Fake vodka and toxic alcohol substitutes have killed scores of people around Russia over the past few months, officials and media reports said.
In the western Belgorod region, 44 of the 912 affected have died since July 31, said Olga Semyonova, a spokeswoman for the Belgorod regional prosecutors' office. And in the north-western city of Pskov, near the border with Estonia, at least 12 people died of toxic hepatitis and 134 remained hospitalised with the disease after drinking bad alcohol since mid-September, local health officials said. "All those people were diagnosed for toxic hepatitis caused by some alcohol liquid," Vladimir Ryabenchenko, head of the Pskov Health Committee's emergency department, told The Associated Press.
More than 550 people in the Siberian region of Irkutsk have appealed for medical assistance and, of those, 19 have died of toxic hepatitis, the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Andrei Kuptsevich, the region's deputy health chief, as saying. The regional government is considering introducing a state of emergency because of the poisonings, ITAR-Tass said.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/27/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
great cartoon ;)
Just last week I went to a wedding and they served chocolate mint chip martini's.
Oh man were they good.
For love of Vodka....how horrible
Posted by: Jan ||
10/27/2006 0:12 Comments ||
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#2
The college weekend party crowd(s) + Spring/Seasonal Breakers t'aint gonna like this news at all - OTOH, Halloween beer suppliers/brewers may had just gotten their seasonal marketing promos free of charge courtesy of the Russians.
#3
---- "Toxic hepatitis" is kind of an odd term. Excessive consumption of regular ethanol without impurities can indeed poison the liver and kill directly. In this part of the world, the ailment could be called "alcoholic hepatitis" and perhaps "alcohol-induced liver failure." The reputation of Russians as extremely heavy drinkers indicates this is the more common adverse outcome hinted at in the story. Excess intake of the best, purest ethanol is toxic all by itself.
-----OTOH, adulteration of ethanol with substitutes like methanol (wood alcohol) or antifreeze (ethylene glycol) is also done by sub-standard distillers. Might as well just say the victims were poisoned.
--- My grandfather was a logger back in 1915, and one weekend his crew drank some suspicious hootch. Everyone vomited the stuff up, everyone but granddad, and they lived, although they were really sick for a while. Granddad didn't vomit, and died. His cause of death as recorded on the death certificate was "alcholic axcess [sic]". It was almost a fitting way for a logger to go.
PORTAGE, Ind. - A young woman's goal of getting her driver's license crashed this week — right into the license branch. The 20-year-old woman was pulling into a parking spot outside the license branch when she hit the accelerator instead of the brake, Assistant Fire Chief Mike Bucy said.
The car jumped a small curb and went into the building about 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, tearing out a large glass window and damaging a door and low brick wall.
Neither the driver nor the examiner, who weren't identified, were injured. Bucy said a person in the building sustained a hip injury and was examined by emergency medical personnel but declined to be taken to the hospital.
Amazing Travel manager Susan Williams said she thought something had exploded next door.
"We jumped up and we went to the door and saw the car half in and half out of the license bureau," Williams said.
The building was closed for the remainder of the day, but reopened Wednesday.
The young driver, meanwhile, failed the test.
"I think it's fair to say the customer did not meet the required criteria," said Greg Cook, a Bureau of Motor Vehicles spokesman. Crash Test Dummy...
#3
Just nervousness- my wife, who can drive anything with a steering wheel, was doing her test in NYC. The examiner gets in, she puts the car in gear, and takes off- in reverse! Got the license anyway.
The "wolves' lair" - ancient Pompeii's biggest, best planned and most richly decorated brothel - yesterday reopened to the public after extensive restoration. The two-storey building, which was built at about the time Spartacus was leading his slaves' revolt, had been closed for almost a year. Its explicit wall paintings have long been a popular attraction for tourists visiting the site of the classical world's best-preserved city.
The busy port of Pompeii was packed with bordellos. At least 25 have been identified. But most occupied a single room, usually above a wine shop.
The more things change, the more they remain the same ...
Though sited, like all the others, at the junction of two side streets, the "Lupanare", was different. Archaeologists believe it was the ancient city's only purpose-built whorehouse.
Sorta live Nevada.
So-called because, in Latin, lupa (she-wolf) was a common term for a prostitute, it consisted of 10 rooms and a latrine beneath the stairs. Set into the wall of each of the women's rooms was a stone bed covered with a mattress.
Not the most comfortable arrangement! Pro'ly didn't encourage loitering.
Researchers believe the Lupanare's celebrated wall paintings, each depicting a different position, were intended to advertise the various specialities on offer. The more elaborately painted upper floor, which had a separate entrance, is thought to have been reserved for better-off clients. The prostitutes were slaves, usually of Greek or Eastern origin. Their earnings were collected by the owner or manager of the brothel.
The Lupanare is known to have been built just a few years before the city's violent destruction. The plaster in one of the rooms bears the imprint of a coin dating from AD72. Pompeii was obliterated when Mount Vesuvius erupted seven years later.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/27/2006 00:00 ||
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Is it just me, or is this article trying hard NOT to say that Spartacus and his mostly male gladiator army revolted against Rome due to lack of sex???
#4
Btw, lupanar is an alternate french word for "brothel". I guess this one was very successful to have spawned a term remaining in use 2000 years or so after.
Four firefighters were burned to death and one other was critically injured today when they got trapped in a fire engine as wind-driven flames raced through a desert community near Palm Springs. The fast-moving wildfire, pushed by dry Santa Ana winds, blackened more than 4,000 acres of desert brushland in the craggy hills, engulfing three buildings and forcing at least 200 people from their homes.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/27/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Heard that these four guys + another suffering 95% burns on his body, got trapped as 1000 acres burned in 20 minutes! That's an incredible amount of land, in such a short period of time.
