Fire Ants Kill Man
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Saturday, August 30, 2008
Fire Ants Kill Man
Monday, August 25, 2008
Potato with the human face
Potato with the human face
As a father of three daughters, Andrew Stewart has always wanted a son.
So, when his mother handed him a inch-long potato taken from a bag of Maris Pipers with an uncanny likeness to his nephew, he thought his prayers had been answered.
The carpet fitter, of Higher Bank Road, Fulwood, could not believe the likeness the vegetable he has dubbed 'Spuddy' bears to his young six-year-old relative.
The 46-year-old said: "He is only tiny but you can see a little face and even got the hair which looks like it is blowing in the wind; all the neighbours have been over and they cannot believe the likeness.
"My mum, Evelyn, gave it to me and said to give it to my youngest daughter Olivia, 9, and she will not leave him alone now.
"We have got him in an egg cup and he is like a member of the family now, the only problem is that he is shrivelling up so I am not sure how much longer he will be with us."
"Spud" the potato boy
As a father of three daughters, Andrew Stewart has always wanted a son.
So, when his mother handed him a inch-long potato taken from a bag of Maris Pipers with an uncanny likeness to his nephew, he thought his prayers had been answered.
The carpet fitter, of Higher Bank Road, Fulwood, could not believe the likeness the vegetable he has dubbed 'Spuddy' bears to his young six-year-old relative.
The 46-year-old said: "He is only tiny but you can see a little face and even got the hair which looks like it is blowing in the wind; all the neighbours have been over and they cannot believe the likeness.
"My mum, Evelyn, gave it to me and said to give it to my youngest daughter Olivia, 9, and she will not leave him alone now.
"We have got him in an egg cup and he is like a member of the family now, the only problem is that he is shrivelling up so I am not sure how much longer he will be with us."
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Should the votes of dead people be counted at elections?
Should the votes of dead people be counted at elections?
In Yolo County, voters are taken off rolls when death certificates are received
By DEBORAH HASTINGS/The Associated Press and ROBIN HINDERY
Article Created: 08/23/2008 08:06:17 AM PDT
If you vote by mail, but die before Election Day, does your vote count? It depends on where you lived.
Oregon counts ballots no matter what happens to the voter. So does California. But in South Dakota, if you die before the election, so does your vote.
Increasingly popular mail-in ballots mean voters can now choose candidates up to 60 days before an election, raising new questions about an age-old phenomenon normally associated with trickery in places like Chicago: What should be done with the ballots of the recently dead?
Laws in at least a dozen states are evenly split between tallying and dumping the votes. No one keeps records on how often such deaths occur.
Yet in this year's contentious campaign, the right of every American to a counted ballot has become a rallying cry - even if the voter dies before the tallying starts.
Take the case of Florence Steen, an ailing 88-year-old grandmother born before women had the right to vote. One of her last wishes was to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton. She wanted to be part of history, said her daughter Kathy Krause.
Steen was confined to a hospice bed in Rapid City, S.D., when she was brought an absentee ballot weeks before the June 3 primary. She studied it a long time, then marked her choice with such determination her daughter feared she would poke through the paper.
Steen died on Mother's Day. With a heavy heart, her daughter took the ballot and dropped it in a mailbox. "In my mind, her vote counted," Krause
said. "My mother believed she had voted for a woman to be president."
But the women down at the county courthouse told Krause the ballot had to be tossed because state law declared a voter must be alive on Election Day.
So Krause passed that word to the Clinton campaign. And Clinton drew great applause when she told the story in her concession speech four days after the South Dakota primary.
"It's just a goofy law, and it needs to be changed," said Krause, who plans to lobby state legislators to reverse that statute just as soon as her grief eases.
"What about the soldiers in Iraq? What if they vote and they're killed in action, God forbid? Should we take away their vote because they died for their country?"
There are no military standards governing voting by soldiers. Rather, their mailed-in ballots are counted at the individual election districts where they are registered to vote. But like civilian votes, no one keeps track of whether the ballots of soldiers are thrown out because they died after casting them.
"No one can tell you that," said Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat, head of the Overseas Voting Foundation in Munich. "Every single election jurisdiction can do it the way it wants. And there are more than 7,000 of them."
In California, county elections offices remove voters fromthe rolls when they receive official death notices from family members or the local health department, but such purges are not conducted in the several weeks before an election, said Yolo County Clerk-Recorder Freddie Oakley.
