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A Fort Worth man trying to scratch an itch on his back used a revolver and accidentally shot himself. Jorge Espinal, 44, was drinking beer and playing poker around 3 a.m. Sunday morning in his home in the 3500 block of Montague Street, when he got up from the table and walked into another room, said Fort Worth police Lt. Kenneth Dean. “He told officers he had an itch on his back and grabbed the first thing he could get a hold of which was a revolver,” Lt. Dean said. “The gun went off."

Police: Motorcyclist flipped bird, popped wheelie, crashed May 5 03:13 PM US/Eastern Write a Comment COPIAGUE, N.Y. (AP) - A Long Island man who flipped his finger at a police cruiser and then popped a wheelie on his motorcycle is recovering from injuries after crashing. Suffolk County Police said Frank Patti, 26, of West Islip, rode by the police car at a service station in Copiague at 7:30 p.m. Sunday. Police say Patti made an obscene gesture to two officers in the car, popped a wheelie and then sped away. Police gave chase. When the motorcycle turned into a parking...

A Royal Air Force top gun crash-landed a new $136.3 million Typhoon fighter — apparently after forgetting to put the wheels down during a training exercise in California. The state-of-the-art jet was badly damaged as it skidded along a runway on its belly at 130 mph. "Everything points to the pilot forgetting to lower the wheels, which does happen from time to time," an RAF insider said.

Some federal air marshals have been denied entry to flights they are assigned to protect when their names matched those on the terrorist no-fly list, and the agency says it's now taking steps to make sure their agents are allowed to board in the future. The problem with federal air marshals (FAM) names matching those of suspected terrorists on the no-fly list has persisted for years, say air marshals familiar with the situation. One air marshal said it has been “a major problem, where guys are denied boarding by the airline.” “In some cases, planes have departed without any coverage...

Ten North Koreans were killed in an IAF air strike on a Syria installation September, Bloomberg reported Monday, quoting an NHK report that cited unidentified South Korean intelligence officials. The report quoted a Japanese broadcaster who said that they had been assisting the Syrians in the construction of a nuclear reactor. Several North Korean workers survived the air strike, the report said. Yielding to months of pressure from the US Congress, the Bush administration gave members briefings on Thursday indicating that on September 6, Israel destroyed an alleged Syrian nuclear reactor built with North Korean help.

Actress and future San Francisco first lady Jennifer Siebel has moved a step closer to the altar, having taken up full-time residence in fiance Mayor Gavin Newsom's Russian Hill penthouse, where she is now registered to vote. It turns out, however, that the onetime Republican registered as a member of the American Independent Party - the anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, anti-NAFTA and anti-tax party.San Francisco's election rolls show Siebel cast her ballot using the Green Street address both in November, when Newsom was re-elected, and during February's presidential primary. But because she was affiliated with the American Independent Party, she was ineligible...

PUYALLUP, Wash. (AP) - A powerful explosion blew the top off a house where a registered sex offender described as acting paranoid had rented a room and appeared to have been making bombs, deputies said Tuesday. Investigators found a body in the rubble Tuesday morning, Pierce County sheriff's Detective Ed Troyer said. They believe they know the person's identity but did not release details. He said the couple who owned the house told authorities late Monday they had returned from a trip and found their tenant was acting strangely and making explosive devices. Troyer said the man was in the...

Mon APR 14 2007 14:53:11 ET Exchange between Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) and William Dean Singleton, chairman of the board of the ASSOCIATED PRESS at the AP annual meeting in Washington DC: Singleton: Obama bin Laden is still at large. Obama: I think that was Osama bin Laden. (audience laughter, delayed applause) Singleton: If I did that, I'm so sorry. Obama: No, no, no. this is part of the exercise that I've been going through over the last 15 months, which is why it's pretty impressive that I'm still standing. (applause) # # # Developing...

Obama Corrects 'Obama bin Laden' Slip April 14, 2008 2:52 PM ABC News' Sunlen Miller and Cullen Dirner Report: Sen. Barack Obama quickly corrected a slipup about his name Monday at the Associated Press' annual luncheon in Washington, DC. Dean Singleton, board chair of the Associated Press and a longtime newspaper executive, asked Obama about the possibility of shifting troops into Afghanistan to fight against the al Qaeda leader. "Can you imagine shifting a substantial number of Afghanistan -- a substantial number to Afghanistan where the Taliban has been gaining strength and Obama Bin Laden is still at large?" Singleton...

