Apr 26, 2007, 23:44 GMT
Washington - Renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking left behind his wheelchair for a zero-gravity experience Thursday.
Hawking, 65, who has been confined to his wheelchair for about four decades with a motor neurone disease known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), did better than expected on the commercial flight, representatives from Zero Gravity Corporation said. The tourism company organizes flights in a specially adapted passenger jet put into a steep dive to simulate zero gravity. Read More
"Yigaquu osaniyu adanvto adadoligi nigohilvi nasquv utloyasdi nihi" Cherokee - "May the Great Spirit's blessings always be with you."
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
25 Days in Iraq - Blog:
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I am proud of Bob Woodruff for what he has done. I am happy for his recovery, and his new found awareness for the suffering that war brings, whether it be physical or mental. In my show 25 Days in Iraq, I say “you cannot shake what sticks to you in war.These soldiers are coming home and they are bringing it home with them”. I am just saddened that it took a celebrity journalist to get his pineapple blasted to begin to think of our soldiers. Was the four and a half years of these wars not enough suffering to warrant a hour long special to this topic? Was Britney’s rehab finally pushed to the back burner for a story of REAL human interest? Did Anna Nichole’s DNA test not interest you today?
"Yigaquu osaniyu adanvto adadoligi nigohilvi nasquv utloyasdi nihi" Cherokee - "May the Great Spirit's blessings always be with you."
The Hoax that Hurts - Blue Mountain Arts Virus Hoax
A small, family-owned publishing company called Blue Mountain Arts is still reeling this week after finding itself the victim of a malicious Net hoax.
Publisher of a variety of note cards and poetry books, Blue Mountain has operated a popular Website offering free electronic cards for all occasions since 1996. Though it's now a highly-trafficked commercial site, it was originally launched as a public service in accordance with the ideals of its hippie-era founders, Susan and Stephen Schutz.
The company achieved a sudden and unwanted notoriety during the week of February 22 when the following message began being passed around on America Online:
Subject: Fwd: BLUE MOUNTAIN CARDS VIRUS ALERT!!!!!
Date: Sat, 27 Feb 1999 01:02:07
Just received a call from family. A friend of theirs opened a card from Blue Mountain Cards and system crashed.
Do not open Blue Mountain Cards until further notice.
Virus has infiltrated their system..pass it on
As virus warnings generally do, this one caught on quickly, spreading beyond the confines of AOL to the Internet at large. What began as a trickle of inquiries to Blue Mountain's Webmaster address on February 25 had escalated to a flood by the following week. People all over the world were not only forwarding the alert to everyone they knew, they were posting it to newsgroups and listservs and spreading it in personal messages. Not one word of it was true.
Read More
"Yigaquu osaniyu adanvto adadoligi nigohilvi nasquv utloyasdi nihi" Cherokee - "May the Great Spirit's blessings always be with you."
Publisher of a variety of note cards and poetry books, Blue Mountain has operated a popular Website offering free electronic cards for all occasions since 1996. Though it's now a highly-trafficked commercial site, it was originally launched as a public service in accordance with the ideals of its hippie-era founders, Susan and Stephen Schutz.
The company achieved a sudden and unwanted notoriety during the week of February 22 when the following message began being passed around on America Online:
Subject: Fwd: BLUE MOUNTAIN CARDS VIRUS ALERT!!!!!
Date: Sat, 27 Feb 1999 01:02:07
Just received a call from family. A friend of theirs opened a card from Blue Mountain Cards and system crashed.
Do not open Blue Mountain Cards until further notice.
Virus has infiltrated their system..pass it on
As virus warnings generally do, this one caught on quickly, spreading beyond the confines of AOL to the Internet at large. What began as a trickle of inquiries to Blue Mountain's Webmaster address on February 25 had escalated to a flood by the following week. People all over the world were not only forwarding the alert to everyone they knew, they were posting it to newsgroups and listservs and spreading it in personal messages. Not one word of it was true.
Read More
"Yigaquu osaniyu adanvto adadoligi nigohilvi nasquv utloyasdi nihi" Cherokee - "May the Great Spirit's blessings always be with you."
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Two Charlotte police officers shot, killed; one man charged
By Kytja Weir, Greg Lacour and Cleve R. Wootson Jr.
McClatchy Newspapers
(MCT)
CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Charlotte-Mecklenburg police charged a man Sunday night in the slayings of two police officers who were gunned down while responding to a call at an east Charlotte apartment complex.
Officers Sean Clark, 34, and Jeff Shelton, 35, died at Carolinas Medical Center early Sunday. They were the first Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers slain in the line of duty in more than a decade.
