The Captain is just about to dock his ship and settle in for a cool autumn day of football, hot apple cider and a delicious meatloaf (which helps keep the Captain's mind sharp). He'll leave you with this link to an incredibly sick collection of Halloween costumes that range from the grotesque to the offensive to the downright wrong. Do click through, you'll be sorry you did. Enjoy! 
23-year-old Megan E. Duskey of Crete, attempted to slide down the railing at the mezzanine level of the Palmer House Hotel and fell to the basement about 10:30 p.m say police.
Sources said the woman was dressed in a black and yellow costume and was attending a Halloween Party at the hotel.
[...]
Duskey was dead on the scene, according to the medical examiner's office. Police said she suffered head trauma. An autopsy is scheduled for later Sunday.
A farm worker has had to have his foot cut off after becoming tangled in a pumpkin-pulping machine.
John Terpstra, 29, was using the heavy machinery to gather and crush the fruit, which is in peak season, when his right leg became caught in the works.
[...]
[F]riends said his leg was too badly injured and surgeons were forced to amputate his foot after the accident on Thursday.
Isn't it high time someone came out and said it? It's all over. Forget it. For years there was "outsourcing" and talk of "globalization" and everything was going to be great.[Reuters via Yahoo! Finance]The U.S. economy is a "fiscal train wreck" waiting to happen that risks ushering in a period of stagflation featuring minimal growth, high unemployment and deflationary pressure, U.S. economist Nouriel Roubini wrote on Friday.
A mum yesterday slammed firefighters who watched as her son and his pal drowned.
Emergency teams failed to act because they were not trained in water rescue. Instead they stood on the bank of a freezing lake as Philip Surridge, 42, who was drowning with his friend Paul Litchfield, screamed: "Help me! Please don't let me die!"
A brave member of the public who waded into the water begged for assistance but the firefighters refused because they only had "basic water awareness training".
The inquest into both men's death at Kettering magistrates' court yesterday was also told that the only fireman who was trained had left his dry suit back at the station. The team of four retained firefighters had also left an inflatable hose - which could have reached the men - on their fire engine, parked 400m from the scene.
[...]
Paul, 30, of Raunds, Northants, and Philip, of Corby, Northants, were regular hunting partners and drove to Brightwell Lake near Ringstead on December 21 last year.
They were searching for ducks when Paul's dog Amy disappeared into the icy lake. Paul ran to save her but the ice gave way. Philip went in after him and both got stuck 100ft from the edge.
[...]
Crew boss Kevin Brown said: "It was inappropriate to go in because of temperatures. We only had T-shirts under our fire kits." Fire crews later saved the dog.
Washington, DC — A multi-year investigation by the Justice Department Office of Inspector General (IG) released this week declares that federal prison industry that recycled computers and other electronics systematically violated health, safety and environmental laws. Despite findings that officials willfully endangered thousands of prison staff and inmates, none will be prosecuted and most of the officials have retired without any sanction, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
[...]
“In the long tradition of prison labor, these operations employed inmates with hammers but instead of rocks they were breaking computer components with no containment or protective equipment,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, whose organization aided Smith “Coated in toxic dust, prison staff and inmates worked for years, in many cases trailing heavy metals back to their homes and cellblocks.”
The IG stated that most of the violations had abated by mid-2009 but the most hazardous activity, glass-breaking of cathode ray tubes, ended due to “economic considerations” not safety concerns.
[...]
“It appears that no responsible official will be held to account for what happened here and this fat report will simply sit on a shelf,” added Ruch, noting that the IG referred some BOP officials for criminal prosecution but those referrals were declined by the Justice Department. “If these violations had been committed by a private business, people would be going to prison but here they still run the prisons.”
Some people keep a gun by their bed for protection but for one Colorado man his pistol proved to be near fatal.
Sanford Rothman, 63, woke up at 2am on Tuesday morning to a loud bang.
While sleepwalking, he had shot himself in the knee with the 9 millimeter handgun he keeps on this bedside table.
Mr Rothman told investigators that he had no clear recollection of the incident and that no one one else was in his home at the time.
Boulder Police Sgt Paul Reichenback says Mr Rothman takes prescription medication for pain but that no alcohol or illegal drugs played a role in the nocturnal shooting.
Mr Rothman was taken to Boulder Community Hospital where he was treated and released.
The Captain implores readers to click through to the linked site and watch the video. It has English subtitles including this gem: "worms may come from the tip of your penis."A TWISTED hotel employee took advantage of the language barrier to call a woman a "pig" as she renewed her wedding vows on a paradise island.
The man — named by the £250-a-night luxury hotel in the Maldives as Hussein Didi — was caught on the couple's wedding video hurling insults at the pair as he pretended to conduct the service.
[...]
Didi, speaking the local Dhivehi language, called the happy couple "swine" and "infidels" and branded their marriage illegal.
