Weird News Thread ....

[Jolie Rouge]

Funeral Planned for Last WTC Firefighter
By KAREN MATTHEWS

NEW YORK (AP) - A vial of blood is all that will be buried at firefighter Michael Ragusa's funeral next week, nearly two years after he was killed in the World Trade Center attack.

The 29-year-old will be the last of the 343 firefighter victims to be memorialized in an official service. His family had hoped his remains would be identified, but his mother, Dee Ragusa, said Sunday that they decided they had waited long enough.

``We always knew in our hearts when it would be the right time, when we would say, 'enough,''' she said.

Of the 2,792 people who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, the medical examiner has identified remains of just over half. Scientists expect to exhaust all available DNA technology in the attempt to identify the rest as early as next year, although unidentified remains will be stored in case new methods are developed.


Many families held memorial services before any remains were identified, but Ragusa's family delayed an official ceremony. His parents decided to hold a funeral after the July wedding of their younger son.


``We got him happily married, and now it was time to take care of Michael,'' Dee Ragusa said.


Instead of the firefighter's remains, his family will bury a vial of blood he had donated to a bone marrow center. The vial will be interred at a cemetery on Staten Island after the funeral Sept. 8.


Dee Ragusa said that if she could not have her son's intact body to bury, she was glad to have the vial of blood. ``I'd much rather have a bottle of blood that flowed through him while he was alive than parts of his body,'' she said.



08/31/03 12:39

[Jolie Rouge]

Originally Posted by Widgetsx3
08-30-2003 10:09 PM

ERIE, Pa. (AP) - A pizza delivery man told police he had been forced to rob a bank and asked authorities to help him minutes before a bomb strapped to his chest exploded and killed him.

On Saturday, federal agents and police in northwestern Pennsylvania were trying to solve the bizarre case of 46-year-old Brian Douglas Wells, who left to deliver a pizza to a mysterious address in a remote area about an hour before he turned up at the bank with a bomb strapped to his body.

No one else was hurt in Thursday's explosion, which happened in front of law enforcement officers as they waited for a bomb squad to arrive.

WJET-TV of Erie captured audio and video from Wells as he sat handcuffed in front of a state police cruiser. "Why is nobody trying to come get this thing off me?" he asked.

A state police spokesman confirmed Friday night that Wells had made a number of statements, including that he had been forced to rob the bank.

The tape shows Wells telling authorities someone had started a timer on his bomb under his T-shirt, and that there was little time left.

"It's going to go off," Wells said. "I'm not lying."

Erie Chief Deputy Coroner Korac Timon said Saturday the bomb appeared to have hung from Wells' neck, and that he had been told it was of a "very sophisticated construction."

FBI Special Agent Bob Rudge called the case unusual, noting that while bank robbers sometimes claim to have a bomb, few actually do.

While no one has been arrested or identified as a suspect, Rudge said the investigation was "going extremely well." Wells' death was being investigated as a homicide and investigators were looking into Wells' background.

Linda Payne, who owns the property where Wells lived, described him as a private, trustworthy person who liked music and cared for three cats. He was a friend of Payne's husband, who also had been a pizza delivery man, she said.

"I couldn't believe that he would rob a bank. He doesn't care that much about money," Payne said. "I think somebody lured him into that place delivering a pizza, dropped a bomb on him and sent him into the bank ... He would not have decided to do that on his own."

Wells' boss and one of the owners of Mama Mia's Pizza-Ria outside Erie, who asked that his name not be published, said Saturday he took a call Thursday for a pizza delivery but didn't recognize the address given.

He put Wells on the phone to get directions. Wells left to make the delivery and never returned, the pizzeria owner said.

The address of the delivery was a rural spot along a main drag that runs south of the city, where a gravel road leads to a television transmission tower.

According to police, Wells entered the PNC Bank branch outside Erie on Thursday afternoon and producing an "extensive note" demanding money and saying he had a bomb. Rudge would not provide any details about the note.

Wells left with an undisclosed amount of money and got into his car. Police surrounded him a short time later in a nearby parking lot, pulled him out of his car and handcuffed him, authorities said.

The bomb exploded about 40 minutes after he entered the bank.