Police charged Demetrius Antonio Montgomery, 25, with two counts of first-degree murder. They did not discuss a motive but are still investigating.
He has been found guilty of assaulting a government official or resisting a public officer five times since 1998, N.C. court records show.
The news of the officers' slayings circulated quickly among police Sunday, with even many of those out of town for spring break having already learned the news by midday.
Officers who were working Sunday wore black elastic bands around their badges. Many said they felt too numb to talk about their fallen comrades, nerves raw from what they know could happen to any of them.
"They're not only in a state of shock," said Chief Darrel Stephens. "They're in a state of wanting to know what you want to know, what we all want to know: What happened."
News of the slayings also reached beyond Charlotte, with people from as far as Kentucky, Michigan and Massachusetts filling more than 18 pages of an online memorial.
The two North Tryon division officers were handling a reported disturbance at 10:26 p.m. at the Timber Ridge Apartments on Barrington Drive near Milton Road and East W.T. Harris Boulevard, police said. The complex used to be called Barrington Oaks.
They were shot around 11:15 p.m., police said, while struggling with the suspect outside an apartment building. No one else was injured. Neither officer fired his weapon, police said.
Police have not yet said whether Clark and Shelton were wearing bulletproof vests, but they said it wouldn't have made a difference even if they were. Witnesses said they were each shot in the head.
Police interviewed scores of people in the neighborhood, Stephens said. Although they initially said they were looking for two men, they said they had interviewed only Montgomery as a suspect and were not looking for anyone else Sunday.
The mayor, City Council members and police officials discussed the news of his arrest in a police conference room Sunday night next to a hallway lined with the framed portraits of 23 other fallen officers.
"In addition to two families, Charlotte is in mourning," Mayor Pat McCrory said. "It was a brutal and senseless act and I don't think it was just against these two heroes and our police department. It's an act that impacts the heart and soul of our city. It's unacceptable."
Clark and Shelton had worked together in the same division for just over two months, working as a team when two officers were needed on one call.
On Saturday night, they were both called to answer the disturbance report, as is standard for such calls. They drove in separate squad cars to the complex off Milton Road near East W.T. Harris Boulevard.
It was the police work they both loved.
Clark had always wanted to be a police officer. The 1991 graduate of West Mecklenburg High joined the Air Force and worked a few other jobs. But he kept trying and trying to get into the police academy. He finally was hired just over a year ago.
He lived in Lincoln County's Iron Station community with his wife. He has a 2-year-old son, and his wife is expecting another child in June.
Shelton was also married and lived in the small Stanly County town of Locust.
He had been with the force for more than six years. The former Marine had worked in various divisions of the Police Department, most recently moving from the midnight shift along the South Boulevard corridor to the same shift in the neighborhoods of east Charlotte's North Tryon division.
Capt. Mike Adams called Shelton a hard-working officer. He was dedicated, said Capt. Chuck Adkins, focusing on his family and his job.
It's not clear what went wrong Saturday night. Police spokeswoman Julie Hill said Montgomery did not appear to be involved in the initial disturbance call that the officers were answering at the complex.
Two women saw the officers' cars in the parking lot as the women smoked and talked just outside their building.
Then, one said, she saw a man about 5 feet 6 inches tall, wearing a white shirt, walk across the lot. Neither recognized him.
After a few minutes, the other woman said, one of the officers stepped outside, followed by his partner. The two officers talked with the man in the white shirt for 10 to 15 minutes, one of the women said.
"It seemed like they were just having a conversation. They were just standing there talking," said E. Tejada, who asked the Observer not to use her full name because she is scared. "It was so weird, how it happened."
She said she turned her head to speak to a friend. Seconds later, she heard shots.
"Bam, bam, bam. Five times," another neighbor said.
Tejada rushed inside her apartment, put her five children in the bathroom and told them to stay close to the floor.
Then, she said, she grabbed her house keys, her cell phone and ran outside, calling 911 as she went. Her cell phone shows the call lasted 27 seconds.
The officers lay in the grass just to the right of a building's entrance. Police said their weapons remained holstered to their bodies.
Tejada told the dispatcher that two officers were shot. One officer was on his back, not breathing, with his eyes closed. The other was on his side, lying partially on top of his partner, still breathing and trying to speak.
"It was like mumbling," she said.
Tejada said she couldn't understand what he was saying. But she said she noticed both men appeared to have been shot in the backs of their heads_one in the middle, the other behind his right ear.
Other residents were beginning to crowd around the officers, she said, and police showed up within two or three minutes.