[...]
In the video, which was translated after being posted on YouTube, he says: "You are swine. The children that you bear from this marriage will all be b****** swine.
"Keep fornicating frequently, and keep spreading hatred among people."
[...]
General manager of the Vilu Reef Beach & Spa Resort, Mohamed Rasheed, said: "The man had used filthy language. Otherwise the ceremony was OK."
An elderly man was bitten hundreds of times on his legs and genitals by a swarm of flesh-eating ants as he lay in his hospital bed.
Cornelius Lewis, 76, was in the intensive care unit at Gulf Coast Medical Center in Florida, recovering from an operation to fit a pacemaker the day before the ant attack.
Remarkably, because he was attacked beneath the bed sheets, medical staff didn't even notice the ants were literally feasting on him until they pulled back the covers hours later.
[...]
'He was supposed to be monitored every 10 minutes,' Neil Lewis told Florida website Newspress.com.
'My mom was there, and they didn’t give her any information.
'They said, "Let’s just get him out of the room." And my father was so exhausted he didn’t have the ability to complain.'
Vegetarians are at an early risk of mental disorder such as dementia and alzheimer's as they develop a Vitamin B-12 deficiency, doctors said here Wednesday.
[...]
"Deficiency of Vitamin B-12 can reduce working capacity of the brain and result in progressive memory loss that has an impact on day to day activities," Praveen Gupta, consultant neurologist at Artemis Health Institute in Gurgaon, said in an Interview.
"We see at least 30 patients under the age of 40 every month -- suffering from memory loss and other manifestations due to deficiency of vitamin B-12...."
Forgetting day to day activities, names of familiar people, frequent irritability, panic episodes and depression are some of the common symptoms of the mental disorder.
Now this is so frustrating. Seems like we were on our way to do something good, for the good guys, for a CHANGE, and there was a problem. I don't buy this explanation at all. How would they know there was a problem if they weren't trying to launch the missles? They were just looking at the missles and they said, "hey, there seems to be a problem." Makes no sense. They must have been trying to do SOMETHING with them, right? Work has begun to try to repair an electronics glitch and determine what disrupted communication between 50 nuclear missles and a launch control center at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, a U.S. Air Force official said.
The incident early Saturday affected 50 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missles based out of Cheyenne. The equipment failure lasted less than an hour and the Air Force said it never lost the ability to launch the missles.
The sweet scent of skid row transitioning to ultra-modernity. For contrarians of all genders, an enticing anti-perfume, composed of near dissonant florals, citruses and herbs.
From a distance it resembled a rather large man in a fur coat, leaning tenderly over the grave of a loved one. But when the two women in the Russian village of Vezhnya Tchova came closer they realised there was a bear in the cemetery eating a body.
[...]
World Wildlife Fund Russia said there had been a similar case two years ago in the town of Kandalaksha, in the northern Karelia republic. "You have to remember that bears are natural scavengers. In the US and Canada you can't leave any food in tents in national parks," said Masha Vorontsova, Director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) in Russia.
"In Karelia one bear learned how to do it [open a coffin]. He then taught the others," she added, suggesting: "They are pretty quick learners."
[...]
According to Vorontsova, the omnivorous bears had "plenty to eat" this autumn, with foods such as fish and ants at normal levels. The bears raided graveyards because they offered a supply of easy food, she said, a bit like a giant refrigerator. "The story is horrible. Nobody wants to think about having a much loved member of their family eaten by a bear."
A Park Forest man was greeted with an unwelcome 50th birthday surprise -- someone stole his wheelchair-accessible van.
Randy Iliff, who uses a wheelchair, returned to the Richton Park Metra station last week to find his van missing. He had left it in a handicapped parking spot at the station. "At first I thought my wife and stepson took it as a practical joke," said Iliff, who turned 50 on Oct. 19. "Someone's going to pull something when you're 50."
But it was no joke.
The modified 1992 Chevrolet Conversion van with Iliff's custom-built wheelchair ramps, wheelchair charger and ham radio equipment inside disappeared from the lot while Iliff was at work at an Illinois Department of Human Services office.
[...]
Iliff now regularly travels two miles to and from the train station to his job on his motorized wheelchair.
John Daly has been sober for two years but when Charlotte Observer columnist Ron Green Jr., asked the two-time major winner what he's learned over the years, the world's most honest golfer said "that I was happy when I was a miserable drunk. I played better when I was drunk."
[...]
"I've done everything right and haven't played worth a darn," said Daly who lost 117 pounds after surgery. "It's unbelievable. I'm giving myself the chance to play good. It seems the more I work, the worse I get."
