LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (AP) -- Divers pulled six bodies out of the Sava River and fought strong currents Friday to search for five other people still missing after two canoes were crushed running over a dam in southeastern Slovenia.

Three people managed to swim ashore after their boats crumpled, overturned and capsized but two of them died Friday in the hospital, raising the death toll to 8, according police spokesman Robert Perc. The third survivor remained hospitalized.

The accident happened late Thursday, when two large canoes decided to run over a dam under construction near Sevnica, a town 56 miles (90 kilometers) southeast of the capital of Ljubljana. At that section, the dam, part of a hydroelectric plant, is currently built only to about the height of the water.

The trip -- ominously dubbed "The Final Descent" -- was organized by local officials and all participants were Slovenians. It was to be the last ride down that section of the river, which will soon be blocked by the hydroelectric plant.

Two other canoes -- part of the four-boat excursion -- left the river before reaching the site.

Slovenian TV journalist Goran Rovan, who had been in one of the safe canoes, told the state-run news agency STA that the other canoes capsized and broke apart when they hit the whitewater passing through the dam gates. The occupants fell into the river and were sucked by the rapids into the underwater tunnel leading to the generator turbines.

TV in Slovenia showed chilling footage Friday of the canoes entering the dam, followed by the sound of screams. Then the kayaks broke up, overturned and capsized.

Rovan said people rushed over and managed to help the two who had reached the shore, but could do nothing more because of the river's dangerous currents. He told STA that almost none of the victims wore life vests.

Police divers raced immediately to the scene, but the rescue operation was hampered by the river's strong currents. More than 15 divers combed the river Friday, trying to find survivors or bodies. A police helicopter flew over the area, while police, civil protection and fire services swept the river banks.

Prime Minister Janez Jansa rushed to the site early Friday, declaring the accident a "great tragedy."

Economics Minister Andrej Vizjak denied speculation that the dam could have been better secured or blocked. He told STA that those in the canoes had clear security instructions.

"Some of them did not respect [the rules] and decided to take a dangerous descent," he said, calling the accident the "consequence of a wrong human decision."

The Slovenian parliament canceled its Friday session. A member of parliament was reported to be among the victims.

Teen decapitated at theme park, police say

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- A teenager died Saturday when he was decapitated at the Six Flags Over Georgia theme park outside Atlanta, authorities said.

The 17-year-old park visitor was killed after scaling two 6-foot fences around the Batman roller coaster, said a statement issued by park spokeswoman Hela Sheth. He was struck by the coaster and killed, she said.

It was unclear how fast the coaster was moving when it struck the teen, but according to the park's Web site, the ride reaches speeds of 50 mph.

"We do not know why this person was intent on gaining access to this restricted area," the statement said, noting that multiple signs are posted stating, "Danger Zone," "Do Not Enter" and "Authorized Personnel Only."

"Some witnesses have stated that the individual was trying to retrieve something he had lost," Sheth's statement said. "Others reported that he was trying to touch the ride. This is merely speculation at this point, and we are working with park visitors and local police to learn more."

The victim's family was at the park with him, Sheth said, and park representatives were with them Saturday evening.

BOSTON -- A Bellingham woman intentionally walked onto Interstate 495 while carrying her niece and nephew before they were hit and killed by oncoming cars last week, Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone said Friday.
Marcelle Thibault, 39, of Bellingham, and her twin sister's children, Kaleigh Lambert, 5, and Shane Lambert, 4, of Brentwood, N.H., were struck and killed by two cars on Interstate 495 North in Lowell on Jan. 11.
"Based on our investigation, we believe that Ms. Thibault took her niece and nephew and walked with them into oncoming traffic on Route 495, tragically resulting in the deaths of the two young children while taking her own life in the process," Leone said in a statement. "The facts of this matter make it a truly heart-wrenching case, with troubling and very difficult findings."
Investigators said according to witnesses, Thibault was driving her 2003 Lincoln sedan southbound on I-495 when she turned sharply, drove across the median strip, crossed oncoming traffic in the northbound lanes, and then began driving against traffic in the breakdown lane of the highway.
Middlesex District Attorney's Office said Thibault eventually stopped the car and removed both her and the children's clothes. She then took the children in her arms and walked into the roadway where they were struck and killed.
Thibault's family said she was taking the children to her Bellingham home for a family sleepover.
Thibault was taken first to Holy Family Hospital in Methuen and later to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where she died. The children were taken to Lawrence General Hospital where they were both pronounced dead.
Autopsies conducted on the children and Thibault determined that the cause of death was homicide/suicide by blunt force trauma resulting from being hit by two cars, Leone's office said.
Thibault had a brief history of mental illness, Leone's office said.
The drivers of the cars that struck the victims were not injured and have not been charged.
The children's funeral was held at Saint Theresa's Catholic Church on Thursday in North Reading. Thibault's funeral was held Wednesday at Saint Blaise Church in Bellingham.

