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South Los Angeles resident Erlyne Toney-Alvarez, 67, had always planned to be cremated when she died. Simple. Inexpensive. Graves, she said, are a waste of land occupied by the dead. Then she saw the intricately plastinated bodies at the Body Worlds exhibit at the California Science Center -- bodies that had been stripped of their fat, filled with plastics and shown off in all their muscular, organic and anatomical glory for the world to see in traveling shows. Now that, she thought, is the way she wants to go. "I was so excited," she said of seeing the exhibit with...

<p>Outsourcing by aircraft manufacturers has resulted in substandard parts being built into commercial airplanes that carry thousands of passengers daily, according to a government report.</p> <p>Major manufacturers such as Boeing Co., General Electric Aircraft Engines and Bombardier/Learjet often cut costs by allowing foreign suppliers to make airplane components, but do not adequately supervise the quality of their subcontractors' work, said the report this week from the U.S. Department of Transportation's inspector general.</p>

WASHINGTON - President Bush signed legislation Monday prohibiting the Pentagon from selling leftover F-14 fighter jet parts, a move prompted by security gaps in the military's surplus auction. Those gaps made the surplus auction a prime place for Iran to shop for the spares it desperately needs for its Tomcat fleet. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., proposed the ban after The Associated Press reported last year that buyers for Iran, China and other countries exploited weaknesses in Pentagon surplus-sale security to obtain sensitive military equipment including parts for F-14s and other aircraft and for missile components....

Tara Grant told her husband that she would call the police, and he would go to jail for striking her, according to the account. Stephen Grant told police that he then began to choke his wife. Grant told police that after his wife stopped moving, he placed a belt around her neck and tightened it. He said he put her in the back of the SUV and covered her with plastic. On Feb. 11, he said, he drove the vehicle to the nearby tool-and-die-shop where he worked. He told police that he broke band saw blades into large pieces, wrapped...

PARENTS of sick children in Britain will be allowed to use IVF to create "spare-part babies" under controversial laws published yesterday. The legislation will dramatically relax rules on IVF clinics creating "saviour siblings" who can help cure their older brothers and sisters of medical conditions such as leukemia. Experts said that one day they could create a "designer baby" with kidneys perfectly compatible with a sibling suffering renal failure. More immediately, saviour siblings could give umbilical cord blood or bone marrow to family members in the hope of treating conditions such as sickle cell anaemia. The Government's Human Fertilisation and...

Charges: 2 Tried to Export F-14 Parts Oct 7, 2007 SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Two Utah men are accused of trying to illegally export surplus pieces of F-14 fighter jets, a plane that is flown only in Iran. Abraham Trujillo, 61, and David Waye, 22, both of Ogden, are alleged to have tried exporting the parts to Canada, but the charges don't specify how they supposedly got the parts and don't list all buyers. Federal agents placed online orders, then intercepted the goods before they made it out of the country, the charges said. Trujillo and Waye were charged...

(LONDON) — Chinese medical officials agreed Friday not to transplant organs from prisoners or others in custody, except into members of their immediate families. The agreement was reached at a meeting of the World Medical Association in Copenhagen. China has previously acknowledged that kidneys, livers, corneas and other organs are routinely removed from prisoners sentenced to death row. But officials insist that this only happens when consent is provided. Critics argue that death-row prisoners are not truly free to consent and may feel compelled to become donors, violating personal, religious or cultural beliefs. The announcement Friday comes after several years...

Three Philadelphia-Area Funeral Directors Nabbed in Scheme Selling Body Parts Thursday, October 04, 2007 PHILADELPHIA — Three funeral directors sold hundreds of bodies to a former oral surgeon who allegedly collected the bones, tissue and skin from the corpses to be used in transplants, a grand jury charged Thursday after a 16-month investigation. The 244 bodies fetched about $1,000 each, the grand jury found, with the body parts being transplanted in unsuspecting medical patients worldwide. Michael Mastromarino, who operated the now-defunct Biomedical Tissue Services of Fort Lee, N.J., ran the scheme with help from a team of "cutters" who stole...

SANTA ANA An Iranian-born man has been sentenced to two years in prison for illegally exporting U.S. military aircraft parts to Iran, authorities said this week. Reza Tabib, 52, of Irvine, pleaded guilty in June to violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which prohibits the export and re-export to Iran of certain items of U.S. origin. As part of his sentencing Monday, Tabib also must complete six months of home confinement. Tabib, a U.S. citizen, was arrested along with his wife, Terri Repic-Tabib, in February 2006 after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents intercepted and seized maintenance kits designed for...

