NEWS OF THE WORLD - Current Events (May Be Disturbing, No Politics Please)

[Opera Ghost]

My Ho is my own, and cheap like I like it!



OG

[Scatter]

My Ho is my owe, and cheap like I like it!



OG

Word.

[Wicked Lester]

My Ho is my own, and cheap like I like it!

OG

THAT"S why Santa says Ho Ho Ho. He must be REALLY happy. You sleigh driving stud you.

[fmofmpls]

Vt. scrap-wood dinosaur posing modern-day problem - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100711/ap_on_re_us/us_wooden_dinosaur

[Dr.Teufel Geist]

It seems that Darth Vader will go to any lengths to reform the Deathstar.....

A man donning a Darth Vader mask at a New York bank has gone to the dark side.

Police say the man entered a Chase bank branch on Long Island on Thursday, displayed a gun and demanded money. A surveillance camera caught the "Star Wars" character wearing a blue cape and camouflage pants.

The bandit escaped from the Setauket bank with an undetermined amount of cash.


Sorry, no link...couldnt get one to load..

[CreepysFan]

 WOW. Now even Darth Vader is among the jobless. 

[Sean]

The fact that he didn't just wear a mask for the sake of hiding his face-----but actually donned a CAPE......is fabulous.

I think capes are coming back.... I HOPE they are...... ohboyohboyohboy!!!!!!!

[Dr.Teufel Geist]

GRIZZLY ATTACKS AND ATTACKS AND ATTACKS....

A mother grizzly and two of her three cubs have been captured after killing a Michigan man and injuring two other people during an overnight rampage through a campground near Yellowstone National Park.

The sow, estimated to weigh 300 to 400 pounds, was lured into a trap fashioned from culvert pipe covered by the dead victim's tent Wednesday evening. The bear tore down the tent again and was caught in the trap, said Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks spokesman Ron Aasheim.

By Thursday morning, two of the year-old bears had been caught and the third could be heard nearby, calling out to its mother.

Montana wildlife officials on Thursday identified the man killed in the mauling as Kevin Kammer, 48, of Grand Rapids, Mich. The bear pulled Kammer out his tent and dragged him 25 feet to where his body was found, Aasheim said.

The other victims, Deb Freele of London, Ontario, and an unidentified male, have been hospitalized in Cody, Wyo.

Fish, Wildlife and Parks Warden Capt. Sam Sheppard said he was confident they had captured the killer bear because it came back to the same site where the man was killed early Wednesday.

Sheppard described the rampage _ in which campers in three different tents were mauled as they slept _ as a highly unusual predatory attack.

"She basically targeted the three people and went after them," Sheppard said. "It wasn't like an archery hunter who gets between a sow and her cubs and she responds to protect them."

Officials have said the sow will be killed after DNA evidence confirms it was the same bear that attacked the victims.

"Everything points to it being the offending bear, but we are not going to do anything until we have DNA samples," Aasheim said.

State and federal wildlife officials will determine the fate of the cubs. Sheppard said they are unlikely to be returned to the wild because they could have been learning predatory behavior from their mother.

Freele said Thursday she was bitten on her arm and leg before she instinctively played dead so the animal would leave her alone.

Appearing on network morning shows from a Wyoming hospital, Freele said she woke up just before the bear bit her arm.

"I screamed, he bit harder, I screamed harder, he continued to bite," she said, adding that she could hear her bones breaking. "I told myself, play dead," she said. "I went totally limp. As soon as I went limp, I could feel his jaws get loose and then he let me go."

Freele said the bear was silent.

"This, to me, was just an absolutely freaky thing," she said. "I have to believe that the bear was not normal. It was very quiet, it never made any noise. I felt like it was hunting me."

Freele suffered severe lacerations and crushed bones from bites on her arms. The male survivor, thought to be a teenager, suffered puncture wounds on his calf.

The bear attack was the most brazen in the Yellowstone area since the 1980s, wildlife officials said.

One camper said he heard the screams from two of the attacks, which started around 2 a.m. Wednesday.

