave them infertile and has a low success rate. But there has been recent demand for the procedure by women in their 30s who want to have children in the future but are afraid they will be too old to conceive the traditional way, said Dr. Jane Frederick, who oversaw Domasin's fertility treatment.
The low viability of frozen eggs is due, in part, to ice crystals that can damage the egg's structure, though freezing sperm has been done for decades, said Richard Paulson, a professor of reproductive medicine at USC.
There have been about 200 documented births from frozen eggs worldwide, Paulson said. But he had not heard of other cases of frozen egg/frozen sperm conceptions. The Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics reported one case last year in Australia.
During the study, Domasin received shots and pills to stimulate egg production. Fertility personnel harvested the eggs, froze them, and after four months, injected them with thawed donor sperm. A fertilized egg was then placed insider her.
Domasin's son, Noah Peter Domasin, was born at Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills weighing 8 pounds, 4 ounces.
"I kept waking up in the middle of the night and I would glance over at him," Domasin said. "I just kept saying to myself 'he's my son.'"

PAIR ACCUSED OF TRYING TO POISON TEACHER
Monday, April 2, 2007
(04-02) 15:43 PDT Tampa, Fla. (AP) --

Two eighth-graders were arrested on charges they tried to poison their science teacher by pouring a fabric freshener into her soda, authorities said Monday.

The teacher, 51-year-old Jacqueline Hutchins, was not hurt, the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office said. She noticed an odd taste when she sipped her Pepsi on Friday.

Other students told deputies the boy and girl, both 15, huddled around the teacher's soda and talked about putting the Febreeze fabric freshener in her soda, Carter said.

The students were charged with poisoning, a first-degree felony, Carter said. The teens were taken to the Juvenile Detection Center. Their status was not available Monday.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (AP)-- A fast-food worker had her son punch her in the face in an attempt to stage a robbery outside a KFC restaurant, police said. Tina Marie Brown, 41, and Brandon Lee Deere, 24, both of Fayetteville were arrested Thursday for theft and filing a false police report.

Police received a robbery report outside a KFC in Fayetteville at about midnight Thursday. Brown told police that a robber punched her in the face while she was changing her car's tire and stole her purse -- along with the restaurant's bank deposit bag, which contained $1,137 in cash and checks, authorities said.

According to police, Brown's son drove up as authorities were investigating the robbery. Police said Deere seemed nervous, and when authorities searched his car they found the money and Brown's purse.

IN CHINA, FIGHT OVER DEVELOPMENT CREATES A STAR
By Howard W. French
Published: March 26, 2007

CHONGQING, China, March 23 — For weeks a dispute had drawn attention from people all across China as a simple homeowner stared down the forces of large-scale redevelopment that are sweeping this country, blocking the preparation of a gigantic construction site by an act of sheer will.

wu ping

Ariana Lindquist for The New York Times
Wu Ping in front of construction site gate that bars her from her home in Chongqing. China Photos/Getty Images)

Wu Ping's house in Chongqing, China, sits on its own island of land amid construction all around it.

Chinese bloggers were the first to spread the news of a house perched atop a tall, thimble-shaped piece of land like Mont St. Michel in the middle of a vast excavation. Newspapers dove in next, followed by national television. Then, in a way that is common in China whenever an event begins to take on hints of political overtones, the story virtually disappeared from the news media, bloggers here said, after the government decreed that the subject was suddenly out of bounds.

Still, the “nail house,” as many here have called it because of the homeowner’s tenacity, like a nail that cannot be pulled out, remains the most popular current topic among bloggers in China.

It has a universal resonance in a country where rich developers are seen to be in cahoots with politicians and where both enjoy unchallenged sway. Each year, China is roiled by tens of thousands of riots and demonstrations, and few issues pack as much emotional force as the discontent of people who are suddenly uprooted, told they must make way for a new skyscraper or golf course or industrial zone.

What drove interest in the Chongqing case was the uncanny ability of the homeowner to hold out for so long. Stories are legion in Chinese cities of the arrest or even beating of people who protest too vigorously against their eviction and relocation. In one often-heard twist, holdouts are summoned to the local police station, and return home only to find their house already demolished. How had this owner, a woman no less, managed? Millions wondered.

