.Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Small Bits of News You Didn’t Know you Needed
City bans mayor from working late
Councillors in California have passed a curfew on their own mayor because they don't like her working late at night.
Blanca Figueroa, the mayor of South El Monte, a suburb east of Los Angeles, must now vacate city hall by 11pm.
Councillors said they had concerns about safety and liability regarding the work schedule of the mayor, who frequently worked until the early hours of the morning.
But Ms Figueroa says the curfew is unfair as she needs to work late to catch up on paperwork because her days are filled with meetings.
She also says her workload has increased over recent months due to the economic downturn worrying constituents.
"My job is 24/7," the mayor, who has been in office since 1997, told the Los Angeles Times.
"I have more work to do now than ever. If I let it go by, it piles up. Do I have a private life? No. Even on Thanksgiving I was here. I'm mentally exhausted, but it is my service to serve the city."
.
Roller Coaster pregnancy
A barmaid didn't know she was pregnant til she went into labor - days after being flung around on white knuckle rides at Alton Towers.
Issy McMurdo, 21, from Leamington Spa, thought it was something she'd eaten when she went to hospital with excruciating stomach pains.
"It was a massive shock when they gave me a scan and told me I was in labor. I simply had no idea I was pregnant. I just thought I'd put on a little bit of weight," she told The Sun.
"Then when my ankles swelled up I assumed it was because I was on my feet all the time at the pub.
"I even went to Alton Towers where pregnant women are warned not to go on the rides. I was flung upside down on the Air ride at speeds of up to 50mph and hurled down drops of 53ft. So it was quite lucky I didn't go into labor there!"
Issy, a slender six-footer, was still working grueling bar shifts before giving birth to 6lb 2oz Oscar.
Boyfriend Harry Humber, 22, a university student, added: "Issy had terrible stomach pains after coming to my flat. Twenty-four hours later, our little boy was born.
"Oscar is the best Christmas present anyone could ask for. We are very lucky."
.
Bailed-out bank pays £1.6bn bonuses
Workers at a firm that benefitted from the US bank bail-out are still to share in a multibillion-pound bonus pot, it has been confirmed.
Goldman Sachs revealed the figure, worth about £55,000 per employee, as it posted its first quarterly loss since becoming a public company in 1999.
A spokesman said the bonus pot, which will not be shared by the chief executive and six senior colleagues who have agreed to give up their perk, totaled £1.67 billion.
The US-based firm, which switched from being an investment bank to a bank holding company in September, lost £1.36 billion in the final quarter of this year.
A spokesman rejected reports that the bonuses could amount to as much as £4.3 billion - or £142,000 for each worker, including the 5,000-plus employed in London.
Salaries and benefits, including bonuses, were paid out of earnings, not capital, he added.
The firm defended the practice of paying out such bonuses, arguing it helped it to "attract and motivate" the best people.
The spokesman said: "We do think the bonuses are justified. Please bear in mind that the firm was profitable for the year. We have one of, if not the lowest compensation ratios in the industry and when the firm does well, our people do well, and the converse is also true."
.
Little 'Adolf Hitler' Denied Birthday Cake at N.J. Grocery
A Easton, Pennsylvania father of 3-year-old Adolf Hitler Campbell, was denied a birthday cake with the child's full name on it by one New Jersey supermarket.
"They need to accept a name. A name's a name. The kid isn't going to grow up and do what (Hitler) did," he said.
After ShopRite refused the request for the cake as inappropriate, the Campbells got a cake decorated at a Wal-Mart in Pennsylvania, Deborah Campbell said..
The Campbells' other two children also have unusual names: JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell turns 2 in a few months and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell will be 1 in April.
Heath Campbell said he named his son after Adolf Hitler because he liked the name and because "no one else in the world would have that name."
Campbell said his ancestors are German and that he has lived all his life in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, which is across the Delaware River from Easton.
.
Councillors in California have passed a curfew on their own mayor because they don't like her working late at night.