WASHINGTON After addressing the journalists gathered at the annual Associated Press luncheon in Washington, D.C., today, Sen. Barack Obama, standing at the podium, took a few questions. The last one from the audience, delivered via AP chairman W. Dean Singleton, was related to Afghanistan, our troops to Iraq and the threat posed by, as Singleton put it, "Obama bin Laden." Obama quickly corrected Singleton. “That’s Osama bin Laden,” he said. The crowd laughed a bit. "If I did that, I am so sorry," Singleton replied. Then Obama said, “This is part of what I have been going through for the...

A piece of artillery apparently misfired yesterday from the Picatinny Arsenal in Morris County and landed about 2 1/2 miles away, crashing into the roof of a house in the Oak Ridge section of Jefferson Township and onto a child's bed, authorities said. No one was hurt in the incident, which occurred between 2 and 3 p.m., but the family cat was killed, Jefferson police said. Picatinny officials said last evening they are investigating the incident. Officials from the base sent an explosive ordnance team to the home to investigate. Picatinny officials said tonight they are investigating the incident. Officials...

CHAPPAQUA, N.Y. -- Lawrence Waterhouse III pulled out all the stops - and all the candles - when he proposed marriage to his girlfriend in the gazebo outside his suburban home. "He had set it up very, very nicely," Chappaqua Fire Chief Andy Metz said Thursday. "He had candles in the trees, candles and dogwood petals along the path, a chandelier with votive candles." The girlfriend apparently said yes to the romantic Wednesday night proposal, and the couple left town early Thursday for a trip out west, Metz said. Unfortunately, at least one of the candles apparently stayed lit. "We...

At least 20 Hizbullah fighters have been killed during military training in Iran, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Watan reported Thursday evening, quoting the Director General of the Islamic Union in Lebanon, Muhammad Ali Husseini The Lebanese official did not say exactly how the fighters were killed, but he made clear that "Hizbullah regards those killed while training in Iran as holy ones who died fulfilling their duties, and this concerns not only Shi'ites, but also Sunnis who are loyal to Hizbullah." "The training in Iran lies at the heart of our connections with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard", said Husseini, who added...

"I did not mean to...I'm sorry about that. I apologize publicly."

Is fifth-grader Kenton Stufflebeam smarter than the Smithsonian? The 11-year-old boy, who lives in Allegan but attends Alamo Elementary School near Kalamazoo, went with his family during winter break to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington.Since it opened in 1981, millions of people have paraded past the museum's Tower of Time, a display involving prehistoric time. Not one visitor had reported anything amiss with the exhibit until Kenton noticed that a notation, in bold lettering, identified the Precambrian as an era.Kenton knew that was wrong. His fifth-grade teacher, John Chapman, had nearly made the same mistake...

When he came outside around 7:30 p.m., his truck was missing. Inside the truck, police said, were two .40-caliber Glock pistols with 100 rounds of ammunition, an AR-15 assault rifle with five fully loaded magazines, a ballistic vest, police uniforms and IDs, flat badges and wallet badges.

BAGHDAD - Fighters of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr have melted away from the streets of the Iraqi capital and Basra where they fought fierce battles with security forces, AFP reporters said today. Yesterday, Sadr ordered his fighters to withdraw from the streets in a move signaling the end of clashes which erupted in the southern port city of Basra and quickly spread to Shiite areas across Iraq. AFP correspondents in Baghdad and Basra said that militants were off the streets in the two key cities where they fought Iraqi security forces backed by US-led coalition air power. The Sadr...

A pastor whose disappearance from a small town in upstate New York triggered a search by police and the FBI was found earlier today — inside an Ohio strip club. Police said that when the Rev. Craig S. Rhodenizer, 46, was confronted by an officer, he began crying and said he couldn't remember anything about the 36 hours he was missing. But dancers at the club remembered Rhodenizer. They told investigators that Rhodenizer spent two hours drinking, soliciting dances and making threatening comments. He also said he wanted to take the dancers back to his motel, according to the police...

