Yes, and I said "forget that", as in, "screw Lord of the Flies, Battle Royale is much scarier territory". But I suppose it was a little ambiguous, and for that I apologize.
ROCKVILLE, Maryland (AP) -- Charges against a man accused of raping and repeatedly molesting a 7-year-old girl have been dropped because the court took too long to find an interpreter fluent in his native West African language.
Montgomery County Circuit Judge Katherine D. Savage dismissed the nearly three-year-old case against Mahamu Kanneh last week, saying the delays had violated the Liberian immigrant's right to a speedy trial.
"This is one of the most difficult decisions I've had to make in a long time," Savage said from the bench Tuesday. She said she was mindful of "the gravity of this case and the community's concern about offenses of this type."
Prosecutors are considering whether to appeal the dismissal. They cannot refile the charges.
Police arrested Kanneh, of Gaithersburg, in August 2004 after witnesses told police he assaulted the girl multiple times. He spent one night in jail and was released on a $10,000 bond with the restriction that he have no contact with minors.
Prosecutors at first maintained Kanneh could understand the proceedings without translation into his native Vai, a tribal language that linguists estimate is spoken by about 100,000 people mostly in Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Prosecutors pointed out that Kanneh attended high school and community college in Montgomery and spoke to detectives in English.
A court-appointed psychiatrist recommended that an interpreter be appointed and judges who handled subsequent hearings heeded that advice. But officials could not find a competent interpreter of Vai who would stay.
The first interpreter stormed out of the courtroom in tears because she found the facts of the case disturbing. A second interpreter was rejected for faulty work. A third Vai interpreter was located, but at the last minute, that person had to tend to a family emergency.
In recent weeks court officials had found a suitable interpreter, but Savage ruled that too much time had already passed.
Prosecutor Maura Lynch had argued that dismissing the indictment "after all the efforts the state has made to accommodate the defendant would be fundamentally unfair."
Kanneh's attorney, Theresa Chernosky, declined to comment.
Loretta E. Knight, the court clerk responsible for finding interpreters, said her office searched exhaustively for a speaker of Vai. She said court officials contacted the Liberian Embassy and courts in all but three states.
The Washington Post reported that it identified three Vai interpreters Thursday with help from the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters, including one in Gaithersburg.
WRIGHTWOOD, Calif. (July 20) - California highways have been shut down by wildfires, mudslides, earthquakes and police chases. Add one more hazard to the list: road rage.
Drivers inconvenienced by a road-widening project subjected construction workers to so much abuse - including death threats, BB gun shootings, even a flying burrito - that the state revoked a rush-hour window and shut down the highway altogether.
Now drivers who relied on California Highway 138 are being forced to take a detour that costs them at least a half-hour a day and businesses along the road are suffering.
"A few inconsiderate people have ruined it for the rest of us," complained Julie Dutra, who owns a scrapbook and stationery store in this town nestled in the Angeles National Forest about 50 miles northeast of Los Angeles.
Dutra's complaint has become a familiar refrain in a state where people have moved in droves from big cities to a more affordable lifestyle in valleys, deserts and mountains, where they hope to escape the hassles of urban living that often come with more cars: congestion, smog and aggressive driving.
Highway 138 connects two such areas that have swollen with urban refugees in the past decade or so. Without it, roughly 20,000 drivers a day have to take a winding, two-lane road or other, indirect routes that predate the region's population boom.
"If you have taken time out of someone's day and add more time to it, their patience levels go off the Richter scale," said Terri Kasinga, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Transportation.
In the five years leading up to the start of construction last summer, there were nearly 3,000 traffic collisions and 68 deaths, according to the California Highway Patrol. The highway had become so dangerous it had been dubbed "Blood Alley."
A $44 million widening project was supposed to alleviate the danger, not create a new class of victims.
The first sign things were going to turn ugly was after the transportation department allowed drivers to use the highway only during rush hour last summer, with traffic flowing in one direction at a time and creeping along behind escort vehicles.
One person called and said he would climb a water tower and shoot workers. Next came angry exchanges, with one driver tossing a burrito at a construction worker. Vandals tore down barricades and construction equipment was stolen, and authorities threatened to shut down the highway.
