Kidnappers in Mexico City killed a five-year-old child by acid injection after discovering they were sought by police, local prosecutors say.
Four suspected kidnappers, including a woman and a 17-year-old boy who knew the victim's family, initially sought a $34,000 ransom after kidnapping the child on October 26, the capital's prosecutor's office said.
"When they found out they were sought by police, they decided to take the victim to a hill... where they killed and buried him," a statement said.
The child was killed with an injection of acid, it added.
The suspects were detained at the weekend after a tipoff from a taxi driver who had picked up one of them with the child and later alerted police after seeing a news report on his disappearance.
Official figures show there were 651 kidnappings in Mexico in the first nine months of the year, although experts say the figure could be two or three times higher because many cases go unreported.
RAVENNA, Mich. (WZZM) - Teammates in his bowling league think after rolling a perfect 300 game Don Doane's heart just gave out.
"You get nervous shooting a 300," says teammate Todd Place. "The pressure keeps building," says bowling alley owner Jim Nutt.
Minutes after achieving the life long goal of a perfect game the 62 year old bowler collapsed and died at Ravenna Bowl in Ravenna. "Don just collapsed," says alley owner Nutt. " At first we thought he just fainted." "Then when I rolled him over I realized it wasn't good," says teammate Place.
The teammates say he was giving a high-five minutes before. They tried to revive him but Doane never spoke another word. He died of what was apparently a massive heart attack "He looked fine, reached across the table and gave me a high-five and he fell over," says Place.
"I think he died by the time he hit the floor." Don Doane was a member of the "Nutt Farm" bowling team at Ravenna Bowl for 45 years. His teammates says its strange not to see him on league nights.
"It was like a book, a final chapter," says Place. "He threw his 300 game with all of his friends, gave each other high-fives and it's like the story ended. He died with a smile on his face."
"Don will be a legend," says Nutt. 'It's something that will never be forgotten as long as people bowl here." Ravenna Bowl is planning a memorial ceremony for Doan's' wife Linda and son Chad.
#1
At least he went out on a high note. He probably died a very happy man.
Rest in peace. There are no gutter balls in heaven.
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11/03/2008 13:59 Comments ||
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"Then when I rolled him over I realized it wasn't good," says teammate Place. "
"No," said Place,"I have had no medical training, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn once."
COL. JOHN W. RIPLEY, U.S. MARINE CORPS (ret.), recipient of the Navy Cross and for years one of my personal heroes, has passed away.
Ripley, 69, was awarded the Navy Cross the nations second-highest award for valor in combat for single-handedly blowing up the Dong Ha Bridge in Vietnam, thus blunting the North Vietnamese Army's Easter Offensive on April 2, 1972.
The enemy was attacking in great strength huge numbers of infantry, tanks, artillery and Ripley's little force was ordered to "hold and die."
Dying would be easy. But the only way to hold was to blow the bridge spanning the Dong Ha River. And, as Ripley said, he was "the Marine there to do it."
Then a 33-year-old captain, Ripley accomplished his task by dangling from the bridge's I-beams, climbing along the length of the bridge hand-over-hand, his body weighted down with explosives, the enemy shooting at him, desperately trying to kill the lone Marine hanging beneath the bridge.
In a June 16, 2008 interview for Marine Corps Times, Ripley said I had to swing like a trapeze artist in a circus and leap over the other I-beam. ... I would work myself into the steel. I used my teeth to crimp the detonator and thus pinch it into place on the fuse. I crimped it with my teeth while the detonator was halfway down my throat.
Ripley set the charges and moved back to the friendly side of the river, all the while under heavy fire.
When the timed-fuses detonated, Ripley running for his life on the road leading away from the bridge was literally blown through the air by the massive shockwave he had engineered. The next thing he remembered, he was lying on his back as huge pieces of the bridge were hurtling and cartwheeling across the sky above him.