Part of the answer, which upon meeting her takes only a moment to discover, is that Wu Ping is anything but an ordinary woman. With her dramatic lock of hair precisely combed and pinned in the back, a form-flattering bright red coat, high cheekbones and wide, excited eyes, the tall, 49-year-old restaurant entrepreneur knows how to attract attention — a potent weapon in China’s new media age, in which people leverage public opinion and appeals to the national image to influence the authorities.

“For over two years they haven’t allowed me access to my property,” said Ms. Wu, her arms flailing as she led a brisk walk through the Yangjiaping neighborhood here. It is an area in the throes of large-scale redevelopment, with broad avenues, big shopping malls and a recently built elevated monorail line, from whose platform nearly everyone stops to gawk at the nail house.

Within moments of her arrival at the locked gate of the excavated construction site, a crowd began to gather. The people, many of them workers with sunken cheeks, dressed in grimy clothes, regarded Ms. Wu with expressions of wonderment. Some of them exchanged stories about how they had been forced to relocate, and soothed each other with comments about how it all could not be helped.

“If it were an ordinary person, they would have hired thugs and beat her up,” said a woman dressed in a green sweater who was drawn by the throng. “Ordinary people don’t dare fight with the developers. They’re too strong.”

Earlier this month, the National People’s Congress passed a historic law guaranteeing private property rights to China’s swelling ranks of urban, middle-class homeowners, among others. Some here attributed Ms. Wu’s success to that, as well as her knack for generating publicity.

“In the past, they would have just knocked it down,” said an 80-year-old woman who said she used to be a neighbor of Ms. Wu. “Now, that’s forbidden because Beijing has put out the word that these things should be done in a reasonable way.”

Between frenzied telephone calls to reporters and to city officials, Ms. Wu, who stood at the center of the crowd with her brother, a 6-foot-3 decorative stone dealer who wore his brown hair in jerri curls, stated her own case with a slightly different spin.

“I have more faith than others,” she began. “I believe that this is my legal property, and if I cannot protect my own rights, it makes a mockery of the property law just passed. In a democratic and lawful society, a person has the legal right to manage one’s own property.”

Tian Yihang, a local college student, spoke glowingly of her in an interview at the monorail station. “This is a peculiar situation,” he said, with a bit of understatement. “I admire the owner for being so persistent in her principles. In China, such things shock the common mind.”

Ms. Wu will in all likelihood lose her battle. Indeed, developers recently filed administrative motions to allow them to demolish her lonely building. Certainly, the local authorities are eager to see the last of her.

“During the process of demolition, 280 households were all satisfied with their compensation and moved,” said Ren Zhongping, a city housing official. “Wu was the only one we had to dismantle forcibly. She has the value of her house in her heart, but what she has in mind is not practical. It’s far beyond the standards of compensation decided by owners of housing and the professional appraisal organ.”

With the street so choked with onlookers that traffic began to back up, Ms. Wu’s brother, Wu Jian, began waving a newspaper above the crowd, pointing to pictures of Ms. Wu’s husband, a local martial arts champion, who was scheduled to appear in a highly publicized tournament that evening. “He’s going into our building and will plant a flag there,” Mr. Wu announced.

Moments later, as the crowd began to thin, a Chinese flag banner appeared on the roof with a hand-painted banner that read: “A citizen’s legal property is not to be encroached upon.”

Asked how his brother-in-law had managed to get inside the locked site and climb the escarpment on which the house sits perched, he said, with a wink, “Magic.”

NEIGHBORS: GRILLS BURNED FOR TWO DAYS
By MONICA RHOR, Associated Press Writer
Sunday, March 25, 2007 (03-25) 14:52 PDT HOUSTON (AP) --

For at least two days, neighbors at a city apartment complex noticed an acrid aroma, black smoke and leaping flames coming from two barbecue grills on the balcony of a second-floor apartment.

What, neighbors at the Red Oak Place apartments wondered, was going on in the unit where 27-year-old Timothy Wayne Shepherd lived? What was he burning at all hours, for days at a time?

According to law enforcement officials, Shepherd dismembered, and then burned the body of his former girlfriend, Tynesha Stewart, a 19-year-old Texas A&M University student. Nothing remains of Stewart's body, Harris County Sheriff Tommy Thomas said at a press conference Saturday.

