Miss Piggy's Grocery Store Checkout Headlines

[Gadritan]

What's even sadder is that a woman did the exact same thing years ago. Million-dollar bill at Walmart.

[Cail]

Judge: Black church rightful owner of KKK store

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — After a lengthy legal battle between a black South Carolina church and members of the Ku Klux Klan, a judge has ruled that the church owns a building where KKK robes and T-shirts are sold.

A circuit judge ruled last month that New Beginnings Baptist Church is the rightful owner of the building that houses the Redneck Shop, which operates a so-called Klan museum and sells Klan robes and T-shirts emblazoned with racial slurs. The judge ordered the shop's proprietor to pay the church's legal bills of more than $3,300.

Since 1996, the Redneck Shop has operated in an old movie theater in Laurens, a city about 70 miles northwest from Columbia that was named after 18th century slave trader Henry Laurens.

Ownership of the building was transferred in 1997 to the Rev. David Kennedy and his church, New Beginnings, by a Klansman fighting with others inside the hate group, according to court records. That man, according to Kennedy, was feuding with store proprietor John Howard over a woman and "developed a spiritual relationship" with Kennedy's church, the judge wrote.

But a clause in the deed entitles Howard, formerly KKK grand dragon for the Carolinas, to operate his business in the building until he dies.

After years of trying to have the property inspected, Kennedy and New Beginnings sued Howard and others in 2008. On Dec. 9, a judge ruled in Kennedy's favor.

Reached on his cell phone, Howard said he did not know about the judge's decision and deferred comment to his attorney, who did not immediately return a message.

It wasn't immediately clear if the judge's ruling would mean Howard must close the shop. Howard hung up on a reporter when asked about the shop's status, but an outgoing message on the shop's answering machine said it's only open one morning a week.

Howard has defended his business in the past.

"If anything turns people off, they shouldn't come in here," Howard told The Associated Press in 2008. "It's not a thing in here that's against the law."

The Redneck Shop has been the target of protests and attacks from the start. A few days after it opened, a Columbia man crashed his van through the front windows and was charged with malicious damage to property. High profile black activists have staged several protests outside the store, and Kennedy has regularly picketed there as well.

Kennedy has a long history of fighting racial injustice. He protested when a South Carolina county refused to observe the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, and he helped lobby to remove the Confederate flag from the Statehouse dome.

Kennedy said Tuesday his congregation was elated by the judge's decision, which he said he had already discussed with local police in hopes of being able to visit and inspect the property this week.

"It has been a long time coming," said Kennedy, who learned of the ruling this week. "We knew we had done everything right. ... The court knows that we have suffered."

Kennedy said his congregation's numbers have decreased in recent years as some of its 200 members became fearful of reprisals from Klan members. Nazi and Confederate symbols have been tacked to the door of the double-wide mobile home where New Beginnings now meets, Kennedy said, and dead animals have been left at the building.

"A lot of people became so afraid," Kennedy said. "I just told them that it is part of our faith to endure."

Kennedy, who has previously said he would like to close the store and hold his church meetings there, declined Tuesday to detail his plans, saying only that he thought some parishioners would feel uncomfortable worshipping in the structure that once segregated moviegoers and now sells Klan-related materials.

"I don't count anything out," Kennedy said. "I think that the church would do good in that building."

[greenhills]

China tycoon 'ate poisoned cat-meat stew'

Poisoned cat-meat stew is suspected to have been used to kill a billionaire in southern China.

Police have detained a local official in Guangdong province in connection with the sudden death of Long Liyuan on 23 December.

The official, Huang Guang, is suspected of adding a toxic plant to the stew at a restaurant where they were eating.

A police statement said the two were involved in a dispute after Mr Huang allegedly embezzled money from Mr Long.

Mr Huang, an agriculture official in Bajia, took Mr Long, who ran a forestry company, to visit a piece of woodland on 23 December, said the statement.

Afterwards, the two went to a local restaurant to share a local delicacy, slow-boiled cat-meat stew. A friend of Mr Long's was also present.

Mr Huang is alleged to have added the plant Gelsemium elegans to the cat-meat dish.

Local media say Mr Long was taken to hospital after feeling dizzy and sick, and later suffered a cardiac arrest.

However the other two diners survived.

A local newspaper reported that Mr Long's friend had eaten only a little because the dish tasted "more bitter" than usual.

Police initially detained the owner of the restaurant on suspicion of serving unsanitary food, AP news agency said.

However Mr Long's family did not believe it was a simple case of food poisoning and pressed police to investigate further as well as offering a $16,000 reward for information, the agency said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16409523

[Eaglestrike]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16420848

A lone zebra shark in a Dubai aquarium has prompted scientific interest after laying eggs for the fourth year in a row which hatch into healthy offspring.