Authorities obtained a search warrant and took evidence from Wells' home, but a state police spokesman refused to say what was taken. The evidence arrived at FBI laboratories in Washington, D.C., but Rudge could not say how long testing would take.

State police forensics teams also searched near the spot of Wells' last pizza delivery. It was not know what, if anything, they found.

__________________



This just gets weirder .....


Co-Worker of Pa. Bank Robber Found Dead

http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news...95.htm&sc=1110

ERIE, Pa. (AP) - A friend and co-worker of a pizza deliveryman who robbed a bank then died when a bomb strapped to his body exploded was found dead at his home Sunday.

Police said there was no obvious connection between the two deaths. Still, authorities sent a bomb squad to search the home in Lawrence Park Township as a precaution, Erie state police Cpl. Mark Zaleski said.

``There was nothing overtly obvious as to the cause of his death,'' Zaleski said, ``but because there's a relationship between the two individuals, we are over there.''

The 43-year-old man, whose name was not released Sunday afternoon, worked with Brian Douglas Wells, 46, who died Thursday shortly after robbing a bank in Erie. Minutes before the bomb went off, Wells told officers who stopped him that he had been forced to rob the bank. No one else was injured in the explosion.


Wells had gone to deliver a pizza to a mysterious address in a remote area about an hour before he turned up at the bank with the bomb strapped to his body.


Police received a call early Sunday asking for medical assistance at the home where Wells' co-worker lived with his parents, but the man refused medical assistance, Zaleski said.


A few hours later, authorities were called again after his parents found him unresponsive. He was pronounced dead at the home and an autopsy was scheduled, Zaleski said. FBI Special Agent Bob Rudge said there was no reason to connect the man's death to Wells' case. There was no answer at the pizza shop where both men worked.



08/31/03 18:39

[Jolie Rouge]

Fugitive Father Defends Medical Standoff
By PAUL FOY

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - A Utah father charged with kidnapping his own son said Sunday that authorities were trying to force chemotherapy on the boy for a cancer that was unconfirmed.

Daren Jensen said his lawyers were asking Utah authorities to drop the custody and kidnapping warrants as part of negotiations to end the standoff over medical treatment for 12-year-old Parker Jensen.

``Any parent with concern for a child would want to know definitely what he has before doing something as invasive as 49 weeks of chemotherapy,'' Jensen said, speaking to The Associated Press by phone from Pocatello, Idaho.

Jensen said he wasn't satisfied by a diagnosis that Parker has a rare and deadly form of cancer, Ewing's sarcoma. He accused the doctors at Primary Children's Medical Center in Salt Lake City of trying to rush the boy into chemotherapy.


He and his wife, Barbara, left Utah two weeks ago and she tried to take Parker to Houston for another medical opinion. The mother and son returned Saturday to Pocatello after Utah authorities foiled their plans by alerting the Houston clinic of the Aug. 9 Utah warrant for Parker's custody.


``They have taken away our rights as parents. It is our decision as to treatment,'' Barbara Jensen told KUTV of Salt Lake City on Sunday.


Daren Jensen was arrested on a fugitive warrant Aug. 16 near his in-laws' residence in Idaho. He is resisting extradition. A warrant also is out for Barbara Jensen.


Utah doctors diagnosed a rare but often fatal form of cancer in Parker and removed a tumor from under his tongue last April. To prevent a reoccurrence, they recommended chemotherapy.


The Houston clinic run by Dr. Stanislaw Bur***ski treats 72 forms of cancer without chemotherapy, but Ewing's sarcoma isn't among them, said Mike Goldberg, the clinic's public relations manager.


``Ewing's is a very different form of cancer and we don't have a trial for it,'' Goldberg told The Salt Lake Tribune.


The family says the boy is testing negative for cancer and that chemotherapy would only stunt his growth and leave him sterile, claims that doctors dismiss.



08/31/03 23:11

[Jolie Rouge]

Pierce Brosnan Wins Rights to Domain Name


GENEVA (AP) - James Bond star Pierce Brosnan has won control of the Internet name www.piercebrosnan.com in a ruling by a United Nations panel.

