Space balls

American tax dollars hard at work.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) — Astronauts were allowed to fly after flight surgeons and other astronauts warned they were so drunk they posed a flight-safety risk on at least two occasions, an aviation weekly reported Thursday.

It cited a special panel studying astronaut health, which found “heavy use of alcohol” before launch that was within the standard 12-hour “bottle-to-throttle” rule, according to Aviation Week & Space Technology. It reported the finding on its Web site.

A NASA official confirmed the health report contains claims of alcohol use by astronauts before launch, but said the information is based on anonymous interviews and is unsubstantiated. The official didn’t want to be named because NASA plans a news conference Friday to discuss the panel’s findings.

The panel was created following the arrest in February of former space shuttle flier Lisa Nowak, who was implicated in a love triangle.

NASA’s space operations chief, Bill Gerstenmaier, said Thursday it would be inappropriate for him to discuss the matter before the report is released on Friday.

Asked if he had ever personally had to deal with a safety issue involving an inebriated astronaut in space, Gerstenmaier replied: “The obvious answer is no. I’ve never had any instances of that.”

“There’s not been a disciplinary action or anything I’ve been involved with regarding this type of activity,” he said.

In Washington, the chairman of the House Science and Technology committee said he hadn’t seen the report, “but if the reports of drunken astronauts being allowed to fly prove to be true, I think the agency will have a lot of explaining to do.”

“That’s not the ‘right stuff’ as far as I’m concerned,” said Bart Gordon, D-Tennessee.

The Aviation Week report doesn’t make clear when the alleged incidents occurred, nor does it say whether the intoxication involved crew members who have no role in flying the shuttle or whether it was the pilot and commander.

NASA plans to release findings of a pair of reviews — one by the outside committee and the other by an internal panel — into astronauts’ health Friday.

The independent panel’s NASA consultant and its eight members, which include Air Force experts in aerospace medicine and clinical psychiatry, did not immediately return phone messages or e-mails from the Associated Press Thursday afternoon.

Aviation Week said the report citing drunkenness does not deal directly with Nowak or mention any other astronaut by name.

Nowak is accused of attacking the girlfriend of a fellow astronaut — her romantic rival — with pepper spray in a parking lot at Orlando International Airport. Fired by NASA in March, she has pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted kidnapping, battery and burglary with assault.

Freeway chase copter collision

Just like out of a cartoon, and over a stupid freeway chase. The reporter in the video sounds like he is busy with himself.

Watch the video
PHOENIX – Two news helicopters covering a police chase on live television collided and crashed to the ground Friday, killing all four people on board in a plunge that viewers saw as a jumble of spinning, broken images.

Both helicopters went down in a park in central Phoenix and caught fire. No one on the ground was hurt.

TV viewers did not actually witness the accident because cameras aboard both aircraft were pointed at the ground. But they saw video from one of the helicopters break up and begin to spin before the station abruptly switched to the studio.

Television station KNXV reported that it operated one of the choppers. The other was from KTVK. A pilot and photographer aboard each chopper were killed.

KNXV reporter Craig Smith, who was among the dead, was reporting live as police chased a man driving a construction truck who had fled a traffic stop. The man was driving erratically, hitting several cars and driving on the sidewalk at times.

Police had blown the truck’s tires, and the man eventually parked it, then carjacked another vehicle nearby.

Just before the picture broke up, Smith said, “Oh geez!”

The station then switched to the studio and briefly showed regular programming, a soap opera, before announcing that the helicopter had crashed.

The man fleeing from police was later taken into custody. Police Chief Jack Harris suggested he could be charged in connection with the collision.

“I believe you will want to talk to investigators, but I think he will be held responsible for any of the deaths from this tragedy,” Harris told reporters at the scene. He did not elaborate.

The two choppers came down on the grass lawn in front of a boarded-up church at the park. Firefighters swarmed to the area as thick black smoke rose from the scene.

Rick Gotchie, an air conditioning contractor, was working nearby when he noticed the helicopters overhead. He said they began circling closer as he continued watching, and one appeared to get too close to the other.