Now this is an equation I can get behind. I apologize for writing a "feel good" story but it's a "feel bad" story if you are actually stupid enough to blow big bucks on these fancy German cars.While European reliability had been improving, momentum seems to have stalled. Audi, BMW, and Mercedes Benz are among the worst automakers overall.[Consumer Reports]
BMW had a bad year, with 5 of 11 models now scoring below average. BMW 1, 3, and 5 models with turbocharged engines had high problem rates with the fuel system, among other issues.
Mercedes-Benz had the least reliable cars in three categories. Six of its 13 models were below average, and the GLK SUV was far below average this year.
Almost three-quarters of the Audi models we analyzed were below average.
Tim Profitt -- the former Rand Paul volunteer who stomped on the head of a MoveOn activist -- told told local CBS station WKYT that he wants an apology from the woman he stomped and that she started the whole thing.And ...
"I don't think it's that big of a deal," Profitt said. "I would like for her to apologize to me to be honest with you."
According to WKYT, "Profitt explained that he used his foot to try and keep her down because he can't bend over because of back problems.
LUCKNOW: A man working with a restaurant situated near Sahu Cinema in Hazratganj area was electrocuted while he was mashing potatoes in a machine inside the restaurant on Monday morning.
The worker was identified as Munna Mahto, a resident of Champaran district in Bihar. The police said that Munna was busy in usual preparations before restaurant opened at around 10.00 in the morning. He was looking after the mashing of potatoes in a machine inside the restaurant, when he received an electric shock.
Munna was taken to a nearby hospital by the restaurant staff. However, the doctors declared him dead.
A 21-YEAR-OLD man has been charged by police in Ipswich for allegedly tattooing a penis on a man's back - instead of the image he had requested.
The 25-year-old victim had been visiting the man, a professional tattooist, at his home in Bundamba last Wednesday when he was talked into getting a tattoo.
He wanted a yin and yang symbol with some dragons, but was instead shocked to discover the 40cm tattoo was of a penis with an obscene slogan.
[...]
Police said the tattooing followed an argument between the men, during which the professional tattooist allegedly took offence at something the other man said.
The victim has also alleged he was punched and thrown out of the house following the tattooing.
The Captain was under the apparently mistaken impression that the French worshipped the devil. What else could explain their long lifespans despite eating nothing but triple-cream cheeses and buttery pastries, not to mention drinking 3 bottles of wine a day and non-stop chain-smoking from infancy. How else could they afford to retire at 60 (now 62, mon Dieu!), work 35 hours a week and take 6 months vacation a year? What other than worship of le diable could explain these things? Why on earth would French people fear their dark master Lucifer, who bestows upon them such wondrous earthly delights? A baby died when a family of 12 leapt from their second floor balcony in Paris claiming they were fleeing the devil.
Eight more were injured, some seriously, in the tragedy when they jumped 20ft into a car park in Paris suburb of La Verriere.
The baffling incident occurred when a wife woke to see her husband moving about naked in the room, police said.
She began screaming 'it's the devil! it's the devil!', and the man ran into the other room where 11 others adults and children were watching television. One woman grabbed a knife and stabbed the man before others pushed him out through the front door.
When the man forced his way back in, they all began screamed in terror and leapt from the balcony screaming 'Jesus! Jesus!'
The naked man also leapt from the balcony, detectives said.
A four-month old baby died in his mother's arms, while a two-year-old was critically injured in yesterday’s incident.
A NEWTOWN man who broke every bone in his face after falling from a four-storey building while overseas was back in hospital on Saturday night after he was glassed at a Geelong nightclub.
Just months after major reconstructive surgery, Josh Filbay, 20, required more attention on his now-famous face after he was glassed at popular nightclub Room 99.
[...]
Images posted on social networking site Facebook show a bloodied Mr Filbay standing inside Geelong Hospital's emergency department with a bandage on his ear.
In the fall Mr Filbay broke every bone in his face, knocked out every tooth, broke his kneecaps and smashed bones in both wrists.
After giving his room key to a friend and returning after curfew to find himself locked out of Paddy's Palace Hostel, Mr Filbay climbed up the fire escape and on to the roof, a method he had used before when locked out of the hostel.
But a cold snap had left a layer of ice on the roof, and Mr Filbay quickly found himself in trouble.
Sensible people are usually content to yell "get off my lawn!" to trespassing teens. Sometimes they may even feel that calling the cops is warranted. Other people think the right approach is to jump in your truck and try and run the teenagers off the road. That approach has its drawbacks.ESCAMBIA COUNTY, Alabama (WALA) - A Brewton family is mourning. Escambia County, Alabama Deputies say Luther McRae was trying to protect his property when he was chasing four teenagers on Stanley Road. He died in the process.
McRae got married a few months ago. He and his wife had recently bought a new home, and they just returned from their honeymoon
Three days later, McRae's life came to an end.
[...]
Escambia County, Alabama Deputies say McRae was trying to protect his property on Wednesday night.
He thought four teenagers were stealing from his shed.