Don Wilhelm, a wildlife biologist from Texas, thought the first scream was just teenagers, maybe a domestic dispute in the middle of the night. He tried to go back to sleep, stifling thoughts that a beast might be lurking outside his family's tent.

Minutes later, another scream _ this one coming from the next campsite over, where a bear had torn through a tent and sunk its teeth into Freele's arm.

"First she said, "No!' Then we heard her say, 'It's a bear! I've been attacked by a bear!'" said Wilhelm's wife, Paige.

By that point, the bear already had ripped into another tent a few campsites away, chomping into the leg of a teenager who had been sleeping with his family. The solo camper who was killed was at the other end of the Soda Butte Campground.

Then, the screams stopped.

After a quick parental back-and-forth over whether to shield their 9- and 12-year-old sons with their bodies or make a break for it, the Wilhelms took advantage of the silence and darted to their SUV.

They drove around the campground, honking their horns and yelling to alert other campers. Along the way, they met with a truck leaving the campground with the teenage victim, who apparently tried in vain to fight off the bear by punching it in the nose.

"It was like a nightmare, couldn't possibly happen," Paige Wilhelm said later.

In 2008 at the same campground, a grizzly bear bit and injured a man sleeping in a tent. A young adult female grizzly was captured in a trap four days later and taken to a bear research center in Washington state.

The latest attack had residents and visitors to Cooke City on edge. Many were carrying bear spray, a pepper-based deterrent more commonly seen in Yellowstone's backcountry than on the streets of the national park satellite community.

"The suspicion among a lot of the residents is that the bear they caught (in 2008) was not the right one," said Gary Vincelette, who has a cabin in nearby Silver Gate.

Sheppard, the warden captain, said there was no truth to that.

The grizzly involved in the latest attack showed no outward signs of sickness or starvation that might have explained its unusual behavior, said Fish Wildlife and Parks spokeswoman Andrea Jones.

About 600 grizzly bears and hundreds of less-aggressive black bears live in the Yellowstone area.

The region is pasted with hundreds of signs warning visitors to keep food out of the bruins' reach. Experts say bears who eat human food quickly become habituated to people, increasing the danger of an attack.

Yet in the case of the Wednesday's attack, all the victims had put their food into metal food canisters installed at campsite, Sheppard said.

"They were doing things right," he said. "It was random. I have no idea why this bear picked these three tents out of all the tents there."

The 10-acre Soda Butte Campground in Gallatin National Forest has 27 sites.

Two other campgrounds were also closed while the attacking bear or bears remained at large.

[Scatter]

(Note to self.........bump "Grizzly" to the top of the Netflix queue.)

[Dr.Teufel Geist]

(Note to self.........bump "Grizzly" to the top of the Netflix queue.)

Dude!! I love that movie...have it somewhere on vhs 

[Scatter]

Dude!! I love that movie...have it somewhere on vhs 

Haven't seen it since I snuck into the Drive-In ages ago. Top of the queue now.

[charp13]

This story is chilling, Doc!  I never would have heard this, as I don't watch the news very much.  Man, this is horrible! I can't believe that lady heard her own bones crack under the bear's teeth and then had the instinct to play dead! I would have soiled myself and had a heart attack.  I am not a camper or national park nighttime visitor. I've actually never been to Yellowstone, but I really want to go within the next couple of years, but just during the day and maybe with a large group of humans that look more appetizing than me! Bears!!!!  Holy crap, I never thought about them rampaging tents! They HAVE to make a movie about this incident, it's too frightening to be forgotten.

[Dr.Teufel Geist]

This story is chilling, Doc!  I never would have heard this, as I don't watch the news very much.  Man, this is horrible! I can't believe that lady heard her own bones crack under the bear's teeth and then had the instinct to play dead! I would have soiled myself and had a heart attack.  I am not a camper or national park nighttime visitor. I've actually never been to Yellowstone, but I really want to go within the next couple of years, but just during the day and maybe with a large group of humans that look more appetizing than me! Bears!!!!  Holy crap, I never thought about them rampaging tents! They HAVE to make a movie about this incident, it's too frightening to be forgotten.

Just rent the movie "Grizzly" ,which I and Scatter are talking about...it's a classic.