“I kept saying ‘Go lower, go lower,’ but he didn’t,” Gotchie said. “It was like a vacuum. They just got sucked into each other, and they both exploded and pieces were flying everywhere.”

He said he ran to the crash site, but “no one got out.”

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said the pilots of the five news helicopters and one police chopper over the chase were not talking to air traffic controllers at the time, which is normal.

“Typically air traffic controllers clear helicopters into an area where they can cover a chase like this,” Gregor said. “Once they are in the area, the pilots themselves are responsible for keeping themselves separated from other aircraft.”

Pilots generally use a dedicated radio frequency to talk to each other and maintain their positions, Gregor said.

“There is a high degree of coordination,” Gregor said. “To fly for a TV station you have to have a commercial rating, which means more (flight hours), more training.”

Keith McCutchen, a past president of the National Broadcast Pilots Association and a news pilot for 11 years in Indianapolis, said pilot awareness is vital while on the scene of a story because of the many distractions that could spell trouble.

“You are watching the scene. You have to bring your attention inside to look at the monitors to see what the audience is seeing so you can converse. But you’re also having to direct your attention to the other aircraft flying around you.

“You have to have your head on a swivel in those kinds of situations,” he said.

In Indianapolis, when news choppers descend on a story, they pick different altitudes and radio their positions to other pilots.

“I may be live on the air and one of the other guys may say, `Hey, I’m coming up on your left side,’” McCutchen said. “I’ll break away from what I’m doing on the air and say, `Roger,’ and then go back to talking.”

Killed on board the KTVK chopper were pilot Scott Bowerbank and photographer Jim Cox. Smith and photographer Rick Krolak were aboard the KNXV aircraft, the stations reported.

Barbara Cochran, president of the Radio-Television News Directors Association in Washington, said the group does not track fatalities among helicopter news pilots, but she could not recall another example of two news choppers colliding while covering a story.

“These pilots, they are very professional. They combine the skills of pilots and skills as journalists,” she said.

I know the dollar is declining but this is too much….

Family searches feces of cash-eating dog

MENOMONIE, Wis. – Debbie Hulleman’s dog Pepper has been known to gnaw on lipstick, munch on shampoo bottles and chew on toothpaste. But Pepper got Hulleman into a real mess after gobbling nearly $750.

“This is probably the worst,” Hulleman said Thursday, recalling how she poked through vomit and dog piles left in the yard to recover the cash.

Hulleman had asked her mother in Oakdale, Minn., to take care of Pepper and Zach, the family’s other dog last month while she and husband went on vacation.

Pepper, an 8-year-old black Labrador-German shorthair, got into a purse belonging to her mother’s friend and chewed the cash from an envelope.

Hulleman’s mother recovered some of the money that Pepper spit out, thinking she had it all. But when Hulleman returned from the trip and went to clean up her dogs’ mess outside, she noticed a $50 bill hanging from one pile.

The chore of sorting through dog feces netted about $400, the 50-year-old dog lover said. Between that and other bills that Pepper had either vomited or simply chewed on, the family recovered $647.

“We have a $100 bill that can’t be recovered because you need three-fourths of a bill and it is only half of a bill,” Hulleman said.

The family swapped the soiled money for fresh currency at a bank.

“It wasn’t that bad. I soaked it and strained it and rinsed it. I just kept rinsing it and rinsing it. I had rubber gloves on of course,” Hulleman said.

“Everyone said, ‘I can’t believe you did that.’ Well, for $400, yeah, I would do that,” she said.

Man locked in a shed.. Tortured to death, British style

Note that they barely got 10 years for this. Why do white people have no respect for life?

THREE white sadists who imprisoned an epileptic in a garden shed for four months and tortured him to death were jailed yesterday.

Victim Kevin Davies was beaten with sticks, burned with a hot knife and starved so harshly he lost three stone.

He was freed only to help with household chores. His blood was found on the ceiling, walls and furniture at the home of his tormentors.