"I just don't know what to think about it," said Louis Evans, whose balcony faces Shepherd's in the quiet tree-lined enclave in northern Houston. "I thought he was a nice normal person. I guess you never know what your neighbors are doing."

Authorities said Shepherd has confessed to strangling and dismembering Stewart, a college freshman who was home on spring break, because he was angry that she had started a new relationship.

Officials first thought Shepherd had disposed of her remains in a large commercial trash bin that had since been emptied, launching an intense debate in the area about whether the Sheriff's Department should conduct a massive and expensive search of area landfills for Stewart's remains.

Stewart was last seen March 15 and was reported missing March 19. The next day the Harris County Sheriff's Office homicide division launched its investigation.

On March 16, neighbors said they first noticed the unusual activity — and the unpleasant odor — on Shepherd's balcony.

"The smell was awful," said Evans, who also became alarmed after seeing a blaze shoot out from the grills. "I was wondering: What is he burning? Not cooking, but burning. There is a difference."

At times, Evans said, the flames from the grills leapt dangerously close to the roof of the balcony. Evans says he called 911, but when firefighters arrived, the flames had calmed and Shepherd assured them everything was under control.

A leasing agent at the apartment complex also noticed the thick dark smoke and the intense flames and asked Shepherd what he was doing, Evans said. Another neighbor, 18-year-old James Hebert, told The Houston Chronicle that he often cooked out with Shepherd, and even left his grill at Shepherd's apartment. When he wasn't invited over, he asked his neighbor what was going on. Shepherd replied that he was cooking for a wedding, the newspaper said.

Dionne Whitaker, 31, who lives in the complex, said she saw Shepherd carry the grill and smoker to a garbage bin a day or so later, the newspaper said.

Human remains generally require extremely high temperatures to destroy, and authorities have not said how it is possible that Stewart's remains could be completely burned on a patio grill.

"This certainly turned out to be one of the most heinous crimes I've ever seen in my 38 years (in law enforcement)," Thomas, the sheriff, said Saturday.

Shepherd, who is charged with murder, is being held on $250,000 bond in the Harris County Jail. Telephone message left with his attorney, Chip Lewis, were not immediately returned. On Sunday, the door to Shepherd's apartment was covered with plywood boards.

It looked for all the world as if the couple on a date -- he was darkly handsome and a little older than the pretty, petite blonde with the Russian accent -- were having a great time together.

"A really great time," their waitress, Karri Cormican, recalled thinking. "She was facing him, had one of her legs up on the bench seat." Good body language.

So it came as a shock when after the woman left the window-side table to visit the restroom, Cormican saw the man shake a white powder into the Hefeweizen beer he had ordered for his date.

"Did I really see that?" Cormican asked herself. "Why would he do that? It seemed like they were having fun."

This was in a bar in Noe Valley that draws a mostly local crowd -- early on most days, the patrons were older folks like the 93-year-old who got upset when the bar manager took a week off. Later, when the restaurants on 24th Street close for the night, a younger bunch of waitstaff and kitchen workers dropped in to watch sports on television or play pinball.

Over the years, the bar has seen a lot of incarnations. When the neighborhood was mostly blue-collar Irish and German, it was Doyle's, and then it became the Connection. As yuppies moved into what became million-dollar Victorians in the 1990s, it became Noe's Arc, and now it's Noe's Bar.

Not a place for trouble. Not the kind of place where what looked like an attempted date rape would occur. Or where a guy on a first date, like Joseph Szlamnik, at the time a 43- year-old senior management assistant for the San Francisco Unified School District, would commit a crime. Szlamnik was sentenced last week to a year in jail by Superior Court Judge Anne Bouliane on narcotic charges related to the incident.

According to the National Crime Victimization Survey conducted by the Department of Justice, 66 percent of sexual assaults in 2005 were committed by friends, acquaintances or other people intimately known to the victims. No tally is kept specifically of date rapes.

Rape of all kinds has dropped by more than half since 1993, said Lynn Parrish, a spokeswoman for the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, which operates a national hot line.

Because of educational efforts, "people are aware that these drugs are used in bars by perpetrators of all ages," she said. "So these two women who saw it knew what was happening." On the night in question, Cormican, 23, quickly approached the bartender, Hannah Bridgeman-Oxley, 27, and told her what she had seen. The two women hatched a plan.

