Bus Stops - October 13

Inmate found hiding under bus in attempted county jail escape (LA Times) 

(A inmate who slipped out of his handcuffs was found by deputies clinging to the undercarriage of a bus as it was leaving the Peter J. Pitchess Detention Center near Castaic, authorities said Tuesday night. The deputies noticed that inmate Gamaliel Martinez, who had been handcuffed to three other prisoners, was missing early Tuesday morning, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said. )

Driver in fatal TTC bus crash charged (Toronto Sun) 

(The TTC bus driver at the wheel in a crash that killed one passenger and injured 13 others is now facing criminal charges. Toronto Police arrested the 51-year-old driver from the fatal August TTC crash on Wednesday morning.)

B.C. marijuana moved by bus to Alberta (Vancouver Sun) 

(Police in Abbotsford, B.C. and Calgary say they have busted a drug-smuggling ring that used a commercial bus line to transport B.C.-grown marijuana to the Alberta city. Abbotsford police on Friday executed a search warrant at a home and found a marijuana grow operation and four pounds of dried pot, Abbotsford police Const. Ian MacDonald said in a news release.)

Detroit police impound 'Booty' bus strip club (MSNBC) 

(Detroit police have impounded a party bus they say operated as a strip club for reveling football fans at a popular tailgating spot. The Detroit News and WDIV-TV report that the "Booty Lounge" bus was parked Monday near Ford Field, where the Lions played the Chicago Bears.)

Mother Faces Trial After School Bus Dispute (Wesh) 

(A woman who stormed her daughter's school bus told her side of the story Wednesday in court. Laura Booker is on trial for trespassing and resisting arrest."My mindset is go ahead and call the police. I'm not doing anything wrong," Booker said. "If I knew I was doing something wrong, I would have got off that bus and would not have wanted the police involved.")

Surfer in Seaside says he stood on shark that knocked him off board (Oregon Live) 

(A surfer at Seaside says he was knocked off his board Monday afternoon by a shark. Doug Niblack tells KATU he ended up standing on top of the shark, which he says appeared to be a 10-to-12-foot Great White )

Injured zombies shock medics (Orange) 

(Emergency crews were confronted with alarming scenes when they were called to an accident on a film set in Toronto. The actors, injured when a high platform moved suddenly, appeared to be covered in blood and gore, reports the BBC. But it turned out that most of it was make-up - they were dressed as zombies for the latest Resident Evil film.)

Menacing Darth Maul strikes back on TV, in film (USA TODAY) 

(Star Wars fans felt the shaft in The Phantom Menace when Darth Maul was introduced and quickly killed off — and so did the spiffy-looking Sith lord, who fell to his death after being sliced in two by a lightsaber. You can't keep a great villain down, though. And that's why Darth Maul will be resurrected this spring, making his grand re-entry into Star Wars mythology in episodes of the Cartoon Network animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars.)

(SUBMITTED BY: @fitzman73)

Woman Sues After Horrific Sex Toy Mishap (Huffington Post) 

(After horrific experience with a sex toy sent her to the hospital, a Northern California woman is a suing a Southern California "marital aid" manufacturer for personal injury and emotional duress. Yreka resident April Bonjour states in her suit that, late last year, she and her boyfriend were using a vibrator made by Pipedream Products when she suddenly noticed that something was wrong.)

'Moss Man' burglar wanted after skipping trial (NWCN) 

(The man known as "Moss Man" has a warrant out for his arrest after he failed to show up for his trial on Tuesday. A Washington County judge issued a bench warrant for Gregory Liascos, 37, after he didn't show up for his first day of trial. Jurors were sent home for the day, according to the Washington Co. Sheriff's Office.)

Vancouver restaurant bans men from peeing standing up (Vancouver Sun) 

(A Vancouver restaurant has come up with an interesting solution to the men-can’t-aim problem: Ban men from peeing standing up. Recently, my wife and I had brunch at the Edible Canada bistro on Granville Island. When I went to use the facilities, I was surprised to see just one unisex bathroom with about six private stalls and a communal sink area.)

