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<p>He said that police were called by four enraged Arabs who were sitting on the sand when Miss Palmer and fellow Briton Vince Acors began having sex in front of them on a sun lounger.</p>

<p>Moscow, July 14: Dozens of young revellers were blinded by a laser show at a dance and music festival near Moscow last week and doctors fear the damage may be irreparable, the Kommersant daily reported on Monday.</p> <p>"More than 30 people between the ages of 16 and 30 have ended up in hospitals in the capital with the same diagnosis-- damaged retinas - since July 7," the report said, quoting doctors.</p>

TAMPA - A Tampa woman bit off another woman's fingertip during an argument at a Tampa meat market. Police say two women were waiting to be served Monday when they began arguing about who was next in line. Customers take a number to order when they enter the market, but another customer who left before ordering had given Pamela Bumpers her number.

A special meeting about Dallas County traffic tickets turned tense and bizarre this afternoon. County commissioners were discussing problems with the central collections office that is used to process traffic ticket payments and handle other paperwork normally done by the JP Courts. Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, who is white, said it seemed that central collections "has become a black hole" because paperwork reportedly has become lost in the office. Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud "Excuse me!" He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a "white hole." That prompted Judge Thomas Jones,...

Sometimes you have to wonder where the priorities of Congress lie. Joe Black, from "Geeks On Caffeine" sure does!

2) Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Peter asked what intelligence was used for this estimate and whether intelligence collection requirements were prepared. National Intelligence Council Chairman Thomas Fingar said no clandestine intelligence was used and that intelligence officers extrapolated what would happen if the “mid-level estimates” by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were correct. When Hoekstra asked why the U.S. Intelligence Community would write an major analysis of low to medium confidence that contained no intelligence, Fingar answered, “because you [Congress] told us to.”

Many historians see little chance for McCain David Paul Kuhn One week into the general election, the polls show a dead heat. But many presidential scholars doubt that John McCain stands much of a chance, if any. Historians belonging to both parties offered a litany of historical comparisons that give little hope to the Republican. Several saw Barack Obama’s prospects as the most promising for a Democrat since Roosevelt trounced Hoover in 1932. “This should be an overwhelming Democratic victory,” said Allan Lichtman, an American University presidential historian who ran in a Maryland Democratic senatorial primary in 2006. Lichtman, whose...

Having an affair can help to save a struggling marriage, according to a new, controversial self-help book. Mira Kirshenbaum, who has over 30 years' experience as a marriage therapist, says the 'right kind' of affair can be a positive thing, acting to "jolt people from their inertia". The author of When Good People Have Affairs, published this week, argues that because society has so far failed to have a sympathetic discussion of infidelity, the positive sides of cheating have been ignored. However, she insists that most cheating spouses should never own up, because revealing the infidelity is more damaging than...

GENEVA (AFP) - It doesn't pay to be smart and ignorance really is bliss if you want a long life -- at least if you're a fly, according to new research by a Swiss university. Scientists Tadeusz Kawecki and Joep Burger at the University of Lausanne said Wednesday they had discovered a "negative correlation between an improvement in a fly's mental capacity and its longevity". As part of their research project, the results of which are published in the journal Evolution, they divided into two a group of flies from the Basel region of northwestern Switzerland. One half was left...

Ville Platte Burglar Stuck in Vent Posted: May 29, 2008 06:23 PM CDT Ville Platte Police had to un-stick a stuck suspect before bringing him to jail. As you can see from these Ville Platte Gazette photos, 31-year-old suspect Robert Gallow wasn't in very good condition after being pulled from the cooking vent at the L and V store. Gallow had apparently tried to enter the store early Saturday morning, but didn't get very far. He was discovered hanging halfway into the store when workers arrived Saturday morning. After the fire department freed him, Gallow made a brief stop at...

Oil prices continue to rise and rise, with no end in sight. Virtually all other commodities seem to be following to be the same suit. Some now say a new economic system is emerging from the ashes of the old and now crumbling financial structure. Failing to meet even the basic needs of the common man, the current economic system is facing its worst crisis and appears in doldrums. It has miserably failed the underprivileged of this world. Markets appear divorced from the fundamentals. F. William Engdahl strongly says in a recent write up that the oil markets (and other...