Zebedee, who lives in the Burj aAl Arab hotel's aquarium, has never had access to a male shark but that has not stopped her producing numerous live offspring.

I want to see some Jesus-themed "I'm a shaarrrrrrk" images pop up because of this.

[Cail]

DENVER (Reuters) - A 36-year-old woman was accused of causing $10,000 worth of damage to a painting by the late abstract expressionist artist Clyfford Still, a work valued at more than $30 million, authorities said on Wednesday.

A police report said Carmen Tisch punched and scratched the painting, an oil-on-canvas called "1957-J no.2", at the recently opened Clyfford Still museum in Denver and pulled her pants down to slide her buttocks against it.

Tisch was charged with felony criminal mischief on Wednesday and has been held on a $20,000 bond since the incident in late December, said Lynn Kimbrough, spokeswoman for the Denver District Attorney's Office.

Kimbrough said Tisch urinated after she rubbed up against the canvas, but whether urine got on the painting was still under investigation, she said.

Born in North Dakota in 1904, Still was considered one of the most influential of the American post-World War Two abstract expressionist artists, although he was not as well known as others such as Jackson Pollock.

Still died in 1980, and the city of Denver worked for years with his widow, Patricia, to secure the single-artist museum. She died in 2005, and her husband's collection was bequeathed to the city.

Four of Still's works were auctioned by Sotheby's last year for $114 million to endow the Denver museum, which opened with much fanfare in November.

Because Still closely guarded his works, most of the pieces at his namesake museum had not previously been displayed.

Tisch will be formally advised of the charges on Friday, Kimbrough said.

.

[Necronus]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16420848



I want to see some Jesus-themed "I'm a shaarrrrrrk" images pop up because of this.

Jurassic Park man. "Nature always finds a way".

[Kerberoz]

Parthenogenesis is a "mystery"?

[Melena]

180 pound tumor removed from Vietnamese man.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/06/health...html?hpt=hp_t3


A Vietnamese man is recovering in the intensive care unit Friday, a day after surgery that completely removed from his right leg a tumor twice his body weight, according to the hospital in Ho Chi Minh City.
The growing tumor had rendered the patient, Nguyen Duy Hai, virtually immobile until his surgery.

The excised tumor weighed 180 pounds (82 kilos), according to the hospital, a bit less than the 200 pounds (90 kilos) estimated before surgery.
Hai, 31, of Da Lat City, has Von Recklinghausen's neurofibromatosis, said Dr. Jean-Marcel Guillon, chief executive officer of FV Hospital, where the 12-hour procedure was performed.

The autosomal dominant hereditary disorder is the same disease that contributed to the extraordinarily large head of Joseph Merrick, whose story was dramatized in the 1980 film, "The Elephant Man," explained Guillon.
The tumor "may return," Guillon wrote in an e-mail to CNN, "but we can operate him again, and it won't never reach such a size anymore."
Doctors expect that Hai's cardiac and pulmonary functions will return to normal during the next 10 days. After that, Hai faces rehabilitation, physical therapy and possible help from the hospital's clinical psychologist to deal with issues pertaining to body image, Guillon said. "This patient lived all his life with this tumor. It was part of him."

Hai also needs to learn how to do things that his body had forgotten, including using the leg he had never used normally, Guillon added.
The tumor was first discovered when Hai was four years old and had grown to its enormous size since then.

Hai had undergone a surgery to amputate his leg -- and with it the tumor -- in 1997, but in 2001, the tumor grew, and no doctors agreed to operate on him, according to the hospital.

Furthermore, his family could not afford surgery, and very few surgeons in Vietnam can treat neurofibromas, Guillon said.

The surgery was considered risky with a 50% success rate for a number of reasons, Guillon explained. "First, such a giant tumor has developed its own blood system with huge arteries branched out from the normal vascular system. Therefore, one of the main risks was abundant bleeding."

Doctors used a "cell saver," which suctions and filters the patient's blood before re-injecting it into the body, along with extra blood for the surgery.
The second and third risks lay in heart function ("How would a heart react when a tumor with twice the weight of a patient is removed?") and the effects of a long -- more than 13 hours -- anesthesia, Guillon said.

Leading the surgical team was Dr. McKay McKinnon, a specialist in plastic and reconstructive surgery from Chicago.
McKinnon has been credited with removing a 200-pound tumor from a woman in the U.S. state of Michigan in 2000, as well as a 176-pound (80 kilo) tumor from a Romanian woman in 2004.

Aside from McKinnon, no one else on the team had any prior experience with Hai's condition or performed such a surgery before, Guillon said. "Though the surgical techniques used by Dr. McKinnon are usual and routinely used by our surgeons, the difference lays in his experience: he knows what to expect and what to do at specific crucial moments."

