FOR a burglar, being chased by the police is one thing. But finding them already there when you jemmy open the window just doesn't seem fair. That was the shock awaiting a couple of thieves who staged a midnight raid on a Melbourne house last week.
But the police weren't waiting for them - in fact, they were no less surprised.
The Melton property was allegedly being used for growing hydroponic cannabis, and the detectives were on a raid to arrest the resident, a man in his 20s. The startled burglars fled, but were caught a couple of days later, said Det Sen-Sgt Paul Cassidy, of Melton CIU. "It is unusual," he said. "We've got to stop meeting like that, you know, it's not an healthy relationship."
He would not say whether the burglars had been after money or drugs. The three arrested men, all in their 20s, have been remanded to appear in court.
Illegal settlers likely working for drug smugglers are starting fires to clear land in the Guatemalan jungle and threatening investigations into an ancient Mayan city with soaring pyramids and temples.
U.S. and Guatemalan archaeologists who trekked to the La Corona site in northern Guatemala to map dozens of huge Mayan ruins had to trade their scientific instruments for machetes and buckets of water last week to fight an encroaching blaze.
They fought the fire for two weeks, helped by natural dirt barriers and rains that calmed the flames, but land invaders deep in the lawless jungle simply lit more fires, dangerously close to the more than 1,200-year-old Mayan site.
"We were able to bring some of the fires under control but the invaders just lit them up again. The rains have helped but there is still a threat," said Mariela Lopez, a director of the forest protection service for the northern Peten department.
The Peten region, which teems with wildlife like jaguars and scarlet macaws, has become a favorite trafficking route for drug cartels.
Smugglers clear jungle to build clandestine airstrips to land small planes loaded with cocaine which is then trucked over the porous border with Mexico and up to U.S. consumers.
Drug gangs, and people supporting them who live illegally in the 800,000-acre Laguna del Tigre park, which surrounds the La Corona site, see the archaeologists as a threat.
"At our archaeological base camp we have guards and that creates a problem for these people. That kind of permanent presence could detect what they are doing," Tomas Barrientos, the Guatemalan head of the La Corona project, told Reuters by telephone.
Slash-and-burn tactics mean vegetation in northern Guatemala is disappearing at one of the fastest rates in the world.
Smuggling has been rife in the area since the 1960s when looters raided the buried temples at La Corona and sold the stolen merchandise to private collections.
Archaeologists searched for the site for decades after discovering a series of looted Mayan sculptures from 600 to 900 A.D. in U.S. and European museums, all carved from stone and showing similar features.
In 2005, investigators identified La Corona as the site they were hunting for, after finding a panel there with the same strange snakehead glyph as the stolen sculptures.
#1
Some of these Guatemalan sites are magnificent. Their empire must have been enormous, based on the amount of labor involved. The ancient city of Tikal alone takes four hours to walk around.
Before they would build their temples, they would create slabs of ground limestone, as much as five feet thick and a half kilometer across. Tikal also has several deep draws that were artificial lakes, lined with that same ground limestone.
A large fire is burning at the world-famous Universal Studios in Los Angeles, California.
Apparently it's not a scene from Randi Rhodes' new movie ...
The blaze was reported before dawn on a sound stage at the film studios, said Los Angeles fire captain Frank Reynoso. More than 100 city and county firefighters are helping studio staff tackle the flames, which have caused several explosions. No injuries have been reported at the 230-acre site, which saw filming for King Kong and The War of the Worlds.
Helicopters have been dropping water on to the burning structures, and television pictures showed flames leaping into the air as a thick cloud of smoke covered the site.
James Barnes of the LA County Fire Department said the fire had virtually destroyed at least one building, and firefighters were battling to stop the flames from spreading to adjoining structures. He said the fire could now be affecting a King Kong ride at the studios. "There's some Hollywood history going up in smoke today and we're doing our best to minimalise the damage," he told the BBC.
Reports suggest the blaze has damaged Universal's New York street scene.
There are indications that the sound stage had recently been used for filming, says the BBC's Rajesh Mirchandani in Los Angeles. It is likely that there would have been a good deal of flammable material and props, as well as fuel supplies, on the site, our correspondent adds.
Behind-the-scenes tours of the studios are a long-established tradition still popular with visitors today.
Posted by: George Smiley ||
06/01/2008 13:15 Comments ||
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#2
Damn! That's some fire. Not helping that most of the stuff there isn't real, just frames and facades, so there's plenty of oxygen and not a lot to slow the spread of fire.
