I read that first line as, "John Cave is dead, but it doesn't keep him from going to public school." I was both inspired by his persistence, and horrified by his apparent zombie-ness.
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- The 17-year-old murder suspect police say was urged by his mother to shoot a rival after a fistfight turned himself in to police Friday.
Clarence Johnson had been sought by investigators since the fatal shooting of Robert Dawson, also 17, on Wednesday night.
Johnson initially walked away from what witnesses described as a routine fight with Dawson -- but then, according to police, he returned with a gun his mother gave him, along with instructions to seek revenge.
Police have declined to say why they believe his mother, Vanessa Johnson, gave her son the gun and ordered him to kill.
The mother, 44, was arrested Thursday. Inside her home, they found a small amount of cocaine and a wall-mounted picture of her son holding a pistol and a wad of cash.
His attorney, Clif Stoutz, said the teen had been in the city since the shooting, "scared for his life."
"He understands he is in a very, very serious situation that his life depends on," Stoutz said.
Johnson was scheduled to appear for a bond hearing Saturday.
Dawson and his mother spent 10 hours on a bus from Dallas, Texas, on Wednesday and returned to their hometown about 3:30 p.m., relatives said. Four hours later, Dawson became the city's 21st murder victim of 2007.
A lot of cities keep running tallies like that. The important part of the statistic is that this makes 21 people murdered since January 1st, only a little over a month since the start of the year. That's a little effed-up, maybe more so than the rest of the article.
In Japan they have displays outside police stations that tell you how many arrests have been made and how many people have died that day. There's a third statistic too, but I forget it.
Yahoo News:
ROME - Archaeologists working on the eve of
Valentine's Day carefully began digging up the bones of a prehistoric couple on Tuesday, hoping to keep their 5,000-year-old embrace undisturbed forever.
The burial was unearthed on the outskirts of Mantua during construction work. The site is 25 miles south of Verona, the city where Shakespeare set the story of "Romeo and Juliet," and the discovery fueled musings in the media about prehistoric love.
After undergoing lab tests, the couple are to be displayed at Mantua's Archaeological Museum.
If you click the link, it shows a picture of them and has the full article. I find the whole thing somewhat eerie and I feel slightly touched. It's sad in a way since they are going to display them like an art piece. Something like that they should leave untouched.
Jeff brought this up in the Amusing News Thread. I suppose which one it belongs in is a matter of opinion. I'ts kind of neat to see some semblance of evidence that interpersonal human relationships may have been around for so long, but other than that, this find doesn't really educate us all that much. That said, I'm all for the excavation of ancient fossils.
If you click the link, it shows a picture of them and has the full article. I find the whole thing somewhat eerie and I feel slightly touched. It's sad in a way since they are going to display them like an art piece. Something like that they should leave untouched.
No, its pretty much required in some districts, mine included. And unfortunately, this also means sitting through the modernized movie version from the 90's.
(AP) An off-duty police officer having an early Valentine's Day dinner with his wife was credited Tuesday with helping stop a rampage in a crowded shopping mall by an 18-year-old gunman who shot five people to death before he was killed by police.
A day after the shooting, investigators struggled to figure out why a trench-coated Sulejmen Talovic opened fire on shoppers with a supremely calm look on his face.
The teenager wanted "to kill a large number of people" and probably would have killed many more if not for the off-duty officer, Police Chief Chris Burbank said.
Ken Hammond, an off-duty officer from Ogden, north of Salt Lake City, jumped up from his seat at a restaurant after hearing gunfire and cornered the gunman, exchanging fire with him until other officers arrived, Burbank said.
"There is no question that his quick actions saved the lives of numerous other people," the police chief said.
Police said it was not immediately clear who fired the shot that killed Talovic.
Talovic had a backpack full of ammunition, a shotgun and a .38-caliber pistol, police said. Investigators knew little about him, except than he lived in Salt Lake City with his mother, the police chief said. He was enrolled in numerous city schools before withdrawing in 2004, the school district said.
"I feel like I was there and did what I had to do," Hammond told reporters. After spotting the gunman, he told his pregnant wife to take cover in the restaurant and went to confront the suspect.
Talovic's aunt, Ajka Onerovic, emerged briefly from the family's house to say relatives had no idea why the young man attacked so many strangers. She said the family moved to Utah from Bosnia.
"He was a such a good boy. I don't know what happened," she told Salt Lake City television station KSL.
