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Honer among thieves?
Thief in Oregon berated mom for leaving kid in car he stole, police say
The Associated Press
BEAVERTON, Ore. (AP) — A car thief who found a toddler in the backseat of a stolen vehicle drove back and chastised the mother for leaving the child unattended before taking off again, police in Oregon said.
The woman went into a grocery store about 15 feet (5 yards) from the car Saturday, leaving her 4-year-old child inside with the engine running and the vehicle unlocked, said Beaverton police spokesman Officer Matt Henderson.
A store employee told authorities the woman was in the market for a few minutes before someone began driving away with the SUV.
Once the thief realized the toddler was in the backseat, he drove back, berated the woman for leaving her child unattended, told the woman to take the child and drove away in the stolen vehicle.
“He actually lectured the mother for leaving the child in the car and threatened to call the police on her,” Henderson said.
Henderson said the woman did nothing wrong and was within sight and sound of the child. He said the incident served as a “good reminder to take extra precaution” with children.
“Obviously, we’re thankful he brought the little one back and had the decency to do that,” Henderson said.
The vehicle was found a few hours later in Portland but police are still searching for the thief. The suspect was said to be in his 20s or 30s with dark brown or black braided hair and a multi-colored face mask...Comment
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From BioBioChile:
So in this case, it was the humans that used up one of their nine lives.Cat birthday party caused covid-19 outbreak in Chile
A cat birthday party caused, a few months ago, a covid-19 outbreak in Santo Domingo, a small seaside city in Central Chile. The information was confirmed today by Francisco Álvarez, the representative of the Ministry of Health in the Valparaíso region.
“Even though it sounds unbelievable and almost fiction, these things happen in our country,” he said in an official statement." "There is no doubt people will come up with any excuse to get together,” he added.
“When I knew about this I said… it’s a joke. Probably they said that to conceal something else, but it was exactly that,” Álvarez told Radio Bío Bío this Saturday. Health officials talked to the attendees and six of them confirmed that the party was intended to celebrate a cat’s birthday. In total, the celebration alone left 15 diagnosed patients.
“The cat never had the virus, but the owner did,” Álvarez revealed.Comment
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We don't know when our cat, "Casper's," birthday is because he was rescued after being abandoned outdoors but, since we adopted him a couple of days before Christmas, we treat it as his birthday.
We don't have a birthday celebration for him but we get him a special present as a combination birthday and Christmas gift. We get him a small package of kitty treats. Normally, we keep the "kitty cookies" locked up because he'll get into them at night, while we are sleeping. When it's his "birthday" we just give him the whole bag and let him tear into it.
We do it, mostly, just for our own entertainment and because we want to share our holiday with Casper. I don't think that pets understand the concept of holidays or birthdays. To a cat, it's just that time of year when there's a tree, in the living room, for them to climb.
I think it's nice to have a little fun with your pets but it's silly to have a full-blown party for them. They probably don't even understand what's going on.
Then, to top it all off, silly people doing silly things only serves to spread the virus.
Fifteen people got sick because of a dumb cat? That's just dain bramaged behavior!Comment
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I don't know if he understands the concept of days, but my bird knows what time it is. Right to the minute, believe it or not. And a regular schedule is important to him.
When it gets to the time that I go to start setting up the night's show he squawks at me and might throw a seed at me if I'm sitting nearby and if I'm not already up and moving out. He doesn't (usually) squawk after dark, but he somehow makes his cage vibrate and buzz when it's time to switch off the light at night and go to bed. His timing for issuing orders and keeping everything on schedule is pretty much exact. His 7pm squawk is at 6:59 or 7:00pm, always. I have no idea how he knows what time it is, especially that precisely, but he does.
During the period that the theatre was closed last spring, he got quite upset with me when he saw that I wasn't going to work on time and it took him several days to accept that the schedule had changed.
It's also important that I hold a piece of millet for him to eat at a certain time each day, but that's never changed of course, and he's sure to start reminding me of that a few minutes before he figures it should be served.Comment
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That's cool!Originally posted by Frank Cox View Post
I don't believe that animals understand the concept of time but they must pick up time cues from somewhere we don't understand.
Could it be the position of the sun? Could it be from environmental or situational cues?
I know that our cat, Casper, seems to know when we are coming home. We often find him waiting for us by the door when we come in. I think he can tell by the sound of our car, driving into the driveway. He could also be picking up time cues from the sun. His humans always come home about the same time each day when the sun starts to go down.