Finally, the team of Vietnamese surgeons and anesthetists had never worked with McKinnon before, and communication issues could turn dangerous in an operating theatre, Guillon said, adding that two of the three Vietnamese surgeons also go by "Dr. Thai."

Nonetheless, the communication among all in the operating theatre went "extremely well," Guillon said.
During the surgery, FV Hospital set up a live video feed for other doctors and hospitals to watch.

Video during the surgery showed five people assisting in the disposal of the excised tumor from its own gurney into a yellow container, which was then sealed.
A small piece has been sent for examination; the rest will be incinerated as with all biological waste, Guillon said.

The cost of the surgery was estimated at $20,000, but the hospital said it will charge 60% of the cost, which will be covered jointly by the Red Cross of Da Lat City and sponsors.
The hospital said it is financing all the traveling costs and accommodation for McKinnon, who is performing the surgery free of charge.

Spoiler: show

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/dam/ass...-story-top.jpg

[Cail]

holy fuck

[Kerberoz]

http://www.lvrj.com/news/alien-catho...136131043.html
Alien Cathouse brothel to feature 'girls from another world'

Have you ever dreamed of traveling to distant planets, meeting exotic alien women and having sex with them?

If so, you -- and possibly Captain Kirk -- are the target audience for brothel owner Dennis Hof's newest Southern Nevada business venture.

The reality television star and outspoken sex merchant recently bought a rundown bordello 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas and unveiled plans to renovate and reopen it with a science fiction theme.

He is calling it Alien Cathouse and promising "girls from another world."

[Olo401]

http://nhregister.com/articles/2012/...b262501653.txt

Authorities in southern Wisconsin are facing a tongue twister thanks to the arrest of Beezow Doo-Doo Zopittybop-Bop-Bop.

The unusually named 30-year-old man was in jail Sunday in Madison. Police say he violated his bail conditions from a previous run-in with the law.

Court records show that his name used to be Jeffrey Drew Wilschke. He legally changed it in October.

[Cail]

omg new haven register

[Bregor]

http://nhregister.com/articles/2012/...b262501653.txt

Authorities in southern Wisconsin are facing a tongue twister thanks to the arrest of Beezow Doo-Doo Zopittybop-Bop-Bop.

The unusually named 30-year-old man was in jail Sunday in Madison. Police say he violated his bail conditions from a previous run-in with the law.

Court records show that his name used to be Jeffrey Drew Wilschke. He legally changed it in October.

http://thetangential.com/wp-content/.../06/Cosby6.gif

[Cail]

Relatives who suspected a British teenager of practicing witchcraft beat and drowned him Christmas Day 2010 as he "begged to die" because of the pain they were inflicting, prosecutors alleged in a London court.

Kristy Bamu, a 15-year-old boy from Newham, east London, allegedly died at the hands of Eric Bikubi and his partner, Magalie Bamu, Kristy's sister. Both of them have denied the charges.

Bikubi and Bamu allegedly forced Kristy's four siblings to join in the attack.

The alleged attackers hit the teen with sticks, metal bars, a hammer and chisel, prosecutors said, and he "begged to die" because of the pain from the beating.

"It was only when he [Bikubi] realized that he [Kristy] wasn't moving that he stopped what he was doing … by then it was too late," prosecutor Brian Altman said.

Kristy suffered more than 100 injuries.

Kristy and his siblings had arrived in London from Paris to see the East London couple for Christmas. But Kelly, Kristy's elder sister, said the trip turned sour when Eric Bikubi accused her and Kristy of practicing witchcraft and sorcery. Eric Bikubi also accused them of influencing his 3-year-old son.

"Despite her own siblings' denials that they were sorcerers, Magalie Bamu joined her boyfriend in repeating these fantastic claims and participating in the assaults," Altman alleged.

"They beat them, refusing to let them eat, drink or sleep for days while the punishments being meted out became increasingly violent, with them using many implements found in the flat as weapons of torture," Altman said.

"However, it was Kristy Bamu who became the focus of Bikubi's attention and, in a desperate attempt to prevent any further suffering, he and his two sisters were eventually to admit to being sorcerers. Wickedly, the defendants also recruited sibling against sibling as vehicles for their violence," Altman told the court.

wow..

[Cail]

THE RISE OF GENBU

After 150 years of being "extinct," a species of giant tortoise may be on the verge of a comeback tour, scientists report today (Jan. 9).

The researchers "found" the lost species, called Chelonoidis elephantopus, by analyzing the genome of a closely related species, Chelonoidis becki, which lives on Isabela Island, the largest of the Galápagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean. The island lies about 200 miles (322 kilometers) from Floreana Island, where C. elephantopus was last spotted before disappearing, likely due to hunting by whalers, some 150 years ago.