Cormican returned to the table and told Szlamnik and his date, whom the court identified only as Tatiana K., then 34, that the woman's beer had come from a fermented keg and that they were going to replace it. Cormican brought her a Stella Artois.

Cormican carried the adulterated Hefeweizen to Bridgeman-Oxley and out of sight into a back room. They held it up to the light and saw, unmistakably, a white powder. At a preliminary hearing last summer, Nikolas Lemos, chief forensic toxicologist at the San Francisco medical examiner's office, identified the powder as zalepron, a prescription sleeping drug sold as Sonata.

After seeing the white powder, Bridgeman-Oxley said she "panicked a little bit. We had to figure out a way to keep her away from this man."

Their chance came when Tatiana went outside to smoke a cigarette. Cormican grabbed the beer with the white powder and followed her. It was a mild night in May 2005 -- the wheels of justice in this case, as one courtroom observer said, have ground exceedingly slowly.

Tatiana was stunned -- she said it was their first date, and they had met at a salsa dancing class only weeks before. Earlier, he had picked her up in his BMW after her classes at City College. "She's a trusting young lady," says David Merin, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case.

Cormican had to repeat herself several times before Tatiana absorbed what had happened. And then things got even worse.

The bartender rushed outside to tell the two women that while they had been talking, Szlamnik had dropped two pills into the new beer Tatiana had left behind on the table.

All three women looked through a window and saw Szlamnik trying to wipe up beer that had foamed over the edge of Tatiana's glass and was fizzing as if there were Alka-Seltzer in it.

In fact, as Dr. Lemos would later testify, the pills were alprazolam, commonly sold as Xanax, a central nervous system depressant prescribed to relieve anxiety. "In combination with alcohol," Lemos testified at the preliminary hearing, the two drugs "are encountered frequently in drug-facilitated sexual assaults ... without giving the victim the chance ... to even realize what's going on."

On the sidewalk, Tatiana was sobbing. Bridgeman-Oxley stalked back into the bar with Tatiana following, swiped the foaming glass off the table and looked the stunned Szlamnik in the eye when he began to protest that she had served him a second bad beer.

After offering to buy everybody a shot of whiskey, Szlamnik fled while Bridgeman-Oxley was calling the police, who arrived quickly and took possession of the two beers.

And the quick-thinking barmaids of Noe's -- a jukebox joint that Bridgeman-Oxley describes as "pretty chill" -- became heroines.

"These were two heroic people who stopped this crime from happening," said Susan Breall, the judge at the preliminary hearing.

Lynn Parrish, the spokeswoman for the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, agreed: "I don't remember hearing another story like this," she said. "They're heroes in my book."

Last Tuesday, Judge Bouliane sentenced Szlamnik, who had no prior criminal history, to one year in jail but suspended six months of that. Szlamnik entered jail voluntarily in January after agreeing to plead guilty to transporting and furnishing a narcotic rather than to a crime directly related to a planned sexual assault. He is due to be released in May.

At the time of his plea, he was terminated by the school district, said a spokesperson.

Cormican had arrived in San Francisco from Fargo, N.D., only six months prior to the incident and still works at Noe's. She shrugs off any attempt to call her a heroine.

"It's just the kind of place where everybody looks out for everybody," she said recently while working behind the bar. "I mean, people look out for me. I hope."

A man told police not to blame him for crashing his truck into a light post — it was that unicorn behind the wheel. Prosecutor Ingrid Rosenquist said Phillip C. Holliday Jr. initially denied driving the truck involved in the March 7 crash in Billings. He told officers at the scene that a unicorn was driving, she said.

Holliday, 42, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to felony charges of criminal endangerment and drunken driving.

A pickup truck drove through a red light and nearly struck another truck in the intersection, according to court documents. The driver then made an erratic U-turn through a gas station, crossed the street and crashed into a light pole. Nobody was injured.

Holliday has five drunken-driving convictions. District Judge Gregory Todd kept his bail at $100,000 despite his lawyer arguing that Holliday's last such conviction was 14 years ago.

A Boston woman who gave birth after a failed abortion has filed a lawsuit against two doctors and Planned Parenthood seeking the costs of raising her child.

The complaint was filed by Jennifer Raper, 45, last week in Suffolk Superior Court and still must be screened by a special panel before it can proceed to trial.

Raper claimed in the three-page medical malpractice suit that she found out she was pregnant in March 2004 and decided to have an abortion for financial reasons.