Talovic drove to the Trolley Square shopping center _ a century-old former trolley barn with winding hallways, brick floors and wrought-iron balconies, and immediately killed two people, followed by a third victim as he came through a door, Burbank said. Five other people were then shot in a gift shop, he said.
Four people who were wounded remained hospitalized Tuesday, two in critical condition, two in serious.
One of the wounded shoppers, Shawn Munns, 34, was alone outside the mall after a meal with his wife and two stepchildren when Talovic blasted him with a shotgun, according to sister-in-law Jodie Sparrow.
With dozens of pellets embedded in his side, Munns staggered into a restaurant and warned diners about the gunman, Sparrow said.
Outside the mall, candles and flowers were left as memorials to the victims, who were identified as Jeffrey Walker, 52, Vanessa Quinn, 29, Kirsten Hinkley, 15, Teresa Ellis, 29, and Brad Frantz, 24.
Hammond's boss, Ogden Police Chief Jon Greiner, said the state Senate wants to honor him.
"Thank goodness he was there," said Greiner, who is also a state senator. "You don't want to ever say it's good we were there and killed somebody, but it's probably good someone was there."
Accountant Jeff Barlow was on a date at another restaurant when he looked outside and saw the gunman firing from the hip.
"I thought it was some kind of joke _ some kind of movie or stunt," Barlow said. "I didn't believe it was happening. And then I saw a man go down in a courtyard. I realized this was serious. These are real bullets flying around."
His date, Stephanie Bronson, added: "Just crazy. Absolutely terrifying."
David Dean, who owns a greeting-card store at the mall, said three or four people died inside his store, which was packed with Valentine's Day shoppers.
(AP) Eighteen months after Hurricane Katrina, Stella Chambers' modest red-brick house had finally been repaired, and she was waiting for one last utility hookup to move back in. But the 85-year-old woman never made it.
A tornado tore through her neighborhood in the city's Gentilly neighborhood before daybreak Tuesday, flattening her house, ripping apart the front-yard FEMA trailer in which she was living, and killing her.
At least 29 people were injured, including Chambers' daughter, Gail, as the twister heaped more misery on neighborhoods still trying to recover from Katrina. The storm destroyed at least 50 FEMA trailers and dozens of homes, and damaged many others _ many of which were in various states of repair.
"We were trying to get my mother back in the house. Now there is nothing to repair," said Mervin Pollard, whose 81-year-old mother's Katrina-flooded home was reduced to a pile of lumber Tuesday. "How do you start over again when you are already trying to do that?"
Firefighters went door to door, once again searching for victims of a storm. They spray-painted bright orange rectangles on the buildings and trailers and, as with the circles searchers used after Hurricane Katrina, they listed the date of the search and whether bodies were found.
"Some of these houses still have the circle on them from the last search," resident Patrick Clementine said. "Now we're doing it again."
Gov. Kathleen Blanco became teary-eyed as she talked to residents of the suburb of Westwego whose homes were destroyed.
"It's incredible. It just looks like pick-up sticks," she said. "People's lives just torn asunder again."
Blanco issued a disaster declaration, authorizing state aid for the area. She said the state would send in National Guard troops for security.
The tornado hop-scotched a 10-mile path from the west bank of the Mississippi River to the shore of Lake Pontchartrain, striking some neighborhoods that had been hard hit by Katrina and have been slow to recover.
In Gentilly, there are vast stretches of abandoned, gutted houses, dotted by trailers and occasional reoccupied dwellings. Some abandoned houses collapsed in the twister's winds.
Blood covered Gail Chambers' face and was running down her side when she banged on the door for help at about 3:30 a.m., said neighbor Hellean Lewis.
"She was crying and screaming, `Help me! I can't find my mother!'" Lewis said. Searchers found Stella Chambers, crying for her daughter and clinging to life in the rubble. She died at a hospital, where her daughter was listed in stable condition.
There was no immediate estimate of the cost of the damage.
About 21,000 electricity customers in the New Orleans area lost power.
Federal Emergency Management Agency teams began inspecting neighborhoods and said it would provide hotel rooms and trailers for people whose FEMA trailers were unusable. The American Red Cross said 90 people were in shelters late Monday afternoon.
Some storm victims faced the prospect of once again having to find temporary shelter and do battle with insurance companies.
