Now even crack dealers have business cards?

Sylvester J. Williams, 21, of Leavenworth, was charged Monday with possessing crack cocaine with the intent to sell it, Maj. Patrick Kitchens of the Leavenworth Police Department said.

Kitchens said Williams remained in custody Wednesday on $75,000 bond.

He said police had heard for some time that Williams had been selling drugs in the area. "Then we heard that he was handing out business cards," the officer said. "In the course of our investigation we were fortunate to come up with one, and we gave him a call."

Kitchens said the business card had an image of what appeared to be an alarm clock being hit by a boxing glove and said: "For a quick hit on time call the boss."

"When he answered, we agreed to buy some crack from him, we went up there, and we arrested him," Kitchens said.

***"For a quick hit on time call the boss."??? Shame on you people thinking that it was Bruce Springsteen!!!

Bad girl blogger goes on trial

CRAIG, Alaska — What 16-year-old Rachelle Waterman seemed to want most in this tiny island village was a bad reputation.

She wore a black leather dog collar and fishnet stockings to classes at Craig High School. She bragged about practicing Wicca and told people she planned to get a pentagram seared into her rear end.

She dated older guys and danced suggestively with girls at school dances. She titled her blog "My Crappy Life: The Inside Look of an Insane Person," and spiked it with swear words, sexual innuendos, and smirking accounts of being an outcast.

Oh yeah, I also got voted Biggest Freak for my class — that makes me happy," she once wrote.

But among the 1,100 close-knit residents of Craig, few were buying Waterman as a true bad girl. To them, the teen was the prized daughter of the school board president and his equally civic-minded wife.

Like her parents, Waterman appeared to be the ultimate go-getter, singing in honor choir, suiting up for the volleyball team, and competing in Academic Decathlon. If she wasn't teaching younger kids about the dangers of drugs as a DARE volunteer, she was playing in pep band or working stage crew in community theater.

She could wear all the black clothes she wanted and talk tough to her friends and on her blog. To those in Craig, Rachelle Waterman was still a decent kid.

But on a cold Sunday morning last winter, a gruesome discovery deep in the forest that covers Prince of Wales Island called that assessment into question.

A hunter stumbled across the charred body of Waterman's mother, Lauri. Within days, the teenager was implicated, and people in Craig began asking themselves how much of the honor student's tough-girl act actually had been real.

"We all just thought of her as an extension of her mother, just somebody who is always doing something for somebody," said Scott Willburn, whose son Jon attended school with Rachelle Waterman. "People were shocked and stunned."

On Tuesday, Waterman goes on trial for first-degree murder and other charges that could land her in prison for the rest of her life. Supported by her father and some friends, she maintains her innocence.

*** I am not sure what happened. May never know. I hope she had nothing to do with it!!

Didn't I see her on Lucha Libre?

Mexican police hunting the country's most-wanted serial killer have arrested a female wrestler.

Juana Barraza, 48, was held as she allegedly fled the scene where a woman in her 80s had been strangled with a stethoscope, police said.

Ms Barraza, known in wrestling as the Silent Lady, is now feared to be Mexico's "Little Old Lady Killer".

She reportedly admitted to Wednesday's killing, but denied a murder spree in which at least 30 women may have died.

The killings began in the capital in the late 1990s.

Mexico City prosecutors said fingerprint evidence linked Ms Barraza to at least 10 murders carried out in recent years. She was arrested at the scene of the killing of 82-year-old Ana Maria Reyes on Wednesday in the Venustiano Carranza area of the capital.

After reports that a woman had carried out the killings, police suspected a man in woman's clothes.

You have to feel for the family....

LAKE BUTLER, Fla. -- A family reeling from the deaths of seven children in a fiery crash on a Florida highway Wednesday afternoon was struck with more tragedy when the children's grandfather suffered a heart attack and died. The grief may have been too much for 62-year-old Edwin Scott. A pastor of a church that the family attended said their grief is "unbearable." Upon hearing the news that all of his grandchildren were killed when a semi smashed into the family's car that had stopped for a school bus, Scott started feeling sick and vomiting. The children of both of his daughters were killed. Relatives called an ambulance, but family members believe he died on the way to the hospital. "We lost my daddy tonight," Barbara Mann said. "He lost all seven of his grandkids and he died, too." Five of those who died were the children of Scott's daughter, Barbara, and her husband, Terry Mann. One daughter, 15-year-old Cynthia Nicole, was from Mann's previous marriage and the others -- Elizabeth, 15; Johnny, 13; Heaven, 3; and Anthony, 20 months -- were taken in through the foster care program. Three had been adopted and Anthony was in the process of being adopted. The other two victims -- Ashley Kenn, 13; and Miranda Finn, 10 -- were children of Scott's other daughter, Mandy. Mandy's family had just moved to the area and the two children were to start school in Union County, Fla., this week. The children died less than two miles from where they lived. The victims' aunt said they were on their way home from school and were planning to go to Wednesday night church services. "It's not describable. A whole chunk of our family is just gone," Tina Mann said. "We're all kind of numb, trying to figure out what happens next." Investigators were trying to understand why the driver of a truck hit the car from behind, pushing it in to the bus that was carrying nine students. Everyone in the car was killed Wednesday, including the 15-year-old girl who was driving illegally. Tina Mann said that her niece, who had a learner's permit, had dropped off another child and was taking her siblings home "to get ready to go to church." "Even though she was an underage driver, it's my understanding she did not cause the accident," Mann said. "The same thing would have happened had there been an adult in the car with her. We'd just have one more death in the family."