A bird that seems to know what time it is, down to the minute, sounds incredible! How could a bird pick up time cues so precisely?
Could there be a clock that the bird can see or, maybe, something that happens on a regular schedule like a timer turning on an appliance of some kind?
A time-telling bird sounds amazing! I wonder how he does it?
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Our cats are very much creatures of routine, and are resistant to disrupt that, even if mine is unpredictable (my wife's varies less than mine does). On a field job or shop day, I'm usually up between 3 and 5am (depending on when I have to be there), and out of the door about an hour later. If I'm not up by 5am, at least one of them is on the bed, pawing at my face; even if it's a work-at-home day, on which I tend to get up at around 6. All three are active from then until around mid-morning, at which point it's nap time. That lasts until late afternoon, and then they're active until 9-10pm.
They can't distinguish between a weekday and a weekend day. The 5am furry alarm call still happens on Saturdays and Sundays, though they accept it eventually when the meowing has no effect, and we don't get up until 7-8.Comment
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Cats are crepuscular. They are most active at dawn and dusk when they are best able to take advantage of growing or fading light levels to catch prey. They will nap between those times, in the afternoon, to conserve energy for hunting at more advantageous times.
The 5 a.m. wake up call we get from our cats comes from a time cue that they get as the sun rises and sets.
This also explains why cats don't seem to care about weekends. Mostly, they don't. Their behavior is governed more by their instinctual prey drive than the activities of their humans.
This is all common sense but I'm still puzzled by how a bird can seem to tell time down to the minute.
Cats are easy to figure out compared to birds.
There's got to be a reason.
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https://deadline.com/2021/01/filmdom...ge-1234683823/
chuckiealert-1.pngThe Texas Alerts system sent out a strange message Friday morning – an Amber Alert for filmdom’s knife-wielding maniac Chucky the doll and his child.
The Amber Alert, typically used in the search for missing or abducted children, listed Chucky from the film Child’s Play as a suspect. The alert described him as a 28-year-old with red, auburn hair, blue eyes, stands at 3’1″, and weighs 16 pounds. He was wearing blue denim overalls with a multi-colored striped long sleeve shirt and wielding a kitchen knife prior to his “disappearance.”
The alert also listed Glen, the son of Chucky who was introduced in the film Seed of Chucky, as an abducted child. He was described as five years old, weighing 6 pounds, standing at 2’3″, and also with red, auburn hair and blue eyes. Glen was described as wearing a blue shirt and black collar prior to his “disappearance.”
Subscribers of the Texas Alert System received the email alert three times on Friday. The agency told television station KENS 5 that the alert “is a result of a test malfunction. We apologize for the confusion this may have caused and are diligently working to ensure this does not happen again.”Comment
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https://canoe.com/news/weird/stick-u...as-cops-arrive
STICK UP: Woman distracts would-be thief with oral sex as cops arrive
A woman certainly got a mouthful while stumbling upon a robbery at a Slovakian gas station.
The unnamed woman entered a gas station in Bratislava, Slovakia on Tuesday night when she noticed a robbery in progress.
According to Slovakian media outlet Noviny SK, a 24-year-old man entered the gas station and allegedly threatened to kill employees if they didn’t empty the cash register.
After caving to demands, the employee reportedly handed the robber the money, who then in turn allegedly punched the staff member several times. The station employee then fled to a back room where another coworker was located and called the police.
Not satisfied with the amount of cash he received, cops say the suspect then entered the back room where he attempted to get more money from the store’s safe. The second employee reportedly bolted.
Wanting to thwart the robbery in progress, the woman customer then reportedly went up to the suspect and distracted him by performing oral sex on him until cops came.
The suspect’s pleasure prematurely climaxed when cops cuffed him.
Slovakian cops told media outlet TV JOJ that upon arrival they found a man and a woman lying half-naked on the floor, with the woman reportedly telling them “I don’t take him anymore.”Comment
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Giggle.
Here is one that I wouldn't have believed if I hadn't just seen it in print. So we've all seen stories about the 30-something female teacher who is caught shagging a male high school student, complete with the usual quotes from the perp's attorney about how sorry she is, and the carefully crafted statement from the school district designed to deflect lawsuits, right? The Daily Mail does about one a month. However, this teacher in Redlands elevated the phenomenon to new heights: she appears to have had affairs with students in every single high school in the frickin' district!