"It was chaos all night after that," she said, with police evacuating the five buildings around the lot.
The officers were rushed to Carolinas Medical Center's main hospital, a line of police cars escorting them. Clark died just after midnight. Shelton was pronounced dead at 4:06 a.m., police said.
The last time an officer from the department was fatally shot in the line of duty was in 1993, when the city was smaller but had a record year of violence with 129 homicides.
The past two years the district has had about 80 homicides, highs for the past decade but nothing matching the violence of the early 90s.
Yet Saturday's shooting came a day after police arrested 15 members of the Hidden Valley Kings, a gang based in a nearby neighborhood in northeast Charlotte. Stephens said investigators do not believe the officers' slaying was connected to the gang crackdown.
By afternoon the complex of two-story apartments with red bricks, beige siding and iron railings looked quiet. Signs of the deadly violence weren't apparent except for a handful of azalea blossoms left on the grassy lawn where the officer's bodies fell.
"Yigaquu osaniyu adanvto adadoligi nigohilvi nasquv utloyasdi nihi" Cherokee - "May the Great Spirit's blessings always be with you."
McClatchy Newspapers
(MCT)
CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Charlotte-Mecklenburg police charged a man Sunday night in the slayings of two police officers who were gunned down while responding to a call at an east Charlotte apartment complex.
Officers Sean Clark, 34, and Jeff Shelton, 35, died at Carolinas Medical Center early Sunday. They were the first Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers slain in the line of duty in more than a decade.
Police charged Demetrius Antonio Montgomery, 25, with two counts of first-degree murder. They did not discuss a motive but are still investigating.
He has been found guilty of assaulting a government official or resisting a public officer five times since 1998, N.C. court records show.
The news of the officers' slayings circulated quickly among police Sunday, with even many of those out of town for spring break having already learned the news by midday.
Officers who were working Sunday wore black elastic bands around their badges. Many said they felt too numb to talk about their fallen comrades, nerves raw from what they know could happen to any of them.
"They're not only in a state of shock," said Chief Darrel Stephens. "They're in a state of wanting to know what you want to know, what we all want to know: What happened."
News of the slayings also reached beyond Charlotte, with people from as far as Kentucky, Michigan and Massachusetts filling more than 18 pages of an online memorial.
The two North Tryon division officers were handling a reported disturbance at 10:26 p.m. at the Timber Ridge Apartments on Barrington Drive near Milton Road and East W.T. Harris Boulevard, police said. The complex used to be called Barrington Oaks.
They were shot around 11:15 p.m., police said, while struggling with the suspect outside an apartment building. No one else was injured. Neither officer fired his weapon, police said.
Police have not yet said whether Clark and Shelton were wearing bulletproof vests, but they said it wouldn't have made a difference even if they were. Witnesses said they were each shot in the head.
Police interviewed scores of people in the neighborhood, Stephens said. Although they initially said they were looking for two men, they said they had interviewed only Montgomery as a suspect and were not looking for anyone else Sunday.
The mayor, City Council members and police officials discussed the news of his arrest in a police conference room Sunday night next to a hallway lined with the framed portraits of 23 other fallen officers.
"In addition to two families, Charlotte is in mourning," Mayor Pat McCrory said. "It was a brutal and senseless act and I don't think it was just against these two heroes and our police department. It's an act that impacts the heart and soul of our city. It's unacceptable."
Clark and Shelton had worked together in the same division for just over two months, working as a team when two officers were needed on one call.
On Saturday night, they were both called to answer the disturbance report, as is standard for such calls. They drove in separate squad cars to the complex off Milton Road near East W.T. Harris Boulevard.
It was the police work they both loved.
Clark had always wanted to be a police officer. The 1991 graduate of West Mecklenburg High joined the Air Force and worked a few other jobs. But he kept trying and trying to get into the police academy. He finally was hired just over a year ago.
He lived in Lincoln County's Iron Station community with his wife. He has a 2-year-old son, and his wife is expecting another child in June.
Shelton was also married and lived in the small Stanly County town of Locust.
He had been with the force for more than six years. The former Marine had worked in various divisions of the Police Department, most recently moving from the midnight shift along the South Boulevard corridor to the same shift in the neighborhoods of east Charlotte's North Tryon division.
Capt. Mike Adams called Shelton a hard-working officer. He was dedicated, said Capt. Chuck Adkins, focusing on his family and his job.
It's not clear what went wrong Saturday night. Police spokeswoman Julie Hill said Montgomery did not appear to be involved in the initial disturbance call that the officers were answering at the complex.
Two women saw the officers' cars in the parking lot as the women smoked and talked just outside their building.