"We explained to the community that if this continued we would omit the escorts," said Dennis Green, a transportation department consultant.
The warning didn't seem to resonate.
Last September, Charles Fenn was arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon on allegations that he clipped a flagman with his vehicle on his way home to Wrightwood. When authorities finally caught up with him at his house, they noticed he had shaved off his mustache, said CHP Officer Jeff Perez.
"I'm the victim," Fenn maintained in a brief phone interview, declining to comment further. His criminal case is pending and he's been sued by the flagman. Fenn has he pleaded not guilty.
In November, an elderly woman struck another construction worker who was badly injured and has not returned to his job. It wasn't known if the woman's actions were intentional or she was confused, Kasinga said.
Earlier this year, another worker felt a stinging sensation on the back of her leg. When she looked down, she found a BB pellet on the ground, Kasinga said.
Citing the continued clashes and the need to expand the construction zone, the state shut down the road last month and made good on its threat to yank the escorts.
There hasn't been any violence lately, and the contractor now expects to finish by Sept. 11, a couple of weeks early.
Although many of the communities support the road repairs - the first major improvements since 1934 - businesses have been crippled by the closures. Some stores in this tourist town that is home to Mountain High ski resort report a drop of as much as 50 percent in sales from last summer.
"It was a ghost town last weekend," said Nancy Youngblood, who owns a collectibles shop called Something Old, Something New. "We just don't want people to forget about us."
Others have struggled to get around the delays caused by the work.
Samantha Frager, 18, said she used to commute to her job at a Mexican restaurant in Wrightwood from nearby Phelan and had to leave about 30 minutes early because of construction delays.
"It's been more of an irritation, a hassle, more than anything," said Frager, who now lives in Wrightwood but had to pick up a second job so she could pay her rent.
Tony Albers had to tack on an extra 10 to 15 minutes to his 60 mile commute to a heating and air conditioner distributorship near Los Angeles. He worries about safety on a two-lane road that serves as an alternate route this summer.
"The extra drivers make it dangerous," said Albers, 41. "In the end it's going to be worth having these delays to have a better highway."
An Indianapolis girl may have been among the first victims of Mattel's magnet mishap at the center of Tuesday's recall of millions of dolls made in China.
Paige Kostrzewski was 7 years old in July 2005 when she was playing with her new Polly Pocket toy, whose plastic clothes attached to the doll with magnets.
When some of the magnets detached from some of the clothing, Paige placed two of them between her lips so that her hands would be free to affix the rest of the clothes, said her mother, Misty May.
A few days later, the girl complained of abdominal pain, but May attributed it to the flu.
"I never thought in a million years she'd swallowed a magnet," the 27-year-old mother of four told CNN in a telephone interview.
But May's concern for her daughter soon heightened.
"When she started puking green, that's when I knew something wasn't right," she said.
May took Paige to a hospital, where a scan revealed that two magnets -- each about the size of a watch battery -- had lodged in her small bowel.
Surgery discovered the magnets had attached to each other, separated only by a thin piece of tissue, May said.
"She had ended up swallowing two of the magnets, and they had somehow connected together inside her intestine, which caused two holes -- punctures -- in her intestines, which caused everything to just seep into her body," May said.
With the seepage came a massive infection.
"If I had waited a few more days, she would have died," May said doctors had told her.
Paige, who will be 10 in November, required two weeks of hospitalization for treatment of her infection and return trips to the doctor every few weeks for months thereafter, May said.
In all, the treatment cost about $40,000.
"I went straight to a lawyer," she added.
Retained by the family, product-liability attorney Gordon Tabor filed suit, and Mattel settled for an amount he would not disclose.
Mattel's CEO, Bob Eckert, said he would not discuss litigation.
"I bet he won't," Tabor told CNN.
Last November, the 62-year-old toymaker voluntarily recalled 4.4 million Polly Pocket products, about 2.5 million of them in the United States. That recall was expanded Tuesday.
May said the experience has moved her to alter her toy-buying habits. "I inspect things more, and there's certain things now I won't allow them to play with no more -- nothing with magnets, nothing that I think is going to fall apart."