British wildlife student dies in front of girlfriend minutes after being bitten by black mamba snake

A British wildlife student has died after being bitten by a snake in South Africa.
Nathan Layton, 27, was walking in long grass with a group of fellow students and teachers when the black mamba struck.
He was comatose almost immediately and died moments later as his girlfriend, 23-year-old Laura Woolley, looked on in horror.
Mr Layton had just enrolled in a course to study wildlife - paid for by compensation he received after he was nearly killed in a car accident.
He had dreams of becoming a vet and working in the South African bush, inspired by the character Danny Trevanion (played by Stephen Tompkinson) in the ITV series Wild at Heart.
Mr Layton's parents Robert and Anne have arranged to have his body flown back to Britain. They declined to comment yesterday.
His aunt Jacqui Edwards, 46, said: "Within minutes he was dead. He was genuinely a loving, caring person with such a warm heart."
Miss Woolley, who lived with Mr Layton and had been his girlfriend since the age of 15, will fly home with his body.
Friends of Mr Layton left tributes on Facebook, the networking website, yesterday.
The tribute page was headed: "Nathan Layton. Born 12-03-1979. Died: 4-03-2008. Died doing what he loved. We love you buddy. You'll never be forgotten."
A spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: "We are aware of the death of a British national in South Africa and we are providing consular assistance."
The black mamba can reach up to 12ft in length and can travel at 12mph, making it one of the fastest snakes. Its poison is the second deadliest and acts by destroying nerves.
While there is an antidote to its venom, it must be applied immediately and is not widely available in the rural parts of Africa where the snake is most common.
The snakes, which are related to cobras, are called black mambas because when threatened, they display the black interior of their mouths.
They tend to live in hollow insect mounds, abandoned burrows and rock crevices.
Unlike most other snakes, they will strike repeatedly if cornered.

BAYOU LA BATRE, Ala. — A man angered after a dispute with his wife confessed to tossing his four young children off a bridge, authorities said Wednesday as they searched murky waters for the bodies.
Lam Luong, 37, who is charged with four counts of capital murder, told authorities Tuesday night that he drove to the Dauphin Island bridge and dropped the children from a span that reaches 80 feet in places, said Detective Scott Rivera.
Luong came to coastal Alabama from Vietnam in 1984 and worked in the commercial fishing industry as a shrimper, Police Chief John Joyner and a relative said. He had argued with his wife, Ngoc Phan, before taking the children, he said.
Missing and presumed dead were 4-month-old Danny Luong; 1-year-old Lindsey Luong; 2-year-old Hannah Luong; and 3-year-old Ryan Phan. Phan is not the man's biological child, but Luong raised him from infancy, authorities said.

Authorities were searching a 100-square-mile area and waters as deep as 55 feet. The search included divers and cadaver dogs in small boats, as well as three helicopters, Mobile County Sheriff Sam Cochran said.
Joyner said he feared the search of the Intracoastal Waterway below the bridge would be hampered by bad weather and choppy waters. The bridge extends from the mainland to Dauphin Island, which lies between the waterway and the Gulf of Mexico.
The couple lived with Phan's mother at Bayou La Batre, a fishing village with a large Southeast Asian community. Phan's brother-in-law Kam Phengsisomboun, who is from Thailand, said the couple moved back to the area from Hinesville, Ga., only a couple of weeks ago.
They argued Sunday night and again Monday, he said. Luong left the home with two of the children, then later came back for the other two, he said.
The family initially feared the children had been traded to support a drug habit, Phengsisomboun said. Luong had a crack cocaine habit and had spent an insurance settlement from an automobile accident rapidly, he said, and authorities confirmed Luong had a history of drug offenses.
Luong reported the children missing Monday, and told police that a woman who had the children failed to return them, authorities said. Phengsisomboun said he was later told by investigators that a witness had seen someone throw a bundle from the bridge and then saw three children in a nearby car.
Phan, 23, was in seclusion Wednesday morning at her mother's brick home, the front porch cluttered with children's shoes.