While talking to 911, McRae went after the teens hoping to get a tag number.
But he lost control of his truck and flipped.
[...]
Sheriff Grover Smith says deputies caught the teens McRae was chasing.
That's when investigators determined the teens were not breaking into McRae's shed. But they were actually toilet papering homes as a homecoming prank.
"As a result, what started off as a prank, harmless fun, a 34-year-old man is dead today," said Smith.
HAZEL GREEN, AL -- A West Neely Road resident lost his home to fire and was injured in a freak motorcycle accident Friday night.
Randy Rutherford returned home about 11:30 p.m. to find volunteer firefighters from Bobo, Toney and Hazel Green battling a blaze at his single-wide trailer near the Tennessee line.
Madison County Deputy Fire Marshal Tyler Brewer said Rutherford accidentally ran over a fire hose and paramedic bag and was thrown from his motorcycle.
He was taken by ambulance to Huntsville Hospital, where he was in good condition Saturday evening.
While everybody is whining about how bad things are...some people are doing well. There is always opportunity in this country. I don't even understand what the beef is here. It's like they are punishing this woman for being good at her job. She can sign a lot of foreclosure documents quickly. That's not easy to do! And having the confidence to sign them without reading them? I would imagine that's worth something extra. At one of the largest foreclosure processing firms in the country, documents were signed be an official who hadn't read them, according to documents released Monday by Florida Attorney General Bill McCollom.[cnnmoney.com]
According to a sworn deposition released by McCollums office, Cheryl Salmons, the operations manager at the Florida law firm of David J. Sterns, signed off on as many as a thousand foreclosures a day.
In the deposition, Salmons' former assistant, Kelly Scott, also claimed that the law firm rewarded her boss with vacations, jewelry and a new BMW SUV.
"She doesn't review [the documents]. She just looks," Scott said in her deposition. "She would just sign all of them."
Here's another great Facebook story. It's like a match made in heaven between the morons who can't stop posting on there and the online freaks who want to exploit them.Two recent academic papers show that in certain circumstances, advertisers - or snoops posing as advertisers - may be able to learn sensitive personal information, like a person's sexual orientation or religion, even if the person is sharing that information with only a small circle of friends.[New York Times]
What's more, the identifier - typically a cookie or computer's Internet address - does not necessarily disclose the identity of the person who clicked. But privacy experts said the advertiser could potentially obtain the name in other ways and link it to the user's sexual orientation, perhaps by asking the person to sign up for a newsletter or fill out a form.
Forty-six elementary school age children from Georgia and Washington states participated in the study for two to three days. Their parents collected a total of 239 non-organic food samples.
Nearly one-fifth of the food samples measured had at least one pesticide. Of those, more than one-quarter contained multiple pesticides in the same food sample.
In total, the food contained varying amounts of 14 different pesticides, including different organophosphates and pyrethroid insecticides.
[...]
The researchers also bought and tested additional samples of the fresh fruits and vegetables most commonly eaten by the children. They found that more than 25 percent of these samples contained measurable pesticide residues.
For over a decade, Nancy Godfrey has been building her dream home from the flower-filled ground up.
"It represented my granddaughter's inheritance," Godfrey said. "All my pets are buried on that ground."
Now Nancy has to sift through every inch of that home after life threw her a few curve balls.
[...]
Nancy says her husband went on disability and then in April she lost her steady job doing construction estimates.
"This was supposed to be the family home where this would always be here," Nancy shared with tears in her eyes as she looked around the living room.
[...]
"He's a big dog," she stated thinking of her four legged companion."He goes through a 14 dollar bag of dog food a week. You've got to figure that's 60 dollars of dog food a month, that's a tank of gas so you have to decide," she said, pausing with the realization of the decision she had been faced with, "It's so hard to decide something like that."
[...]
"The thoughts did go through my head," she acknowledged. "If I was to just knock myself off Wayne could pay off the mortgage and everything would be fine," but Nancy quickly realized everything would not be fine. Looking around she knew life was worth so much more than money.
So now she is working to take the lemons that have landed in her lap and she is literally painting her new home, or at least the walls, into a shade of lemonade.
"I'm still a free person and this is still America," Nancy said emphatically. "I can still have nine colors of paint in my house if I want to; even if my house is a third of the size that it was it's still my home."
A man thought to be the first in the world to receive a mind-controlled bionic arm was involved in a fiery car accident on Wednesday, according to European media reports.
Christian Kandlbauer, 22, lost both his arms in high-voltage powerline accident five years ago. A year later, he was fitted with a robotic arm by the medical technology company Otto Bock Healthcare, the BBC reported. His right arm was a normal prosthetic limb.
[...]
On Wednesday, Kandlbauer's Subaru left the road, smashed into a tree and caught fire, the Austrian Independent reported. A truck driver was able to put out the blaze and drag him out of the car.