"In most cases, we would not even know if a person died, and (if we did) we wouldn't go through all the ballots and find their envelope," she said.
Oakley said her office has no way of keeping track of how many absentee voters have died before their votes were tallied, but she said she knows it has happened: A few years ago, a county poll worker died on Election Day after having already submitted his mail-in ballot, she said. His vote was counted along with all the rest.
In addition to California, 30 other states allow some form of early voting.
Ballots cast by the dead are usually the focus of fraud allegations, as happened in Washington's extremely tight 2004 gubernatorial race, decided by a margin of 129 votes out of 3 million cast. More than a dozen ballots were linked to dead people.
But some advocates say legitimate, mail-in votes from people who die before Election Day should be counted, particularly in rural elections, where races can hang on a handful of votes.
"In Montana, there have been several legislative seats decided by one, two, three votes," said Tim Storey of the National Conference of State Legislatures, an organization that recently looked at 12 mostly Western states and found that half have no rules governing ballots of the deceased.
Those remaining states - Colorado, Idaho, Minnesota and Utah - demand that such ballots be rejected, leaving Montana and Oregon as the only states that count them.
South Dakota Secretary of State Chris Nelson said he doesn't understand why a dead person's vote should be counted.
"In my mind, it's clear," Nelson said. "You have to be a qualified voter on Election Day. I don't know how someone can say you're a qualified voter if you're deceased."
Pam Smith, director of the advocacy group Verified Voting, disagrees: "By definition, the day you cast a ballot is Election Day. That's it."
Mail-in ballots arrived in record numbers during this year's protracted primary season.
In California's San Diego County, for example, 45 percent of the presidential vote arrived by mail. Similar numbers surfaced across the country. Election experts have predicted that as many as 25 percent of voters will vote by mail in November.
In Yolo County, voters are taken off rolls when death certificates are received
By DEBORAH HASTINGS/The Associated Press and ROBIN HINDERY
Article Created: 08/23/2008 08:06:17 AM PDT
If you vote by mail, but die before Election Day, does your vote count? It depends on where you lived.
Oregon counts ballots no matter what happens to the voter. So does California. But in South Dakota, if you die before the election, so does your vote.
Increasingly popular mail-in ballots mean voters can now choose candidates up to 60 days before an election, raising new questions about an age-old phenomenon normally associated with trickery in places like Chicago: What should be done with the ballots of the recently dead?
Laws in at least a dozen states are evenly split between tallying and dumping the votes. No one keeps records on how often such deaths occur.
Yet in this year's contentious campaign, the right of every American to a counted ballot has become a rallying cry - even if the voter dies before the tallying starts.
Take the case of Florence Steen, an ailing 88-year-old grandmother born before women had the right to vote. One of her last wishes was to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton. She wanted to be part of history, said her daughter Kathy Krause.
Steen was confined to a hospice bed in Rapid City, S.D., when she was brought an absentee ballot weeks before the June 3 primary. She studied it a long time, then marked her choice with such determination her daughter feared she would poke through the paper.
Steen died on Mother's Day. With a heavy heart, her daughter took the ballot and dropped it in a mailbox. "In my mind, her vote counted," Krause
said. "My mother believed she had voted for a woman to be president."
But the women down at the county courthouse told Krause the ballot had to be tossed because state law declared a voter must be alive on Election Day.
So Krause passed that word to the Clinton campaign. And Clinton drew great applause when she told the story in her concession speech four days after the South Dakota primary.
"It's just a goofy law, and it needs to be changed," said Krause, who plans to lobby state legislators to reverse that statute just as soon as her grief eases.
"What about the soldiers in Iraq? What if they vote and they're killed in action, God forbid? Should we take away their vote because they died for their country?"
There are no military standards governing voting by soldiers. Rather, their mailed-in ballots are counted at the individual election districts where they are registered to vote. But like civilian votes, no one keeps track of whether the ballots of soldiers are thrown out because they died after casting them.
"No one can tell you that," said Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat, head of the Overseas Voting Foundation in Munich. "Every single election jurisdiction can do it the way it wants. And there are more than 7,000 of them."
In California, county elections offices remove voters fromthe rolls when they receive official death notices from family members or the local health department, but such purges are not conducted in the several weeks before an election, said Yolo County Clerk-Recorder Freddie Oakley.
"In most cases, we would not even know if a person died, and (if we did) we wouldn't go through all the ballots and find their envelope," she said.