Couple lost in Massachusetts corn maze causes media bonanza (LA Times) 

(One couple's corn maze nightmare has turned into a media bonanza for a corn maze owner. "We have the whole country chasing us," said Bob Connor, owner of Connors Farm, in a telephone interview with the Los Angeles Times. "Nothing like this has ever happened." A Massachusetts couple got the publicity ball rolling late Monday afternoon -- though they didn't know it at the time -- when they entered the Connors Farm corn maze with their newborn. The farm is in Danvers, Mass., about 20 miles north of Boston.)

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall defends eating dogs (News Lite) 

(TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has irked animal lovers by defending eating puppies in an interview. The River Cottage star -- who spent five months as a vegetarian for his new series -- was being interviewed by Radio Times about meat eating.)

Does my bomb look big? Nudist beach contains 87 explosives (The Mirror) 

(NATURISTS have been stunned by some bare facts... 87 bombs have been found at a nudist beach. Experts at the Royal Navy unearthed 61 of the explosives – some dating back to the late 19th century – during a two-day sweep of the sands. They were called in after 26 bombs – including two submarine depth charges and at least six 10lb mortars – washed up on the beach.)

City repeals ordinance banning domestic battery
(CJ Online) 

(Topeka’s governing body voted 7-3 Tuesday evening to repeal the part of city ordinance banning domestic battery. Interim city manager Dan Stanley said the move would force Shawnee County District Attorney Chad Taylor to resume reviewing and evaluating domestic batteries committed in Topeka for possible prosecution.)

Las Vegas Monsignor stole over $650,000 from his parishioners to feed his gambling habit (Daily Mail) 

(One of the most senior churchmen in Las Vegas has admitted stealing over $650,000 from his parishioners to feed his gambling habit. Monsignor Kevin McAuliffe faces up to 60 years in jail after confessing to raiding church funds to feed his addiction to video poker.)

University weighing interest for gay fraternity (Press Citizen) 

(The University of Iowa is gauging interest for a potential fraternity for gay, bisexual and progressive men. Kelly Jo Karnes, associate director for the Center for Student Involvement & Leadership, said it’s the latest effort by the organization to expand the Greek community.)

Prostitutes Sell Sperm to Ritual Killers in Abuja (Codewit) 

(Randy men in Abuja stand the chance of having their semen taken away and sold to ritual killers by commercial sex workers who have laid siege to the city. This demonic practice may have been responsible for the woes suffered by some men including sterility, erectile dysfunction, marital crisis, failure in business and even death, said observers. Our correspondents reported that some prostitutes with condoms filled with fresh semen were arrested by officials of the Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB), while raiding some red light areas of the city.)

Critics call radio station's 'Win a Baby' contest exploitative (CNN) 

(A radio station promotion that awarded five couples in vitro fertility treatments Tuesday as part of a “Win a Baby” contest has drawn the ire of Canadians on both sides of the issue. Hundreds entered the contest held by Ottawa station Hot 89.9 for a chance to win a round of IVF treatments. After several weeks of having hopefuls campaign and write essays on why they should be chosen, the station whittled the competition down to five couples.)

Detectives hope DNA from 8 unidentified Gacy victims will 'close the book, once and for all' (Chicago Tribune) 

(Cook County sheriff's detectives have exhumed the remains of eight young men killed by John Wayne Gacy, extracting DNA in hopes they can finally identify the bodies and "close the book, once and for all" on the notorious serial killer. "For 25 of these families, there was some degree of justice, some degree of closure," Sheriff Tom Dart said, referring to Gacy’s victims that have been identified. "For eight of the families there was not closure. . .Today, we are beginning the process to close the book, once and for all, on John Wayne Gacy.")

Red State - movie review (The Vine) 

(I've long dreamed that some enterprising studio type would option The Bible and dole out The Book of Revelation to Michael Bay. Imagine Mr Transformers getting crazy with the CGI Cheese Wiz on verses like, "The dragon stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name".)