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese bride burned her new husband to death after he got into bed after a drunken argument without washing his feet, state media reported on Wednesday.
"Wang and his wife, Luo, were married on February 2. The couple, however, frequently fought over trivial things while still on their honeymoon," the official Xinhua news agency quoted a local newspaper as saying.
The couple, from the central province of Hubei, had another fight on the night of March 4, "and in frustration they together drank a bottle of liquor to ease their anger."
"At about 10 p.m., Luo watched her husband get into bed without cleaning or washing his feet. In a fit of anger and intoxication, she set fire to the sheet he was sleeping in," the report said.
"When he awoke, the two began fighting before a very drunk Wang collapsed. As fire engulfed the bedroom. Luo escaped to the living room, leaving her other half to burn," it added.
The woman has been arrested, Xinhua said.

HOUSTON -- A juvenile is being questioned about a shocking discovery a cleaning crew made when they prepared an airplane for a new set of passengers on Sunday, KPRC Local 2 reported.
Houston police said the crew found a fetus in a trash bin in one of the lavatories on the Continental Airlines jet.
Officials said flight 433 from New York's LaGuardia Airport arrived at George Bush Intercontinental Airport at about 4:45 p.m. Investigators said the fetus was discovered at about 5:15 p.m., nearly 15 minutes after passengers got off the aircraft.
The fetus was taken to the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office, where the cause of death will be determined. Detectives said it was possible that the fetus was stillborn or the mother may have suffered a miscarriage.
The FBI is involved in the investigation and working with Houston police to determine if a crime was committed. If detectives determine there was a crime, the agencies would decide jurisdiction over the case based on the approximate time the crime occurred.
Airline officials have not said if any passengers on board the flight reported being or appeared to be ill during the flight.

HAYDEN, Idaho (AP) -- A man who believed he bore the biblical "mark of the beast" used a circular saw to cut off one hand, then he cooked it in the microwave and called 911, authorities said.
The man, in his mid-20s, was calm when Kootenai County sheriff's deputies arrived Saturday. He was in protective custody in the mental health unit of Kootenai Medical Center.
"It had been somewhat cooked by the time the deputy arrived," sheriff's Capt. Ben Wolfinger said. "He put a tourniquet on his arm before, so he didn't bleed to death. That kind of mental illness is just sad."
It was not immediately clear whether the man has a history of mental illness. Hospital spokeswoman Lisa Johnson would not say whether an attempt was made to reattach the hand, citing patient confidentiality.
The Book of Revelation in the New Testament contains a passage in which an angel is quoted as saying: "If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, he, too, will drink the wine of God's fury."
The book of Matthew also contains the passage: "And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for you whole body to do into hell."
Wolfinger said he didn't know which hand was amputated.

SEOUL (Reuters) - The Seoul subway authority will install toilets in drivers' compartments after one of its engineers plunged to his death, apparently relieving himself from a train that was in motion.
The Seoul Metro plans to provide nearly 400 toilets from this month in drivers' cabs and increase the number of staff bathrooms at stations, a spokesman said on Thursday.
"A major concern is the smell," said Kim Kyung-mo.
The incident that prompted the move took place in December when a driver apparently suffering from diarrhoea leaned out of his compartment and fell on the tracks. He was hit by another train, local media reported.
The toilets consist of a collapsible seat that stands a few centimetres off the ground and a receptacle. The device can be stored in a compartment about the size of a thick briefcase.
"Seoul Metro believes this step will help our staff better focus on transporting our citizens safely," it said in a news release.