***That is one of the saddest stories of all time.

A new cure for hiccups - death!!!

A Colombian man who tried to startle his nephew from a bout of the hiccups by pointing a gun at him accidentally pulled the trigger and killed him. Police in the northern city of Barranquilla said the distraught uncle then ran out of the house and down the street a few yards before stopping and shooting himself. He died from a gunshot wound in the head.

Punk beats grandma for not buying him beer

Bradenton, Florida -- Deputies say a 16-year-old has been arrested for beating his grandmother with a two-by-four for refusing to give him $100 for beer.

Charged is Kurt Cass of Hammock Drive, Bradenton.

Investigators say Cass went into his 60-year-old grandmother's bedroom Thursday and asked her for $100 for beer. When she refused, he allegedly placed a razor blade on her throat and demanded she take him to the bank to get the money, deputies said.

"When the victim arrived back home she locked all of the doors," deputies reported. "The defendant arrived back home and kicked the front door in.

"Once inside the defendant grabbed a two foot 2x4 piece of wood and hit the victim numerous times on the back. The defendant then grabbed a three foot piece of 3 inch PVC pipe and hit the victim on her head, back, and legs numerous times. The defendant's case worker arrived on scene and was able to hold him until law enforcement arrived."

***Gawd, what a waste!!!

Dog strangles girl

MANORVILLE, Long Island (AP) A six-year-old girl playing with her dog in the backyard was strangled when the pet apparently grabbed her scarf and playfully pulled her down to the ground and dragged her around the yard. Suffolk County Homicide Detective Lieutenant John Fitzpatrick calls it "an absolutely tragic story.''

Police say the accident happened in the backyard of little Kaitlyn Hassard at 4:30 p.m. yesterday. The girl came home from school wearing the scarf and the dog began pulling on it. The girl's mother put the dog in the backyard and a few minutes later Kaitlyn asked to go out and play with the dog, which weighs about 70 pounds.

The one-and-a-half Golden Retriever named Jessie, again began playing with the 40-pound girl tugging on her scarf.

Lieutenant Fitzpatrick says the girl was in the yard for no more than ten minutes, because the family was going to run an errand at the Post Office. When her eleven-year-old brother went to the backyard to get his sister, he found her lying on the ground.

The boy called his mother who called 9-1-1 and began C-P-R. The girl was pronounced dead at Brookhaven Memorial Hospital.

Lieutenant Fitzpatrick says ``there were no injuries inflicted by the dog.'' He adds ``I don't believe the dog's actions were intentionally malicious.''

The dog has been brought to the Brookhaven Animal Shelter.

***What a tragedy!!!

Maybe I would just stay home

Alongside food and fire crackers, Chinese are adding a new item to their lunar New Year shopping: Adult diapers. Sales have soared ahead of the holiday as travelers prepare for long trips home aboard trains so crowded that even the toilets are jammed with people, newspapers said Tuesday.

In Foshan, a southern industrial city with a large migrant population, supermarkets report diaper sales have risen 50 percent since the main travel season began on Jan. 14, the papers said.

The problem arises from the need to sell twice as many tickets as there are train seats to accommodate the crush of travelers. Those without seats must find some place -- any place -- to put themselves, including in overhead racks, between cars, and in the usually stinking toilets.

Squirrels gone wild?

An officer was sent to a home on 10th Avenue shortly after 8:30 a.m. A man there told police a sick squirrel was in his backyard ''shaking, crying and [with] saliva coming from its mouth,'' police said.

The officer instead found two squirrels mating.

***Bow chica bow bow (Squirrel Love Music)

Slap happy girl get punished

A girl who was 14 when she took part in a "happy slapping" attack in which a man was beaten to death was jailed for eight years yesterday.