The brand spanking new Airbus 340-600, the largest passenger airplane ever built, sat in its hangar in Toulouse, France without a single hour of airtime. Enter the Arab flight crew of Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies (ADAT) to conduct pre-delivery tests on the ground, such as engine runups, prior to delivery to Etihad Airways in Abu Dhabi. The date was November 15, 2007. The ADAT crew taxied the A340-600 to the run-up area. Then they took all four engines to takeoff power with a virtually empty aircraft. Not having read the run-up manuals, they had no clue just how light an...

Decision '08: After criticizing McCain for mentioning that Hamas endorses him, Obama says it's understandable that Hamas would do so. Just how anti-Hamas and pro-Israel is the Democratic front-runner? And just why did he fire an adviser who talked with the group?Barack Obama would like us to believe that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright who ranted anti-American profanities at the National Press Club was not the man he saw from the pews of his church for two decades. He'd also have us believe that Weatherman terrorist bomber William Ayers, who played host to his first fundraiser and with whom he would...

Tales of the BlancasphereHillary has been doing my work again. It’s not that she has been trying to derail Barack Obama using the tactics we used against her and Bill in ’90’s. It’s not that she has been trying her best to make him unelectable. It’s not even that she has been sinking her own party. It’s that she has been so stupid to let the right manipulate her and play her like a cheap guitar. She is the gift that keeps on giving–to the vast right wing conspiracy, of which I have been a loyal member. And here’s the...

I just listened to 10 minutes of the most blatant lies I have ever heard. BO, stated that the oil companies were keeping the price of oil up by not building new refineries or looking for alternate sources of energy. Both are lies on the face. 1) Oil companies and many other businesses have been trying to get permits to build for years but are not allowed. 2) Should one business look for another which would cost a fortune to the end of putting it out of business. His answer to high gas prices is to boycott "BIG OIL". That...

This is priceless 1:19 into the video right hand flip off...

BAGHDAD, (AP) -- The U.S. military says it will release Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein after more than two years in custody. The statement said Hussein will be freed Wednesday now that Iraqi judicial committees have granted him amnesty for all allegations. Hussein has been in custody since April 12, 2006 when he was detained by U.S. Marines for alleged links to insurgents.

Citing advice from the sage of Omaha, Warren Buffett, Democratic presidential contender Sen. Barack Obama has called for a massive increase in the capital gains tax. No word from the billionaire investor Buffett in reaction to Obama’s policy proposal — aired first on MSNBC by the Democratic presidential contender in an interview with Maria Bartiromo – but many other investors are already responding. Currently, the capital gains tax rate is 15 percent. "When I talk to people like Warren Buffett, or others, and I ask them, you know, how much of a difference is it going to be if it’s...

KANAWHA COUNTY, W.Va. (WSAZ) -- Most students are excited to get their high school diploma, but a former student at Sissonville High is suing the Kanawha County School Board for letting him graduate. Now the state Supreme Court has decided to hear the case. Thomas Sturm's attorney says Sturm shouldn't have graduated because he still reads on a third grade level. The school board's attorneys say Sturm had an individualized education plan, and neither he nor his parents filed any complaints while he was in school. “IEPs are developed and formulated and put in place anytime the parent would have...

You can't fix stupid... ONE I was checking out at the local Wal-Mart with just a few items and the lady behind me put her things on the belt close to mine. I picked up one of those 'dividers' that they keep by the cash register and placed it between our things so they wouldn't get mixed. After the girl had scanned all of my items, she picked up the 'divider', looking it all over for the bar code so she could scan it. Not finding the bar code she said to me, 'Do you know how much this is?'...

CY did a great job with this story here. I have just the following to add: Barack Obama is, quite simply, doing at least one of three things here (and, with credit to Lileks, I fully expect the Left to shut up and reverently honor my acting out of the highest form of patriotism with regard to Mr. Obama and dissenting against him):(1) He is lying his ArmaniGucci pants off, on purpose.(2) He is blowing smoke out his fourth point of contact just to be able to appease his base more(3) He is so mind-blowingly ignorant of the military and...