In an interview for Americans at War (U.S. Naval Institute), Ripley said, "The idea that I would be able to even finish the job before the enemy got me was ludicrous. When you know you're not gonna make it, a wonderful thing happens: You stop being cluttered by the feeling that you're going to save your butt."
A Virginia native, Ripley served in the Marine Corps for 35 years: He commanded three Marine infantry platoons (one rifle, one weapons, one reconnaissance), three rifle companies, a British Royal Marine Commando company (which operated alongside Gurkha infantry in Malaya), a U.S. Marine rifle battalion and a Marine infantry regiment. He also held a variety of other posts from professor to university president. He directed the Marine Corps' History and Museums Division. He testified before Congress on the dynamics and rigors of combat. And a Forward Operating Base in Afghanistan was named for him.
In addition to being one of the Corps greatest heroes and a legend among midshipmen at Annapolis (his alma mater), this year Ripley became the first Marine inducted into the U.S. Army Ranger Hall of Fame.
Incidentally, a signed copy of Col. Charles H. Waterhouse's painting depicting Ripley's exploits at the Dong Ha Bridge hangs in my office as a reminder that as we read in Philippians "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me."
Considering the lives saved and the superhuman feat performed under intense enemy fire at Dong Ha, I believe Col. Ripley's Navy Cross should have been and should be upgraded to the Medal of Honor.
#2
His heroic act is very well described in the book Easter Offensive by Turley. This is a book that should be read by all those that think that the ARVN could not fight.
The complaint, filed Sept. 16 to the Human Right Tribunal of Ontario, alleges that John Sit, owner of the New Locomotion Strip Club on Matheson Blvd., got rid of Ms Ouwroulis back on June 6 because of her age [44 at the time]. She says she had been earning up to $8/k month there.
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There's a whole world of people out there, and boy, are they pissed off.
The anonymity of the Internet encourages online ranting, from election-season tirades to mockery of celebrities.
On political blogs, the invective flies. Posters respond to the latest celebrity gossip with mockery or worse. Sports fans set up Web sites with names that begin with "fire," hoping coaches, athletic directors and sportscasters lose their jobs.
Continued on Page 49
#2
CNN sez "The anonymity of the Internet encourages online ranting, from election-season tirades to mockery of celebrities."
I think someone's not happy at how they are being marginalized by people doing actual research and trying to find the truth as opposed to themselves trying to manufacture it.
Professors at the Cairo-based al-Azhar University said that they were against the enrollment of Christian students, while professors from other Egyptian universities called for more flexibility after the matter was taken to court.
Coptic lawyer Mamdouh Nakhla has filed a lawsuit against al-Azhar University, highest seat of learning in the Muslim Sunni world, for its refusal to accept Christian students and called it an "unconstitutional university" because it discriminates between Muslims and Christians.
Hussein Eweida, chairman of the al-Azhar University Teaching Staff Club, said the professors will hold a meeting, together with scholars from inside and outside Egypt, then will all present their resolutions to President Hosni Mubarak.
The rejection is attributed to preserving the Islamic identity of the oldest theological university in the world and maintaining the rules upon which it was founded, Eweida told AlArabiya.net.
Eweida argued that law no. 103 for the year 1961, which sets the requirements of enrolling at al-Azhar University, stated that only Muslim graduates of al-Azhar high schools or those with university degrees can be enrolled in the Sunni university. Muslim students from other universities can also enroll after passing the required exams. "Let's ask our Christian brothers if they will accept Muslim students in their seminaries. The answer will be in the negative since there are rules tat ban the enrollment of Muslims," Eweida added.
Eweida dismissed rumors about the separation of theological and secular faculties so that Christians will be able to join the latter. "This will never happen as long as there are professors who bear the name and mission of al-Azhar."