[Dr.Teufel Geist]

Sour inspection squeezes kid's lemonade stand, but on appeal, county chair makes it sweeter

After a county inspector squeezed out a kid's lemonade business, so many Oregonians puckered up in disgust that the county chairman had to pour on a little sugar.

The apology sweetened up some sour feelings and made 7-year-old Julie Murphy eligible to resume selling her Kool-Aid and water concoction for 50 cents a cup.

Last week at a local arts fair, Julie and her mother were surprised when a county inspector asked to see their restaurant license.

They didn't have one. The inspector told them they would face a fine of up to $500 if they didn't stop selling lemonade.

Other vendors urged Julie and her mother not to leave. A second inspector arrived and the two inspectors were surrounded by a crowd of vendors supporting Julie and her mother.

Ultimately, Julie and her mother packed up the stand, and as Julie left the fair she was crying.

But Julie has prevailed.

Jeff Cogen, chairman of Multnomah County, says the health inspectors were "just following the rule book" but they should have given the girl and her mom a break. On Thursday, he talked with Julie's mom to apologize.

"A lemonade stand is a classic, iconic American kid thing to do," Cogen told The Oregonian. "I don't want to be in the business of shutting that down."

And how does Julie feel about this?

Her mother, Maria Fife, said she and her daughter appreciates the apology.

But the sweet and sour tale of lemonade stands at the Portland art fair might not yet be over.

According to the Oregonian, one vendor at the local arts fair is planning a "lemonade revolt" the next time the fair is held _ later this month.

Cogen says he doesn't know what he'll do if a bunch of fair vendors try selling lemonade without a license.

As it turns out, lemons may present county officials with something of a pickle.

[Sean]

Bear Pack Greets Cops on Pot Bust in Canadian Woods

AOL News (Aug. 19) -- Canadian police on a bust in the woods of British Columbia found more than drugs at one remote cabin.

Cops in Christina Lake, a town of barely 1,500 year-round residents, were acting on an anonymous tip that a woman in the woods was up to something. When they arrived, they found $1 million worth of marijuana plants, but they weren't the only ones on the scene.


RCMP / The Canadian Press / AP
A Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer poses for a photo July 30 as bears walk toward him near a marijuana crop in Christina Lake, British Columbia.
Police were shocked to discover at least 10 full-grown black bears wandering the property. One officer grabbed a shotgun, fearing for his safety. To the officers' surprise, the bears were not hostile, and they seemed undisturbed by the sight of armed strangers.

"They soon realized [the bears] were very docile and very laid back, wandering throughout the property," Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sgt. Fred Mansveld told The National Post.

It appeared the bears were being fed dog food. Black bears can weigh as much as 600 pounds in British Columbia, according to the tourist website bcadventure.com.

The owners of the property, whose names were not released, assured the police that the bears weren't hostile. Still, with at least 1,000 marijuana plants on the property, they had other problems. Police arrested the couple, one of whom is known locally as the "Bear Lady."

The so-called Bear Lady is, by all accounts, a private person. She lives deep in the woods, emerging only to buy basic provisions. Many Christina Lake residents didn't even know she was married.

Christina Lake is a rural community near the Gladstone Provincial Park. Bears, elk, deer and mountain sheep wander through the countryside, and it is easy to live a private -- and criminal -- lifestyle away from prying eyes.

Residents took a benign view of the Bear Lady.

"She's just different," one woman told The National Post. "She's very much into thinking the bears are part of her friends. I don't think she realizes they are not a domesticated animal."

It isn't clear if the woman was keeping the bears as pets, or if they were meant to guard her drug cultivation operation, The New York Daily News reported.

Either way, the future for the bears is uncertain. Authorities in British Columbia have to kill dozens of bears each year if they rely on humans for food and then become a threat to public safety.

The bears were not the only guests on the property: Police also stumbled upon a pig and a raccoon napping in one of the bedrooms.

"The pig was a little frantic at the sight of police, but the raccoon was pretty laid back about the bust and took it all in stride," Cpl. Dan Moskaluk said, according to The Canadian Press.