 

Incredibly Kevin, 29 – cruelly nicknamed P**** – was even forced to make a “distressing” Middle East hostage-style video in which he praised his captors for looking after him.

Ringleader Amanda Baggus, 26, her lover David Lehane, 35, and Scott Andrews, 27, tried to blame each other.

But they were given away by a diary kept by Baggus in which she mixed casual horror with banal domestic notes. Her entries read:

“Scott and Dave hit him until quite late cause P**** made a load of shouting. Hooverd 3 times. Dave got back about 5ish. He seem in good mood.

“Made sure Kevin got a good night by getting Dave to beat him up.”

“He came in. Have not given him food. Dave smacked him one.”

The vile trio were accused of murder. But the charge was dropped after experts could not rule out epilepsy as a contributory cause of death.(!!?!?) All three admitted at Bristol crown court false imprisonment and ABH.

Baggus and Lehane were jailed for 10 years and Andrews for nine.

They showed no emotion as a judge branded their treatment “truly horrendous and completely inhumane”.

Outside court Kevin’s mother, Elizabeth James, fought back tears as she declared: “I can’t believe that anyone can be so cruel. They’ve got away with murder.”

Alcoholic Kevin – described as “very vulnerable and very gullible” – was a friend of landscape gardener Lehane and helped him out with odd jobs.

But Baggus, mother of a son of nine, decided he would have to “pay off the debt” after crashing her three-wheeler car in May last year.

On May 27 the couple locked him in the metal windowless shed at their home in the Forest of Dean, Glos. They were joined in July by Andrews.

They started cashing his benefit cheques. Then for reasons which are still a mystery, the mental abuse turned to raw, physical terror.

Kevin was beaten daily, sometimes with a thick wooden bar, leaving his body covered in injuries. He was given potato peelings to eat.

As the violence intensified he was burned, possibly with a hot knife and corrosive liquid.

The three brutes also recorded a video in which their gaunt and terrified captive nervously tells the camera he is scared of his family and says he is being fed well. Both were lies. On September 26, the day of his death, Baggus and Lehane visited the shed and hit him repeatedly in the face.

Vicious Baggus also slammed him over the head with a jug.

Bloodstained Kevin collapsed. His tormentors feared he had had an epileptic fit and dragged his body into the kitchen. Baggus later rang 999.

But tragic Kevin was already dead by the time paramedics arrived.

Prosecutor Ian Pringle said: “The last few months of this man’s life must have been utterly miserable.

“He was effectively held captive in a locked garden shed, kept like a dog and abused for four months.

“There was bruising to both arms, both legs and to the lower jaw.

“There were fractures to his ribs and and larynx. Burn marks covered 10 per cent of his body area.”

Baggus blamed depression caused by the death of her mother for her part in the violence. Lehane’s defence said “things had got out of hand”. Andrews had a string of convictions.

Investigation leader Det Chief Insp Geoff Brookes said: “Only they can say what motivated them.

“On the face of it, they were normal members of the community. But clearly their behaviour was bizarre. This was the worst abuse I’ve seen.”

Presenting the Pizza bomber, and friends

Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, right, is serving a seven to 20 year sentence for the murder of former boyfriend James Roden. That same month, Brian Wells, aka the “pizza bomber,” left, was killed by a bomb’s explosion as he tried to rob a bank.

A “white collar” crime?

White Girl, 13, guilty of murdering her family

Family values at work. She had help from her 23 year old white boyfriend(the parents didn’t approve) . The girl, who can’t be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, is believed to be the youngest person ever convicted of a multiple murder in Canada.
She’ll serve only 6 years. Thats what I call tolerance.

Fiber

Blame it on roid rage….Chris Benoit

A white celebrity murders his wife and son, and the culprit is his doctor(white) who hooked him up with steroids? Benoit knew what he was doing, and should be remembered for the murderous junkie that he was. Why are white people making excuses for this guy?

Who in their right mind pays to watch these retarded  circus freaks molest each other?