Chelsea O'Mahoney filmed her friends on her mobile phone as they battered David Morley. She then ran at the bar manager and "kicked his head like a football".

Mr Morley, 37, was one of eight victims assaulted as the hooded gang prowled the streets looking for targets in what a judge at the Old Bailey called an hour-long "orgy of attacks". Three other gang members were each jailed for 12 years for manslaughter.

Brian Barker, the Common Serjeant of London, said O'Mahoney, now 16, was "part of the group from first to last" and was "quite indifferent to the pain" her friends were inflicting.

Her counsel, Anthony Berry, QC, said her parents were heroin addicts. "Aged three or four she was used to seeing her mother injecting herself with heroin," he added. "Life was such a hopeless situation that she was found wandering around the streets of London completely unsupervised."

She met the rest of the gang when she was sent to live with her aunt on an estate in Kennington, south London.

The jury also heard O'Mahoney's diary entry for Oct 3, 2004, a few weeks before the attack on Mr Morley. She wrote: "Them lot banged up some old harmless man which I fink is bad man, even doe I waz laughing afterwards."

***Dat iz sum gud spellng gurll!!!

Whale vomit is valuable!!!

STREAKY Bay couple Loralee and Leon Wright have discovered one of nature's most valuable treasures - a 14.75kg lump of solid whale vomit worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The Wrights found the lump of ambergris, an excretion from a sperm whale, while driving along Yanerbie beach, south of Streaky Bay, looking for schools of salmon.

Mrs Wright said at first they were not sure what the object was but, after driving past it several times, they decided to collect it and have it tested.

The best ambergris is as valuable as gold and it has been speculated the Wrights' find could be worth between $400,000 and $1 million.

***I am going to go get Moby Dick drunk and rake in the bucks!!!

Meth Man suffocates daughters

A man high on methamphetamine rolled over in his sleep and suffocated his 1-month-old twin daughters, police said.

The man and the girls' mother were sharing their bed with the babies, who died Monday.

Jason Moises Gomez, 31, was ordered held without bail on suspicion of child endangerment causing death, being under the influence of a controlled substance and violating probation, police said.

***SAD!!!

Defibrillator of death

LEBANON -- Joshua Philip Martin was in his fourth day on the job as a rescue-squad worker in Russell County when, in a playful mood, he decided to reach into the front seat of the ambulance and zap one of his co-workers with the defibrillator paddles. The rookie's mistake was fatal.

Yesterday, in Russell Circuit Court, a judge convicted Martin, 25, of involuntary manslaughter, warning the burly but pink-faced young man that when he returns to court in March, he likely will be sent to prison. He faces a maximum sentence of 10 years.

The target of Martin's prank was Courtney Hilton Rhoton, a 23-year-old mother of two small children who had worked her way through school to become an emergency medical technician. She went into cardiac arrest seconds after Martin placed the paddles on her chest and shoulder. Three days later, on June 4, she died.

***Sure, he didn't mean to kill her but a mother of 2 is DEAD!!! Dude needs a series of beatings.

The new roach diet

It was supposed to be a quick after school snack, but instead a family said it turned out more like a scene from an episode of "Fear Factor."

A family claimed it ate fast food sandwiches filled with baby roaches.

However, the real debate began after the company quickly offered a cash settlement that Linda Watson said made her even angrier.

Watson said she drove up to a KFC drive-through window in Waxahachie and came home with the surprise.

"They were all in the sandwich [and] they were alive crawling in the napkin," she said.

Her daughter, Alicia Lewis, said she ate some of the food before she saw the roaches and what she ate made her sick.

"I had diarrhea and it went on for two days," she said.

*** I remember one night after a night of fun on the town, my friends and I went into a restaurant that will remain nameless. I was waiting in line to order when a guy opened the door to the kitchen area. I distinctly saw 3 or 4 roaches running aross some ove the food that had been sat out. Of course, I lost my hunger and told all of the people with me except 1 guy who I didn't like at all. He wound up getting something and we watched as he ate it. Cruel. YES!!!

Young Gun

GERMANTOWN, Md. - A 7-year-old girl was shot in the arm at a day-care center Tuesday after an 8-year-old classmate brought in one of his father’s guns and it accidentally went off, authorities said.

The father was arrested for gun offenses, and court documents outlined an extensive criminal record. The boy also was charged, but authorities said that was done only so he could be helped by juvenile authorities.

The boy had the weapon in a backpack and was playing with it when it went off, said Montgomery County police spokesman Derek Baliles.