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Maila Nurmi, whose "Vampira" TV persona pioneered the spooky-yet-sexy Goth aesthetic, has died, coroner's officials said. She was 85.
Nurmi died Thursday afternoon at her Hollywood home, Los Angeles County coroner's Lt. Fred Corral said. The cause of death has not been determined, Corral said.
Nurmi created her Vampira character -- reminiscent of Charles Addams' spooky New Yorker cartoons -- to host horror movie broadcasts on KABC TV in Los Angeles in 1954.
With darkly mascaraed eyes and blood-red lipstick, Nurmi appeared each week in her revealing black dress and slinky fishnets to introduce such films as "Revenge of the Zombies" and "Devil Bat's Daughter."
"The Vampira Show" was canceled after about a year, but Nurmi remained a cult figure among B-movie buffs and is thought to have inspired the vampish Morticia Addams on "The Addams Family," which premiered about 10 years later.
But Nurmi's cultural resonance did not translate into long-term wealth. In 1989, she lost a $10 million lawsuit that contended Cassandra Peterson's late-night horror hostess Elvira pirated her character.
"There is no Elvira. There's only a pirated Vampira," she was quoted as saying in an Associated Press story at the time. "Cassandra Peterson slavishly copied my product and made a fortune. America has been duped."
Among Nurmi's scattered film appearances following her TV career was a cameo in Ed Wood's 1959 cult classic, "Plan 9 From Outer Space." Nurmi was played by Lisa Marie in "Ed Wood," Tim Burton's 1994 tribute to the B-movie director.
Nurmi was born Maila Elizabeth Syrjaniemi in Finland on December 11, 1922, and emigrated with her family to Ohio, said Heather Saenz, a friend.
In her late teens she went to New York, where she fell in with a clique of actors and artists and moved with them to Hollywood to seek a film career, Saenz said. She worked as a chorus girl and model before appearing as Vampira, Saenz said.
Nurmi supported herself late in her life by selling handmade jewelry, Saenz said.
Saenz and her husband, Bryan Moore, met Nurmi in 2005 when they recruited her to serve as grand marshal in a procession of hearses sponsored by Los Angeles' Petersen Automotive Museum.
Moore said he plans to transport Nurmi's casket in the same hearse she rode in at the parade -- a vintage 1951 vehicle that appeared in a scene of "Ed Wood."
"So that's going to be Vampira's last ride," he said.
Funeral arrangements are pending. Nurmi has no known surviving family, Moore said.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- The father of a 14-year-old who collapsed and died after a Providence Bruins hockey game says his son had a heart condition that probably led to his death.
Bill Coulter said his son, Patrick Coulter, had been diagnosed with ventricular tachycardia, which can produce episodes of overly rapid heartbeat.
He said he believes an autopsy will link his son's death to his medical condition. He called his son "a good kid who just had a bad heart."
Patrick Coulter of Coventry was attending a church revival night after the game Friday at the Dunkin Donuts Center, and won a raffle for a Nintendo Wii video game system.
His father said Patrick excitedly rushed to the ice to claim the prize.
He collapsed there, and medical workers were unable to revive him.

CENTERTON, Ark. -- The mayor of an Arkansas town resigned on Wednesday, claiming he was abducted and brainwashed by Satan worshippers nearly three decades ago.
Centerton Mayor Ken Williams said he has been living under an assumed name for nearly 30 years. He had been mayor since 2001.
Williams told authorities he was born Don LaRose and that in the mid-1970s, he was a preacher in Indiana. He said he was abducted and brainwashed into forgetting all about his life as Don LaRose.
It was a double life he had never acknowledged, Williams said, because he didn't even realize it existed until he had recently taken a truth-serum injection.
As Williams regained his memory, he said, he realized that he had a wife and two kids but that he had decided to leave and take on a new identity to protect them.
"I had no choice. The choice was to watch my family killed before my eyes or go with these people, and I chose instead to run," Williams said.
He wouldn't explain from who he was running, saying only that he had been brainwashed.
"I had multiple shock treatments," Williams said. "It took five years to get my memory back."
Williams said he took his current identity in 1980 when he moved to Centerton. His full name -- Bruce Kent Williams -- was taken from a man who died in a car crash back in 1958, he said.
"What happened in 1980 -- whether it was right or wrong -- I did it under the threat of my family and for my own survival," he said.
The information went public, Williams said, because he runs a Web site about Don LaRose and his disappearance. LaRose's former family found the Web site and started inquiring about its author. They found the site registered to a Ken Williams and went from there.
Williams said his current wife is standing by him and the two of them want to continue living in Centerton. He said he plans to continue living as Ken Williams.
Also, his resignation was signed with two names, he said.
According to police, Williams is under no investigation for any wrongdoing.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- An exploding mobile phone battery apparently killed a South Korean man in the first such known case in this gadget-obsessed country, police say.
The man, identified only by his family name Suh, was found dead at his workplace in a quarry Wednesday morning and his mobile phone battery was melted in his shirt pocket, a police official in Cheongwon, 135 kilometers (85 miles) south of Seoul, told The Associated Press.
"We presume that the cell phone battery exploded," the police official said on condition of anonymity.
The official said the phone was made by South Korea's LG Electronics, the world's fifth-biggest handset maker.
LG Electronics confirmed its product was involved in the accident but said such a battery explosion and death was virtually impossible.