"For the First Time in My Adult Lifetime, I Am Really Proud of My Country," said Michelle Obama, rich lawyer and wife of Barack Hussein (same last name), yesterday. Excuse me? A female, African-American, Princeton-and-Harvard-educated attorney, who has achieved a great deal in her life, who lived through the Civil Rights revolution (and was the daughter of a Chicago city worker who really experienced those events), and who is married to an African-American man who is a U.S. Senator, has never been proud of her country before?Putting that aside for a moment, what is it that we've suddenly done to...

Because Republicans are nominating what she calls an "open-borders, anti-tax cut, anti-free speech, global-warming hysteric, pro-human experimentation 'Republican' — which is to say a Democrat," Ann Coulter's alternative to John McCain is either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. While the onetime "Goldwater girl" says she's deserting the GOP this time around, she doesn't exactly swoon over Hillary, warning that "If Hillary is elected president, we'll have a four-year disaster," which is what Coulter wants because it would revive the GOP and win back the White House four years later. "With Republicans ferociously opposing her," Ann says, it would bring "Republicans...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - An Irish woman who crossed a breached border into Gaza with her daughter said Wednesday that border guards were preventing them from returning to Egypt. Treasa Ni Cheannabhain said she and her daughter, an Egyptian national, entered Gaza on Saturday, more than a week after Hamas militants knocked down the border wall. As hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flooded into Egypt, Ni Cheannabhain, 56, said she sneaked into Gaza with her 19-year-old daughter, Naisrin el-Safty, to distribute money to needy Gazans. Egyptian guards resealed the border Sunday, ending the 12-day breach. Ni Cheannabhain said she...

Can the Redskins' search get any more screwy? Still without a head coach, FOXSports.com has learned that Washington has fired defensive coordinator Gregg Williams. Williams is widely considered one of the best and most aggressive defensive minds in the NFL, and his unit was the strength of the Redskins' playoff run. Still, the highest paid defensive coordinator in the NFL, is without a job despite having one year remaining on his contract. Williams shouldn't be unemployed for long, as the St. Louis Rams have already requested permission to interview him and the Jacksonville Jaguars have shown interest as well. Williams...

LAS VEGAS - Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton welcomed her traveling press corps aboard her campaign plane Wednesday with a humorous riff on the standard flight attendant speech familiar to commercial air travelers. “Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, and welcome aboard the maiden flight of Hill Force One,” Clinton said over the plane’s intercom as it taxied down the runway en route to Reno, Nev.

Most people would respond to the birth of a child with a hearty Mazel Tov! or a cigar. The Associated Press, here through the Los Angeles Times, decides to wear sackcloth and ashes. A baby boomlet in the United States -- which merely returned us briefly to viability -- gets blamed on a lack of abortions, poverty, and stupidity: The nearly 4.3 million births in 2006 were mostly due to a bigger population, especially a growing number of Latinos. That group accounted for nearly one-quarter of all U.S. births. But non-Latino white women and other racial and ethnic groups were...

ABC-TV decides not to air Bush's news conference... Developing... (not a whole lot right now.)

While brands certainly don't want people using their products, logos and other related imagery to create products of their, own, the hammer that Ford legal dropped on the Black Mustang Club seems a bit heavy handed. Recently the club created a calendar which contained images of club member's cars photographed by the member's themselves. Ford didn't take kindly to this and asked CafePress, the service the group had chosen to print the calendars, to kill the project claiming all the images in the calendar are the property of Ford...including the Black Mustang Club logo. It's understandable that a brand would...

A policeman’s job is never easy, but dumb criminals make it somewhat easier. This list was whittled down from a much longer list of stories of the stupid things lawbreakers did this past year. These are in chronological order instead of rank. The dates are from the news stories; in some cases the crime itself happened earlier. Most of the links have accompanying video. 1. Lottery Thief Sets Himself on Fire ROME, GA June 2 A convenience-store thief got away, but the video from the security camera told a strange, strange tale. A man broke into the store overnight, and...

The same thing struck me then as now, while it may be humble to disavow ambition Thompson must have a pretty high impression of himself to believe the times are calling him. His statement on why he is running even includes the line: "I don't know if they ever asked George Washington a question like this." So what is his motivation?