May faulted the company for not having recalled the products sooner. "It should have been done two years ago, when my daughter almost died," she said.
A representative of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group in Washington, said Mattel should have had better safeguards in place.
"They should have never allowed it to happen in the first place," said Ed Mierzwinski, the organization's consumer program director. "They have a responsibility to avoid recalls."
That's so stupid, it was a freak accident that could have happened to anybody for swallowing magnets! The problem here is that medical bills are so high.
TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese biker failed to notice his leg had been severed below the knee when he hit a safety barrier, and rode on for 2 km (1.2 miles), leaving a friend to pick up the missing limb.
The 54-year-old office worker was out on his motorcycle with a group of friends in the city of Hamamatsu, west of Tokyo, on Monday, when he was unable to negotiate a curve in the road and bumped into the central barrier, the Mainichi Shimbun said.
He felt excruciating pain, but did not notice that his right leg was missing until he stopped at the next junction, the paper quoted local police as saying.
The man and his leg were taken to hospital, but the limb had been crushed in the collision, the paper said.
I have never ridden a motorcycle before, but wouldn't you feel a slight weight shift or something, or at least think to look down for a moment at about the same time you feel excruciating pain?
KANSAS CITY, Missouri (AP) -- A man threw his seriously ill wife four stories to her death because he could no longer afford to pay for her medical care, prosecutors said in charging him with second-degree murder.
According to court documents filed Wednesday in Jackson County Circuit Court, Stanley Reimer walked his wife to the balcony of their apartment and kissed her before throwing her over.
The body of Criste Reimer, 47, was found Tuesday night outside the apartment building, near the upscale Country Club Plaza shopping district.
Stanley Reimer, 51, appeared dazed when authorities arrived. He was taken away from the scene by ambulance.
Reimer was charged Wednesday. He remained jailed on $250,000 bond and was scheduled to be arraigned Thursday.
In the probable cause statement filed with the charges, police said Reimer was desperate because he could not pay the bills for his wife's treatment for neurological problems and uterine cancer.
Investigators said that Reimer was in the apartment when they arrived. He told them, "She didn't jump," but did not elaborate, they said.
Criste Reimer's caregiver told police she could barely walk and would not have been able to climb over the railing of the balcony, according to the probable cause statement.
Reimer's alleged motive emerged after several more hours of questioning, police said.
According to Jackson County Probate Court records, Criste Reimer had been in ill health for several years. Her weight had fallen to 75 pounds and she was partly blind.
According to the court records, she had no health insurance to pay for medical bills that ranged from $700 to $800 per week.
The Probate Court documents were filed in April, when Stanley Reimer petitioned to be allowed to sell personal property his wife owned in Wheeler County, Texas, for $20,000.
The documents listed her assets at approximately $6,700, with monthly income of $725 from oil royalties and Supplemental Security Income.
It was not immediately known if Stanley Reimer had an attorney.
Man, that's depressing. I know what he did was unforgivable, but that's gotta be rough watching your loved one slowly die in front of you and not being able to afford keeping her alive. Of course, there were better (and more legal, sane, humane and moral) solutions available to him.
Well, our health care system in the US is atrocious. Granted, we have access to some of the best care in the world, but it is so poorly financially structured.
My dad was telling me a week or so ago that a bill was recently passed through Congress that no longer requires drug manufacturers to negotiate prices of new drugs. They set their own prices. Sorry, I can't source that, but apparently it was on 60 minutes.
A man in Florida surprised police by handing in a surface-to-air missile launcher during a gun amnesty in the city of Orlando.
Under the no-questions-asked scheme, "Kicks for Guns", anyone who surrendered a firearm would receive trainers or $50 (£25).
The Orlando Sentinel newspaper said the man exchanged the rocket launcher for designer footwear for his daughter.
He told the newspaper he found the 4ft (1.2m) weapon in a shed last week.
The unidentified man said he had tried in vain to get rid of the launcher, which is designed to blow aircraft out of the sky.
"I took it to three dumps to try to get rid of it and they told me to get lost."
"I didn't know what to do with it, so I brought it here," he told the newspaper.
Besides the missile launcher, Orlando Police collected more than 310 guns during the amnesty.