Oakley said her office has no way of keeping track of how many absentee voters have died before their votes were tallied, but she said she knows it has happened: A few years ago, a county poll worker died on Election Day after having already submitted his mail-in ballot, she said. His vote was counted along with all the rest.
In addition to California, 30 other states allow some form of early voting.
Ballots cast by the dead are usually the focus of fraud allegations, as happened in Washington's extremely tight 2004 gubernatorial race, decided by a margin of 129 votes out of 3 million cast. More than a dozen ballots were linked to dead people.
But some advocates say legitimate, mail-in votes from people who die before Election Day should be counted, particularly in rural elections, where races can hang on a handful of votes.
"In Montana, there have been several legislative seats decided by one, two, three votes," said Tim Storey of the National Conference of State Legislatures, an organization that recently looked at 12 mostly Western states and found that half have no rules governing ballots of the deceased.
Those remaining states - Colorado, Idaho, Minnesota and Utah - demand that such ballots be rejected, leaving Montana and Oregon as the only states that count them.
South Dakota Secretary of State Chris Nelson said he doesn't understand why a dead person's vote should be counted.
"In my mind, it's clear," Nelson said. "You have to be a qualified voter on Election Day. I don't know how someone can say you're a qualified voter if you're deceased."
Pam Smith, director of the advocacy group Verified Voting, disagrees: "By definition, the day you cast a ballot is Election Day. That's it."
Mail-in ballots arrived in record numbers during this year's protracted primary season.
In California's San Diego County, for example, 45 percent of the presidential vote arrived by mail. Similar numbers surfaced across the country. Election experts have predicted that as many as 25 percent of voters will vote by mail in November.
Alabama cracking down on obesity
Alabama, pushed to third place in national obesity rankings by deep-fried Southern favorites, is cracking down on state workers who are too fat.
The state has given its 37,527 employees a year to start getting fit - or they'll pay $25 a month for insurance that otherwise is free.
Alabama will be the first state to charge overweight state workers who don't work on slimming down, while a handful of other states reward employees who adopt healthy behaviors.
Alabama already charges workers who smoke - and has seen some success in getting them to quit - but now has turned its attention to a problem that plagues many in the Deep South: obesity.
The State Employees' Insurance Board this week approved a plan to charge state workers starting in January 2010 if they don't have free health screenings. If the screenings turn up serious problems with blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose or obesity, employees will have a year to see a doctor at no cost, enroll in a wellness program or take steps on their own to improve their health. If they show progress in a follow-up screening, they won't be charged. But if they don't, they must pay starting in January 2011.
Computer technician Tim Colley already pays $24 a month for being a smoker and doesn't like the idea of another charge. "It's too Big Brotherish," he said.
The board will apply the obesity charge to anyone with a body mass index of 35 or higher who is not making progress.
The board has not yet determined how much progress a person would have to show and is uncertain how many people might be affected because everyone could avoid the charge by working to lose weight.
But that's unlikely - a nationwide study released one day before the board's vote shows Alabamians have a big weight problem. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Trust for America's Health report found 30.1 percent are now obese.
E-K. Daufin of Montgomery, a college professor and founder of Love Your Body, Love Yourself, which holds body acceptance workshops, said the new policy will be stressful for people like her.
"I'm big and beautiful and doing my best to keep my stress levels down so I can stay healthy," Daufin said. "That's big, not lazy, not a glutton and certainly not deserving of the pompous, poisonous disrespect served up daily to those of us with more bounce to the ounce."
The state has given its 37,527 employees a year to start getting fit - or they'll pay $25 a month for insurance that otherwise is free.
Alabama will be the first state to charge overweight state workers who don't work on slimming down, while a handful of other states reward employees who adopt healthy behaviors.
Alabama already charges workers who smoke - and has seen some success in getting them to quit - but now has turned its attention to a problem that plagues many in the Deep South: obesity.
The State Employees' Insurance Board this week approved a plan to charge state workers starting in January 2010 if they don't have free health screenings. If the screenings turn up serious problems with blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose or obesity, employees will have a year to see a doctor at no cost, enroll in a wellness program or take steps on their own to improve their health. If they show progress in a follow-up screening, they won't be charged. But if they don't, they must pay starting in January 2011.
Computer technician Tim Colley already pays $24 a month for being a smoker and doesn't like the idea of another charge. "It's too Big Brotherish," he said.
The board will apply the obesity charge to anyone with a body mass index of 35 or higher who is not making progress.