"Looking at the state of the wreck, it's a miracle he got out at all," a police officer was reported as saying.
A doctor says an Austrian man who was able to drive because of an innovative high-tech artificial arm has died after a car crash.
Andreas Waltensdorfer, a senior physician at a hospital in the southern city of Graz, says Christian Kandlbauer died Thursday. The 22-year-old had been in intensive care since Tuesday after his vehicle veered off the road and into a tree.
The plane came down despite no apparent mechanical problems during an internal flight in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
It has now emerged that the crash was caused by the concealed reptile escaping and causing a stampede in the cabin, throwing the aircraft off-balance.
A lone survivor apparently relayed the bizarre tale to investigators.
The crocodile survived the crash, only to be dispatched with a blow from a machete.
[...]
One of the passengers had hidden the animal, which he planned to sell, in a big sports bag, from which the reptile escaped as the plane began its descent into Bandundu.
A report of the incident said: "The terrified air hostess hurried towards the cockpit, followed by the passengers."
The plane was then sent off-balance "despite the desperate efforts of the pilot", said the report.
"The patient stated he was wheelchair-bound and was smoking a cigarette, which he thought he had extinguished and discarded into the brush, which rapidly ignited and caught his wheelchair on fire," authorities said in a police report.
[...]
Firefighters knocked down the blaze while Ormond Beach police and the Volusia County Beach Patrol searched for the man. The severely burned man was located around the corner north of the fire.
An ambulance took the him to Halifax Health Medical Center in Daytona Beach in critical condition. The victim was transferred a few hours later to Orlando Regional Medical Center.
If you've been having more terrifying dreams lately, it might not be your own fault. And you're certainly not alone. Nightmares could be much more common than previously thought, as Australian research shows almost 16 per cent of people have dreams that cause them to wake in fright every week.
Victoria University PhD candidate Fabian Elzo surveyed 440 students, aged 18 to 34 years, from the Melbourne-based university, asking them how often they had bad dreams that caused them to wake up.
[...]
"The finding was a lot higher than what was reported in the literature, it says an estimated four to 10 per cent of the population have weekly nightmares," Mr Elzo said.... "Most of our dreams are in fact negative, and have negative emotions and imagery ... so most people report misfortunes, bad luck, fear and distress."
So this is the reason they do the census? The federal government needs to spend this kind of money to tell you what the Ensign could have told you sticking his head out the window? Things are bad, and they are really bad. Duh hey!The total number of Americans living in poverty hit 43.6 million, the highest level in 51 years and the national poverty rate rose to 14.3% from 13.2%, according to data released last month by the Census Bureau.[Huffington Post]
Among the hardest hit states were Louisiana, Mississippi and certain areas of Texas. States with the lowest poverty statistics include Wyoming, Hawaii, Minnesota and several East Coast states.
Nobody is sure exactly what is keeping people away from Sedona’s four vortexes, swirling energy sources emanating from the earth, but the effects are clear: far fewer crystals are being bought, spiritual tours taken and treatments ordered, from aura cleansings to chakra balancings.
That an earthly power — the economy — is a culprit is not in doubt. But some do not discount the effects of an awful incident from a year ago that put Sedona’s New Age community in a bad light and that, to some degree, still lingers, despite efforts by metaphysical people to cast it away.
Last October, a celebrated New Age practitioner held a sweat lodge ceremony that ran dangerously amok, shattering the tranquillity of a spiritual center hidden in a forested valley here.
Packed into a circular hut on the grounds of Angel Valley were red-hot rocks, seething steam and scores of followers of James A. Ray, a California self-help guru. He encouraged them to finish the final test in his “Spiritual Warrior” retreat, participants told law enforcement officials, even though they might feel as though they were going to die.
Three of them did. Numerous others were rushed to hospitals.
A 19-year-old Bellevue woman has been charged with second-degree assault after she allegedly stabbed a classmate Saturday during an anger-management class.
Bellevue police say Faribah Maradiaga "blew up out of control" and stabbed the classmate's arm and shoulder several times after the two women exchanged words.
[...]
Maradiaga walked into a classroom on the Bellevue College campus, where a court services agency rents space for the anger management class, around 9 a.m. Saturday while a video on anger management was being shown, according to the charges. Maradiaga started complaining about the movie and disrupting the class, according to the documents, when the victim told Maradiaga "the video was good and to give it a chance."
Maradiaga, who was sitting two rows behind the victim, then stood up and started talking "trash" before pulling out a knife with a 3-inch blade and stabbing the other woman, police and prosecutors say.
The charges say Maradiaga then threatened to kill the victim's family.
The sole purpose of non-Jews is to serve Jews, according to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the head of Shas’s Council of Torah Sages and a senior Sephardi adjudicator.The "Shas" referred to in the 1st paragraph of the quoted section is an Israeli political party with 11 seats in the Knesset. They are a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition government. With this kind of talk coming from prominent Israeli religious leaders, the Captain can just feel imminent Middle East peace in his bones!
“Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel,” he said in his weekly Saturday night sermon on the laws regarding the actions non-Jews are permitted to perform on Shabbat.
[...]
“In Israel, death has no dominion over them... With gentiles, it will be like any person – they need to die, but [God] will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money.
This is his servant... That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew,” Yosef said.
“Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat.
That is why gentiles were created,” he added.
MANILA, Philippines—A man was beheaded in a freak accident in the middle of a heavy downpour in Navotas City on Sunday night.
Emmanuel Pilera, 20, a laborer of a garments company on Galicia Extension in Barangay Bangkulasi, was walking home at around 8:30 p.m. when lightning struck an electrical post and cut several of the high-tension wires.
As the wires swung to the ground, some wrapped themselves around Pilera’s neck, according to PO1 Philip Edgar Valera, an investigator of the city police.
As a result, the victim was electrocuted while his head was severed from his body.
A police report said Pilera’s head was found a few feet away from his body.
“The voltage was extremely high, not to mention it was raining,” Valera added.
It was just another normal Monday for John Muchiri, a casual labourer in Rurie, Nyandarua County.
As usual, Muchiri finished his work at 5pm and joined his friends at a local bar for a drink.
Before he could begin, four men entered the bar and sat beside him. And as it is usual with Kenyan bar patrons, a political discussion ensued and Muchiri joined in.
[...]
Time passed and it was soon 9pm. ‘Sonko’, as everyone started addressing him, ordered for yet more drinks.
Muchiri was, however, curious about the men and asked one of them who they were.
“The sonko is a prospective governor and he is on a meet-the-people tour,” the man told Muchiri.
“We are laying strategies for him to capture the seat in 2012.We are after people like you who will help us in the campaigns,” he added.
At around 11pm, the barmaid requested everyone to leave because it was time to close the bar.
After most had left, Muchiri was left with the four men and asked them for a lift home.
[...]
They agreed but after driving for a short distance, they dragged him into a roadside bush and after gang-raping him, chopped off his private parts and drove away.
Passersby found Muchiri lying in a pool of blood writhing in pain.
Narrating the story from his hospital bed in Ol Kalou, Muchiri says he had never before met the men and was just after free drinks and money.
The father of four has since vowed to stop drinking.
I recently went to a rock concert and I was amazed at how many people are totally joined at the hip with their iPhones. Even during the show, these people could not take their eyes off their hands. They were surfing the web, texting, using the camera, everything except watching the show. Before the concert, they were all in the bar, and instead of talking to each other, they were glued to the screen. A group of four people would come in, and without saying a word to each other or even looking at anyone else, each one would immediately pull out the phone and start diddling it. At one point a guy in mid-text at the bar muttered something to me. I said, "what?" And he said "where's the bathroom?" Without even looking up. So I said, "why don't you fucking Google it douchebag?" He looked up and walked away, without taking a break from twiddling his thumbs. "Progress" is not the first word that springs to mind. People used to go out to TALK TO OTHER PEOPLE. That's all over now. Today they prefer to stare at their hands. And what is private time today? You spend THAT time getting your latest news on Facebook. Here's a picture from my trip. Here's my boyfriend. I'm at a show and texting. Facebook said on Monday it was talking to application developers about how they handle some personal data, after a report said some applications had been improperly sharing the data with advertisers and Web tracking companies. The report, from the Wall Street Journal, said that all 10 of the most popular applications on Facebook, including games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars, were transmitting user IDs to third parties.[Yahoo Finance]
A former city mayor was ruing an expensive slip-up today after his failure to vault a giant human tomato cost his council £24,000.Do click thru to the Scotsman site, the picture there of Jim Rodgers "attempt[ing] to jump a vegetable-themed employee" is priceless.
Jim Rodgers accidentally kicked Belfast City Council employee Lorraine Mallon in the head in a publicity stunt that went spectacularly wrong.
Ms Mallon, who was dressed up as the huge fruit for a photo shoot to promote a gourmet food fair, suffered a slipped disc in the ill-fated leap.
[...]
Egged on by press photographers, Mr Rodgers tried to jump over her but he slipped on wet grass on his run up and ended up kneeing her in the back of the head.
[...]
"I have been absolutely devastated over what has happened," he said.
[...]
"I just caught the top of her head and unfortunately I injured her." Mr Rodgers said he was confident he would have been able to make the jump if he hadn't slipped.
An employee of the State Anatomy Board got a shock when he went to transport the body of an elderly Severna Park woman whom county police found "dead" inside her bathroom.
The woman, who lay on the floor for three hours on Oct. 1 while officers notified her family, physician and medical examiner of her death, was in fact alive.
[...]