Source: Redlands Daily Facts - My emphasis
At least she didn't respond to the request for comment by inviting the journalist back to her apartment...Another alleged victim of former Redlands High School teacher Laura Whitehurst sues district
‘There is a good reason why Redlands Unified School District is the national poster child for sexual abuse of students,’ says the plaintiff’s attorney
A former Redlands High School student has filed a lawsuit alleging he was sexually abused by former teacher Laura Whitehurst in 2007, and that teachers, counselors and administrators failed to report it to police.
In the second lawsuit filed on behalf of one of Whitehurst’s accusers, the first of which resulted in a $6 million settlement in 2016, attorneys allege more than a half-dozen Redlands Unified School District and Redlands High School administrators, counselors and teachers were aware of allegations that Whitehurst was having sexual relations with students, but failed in their obligation as mandated reporters to notify police.
The lawsuit, filed Friday, Jan. 29, in San Bernardino Superior Court by the Irvine firm Manly, Stewart & Finaldi, alleges Whitehurst, a former English teacher and soccer coach, began having sex with the student in 2007, when he was 14 years old. Whitehurst admitted to police in 2013 she had sex with the boy 10 to 15 times in her classroom and at her Redlands apartment, according to a police report.
In her seven-year career with the school district in which she taught briefly at all of its high schools, Whitehurst, according to the lawsuit, had a specific method of inviting male students, ages 14 to 18, into her classroom, where she would engage in sexual discussions and/or have sex with them. Whitehurst also dated students and had sex with them at her home, according to the lawsuit.
A yearlong investigation by the Southern California News Group exposed a more than decade-long pattern at Redlands Unified of administrators failing to report to police teachers who had a proclivity for grooming and sexually abusing students, including Whitehurst and former Redlands High School teacher and golf coach Kevin Patrick Kirkland. That failure allowed teachers like Whitehurst and Kirkland to continue sexually abusing students for years.
“There is a good reason why Redlands Unified School District is the national poster child for sexual abuse of students. More than 20 teachers and administrators in RUSD have been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with their students over the last ten years,” said a statement from Morgan Stewart, the attorney representing the former student in the lawsuit. “The district has spent millions on civil lawsuit settlements, and two students have committed suicide. There are at least 50 victims of sexual abuse within RUSD.”
The Southern California News Group investigation led to the implementation of new policies and procedures at Redlands Unified in reporting suspected sexual abuse of minor students and establishing firm boundaries between staff and students.
Stewart, whose firm specializes in representing victims of sexual abuse by teachers in public schools, called Whitehurst one of the worst predators he’s ever seen.
“The district had complaints against her for six years. If they had acted in 2007 and removed her from the classroom, she never would have injured our clients and other children,” Stewart said.
Whitehurst pleaded guilty in 2013 to six felony counts of having sex with two Citrus Valley High School students, one whose child she bore, and one Redlands High School student. She was sentenced to one year in jail, but was released on probation after serving only six months.
The Redlands High School student Whitehurst was convicted of molesting was not the plaintiff in the latest lawsuit filed against the district.
Redlands Unified spokeswoman MaryRone Shell did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
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https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens...itar-1.5909331
It's pretty metal,' says man who turned his uncle's skeleton into a guitar
Florida musician says this was ‘the best way to honour’ the man who introduced him to heavy metal
CBC Radio · Posted: Feb 10, 2021 6:00 PM ET | Last Updated: February 11
Florida musician Midnight Prince, right, says he imported his uncle's medically prepared skeleton from Greece and turned it into a guitar. (Submitted by Midnight Prince)
A Florida musician says turning his late uncle's skeleton into a sick guitar was "the best way to honour" the man who first introduced him to heavy metal.
The Tampa, Fla., musician, who goes by the moniker Prince Midnight, says he crafted the instrument out of the medically prepared remains of his Uncle Filip.
"It's pretty metal to play a guitar made out of skeleton, I have to say," he told As It Happens host Carol Off.
Prince unveiled the final product — called the Skelecaster — on his Instagram.
The Skelecaster is the result of lots of bureaucratic wrangling, family skirmishes and experimental craftsmanship, Midnight said.
His Uncle Filip died in a car accident in Greece in the mid-'90s at the age of 28, he said. Per his wishes, his remains were donated to science, and his skeleton was used in medical school classes there for decades.
