Posted on 03/26/2002 7:40:55 AM PST by Texaggie79
Melting snow reveals hundreds of urine bottles at roadside |
Workers cleaning the sides of motorways in the north-west of the US are finding hundreds of urine-filled bottles.
Cleaning crews in Washington state are uncovering the bottles as the winter snow melts.
It is believed they were filled by motorists 'caught short' on long drives and then tossed out of windows.
Gary Lambacher of the state government says one crew in Spokane has found 300 bottles in just a week.
Reports say they're even coming across fully-filled gallon bottles.
Story filed: 12:30 Tuesday 26th March 2002
Must have been one DAMN long drive!
MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) - A Munich man suspected of murder after he was seen carrying what a neighbour thought was a dead body into his flat has cleared his name by showing police his collection of rubber sex dolls.
A police spokeswoman said on Tuesday the neighbour called to say he saw the man carrying a "corpse" into the apartment. Police responding to the call found the suspect to be "surprised and disturbed" by their questions at first.
"When the officers then told the man they were investigating a murder he showed them his newly acquired silicon sex doll," the spokeswoman said.
"The man also showed the officers four other inflatable sex dolls he owns. Apparently, he had just been testing out his new acquisition when police arrived."
The spokeswoman said the police then left the apartment and closed the file. "They didn't want to disturb him any longer," the spokeswoman said.
POLICE MUST NOTIFY RESIDENTS WHEN
CATHOLIC CHURCH MOVES INTO NEIGHBORHOOD
Controversial "Egan's Law" Expected to Gain Widespread Support
Trenton, N.J. (SatireWire.com) Under a new law designed to protect minors, local police departments will now be required to inform residents any time a known Roman Catholic church moves into their neighborhood.
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New Jersey State Senate debating Egan's Law |
The law also mandates that Catholic churches register with authorities, wear electronic monitoring devices, and be prohibited from moving to within a half-mile radius of a school.
A follow-up to Megan's Law, enacted by New Jersey in 1994, the so-called "Egan's Law" is named for Cardinal Edward Egan of New York and Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, who are both accused of covering up sexual abuse by priests under their authority. Like Megan's Law, Egan's Law is expected to spread quickly to other states, but for parents in towns across New Jersey, it's on the books none too soon.
"Last year, we discovered that a Catholic Church had been in our neighborhood for 30 years! And nobody told us!" said Ruth Harper of Redbrook, N.J. "My sons used to walk by that church every day on their way to school. Even now I shudder to think of what might have happened."
"I always told my kids to steer clear of that place," added neighbor Scott Carlyle. "But that's because there were a lot of strange people going in and out at odd hours, even at midnight on Saturdays. I was worried it was some kind of druggie hangout.
"To think the whole time it was a Roman Catholic Church. Now I know why they had all those stained glass windows . so nobody could look in."
Critics, however, charge that Egan's Law is unconstitutional, specifically because it relies on religious profiling and is intended to safeguard only one segment of the population: young males. But State Sen. Carmela Truto, a Catholic who co-sponsored the bill, used church doctrine itself to prove only one segment needs protection.
"In the Catholic Church, after 2,000 years, Mary is still a Virgin," she said. "So clearly, they're not interested in girls."
Not My Fault!
Paul Andrew Jackson was awarded about $31,000 (U.S.) in March in his lawsuit against the provincial Roads and Traffic Authority after hurting his back at a bicycle bridge near Wollongong, Australia. Jackson, a 35-year-old surfer, had stepped over a guardrail in the dark to relieve himself but underestimated the drop-off (after a self-reported six-beer night), falling 40 feet down and momentarily knocking himself unconscious. [Sunday Times (Perth), 3-4-02]
I dont know about you, but Ive had a few of those giant cans of Fosters in one night, and let me tell you, they will knock you on your butt!
Unclear on the Concept
In a joint federal-state child-protection announcement in December, the German government proposed that online pornography Web sites could transmit only between the hours of 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. (which, for example, is 5 p.m. to midnight in New York and 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. in California). [Financial Times Deutschland, 11-29-01]
Well, I feel safer already! Dont you!
Latest Cutting-Edge Research
The journal Experimental Biology and Medicine reported that regulating men's hand temperature has no effect on the temperature of the rectum but that regulating scrotal temperature does. [Experimental Biology and Medicine, Volume 227, pages 105-107 (2002)]
What the
?
And an August Journal of Sex Research report by two Georgia State University professors concluded that people who desire sex but are not having it are grumpier than those who are having it or who don't want it. [Fox News, 8-30-01]
Well DUH!