"We hadn't seen her for four or five days," said Stacie Zarriello, who lives across the street. "She wasn't answering the door or the phone. We checked her mailbox and it was full. The newspapers were piling up."
The officers found an unlocked side door to Johnson's home and went inside.
They searched the first floor, but found nothing. Brown began checking the upstairs bedrooms when he noticed an odor "similar to a decomposition smell," according to the police report.
The officers walked through the master bedroom and opened a bathroom door. There, they found Johnson motionless on the bathroom floor. Her skin was blue and she was not breathing, the report says. The officers' experience led them to believe Johnson had been dead for a couple of days.
Thinking Johnson was clearly deceased, the officers did not check for a pulse.
[...]
Charles Morgan, an employee of the anatomy board, arrived at Johnson's home around 7:10 p.m. - three hours after Johnson was found, seemingly lifeless, on her bathroom floor.
He went upstairs and entered the bathroom. He was preparing to take Johnson's body away when he heard her take a deep breath and saw her move her arm.
[...]
"I shouted, 'Ruth!' and she responded with 'Arrgghh,' " Brown wrote in the report.
BAQUBA, Iraq — Members of United States-allied Awakening Councils have quit or been dismissed from their positions in significant numbers in recent months, prey to an intensive recruitment campaign by the Sunni insurgency, according to government officials, current and former members of the Awakening and insurgents.I trust Daily Downers readers are aware that prior to the US invasion, there were precisely zero members of Al Qaeda in Iraq; the existence of terrorists in that country is entirely a result of the US invasion. If that weren't bad enough, not only has the US created a new outpost for Al Qaeda, now we know that US taxpayers are putting money directly into the pockets of possibly thousands of Al Qaeda double agents with "extensive knowledge about the American military."
Although there are no firm figures, security and political officials say hundreds of the well-disciplined fighters — many of whom have gained extensive knowledge about the American military — appear to have rejoined Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Beyond that, officials say that even many of the Awakening fighters still on the Iraqi government payroll, possibly thousands of them, covertly aid the insurgency.
[...]
“The Awakening doesn’t know what the future holds because it is not clear what the government intends for them,” said Nathum al-Jubouri, a former Awakening Council leader in Salahuddin Province who recently quit the organization.
“At this point, Awakening members have two options: Stay with the government, which would be a threat to their lives, or help Al Qaeda by being a double agent,” he said.
“The Awakening is like a database for Al Qaeda that can be used to target places that had been out of reach before.”
An important lesson here. The "drug charges" referred to in the article below were related to a police stop where the cops smelled weed and tossed T.I.'s car, finding ecstasy, and then he tested positive for opiates. Guy drives a Maybach, which is a really nice car.T.I. was sentenced to 11 months in prison today after a judge revoked the rapper's probation following his arrest on drug charges in Los Angeles last month, the Atlanta Constitution-Journal reports. T.I., who was released from prison eight months ago, after serving nearly a year behind bars on federal weapons charges, was on three years' probation as part of his initial plea bargain. Two days ago, T.I. helped police in convincing a suicidal man not to jump from a 22-floor Atlanta building, but the rapper's rescue and the police's gratitude for assisting in the situation (one of the officer's spoke at today's hearing), apparently did not factor in the judge's decision. T.I. was given two weeks to turn himself into the authorities.[Yahoo Music]
SOUTH BRUNSWICK — A New Jersey car dealer plans to keep his word after offering Florida pastor Terry Jones a new car if he promised to not burn a Quran.
Car dealer Brad Benson made the offer in one of his dealership's quirky radio ads, which focus more on current events than cars. But he was surprised when a representative for Jones called to collect the 2011 Hyundai Accent, which retails for $14,200.
"They said unless I was doing false advertising, they would like to arrange to pick up the car," Benson recalled. At first he thought it was a hoax, so Benson asked Jones to send in a copy of his driver's license. He did.
HUNTER, OK--During Sunday's severe storms, a local church in Garfield County was struck by lightning and started a devastating fire. More than half a dozen fire departments fought the blaze for about six hours in the small town of Hunter.
Residents who live near the church say they heard a loud bang about eight-thirty Sunday night which was followed by flames and smoke that hovered in the rainy air until morning.
"We were home and I heard the initial crack," said Laura Renfrow, a church member.
[...]
"I was putting the baby down for bed and looked out the window and saw the flames shooting out," said Renfrow.
[...]
"Oh, no. They lost their rolls," said Renfrow. "They had years and years of photographs of all the little kids hanging on the walls here. It's pretty sad, because you lose the history. Just a little bit of history gone."
For Amber Zavala, it was just an attempt to help her godmother. It turned out to be a hard lesson, when the collection jars she set out were stolen.
Zavala, who lives in Evans, said her godmother has stage-four cancer and doesn't want her name in a story. Zavala set out collection jars in several businesses last week, hoping to collect enough to help pay for medications for her godmother.
