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Fierce battle rages for Taliban stronghold
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Page 4: Opinion
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-Lurid Crime Tales-
Breaking: Four People Shot Outside Colorado Springs New Life Church
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — At least four people were shot outside of a Colorado Springs church on Sunday, but it was not immediately known whether the shootings were related to an earlier shooting about 70 miles away, authorities said.

The conditions of the people shot outside the New Life Church were not known, El Paso county Sheriff's Lt. Lari Sevene said.

Two people died and two were wounded earlier Sunday when a gunman opened fire in a dormitory at a missionary training center in the Denver suburb of Arvada.

Fox TV news describes the shooter as "a white male in his twenties," same description as the Arvada perp.
Posted by: Angique Gonque2974 || 12/09/2007 16:02 || Comments || Link || [4 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Move to LOCAL please, not WOT as far as we know.
Posted by: OldSpook || 12/09/2007 17:18 Comments || Top||

#2  Moved to local for now. Perp in the other shooting was described as a white male in his 20s wearing a beanie and maybe with a beard. One shooter down in the New Life Church shooting, one in custody. IEDs found in the car.

The initial odor is Islamic.
Posted by: Fred || 12/09/2007 17:36 Comments || Top||

#3  From the local news here in the springs...

3-5 wounded. No reports of deaths. Police are not confirming they have the gunman or if they were more than one shooter.

Hopefully everyone is not seriously hurt. I have several friends that go there and have been trying to contact them.
Posted by: DarthVader || 12/09/2007 17:39 Comments || Top||

#4  Shooter didn't get to make the splash he wanted because New Life was not a "gun free zone". He killed one and injured four before he the floor opened and he was grabbed by shrieking demons who threw him straight into a firey pit.
Posted by: Whomong Guelph4611 || 12/09/2007 21:31 Comments || Top||

#5  http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,316263,00.html

Witnesses told police that the gunman was a 20-year-old white male, wearing a dark jacket and skull cap, who left on foot. He may have glasses or a beard.

The religion of peace attacking missionaries? I don't beleive it!
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 12/09/2007 22:27 Comments || Top||

#6  I was just reading the CNN version - no mention of a beard or skull cap. editor was mohammad something. Just a coincidence, I'm sure.
Posted by: Grampaw Thrish3238 || 12/09/2007 22:51 Comments || Top||

#7  read on another blog that there were two shooters. One dead (New Life) and one in custody (Arvada). Also mentions explosive devices in parking lot ??

Hopefully more info avail tomorrow.
Posted by: Whomong Guelph4611 || 12/09/2007 23:38 Comments || Top||


Gunman kills 2 in missionary center (Arvada CO)
ARVADA, Colo. - A gunman walked into a training center dormitory for young Christian missionaries early Sunday and opened fire, killing two of the center's staff members and wounding two others. No arrests had been made by late morning.

The shooting happened at about 12:30 a.m. at the Youth With a Mission center, police spokeswoman Susan Medina said. About 45 people were evacuated from the dormitory in this Denver suburb and moved to an undisclosed location. A man and a woman were killed and two men were wounded, Medina said. All four victims were staff members, said Paul Filidis, a Colorado Springs-based spokesman with Youth With a Mission.

Brady White, who attends Faith Bible Chapel, where the center is located, said he spoke to some students there, who were unhurt but called the experience "terrifying." "They're just wonderful people," White said of the center's students. "Their mission is to know God and to make him known."

Police identified the victims as Tiffany Johnson, 26, and Philip Crouse, 23. Youth With a Mission said Johnson was from Minnesota and Crouse was from Alaska. Their hometowns weren't immediately available. Cheril Morrison, wife of chapel pastor George Morrison, said Crouse had just hung up Christmas lights at her home and Johnson was "an amazingly beautiful person."

One of the injured men was hospitalized in critical condition and the other was in stable condition, police said. Both are in their 20s.

Witnesses told police that the gunman was a 20-year-old white male, wearing a dark jacket and skull cap, who left on foot. He may have glasses or a beard. "There's no blueprint for this, we're just going to be honest and pray for one another, cry with one another," center director Peter Warren told KUSA-TV. "Who knows what was going on in this young man's life."

Police with several dogs searched the area through the night, and residents of nearby homes were notified by reverse 911 to be on the lookout. Medina said residents were asked to look out their windows to see the snow had been disturbed during the night. About 4 inches of snow had fallen in the area in the past day.

Mimi Martin, who lives near the center, said she received the warning call at about 9 a.m. warning neighbors to keep their doors and windows locked. "Why would anybody want to hurt those kids?" Martin said. "I just pray for their families."

People bundled up against freezing cold attended Sunday services at the sanctuary, about 300 yards from the dormitory on the campus of the Faith Bible Chapel. Police kept tight security on the chapel grounds. "We never doubted that we would have a service," said Cheril Morrison. "We felt like our church faithful all needed to be together."