After inspecting the rocket launcher, police spokeswoman Sgt Barbara Jones said: "I tell you, you never know what you're going to get."
That's good he turned it over to the authorities and didn't(and wasn't allowed to) dump it off in some random place. I wonder whose shed he found this in.
I have no idea what to make of this story. On the one hand I have my loathing of the EU and on the other hand I have my loathing of the death penalty...
well, there are so many jokes to make about Texas in reference to this, but wow, I didn't realize that Texas had over 1/3 of the executions. That is pretty bad.
I gotta warn you guys, this may be the most fucked up story yet in this thread. I seriously thought about whether I should post it or not since there's absolutely no humor to be found here. It's just a horrible story of senseless brutality and tragic violence. If you decide to read it, I apologize in advance for ruining your day.
Boy, 5, doused in gas, set on fire by masked men
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Five-year-old Youssif is scarred for life, his once beautiful smile turned into a grotesquely disfigured face -- the face of a horrifying act by masked men. They grabbed him on a January day outside his central Baghdad home, doused him with gas and set him ablaze.
It's an act incomprehensibly savage, even by Iraq's standards today. No one has been arrested and the motive remains unknown.
In a war-ravaged city torn by sectarian violence and marked by acts of vengeance, this attack's apparent randomness stands out as an example of what life has become in a place where brutality -- even against young children -- is a constant.
"They dumped gasoline, burned me, and ran," Youssif told CNN, pointing down the street with his scarred hands where his attackers fled. Photo See photographs of Youssif before and after the attack »
As he sucked his thumb, he repeated, "I was burning." He tried to put the flames out himself.
It looks as though this boy's face melted and then froze into rivers cutting through swollen hard flesh. It's hard to see the energetic outgoing child his parents describe beneath the sullen demeanor that defines Youssif today.
"He's become spiteful, I am not sure why," said his mother, Zainab. "He is jealous of everyone. If I say the slightest thing to him, he cries. He's sensitive." Video Watch the mother describe how she cries at night wracked with guilt »
Even things like eating have become a chore. His face contorts when he tries to shovel rice into his mouth, carefully angling the spoon and then using his fingers to push the little grains through lips he can no longer fully open.
He has also become jealous of the baby sister he used to dote on. "I sit sometimes at night and cry," Zainab said, her voice heavy with guilt. "If only I hadn't let him go outside, if only I hadn't let him play."
It was on January 15 that masked men attacked her boy, their identities still unknown. Zainab said she was upstairs at the time.
"I heard screaming. I thought someone was fighting or something," she said.
She ran downstairs, saw her son and fainted. When she came to, she barely recognized her child. "His head was so swollen, you couldn't see his eyes, and his nose was pushed in."
"There was blood," she added, shuddering slightly. "The skin was melted off."
He spent two months in the hospital recovering from the severe burns. These days Youssif spends most of his time indoors, in front of the computer. It's only then that traces of the 5-year-old in him emerge. "He can't play outside with the other kids," Zainab said. "The other day they were playing, and he came in crying. I asked him, 'What's wrong?' and he said, 'They won't play with me because I am burned.'"
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She said he once wanted to be a doctor and he loved kindergarten. "He used to be the one who would wake me up every morning, saying let's go to school," Zainab recalled.
She coaxed him to tell me the few words he knows in English. "Girl, boy, window, fan," he said, his voice barely audible, the words barely intelligible.
Doctors told the family there is little more they can do to help Youssif. The family can't afford care outside Iraq.
So Zainab has taken a massive risk by telling her story to the world. Her husband works as a security guard, and it's too dangerous for him to talk to the media.
"I'd prefer death than seeing my son like this," Zainab said.
All she wants is for someone to help her little boy smile again.
Comments
Road Work Rage Closes Highway
Girl, 7, got serious infection after swallowing Mattel magnets in 2005
What a great story to read to brighten my day!
My dad was telling me a week or so ago that a bill was recently passed through Congress that no longer requires drug manufacturers to negotiate prices of new drugs. They set their own prices. Sorry, I can't source that, but apparently it was on 60 minutes.
You knew what you were getting into when you clicked the thread!