The board has not yet determined how much progress a person would have to show and is uncertain how many people might be affected because everyone could avoid the charge by working to lose weight.
But that's unlikely - a nationwide study released one day before the board's vote shows Alabamians have a big weight problem. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Trust for America's Health report found 30.1 percent are now obese.
E-K. Daufin of Montgomery, a college professor and founder of Love Your Body, Love Yourself, which holds body acceptance workshops, said the new policy will be stressful for people like her.
"I'm big and beautiful and doing my best to keep my stress levels down so I can stay healthy," Daufin said. "That's big, not lazy, not a glutton and certainly not deserving of the pompous, poisonous disrespect served up daily to those of us with more bounce to the ounce."
Man Robbed, Warns Others To Watch For Same Scam
Man Robbed, Warns Others To Watch For Same Scam
POSTED: 8:57 pm CDT August 20, 2008
UPDATED: 7:55 am CDT August 21, 2008
UNIVERSAL CITY, Texas -- One local man said he wanted to tell how he was robbed because he hopes it doesn't happen to others.Paul Malone, a retired Vietnam War veteran, said he was leaving a convenience store when a man with an accent approached him and told him a story about donating money to charity."He was going to give me $10,000, and I would take the rest of the $80,000 and place it in a charity to help the poor," Malone said.
The man then asked Malone to prove he could be trusted by showing he had his own money, so Malone said they went to a nearby bank."All I could think about was, 'This money's going to help a lot of people,'" Malone said.Malone said he withdrew $7,500 and showed it to the man, who then asked to hold the money. When Malone declined, he said the man demanded the money and held out a knife."They're very, very good at what they do," Universal City Police Sgt. Steve Mihalski said. "(Malone) is still shocked that he fell for it."Mihalksi said similar scams have recently been reported in Selma and San Antonio, but with different suspects.Malone said he's now lost a lot of trust in people."I don't know whether I can be nice to anybody that comes up to me," he said. "I'll be running the other direction."
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Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Commuter Flights Grounded Thanks To Bumbling TSA Inspector
Commuter Flights Grounded Thanks To Bumbling TSA Inspector
Wed, 20 Aug '08
Damaged TAT Probes On Nine Jets While Conducting 'Security Checks'
Citing sources within the aviation industry, ABC News reports an overzealous TSA employee attempted to gain access to the parked aircraft by climbing up the fuselage... reportedly using the Total Air Temperature (TAT) probes mounted to the planes' noses as handholds.
"The brilliant employees used an instrument located just below the cockpit window that is critical to the operation of the onboard computers," one pilot wrote on an American Eagle internet forum. "They decided this instrument, the TAT probe, would be adequate to use as a ladder."
Officials with 
One Eagle pilot says had the pilots not been so attentive, the damaged probes could have caused problems inflight. TSA agents "are now doing things to our aircraft that may put our lives, and the lives of our passengers at risk," the pilot wrote on the forum.
Grounding the planes to replace the TAT probes affected about 40 flights, according to American Airlines spokeswoman Mary Frances. "We think it's an unfortunate situation," she told ABCNews.com.
TSA conducts routine spot inspections of aircraft parked at commercial airports, according to agency spokesman Elio Montenegro. "Our inspector was following routine procedure for securing the aircraft that were on the tarmac," Montenegro said, adding the inspector was attempting to determine whether someone could break into the parked planes.
Pilots respond that agents are only allowed to check for unlocked cabin doors... a clear security risk, that could indeed compromise security. Indeed, regional airline Mesa Air Group notes "48 percent of all TSA investigations involving Mesa Air Group involve a failure to maintain area/aircraft security."
It's unclear whether that duty also allows an inspector to paw around an aircraft, however.
The TSA has NO BUSINESS putting untrained personnel in a position to damage aircraft. Their bizarre games, in the name of security, do NOTHING to enhance security and do much to inhibit safety. Aviation personnel -- pilots, A&P's, ground personnel -- are all either licensed or supervised by licensed personnel and this kind of tampering, had it been accomplished by anyone else, would have subjected that person to criminal charges.
In this case, ANN strongly recommends and encourages the criminal prosecution of this so-called inspector and his immediate supervisors... it is a matter of time before one of these morons does something stupid and gets someone killed... and with the way these incidents are occurring, we believe it is a virtual certainty that a TSA "Inpector" will hurt or kill someone in such a manner. No kidding.
A few other notes.. ANN spoke directly to the TSA PAO in this story, Elio Montenegro... a man who desperately needs to get his stories straight. When ANN talked to him early Tuesday evening, Montenegro first stated that no aircraft were tampered with, and thereafter attempted to minimize the issue by stating that a TSA Inspector "may have touched" the aircraft... which American Eagle "sorta" objected to. He claimed that there was no attempt to enter the aircraft, and when he was asked if TSA was, in fact, authorized to attempt such an entry -- out of the sight/knowledge/supervision of American Eagle personnel -- he said that he thought that I had asked a good question, did not know the answer, and promised to get back to me... in direct conflict with other reported statements. TSA can not keep their stories straight... and lying to the media... especially that part of the media that actually knows a thing or two about airplanes, was just plain foolish... if not a deliberate attempt to mislead.
Mind you, this is the same agency that now wants to step up supervision and surveillance of the GA world. Would you trust these kind of folks around your airplane?
I sure do not, and will not -- and the first time that I see a TSA person attempt any interaction with any aircraft under my control, I will call the cops and do my utmost to see that person charged with a crime... TSA can not be trusted around Air Transport airplanes... hell, TSA can not be trusted around GA... and TSA has shown us little or no reason why they should be trusted, in any way, with the security of the traveling public.
We're fed up with the incompetence of this organization... and while it was simply 'annoying' when they were sniffing our shoes or trying to rip off our laptops, it gets downright threatening when they start tampering with our airplanes.
Yes... this is quite the rant and I admit to no end of frustration with this organization... but I have to tell you, it's time to scrap the TSA and failing that, it is WAY past time that they be SEVERELY curtailed in their ability to harm others. Simply put, it's time to reign in the TSA... before they kill someone... if they haven't already.
Rant over... for now. -- Jim Campbell, ANN E-I-C.
'I stopped to help pedestrian hit by car... then realised it was my dying wife'
'I stopped to help pedestrian hit by car... then realised it was my dying wife'
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 11:27 AM on 19th August 2008
A husband today told how he held a drip attached to the dying victim of a car crash - unaware that the woman was his wife.
James Peters stopped to help paramedics when he saw a pedestrian had been hit by a car at the spot where he usually picked up 60-year-old wife Susan.
It was only when he was passed the victim's handbag that he realised the victim was the woman he had been married to for 40 years.
Devoted couple: James Peters was just a passer-by who stopped to help at the scene of a car accident when he realised his wife, Susan, was involved
Mrs Peters's injuries were so severe that her husband, also 60, helped at the scene for almost 10 minutes before he realised what had happened to the mother of his three sons.
She had been hit by a blue Volkswagen Golf as she crossed an M25 slip road in Leatherhead, Surrey, last Friday.
The couple had celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary just two days before the crash and were finalising their plans for retirement.
Mr Peters, who is a retired businessman and a magistrate in Richmond, said they had only recently moved into a secluded £1million home in Leatherhead and had been refurbishing it.
He paid tribute to his "perfect" wife, saying: "She was the better half of me and now my better half is gone, I'm totally devastated."
He usually picked up his wife from the bus stop to save her the walk home after she finished work at Surrey county council in Kingston.
Mrs Peters was airlifted from the crash site to the Royal London Hospital where she died of her injuries.
The businessman, who ran his own firm supplying and installing central heating, kitchens and bathrooms, said he was "devastated".
Mr Peters - who is also president of Twickenham Rugby Club and a referee in the sport - said: "We only celebrated our ruby wedding anniversary days ago and now she is gone. I had just stopped to help as I saw there had been an accident.
"I parked my car, thinking that my wife's bus must have been delayed by what had happened but it must have been fractionally early.
"At virtually the same time the paramedics arrived. They were doing their best to help and I was holding a saline drip for them.
"Then another person who had stopped handed me a handbag and I recognised it. I always pick her up so she doesn't have to walk home. I couldn't believe it."
Mr Peters, who is a grandfather of four, added: "It's no reassurance to me that I was there at her final moments, there's not much reassurance anywhere, I'm devastated.
"She had been struck by a car as she crossed the road. I'm being looked after by my family but it is hard. My wife was perfect."
A close neighbour of Mr Peters, who did not wish to be named, said: "They are such a lovely couple. They were getting to that age where they could really start to enjoy what they had achieved in life."
A Surrey Police spokesman said a 25-year-old man from a nearby village was arrested after the accident and had been released on bail until November.
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