Darv Smith, director of a Youth With a Mission center in Boulder, said people ranging from their late teens to their 70s undergo a 12-week discipleship course that prepares them to be missionaries. He said the center trains about 300 people a year. Filidis said staffers are usually former missionaries themselves and that the "mercy ministries" performed by trainees include orphanage work. He said he didn't know where the group being trained in Arvada was going to be sent.

Youth With a Mission was started in 1960 and now has 1,100 locations with 16,000 full-time staff, Smith said. The Arvada center was founded in 1984.
Our heartfelt condolences to the victims, their families, and their friends. Youth with a Mission is quite a large organization, with activities in 149 countries.
Posted by: Angique Gonque2974 || 12/09/2007 14:11 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:

#1  UPDATE
There has been a second shooting in the same area, this time in the New Life Church in Colorado Springs.

COLORADO SPRINGS - Gunfire erupted in the 10,000-plus member New Life Church on Sunday at around 1:20 p.m. El Paso County Sheriff's office says there are two to three victims, possibly including the shooter. It was the second shooting of the day at a religious organization. 9NEWS and 9NEWS.com will update this story as more information becomes available.
Posted by: Angique Gonque2974 || 12/09/2007 15:54 Comments || Top||


British canoeist who ‘returned from dead’ charged
LONDON - A man who ‘returned from the dead’ after apparently being lost at sea in a canoeing accident five years ago was charged by police on Saturday with obtaining money by deception and making a false declaration to get a passport.

The charges come after a week of revelations that began with John Darwin, 57, walking into a London police station claiming amnesia and ended with his wife Anne telling newspapers she had hidden him at the family home during the missing years.

Anne Darwin described how her husband had avoided discovery by using a small passage to an apartment in an adjoining house owned by the couple. ‘For three years, while virtually everyone close to us believed John was missing presumed dead, he was actually at home with me,’ Anne Darwin, who recently left Britain for central America, told the Daily Mirror.
Wonder which central American countries lack an extradition treaty with Britain?
‘We were living as man and wife, although it was far from a conventional life,’ she added. ‘There were a few hairy moments and I lived in fear of being found out,’ she told the Daily Mail in another interview.

On Saturday police urged her to make contact with them as soon as possible but said they did not know when she intended to return to Britain.
Ummm, how about 'never'?
Newspaper reports said Darwin’s life insurance and work benefits had been paid to his wife.

Anne Darwin spoke to the Daily Mail in Miami where she had travelled from Panama, apparently heading to Britain after telling reporters she had been ‘living a lie’ and feared her children would never forgive her. She told the Daily Mirror her husband had partly lived with her in the family home but, if visitors called, had to flee through the passage hidden by a wardrobe with a false back to the neighbouring apartment.

Former prison officer Darwin vanished in March 2002 from his home, but according to his wife, turned up at their house a year later. ‘I didn’t even recognise him at first,’ she told the Mirror. ‘He was an absolute mess, all dishevelled. I was relieved he was alive, of course, but I was also very angry with him.’
Hadn't taken the garbage out before he vamoosed?
She said the couple decided to move to Panama but Darwin, who was missing their sons Anthony and Mark, invented a plan to ‘return from the dead’ to see his sons.

In 2002, Anne Darwin reported her husband missing, saying she feared he had suffered an accident while canoeing in the North Sea near their home in Hartlepool, northeast England. A few weeks later the shattered remains of his red kayak were discovered. In 2003, following a police inquiry, a coroner declared him dead.
Posted by: Steve White || 12/09/2007 00:00 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:


US man sues over rubber in hamburger
A man who says he bit into a Burger King hamburger and found an unwrapped condom inside has sued the owner of the restaurant. Van Miguel Hartless (24), of Fair Haven, said on Friday he bought the Southwestern Whopper at a Burger King in Rutland on June 18 and made the discovery when he got home and started eating it. "My third bite into the burger, it was just a foreign taste," he said. "It was a very sour, bitter sort of taste. It almost had a numbing sensation. As I went to bite down a little harder, I felt a rubber grind in between my teeth. I saw it half in my mouth, half hanging out. It was an immediate sick-to-my-stomach type of thing."
I had always assumed they had no taste...
Hartless said he waited three weeks before contacting an attorney. His lawsuit, filed on November 16, names store owner Carrols, of Syracuse, New York, and seeks damages for pain and suffering, emotional duress and medical expenses. Messages left with Carrols were not returned on Friday. A spokesperson for Burger King said it has referred the matter to Carrols.

Similar claims have turned out to be fraudulent in other cases. A California couple was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2006 for planting a severed finger in a bowl of Wendy's chilli in a scheme to extort money from the fast-food chain.