Blanca Figueroa, the mayor of South El Monte, a suburb east of Los Angeles, must now vacate city hall by 11pm.
Councillors said they had concerns about safety and liability regarding the work schedule of the mayor, who frequently worked until the early hours of the morning.
But Ms Figueroa says the curfew is unfair as she needs to work late to catch up on paperwork because her days are filled with meetings.
She also says her workload has increased over recent months due to the economic downturn worrying constituents.
"My job is 24/7," the mayor, who has been in office since 1997, told the Los Angeles Times.
"I have more work to do now than ever. If I let it go by, it piles up. Do I have a private life? No. Even on Thanksgiving I was here. I'm mentally exhausted, but it is my service to serve the city."
.
Roller Coaster pregnancy
A barmaid didn't know she was pregnant til she went into labor - days after being flung around on white knuckle rides at Alton Towers.
Issy McMurdo, 21, from Leamington Spa, thought it was something she'd eaten when she went to hospital with excruciating stomach pains.
"It was a massive shock when they gave me a scan and told me I was in labor. I simply had no idea I was pregnant. I just thought I'd put on a little bit of weight," she told The Sun.
"Then when my ankles swelled up I assumed it was because I was on my feet all the time at the pub.
"I even went to Alton Towers where pregnant women are warned not to go on the rides. I was flung upside down on the Air ride at speeds of up to 50mph and hurled down drops of 53ft. So it was quite lucky I didn't go into labor there!"
Issy, a slender six-footer, was still working grueling bar shifts before giving birth to 6lb 2oz Oscar.
Boyfriend Harry Humber, 22, a university student, added: "Issy had terrible stomach pains after coming to my flat. Twenty-four hours later, our little boy was born.
"Oscar is the best Christmas present anyone could ask for. We are very lucky."
.
Bailed-out bank pays £1.6bn bonuses
Workers at a firm that benefitted from the US bank bail-out are still to share in a multibillion-pound bonus pot, it has been confirmed.
Goldman Sachs revealed the figure, worth about £55,000 per employee, as it posted its first quarterly loss since becoming a public company in 1999.
A spokesman said the bonus pot, which will not be shared by the chief executive and six senior colleagues who have agreed to give up their perk, totaled £1.67 billion.
The US-based firm, which switched from being an investment bank to a bank holding company in September, lost £1.36 billion in the final quarter of this year.
A spokesman rejected reports that the bonuses could amount to as much as £4.3 billion - or £142,000 for each worker, including the 5,000-plus employed in London.
Salaries and benefits, including bonuses, were paid out of earnings, not capital, he added.
The firm defended the practice of paying out such bonuses, arguing it helped it to "attract and motivate" the best people.
The spokesman said: "We do think the bonuses are justified. Please bear in mind that the firm was profitable for the year. We have one of, if not the lowest compensation ratios in the industry and when the firm does well, our people do well, and the converse is also true."
.
Little 'Adolf Hitler' Denied Birthday Cake at N.J. Grocery
A Easton, Pennsylvania father of 3-year-old Adolf Hitler Campbell, was denied a birthday cake with the child's full name on it by one New Jersey supermarket.
"They need to accept a name. A name's a name. The kid isn't going to grow up and do what (Hitler) did," he said.
After ShopRite refused the request for the cake as inappropriate, the Campbells got a cake decorated at a Wal-Mart in Pennsylvania, Deborah Campbell said..
The Campbells' other two children also have unusual names: JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell turns 2 in a few months and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell will be 1 in April.
Heath Campbell said he named his son after Adolf Hitler because he liked the name and because "no one else in the world would have that name."
Campbell said his ancestors are German and that he has lived all his life in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, which is across the Delaware River from Easton.
.
Assorted Images
PZR said... I wonder if Dick Bliss and Harry Ball are related?
The Harry Ball Field in Beverly, Massachusetts
.Man's pet 'dog' was a rare fox
A Chinese man was shocked to discover the dog he had raised from a pup was actually a rare Arctic fox.Zhang, of Tunkou, bought what he thought was an all-white Pomeranian dog for £60 a year ago on a business trip.