[...]
“It's hard enough for my godmother to make it nowadays,” Zavala said. “Now someone stole from her.” She said her godmother is a truck driver, has no health insurance and has difficulty meeting medical expenses and paying for prescriptions.
“She and her husband drove for a trucking firm for many years,” Zavala said, “But now she's sick, and her husband can't drive because he's staying at home to take care of her. That's why we set out the jars.”
A horrified 8-year-old boy watched as an alligator ate the pet turtle he'd just donated to a Panhandle aquarium.
Brenda Guthrie and her 8-year-old son Colton witnessed Tomalina’s death as the red-eared slider disappeared into the alligator’s jaws at the Gulfarium. When the two looked away from the sight, she said they could hear the crunching of the turtle’s shell.
“He was jumping up and down screaming,” Guthrie said of her son’s reaction. “He was shouting, ‘Oh no alligator, let it go.’ ”
Sometimes even good fences don't make good neighbors. An American husband and wife have been branded the most heartless couple in the U.S. after taunting the family of a seven-year-old girl who is dying from an incurable disease.
Scott and Jennifer Petkov's despicable behaviour has caused outrage across the country after they posted a photo of terminally ill schoolgirl Kathleen Edwards on Facebook above a set of crossed bones.
Little Kathleen is in the final stages of Huntington’s disease – the same wasting illness that her mother, Laura, died from last year at the age of 24.
In another incredibly cruel taunt, Mrs Petkov also put a picture of the girl’s dead mother in the arms of the Grim Reaper online.
After Laura Edwards died last year, the Petkovs also allegedly drove their truck – which bears the message ‘Death Machine’ and has a coffin attached to it – down the street and honked the horn.
[...]
Family friend Michelle Yerigian, 42, said: ‘I don’t understand how people could spew such hatred. They would pull up in the truck with the coffin attached, rev up the engine, and say to Kathleen, "I can’t wait until you die."
The Captain may have stumbled upon what could become a regular feature: bad things happening to people who've had a few too many.A Wausau man was rescued from the Wisconsin River on Thursday after he plunged into its frigid water while drunk and chasing a hobbled goose, police said.
Troy Kaczor, 40, told police he shed his shirt and shoes at Big Bull Falls Park in downtown Wausau before he dove into the river, intending to catch the one-legged bird and then roast it, Wausau Police Lt. Bill Kolb said.
[...]
Police arrested Kaczor, 529 McClellan St., on a warrant for bail jumping and took him to the Marathon County Jail, Kolb said.
A drunk 20-year-old woman fell about 20 feet from her apartment window early Thursday in downtown St. Cloud, while pursuing her cat out on the ledge, authorities said.
A witness said that the woman was sitting by the open window about 1 a.m. and smoking before she fell two stories to the sidewalk at 25 1/2 5th Av. S., police said.
Yes, they were nude and drinking beer on their porch while listening to Bob Dylan, say two men charged with incidents at a Roane County sanctuary for lions and tigers.
But no, they didn't run naked through Tiger Haven, Jake Loftis and Samuel Adams say.
Loftis, 22, of Blaine, and Adams, 26, of Knoxville are charged with indecent exposure and vandalism in connection with a Sept. 16 episode at the big-cat sanctuary located on 50 acres in a rural, eastern part of the county.
The warrants allege the men, who lived on the property and worked as cat keepers, "ran nude around the complex exposing themselves to co-workers."
[...]
"It was kind of a protest, really," Loftis said of their decision to get naked. He said it was their way to express anger at being fired.
"I know it was a stupid mistake; something I'll never do again," he said.
"I got drunk, and I got stupid, to be honest," Adams said.
[A] 21-year-old Indian, a shop assistant named Pankaj Rawat, was walking with a friend on Saturday night when they saw two men arguing with a woman.
Rawat told Edinburgh Evening News: "I saw two Scottish men shouting at a woman. One of them was pushing her and trying to kiss her, and she was shouting for help."
Rawat attempted to assist the woman when one of the suspects punched him on the side of his head. Three other men then joined the group and became involved in the dispute. The second male who had also been arguing with the female then struck the victim to the head, knocking him to the ground. "I told them to leave her alone or I would call the police. The man who was pushing the woman came over to me and asked where I was from. I told him I was from India and he started shouting "b****** Indian b****** at me," said Rawat.
"I told him I didn't want any problems, but he couldn't do that to a woman. He kept making racial comments then he punched me on the side of the cheek. He punched me a second time and I fell to the ground."
[...]
But his story gets worse. The shop where he worked has fired him because he needed four weeks off to recover from his injuries. "I was released from the hospital on Monday and I'm still in lot of pain. I have painkillers to take and I need to stay on a liquid diet. I lost my job, though because they weren't able to give me the month off," he says.