Red State - movie review (The Vine) 

(Nerd God director Kevin Smith (Clerks, Dogma, Chasing Amy) tries his nervous hand at an issue-driven siege comedy, fails. The heavily armed church of ultra-conservative, homosexual-hating small-town preacher Abin Cooper (Michael Parks) is surrounded by gun-toting ATF agents (lead by a wasted John Goodman) after their true purpose is revealed.)

Preview: Red State (City Weekly) 

(Few filmmakers have the bomb-to-hit ratio of Kevin Smith. And let’s be honest, his recent output has been terrible. Smith was the indie king in the 1990s, crafting Gen-X classics such as Clerks, Chasing Amy and Dogma. But in the new millennium fans left in droves after car crashes like Jersey Girl and Cop Out. And let’s not mention his repeated flogging of the Jay & Silent Bob franchise.)

On second thought, Val Kilmer was the best Batman, says Joel Schumacher (Entertainment Weekly) 

(Asking Joel Schumacher about his Batman films must be like asking Steve Bartman about the Chicago Cubs. But the director, who was blamed for nearly killing the franchise after 1997′s Batman & Robin, seemed to have a healthy perspective when an IFC.com reporter brought it up during press for his latest film, Trespass, with Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman. “I’m responsible for everything. I said, ‘yes’ and I took it on,” he said. “It’s not my favorite movie I’ve ever made, but I’m proud of my cast and I’m proud of all the artists who worked on it. I take full responsibility for Batman & Robin.”)

Breaking of the Bat in Batman 3: Dark Knight Rises?(Boom Tron) 

(If you’re a Batman fan then you know about the possibilities for pain that are associated with Bane but there’s still a chance for spoilers ahead so don’t go any further if you don’t want to find out about a revealing video taken during the filming of The Dark Knight Rises. The video, which is posted on YouTube, might not be the greatest TDKR behind-the-scenes clip we’ve seen but it does possibly reveal an important part of the storyline.)

Mind-blowing sex actually can wipe memory clean (MSNBC) 

(A 54-year-old woman showed up in the emergency room at Georgetown University Hospital with her husband, unable to remember the past 24 hours. Her newer memories were hazy, too. One thing she did recall: Her amnesia had started right after having sex with her husband just an hour before.)

'm only 26! Doctors baffled by condition that sees wife age 50 years in a matter of days (Daily Mail) 

(Doctors have been left baffled by a strange condition which caused a 23-year-old woman to age 50 years in a matter of days. Nguyen Thi Phuong, from Vietnam, now looks like a septugenarian after the affliction took hold in 2008 leaving her with a puffy face and sagging skin. However her husband, carpenter Nguyen Thanh Tuyen says his love has not faded for his once beautiful wife, who is now 26.)

Early Celtic 'Stonehenge' Discovered in Germany's Black Forest (Science Daily) 

(A huge early Celtic calendar construction has been discovered in the royal tomb of Magdalenenberg, nearby Villingen-Schwenningen in Germany's Black Forest. This discovery was made by researchers at the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum at Mainz in Germany when they evaluated old excavation plans. The order of the burials around the central royal tomb fits exactly with the sky constellations of the Northern hemisphere.)

Researchers trace the roots of Europe's Black Death plague (ABC) 

(The Black Death of the medieval era, far from being just a more dangerous form of an already-occurring disease, was a newly evolved variant of a harmless bacteria that quickly began its death march across the globe. That's the finding of researchers who have sequenced the genome, or genetic blueprint, of the plague bacteria and found that the strain arose no more than 140 years before the Bubonic Plague's start in 1347. The plague killed an estimated 50 million people in Europe in just five years.)

FBI arrests alleged celebrity e-mail hacker
(CNET) 

(The FBI today arrested a Florida man accused of hacking into e-mail accounts of Scarlett Johansson, Christina Aguilera, and dozens of other celebrities, and releasing stolen photos of them to the Web. Authorities arrested Christopher Chaney, 35, of Jacksonville, Fla., as part of an 11-month investigation officials dubbed "Operation Hackerazzi," according to a statement from the FBI in Los Angeles.)