Arbitrators from the World Intellectual Property Organization ordered the transfer of the domain name to the Irish actor, who had complained that it was being used illegally.

The ruling said the registered owner of the name - Alberta Hot Rods, of Alberta, Canada - had no rights or interests in the name and was using it in bad faith.

Brosnan's lawyers told the panel that the domain linked to another Web site, www.celebrity1000.com, which they said contained biographies of some actors but no information about Brosnan. They noted that the site carries numerous advertising messages, and that the owner appeared to be using Brosnan's name to earn money.


The owner of the site did not file a defense.


Anyone can register a domain name for a few dollars, which has led so-called ``cybersquatters'' to file for famous names to make a fast buck from those who want the names. Some names are worth millions of dollars.


Brosnan's lawyers noted that Alberta Hot Rods is linked to Jeff Burgar, whom they described as a ``notorious cybersquatter.'' In its ruling, the U.N. panel said that Burgar or linked companies have previously been ordered to hand over domain names to other celebrities.


Actors Kevin Spacey and Pamela Anderson, ``Jurassic Park'' author Michael Crichton as well as singing star Celine Dion all have won their domain names from Burgar or companies linked to him.


The U.N. arbitration system, which started in 1999, allows those who think they have the right to a domain to get it back without having to fight a costly legal battle or paying large sums of money.



09/01/03 11:48

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I saw that update Jolie, you beat me to the post though

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BETHEL, Maine (AP) - Dave Hart and Rockie Graham exchanged vows on Monday, pledging their hearts and souls to each other underneath next to a cardboard recycling container.

The couple tied the knot at the Bethel Transfer Station, where they met and love bloomed next to the piles of recycled cans and garbage.

"What a contrast. The tux and the trash," Hart told the Lewiston Sun-Journal.

It was nearly three years ago at the transfer station that Hart met Graham, a committed recycler who now works part-time there. Hart is the station's manager.

When they decided to marry, it was Hart's idea to hold the ceremony where they first met, and where everyone knows them.

But what started out as a low-key event turned into a national news story.

"Inside Edition" flew the couple to New York City last month and outfitted them with expensive wedding attire. The couple were wired with microphones to capture the wedding, which will be shown on the television show this week.

All the hoopla also attracted a lot of guests. Around 250 people attended the wedding, standing on either side of a red carpet laid in the middle of the dump.

Hart wore gloves, top hat and tux. His bride wore a $7,000 wedding dress with sparkling sequins and white roses.

Next to a handmade sign that read "Tires $2 paid at town," guitarist Sam Chapman sang a tune he composed for the couple: "I hope you won't dump me when we marry, or toss me out like a bag of trash, I wouldn't want your burning love to turn to ash."

The crowd pressed in close as local lawyer Mike O'Donnell led the exchange of vows. Dave choked back tears as Rockie told him he was the love of her life.

They exchanged rings, and Hart stomped on the ceremonial champagne glass. Whoops and laughter and clapping filled the air.

The coverage on "Inside Edition" will air at 7 p.m. Sept. 2 on Boston channel WCVB and 12:30 p.m. Sept. 3 on WMTW Channel 8.

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JANESVILLE, Wis. (AP) - To track down this alleged thief, all police had to do was flick on a computer.

A 40-year-old man was arrested Wednesday and charged with stealing a computerized tracking device that uses a global positioning system to keep track of jail prisoners on home detention.

"He apparently didn't know what he had because he would be awfully stupid to steal a tracking device," said correctional officer Thomas Roth, who runs the home detention program at the Rock County Jail.

The $2,500 device was temporarily placed outside a home by a woman serving home detention. The device, which is a little bigger than a brick in size, has a built-in GPS satellite receiver.

Prisoners wear a transmitter about as big as a cigarette pack on the ankle, and it acts as a 100-foot tether to the portable tracking device.

By the time the prisoner called to report the theft Monday night, the device had automatically notified the jail that it had been taken outside the prisoner's home area.

Roth then tracked the device through the Internet on his home computer.

A trail of electronic dots led authorities to an apartment building, where the suspect was captured.