Dr. Allison Bryant, a physician working for Planned Parenthood at the time, performed the procedure on April 9, 2004, but it "was not done properly, causing the plaintiff to remain pregnant," according to the complaint.

Raper then went to see Dr. Benjamin Eleonu at Boston Medical Center in July 2004, and he failed to detect the pregnancy even though she was 20 weeks pregnant at the time, the lawsuit alleges.

It was only when Raper went to the New England Medical Center emergency room for treatment of pelvic pain in late September that year that she found out she was pregnant, the suit said.

Raper and her lawyer, Barry C. Reed Jr., refused comment when contacted by The Boston Globe.

A spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood said the organization does not comment on pending litigation.

Raper alleges in the suit that Planned Parenthood and Bryant were negligent for failing to end her pregnancy and that Eleonu was negligent for failing to see she was still pregnant.

The state's high court ruled in 1990 that parents can sue physicians for child-rearing expenses, but limited those claims to cases in which children require extraordinary expenses because of medical problems, medical malpractice lawyer Andrew C. Meyer Jr. said.

Raper's suit has no mentions of medical problems involving her now 2-year-old daughter.

As with all medical malpractice suits in Massachusetts, Raper's complaint will have to be screened by a tribunal consisting of a Superior Court judge, a lawyer, and a doctor to determine whether it has merit to go to trial.

psycho wrong

Filling your tank at a gas station has never been a particularly pleasant experience. But it does allow for a few minutes of relative calm as you listen to the soft whir of the pump and contemplate your surroundings.

Not for much longer.

Pumps at about a dozen Shell stations in the Bay Area have been equipped with video screens and speakers that feature three-minute blasts of promos from TV network NBC and ads for a variety of corporate sponsors.

By the end of the month, at least 75 Shell stations in the region will have this capability, according to FuelCast Media Network, the Los Angeles venture behind the trend. Over ensuing months, as many as 200 local Shell stations will feature at-the-pump programming.

And that's just the beginning. FuelCast says it's in talks with other leading oil companies to install screens and speakers at their stations as well.

"There's not much else to do while you're filling your tank," said Gary LePon, executive vice president of FuelCast. "This gives you something to do while you're waiting.
read more

PILOT CRASHES INTO EX-IN-LAW'S HOUSE

By TOM DAVIES, Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
(03-06) 08:35 PST Bedford, Ind. (AP) --

Federal and state investigators were trying to determine Tuesday why a man took his 8-year-old daughter up in a small plane and then crashed it into his former mother-in-law's home, killing the little girl and himself.

Eric Johnson strapped daughter Emily into the passenger seat of a leased, single-engine Cessna on Monday and took off from Virgil I. Grissom Municipal Airport, police said. Moments later, the aircraft slammed into the side of Vivian Pace's house in this southern Indiana city.

State and Bedford police were treating the criminal investigation as a suicide and homicide, State Police 1st Sgt. Dave Bursten said. No note of explanation had yet been found, Bursten said.

"It is just gut-wrenching to think about what was happening to that child just prior to the crash," he said.

The National Transportation Safety Board investigation could take up to a year.

Emily didn't go to school Monday, and her mother, Beth Johnson, arrived at Bedford police headquarters about 11:30 a.m. to say she believed her ex-husband had abducted the girl, Bursten said.

By then, investigators already were examining the wreckage of the plane crash at Pace's home in Bedford, about 20 miles south of Bloomington.

Bursten said Tuesday that police understood the father and daughter had been on a trip. He said Beth Johnson gave specific information about an alleged abduction, but he declined to release details.

"All of those things together lead us in the direction that this was done intentionally," he said Tuesday.

Before the pilot was identified, Pace told The Times-Mail newspaper that she was in the living room when the plane struck the side of her one-story home. She said everything fell off the walls. Pace wasn't injured, and the crash into a side wall did not start a fire.

Bursten said eyewitness accounts of the plane's movements just before the crash led police to suspect the crash was deliberate, as did the relationships involved.

"I thought he would do something to get back at Beth," Pace said. "He was a very possessive person. He got what he wanted."

At Parkview Primary School in Bedford, where Emily was a first-grader, counselors were called in to help the students, Principal Sari Wood said Tuesday.