Sony Recalls 1.6 Million TVs on Fear of Flame-Ups (Tech News World) 

(Sony (NYSE: SNE) has issued a voluntary recall for 1.6 million Bravia flat-panel TVs sold worldwide covering certain TV sold since 2007. A defective component reportedly causes them to be slightly more likely to melt or catch fire than the average TV. In September, a Japanese customer discovered that his TV started a small fire. Eleven incidents like this have apparently occurred in Japan since 2008.)

BlackBerry suffers epic outage – so where are its CEOs? (The Star) 

(While Research In Motion Ltd. struggles to contain a service outage that’s affecting tens of million of BlackBerry users around the world, its co-chief executives are most conspicuous by their absence. Neither Jim Balsillie, who was in Dubai Monday at an industry conference when the outage began, nor Mike Lazaridis, the dual CEOs and co-chairmen who together own 10.5 per cent of Waterloo-based RIM, has stepped to the fore during the crisis that extended into a third day Wednesday.)

Sony detects attacks on its networks, over 90,000 customer accounts locked (Tecca) 

(Today, Sony's PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment service are up and running in fine style, but if you rewind just a few months, you'll remember that it hasn't always been this way. Earlier this year, Sony suffered one of the worst cyber attacks on a company in recent memory. Millions of accounts were compromised, and Sony spent months cleaning up the mess. And according to a new press release by the company, someone is at it again.)

That's a Lot of Gas Money: World's Oldest Car Sells for $4.6 Million (Time) 

(It's been around the block a few times. But that didn't put the brakes on an auction for the world's oldest car, where bidding closed at a staggering $4.6 million last week. A steam-powered automobile, billed as the oldest-operable car in the world, fetched more than twice its estimated price at the RM Auctions house in Hershey, Pa., CNNMoney reports.)

Urban Outfitters Taken to Task for Faux 'Navajo' Products (Time) 

(Fashion retailer Urban Outfitters has landed in hot water after a scathing letter points out its (potentially illegal) fascination with all things Navajo. Earlier this week, Sasha Houston Brown of Minneapolis published an open letter to the company's CEO as a guest contributor on the blog Racialicious. Brown posits that the frequent use of “Navajo” to describe and market Urban Outfitters' products is offensive, and moreover, a possible violation of federal law.)

Can Eating Fruits and Veggies Outwit Bad Heart Genes? (Time) 

(We know that eating lots of fruits and vegetables is good for the heart, but can a healthy diet really overcome the effect of genes that boost your risk for heart problems? Yes, it can, according to researchers in Canada who studied data on more than 27,000 people to figure out which contributes more to the risk of heart disease: environment or genes. The researchers focused on a group of people with specific genetic variants that are known to increase the risk of heart disease. They found that people who had the variants but ate lots raw fruits and vegetable showed no increased heart risk, compared with those who had a less healthy diet, who were twice as likely to have a heart attack.)

Seal Beach shooting: Death toll rises to eight (LA Times) 

(Seal Beach police said the death toll from the salon shooting has risen to eight people. A ninth victim is in critical condition at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center. "This could be one of our greatest tragedies," Police Sgt. Steve Bowles said. The gunman opened fire inside the crowded salon Wednesday, littering the shop with bodies. Police said he acted alone, although investigators said they were still scrambling to piece together what triggered such violence.)

Potter actor Waylett charged over riots (Orange) 

(Harry Potter star Jamie Waylett has been charged with violent disorder for allegedly taking part in the riots which blighted London in August. The 20-year-old, who starred as Hogwarts bully Vincent Crabbe in the wizard franchise, is accused of handling a petrol bomb during clashes in the capital's Chalk Farm area. He has also been charged with allegedly stealing a bottle of champagne during mass lootings of a supermarket.)

'Underwear bomber' praises jihad while pleading guilty (USA Today) 

(A Nigerian student dubbed the "underwear bomber" pleaded guilty to trying to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. The plea comes on the second day of the trial of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.)