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TOKYO (Reuters) - Hundred yen shops are all the rage in deflation-hit Japan, but an upscale department store fought back on Monday with a different sort of campaign, offering an array of luxury goods tagged at a million yen ($8,570) each.
Crowds of shoppers -- many of them elderly women -- strolled the aisles of Mitsukoshi Ltd's flagship Nihonbashi store in downtown Tokyo, eyeing a special display of wares such as mink coats, Persian rugs, gold-encrusted Buddhist altars and pearls.

"The price may be high but the items on sale are worth even more, so they're actually bargains," said a spokesman for the department store, adding he had no estimate for how much the one-day campaign was likely to rake in.

The sale was to mark the Tokyo-based company's merger with four local subsidiaries.

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GREAT DIAMOND ISLAND, Maine (AP) - A rift has developed on this small coastal island over a subject that rarely stirs passions: golf carts.

There is no golf course here, but over the last decade or so the number of battery-operated carts has exploded to more than 100 among the vacationers and retirees who have flocked to an old Army fortress transformed into a pricey new development on one side of the island.

Golf carts have become the most visible symbol of the influx, and they've spurred a backlash among some longtime residents who feel the sleepy charm of what had been a largely pedestrian island is under threat from the newcomers.

The dispute is "the most divisive thing that's happened to the island in a long time," says Roger Robinson, a year-round Great Diamond resident. He complains that newcomers are transforming the island into another outpost of suburbia.

"It's so different from where they came from, and that's the appeal of it," Robinson said. "More and more of them keep coming until systemically it becomes where they came from."

Great Diamond, just a two-mile ferry ride from Portland and one of hundreds of islands dotting Casco Bay, has only a handful of cars. In the past, most people walked or used the island taxi service. When the new development opened on the north side of the island, cars were even banned from its historic district.

But now some people complain that the proliferating golf carts cause parking problems at the ferry landing on the south side of the island, and some say they damage the island's roads.

A compromise reached in May bars people from crossing the island in their carts during the relatively busy summer, but some openly flout the rules. Others are embarrassed that a picayune dispute has turned their community into a source of amusement for outsiders.

But no one, it seems, can find a satisfactory solution.

"You have almost mutually exclusive lifestyles at stake," said Philip Conkling of the Island Institute up the coast in Rockland. "It's hard to compromise. People don't compromise over their lifestyles."

The island's southern end was settled by summer residents in the late 1800s.

On the northern end, the Army built Fort McKinley following the Spanish-American War. Abandoned and looted after World War II, the fort was an eyesore and makeshift trash dump for decades, until a developer transformed it in the early 1990s into a luxury community dubbed Diamond Cove.

Diamond Cove's rules barred residents from driving golf carts to the island's southern end, but the restrictions were largely disregarded by Diamond Cove residents. And people on the south end routinely traveled to Diamond Cove's restaurant, general store and the northern ferry terminal.

And around the time new residents began arriving in the early 1990s, the woman who ran the island's taxi service retired. Many people who had used taxis to haul groceries from the ferry decided to buy their own carts.

To some, the influx seemed innocuous.

Others saw Great Diamond's population increase as contributing to a major change in the island's character. Current estimates on the island's summer population vary from 300 to 600.

"The island that I knew in 1978 has been sort of overwhelmed by all these new people," says Paul Gleason, one of a handful who considered going to court over the carts.

On a recent afternoon, Joy Lee Eppes and her retired husband Bill were puttering around Diamond Cove in their golf cart.

Joy Lee, 65, recalls that tears streamed down her cheeks when she first saw the fort's meticulously preserved parade ground. The couple nixed plans to move to North Carolina and decided to make Diamond Cove their year-round home.

"For me it's magical," Mrs. Eppes said. "There's no more beautiful spot than right here on this island."

Throughout the fort, lawns are trimmed, the roads smooth, and the restored brick buildings have an orderly charm.

It's different on Great Diamond's southern end. Many of the summer residents are wealthy, but some chuckle that they're putting off repairing their weather-beaten homes to avoid showing up the neighbors.

Golf carts have sparked a few disputes in other upscale communities like Put-In-Bay, Ohio, and the Hampton Cove neighborhood of Huntsville, Ala.