AUGUSTA, Ga. - A 22-year-old woman fatally stabbed her two young children in a convenience store bathroom Thursday, police said.
A worker at Food Mart told police she saw Jeanette Michelle Hawes enter the restroom Thursday afternoon with the two children, a boy and girl, and then heard a scream, Richmond County Sheriff Ronnie Strength said.
The worker called 911, and when deputies arrived they forced the door open and found Hawes on the floor, holding a steak knife and covered in the children's blood, Strength said.
Jordon Hawes, 1, and Shakayla Hawes, 3, were pronounced dead upon arrival at the Medical College of Georgia Hospital. Both died of stab wounds to the chest, Chief Deputy Coroner Mark Bowen said.
Hawes was charged with two counts of murder and with possession of a knife during the commission of a crime. She was being held at the Richmond County jail.
Jail officials said they did not know whether Hawes had an attorney. A message seeking comment left late Thursday at the Richmond County Sheriff's Office wasn't immediately returned.
Store clerk Amanda Thomas said Hawes was a regular customer.
"Michelle went to the bathroom, and I heard the children crying," Thomas told WAGT-TV.
A moment later, Thomas said, "I heard a different sound that didn't sound right. I went back there to get the door opened and I couldn't get it opened and I didn't hear anything."

SANTA FE, N.M. -- A woman drowned when she apparently tried to retrieve a kitten from a 55-gallon rain barrel at her home southeast of Santa Fe.
Santa Fe County Sheriff Greg Solano said 48-year-old Deborah Hill was found by her husband Sunday afternoon after he returned home from running errands. Solano said the couple had dragged the plastic barrel inside their home because they wanted to thaw ice that had formed in the barrel.
The barrel, which Solano said was tied to a door so it wouldn't tip, was about one-third full of water when the kitten fell in. Solano said Hill apparently was standing on something to reach down for the kitten when she slid in.

Texas authorities find a body, a human ear in a pot and a hunk of flesh at the kitchen table

TYLER, Texas: A Texas man who told an emergency dispatcher he killed his girlfriend and cooked parts of her body later described his actions as being compelled by God, police said.
Christopher Lee McCuin, 25, made his initial court appearance Monday on a capital murder charge. He was arrested Saturday after police said they found an ear boiling in a pot on a stovetop and a hunk of flesh impaled on a fork on a plate at the kitchen table at his mother's house in the town of Tyler about 110 miles (177 kilometers) east of Dallas.
McCuin, wearing a jail-issue red jumpsuit, was not asked to enter a plea as he appeared before state District Judge Jack Skeen Jr., who continued McCuin's bond at $2 million (€1.36 million) and appointed an attorney to represent him.
Skeen also sealed the arrest and search warrant affidavits and issued a gag order in the case.
Authorities said it is unclear whether McCuin consumed any part of the woman's body. McCuin told investigators that God made him kill 21-year-old Jana Shearer, Smith County sheriff's Lt. Larry Wiginton said.
McCuin is also the suspect in the stabbing early Saturday of a man described as his estranged wife's boyfriend, authorities said.
Sheriff J.B. Smith said McCuin was known to authorities and had "a history of violence," including assaulting his estranged wife, his girlfriend and his sister.
McCuin has a criminal record that includes driving while intoxicated and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon charges. When he was arrested, McCuin had an outstanding felony retaliation warrant.
Officials believe the horrific chain of events began when Shearer was taken by McCuin from her home late Friday night and killed.
Smith said McCuin then drove to his estranged wife's home, where he stabbed William Veasley, 42. His condition was unavailable on Monday night.
McCuin was still at his estranged wife's home when deputies arrived, but he jumped into his car and escaped after a short chase, Smith said. "We did not know at the time that he had murdered anyone," the sheriff said. "We thought it was a disturbance or an assault."
McCuin wasn't seen again until Saturday morning, when he arrived at the home he shared with his mother and called her into the garage so she could "come see what he had done," Smith said.
His mother and her boyfriend saw the remains of Shearer, authorities said. McCuin's mother and her boyfriend fled the home and flagged down a police officer. McCuin dialed authorities after they left and told an emergency dispatcher he had killed Shearer and was boiling her body parts, Smith said.
Shearer appeared to have died of blunt trauma to the head, Smith said. She may have been kidnapped Friday night, when her mother saw her get into McCuin's truck.
Amy Gage, a friend and neighbor of Shearer, said the pair had only been dating a few months. "We really want to focus on her being a person who loved life, and not what happened to her," Gage said. "It was such a tragedy. We have to try to focus on the fact that Jana was a good person."

