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-suspect shot 68 times "That's all the bullets we h...
-Police: Man killed over toilet paper
-Teenage Girl Convicted in Ill. Killing
-Severed Male Body Part Brought To Local Store
-Toddler's Talking Elmo Book Asks 'Who Wants To Die?'
-Restaurant serves alcohol to 5-year-old
-Whale vomit worth millions
-Sony plants secret controls on PCs
-Marijuana Compound Spurs Brain Cell Growth
-Tracking Code Discovered in Color Printers
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Offbeat News
Friday, October 06, 2006
suspect shot 68 times "That's all the bullets we had, or we would have shot him more."
Updated: 10:07 a.m. ET Oct 1, 2006 MIAMI - A fugitive gunman accused of killing a Florida sheriff's deputy was shot 68 times by SWAT team officers who found him hiding in the woods, according to autopsy results. Police fired 110 shots at Angilo Freeland, 27, the target of a massive manhunt in central Florida following the shooting death of Polk County Sheriff’s Deputy Matt Williams Thursday. "That's all the bullets we had, or we would have shot him more," Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd told the Orlando Sentinel newspaper. Judd said Williams was "executed" after Freeland was pulled over in a routine traffic stop on Thursday. Another deputy was wounded and a police dog killed. Williams, 39, was shot eight times—one bullet fired at close range behind the deputy's right ear and another in his right temple, according to autopsy results released on Saturday by the sheriff's office. Sheriff's officials said SWAT team members found Freeland on Friday hiding under a fallen oak tree in a wooded area near where the deputies were shot, and began firing when they saw a gun in his hand.
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Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Police: Man killed over toilet paper
MOSS BLUFF, Florida (AP) -- A man was arrested and accused of fatally beating his roommate with hammers because there was no toilet paper in their home, police said. Franklin Paul Crow, 56, was charged Monday with homicide, according to a spokesman with the Marion County Sheriff's Office. Crow is accused in the death of Kenneth Matthews, 58, the spokesman said. Capt. Thomas Bibb said Crow initially denied his involvement, but later confessed during questioning.(Watch how an 11-year-old helped get the confession -- 1:30) Crow told investigators that the men were fighting about the toilet paper over the weekend when Matthews pulled out a rifle. Crow said he then began beating Matthews with the sledgehammer and claw hammer, according to an affidavit. Matthews was beaten so badly he had to be identified through his fingerprints, detectives said. Crow was being held at the Marion County jail without bond. It was not immediately known whether he had an attorney. Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Teenage Girl Convicted in Ill. Killing
By JAN DENNIS, Associated Press Writer
Wed Feb 22, 6:09 PM ET
DIXON, Ill. - A teenage girl was convicted Wednesday in the killing of a 16-year-old classmate who was choked, beaten and sawed into pieces after an argument over boys. Sarah Kolb, 17, faces up to 60 years in prison.
The victim, Adrianne Reynolds, had just moved to East Moline from Texas about two months before she was killed. Prosecutors said she was just trying to fit in at a new school but picked the wrong friend.
On Jan. 21, 2005, Kolb, Reynolds and schoolmate Cory Gregory were in Kolb's car at a fast-food restaurant when the fight began. Reynolds was killed and her body was burned, dismembered and hidden in two counties.
Gregory also is charged with murder and concealing a homicide and is scheduled to stand trial May 1.
Kolb showed no reaction as the verdict was read. Her family and Reynolds' family wept quietly as the jury was polled.
Later, step-uncle Michael McCollum said Reynolds' family was "overjoyed. It's been a very long road."
Kolb's family declined to comment as they left the courthouse.
The trial was Kolb's second in three months. The first ended in a mistrial in November when a Rock Island County jury deadlocked 11-1 in favor of conviction. Her retrial was moved to Dixon, about 60 miles from the Quad Cities.
In the retrial, Rock Island County State's Attorney Jeff Terronez said Kolb wrote in a class journal that she was going to kill Reynolds just hours before Reynolds was beaten and strangled in the car.
Terronez said Kolb was angry because Reynolds had shown interest in Kolb's boyfriend and Gregory, her ex-boyfriend.
Defense attorney David Hoffman told jurors it was Gregory who killed Reynolds. But prosecutors said Kolb was still accountable because she choked and beat Reynolds before Gregory "finished her off."
Prosecutors say the two took the girl's body to Kolb's grandparents' farm and burned it, then returned two days later, sawed the body into pieces and dumped the remains on the farm and in Black Hawk State Park in Rock Island.
In her first trial, Kolb testified that Gregory strangled Reynolds, then hit Kolb and threatened to kill her, her family and her cats if she reported the crime. Gregory, who has pleaded not guilty, denied that account in a television interview.
Kolb did not testify in her second trial, and the defense rested without presenting a case.