The Litigious Society Kaziah Hancock and Cindy Stewart won almost $300,000 in damages in January from a breakaway Mormon sect in Manti, Utah, based on their lawsuit for fraud claiming that self-proclaimed prophet Jim Harmston failed on several promises, including one to produce Jesus Christ himself in the flesh. Hancock said Harmston persuaded her to give 67 acres of land to the church and that the church would give her back a place to live but that after the church made one payment on the new place, Harmston said God told him to stop paying. [Salt Lake Tribune, 1-29-02]
In March, a Canadian federal judge refused to quash convicted murderer David Wild's $2 million (U.S.) lawsuit against the Mission Medium Security Institution in British Columbia. Wild claims the guards aren't quiet enough when they do nighttime bed checks and thus make getting a good night's sleep impossible, causing Wild headaches, loss of balance, blurred vision, irritability and depression, and leave him too weary to play in the prison's soccer tournament. [National Post, 3-12-02]
You just cant make this stuff up!
Tuesday, March 26, 2002
SAN DIEGO Rio DiAngelo walked away from the regimented life within the Heaven's Gate cult in 1997 after three years, but a message from cult members drew him back a month later to the group's rented hilltop mansion.
There, on March 26, 1997, he uncovered the worst mass suicide on U.S. soil. The 39 cult members killed themselves, believing they were shedding their earthly ``containers'' to catch a ride on a spaceship trailing the Hale-Bopp Comet.
Five years later, DiAngelo, or ``Neody'' as he was known in the group, still sees himself as its messenger.
``I'm really the only one left,'' the 48-year-old Los Angeles resident said.
Interviews with news organizations five years ago left DiAngelo angry at the media, but he agreed reluctantly to a phone interview with The Associated Press last week.
Little remains from the group whose androgynous-looking men and women downed a lethal concoction of pudding or applesauce spiked with vodka and barbiturates. They sealed their fate by placing plastic bags over their heads.
The group's possessions have been auctioned off. The 9,000-square-foot mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, one of San Diego's northern neighborhoods, was sold for a fraction of its value.
Now a free-lance designer who makes ergonomic items, DiAngelo is applying what he learned from Heaven's Gate to his earthly life and cashing in on it. DiAngelo is auctioning off the cult's van on eBay to mark the Tuesday anniversary of the suicide.
He is asking a minimum of $39,000 for the 1992 Ford van, which cult members once used for road trips to SeaWorld and Las Vegas.
Some victims, who ranged in age from 26 to 72, had traveled around the country with the group for decades. They included Jackie Leonard, a grandmother who was the eldest member of the group, and Thomas Nichols, 59, whose sister, Nichelle, played Lt. Uhura on TV's ``Star Trek.''
Clad in black outfits with ``Away Team'' patches and Nike tennis shoes with their trademark comet-like swoosh, each packed a small bag and carried identification, $5 and some change for their journey toward what they believed was a ``level beyond human.''
Two other cultists later followed with similar suicides.
``They weren't trying to kill themselves because of a crazy idea, although some people saw it as a crazy idea,'' DiAngelo said. ``It really is an advanced level of being.''
DiAngelo said cult leader Marshall Applewhite, 66, known as ``Do,'' was from another planet and taught DiAngelo to be more aware, honest and sensitive to the world around him: in short, a better person.
``What I've gained from this group is phenomenal,'' he said. ``If he is just a gay music teacher from Texas how he could teach all these advanced ways of being that really work?''
At the same time, DiAngelo, is not sentimental about the past.
He signed a development deal to write a TV movie based on Heaven's Gate, but the project never got off the ground. A tabloid offered him $1 million for exclusive rights to his story five years ago, but he refused, preferring to preserve the dignity of his departed friends. Today, he said he'd take the money.
His life today is far from his days in Heaven's Gate, when members watched selected TV programs in assigned seats and wrote the ``Individual Needs Department'' when they ran out of deodorant.
He has re-established contact with his 19-year-old son and earns his living working in the nation's second-biggest city, slogging his way through daily traffic jams.
``Here I am a slave to commerce like everybody else,'' he said.
-Eric
By ANDY RUSSELL
A BOOZY motorist drank a staggering 45 PINTS of beer a day, a court heard yesterday.
Machine minder Brian Laycock was said to be lucky to be alive after four months of marathon drinking sessions.
Laycocks benders were revealed to a court after he had been caught driving while almost three times over the limit.
When Judge Brigid Knight read the report she had to ask if there had been a mistake.
It said Laycock who has two previous drinkdrive convictions guzzled between 35 and 45 pints of average-strength lager a day plus an occasional litre of vodka.
Laycock, 45, of Oldham, Lancs, was spotted driving after an all-day binge in which he claimed to have sunk 35 pints of lager.
Another motorist followed him home and told cops of his erratic driving.
Chris Sweetman, defending, said: He is lucky to be alive after drinking this much.
He needs help with his drink problems. He suffered problems with his fathers health which caused him to seek solace in the bottle.
Laycock was jailed for four months and banned from driving for five years.
Judge Knight told him: Killing yourself or others would not have solved your problems.
Your attitude to drinking and driving is not acceptable.
Booze expert Dr Robin Touquet last night said: People who drink anything like these amounts just stop breathing.
It is obvious this man is a dependent alcoholic and a danger to himself and others if he is in charge of machinery or at the wheel of a car.
I'm glad you re-posted it, Gawain. What's amazing is that those who claimed to be compassionate Christians have neither tolerance nor sense of humor.
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