Arson -- four if not five counts of murder. And will the fighting firemen have time, to leave the fires and honor their fallen ones?
And I know, that Rantburgers will take a moment, in silence, remembering these guys, their families and the fight their buddies still have ahead of them.
#3
It's being called arson. Could be it was set by some random pyromaniac. Could be it was set by a wacko firefighter wanting some action. Could even be it was set by some anti-development environmentalist nut.
But it also could be it was set by some Mohammedan just as it was laid out in documents captured in the past.
#2
When I read Iowahawk and Scrappleface it occurs to me that the people at NBC who run SNL together with the people at Fox who run Mad TV are idiots for not putting these guys on the writers payroll.
Posted by: Mark Z ||
10/27/2006 10:42 Comments ||
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Give us your money or else. That's the threat from MoveOn.org, the crazed ultra-liberal political blog, to U.S. Rep. Marty Meehan.
Who's not one of my favorite people. Red on red, yummy ...
For a week now, MoveOn.org's political extortionists have mounted an Internet campaign against Meehan because he refuses to accede to their wishes. They want Meehan to open his $4.9 million campaign war chest to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which is trying to win back the House from Republicans.
Meehan has resisted, and rightly so.
Yeah, he stole it fair and square!
But what began as playful politics has escalated into a nasty MoveOn.org shakedown.
First, the bloggers sought a $1.2 million contribution from Meehan. They called him "cheap" when he didn't budge. Next, they ratcheted up the pressure, urging Democrats across the nation to e-mail Meehan. On Tuesday, they trotted out a Meehan supporter who has a son serving in the U.S. military in Iraq and fed the father to the press. The Lowell man implied that if Meehan didn't help the Democratic cause, his son might not come home on schedule. Yesterday, MoveOn.org's coordinator Adam Green sent an e-mail to Meehan's Lowell district manager, saying if Meehan forks over $250,000 "there is still time to make this a net positive instead of a net negative for Meehan."
"Nice campaign you got here Mr. Meehan, be a shame if something happened to it ..."
Just think, like a political Mafia, MoveOn.org is willing to settle its score with Meehan for $250,000. But it's an offer Meehan can -- and should -- refuse.
Do 5th District constituents want a congressman in office who kow-tows to irresponsible bully bloggers? What's their next strong-arm campaign -- U.S. citizenship for Guantanamo detainees?
I wouldn't put it past them ...
The attack on Meehan has exposed MoveOn.org for the cheap-shot blog artists they truly are. Most of what they spew on the Internet isn't even credible.
It has to hurt when a liberal newspaper in Massachusetts points that out.
In Meehan's case, the facts show he's done his fair share for the DCCC and party candidates. Meehan is a convenient MoveOn.org target because he has amassed the largest campaign war chest in the House and doesn't face a November challenger.
Meehan supporters should be outraged by MoveOn.org's heavy-handed tactics.
To think that these Beltway fakers, who call themselves Democratic activists, would reach into the pockets of 5th District Democrats by attempting to embarrass a sitting congressman into submission shows just how rotten these political scoundrels have become on the campaign scene.
Nah, they're rotten for lots of other reasons.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/27/2006 00:19 ||
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I guess this means no special/reserved seat on the future Amerikan Global SSR = USR CPUS Politburo-Presidium > you know, the one Russia-China never promised Cindy Sheehan or any of the US Left.
#2
Hardly run of the mill bully boy bloggers when MoveOn has already spent over $20 million during this election season. Unless that is, the original Bully Boy Blogger, Fabulous Fred, has a pickle heiress tucked away somewhere writing million dollar bandwidth checks.
Instead of shaking down congressmen, why don't George Soros and Peter Lewis pony up another $50 million?
Though fortunes seemed to have changed for the worse for them to try and extort congressmen.
Posted by: ed ||
10/27/2006 7:35 Comments ||
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Can't edit to save my life. Del the last line.
Posted by: ed ||
10/27/2006 7:36 Comments ||
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Remember, from the very fundamental concept of communism Moveon, there is no private property or money. There is only public money and property. All others are simply stewards of that which belongs to Moveon to the people. And of course, only THE members of the inner party have the authority to determine how that works
#6
Ha! They won't get a dime outta Marty. He treats them like manhole covers. Keeps saving up for the day Kennedy or Kerry croaks and he can run for the Senate which is his ultimate wetdream.
#8
Y'know, I remember when MoveOn started up during Clinton's impeachment. Forgive me, back then I was ignorant and very naive -- and more or less agreed that Washington needed to concern itself with more important things than a BJ. So what the hey, I signed MoveOn.org's petition.
Two years passed without incident -- and then I started receiving a slew of hostile, aggressive e-mails, shrieking that I had made a pledge and I had goddamned well better fork over some money. The only thing missing was a threat to come break my kneecaps. It confirmed my growing sense that "liberals" were not liberal at all, but communist thugs.
MoveOn.org: alienating swing voters for almost a decade!
#9
And what do these commy thugs get outtta being commy thugs ? There must be some material gain, or they would not play. The answer is the key to how Communism fails. It works well for the elitists, but not at all for the masses. Even the thugs don't realize this fact. Swallowing the dogma is no excuse for closing your mind forever. Wake up commies. Get a job. Start a business.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Fake vodka and toxic alcohol substitutes have killed scores of people around Russia over the past few months, officials and media reports said.
The "wolves' lair" - ancient Pompeii's biggest, best planned and most richly decorated brothel - yesterday reopened to the public after extensive restoration. The two-storey building, which was built at about the time Spartacus was leading his slaves' revolt, had been closed for almost a year. Its explicit wall paintings have long been a popular attraction for tourists visiting the site of the classical world's best-preserved city.