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Severed Male Body Part Brought To Local Store
(KDKA) McKeesport KDKA’s Ralph Iannotti reports that a man went into a local store and asked the clerk to warm up - in the microwave - what appears to be a severed male body part. Customers going in and out of the Giant Eagle Get-Go mini market on 5th Avenue in McKeesport didn't know what to think when they saw police activity on the scene. A man walked in and asked a female clerk if she could use the store microwave to warm up something he had wrapped in a paper towel. Concerned about an unusual odor from the oven, the clerk opened the microwave to check on the item and out tumbled what appeared to be a severed human penis, wrapped up in the paper towel. Police were called immediately and the man ran out of the store empty handed. “Hopefully, they're looking for the person this belongs to,” said Sandy Furman, of McKeesport. “I think that's the one they ought to look for - the one who may be hurt,” said Denny Adler, of McKeesport. “It's shocking that I'm not (surprised). It's just the nature of the beast.” As McKeesport police continue to look into the case, sources say that county homicide detectives have been notified of the incident in case a crime was committed outside McKeesport.
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Thursday, January 26, 2006
Toddler's Talking Elmo Book Asks 'Who Wants To Die?'
A mother in Dallas is one of several parents complaining about a new interactive book for toddlers in which Sesame Street character Elmo asks "who wants to die?" according to a Local 6 News report.Family members said 16-month-old Miranda Boll's new book, "Potty Time With Elmo," was supposed to teach an interactive lesson using voice commands.However, when the book's buttons are pressed, it reportedly says something it is not supposed to -- "who wants to die?"
"It's a sick joke," mother Angela Bolls said. "If it's a joke then it's a bad one, you know? And it's not necessary. It's inappropriate."
Bolls said she checked another copy of the same book and found that it says something completely different; "Who wants to try to go potty?"
The company that makes the book said it has had several complaints concerning the book, according to the report.
Watch Local 6 News for more on this story.
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Restaurant serves alcohol to 5-year-old
NEW YORK -- A mother is suing the chain eatery Applebee's after a restaurant in Manhattan served her five-year-old son a Long Island Iced Tea instead of the apple juice he ordered.
The young boy ended up in the emergency room after he was clowning around, shouting and stumbling more than normal. Cynthia Pereles said her son thought the "juice" tasted funny but she thought he was just being a "pain in the neck." As her child's behavior become more erratic, she eventually took a sip herself and that's when she tasted alcohol.
© 2006
CNN
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Whale vomit worth millions
A STINKING, solidified lump of gunk from the gut of a sperm whale could make an Australian family up to $1 million richer.The 14.75kg block of rare whale excreta, expelled orally, was found by the family on a beach near Streaky Bay on South Australia's west coast.
They were baffled by the substance before inquiries revealed it to be ambergris - a wax-like substance originating from the intestine of a sperm whale, and greatly prized for its use in perfume.
Marine ecology consultant Ken Jury, who is representing the family, said ambergris was worth $US20-$US65 a gram ($27-$87). Mr Jury said ambergris was belched from a sperm whale as a foul-smelling substance.
"It's actually belched out by the animal, would you believe, and those few across the world that have witnessed that or heard it say it's quite remarkable," Mr Jury told ABC radio.
"When a whale does that, particularly a big sperm whale, apparently the sound of it travels for miles across the water."
Mr Jury said the finding was rare. "When the whale throws this out, it's discarded material that it can't digest and includes all sorts of things like hundreds of squid beaks and goodness knows what," he said. "The substance is actually lighter than water and so it floats around the ocean.
"If you were to pick it up immediately after the whale discarded it, you would immediately put it back because it is so foul.
"However, over a period of floating around the ocean for 10 years, the sun and the salt water cleanses this amazing stuff. After 10 years, it's considered clean and all you are getting then is the wonderful musty, very sweet perfume which I have got to say is ultra-smooth.
"You can trace it back to 1000 BC. The Egyptians used it, the Chinese did - they not only used it as perfumes but they used to eat it and they used to give it as gifts. It was literally worth more than gold."
Ambergris has been used as a fixative for fine perfumes, for medicinal purposes and also as an aphrodisiac. It also has been used to enhance the flavours of food and wine, and for herbal and homeopathic remedies.