"We're all grieving over this," Wood said. She described Emily as a "dear little girl" who "got a kick out of things and enjoyed life."

"She just was one of those really friendly, really open little kids," Wood said.

SWISS ACCIDENTALLY INVADE LIECHTENSTEIN
Published: March 2, 2007

ZURICH, Switzerland (AP) -- What began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighboring Liechtenstein.

According to Swiss daily Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers wandered 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) across an unmarked border into the tiny principality early Thursday before realizing their mistake and turning back.

A spokesman for the Swiss army confirmed the story but said that there were unlikely to be any serious repercussions for the mistaken invasion.

''We've spoken to the authorities in Liechtenstein and it's not a problem,'' Daniel Reist told The Associated Press.

Officials in Liechtenstein also played down the incident.

Interior ministry spokesman Markus Amman said nobody in Liechtenstein had even noticed the soldiers, who were carrying assault rifles but no ammunition. ''It's not like they stormed over here with attack helicopters or something,'' he said.

Liechtenstein, which has about 34,000 inhabitants and is slightly smaller than Washington DC, doesn't have an army.

GIRL'S 5 WEEKS OF HICCUPS FINALLY END

Thursday, March 1, 2007
07:34 PST Saint Petersburg, Fla. (AP) --

She sipped pickle juice, held her breath, breathed into a bag, even went to a neurologist, but for more than five weeks nothing would stop a 15-year-old girl's rapid hiccups — until they finally just stopped on their own.

After trying countless remedies and attracting national media attention, Jennifer Mee said her hiccups suddenly stopped around 5 p.m. Wednesday. No one is certain why.

"Right now, my nose is burning and my throat hurts," she told the St. Petersburg Times, but she said she felt a lot better than she has in weeks.

Jennifer had started hiccuping Jan. 23 close to 50 times a minute and said it only stopped when she was sleeping.

She saw an infectious disease specialist, a neurologist, a chiropractor, a hypnotist and an acupuncturist. She tried a patented device that is designed to stop hiccups, plus all the old remedies. Her mother called the media two weeks ago to try to find more help for her daughter, who ended up on NBC's "Today" show.

According to the National Institutes of Health, hiccups can be triggered by anything from spicy foods to stress, and they can start for no reason at all. They're caused by involuntary contractions of the diaphragm, which causes the vocal cords to close briefly, making that distinctive sound.

NEW AIRPORT X-RAYS SCAN BODIES, NOT JUST BAGS

elaine thompson/associated press

PHOENIX, Feb. 23 — X-ray vision has come to the airport checkpoint here, courtesy of federal aviation security officials who have installed a new device that peeks underneath passengers’ clothing to search for guns, bombs or liquid explosives.
Skip to next paragraph
Threats & Responses
Go to Complete Coverage »
Enlarge This Image
Tom Tingle/The Arizona Republic, via Associated Press

Melanie Concepcion, right, a transportation security officer, using a model to demonstrate a new scanning machine on Thursday at the Phoenix airport. The X-ray machine is intended to detect guns or explosives.
Enlarge This Image
Elaine Thompson/Associated Press

The X-ray image before software was used to blur bodily contours.

The new body scanning machine, which went into use on Friday at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and will be tested later at airports in Los Angeles and New York, will screen only volunteers, at least initially. Transportation Security Administration officials want to make sure the machine is reliable and fast enough to replace the traditional pat-down — and that it does not provoke too many protests.

Security officials examining the head-to-toe images work in a closed booth, hidden from public view, agency officials said. Special “privacy” software intentionally blurs the image, creating an outline of a body that is clear enough to see a collarbone, bellybutton or weapon, but flattens details of revealing contours.

Kenneth Johnson, 64, of Mesa, was the first passenger screened on Friday in Phoenix. He said he had titanium implants in both shoulders and one knee that set off alarms at checkpoint metal detectors.

“I’ve been all over the world; I’ve been strip-searched,” Mr. Johnson, who was traveling to Florida, told an Associated Press reporter. “This was very easy.”

Others found the scans objectionable.

“I think that is a violation of people’s personal rights,” said Kara Neal, 36, a mental health counselor on her way to Philadelphia. She was not asked to undergo the screening, but said she would have refused. “I would rather take a pat-down than go through this,” she said.

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union have raised similar objections, calling the X-ray scan a “virtual strip-search,” and have urged Congress to prohibit its use for routine screening.