***My weapon used to go off all the time when I was a kid. I am able to control it now! *chuckle snort*

Light 'em If you got 'em

A woman who killed her ex-husband by dousing him with gasoline and setting him on fire has been sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Barbara Ann Banning, 60, poured the fuel on her ex-husband while he was sitting in a recliner recovering from knee surgery. She then lit a piece of newspaper on a stove and threw it at him.

Neighbors put out the flames, but Fred Bounous died hours later.

***That is harsh, isn't it?!

South Dakota considers abortion ban

In the next six weeks, South Dakota lawmakers will decide whether to make abortion a crime.

A bill that would ban abortion in the state will be introduced within the next two days.

The bill will be called the Woman's Health and Life Protection Act. It will ban abortion, but won't prosecute a doctor who performs one to save a woman's life.

And the lawmaker who's introducing the bill says he thinks now is the right time to try and over-turn Roe vs Wade.

*** *Sigh*

College students dumber than dirt?

More than half of students at four-year colleges -- and at least 75 percent at two-year colleges -- lack the literacy to handle complex, real-life tasks such as understanding credit card offers, a study found.

The literacy study funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the first to target the skills of graduating students, finds that students fail to lock in key skills -- no matter their field of study.

The results cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents and having math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips.

Without "proficient" skills, or those needed to perform more complex tasks, students fall behind. They cannot interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.

"It is kind of disturbing that a lot of folks are graduating with a degree and they're not going to be able to do those things," said Stephane Baldi, the study's director at the American Institutes for Research, a behavioral and social science research organization.

***is anyone surprised by this? I bet they would be able to tell you about drinking and partying!!!

The new biggest loser?!?!

A prison inmate who shed 31 pounds so he could escape through a narrow hole in a wall has been recaptured after three days on the run in Sydney, the prison department said Sunday.

Robert Cole, 36, who was serving time for sex offenses and armed robbery, escaped from a hospital wing of Sydney's Long Bay Jail on Wednesday through 6-inch wide hole he had chiseled in the brickwork beside a window frame. He had been undergoing treatment for a psychiatric illness.

He reportedly managed to escape by reducing his weight to 123 pounds by taking laxatives.

He was recaptured in a Sydney shopping mall Saturday disguised with a beard drawn on his face with a pen, The Sunday Telegraph newspaper reported.

*** I need a picture of the beard drawn on his face with a pen!!! That would be classic!!

In other drinking news...

More and more area judges who order drunken drivers to avoid alcohol are using a snitch to monitor them that's more powerful than a nosy neighbor or suspicious spouse.

The device weighs less than a half-pound and is strapped to the offender's ankle to measure ethanol vapors as they leave the body. It takes hourly readings around the clock of the person's sweat to detect alcohol consumption.

***This should work better than the old blow in the tube thing connected to the starter system of their vehicle.

Absinthe in the news

An illegal alcoholic drink that gained notoriety in the 19th century for its hallucinogenic effects is emerging as the latest twist in a modern mystery surrounding a Greenwich man who vanished from his honeymoon cruise last summer.

Passengers say that absinthe, made from grain alcohol and the common herb wormwood, was consumed by a group of men last seen with George Allen Smith IV on July 5, the day he disappeared from a Royal Caribbean cruise of the Mediterranean.

C. Keith Greer, the attorney for one member of that group, Josh Askin of California, said Smith also drank shots of absinthe.

Absinthe is banned in the United States because of harmful neurological effects caused by a toxic chemical called thujone, said Michael Herndon, spokesman for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

It is historically blamed for hallucinations and bizarre behavior dating back to Vincent van Gogh.

*** If you are going to drink, you might as well do it right.

Geese full of poop

Piles of goose poop at a city lake have officials struggling to find a way to clean up the mess for picnicking parkgoers.

Full-time resident Canada geese arrived at the city's Lake Merritt in 1954 when several injured birds were introduced to the refuge. Their numbers have exploded in the past 20 years to at least 200 regulars, with some 2,000 geese descending on the park each summer, according to the National Audubon Society.

"Each bird produces about a pound of poop a day -- that's literally a ton each day," said Stephanie Benavidez, head naturalist at the Lake Merritt Wildlife Refuge.

It's a staggering problem that has Oakland and other cities trying to figure out how to chase away the geese without running afoul of the Federal Migratory Bird and Endangered Species acts that protect many of the birds that live alongside the geese at Lake Merritt, which covers 150 acres.

***Sounds like Washington to me!!!

Torture nurse!!!

A Japanese nurse who tried to relieve her work stress by tearing off patients' nails was sentenced Monday to three years and eight months in prison.

The 32-year-old Japanese woman, who worked at a hospital in the ancient capital of Kyoto, tore off the fingernails and toenails of six female patients in September and October 2004. The patients were all immobile after strokes or other illnesses.