But he found the dog hard to tame, it would often bite him and had several unusual traits, he told the Wuhan Evening Post.
"It can't bark but instead makes little 'em em' noises, and its tail has been growing longer and longer," he said.
"The most annoying thing is that starting this summer, the dog became very smelly. Even when we gave it a daily shampoo bath, the smell was still strong."
Zhang took his 'dog' to a local zoo for answers, and it turned out the dog is actually an Arctic fox, a protected rare species.
He has now donated the animal to the zoo.
.
That's Just Crazy
Huge vortex of tumbleweeds in Queensland...Australia
.
.
.
How about the Devil raising Hell
.
Small Bits of News You Didn’t Know you Needed
Texting surpasses 6,000 monthly limit
A 16-year-old New Zealand girl who is allowed a substantial 6,000 text messages per month says she often goes over her limit and has to bum phones from friends.
Wellington High School student Hannah Brooke said her text plan, which costs $17 monthly, is not enough to satisfy her 260 texts-per-day habit, The Dominion Post reported Tuesday.
"I have three phones and I run out of texts all the time. It's just like all day," she said.
Brooke said her texting, which she pays for out of her own pocket, is mostly just to keep up to date on daily goings-on.
"Just everyday things -- `What are you up to? Where are you? What's up?' Just normal stuff," she said. "If you have nothing to do, you usually text more. I guess I just text for the sake of it."
.
Pornography is an $8-billion-per-year industry in America.
According to U.S. News & World Report, those earnings dwarf the conventional movie industry and exceed the revenues of the rock and country music industries combined.
In 2002, more than 11,000 pornographic movies were released, compared to Hollywood's 470 features.
According to the Sourcebook on Pornography, the average age a person first views porn is 13.
Only about 3,000 child pornographers were reported in 1998. In 2004, more than 106,000 cases were brought before police, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
.
FLAME™ Body Spray
Burger King has come up with a novel Christmas gift idea for meat-loving men - barbecue-scented cologne.
Flame is being promoted as "the scent of seduction with a hint of flame-broiled meat", reports the Daily Telegraph.
It is on sale for just $3.99 online and in a selection of US stores - but not in the UK. It even has its own website: BK Flame The website extol the virtues of a perfume that smells like cooked meat.
"Flame by BK captures the essence of that love and gives it to you. Behold... now you can set the mood for whatever you're in the mood for," it says.
.
Hey, officer -- that cocaine in my sock. It's not mine
A Niceville Police was on routine patrol at midnight on Dec. 4 when he noticed a car stopped in his lane, with its lights pointing toward the patrol car. The driver, 42-year-old Mitchel McNabb of Fort Walton Beach, was slumped below the steering wheel for an unknown reason, the officer noted.
The driver's eyes were glassy and he was moving very slowly. He told the officer he'd stopped because he was looking for a cigarette, according to his arrest report.
A K-9 dog was called to the scene and alerted to the possibility of narcotics in the vehicle.
During a search, the officer found a lump of toilet paper in the driver's sock. Inside the toilet paper was a chunk of crack cocaine. The man denied the crack was his.
Officers also found a baggie with more cocaine in it, which Mitchell also denied owning.
The amount of crack cocaine found on Mitchell "far exceeds personal use," the report noted.
He was charged with possession of crack cocaine, with the intent to distribute.
.
Naked woman taken from street to detox
Deputies took a naked woman to the county jail for detox Sunday after she ran door to door in the dark of night, looking for someone to have sex with her.
At the scene, the responding deputy found a man in his underwear on top of the "completely naked" 32-year-old woman on the side of Mimosa Avenue. The investigation began as the two were separated.
He ordered her into the back seat of his patrol car to keep people from seeing her, according to the report. She eventually complied - but started fighting when she overheard dispatch on the radio and wanted to escape "the voices.
.