The vending-machine-size device, which costs about $110,000, will be used only when passengers are pulled aside for a more thorough check, known as secondary screening, after passing through a metal detector. Other scanning machines will be installed this year at Los Angeles International Airport and at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

While security agency officials say the machines, known as SmartCheck, pose no health hazards, some experts disagree. The machine, manufactured by American Science and Engineering Inc. of Billerica, Mass., generates about as much radiation as a passenger would get flying for about two minutes at about 30,000 feet, or in technical terms, fewer than 10 microRem per scan, according to security agency and company officials. The machine is already being used in some prisons, by United States customs and at Heathrow Airport in London.

Dr. Albert J. Fornace Jr., an expert in molecular oncology at Georgetown University Medical Center, said such a low dose was inconsequential, even for pregnant women.

“Obviously, no radiation is even better than even a very low level,” Dr. Fornace said. “But this is trivial.”

But David J. Brenner, a professor of radiation oncology at Columbia University, said that even though the risk for any individual was extremely low, he would still avoid it.

“The question is, Do you want to add to your already existing risk?” Professor Brenner said, recommending that pregnant women and young children, in particular, avoid the device. “There are other technologies around that can probably do the job just as well without the extra radiation.”

The machine beams a low-energy X-ray at the passenger, which after it bounces off the surface of the skin is processed by computer software that highlights metals or elements like nitrogen that are found in explosives or weapons.

The X-ray is not strong enough to penetrate much beyond the skin, so it cannot find weapons that may be hidden in body cavities.

“A lot of people aren’t really comfortable with a pat-down,” said Ellen Howe, a security agency spokeswoman, “so they may find this to be an alternative they may appreciate.” She added that the X-ray images would be destroyed immediately.

Aviation security officials are rushing to bring new screening devices to airports because of the London-based plot last summer to use liquid explosives to blow up airliners headed to the United States.

The devices now used at the nation’s airports, the X-ray machine for carry-on bags and the metal detector for passengers, rely on 1950s-era technology that cannot reliably detect liquid or plastic explosives.

Earlier efforts by the federal security agency to introduce more advanced checkpoint technologies have stumbled, including the so-called puffer machines, which blow air on passengers to search for minute traces of explosives.

After installing 94 of the machines at 37 airports, officials suspended the program last year, saying the devices broke down too often. More puffer machines may be bought if the problems can be resolved.

Officials intend to try other alternatives, like a so-called millimeter wave machine that uses harmless radio waves, instead of X-rays, to do a full body scan.

Ms. Howe said that until the tests on the SmartCheck were complete, it was unclear how widely used the machines would be. “We are committed to testing it,” she said. “But we are not committed to deploying it widely until we learn more.”

ASTRONAUT CHARGED WITH KIDNAP ATTEMPT
Published: February 6, 2007

Filed at 10:39 a.m. ET

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) -- A NASA astronaut charged with attempting to kidnap a romantic rival in a love triangle with another astronaut was allowed to go free on bail Tuesday on the condition that she not contact the alleged victim.

The judge told Lisa Marie Nowak she could be released on $15,500 bond, then asked if she understood the conditions. She responded ''yes.''

Nowak, a married mother of three, stood in a jail uniform, usually facing down during the hearing. She planned to return home to Houston, and the judge ordered her to wear a tracking device.

The 43-year-old robotics specialist faces charges including attempted kidnapping, attempted vehicle burglary with battery, destruction of evidence and battery.

Police said she drove 900 miles, donned a disguise and was armed with a BB gun and pepper spray when she confronted a woman she believed was a competitor for the affections of Navy Cmdr. William Oefelein, an unmarried fellow astronaut.

Nowak rode aboard Discovery in July. Oefelein, 41, piloted the space shuttle Discovery in December. They trained together but never flew together.

Nowak told police that her relationship with Oefelein was ''more than a working relationship but less than a romantic relationship,'' according to an arrest affidavit. Police found a love letter to Oefelein in her car.

According to authorities, Nowak believed another woman, Colleen Shipman, was romantically involved with Oefelein. When Nowak found out Shipman was flying to Orlando from Houston, Nowak decided to confront her early Monday, according to the arrest affidavit.