But then, one day, the school no longer had any use for the bones, Midnight said. Filip's parents had since died, so the responsibility for his remains fell to Midnight's mother.No one's ever made a guitar out of a skeleton, to my surprise. So there is a little bit of a learning curve- Prince Midnight, metal musician
Cremation was not an option for the Greek Orthodox family, he said, so his mother was stuck with two options — pay for a burial plot, or continue to pay a monthly fee to store the remains.
"She didn't want to pay for that anymore. And then I was like, 'I'll take care of it,'" Midnight said.
"So I went through all the red tape, which is a tremendous amount of trouble. You've got to contact the funeral home. The State Department's involved."
Midnight says his uncle, pictured here, introduced him to heavy metal when he was a boy. (Submitted by Prince Midnight )
Eventually, the musician was able to get Filip's remains shipped to him in Tampa. At first, he says he wasn't sure what to do with them. Then, inspired by his guitar maker friend, the idea struck.
"It just popped into my head. I'm going to turn Uncle Fil into a guitar. And I was like, that is the best way to honour him. He would love that idea," he said.
Midnight says he has fond memories of listening to metal with his uncle, and seeing him perform at shows.
"Uncle Filip was a super metal head," he said. "He got me totally into metal when I was a little kid because he was my mother's younger brother, so he was closer to my age, and took me under his wing."
The idea didn't go over well with his mother at first, he said.
"When this first started happening, she was really upset. She said, 'It's sacrilegious. He needs to lie, you know, and rest,'" he said.
"And as she was walking away, I was like, 'You think Uncle Fil would rather be a guitar, or a box of bones?' She threw her arms up. She goes, 'Probably the guitar.'"
'It's got some quirks'
Making the guitar was no easy feat, either.
"No one's ever made a guitar out of a skeleton, to my surprise. So there is a little bit of a learning curve," he said.
"Originally, I was drilling into the vertebrae, the bones, and one cracked and broke. And so I was like, well, I've got to re-assess how I'm going to do this."
He ended up welding a metal bar onto the spine and attaching it to the bridge and neck of an old Fender Telecaster guitar. He also attached red and blue wires, reminiscent of veins and arteries depicted in medical books.
Turning a human skeleton into a guitar was no easy feat, says Midnight. (Submitted by Prince Midnight)
"It is not a typical guitar, so it's got some quirks, to say the least. But sometimes the limitations we have with our tools are what make the products great," he said.
"When you are trying to strum inside a rib cage, it limits how long your strokes with a pick could be, right? So that tends to make a heavier kind of tone when you're strumming. So, yeah, it has a certain sound to it, and I think it sounds great."
But most of all, he says it makes him feel close to his uncle again.
"I feel like Uncle Fil is not just here now figuratively; he's here literally too," he said. "I'm literally giving my Uncle Fil hugs while he's figuratively with me, creating, you know, heavy metal riffs."
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A newspaper is planning to open a casino to pay the bills.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/tor...sino-1.5931827
Torstar Corp., owner of the Toronto Star, the Hamilton Spectator and other papers, announced on Monday it plans to launch an online casino betting brand in Ontario this year.
"We are excited at the prospect of participating in a regulated online Ontario gaming market with a made-in-Ontario product," said Corey Goodman, Torstar's chief corporate development officer, in a news release.
After decades of being controlled by a trust owned by the families who founded the Toronto Star in 1892, Torstar was recently bought by an investment company called Nordstar, which promised to maintain the company's focus on producing "world-class journalism befitting the Star's storied history."
Torstar has since its founding espoused the so-called Atkinson principles, which are focused on advancing progressive causes.
Torstar's new owners say they are branching into online gambling to help pay for those continuing efforts.
"Doing this as part of Torstar will help support the growth and expansion of quality community-based journalism," co-owner Paul Rivett said.
The company cited government data showing Ontarians spend about $500 million a year on online gambling, with the vast majority going to grey market websites domiciled outside Canada, where there is less legal and regulatory scrutiny.
Under current rules, only the Ontario government itself is licensed to conduct online gambling, but the province's last budget opened the door to expanding the market to other companies some time this year.
Torstar says its plans are contingent on those government plans moving ahead.
Rivett said it's to everyone's benefit for an Ontario-based company like Torstar to become a player in the province's industry. "We want to ensure the new marketplace is well represented with a Canadian, Ontario-based gaming brand so that more of our players' entertainment dollars stay in our province," he said.Comment
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