NORRISTOWN, Pa. - A man who mailed a bloody cow's head to his wife's lover has been sentenced to probation and community service. Jason Michael Fife "understands that in a civilized society a person cannot send a severed cow's head to anybody," said his defense lawyer, Henry Hilles.
Authorities in Lower Pottsgrove, northwest of Philadelphia, arrested Fife and charged him with stalking, terroristic threats, disorderly conduct and harassment after he allegedly sent threatening messages and pictures to the victim between May and September 2006.
The victim received a package containing a cow's head with a puncture wound in its skull on June 1, 2006.
Police said Fife, 31, got the cow's head from a butcher's shop, claiming he wanted the dried skull for decoration. Instead, he mailed the head frozen, so as not to alert parcel carriers to the contents, police said. The box became bloody after sitting on the victim's doorstep on a warm day.
Police were able to trace the package and threatening e-mails to Fife, court documents indicate.
"My client did step over the line here, but one can certainly understand his frustration, given that the victim was carrying on an affair with my client's wife," Hilles said.
Fife, of Hunker, southeast of Pittsburgh, was sentenced Friday to a program for first-time offenders in which he must complete two years of probation and 50 hours of community service. If he successfully finishes the program, his record will be cleared.
Fife and his wife, who have a young child, later reconciled, Hilles said.

NEW YORK - Two men wheeled a dead man through the streets in an office chair to a check-cashing store and tried to cash his Social Security check before being arrested on fraud charges, police said.
David J. Dalaia and James O'Hare pushed Virgilio Cintron's body from the Manhattan apartment that O'Hare and Cintron shared to Pay-O-Matic, about a block away, spokesman Paul Browne said witnesses told police.
"The witnesses saw the two pushing the chair with Cintron flopping from side to side and the two individuals propping him up and keeping him from flopping from side to side," Browne said.
The men left Cintron's body outside the store, went inside and tried to cash his $355 check, Browne said. The store's clerk, who knew Cintron, asked the men where he was, and O'Hare told the clerk they would go and get him, Browne said.
A police detective who was having lunch at a restaurant next to the check-cashing store noticed a crowd forming around Cintron's body, and "it's immediately apparent to him that Cintron is dead," Browne said.
The detective called uniformed New York Police Department officers at a nearby precinct. Emergency medical technicians arrived as O'Hare and Dalaia were preparing to wheel Cintron's body into the check-cashing store, Browne said. Police arrested Dalaia and O'Hare there, he said.
Cintron's body was taken to a hospital morgue. The medical examiner's office told police it appeared Cintron, 66, had died of natural causes within the previous 24 hours, Browne said.
"He was deceased in the apartment when he was removed by these two," Browne said.
Dalaia and O'Hare, both 65, were being held by police and faced check fraud charges, Browne said.
A call to a telephone number listed for Cintron at the apartment he shared with O'Hare went unanswered Tuesday evening. Police said they didn't have an address for Dalaia or attorney information for him or O'Hare.