The two species of gigantic tortoise, both living in the Galápagos Islands (famously studied by Charles Darwin), have different shaped shells. The shells of C. elephantopus on Floreana Island were saddle-shaped while tortoises on other islands, including C. becki, had domed-shaped shells. These giant tortoises can weigh nearly 900 pounds (408 kilograms) and reach almost 6 feet(1.8 meters) in length.

Finding hybrids

The researchers noticed in 2008 that some of the C. becki shells were more saddle shaped than domed shaped, and found that these were hybrid offspring from matings between the two species. They took samples for genetic analyses from 1,669 of the large tortoises on the island, about 20 percent of their population.

They found some snippets of the C. elephantopus genome in the population, and using a special computer model they analyzed how recently these genes would have entered the population. This would have happened when a living C. elephantopus mated with a C. becki — and is indirect proof that at that time living C. elephantopus existed.

They found that 84 of the tortoises had genetic indicators that one of their parents was a C. elephantopus, 30 of which were less than 15 years of age. Given the 100-year lifespan of the tortoises the researchers say there is a good chance that their C. elephantopus parent would still be alive.

"To our knowledge, this is the first report of the rediscovery of a species by way of tracking the genetic footprints left in the genomes of its hybrid offspring," study researcher Ryan Garrick, who performed the work at Yale University, but is now assistant professor at the University of Mississippi, said in a statement. "These findings breathe new life into the conservation prospects for members of this flagship group."

Because of genetic differences between the hybrid tortoises, the researchers estimate that at least 38 C. elephantopus left behind hybrid descendants on the Galápagos Islands, and many may still be alive.

Planning a comeback tour

If the researchers can find this hidden population, they could capture individuals to set up a breeding program to regenerate the species, the authors write in the paper published Jan. 9 in the journal Current Biology. They could even try to resuscitate the species from the genetic snippets found in C. becki.

"This is not just an academic exercise," study researcher Gisella Caccone, of Yale University, said in a statement. "If we can find these individuals, we can restore them to their island of origin. This is important as these animals are keystone species playing a crucial role in maintaining the ecological integrity of the island communities."

In an interesting twist, the researchers aren't sure how the giant tortoises would have gotten from Floreana Island to Isabela — they suggest the animals may have been brought to Isabela as food and then either thrown overboard or left on the shore.

[Omniyoji]

They fell from the sky

http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s...z/img_0061.jpg

[Cail]

dat ass

(CNN) -- A man suspected in a series of buttock slashings in Fairfax, Virginia, has been captured in Peru, authorities said.

Johnny D. Guillen, known as the "Corta Nalgas" -- or "butt cutter" -- was captured Friday in Lima, according to Jair Quedas, system operator for Interpol Peru.

Authorities in the United States were looking for Guillen for allegedly cutting the buttocks of 13 young women, according to America Noticias, Peruvian local television.

Fairfax County Police in Virginia posted on its website that the man -- whom it identifies as Johnny D. Guillen Pimentel -- is suspected in a retail store assault that took place last year.

County police set up a task force to try to find a serial assailant responsible for several attacks that took place between February 2011 and July 2011.

"In each case, the suspect distracts his victim before cutting them. The victims have all been teenaged women or in their early 20s," Fairfax County Police said in a statement last year.

In one incident, officers responded to a report of a woman who suffered a 1 1/2 inch wound to her buttocks at a Forever 21 store on July 25.

"The 18-year-old victim was shopping when she noticed clothes that had fallen off of a rack behind her and saw a man bending down to pick them up," police said. "She abruptly felt a sharp pain and considered that one of the hangers had struck her. A short time later, she discovered her denim shorts had been slashed; her buttocks had been cut and were bleeding."

In another case, police said, a 21-year-old woman was shopping at a T.J. Maxx store at Fairfax Towne Center on June 8 when she felt a pinch on her buttocks.

Similar to other reports, "the victim turned around, saw a man picking up pieces of clothing and thought she may have been cut by one of the hangers," police said. "When the woman returned home, she discovered cuts in her clothing."

[Kerberoz]

Someone took daggering too literally.

[Mayareira]

PHILIDELPHIA, PA (KTVI - FOX2now.com—

A Philadelphia McDonalds is under scrutiny after a former employee recorded a mouse nibbling away at hamburger buns. The former employee used his cell phone to show the mouse inside a bag of buns at the fast food restaurant.

The employee claims this was the sixth or seventh time he'd seen a mouse and was finally able to capture it on his cell phone.

According to the FOX 29 station in Philly, the employee also claims he told the manager who then told employees to brush off the droppings and serve the bread to customers.

The owner of the McDonald's franchise is investigating the claims.

Shit's disgusting. GM actually ordered employees to take the mouse out and serve the bread. Video @ link and youtube below.

http://www.fox2now.com/news/ktvi-emp...,2439526.story

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ksmwi3z7LyY

[tyven]

how surprising!