Female jailer fired for smuggling in nude photos
A detention officer accused of sneaking drugs and nude photographs of herself into Bay County Jail was arrested Sunday, Bay Sheriff's Office officials said.
Shannon Nicole Copeland, of 1613 Fairy Ave., was met at the jail by Sheriff Frank McKeithen and jail administrator Rick Anglin as she began her shift Sunday. A search of her person revealed a CD of nude photographs of herself and several printed nude images, according to a Bay County Sheriff's Office release.
Copeland, a control room operator who had been entrusted with the movements of inmates, was a former employee of Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA, and had been retained by the jail as an uncertified detention specialist after the transition.
The Sheriff's Office took over day-to-day operation of the jail in October, and Copeland had been under investigation since then, officials said, when other employees reported her behavior as suspicious.
.
Man steals urine samples from fridge
Here's a novel way to beat that "dirty" urine problem.
Steal the fridge with the samples.
Only one flaw: Cops say a Gainesville man is behind bars for doing just that.
The Alachua County Sheriff's Office says 26-year-old Devin Perry stole the fridge used to store urine samples from a probation office after testing positive for drug use.
His urine was among the samples.
Probation officers gave investigators a list of names of those whose drug samples were stored in the stolen fridge.
Cops tracked down Perry at his home where they found shards of glass with blood on them. Perry is being held in jail but the fridge is still missing.
So if you find a fridge with bottles of yellowish liquid, here's a tip.
They're not Mountain Dew.
.
A 16-year-old New Zealand girl who is allowed a substantial 6,000 text messages per month says she often goes over her limit and has to bum phones from friends.
Wellington High School student Hannah Brooke said her text plan, which costs $17 monthly, is not enough to satisfy her 260 texts-per-day habit, The Dominion Post reported Tuesday.
"I have three phones and I run out of texts all the time. It's just like all day," she said.
Brooke said her texting, which she pays for out of her own pocket, is mostly just to keep up to date on daily goings-on.
"Just everyday things -- `What are you up to? Where are you? What's up?' Just normal stuff," she said. "If you have nothing to do, you usually text more. I guess I just text for the sake of it."
.
Pornography is an $8-billion-per-year industry in America.
According to U.S. News & World Report, those earnings dwarf the conventional movie industry and exceed the revenues of the rock and country music industries combined.
In 2002, more than 11,000 pornographic movies were released, compared to Hollywood's 470 features.
According to the Sourcebook on Pornography, the average age a person first views porn is 13.
Only about 3,000 child pornographers were reported in 1998. In 2004, more than 106,000 cases were brought before police, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
.
FLAME™ Body Spray
Burger King has come up with a novel Christmas gift idea for meat-loving men - barbecue-scented cologne.
Flame is being promoted as "the scent of seduction with a hint of flame-broiled meat", reports the Daily Telegraph.
It is on sale for just $3.99 online and in a selection of US stores - but not in the UK. It even has its own website: BK Flame The website extol the virtues of a perfume that smells like cooked meat.
"Flame by BK captures the essence of that love and gives it to you. Behold... now you can set the mood for whatever you're in the mood for," it says.
.
FLORIDA NEWS
.
'Burglar' was really a victim fleeing robbers
Shane and Jenny Coombs went from sound sleep to sheer terror when a man jumped through their bedroom window about 2:40 a.m, spraying the couple with broken glass.
Then came the hand-to-hand combat.
Marine veteran Shane Coombs, 41, came out of bed swinging. He subdued the guy until cops arrived.
And then the intruder delivered the real surprise:
He wasn't a burglar. He was a victim.
It's true. St. Petersburg police believe the intruder wasn't attacking the couple — he was escaping his own gun-toting attackers.
He'd been shot in the lower left leg and told cops he was running for his life when he dove through the window.
He claimed two men pulled up in a silver sedan and demanded money. He threw his cash down.
But they shot him anyway. So he ran. His shoes were found a few streets down — and they kept shooting.
The Coombs couple said the guy damaged their backyard gate and landscaping before leaping through their window.
