H/T Drudge
Police say a passenger set a taxicab on fire during a robbery attempt and died in the blaze. Bowie (Prince George's County, MD) Police say around 4:50 Friday afternoon, a detective spotted the cab on fire. The driver, a seven year veteran of the taxi business, told officers he had picked up a male fare from the Largo metro station and brought him to the 4200 Block of Northview Drive.
Before that, he says, there were warning signs. "He's drinking the spirit," the driver said. "Alcohol." The victim says the passenger, drinking and smoking in the back seat, first hedged and then became angered about a $34 fare. The driver explained the passenger then grabbed him from behind in a headlock, hissing 'Give me your money', and then deliberately set the cab on fire after dousing the back seat area with alcohol. Whatta maroon. If he'd been carrying a gun, he'd have probably put a bullet through his own femoral artery while pulling it out of his pocket and the cabby would only be out a few packages of paper towels and a case of Formula 409...
"He is starting to put down the spirit, and he lit it... the liquor," recalled the driver. The driver with his hair in flames escaped the vehicle, but the passenger did not. One officer told the driver that rubber seals in the car's doors had melted, possibly trapping the would-be robber inside and providing irrefutable proof of God's sometimes twisted sense of humor.
Witnesses came to the driver's aid, helping to put out the flames on his head. Firefighters found the passenger inside dead. His body was burned beyond recognition. Authorities have not yet identified the passenger.
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
08/19/2012 15:41 ||
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#1
...Lawsuit against the taxicab driver and company from the Awardee's family in three, two, one...
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
08/19/2012 17:06 Comments ||
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New York City must be one of the places where old hippies go to die. Hat tip to The Other Perfesser
Alt-weeklies are always dying. But the news Friday that four editorial staffers were laid off or had their hours cut to part-time at The Village Voice -- two features writers, a news blogger and a listings editor -- makes the sad fact of that paper's eventual demise, evident for years, more immediate. The paper now has one news blogger, two features writers, a music editor, a few people working on listings and one critic, aided by a couple contributors, writing about food.
The layoffs at the Voice weren't the only ones: papers across the Village Voice Media company, which owns more or less every notable alternative weekly nowadays, experienced layoffs, I've learned, including those in Minneapolis, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, and Broward-Palm Beach. The Voice itself is planning to move out of its iconic East Village office space in the near future, as I and other staff members found out last year. There have been many ends of an era for a paper that always prided itself at being on the vanguard, but this one seems permanent and final: "I can't imagine how much leaner they can get," said a friend of mine who was recently let go from the Dallas Observer. More at the link
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is set to break months of silence Sunday from Ecuador's Embassy in Britain, where he fled to avoid extradition to Sweden.
London police officers stood guard outside the embassy ahead of the expected appearance, while a dozen Assange supporters showed up. Both groups were outnumbered by the media and by curious shoppers from the upscale stores in the area.
Assange is scheduled to speak Sunday afternoon from the embassy in London, where he has been living, effectively confined to the diplomatic mission in a posh London neighborhood near Hyde Park.
His statement comes as foreign ministers from various South American countries gather in Ecuador to discuss his fate.
The dispute between London and Ecuador broke out when the British Foreign Office cited a little known law that could temporarily suspend the embassy's diplomatic protection and allow authorities to enter and arrest Assange. Ecuador's president Rafael Correa on Saturday called Britain's behavior toward Ecuador "intolerable" and "unacceptable."
During his weekly address, Correa said, "Who do they think they're dealing with? They don't realize Latin America is free and sovereign. We won't tolerate interference, colonialism of any kind."
The president said Ecuador had sought, but did not receive, a guarantee that Assange would not be extradited to a third country.
Assange's supporters fear if he is extradited to Sweden, he could be sent to the United States next. Sweden angrily rejected the allegation on Thursday.
"Sweden does not extradite individuals who risk facing the death penalty," the Foreign Ministry said after Ecuador granted Assange asylum.
I'm thinking it sounds a LOT like Julie has figured out that he's going to be in that embassy for a long, long time...or until the Ecuadorian government gets tired of tweaking the Brits. As far as his other 'demands'...lemme know how that works out, mmmmmmmmmkay?
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
08/19/2012 10:58 Comments ||
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I understand that he is an arrogant abusive asshole. Hope they enjoy his company
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/19/2012 11:09 Comments ||
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For a guy sleeping on the sofa, he sure does have a lot of demands... he really needs to take a seminar on "Negoitating from Strength" that I see advertised in the in flight magazines.
If I were Julian I would be more concerned with the "girl with the Dragon tatoo" waiting for him in Sweden than BO- Heck, POTUS would probably ask him to address the White House Leak Team for a motivational talk.
#2
Agreed something got rost in translation-
However when I went to Japan a few years back I spent a half an hour watching a "pickling shop" open for business for the day and was amased at the number of ingredients that were being pickled in this mom and pop store. As with most things Japanese, very detail oriented and specific.
Maybe it is our definition of associating cucumber pickles with the picling process as a whole is a bit narrow.
A sad reminder that this kind of thing happens all over, not just in America. The odds are about 50% that the perpetrator is one of the 5-10% of the mentally ill who become violent.
Eight people were stabbed or cut by a man wielding a box-cutter Saturday at a subway station just outside of South Korea's capital, police said.
No one died in the 10-minute rampage and the injuries weren't life-threatening, according to three coppers who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to talk to the media. A man was tossed in the calaboose Drop the gat, Rocky, or you're a dead 'un! running away from the station in Uijeongbu, which is home to US and South Korean military bases, the officers said.
In the ornate setting of Warsaw's royal castle Patriarch Kirill, head of Russia's Orthodox Church, and Archbishop Jozef Michalik called for forgiveness and understanding. The memorandum has already been likened to a historic 1965 letter on forgiveness from Polish bishops to their German counterparts that paved the way for a new era of relations between Poland and Germany after the horrors of the Second World War.
Poland's close friendship with Germany now stands in marked contrast with Warsaw's relations with Moscow, which are still dogged by mistrust and a widespread feeling in Poland that Russia has done too little to atone for historical wrongs inflicted on the Poles. Russia's apparent inability to come completely clean and show true regret over the 1940 massacre of thousands of Poles at the hands of Stalin's secret police in the Katyn forests, and the imposition of communist rule after the war still rankles Poland, and colours relations between the two countries.
In response Moscow has long complained that a Polish obsession with history gets in the way of good relations, and interferes with Russia's relations with the West as a whole.
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.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is set to break months of silence Sunday from Ecuador's Embassy in Britain, where he fled to avoid extradition to Sweden.