The love of my life is seeing other women. It started innocently enough, a bite to eat, a stroll through the park -- the stuff I never have time for. Then came the private jokes, the pet names, the stolen kisses, the bubble baths. At first I was crushed. What did these women have that I didn't? Sure, they're gorgeous, but I happen to look very nice in navy; and, yes, they're bright, but I scored unbelievably high on the SATs ... if you don't count the half with all that math. I told myself it was just a fling,...

A label on a small tractor that warns, "Danger: Avoid Death," has been chosen as the nation's most obvious warning label in M-LAW's annual Wacky Warning Label Contest.The Wacky Warning Label Contest, now in its eleventh year, is conducted by Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch, M-LAW, to reveal how lawsuits, and fear of lawsuits, have driven the proliferation of common-sense warnings on U.S. products.

Pakistan police today arrested the leader of the feminist U.S. antiwar group Code Pink, who was in Lahore for a student peace rally, according to a spokeswoman for the group. Medea Benjamin, a co-founder of the group, was arrested by plainclothes police with guns drawn and taken to a police station in Lahore, spokeswoman Dana Balicki said. Police also arrested Tighe Barry, a longtime Code Pink activist, who was participating with the student rally outside the Lahore Press Club. The students were protesting the emergency rule imposed Nov. 3 by President Pervez Musharraf. Police told Ms. Benjamin and Mr. Barry...

Speech...The Death of the Grown-Up...Heritage Foundation This is one book I'd like to buy. I had trouble finding it at the bookstore. For all you insomniaks (sp?) Ann Coulter is on CSPAN at 1:18 AM.

Voters in Virginia's Feb. 12 Republican presidential primary will have to sign an oath swearing loyalty to the eventual GOP ticket. The State Board of Elections on Monday approved a state Republican Party request that all who apply for a GOP primary ballot first vow in writing to vote for the Republican presidential nominee next fall. [snip] There is no practical way to enforce the GOP covenant in the constitutionally guaranteed secrecy of the voting booth. Yet the oath is a concept Virginia's GOP has considered for years. Voters in Virginia do not register by party. Since the mid-90s, the...

The first kind are merely stupid, the second nefarious. It is impossible to understand politics in the world today without grasping the fundamental fact that there exist two different Lefts. These are the Stupid Left and the Satanic Left. The two are very different, although they work together. People who are part of the first are simply stupid people. People who are part of the second may in fact be quite shrewd, but are evil and nefarious. There is no third type of leftist. Over time, the Stupid Left has been losing its numbers, as many Stupid Leftists either become...

MUQDADIYA, Iraq – Acting on a tip from a local citizen, a group of Concerned Local Citizens located a suicide bomber, who detonated himself upon discovery in Muqdadiya Oct. 26. The suicide bomber, who was believed to be targeting a populated area, detonated as soon as the CLC group entered the house he was located in, causing it to collapse. The collapse wounded one CLC and a suspected extremist who was in the house with the suicide bomber. “Today’s discovery is a sure sign the population continues to grow tired of al- Qaeda’s barbaric acts,” said Col. David W. Sutherland,...

Three self-confessed, 20-something Pakistani jihadists arrested in Afghanistan have an odd story to tell -- assuming it's true. "They'd followed the call from a religious leader in Pakistan to come in and wage jihad," CTV's Paul Workman told Newsnet on Saturday from Kandahar. "They were told that the 'infidels' -- the NATO forces -- were running this country now, and they came in to help drive them out." After their arrest, "they suddenly realize that Afghanistan is not ruled by infidels, that this very much still a Muslim country, and they were proclaiming their naivete," Workman said. An Afghan security...

WASHINGTON - The homeland security chief on Saturday tore into his own employees for staging a phony news conference at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "I think it was one of the dumbest and most inappropriate things I've seen since I've been in government," Michael Chertoff said. "I have made unambiguously clear, in Anglo-Saxon prose, that it is not to ever happen again and there will be appropriate disciplinary action taken against those people who exhibited what I regard as extraordinarily poor judgment," he added. Asked specifically if he planned to fire anyone at FEMA, which is part of his...