Professor of Islamic Philosophy Dr. Amna Nosseir questioned the motives of Christians fro joining al-Azhar. "They say they want to study Islamic law, but this is not convincing. They can do that in the Faculty of Law or the Faculty of Dar al-Oloum [Arabic and Islamic Studies]. These accept non-Muslims," she told AlArabiya.net.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/03/2008 00:00 ||
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Oman's central bank agrees to provide dollar loans and swaps to local banks facing hard currency shortage, to avoid the world financial crisis.
The central bank declining to say how much liquidity it will pump into Omani banks said in a statement on Sunday that liquidity can be used only to fund local projects, pay back depositors in hard currency, or service foreign loans that are due and un-extendable. The dollar loans and swaps will be provided for a period of between one and three months, the statement said.
Oman is the last Arab Persian Gulf country to intervene in its financial sector in order to fend off the impacts of the current global financial crisis. The other five Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had earlier committed themselves to support their banking sectors.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/03/2008 00:00 ||
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RIYADH: Saudi Arabia has held its first beautiful goat pageant following a series of lucrative camel competitions that have taken off in recent years.
Owners of pedigree Najdi goats from around the Gulf region converged on Riyadh this week, hoping to win the prize for top male and female goat.
The Najdi goat is a pure national product like nothing else in the world, said Sheikh Faisal al-Saadoun, a leading Saudi breeder who organised the show. They are different in terms of beauty, shape and how eye-catching they are.
The goats are named after the central Najd region of Saudi Arabia, where the goats have a distinctive high nose bridge and shaggy hair with a fine, silky quality. They were given a thorough shampoo for the show, according to the official website (wwwl.al-nawader.com) which displayed the winners.
Most of the goats in the competition were bred from one star goat, Burgan (Volcano), from Saadoun's stable and have been exported around the Gulf in trade worth millions of riyals.
Burgan was not on display at the show as the owners fear he could be afflicted by the evil eye. But that did not stop offers from the Qatari royal family to buy him, the compere told the gathering.
Saadoun sold dozens of goats from his stable for at least 100,000 riyals ($26,000) each at the show, adding to some 8 million riyals he has made over the years breeding from Burgan.
This male goat is different. He is historic and he has contributed to developing the Najdi goat, he told Reuters, as poets recited odes in praise of the goats over loud speakers. The winner in the male category was a son of Burgan with a value of 450,000 riyals.
The gathering at a ranch outside Riyadh gave breeders a chance to trade but Abu Ahmed, a breeder from the United Arab Emirates, was disappointed that Saadoun did not take his offer of 350,000 riyals for a one son of Burgan. I wanted to develop the breed from the point it has got to, he said.
However, camels remain the pride of the Bedouins. Delicate females or strapping males can sell for more than a million riyals and camel-racing is a popular throughout the Gulf.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/03/2008 00:00 ||
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A young man grew fed up with modern life and decided to leave the big city and become a shepherd, spending months in the seclusion of the distant mountains alone with his thoughts and sheep. So he went up the high mountains where he found three older shepherds with a big flock of sheep, and asked them to show him the ropes. The shepherds agreed. The young man spent a week with them. One evening by the fire he asked casually,"So how do you guys get by with no women around here?"
Said one of the men,"Why, with so many sheep around, who needs women?"
The youngster shuddered: "Ewwwww! How horrible! How can you...?"
The three men only smiled and said nothing.
Another week passed and one morning the young man realised that the tension in his groin had grown unbearable. He remembered what the men had said, and looking at the sheep, thought, "Hmm, why not after all..."
He chose a moment when none of the older shepherds were around, and grabbed one of the nearest sheep. However, the others showed up in a minute, and seeing him with the sheep burst out laughing.
"What? What?!!", shouted the young man, blushing. "You told me that's what you did yourselves, didn't you??!"
LONDON'S financial district will get bombproof recycling bins from next year, the company that makes them says. The bins, which cost around £30,000 ($72,000) each, will also feature news and weather information on LCD screens.
"From a blast technology side, it's just something that should be there," said Brian James of Media Metrica, the company providing the product.
Media Metrica will fund the production, installation and maintenance of the bins after signing a 15-year contract with the City of London, the local authority that administers the British capital's financial district.