Scared the bejeesus out of them. Lucky for the intruder -- the couple doesn't sleep with a gun under the pillow.
.Shane and Jenny Coombs went from sound sleep to sheer terror when a man jumped through their bedroom window about 2:40 a.m, spraying the couple with broken glass.
Then came the hand-to-hand combat.
Marine veteran Shane Coombs, 41, came out of bed swinging. He subdued the guy until cops arrived.
And then the intruder delivered the real surprise:
He wasn't a burglar. He was a victim.
It's true. St. Petersburg police believe the intruder wasn't attacking the couple — he was escaping his own gun-toting attackers.
He'd been shot in the lower left leg and told cops he was running for his life when he dove through the window.
He claimed two men pulled up in a silver sedan and demanded money. He threw his cash down.
But they shot him anyway. So he ran. His shoes were found a few streets down — and they kept shooting.
The Coombs couple said the guy damaged their backyard gate and landscaping before leaping through their window.
Scared the bejeesus out of them. Lucky for the intruder -- the couple doesn't sleep with a gun under the pillow.
Hey, officer -- that cocaine in my sock. It's not mine
A Niceville Police was on routine patrol at midnight on Dec. 4 when he noticed a car stopped in his lane, with its lights pointing toward the patrol car. The driver, 42-year-old Mitchel McNabb of Fort Walton Beach, was slumped below the steering wheel for an unknown reason, the officer noted.
The driver's eyes were glassy and he was moving very slowly. He told the officer he'd stopped because he was looking for a cigarette, according to his arrest report.
A K-9 dog was called to the scene and alerted to the possibility of narcotics in the vehicle.
During a search, the officer found a lump of toilet paper in the driver's sock. Inside the toilet paper was a chunk of crack cocaine. The man denied the crack was his.
Officers also found a baggie with more cocaine in it, which Mitchell also denied owning.
The amount of crack cocaine found on Mitchell "far exceeds personal use," the report noted.
He was charged with possession of crack cocaine, with the intent to distribute.
.
Naked woman taken from street to detox
Deputies took a naked woman to the county jail for detox Sunday after she ran door to door in the dark of night, looking for someone to have sex with her.
At the scene, the responding deputy found a man in his underwear on top of the "completely naked" 32-year-old woman on the side of Mimosa Avenue. The investigation began as the two were separated.
He ordered her into the back seat of his patrol car to keep people from seeing her, according to the report. She eventually complied - but started fighting when she overheard dispatch on the radio and wanted to escape "the voices.
.
Female jailer fired for smuggling in nude photos
A detention officer accused of sneaking drugs and nude photographs of herself into Bay County Jail was arrested Sunday, Bay Sheriff's Office officials said.
Shannon Nicole Copeland, of 1613 Fairy Ave., was met at the jail by Sheriff Frank McKeithen and jail administrator Rick Anglin as she began her shift Sunday. A search of her person revealed a CD of nude photographs of herself and several printed nude images, according to a Bay County Sheriff's Office release.
Copeland, a control room operator who had been entrusted with the movements of inmates, was a former employee of Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA, and had been retained by the jail as an uncertified detention specialist after the transition.
The Sheriff's Office took over day-to-day operation of the jail in October, and Copeland had been under investigation since then, officials said, when other employees reported her behavior as suspicious.
.
Man steals urine samples from fridge
Here's a novel way to beat that "dirty" urine problem.
Steal the fridge with the samples.
Only one flaw: Cops say a Gainesville man is behind bars for doing just that.
The Alachua County Sheriff's Office says 26-year-old Devin Perry stole the fridge used to store urine samples from a probation office after testing positive for drug use.
His urine was among the samples.
Probation officers gave investigators a list of names of those whose drug samples were stored in the stolen fridge.
Cops tracked down Perry at his home where they found shards of glass with blood on them. Perry is being held in jail but the fridge is still missing.
So if you find a fridge with bottles of yellowish liquid, here's a tip.
They're not Mountain Dew.
.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