They've probably got half the ladder pipes in LA dumping water on this. Surf's up, dude.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
06/01/2008 13:35 Comments ||
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A Fox News employee who says she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder after being bitten by bedbugs at work filed a lawsuit on Thursday against the owner of the Manhattan office tower where she worked. Jane Clark, 37, a 12-year veteran of Fox News, a unit of News Corp, said she complained to human resources after being bitten three times between October 2007 and April 2008. She said she was ridiculed and the office was not treated for months.
Beacon Capital Partners, which owns the tower in midtown Manhattan, said in a statement that it had not been made aware of the problem and that it was the responsibility of tenants to manage infestations. "As a prudent step, we are bringing in outside, independent experts to review the situation," the statement said.
The suit did not say how much Clark was seeking in damages. Clark, who says she's been diagnosed with PTSD and can no longer work, has filed a separate workers compensation claim with News Corp, and the company is paying her medical bills and lost wages. A News Corp spokeswoman declined to comment because News Corp was not named in the lawsuit.
"They made a lot of mistakes," Clark said through tears at a news conference at the office of her lawyer, Alan Schnurman, who said he has brought numerous bedbug cases. "I didn't want my baby to get bitten. I was terrified of bringing it home," Clark said.
She said she believed a colleague who used her workstation on weekends, and who no longer works for Fox News, brought the infestation to the office. Clark's home was never infested.
Clark says she suffers nightmares and keeps a flashlight at her bedside so she can check for bugs during the night. "It's their obligation to the working public to provide a safe environment," Schnurman said.
Posted by: ed ||
06/01/2008 7:43 Comments ||
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#3
Probably in the cushion of the chair at her desk. New York City is infested with the things, apparently. So, I'm told, are the less nice city sections of Cincinnati. PTSD is perhaps an extreme response to the situation.
#6
The possibility of Chagas Disease is more likely now than ever.
Chagas' disease of South and Central America caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. It usually affects children and young adults and is transmitted by the feces of infected insects, typically the assassin bug. Most of those infected have mild symptoms, such as fever and swelling and redness around the eyes, but from 10% to 30% develop chronic disease that may result in serious or fatal inflammation of the brain and heart tissues. There is no vaccine and no satisfactory treatment. The incidence of Chagas' disease in the United States has increased since the 1970s, possibly because of increased immigration from Mexico and Central America, where the incidence is very high. In immunosuppressed patients (see AIDS) Chagas' disease can form a mass in the cranial cavity that mimics a tumor, presumably because the lymphocytes that guard against the parasite are the same that are depleted by the AIDS virus. See also trypanosome.
Day long raids to curb the menace of illicit liquor led to arrest of 14 people Saturday in Puducherry while three policemen were injured due to stone-pelting and attacks with deadly weapons by a gang of bootleggers. The raids led to the destruction of over 2,000 litres of illicit liquor in the union territory. The police had to open fire when illicit distillers of hooch attacked a posse of policemen in Bahour, a village bordering Tamil Nadu, 170 km south of Chennai, government sources said.
While there were no fatalities due to the firing, three officials were seriously injured due to stone-pelting and attack with deadly weapons by a gang numbering some 100 suspects. The injured have been admitted to JIPMER Hospital, police sources added.
Following over 200 recent deaths from drinking spurious liquor in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, a drive is underway in south India since May 18 to rid the region of the menace.
Posted by: john frum ||
06/01/2008 17:57 ||
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Now, there is about 30,000 children living or working on the streets of the country -- out of an estimated total population of 70 million, social deputy of state Welfare Organization said here on Saturday.
If the necessary budget is funded, several programs for rehabilitating street-working kids will be implemented in 20 parts of the country, seyed Mohammadi said.
The programs including some strategies and tools needed to give street kids around the country the skills and opportunities to make a better life for themselves, would be developed and disseminated by some NGOs.
Children making their home on the street, is not a new or modern phenomenon, they may be found on every continent in a large majority of the world's cities.
Estimates vary but one often-cited figure is that the number of children living independently in the streets totals between 100 million and 150 million worldwide.
Although there are variations from country to country, 70% or more of street children are boys.
Children may end up on the streets for several basic reasons:
They may have no choice -- they are abandoned, orphaned, or thrown out of their homes. Secondly, they may choose to live in the streets because of mistreatment or neglect or because their homes do not or cannot provide them with basic necessities. Many children also work in the streets because their earnings are needed by their families.
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.
Cops and robbers break into same house
Fox News worker sues over bedbugs in office