Hartless, a student at Green Mountain College, defended his claim. A search of court filings in Rutland Superior Court -- where Hartless's suit was filed -- and the civil court in El Paso, Texas, where he lived before showed no prior or existing lawsuits, according to the Rutland Herald, which first reported the lawsuit on Friday. Hartless's lawyer, Devin McLaughlin, said he had Hartless undergo a lie-detector test before the suit was filed, and that he passed "with flying colours".

Hartless said he has suffered from vomiting, nightmares and emotional distress. He said he also has incurred medical expenses, because he is worried about whether the condom had been used. He said he stored the hamburger and its original wrapper in a plastic bag in a freezer in his garage.
Posted by: Fred || 12/09/2007 00:00 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:

#1  waited three weeks, but store the burger and wrapper in the freezer immediately? I call Bullshit
Posted by: Frank G || 12/09/2007 8:31 Comments || Top||

#2  This entire ugly episode can be attributed to the downturn in the effectiveness of our public schools system. Even as late of as the 70's burger assembly dude and the king of the Fry-o-lator knew what a condiment was.
Posted by: Super Hose || 12/09/2007 14:11 Comments || Top||


-Short Attention Span Theater-
Greek parrot in parking fine row
A legal battle is under way in the western Greek city of Patras over a parrot that is facing a $650 (£320; 444 euros) parking ticket.

The local council says his perch is illegally parked and is obstructing drivers because it partially blocks a metered parking space. Coco the parrot's owner, Lambros Michalopoulos, says if the bird has to move back inside it will kill him. Neither side is backing down so now the dispute is going to the courts.

Pet shop owner Mr Michalopoulos offers Coco a banana and encourages him to go through his vocal repertoire. But on this occasion the macaw refuses to perform his piece de resistance, asking for a ham and cheese toasted sandwich. With his multi-coloured Amazonian plumage and extrovert personality, Coco has, for 18 years, been something of a mascot in this busy port city, with narrow streets and precious few parking places. His small perch occupies part of a metered zone and under the zero tolerance rules, the local police have ordered Mr Michalopoulos to pay a heavy fine. The pet shop owner says he has ignored the authorities because if Coco goes back inside the store permanently he will die because he is a sociable creature who enjoys being with people.

Patras's Deputy Mayor Spiros Demartinos is embarrassed that Coco's plight is attracting international attention. He would prefer to talk about the city's ambitious plans to use parking revenue for funding bicycle lanes and pedestrian zones. "Is it bureaucratic to be concerned about the parrot's safety?" he asks. "The parrot's security is of paramount concern to the council."

Both sides are refusing to back down and so the dispute is heading to the palace of justice. Coco's owner is hoping that the case will be laughed out of court.
Posted by: john frum || 12/09/2007 10:56 || Comments || Link || [4 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Okay, I'll bite, so its NOT the pet bird that credits its longetivity to sipping whiskey???
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 12/09/2007 23:39 Comments || Top||


Today in History: A Charlie Brown Christmas
Beyond the inclusion of Schulz’s cast of wildly popular characters, 1965’s A Charlie Brown Christmas seemed a production earmarked for failure. The special’s small crew was given a mere six months between the film’s conception and its maiden broadcast. At his own insistence, Schulz signed up to pen the script, his first attempt at a screenplay. . . . Schulz’s script centered around a pensive Charlie Brown attempting to find the true meaning of Christmas. “The 1960s were when Christmas first began to start the day after Thanksgiving,” says Mendelson. “There was an irony to this, given the commercialization of the comics. That wasn’t really his doing. He said, ‘If people want to buy stuff, that’s up to them. I’m not in the business of making stuff and selling it. I’m in the business of making a comic strip, and if people want products, then so be it.’ “

“We’re all a little schizophrenic in that way,” adds Jean Schulz. “You live in this world, and you despair. If you think at all, you’re always wrestling with this. I think that’s exactly what Sparky was expressing.” The special opens with a characteristically distraught Charlie Brown, speaking to the perpetually blanket-wielding Linus on a snow-covered version of the brick wall, the bald third-grader’s preferred location for vocalizing his ever-present inner despair. “I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus,” he begins. “Christmas is coming, but I don’t feel happy.”

In case that wasn’t enough to threatren the film’s commercial potential, the producers added one final nail to the prime time coffin: Schulz’s script called for Linus to deliver a subdued monologue at the film’s climax, a word-for-word recitation of Jesus’s birth, taken from the Gospel of Luke. “Bill said, ‘You can’t have the Bible on television!’ Sparky said, ‘If we don’t do it, who will?’ By the time that Coca-Cola and CBS saw it, they had no choice but to play it. They had nothing else to put in there.”