Mr James said the company was in talks with potential corporate sponsors, and expected to finalise those arrangements by the end of March 2009, with the bins being installed by the end of next year in around 100 locations. "It's a pretty expensive product to produce, because as you can imagine, the blast technology is basically military technology," he said. "It's very expensive to put in."
The bins are made of a steel composite that would absorb the force and fire of any potential explosion.
Mr James said that while the company would be interested in installing the recycling bins on London Underground stations, it was more focused on discussions with other major cities such as New York, Singapore and Tokyo.
There are very few rubbish bins in the City of London. Most were removed in the early to mid-1990s after IRA attacks in the capital over fears that bombs could be concealed in them. Other public areas regarded as sensitive, such as footpaths outside parliament and civil service buildings, also lack rubbish bins.
"The seven pensioners, including a 96-year-old and her friend who dedicated 40 years of her life to the NHS, have been told their teatime chats are a 'noise nuisance' which disturbs nearby residents.
Housing Association bosses have now warned the group the four benches in Mottingham, south London, they sit on will be removed if they don't tone down the volume of their conversations. Being 'hard of hearing' is now punishable?
The pensioners meet up once a day to talk about such every things like the weather, their families and the cost of living. Ann Reddy, 69, who is recovering from a stroke and has had 45 operations, said she was horrified about being branded a trouble-maker."
"But someone has complained and said we are making too much noise." Her friend, 96-year-old Rose Anderson, a great-grandmother of nine great, said she would "go mad" if forced to sit in her flat all day by herself.
She said: "I'm so old now and I have got nothing else to do with my day.
"We all deserve to be treated with a lot more respect than this." No, you're just a pensioner - Broomleigh Housing Association
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
11/03/2008 10:17 ||
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But Broomleigh Housing Association are refusing to back down. Julie Schoon, assistant director of supported housing at Broomleigh, said: "As a registered social landlord we are responsible for ensuring that any complaints of noise nuisance or other forms of anti-social behaviour are acted upon."
Help The Aged report last week found that a third of people over 65 in the UK - 3.6 million in total - now live alone and have little contact with their friends and family.
Latest figures show more than a million pensioners half a million leave their house less than once a week, and that 300,000 feel like prisoners in their own homes.
TOBA TEK SINGH, PAKISTAN, Nov 2: Scores of parents of children under five have refused anti-polio vaccination for their children in the district, a health department official told Dawn on Sunday.
Asked about the reason for the peoples refusal to administer vital vaccination to their children, the source said, most of them talked about the propaganda that pig fat was being used in the vaccine. Many others said the vaccine was manufactured by Jews, so it was harmful for their children.
EDO (Health) Dr Masood Iqbal Bukhari said he lacked the exact count of the people who had avoided the vaccination. However, he said, it was a false propaganda against the vaccine. He said he had already informed the higher authorities about the public response to the campaign.
The EDO said eight-month-old Draz Khan the first polio case in the district was administered vaccination but it could not work. Meanwhile, a World Health Organisation team visited Chak 346-JB (Gojra tehsil) and examined the polio case detected here the other day.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/03/2008 10:44 ||
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Many others said the vaccine was manufactured by Jews
It is worse than that - from their bios, it looks like both Salk and Sabin, the inventors of the polio vaccine, were both Jewish. Oh, those cunning Jews, is there no end to their life-saving treachery?
TIRUCHI: Bharathidasan University has come forward to offer free education and job training to bring about academic and economic inclusion of transgenders through its Centre for Distance Education. Likewise, skill training and job placement would be undertaken through the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Career Development, Vice-Chancellor M. Ponnavaikko announced recently at the inaugural of a seminar on Transgender Issues and Concerns for Social Workers, organised by the Universitys Department of Social Work.
The Department organised the seminar with the purpose of finding answers to crucial questions pertaining to the gender categorisation of transgenders, the societys readiness to accept them as equals, and the psycho-social issues surrounding them, said P. Ilango, Professor and Head of the Department.