Former Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson should be freed from prison immediately because California corrections officials had no authority to re-arrest her after she was paroled last week, her attorneys argued in a court motion filed Tuesday. The motion filed in Sacramento County Superior Court claims that Olson's due process rights were violated when she was returned to prison Saturday to serve at least another year behind bars. Olson, 61, was paroled March 17 after serving six years in prison for the attempted bombings of Los Angeles police cars in the 1970s and the shooting death of a...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon announced on Tuesday that it mistakenly shipped non-nuclear ballistic missile components to Taiwan from a U.S. Air Force base in Wyoming.

Pentagon admits mistaken arms shipment 6 minutes ago The Pentagon has announced that it mistakenly shipped non-nuclear ballistic missile components to Taiwan from a U.S. Air Force base in Wyoming. It said the items have been returned to the United States. At a news conference, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne said Tuesday that the misshipped items were four nose cone assemblies for ballistic missiles. He also said it was sent instead of helicopter batteries that had been ordered by Taiwan, he said. Wynne said the matter is under investigation.

I really, really hope this one isn't photoshopped, (as was the one with Bush looking backward thru binoculars).

Residents of a Tulsa apartment complex are extremely lucky to be unharmed this morning after a military rocket crashed nearby after apparently falling off a passing jet. It happened Thursday afternoon near 51st and Lewis. Police showed up after the power went out at the Canyon Creek Apartments. When they arrived, they found what appeared to be a bomb. They called out the bomb squad, who quickly identified it as a military ordnance. The military later took over the scene and said it had indeed lost a rocket off one of its planes during a training exercise. The ordnance hit...

LONDON (Reuters) - It is the one moment every man wants to get right -- and which London floor-fitter Lefkos Hajji could hardly have got more wrong. The luckless 28 year-old's dreams of giving his sweetheart, Leanne, 26, the ultimate proposal have literally vanished into thin air. Hajji, of Hackney, east London, had concealed a $12,000 engagement ring inside a helium balloon. The idea was that she would pop the balloon as he popped the question. But as he left the shop, a gust of wind pulled the balloon from his hand and he watched the ring -- and quite...

LONDON (Reuters) - It is the one moment every man wants to get right -- and which London floor-fitter Lefkos Hajji could hardly have got more wrong. The luckless 28 year-old's dreams of giving his sweetheart, Leanne, 26, the ultimate proposal have literally vanished into thin air. Hajji, of Hackney, east London, had concealed a $12,000 engagement ring inside a helium balloon. The idea was that she would pop the balloon as he popped the question. But as he left the shop, a gust of wind pulled the balloon from his hand and he watched the ring -- and quite...

Saint Paul, Minn. (AP) -- Attorneys for U.S. Senator Larry Craig are asking the Minnesota Court of Appeals to correct a "manifest injustice" by allowing the Idaho Republican to withdraw his guilty plea stemming from an airport restroom sex sting. In court papers filed Tuesday, the lawyers asked the appellate judges to reverse the trial court's decision to let stand Craig's guilty plea to a disorderly conduct charge. They also asked the court to vacate his plea. Craig was arrested in June in a restroom stall at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport during a broad sweep targeting men soliciting sex. An...

"I am a proud conservative liberal Republican." http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4363279

Kill the short headline in BC-White House-Plagiarism,... A presidential aide resigned, not Bush.

US military secrets sent to Suffolk tourist site By Tom Chivers Last Updated: 5:00pm GMT 29/02/2008 A tourist information website promoting a small Suffolk town has had to shut down after it received a barrage of thousands of classified US military emails. USAF F16s from Mildenhall. Thousands of sensitive emails have been misdirected to a tourist website Sensitive information including future flight paths for US Presidential aircraft Air Force One, military strategy and passwords swamped Gary Sinnott's email inbox after he established www.mildenhall.com, a site promoting the tiny town of Mildenhall where he lives, the Anglia Press Agency reports. As...