But the controversy on Great Diamond embodies much of what makes life off Maine's coast unique. Community bonds are tight, but once disputes erupt things can turn ugly.

Residents of both ends of the island say they want to bury their squabbling.

At the main gate to Diamond Cove, most residents seem to be complying with the restrictions, but some simply ignore the posted warnings and buzz past in their electric carts. Vandals have taken some of the warning signs.

Still, islanders seem to be maintaining a sense of humor. A T-shirt that recently went on sale reads: "If golf carts are outlawed, only outlaws will have golf carts."

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PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - When, five minutes before curtain call, one of the leading actors in Portland's Northwest Classical Theatre Company's production of "King Henry VI, Part 1" was arrested, his colleagues ensured that the show went on.

Thaddeus "Scott" Carson, who played Lord Talbot, was hauled away from the Terry Schrunk Plaza in handcuffs as 120 eager Shakespeare fans waited for the show to begin.

According to police, an off-duty officer was jogging Saturday when he encountered a fully costumed Carson, who was swinging a metal sword.

The officer said, "Hey, man. Be careful with that thing," according to Henry Groepper, a police bureau spokesman. Carson started screaming and swearing, according to Groepper.


Groepper said when Carson raised the 24-inch sword again, the officer ran to a pay phone and called 9-1-1 .

Carson, 33, was arrested and accused of menacing and being an ex-con in possession of a restricted weapon.

Listed in the play program as "Scott Carson," police said Carson's real name is Thaddeus Carson. Court records show he was convicted in 1994 of first-degree sodomy, rape and sex abuse.

Several of the play's actors confronted the police officers to explain that Carson was an actor in a play, but the officers told them Carson would be held from one to four hours while he was booked, said Donovan Snyder, who played the Earl of Warwick.

With about 120 people waiting, Snyder said one of the play's directors addressed the audience about the problem, and stepped in to read Carson's lines.

The play, free to the public, was in its final production Saturday, having been performed each weekend in August. The actors were volunteers who have been rehearsing since the end of July.

Snyder said this time, life turned out to be far more dramatic than art.

"You don't often have to go to an audience and say one of our lead actors has just been arrested," he said. "It was bizarre in the extreme. I would have liked to have cued up the music and made it part of the play."

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MILFORD, N.Y. (AP) - Adding bubbles to milk is tricky. Pump in too many, and it foams over. Add too few and why bother.

George and Mary Ann Clark, husband-and-wife entrepreneurs, have spent the past seven years trying to find the balance. Last week, they started production on a carbonated milk-based drink called Refreshing Power Milk - RPM - and they already have orders coming in from school districts.

Mary Ann Clark, a registered nurse, said she was pained to see children drinking cola and shunning milk when she worked in schools so she decided to do something about it.

"If you take water and add carbon dioxide to make soda, why can't you do that with milk?" she asked.


She and her biochemist husband started work on a carbonated milk drink in 1996 and founded Mac Farms Inc. in 1998. The company already sells eMoo, another carbonated milk drink. On Wednesday, in a factory with a barn-red roof and purple-and-yellow cow out front, the first batch of RPM was bottled.

The Clarks combined water and powdered milk to create slightly fizzy, mildly milky-tasting drink with the nutritional value of skim milk and 40 percent of the recommended daily amount of calcium.

Each 12-ounce serving contains 90 calories and 12 grams of sugar, compared to 150 calories and 40 grams of sugar in a 12-ounce can of Coca-Cola. RPM contains 9 grams of protein compared to none in a can of Coca-Cola, but is higher in sodium: 115 grams to 52 grams per 12-ounce serving.

The flavors: vanilla cappuccino, Brazilian chocolate and chocolate raspberry.

Researchers at Cornell University had been looking for ways to extend the shelf life of dairy products using carbonation when the researched teamed up with the Clarks several years ago.

Joe Hotchkiss, chairman of the Department of Food Science at Cornell University, said the drink was designed to attract people who like soda.

"People consume food based on their sensory properties, taste, what kind of emotional feelings it gives them," said Hotchkiss. "Our role is to provide that similar kind of satisfaction in foods, but also couple that to foods that are more nutritionally sound."