The Centre for Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy would analyse the methodologies for their social inclusion, Centre Director K. Raja Mohan Rao added.
S. Srinivasan, Project Officer, Tamil Nadu Women Development Corporation, Tiruchi, informed that 135 transgenders in the district have enrolled as members of the exclusive Welfare Board.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/03/2008 05:59 ||
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TWO young Swedish women tied the knot at the weekend in the first known lesbian wedding at the Taj Mahal, India's ethereal monument to love.
The couple, known only as Sandra and Sarah, followed Hindu rituals during the ceremony, which was conducted by a priest at the Mahadeva Shiva temple near the Taj Mahal in the town of Agra. After exchanging garlands, Sandra, 19, marked the head of 18-year-old Sarah with vermilion. They then made seven circuits around a fire in the traditional marriage custom.
The priest, Dharm Das, initially refused to marry the couple but relented after they gave an offering to the temple and said they would be his life-long disciples, reports said.
"Although the Hindu system of marriage doesn't allow such relationships or marriages, I am impressed with the love that the two women have for the monument of love," Mr Das told the Mail Today. "They had also argued that their Swedish society allows such kind of marriages."
The Taj Mahal was built by Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his second wife Mumtaz Mahal who died giving birth in 1631.
At Saturday's ceremony, Sandra acted as the groom while Sarah played the role of the coy bride, newspapers reported.
"We were in love with each other since childhood," Sandra said. "A few months ago we came to Agra and were mesmerised by the Taj Mahal.
"Both of us had read extensively about the emperor and his love and decided to draw a parallel and get married in the proximity of the Taj."
The couple live together in New Delhi working for a children's charity, reports said.
The priest said the ceremony had attracted much local curiosity as homosexuality is illegal in India. "Since it was practically a once-in-a-blue moon event in Agra, a large number of people gathered outside the temple for a glimpse of the couple," he said.
One priest told the Times of India that "foreigners are mocking our system and misusing the liberal parameters. Such waywardness must be stopped."
An ancient grave unearthed in modern-day Israel containing 50 tortoise shells, a human foot and body parts from numerous animals is likely one of the earliest known shaman burial sites, researchers say.
Hebrew University of Jerusalem researcher Leore Grosman and his colleagues say the 12,000-year-old grave dates back to the Natufian people who were the first society to adopt a sedentary lifestyle. "The interment rituals and the method used to construct and seal the grave suggest this is the burial of an ancient shaman, one of the earliest known from the archaeological record," they wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers say shamans play an important role in many cultures, mediating between the human and spiritual worlds and acting as messengers, healers, magicians to serve the community.
The Israeli team found the bones in a small cave in the lower Galilee region of present-day Israel that was a Natufian burial ground for a least 28 people.
At the time of burial, more than 10 large stones were placed directly on the head, pelvis, and arms of the elderly woman whose body was laid on its side. The legs were spread apart and folded inward at the knee. The special treatment of the body and use of stones to keep it in a certain position suggests the woman held a unique position in the community, likely some sort of a shaman.
"The burial of the woman...is unlike any burial found in the Natufian or the preceding Palaeolithic periods," Mr Grosman's team wrote. "We argue that this burial is consistent with expectations for a shaman's grave."
The woman was also interred with some unusual grave goods, including the complete tortoise shells and select body-parts of a wild boar, an eagle, a cow, a leopard, and two martens, as well as a complete human foot.
The grave portrays several hallmarks that later become central in the spiritual arena of cultures worldwide, the researchers added. "Tortoises, cow tails, eagle wings, and fur-bearing animals continue to play important symbolic and shamanistic roles in the spiritual arena of human cultures worldwide today," they wrote. "It seems that the woman in the Natufian burial was perceived as being in a close relationship with these animal spirits."
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
There's a whole world of people out there, and boy, are they pissed off.