***Wouldn't a fitting penalty be for the same to be done to her?!?! Like 6 times?

The sequel to Brokeback Mountain?

Enough already, say the residents of Gaywood Road who are darned tired of getting their street signs nabbed by pranksters humored by the name.

The fourth custom-made green wooden sign with fancy white letters disappeared over the holidays. With new signs costing $600 a pop, neighbors aren't laughing anymore.

Residents on Gaywood Road in Alamo -- and on Gaywood Place in Moraga, where street signs also have been stolen -- like their street name and wouldn't have it any other way. They want no such name change and are bemused by those captivated by the word "gay."

"At first we made a joke out of it, and everybody pitched in to buy a new sign," said 10-year Alamo resident Linda Buschmeyer. "Then, it wasn't so funny the second time on. It is kind of a personal insult."

Democrats accuse spying by Bush administration

While the White House defended domestic surveillance as a safeguard against terrorism, a Florida peace activist and several Democrats in Congress accused the Bush administration on Friday of spying on Americans who disagree with President Bush's policies.

Richard Hersh, of Boca Raton, Fla., director of Truth Project Inc. of Palm Beach County, told an ad hoc panel of House Democrats that his group and others in South Florida have been infiltrated and spied upon despite having no connections to terrorists.

"Agents rummaged through the trash, snooped into e-mails, packed Web sites and listened in on phone conversations," Hersh charged. "We know that address books and activist meeting lists have disappeared."

The Truth Project gained national attention when NBC News reported last month that it was described as a "credible threat" in a database of suspicious activity compiled by the Pentagon's Talon program. The listing cited the group's gathering a year ago at a Quaker meeting house in Lake Worth, Fla., to talk about ways to counter military recruitment at high schools.

***More and more things like this are being brought out aren't they? Hmmmm.....

Let's all go to Daytona Beach!!!

A federal judge struck down Daytona Beach's anti-nudity laws, saying they're unconstitutional.

Regulations prohibiting public nudity and nudity in places that sell alcohol violate the First and 14th amendments' protections of free speech and equal protection, the judge decided.

Daytona Beach also failed to prove its claim that adult nightclubs create secondary negative impacts on levels of crime, prostitution and illegal drug activity in neighborhoods, the judge wrote.

***Finally, a win for the good guys!!!!

Taking Lolita off the shelves

A 50-year-old classic novel about forbidden love is shaking things up in Marion County. The controversy centers on the book "Lolita" and whether it's obscene under today's standards, WESH 2 News reported. "I believe that you, at least hypothetically, could read this book and consider it obscene," said Terry Blaes, of Dunnellon. She challenged the Marion County Commission to determine whether they should pull "Lolita" from public library shelves, as they have the right to do so. "I want you to think about the effect of literature on the people who read it, children and adults," she said. In an odd twist, even though Blaes sounds opposed to "Lolita" on the shelves, she actually wants it to remain. Her challenge really questions what Marion County Commissioners think. "If there's something illegal there that children can't be exposed to, then we need to remove it," said County Commissioner Randy Harris. On a 3-2 vote, the County Commission determined "Lolita" will stay on the adult fiction shelves, but they also ordered the county attorney to come up with his determination on whether "Lolita" is indecent for minors.

*** Good gosh. It just makes me sick to my stomach that things like this continue happening. "I believe that you, at least hypothetically, could read this book and consider it obscene," said Terry Blaes. For crying out loud you can read ANYTHING and consider it obscene if you are a stinkin' prude!!! It's not like it's an illustrated book or anything!!! It is a freakin' novel!! Honestly, I applaude people for trying to protect children. I have NO problem with that!!! But when you want to pull it form the ADULT fiction shelves is going too darn far!! Come on!!! Let's use a bit of common sense!!!

Woman assaulted then put in jail with guy who assaulted her?

A petite young Cape Town woman was locked in a police holding cell with four men this week when she turned to the police for help after being assaulted.

One of her cellmates was the man who had allegedly assaulted her.

Police confirmed that men and women are not allowed to be locked in the same cell. A senior policeman has now been appointed to investigate the incident and the police say they are taking the matter seriously.

Portia Adams, 25, from Ruyterwacht, who is very slightly built, said she was convinced she was going to be raped in the tiny, filthy, windowless cell at the Elsies River police station.

'He is a huge guy'

"I was thinking 'Oh God, I'm going to die in here'," the young mother said, adding that she was only taken out of the cell when a woman police officer walked past and was shocked to see her inside with four men.

*** Sounds like they have a great police force there. To protect and to serve?!?!?!