Then, one said, she saw a man about 5 feet 6 inches tall, wearing a white shirt, walk across the lot. Neither recognized him.
After a few minutes, the other woman said, one of the officers stepped outside, followed by his partner. The two officers talked with the man in the white shirt for 10 to 15 minutes, one of the women said.
"It seemed like they were just having a conversation. They were just standing there talking," said E. Tejada, who asked the Observer not to use her full name because she is scared. "It was so weird, how it happened."
She said she turned her head to speak to a friend. Seconds later, she heard shots.
"Bam, bam, bam. Five times," another neighbor said.
Tejada rushed inside her apartment, put her five children in the bathroom and told them to stay close to the floor.
Then, she said, she grabbed her house keys, her cell phone and ran outside, calling 911 as she went. Her cell phone shows the call lasted 27 seconds.
The officers lay in the grass just to the right of a building's entrance. Police said their weapons remained holstered to their bodies.
Tejada told the dispatcher that two officers were shot. One officer was on his back, not breathing, with his eyes closed. The other was on his side, lying partially on top of his partner, still breathing and trying to speak.
"It was like mumbling," she said.
Tejada said she couldn't understand what he was saying. But she said she noticed both men appeared to have been shot in the backs of their heads_one in the middle, the other behind his right ear.
Other residents were beginning to crowd around the officers, she said, and police showed up within two or three minutes.
"It was chaos all night after that," she said, with police evacuating the five buildings around the lot.
The officers were rushed to Carolinas Medical Center's main hospital, a line of police cars escorting them. Clark died just after midnight. Shelton was pronounced dead at 4:06 a.m., police said.
The last time an officer from the department was fatally shot in the line of duty was in 1993, when the city was smaller but had a record year of violence with 129 homicides.
The past two years the district has had about 80 homicides, highs for the past decade but nothing matching the violence of the early 90s.
Yet Saturday's shooting came a day after police arrested 15 members of the Hidden Valley Kings, a gang based in a nearby neighborhood in northeast Charlotte. Stephens said investigators do not believe the officers' slaying was connected to the gang crackdown.
By afternoon the complex of two-story apartments with red bricks, beige siding and iron railings looked quiet. Signs of the deadly violence weren't apparent except for a handful of azalea blossoms left on the grassy lawn where the officer's bodies fell.
"Yigaquu osaniyu adanvto adadoligi nigohilvi nasquv utloyasdi nihi" Cherokee - "May the Great Spirit's blessings always be with you."
Man Charged in Slaying of 2 Charlotte Police Officers
Charlotte — A suspect was charged with murder Sunday, less than 24 hours after two Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers were fatally shot during a domestic disturbance call at an apartment complex.
Demetrius Antonio Montgomery, 25, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, said police spokesman Officer Bob Fey.
"This is an ongoing investigation," the spokesman said when asked if there were other suspects.
The two officer were shot late Saturday during a struggle outside an apartment complex and died early Sunday.
Sean Clark, 34, and Jeffrey Shelton, 35, were the first officers from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg department fatally shot in the line of duty in more than a decade.
"It's a real tragedy for us, the officers, for the families, for the communities, that we've lost two in one incident," said Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department Chief Darrel Stephens.
Stephens said the two officers were responding to a disturbance call around 10:30 p.m. Saturday night at the apartment complex in east Charlotte. They were shot around 11:15 p.m. in the parking lot during a struggle. Neither fired their weapon, Stephens said.
Clark and Shelton were taken to Carolinas Medical Center, where they later died. Clark had been with the police department for a year, and Shelton had worked there since 2001.
Police blocked a road near the apartment complex for several hours overnight. Police used patrols, a helicopter, K-9 units and a SWAT team during the search.
"We have an enormous number of questions in our minds about what happened, and how it happened, that we don't have the answers to right now," said Stephens, adding later, "We don't have suspects at this point."
Both officers were married. Clark, a 1991 graduate of West Mecklenburg High School who had worked for the department for a little more than a year, and his wife were expecting a child. Shelton was a six year veteran of the force.
A Charlotte officer was last shot and killed on duty in 1993, when officers John Burnette and Andy Nobles died while chasing Alden Harden through a wooded section of southwest Charlotte, The Charlotte Observer reported on its Web site. Harden was convicted a year later and is one of 166 inmates on North Carolina's death row.
Last year, Officer Kayvan Hazrati survived when he was shot in the head while trying to serve a rape warrant in north Charlotte. He has yet to return to work.
"Yigaquu osaniyu adanvto adadoligi nigohilvi nasquv utloyasdi nihi" Cherokee - "May the Great Spirit's blessings always be with you."