Pentagon Halts Sale of F-14 Parts Tuesday January 30, 2007 11:31 PM By SHARON THEIMER Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon said Tuesday it had halted sales of spare parts from its recently retired F-14 fighter jet fleet, even as lawmakers pledged tougher oversight of the military's surplus sales to stop buyers for Iran and other countries from acquiring gear. Sales of F-14 parts were suspended last Friday pending a comprehensive review, said Defense Logistics Agency spokesman Jack Hooper said. ``It was the prudent thing to do,'' he said. The review will examine Pentagon policy for handling the...

Can you imagine the rush of emotion you'd feel if your 8-year-old son, who had been kidnapped six months earlier, suddenly appeared at your door after you'd given up hope of ever seeing him again? In Pakistan just a fews days ago, I was repeatedly blessed to witness parents experience that thrill as we returned their abducted children. As the father in the above photos told us as he clung to his son, "It is a miracle." Indeed it was. Let me tell you how it happened. For those of you who haven't been following the unfolding story over the...

Building near WTC entombs toxins, remainsBy AMY WESTFELDT, Associated Press Writer 7 minutes ago AP Photo: In this Sept. 30, 2001, file photo NEW YORK - While debates rage about why more buildings have not gone up at the World Trade Center site, there is one, shrouded in a web of black netting and full of trade center dust, that can't seem to come down. The vacant 41-story former Deutsche Bank AG building looms above ground zero, contaminated with toxic waste and still holding tiny body parts more than four years after the trade center collapsed onto it on Sept....

SAN DIEGO - A Pakistani who spent five years in prison for selling missile parts to Iran in the 1980s was convicted Friday of illegally exporting military aircraft parts to Belgium, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates. Arif Ali Durrani was convicted in U.S. District Court on four counts of exporting engine parts and other components for the F-5 fighter jet and the Chinook helicopter, said Jennifer Silliman, assistant special agent in charge for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Diego. Durrani was also convicted on one count of conspiracy to export parts, she said. The ultimate destination for the...

TAMPA — A Tampa man is getting a citation for storing animal parts in a freezer. Police say Lester Huckaby can be punished by up to 60 days in county jail and a $500 fine. He had birds that wildlife officials say are protected under the Federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Authorities say an anonymous caller told police that Huckaby was storing part of a migratory bird and pieces of sea turtles inside a freezer in his house. When authorities searched they house, they say they found one room filled with hawk wings, talons and a raccoon in the process...

Tejon Ranch and its conservation partner, The Trust for Public Land, have figured out which 100,000 acres of the ranch's 270,000 acres will be carved out into a preserve. If the deal goes through, some of Tejon's majestic peaks and canyons in the Tehachapi Mountains could forever be saved from development. A step is being taken in that direction today, though an actual deal is much further away. The majority of the land is in the southeastern portion of the Tehachapis. There's also a swath next to Interstate 5 intended to connect the future preserve with the Wind Wolves Preserve...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A federal judge Monday tentatively dismissed parts of a discrimination lawsuit brought by a group of doctors and residents who accused the county of trying to dismantle a troubled inner-city hospital. The nonprofit group Friends of Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center Inc. doesn't have legal standing for several of its claims, because it wasn't directly harmed by the county's decision to close the hospital's trauma unit, U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper tentatively ruled. The judge, however, said she was inclined keep some portions of the lawsuit, including accusations that the Los Angeles County Board of...

Subject: Don't listen to CNN I've edited out the identity of the person who sent this as his job would be in serious jeopardy if Senator Leahy gets wind of this. But it may begin to explain to some people how their preoccupation with single 'issues' can have disastrous repercussions for all the other things they may - or may not - hold dear. And it may lend some balance to the media's tendentious reporting on efforts being made to alleviate the suffering. On a final note, this guy is an American who, along with a lot of other Americans,...

There Are No Loopholes in Law to Prosecute the Sale of Baby Body Parts Crime/Corruption News Keywords: FETAL BODY PARTS AND ABORTION Source: Covenant Published: 04/03/00 Author: Jim Rudd Posted on 04/05/2000 07:07:59 PDT by truthandlife Remember the law that makes it a felony to purchase or sell aborted baby parts for profit? It's part of the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act of 1993. You would think with all of the pro-life lobbying groups in Washington, D.C., we would be hearing a multitude of voices crying out from the rooftops demanding a nationwide investigation to bring these baby...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Nearly four years have elapsed since the Oslo process (1993-2000) between Israelis and Palestinians foundered in bloodshed. Over that period, two U.S. administrations have tried to forge policies that would reduce the violence and point toward a solution to the conflict.It has not been a single-minded pursuit. Since September 11, 2001, the prime focus of Washington has been the management of unprecedented U.S. military interventions in the region, which removed regimes from power in Afghanistan and Iraq. The notion of Israeli-Palestinian peace as the key to regional stability has been replaced by the war on terror and the insistence on...