Nowak raced from Houston to Orlando wearing diapers in the car so she wouldn't have to stop to go to the bathroom, authorities said. Astronauts wear diapers during launch and re-entry.

Dressed in a wig and a trench coat, she waited for Shipman's plane to land and then boarded the same airport shuttle bus Shipman took to get to her car, police said. Shipman told police she noticed someone following her, hurried inside the car and locked the doors, according to the arrest affidavit.

Nowak rapped on the window, tried to open the car door and asked for a ride. Shipman refused but rolled down the car window a few inches when Nowak started crying, the statement said. Nowak then sprayed a chemical into Shipman's car, the affidavit said. Shipman drove to the parking lot booth and police were called.

An officer reported following Nowak and watching her throw away a bag containing the wig and BB gun. Police also found a steel mallet, a 4-inch folding knife, rubber tubing, $600 and garbage bags inside a bag Nowak was carrying when she was arrested, authorities said.

Two other astronauts attended the hearing. Steve Lindsey, commander of Nowak's Discovery flight last July, testified that Nowak would obey the conditions of her release.

Chris Ferguson, a pilot on the mission, also attended the hearing. Asked afterward about Nowak's behavior, Ferguson said ''perplexed is the word I'm sticking with.''

Oefelein and Shipman, who the Houston Chronicle said worked at Patrick Air Force Base near the Kennedy Space Center, did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

NASA spokesman James Hartsfield in Houston said that, as of Monday, Nowak's status with the astronaut corps remained unchanged. ''What will happen beyond that, I will not speculate,'' he said.

Hartsfield said he couldn't recall the last time an astronaut was arrested and said there were no rules against fraternizing among astronauts.

Police said Nowak told them that she only wanted to scare Shipman into talking to her about her relationship with Oefelein and didn't want to harm her physically.

''If you were just going to talk to someone, I don't know that you would need a wig, a trench coat, an air cartridge BB gun and pepper spray,'' said Orlando police Sgt. Barbara Jones. ''It's just really a very sad case.''

According to NASA's official biography, Nowak is a Naval Academy graduate who has a master's degree in aeronautical engineering. She has a teenage son and younger twin girls.

Oefelein has two children and began his aviation career as a teenager flying floatplanes in Alaska, according to a NASA biography. He studied electrical engineering at Oregon State University and later earned a master's degree in aviation systems at the University of Tennessee Space Institute. He has been an astronaut since 1998.

SUITE SETTLED OVER TOWEL FOUND IN PATIENT

Friday, January 26, 2007
(01-26) 07:16 PST Canton, Ohio (AP) --

The Cleveland Clinic settled a lawsuit filed by the family of a woman who died seven years after a surgeon left a rolled-up towel inside her chest.

The confidential agreement with Bonnie Valle's family came Thursday, almost two weeks into a jury trial in Cleveland.

Also Thursday, Judge Nancy Margaret Russo dismissed claims against Valle's Canton-based doctor, Jeffrey Miller.

Valle had surgery for emphysema at the Cleveland Clinic in 1995 and died at age 60 in 2002. She donated her body to the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine in Rootstown, where a dissection revealed a green surgical cloth the size of a large hand towel in her left lung.

Her family sued in 2004, claiming that because Valle's doctors never found the towel, she suffered serious complications, incurred medical expenses and died.

"She always said, `On the left side it feels like there's something there. It felt like something moved,'" Valle's daughter, Jeanne Clark, said in 2004.

Clinic attorneys disagreed that the towel affected Valle's health.

In a letter to the medical school, Miller wrote that he did not think the towel affected the length or quality of Valle's life.

"She lived seven years ... which is certainly as well as one would have expected her to survive given her severe emphysema and poor pulmonary function and overall condition," Miller wrote.

Why I don't wear flammable clothing...
A cell phone apparently ignited in a man's pocket and started a fire that burned his hotel room and caused severe burns over half his body, fire department officials said.Luis Picaso, 59, of Vallejo was in stable condition Monday at UC Davis Medical Center with second and third-degree burns to his upper body, back, right arm and right leg, Vallejo Fire Department assistant chief Kurt Henke said.Firefighters arrived at the residential hotel late Saturday night to find Picaso lying on the bathroom floor after the cell phone in Picaso's pants pocket set fire to his nylon and polyester clothes, department spokesman Bill Tweedy said.

home :: design :: photo :: painting :: about :: email