Demetrius Antonio Montgomery, 25, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, said police spokesman Officer Bob Fey.
"This is an ongoing investigation," the spokesman said when asked if there were other suspects.
The two officer were shot late Saturday during a struggle outside an apartment complex and died early Sunday.
Sean Clark, 34, and Jeffrey Shelton, 35, were the first officers from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg department fatally shot in the line of duty in more than a decade.
"It's a real tragedy for us, the officers, for the families, for the communities, that we've lost two in one incident," said Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department Chief Darrel Stephens.
Stephens said the two officers were responding to a disturbance call around 10:30 p.m. Saturday night at the apartment complex in east Charlotte. They were shot around 11:15 p.m. in the parking lot during a struggle. Neither fired their weapon, Stephens said.
Clark and Shelton were taken to Carolinas Medical Center, where they later died. Clark had been with the police department for a year, and Shelton had worked there since 2001.
Police blocked a road near the apartment complex for several hours overnight. Police used patrols, a helicopter, K-9 units and a SWAT team during the search.
"We have an enormous number of questions in our minds about what happened, and how it happened, that we don't have the answers to right now," said Stephens, adding later, "We don't have suspects at this point."
Both officers were married. Clark, a 1991 graduate of West Mecklenburg High School who had worked for the department for a little more than a year, and his wife were expecting a child. Shelton was a six year veteran of the force.
A Charlotte officer was last shot and killed on duty in 1993, when officers John Burnette and Andy Nobles died while chasing Alden Harden through a wooded section of southwest Charlotte, The Charlotte Observer reported on its Web site. Harden was convicted a year later and is one of 166 inmates on North Carolina's death row.
Last year, Officer Kayvan Hazrati survived when he was shot in the head while trying to serve a rape warrant in north Charlotte. He has yet to return to work.
"Yigaquu osaniyu adanvto adadoligi nigohilvi nasquv utloyasdi nihi" Cherokee - "May the Great Spirit's blessings always be with you."
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Wounded Warriors and the America Way
"The new organization will allow us to give a personal touch to former Marines," says Col. Gregory A.D. Boyle, the regimental commander. "I want these Marines to feel . . . that they're the center of the universe and that we care about them and we're concerned about them."
When Boyle and other Marine Corps leaders describe the advantages of the new Regiment, one also gets a glimpse of what has been deficient in previous programs. Troops will be helped through loneliness, frustration and depression; troops and their families won't get substandard or unsanitary treatment, won't get lost in the system or fall through the "seams" or the "cracks" of inattention and perfunctory care, troops will get "personal" care and a built-in and focused support network, transportation to appointments and therapy, an advocate, an ombudsman, legal counsel, religious and spiritual support; troops will have assistance in cutting through Marine Corps, Navy, Defense Department, Department of Veterans Affairs, Social Security and federal government red tape and in navigating the voluminous paperwork and bureaucratic tangle, and in dealing with military and government boards and commissions, Congressional offices, disability claims, military contracts, insurance policies, discharge papers, as well as external charities and veterans groups; troops will have help in the transition back to units for duty, to the Veterans Administration, or in making their way to civilian life and follow-up family, charitable or government outpatient care, services, and benefits.
Read More
"Yigaquu osaniyu adanvto adadoligi nigohilvi nasquv utloyasdi nihi" Cherokee - "May the Great Spirit's blessings always be with you."
When Boyle and other Marine Corps leaders describe the advantages of the new Regiment, one also gets a glimpse of what has been deficient in previous programs. Troops will be helped through loneliness, frustration and depression; troops and their families won't get substandard or unsanitary treatment, won't get lost in the system or fall through the "seams" or the "cracks" of inattention and perfunctory care, troops will get "personal" care and a built-in and focused support network, transportation to appointments and therapy, an advocate, an ombudsman, legal counsel, religious and spiritual support; troops will have assistance in cutting through Marine Corps, Navy, Defense Department, Department of Veterans Affairs, Social Security and federal government red tape and in navigating the voluminous paperwork and bureaucratic tangle, and in dealing with military and government boards and commissions, Congressional offices, disability claims, military contracts, insurance policies, discharge papers, as well as external charities and veterans groups; troops will have help in the transition back to units for duty, to the Veterans Administration, or in making their way to civilian life and follow-up family, charitable or government outpatient care, services, and benefits.
Read More
"Yigaquu osaniyu adanvto adadoligi nigohilvi nasquv utloyasdi nihi" Cherokee - "May the Great Spirit's blessings always be with you."
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