(CNN) -- Two masked and machete-wielding men who barged into a club in Sydney, Australia, couldn't have picked a worse night for their robbery -- a monthly meeting of bikers. About 50 burly bikers fought back with tables and chairs -- pretty much anything that wasn't bolted down. One would-be robber was tied up; the other in the hospital. Police arrested both. "These guys were absolutely dumb as bricks," Jerry Vancornewal, leader of the bikers, told CNN Thursday. "I can't believe they saw all the bikes parked up front and they were so stupid that they walked past in." Vancornewal...

Bill Slips While Stumping For Hillary ~ "If You Elect Me" ~~~~ Bill Clinton: "If You Elect Me" (I'm Speaking as Her) For a natural-born politician such as former President Bill Clinton, it may be tough to spend so much time talking about someone else. For that reason, he has assumed an interesting way of speaking from the stump whilst campaigning for his wife. He precedes a pitch by saying something along the lines of "This is what my wife says" and then he launches full-throttle into the pitch. It can get confusing if you tune out for a second....

For a natural-born politician such as former President Bill Clinton, it may be tough to spend so much time talking about someone else. For that reason, he has assumed an interesting way of speaking from the stump whilst campaigning for his wife. He precedes a pitch by saying something along the lines of "This is what my wife says" and then he launches full-throttle into the pitch. It can get confusing if you tune out for a second. Today in Portsmouth, Ohio, he said, "So Hillary says, in 2005, the United States Congress adopted the Bush-Cheney energy bill, which gave...

New York hedge fund DB Zwirn & Co is winding down its principal funds after investors – rattled by lapses in internal controls, including the expense of a private jet used by the firm’s founder – said they would withdraw more than $2bn. Investors started pulling their money after the group, which has almost $5bn under management, disclosed in March last year that an independent internal review had uncovered improper transfers among funds and improper handling of operational expenses.

NEW YORK - NBC News said Tuesday it has reprimanded the employee responsible for mistakenly flashing a picture of Osama bin Laden on MSNBC as Chris Matthews talked about Barack Obama. "This mistake was inexcusable," MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines said. It happened during the opening of "Hardball" Monday evening. Matthews was previewing a story on the controversy over Obama's use of another politician's words, and a picture of bin Laden briefly flashed on the screen beside him with the headline "Words About Words." The Obama campaign immediately called NBC to complain, and Matthews apologized on the air a few minutes...

I caught Matthews speaking of Obama's 'words about words' today with this mixup. He was talking about Hillary and Obama's back and forth today. Osama's photos was only on the screen for a few seconds.

LONDON (AP) -- Can his fractured fiddle - a million dollar Guadagnini - be fixed? It's too early to tell. David Garrett, a former model who has been called the David Beckham of the classical scene, said he tripped while carrying his 18th century violin as he was leaving London's Barbican Hall after a performance, smashing it to bits. "I had it over my shoulder in its case and I fell down a concrete flight of stairs backward," Garrett said Thursday. "When I opened the case, much of my G.B. Guadagnini had been crushed." Garrett said he bought the 1772...

BREMERTON, WA An 18-year-old Bremerton woman told police last week that she may have mistakenly placed a bag of meth into a local ATM for deposit into her bank account, according to documents filed in Kitsap County Superior Court. An employee at Kitsap Credit Union told police that a bag of suspected methamphetamine showed up in a deposit envelope to be deposited in the woman's account at an ATM at the 100 block of Washington Avenue. When police contacted the woman, she said that she's used meth and may have accidentally put the bag into the deposit envelope when she...

The parents of all 2,550 Palm Bay High School students received a phone call informing them that their child was due for weekend detention. No, there was no coordinated uprising at the school. An accidental push of a button sent the automated call to the homes of the entire student body instead of the intended 16. One parent didn't believe her son's protests that he had done nothing wrong and took him to school Saturday morning anyway. When they learned of the glitch, Amy Stewart took her son Jimmy to breakfast to make up for it. Assistant superintendend Steve Muzzy...

A LANDMINE blew up in the home of a religious cleric in southern Afghanistan, killing the mullah, two of his sons and two other men who had been preparing an attack, police said today. The cleric's wife was critically wounded in the blast in their compound in the southern province of Helmand late yesterday, and a daughter was hurt, provincial police chief General Mohammad Hussein Andiwal said. The bodies of the mullah and his two sons, both under 15 years old, remained at the site of the blast, he said. Other people in the compound said two other men were...