What the roomful of executives saw upon the first screening was a shock—a slow and quiet semireligious, jazz-filled 25 minutes, voiced by a cast of inexperienced children, and, perhaps most unforgivably, without a laugh track. “They said, ‘We’ll play it once and that will be all. Good try,’ “ remembers Mendelson. “Bill and I thought we had ruined Charlie Brown forever when it was done. We kind of agreed with the network. One of the animators stood up in the back of the room—he had had a couple of drinks—and he said, ‘It’s going to run for a hundred years,’ and then fell down. We all thought he was crazy, but he was more right than we were.”
Posted by: Mike || 12/09/2007 10:05 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Linus's speech
Posted by: Frank G || 12/09/2007 10:28 Comments || Top||

#2  the peanuts cartoons are classic, I loved them as a kid and am happy I will have the chance to share them w/my kids.
Posted by: Broadhead6 || 12/09/2007 11:35 Comments || Top||

#3  CHARLES and other Xmas toons are still great, when the waffle/flip-happy MSM isn't trying to get mainstream Amer angry in the name of OWG = Nationalism, War = Peace, Democracy-Libertar = Socialism-Govtism, etc.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 12/09/2007 17:33 Comments || Top||


Europe
Schindler typist adds her postscript
Great story in the Guardian. Never forget.
Posted by: Steve White || 12/09/2007 00:00 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:

#1  A man who rose to the challenge of the times. After the war, Germany had no place for him; he died impoverished in Frankfurt. How lovely that his secretary can add another piece to to the story of this rakish hero, and end her years with the family his care enabled to exist. Thank you for posting this, Dr. Steve.
Posted by: trailing wife || 12/09/2007 19:41 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Culture Wars
Video: Paul Stamets Speaks on Fungi saving us.
Posted by: 3dc || 12/09/2007 15:33 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:

#1  It would have been nice if they let him talk for longer. The damn introduction was 30% of it.
Posted by: Penguin || 12/09/2007 16:25 Comments || Top||

#2  I must have missed the point to this, unless it was to display yet again how utterly sickening lefty green feminists can be. Wood chips plus fungi make soil. What an amazing deduction! Do you think anyone has alerted our Nobel-winning ex-VP to this previously unknown phenomenon?
Posted by: Jomosing Bluetooth8431 || 12/09/2007 16:27 Comments || Top||

#3 
Paul's bio at wikipedia


The intro ate all the time... the version they are flogging cost $15 from commie tv...
That said he actually has some very interesting ideas... (video ad didn't show it.)
Nobody but him is really using fungi.. It maybe because it started out trying to grow better magic mushrooms to keep him and his customers high...
Likely scared others out of the field.

One of his little fungi could save the bee...
Another does a job on queen insects that attack homes (like carpenter ants) A one time $1 fix.

Another predigests cellulose to complex sugars that existing yeasts can turn into booze for our cars.. This would jump start the cellulosic-ethanol process. He did a working demo in one day for that process.

Then he gets into dreamy stuff. That's likely when his fungi kick in to expand his mind....
One was comparing fungi to brain networks...

Posted by: 3dc || 12/09/2007 19:15 Comments || Top||




Who's in the News
29[untagged]
6Govt of Pakistan
5Global Jihad
4Govt of Iran
2Iraqi Insurgency
2Taliban
2Islamic Courts
1Hamas
1Jamaat-e-Islami
1Jamaat-e-Ulema Islami
1Lashkar e-Taiba
1TNSM
1al-Aqsa Martyrs
1al-Qaeda
1al-Qaeda in Iraq
1al-Qaeda in Yemen
1GIA
1Govt of Syria

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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.
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Meet the Mods
In no particular order...
Steve White
Seafarious
tu3031
badanov
sherry
ryuge
GolfBravoUSMC
Bright Pebbles
trailing wife
Gloria
Fred
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Two weeks of WOT
Sun 2007-12-09
  Fierce battle rages for Taliban stronghold
Sat 2007-12-08
  Berri postpones Lebanon presidential election to Tuesday
Fri 2007-12-07
  Pak troops capture Mullah Fazlullah's base
Thu 2007-12-06
  Suicide attack on army bus in Kabul kills 16
Wed 2007-12-05
  Somali leader taken to hospital
Tue 2007-12-04
  Abu Maysara Positively Deader Than a Rock
Mon 2007-12-03
  40 Taliban killed, 14 held in Afghanistan
Sun 2007-12-02
  Walkout in Iraq parliament over Sunni leader raid
Sat 2007-12-01
  Binny: Euroleaders 'like living under shadow of White House'
Fri 2007-11-30
  Perv Sworn In as Civilian President
Thu 2007-11-29
  Perv finally quits army
Wed 2007-11-28
  Sistani tells Shiites to protect Sunni brothers
Tue 2007-11-27
  Perv to bid farewell to troops
Mon 2007-11-26
  Nawaz returns, vows to contest elections
Sun 2007-11-25
  Sharifs reach deal with Perv

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