HOUSTON, Texas -- A hunting dog apparently stepped on a loaded shotgun in the bed of his owner's pickup truck, firing a fatal blast into the man's thigh during a goose hunt, officials said.
Perry Alvin Price III died Saturday at a hospital from severe blood loss from his femoral artery shortly after the freak accident in southeast Texas.
Chambers County sheriff's investigators said Price, 46, was hunting on a lease near Stowell, about 60 miles east of Houston, when he shot down a goose.
Price then set the gun in the back of his truck and was about to open the tailgate to release his retriever when the shotgun fired, investigators said. The blast penetrated the truck's tailgate before hitting Price.
Paw prints from the dog, a chocolate Labrador retriever named Arthur, were found on the muddy shotgun, Sheriff Joe LaRive said. Daniel Groberg, Price's hunting partner, said he tried to stop the bleeding with clothing before driving him to seek help.
"It's the strangest case that I've seen," LaRive said. "We couldn't talk to Perry and Groberg was at the front of the truck when he heard the shotgun blast and didn't see what happened."
Price's sister, Patricia Payne, said her brother was always very careful while hunting.
"His dog was so excited," she said. "He was jumping all around, because he was about to get out and go get that goose.
"That gun had to be knocked around just right to fire. I believe the dog knocked the safety off and hit the trigger, too," she said.
Price, who taught math at Robert E. Lee High School in Baytown, was known for his love of hunting and dogs, friends and family members said.
Earlier this school year, Price developed an award for especially determined students that included a T-shirt naming them "Bird Dog of the Week," said Melanie Turner, a fellow teacher.
"His loss will be felt for quite some time," Turner said.
LaRive said hunters should be extra careful to make sure the safety is enacted on any gun that's not immediately being fired and that barrels should always be pointed away from people when guns are stored.
Price's survivors include his wife, Kelli, and two stepchildren, Payne said.

QUINCY, Mass. -- A 9-month-old Quincy girl drowned Saturday morning after she climbed into a bucket filled with bleach, the Norfolk County District Attorney’s office said.
The Boston Herald reported that the baby’s mother Lee Ann Auperlee, 20, was watching three children inside her Sumner Street apartment when her daughter Mya crawled out of her sight and into a bucket on the kitchen floor.
“I heard a boom,” said Angela Curran, who told the newspaper she was sleeping inside the apartment. “I came out and she was holding her baby. She said ‘What happened? What happened?’ We did CPR, mouth to mouth. She told me to call 911,” Curran told The Herald.
The baby was rushed to Quincy Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead.
Curran said Auperlee told her the baby was in the living room just before the drowning.
“She said Mya was tapping at the TV then she just crawled away toward the kitchen,” Curran said.
A preliminary autopsy was completed Sunday by the office of the chief medical examiner. No signs of trauma were found and drowning was determined to be the cause of death, the district attorney’s office said.
“The injuries as now known are consistent with the information given to police by those at the residence, including the mother,” said David Traub, a spokesman for District Attorney William Keating.
No charges have been filed by police. Toxicology and other tests are still pending.

TAMPA, Fla. -- A Gulf Coast man was taken into custody over the weekend for what police said was a plan to kill man and have sex with the body.
Police said Kevin Wade Daley, 50, of Citrus Springs was arrested and charged with criminal solicitation to commit first-degree murder in connection with the plot.
Citrus County sheriff's officials said they were tipped off by a friend of Daley who said he was alarmed when he heard of the suspect's plans.
Police searched Daley's home and confiscated his computer.
Officers said Daley discussed his intentions to have sex with a corpse during phone conversations.

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- A 66-year-old man was bashed to death while watering his lawn in an argument over Sydney's water restrictions, police and media said Thursday.
A 36-year-old man, whose name has not been released, will appear in a Sydney court Thursday charged with murder following the fatal altercation Wednesday, a police statement said.
The alleged killer approached the older man, whose name has not been made public, as he watered his lawn in southern Sydney with a hose at 5:30 p.m. (0630 GMT) Wednesday and an argument ensued, police said.
Media reported the argument was over Sydney's water restrictions. The victim reportedly sprayed the younger man with the hose. Police said the younger man responded by punching and pushing the older man to the ground and kicking him.
An off-duty police officer intervened and arrested the younger man, the statement said. The older man was taken by ambulance to the hospital but died soon after, police said.
The victim was complying with Sydney's water restrictions when he was killed. Watering with hand-held hoses is allowed on Wednesdays and Sundays before 10 a.m. and after 4 p.m.

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said two teens accused in the "bone-chilling" killing and beheading of Daniel Sorensen had carefully planned the attack for no other reason than the thrill of it.
Canton High School student Jean Pierre Orlewicz, 17, of Plymouth Township; and Alexander James Letkemann, 18, of Westland are being held without bond at the Wayne County Jail after being charged with two counts of murder and one count of mutilation of a corpse. A court date of Nov. 19 has been set.
Worthy said in a news conference Monday that neither money nor drugs appeared to be the motive when Orlewicz allegedly lured Sorensen to his grandfather's home on November 7 "for the purpose of killing him."
Orlewicz then allegedly attacked Sorensen from behind, cutting his throat with a kitchen knife. