gizmodo - How far would your jaw have dropped if George Lucas told you how he thinks the world will end next year? If you were comedian/actor Seth Rogen, you'd scoop your jaw up and then tell the world all about it.
Rogen remembers:
"He's going on about the tectonic plates and all the time Spielberg is, like, rolling his eyes, like, 'My nerdy friend won't shut up, I'm sorry...'
I first thought he (Lucas) was joking... and then I totally realized he was serious and then I started thinking, 'If you're George Lucas and you actually think the world is gonna end in a year, there's no way you haven't built a spaceship for yourself... So I asked him... 'Can I have a seat on it?'
He claimed he didn't have a spaceship, but there's no doubt there's a Millennium Falcon in a garage somewhere with a pilot just waiting to go... It's gonna be him and Steven Spielberg and I'll be blown up like the rest of us."
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Stray Hippo Attacks in Uganda
newvision - A total of 21 people have been killed by stray hippos on the shores of Lake Albert in Kibaale district, Uganda in the last one year. The latest incident occurred last week, when Wilson Monday and another fisherman, who is currently hospitalised, were attacked by hippos as they returned from fishing.
Kabukanga landing site information secretary Richard Sunday Kabila identified the other people kiiled by hippos as Alex Twinomugisha, Philimon Timasakira, Chapakazi Onega, Godfrey Mugisa, Matiasi Bizimana, Wilson Byaruhanga, Kosta Ntanda, Gabi Onega and Jackson Mumbere.
Others are Wako Chan, Saturday Twikirize, John Kadoma, Joseph Sanyu, Vincent Safari, Gerald Amis, George Weki, Topher Jalwin and Fred Kanyaihamba.
The victims were residents of Nyamasoga, Kamina, Rwebigongoro, Kitebere and Kabukanga landing sites in Kibaale district.
However, the district fisheries officer, Francis Gwazo, said the deaths were over two years.
“It is true that people have been killed, but not in a period of one year as alleged by the fishermen,” Gwazo said.
Enraged by the killings, the fishermen threatened to beat the Uganda Wildlife Authority officials from Ntoroko station, who argue that the hippos had to be protected.
Tom Okello Obbo, the conservation mananger at Murchison Falls, said the Uganda Wild life Authority was planning to sensitise fishermen on how they can live in harmony with the animals.
Okello said the hippos were important because they fertilised the water for fish breeding.
He said the fishermen were being killed because the fish in hippos’ habitats, where there was a lot of fish.
Okello said UWA could not authorise the killing of the hippos because they were part of the aquatic life necessary for the continuation of the fishing business.
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Blame the Black Cat
irishtimes - A woman who has sued her former brother-in-law over ankle injuries suffered when she fell allegedly as a result of “a crumbling step” at his home, has denied in the High Court suggestions the fall was caused by a black cat.
Despite the belief of some people that encountering a black cat means good fortune, Margaret Caldwell said such an encounter had not brought her any luck and she remained in constant pain because of the fall.
While she observed a black cat sitting to her left after she fell on May 9th, 2007, she denied the fall was caused by the cat and said it was due to a “a crumbling step”.
Ms Caldwell (52), Oakleigh, Dublin Road, Navan, Co Meath, is suing Eugene Caldwell, Drumcargy, Upper Maracloon, Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan, over the fall. When Joseph McGettigan SC, for Mr Caldwell, put it to her that extracts from reports of two separate hospitals stated Ms Caldwell had told the hospital authorities she had fallen over a cat, Ms Caldwell said she told the hospitals she fell when a step crumbled and denied falling over a cat.
She agreed she had been involved in a road traffic incident in 2008 as a result of which she had secured €10,000 damages.
In evidence, Eugene Caldwell said Ms Caldwell had told him she had tripped on the cat and had not said anything about the step crumbling. There were always a couple of cats around the house, he said.
A crack in the step was inflicted by a JCB but there was no difficulty walking on it, and the step had been replaced due to water seeping into the house, he added.
The hearing was adjourned to Friday.
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House of Horrors in Philadelphia
msnbc - A doctor whose abortion clinic was a filthy, foul-smelling "house of horrors" that was overlooked by regulators for years was charged Wednesday with murder, accused of delivering seven babies alive and then using scissors to kill them.
Hundreds of other babies likely died in the squalid clinic that Dr. Kermit Gosnell ran from 1979 to 2010, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams said at a news conference.
"My comprehension of the English language can't adequately describe the barbaric nature of Dr. Gosnell," he added.
Williams said he might seek the death penalty for Gosnell, who with nine of his associates, including his wife, was arrested on Wednesday.
Gosnell was charged with murder, infanticide, conspiracy, abortion at 24 or more weeks and other charges.
Pennsylvania law prohibits abortion after 24 weeks except to save the life of the mother or avoid serious health risk to her.
In a nearly 300-page grand jury report filled with ghastly, stomach-turning detail, prosecutors said Pennsylvania regulators ignored complaints of barbaric conditions at Gosnell's clinic, which catered to poor, immigrant and minority women in the city's impoverished West Philadelphia section.
Prosecutors called the gruesome case a "complete regulatory collapse."
"Pennsylvania is not a third-world country," the district attorney's office declared in the report. "There were several oversight agencies that stumbled upon and should have shut down Kermit Gosnell long ago."
Gosnell, 69, was arrested and charged with eight counts of murder altogether in the alleged killings of seven babies and the death of a woman from an overdose of painkillers. Nine of Gosnell's employees — including his wife, a cosmetologist — also were charged.
Prosecutors said Gosnell made millions of dollars over three decades performing thousands of dangerous abortions, many of them illegal late-term procedures. His clinic had no trained nurses or medical staff other than Gosnell, a family physician not certified in obstetrics or gynecology, prosecutors said.
At least two women died from the procedures, while scores more were injured from perforated bowels, cervixes and uteruses, authorities said.
In a typical late-term abortion, the fetus is dismembered in the uterus and then removed in pieces. That is more common than the procedure opponents call "partial-birth abortion," in which the fetus is only partially extracted before being destroyed. Prosecutors said Gosnell instead delivered many of the babies alive.
He "induced labor, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord," District Attorney Seth Williams said.
Gosnell referred to the practice as "snipping," prosecutors said.
Prosecutors estimated Gosnell ended hundreds of pregnancies by cutting the spinal cords, but they said couldn't prosecute more cases because he destroyed files.
"These killings became so routine that no one could put an exact number on them," the grand jury report said. "They were considered 'standard procedure.'"
Defense attorney William J. Brennan, who represented Gosnell during the investigation, said: "Obviously, these allegations are very, very serious."
Authorities raided Gosnell's clinic early last year in search of controlled drug violations and stumbled upon "a house of horrors," Williams said. Bags and bottles holding aborted fetuses "were scattered throughout the building," the district attorney said. "There were jars, lining shelves, with severed feet that he kept for no medical purpose."
Prosecutors said the place reeked of cat urine because of the animals that were allowed to roam freely, instruments were not properly sterilized, and disposable medical supplied were used over and over.
Gosnell didn't advertise, but word got around. Women came from across the city, state and region for illegal late-term abortions, authorities said. They paid $325 for first-trimester abortions and $1,600 to $3,000 for abortions up to 30 weeks. The clinic took in $10,000 to $15,000 a day, authorities said.
"People knew near and far that if you needed a late-term abortion you could go see Dr. Gosnell," Williams said.
White women from the suburbs were ushered into a separate, slightly cleaner area because Gosnell believed they were more likely to file complaints, Williams said.
Few if any of the unconscious patients knew their babies had been born alive and then killed, prosecutors said. Many were first-time mothers who were told they were 24 weeks pregnant, even if they were much further along, authorities said.
Prosecutors said Gosnell falsified the ultrasound examinations that determine how far along a pregnancy is, teaching his staff to hold the probe in such a way that the fetus would look smaller.
Gosnell sometimes joked about the babies, saying one was so large he could "walk me to the bus stop," according to the report.
State regulators ignored complaints about Gosnell and the 46 lawsuits filed against him, and made just five annual inspections, most satisfactory, since the clinic opened in 1979. The inspections stopped completely in 1993 because of what prosecutors said was the pro-abortion rights attitude that set in after Democratic Gov. Robert Casey, an abortion foe, left office.
Williams accused the state Health Department officials of "utter disregard" for the safety of women undergoing abortion, and said the testimony of agency officials "enraged" the grand jury. But he said he could find no criminal offenses with which they could be charged, in part because too much time has elapsed.
"These officials were far more protective of themselves when they testified before the grand jury. Even (Health Department) lawyers, including the chief counsel, brought private attorneys with them — presumably at government expense," the report said.
The state's reluctance to investigate, under several administrations, may stem partly from the sensitivity of the abortion debate, Williams said. Nonetheless, he called Gosnell's case a clear case of murder.
"A doctor who with scissors cuts into the necks, severing the spinal cords of living, breathing babies who would survive with proper medical attention commits murder under the law," he said. "Regardless of one's feelings about abortion, whatever one's beliefs, that is the law."
Four clinic employees were also charged with murder, and five more, including Gosnell's wife, Pearl, with conspiracy, drug and other crimes. All were in custody. Gosnell's wife performed extremely late-term abortions on Sundays, the report said.
One of the murder charges against Gosnell involves a woman seeking an abortion, Karnamaya Mongar, who authorities said died in 2009 because she was given too much of the painkiller Demerol and other drugs.
Gosnell wasn't at the clinic at the time. His staff administered the drugs repeatedly as they waited for him to arrive at night, as was his custom, the grand jury found.
Mongar and her husband, Ash, had fled their native Bhutan and spent nearly 20 years in camps in Nepal. They had three children. A man who answered the phone Wednesday at a listing for Ash Mongar in Virginia did not speak English, while their daughter did not immediately return a message.
The malpractice suits filed against Gosnell include one over the death of a 22-year-old Philadelphia woman, a mother of two, who died of a bloodstream infection and a perforated uterus in 2000. Gosnell sometimes sewed up such injuries without telling the women about the complications, prosecutors said.
Gosnell earned his medical degree from Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and is board certified in family practice. He started, but did not finish, a residency in obstetrics-gynecology, authorities said.
Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore said: "He does not know how to do an abortion. Once he got them there, he saw dollar signs and did abortions that other people wouldn't do."
A local CBS station reported that around $240,000 in cash had been found when his house was searched.
It added that Gosnell had previously insisted he was innocent of any crimes and predicted he would be acquitted if he was charged.
NOTE: neither pro-abortion or pro-life advocates can take anything positive from this scenario...Lon
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Burglars mistake cremated remains as cocaine...yeah, they snorted some
myfoxorlando - Marion County, Florida Sheriff's deputies on Tuesday arrested five burglary suspects stemming from an investigation which began last month.
The victim in the burglary said she returned to her home on Locust Lane in the Silver Springs Shores to discover that several items were missing. Some of the items included electronics and jewelry, but what she found most troubling, was the theft of her late father's ashes and the ashes of her two Great Danes.
During the investigation, detectives learned that the ashes were taken because the suspects mistook the cremains for either cocaine or heroin. It was soon discovered that the suspects snorted some of the ashes believing they were snorting cocaine.
According to detectives, the suspects realized they had the remains from the dogs and the victim's father, so the suspects got rid of the ashes. Detectives are presently working with the Marion County Sheriff's Office Dive Team to locate the ashes.
Arrested were Waldo Soroa, 19, who faces seven charges and has a bond of $17,000, Matrix Andaluz, 18, who faces six charges and has a bond of $11,500, and Jose David Diaz Marrero, 19, who faces four charges and has a bond of $9,000. There are two juvenile suspects facing charges which include attempted residential burglary and impairing a phone line to the home.
Also, in a difference incident, detectives charged all five suspects with attempted residential burglary and impairing the phone line to a home on Oak Circle in the same community. The victims in that incident, a married couple, were awakened by loud banging noises back and at one point, the victims were face-to-face with one of the suspects. That suspect took off running, while the other suspects raced away in one red car and one black car, according to the Marion County Sheriff's Office.