Own goal: A WOULD-be suicide bomber fell down a flight of stairs and blew himself up as he headed out for an attack in Afghanistan, police say. It was the second such incident in two days, with another man killing himself and three others on Tuesday when his bomb-filled waistcoat exploded as he was putting it on in the southern town of Lashkar Gah. Thanks to CAD Daddy for the story and the headline.

ST. LOUIS (AP) - Charter Communications officials believe a software error during routine maintenance caused the company to delete the contents of 14,000 customer e-mail accounts. There is no way to retrieve the messages, photos and other attachments that were erased from inboxes and archive folders across the country on Monday, said Anita Lamont, a spokeswoman for the suburban St. Louis-based company. "We really are sincerely sorry for having had this happen and do apologize to all those folks who were affected by the error," Lamont said Thursday when the company announced the gaff. Charter, one of the nation's largest...

The Michigan Republican Party accidentally sent out a news release congratulating John McCain for winning the state's GOP primary. It had to scramble to send out a second release praising Mitt Romney's victory after catching the error.

A 2,000-foot television tower collapsed while workers were restringing guy wires, knocking a Little Rock television station off the air. KATV news director Randy Dixon said one person suffered a minor injury Friday when the tower collapsed in a field about 20 miles south of Little Rock. The station was working to establish a feed to restore its signal to the portion of its audience that obtains programming by satellite. "We're off the air. It's a heckuva mess," Dixon said. KATV is an ABC affiliate.

A Polish man got the shock of his life when he visited a brothel and spotted his wife among the establishment's employees. Polish tabloid Super Express said the woman had been making some extra money on the side while telling her husband she worked at a store in a nearby town. "I was dumfounded. I thought I was dreaming," the husband told the newspaper Wednesday. The couple, married for 14 years, are now divorcing, the newspaper reported.

WARSAW (Reuters) - A Polish man got the shock of his life when he visited a brothel and spotted his wife among the establishment's employees. Polish tabloid Super Express said the woman had been making some extra money on the side while telling her husband she worked at a store in a nearby town. "I was dumfounded. I thought I was dreaming," the husband told the newspaper Wednesday. The couple, married for 14 years, are now divorcing, the newspaper reported.

A fight that left one man dead in September stemmed from a language barrier, according to court testimony Thursday. ....snip.... Defense attorney Dan Lopez said the fight started because of a miscommunication between Molina, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador who does not speak much English, and the other men. ....snip.... "Someone brought up homo sapiens and [Molina] thought they were calling him homosexual," Lopez said. ....snip....

SAN RAFAEL -- A Concord man who was taking his 12-year-old son on his first trip to a shooting range Monday accidentally shot and wounded the range's owner, police said. The incident occurred at 6:15 p.m. at the Bullseye Precision Indoor Shooting Range on Andersen Drive in San Rafael. Police said the customer, Joseph Moore, 49, unintentionally fired a .22-caliber rental gun, hitting proprietor Bill Byrd in the abdomen. Byrd, 42, who did not lose consciousness after the shooting, was taken to Marin General Hospital. He was in stable condition Monday night, a nursing supervisor said. Moore is not suspected...

KABUL, Afghanistan — Three Taliban militants were killed on Friday when a roadside bomb they were planting exploded prematurely, as Afghan and foreign troops launched an operation to retake a neighboring Afghan town controlled by Taliban militants, officials said. The blast occurred in Kandahar, south of Kandahar city on a road frequently used by NATO and police forces, he said. In Musa Qala, ground forces surrounded the area and airstrikes targeted militants inside the town in the southern province of Helmand, defense ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said. "The operation has started," said Maj. Charles Anthony, a spokesman for...

A posh food store in New York's Greenwich Village has found itself red faced after offering hams for sale with the slogan "Delicious for Hanukkah," the current Jewish religious holiday. The non-kosher labelling was spotted at the weekend by Manhattan novelist Nancy Kay Shapiro, 46, who decided instead of alerting management to take a picture of the unorthodox sign and post it on the Internet. "I just thought it was funny," Shapiro, who described herself as an unobservant Jew, told the New York Post. "I wasn't offended in any way. I just thought, here's somebody who knows nothing about what...

"We have verified that there was marijuana in the pizza."