NEW YORK He's been "in" the race for less than a week, and already faux-pundit Stephen Colbert has surged ahead of longtime candidate Gov. Bill Richardson in one national poll gauging the race for the Democratic nod for president. And watch out Joe Biden! The Public Opinion Strategies poll this past weekend of 1,000 likely primary voters that included Colbert's name -- as both a Democrat and Republican, as he wishes --- found him drawing 2.3 percent in the Dem race nationally (though he is threatening to run only in his native South Carolina). This put his ahead of Richardson...

It occured to me I can not be the only Freeper with inlaw issues that are driving a wedge between myself and other family members, in my case my inlaws. On a side note, my mother in law lives in AZ and went to high school with Harry Reid. She claims a personal relationship with him and is a complete groupthinker, informed = 0, believes everything he says, all others need not apply, father in law hoping to continue to get some agrees with her. Fall out from the recent Reid lies are driving a wedge between family members. Considering...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi came under increasing pressure from members of her Democratic caucus Wednesday not to bring a resolution officially recognizing the Armenian genocide to a vote. The San Francisco Democrat, who had promised to bring the long-debated resolution to the floor, sounded uncertain about its fate as support waned in the face of angry denunciations from Turkey and fears that the symbolic resolution could disrupt U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Whether it will come up or not, or what the action will be, remains to be seen," she said. The Bush administration and the Turkish government...

What age did you join the Military and why? What motovate you? Any regrets? What would advise a young person to do these days?

If you’re Adolf Hitler’s agent and you’re trying to book a speaking gig, who do you call: Columbia University or the Carolina School of Straight Chiropractic? If you’re looking for a student to slap on a circuit board and Silly Putty and head for the airport, do you ask a drunk coed from the community college or dial MIT? If you want something done that’s really, really stupid, you need to find someone who is really, really smart. Or thinks they are, anyway. I had this epiphany reading reviews of the newest exhibition at the Boston Center for the Arts....

Last week the California Supreme Court ruled that high schools can't censor their students in school newspapers. A former Novato High School student journalist filed a lawsuit against the government school district for censoring two columns he wrote in the paper. Here's an example of what they tried to censor. This is the student's solution to illegal immigration: "It can't be hard to find and detain the people who can't speak English. If a person looks suspicious than just stop them and ask a few questions, and if they answer 'que?,' detain them and see if they are legal." The...

Lansing man loses arm when home booby trap explodes Derek Wallbank, Lansing State Journal 9/13/2007 3:27:54 PM LANSING - Police are investigating an explosion that injured a Felt Street man. The man, a neighbor said, apparently lost a considerable part of his right arm today after tripping a booby trap he'd set in his home to catch burglars. The man, whose ID has yet to be released, apparently tripped the explosive about 8:30 a.m., and then ran to a neighbor's home for help. City police spokesman Sgt. Bruce Ferguson said the man was "working with or creating some sort of...

(IsraelNN.com) President Shimon Peres told the Turkish newspaper Today's Zaman that he is "100 per cent" sure that the separation barrier eventually will come down. He added, "We are experts in dismantling walls." He explained, "It is not the age of walls, but it is the age of terror, and I think terror will disappear finally because it does not have a message. It is a violent protest and they don't know where they are going." The newly elected President added, "We don't have any embargo on the Palestinians. We have an embargo on Hamas... What can Israel do if...

Ananova: Students played 'frisbee' with land mine Two Swiss students on holiday played frisbee with an object they found on a beach unaware it was a live land mine. Lukas Aider, 20, and Christoph Kurz, 19, took a plunge in the Danube river in Budapest when they found the mine and began their potentially lethal game. A lifeguard watching stopped them and immediately called the police. A bomb squad then arrived to make safe what turned out to be an old Soviet 6 kilogrammes anti-tank mine.

Mother: Ferret, not pit bull, gnawed off baby's toes BENTON, La. – The parents of a month-old girl whose toes were gnawed off while they slept apparently disagree about whether the culprit was their ferret or their 6-week-old pit bull. Mary Hansche, 22, told KTBS-TV on Tuesday that she thinks it was the ferret. "The way the bite marks were on her foot. The ferret being out of its cage. I knew it wasn't the dog," she said. [snip] "We were told that the puppy had blood on its fur. But when the officers arrived there, the animal did not...