Kamal Namazi, 49, figured the storm did $175,000 in dents, broken windows and other damage to the 18 new and used cars on his lot in Westwego. The car lot was hit by a tornado in 2004. Katrina tore off the roof of his Metairie home and left a foot of water inside.
"Right now, I don't want to live any more," he said. "I don't want to be in this world."
The storm ripped the roof from the 51-room hotel next to Namazi's lot. Owner Stella Lin said 36 rooms were occupied but only minor injuries were reported.
"Some of the people there at the hotel were still living there from Katrina," Westwego Fire Chief Keith Bouvier said.
Lin said her insurance covered only a tiny fraction of her hurricane losses, and she got that after a "really, really, really big fight."
WINDHAM, Conn. - Until recently, Julie Amero says, she lived the quiet life of a small-town substitute teacher, with little knowledge of computers and even less about porn.
She was convicted last month of exposing seventh-grade students to pornography on her classroom computer. She contended the images were inadvertently thrust onto the screen by pornographers‘ unseen spyware and adware programs.
"I‘m scared," the 40-year-old Amero said. "I‘m just beside myself over something I didn‘t do."
Amero says that before her class started, a teacher allowed her to e-mail her husband. She says she used the computer and went to the bathroom, returning to find the permanent teacher gone and two students viewing a Web site on hair styles.
"I did everything I possibly could to keep them from seeing anything," she says.
Several students testified that they saw pictures of naked men and women, including at least one image a couple having oral sex.
The defense argued that the images were caused by adware and spyware — programs that are often secretly planted on computers by Internet businesses to track users‘ browsing habits. They can generate pop-up ads — in some cases, pornographic ones.
But many remain skeptical, including Mark Steinmetz, who served on Amero‘s jury.
The Federal Trade Commission has been cracking down on companies accused of spreading malicious spyware to millions of computer users worldwide. And pop-up blockers that can prevent so-called porn storms are now in wide use.
"What is extraordinary is the prosecution admitted there was no search made for spyware — an incredible blunder akin to not checking for fingerprints at a crime scene," Alex Eckelberry, president of a Florida software company, wrote recently in the local newspaper. "When a pop-up occurs on a computer, it will get shown as a visited Web site, and no ‘physical click‘ is necessary."
Smith, the prosecutor, would not say what he plans to recommend when Amero is sentenced March 2. John Newsone, a defense attorney in Norwich familiar with the case, said Amero might be spared prison or face perhaps a year to 18 months.
Principal Scott Fain said the computer lacked the latest firewall protection because a vendor‘s bill had gone unpaid. "I was shocked to see what made it through," he said.
But Fain also said Amero was the only one to report such a problem: "We‘ve never had a problem with pop-ups before or since."
And before Night Lord can say it: Yes, we know that wouldn't have happened on a Mac. But the subtitute teacher didn't really have a choice in computers, so please spare us.
See? Eternal source of fucked-up news. In fact, I had to turn off the Wii before I kept doing and posted a day's worth of reading material in here.
I don't know where I was talking about Macs other than this and asking questions about the virus protection. I know I talk about Windows a lot, though.
I don't see what the big deal is with the porn case, it was obviously an accident, I really can't see a 40 year old woman lookign up porn while she is substituting. I'm pretty sure that most seventh graders know enough about porn not to freak out. We are just a bit to sensitive about sex in this country, methinks.
Comments
That principal's a jerk. And possibly a cat person.
*ducks*
I seem to be on an unfit parents kick.
Kid: Sure thing, Mom!
Mom: Don't put your eye out.
The tally is all about 'Look at us, our city's dangerous!'
http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/usworld/news-article.aspx?storyid=75670
If you click the link, it shows a picture of them and has the full article. I find the whole thing somewhat eerie and I feel slightly touched. It's sad in a way since they are going to display them like an art piece. Something like that they should leave untouched.
We started reading Romeo and Juliet in English.
"I shalt draw my naked weapon" (Shakespeare 33).
Correct me if I'm slightly off.
Off Duty Cop Helped End Utah Mall Rage
Tornado Hits New Orleans Area; 1 Dead
See? Eternal source of fucked-up news. In fact, I had to turn off the Wii before I kept doing and posted a day's worth of reading material in here.
I don't see what the big deal is with the porn case, it was obviously an accident, I really can't see a 40 year old woman lookign up porn while she is substituting. I'm pretty sure that most seventh graders know enough about porn not to freak out. We are just a bit to sensitive about sex in this country, methinks.