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Thursday, November 03, 2005
Sony plants secret controls on PCs
Francis Till: Buy Sony, become the enemy
try{if(command.toLowerCase()=="ebinteraction")gEbStdBanners[0].handleInteraction();}catch(e){}
After being caught out by a researcher, Sony has admitted to planting a secret, invisible digital rights management tool on PCs when they play Sony CDs, a bit of malware that can't be removed without damaging host computers.The code prevents the music from being loaded into iTunes and limits copying, according to Good Morning Silicon Valley.Discovered by Sysinternal's Mark Russinovich, the code comes in the form of a "rootkit," something Mr Russinovich describes as cloaking technologies that hide files, Registry keys, and other system objects from diagnostic and security software," noting "they are usually employed by malware attempting to keep their implementation hidden."He found the Sony bug while testing the latest version of RootkitRevealer.The folks at Rootkit.com say Sony licensed the malware (XCP® copy protection) from a UK-based firm called First 4 Internet.Not many apparently noticed at the time, but vnunet.com story hosted on the First 4 Internet website, dated 5 May 2005, advises that the company was then "working with Sony to develop next-generation copyright protection technology that allows CDs to be copied a specific number of times before locking them down."It says that at that point, Sony had shipped nearly two million CDs using the code, but only on discs released in the US and only for "a limited number of artists" -- although the company said it was working on releases aimed at other countries.The CD on which Mr Russinovich discovered the rootkit was apparently purchased through Amazon, a near-universal shipper.Sony has not said how many CDs it has infected with the rootkit or what artists are involved.While other companies make clear that disks are protected in various ways by digital protection systems, Sony apparently provided no warnings that playing an infected CD would plant code on the user's computer, that the code was designed to escape detection and that attempts to remove it could seriously damage a user's computer.In another story hosted on the website, this one from Softpedia and dated later in May, the company says that it is in collaboration with Sony BMG to introduce code that will limit the number of copies that can be made of any CD and render those copies incabable of being themselves copied.This story makes the claim that personal use copying of CDs is the heart and soul of international piracy.The story says that, as at 31 May, about a million disks had been implanted and that the company was working with distributors other than Sony. It also notes that an earlier DRM "solution" provided by MediaMax had been defeated.In August, the company featured in another story, this one from BusinessWire, claiming that American indie labels under Universal Music Group control were using the tool.And this Reuters article, which ran on CNet in June, says the technology is in use by not only Sony and UMG, but Warner Music Group and EMI.Apparently, privacy issues never came into prominence during this ramp up period, but they have exploded into very contentious view since the nature of the DRM tactic was revealed by Mr Russinovich.Especially since the software, once planted, vigorously resists uninstall.As Mr Russinovich noted:
Not happy having underhanded and sloppily written software on my system I looked for a way to uninstall it. However, I didn’t find any reference to it in the Control Panel’s Add or Remove Programs list, nor did I find any uninstall utility or directions on the CD or on First 4 Internet’s site. I checked the EULA and saw no mention of the fact that I was agreeing to have software put on my system that I couldn't uninstall. He found out quickly that a manual uninstall wiped out access to his CD player.Not only had Sony put software on my system that uses techniques commonly used by malware to mask its presence, the software is poorly written and provides no means for uninstall. Worse, most users that stumble across the cloaked files with a RKR scan will cripple their computer if they attempt the obvious step of deleting the cloaked files.
Sony has refused to stop using the malware -- but it appears that Sony is far from alone in using it, so that decision may be based at least in part on commercial disadvantage.But security experts have noted that the masking technigue could be piggybacked by malware developers with far more sinister agendas than DRM -- and so Sony, and First 4 Internet, say they are developing a patch, to be distributed by anti-virus systems, that will uncloak, but not remove, the code.The patch will also be hosted for direct download on Sony BMG's website.According to a Computerworld interview, Sony believes not only that it has done nothing wrong, but that it gives adequate notice of the software through the accompanying end user license agreement (EULA), which specifies that playing the CD on a computer will install software that will remain in residence until removed.Sony spokesman John McKay told Computerworld: “I think the EULA’s pretty clear about what it is. The reason why consumers have really high acceptance levels of these content-protected disks is because they have the functionality that people want.”In the meantime, Sony must contend with the adverse publicity that stems from having declared its customers the enemy -- and users who object to having the code running on their computers are advised to follow the step-by-step instructions provided by Mr Russinovich, until an enterprising engineer automates the process.
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Friday, October 21, 2005
Marijuana Compound Spurs Brain Cell Growth
When it comes to the controversy surrounding medical marijuana, an international team of researchers is busy stirring the pot by releasing findings that suggest the drug helps promote brain cell growth while treating mood disorders.The hippocampus area of the brain where the neuronal growth occurred is key to the regulation of stress and other mood disorders, Zhang's team point out. This region is also important to the control of cognitive processes such as learning and memory.Among the common addictive drugs, marijuana alone appears able to promote neurogenesis when used over time and in the right dosage, the researchers say. In contrast, prior research has demonstrated that chronic administration of cocaine, opiates, alcohol and nicotine inhibits brain cell growth.
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Tracking Code Discovered in Color Printers
It sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it isn't. The pages coming out of your color printer may contain hidden information that could be used to track you down if you ever cross the U.S. government.Last year, an article in PC World magazine pointed out that printouts from many color laser printers contained yellow dots scattered across the page, viewable only with a special kind of flashlight. The article quoted a senior researcher at Xerox Corp. as saying the dots contain information useful to law-enforcement authorities, a secret digital "license tag" for tracking down criminals.It's unclear whether the yellow-dot codes have ever been used to make an arrest. And no one would say how long the codes have been in use. But Seth Schoen, the EFF technologist who led the organization's research, said he had seen the coding on documents produced by printers that were at least 10 years old.
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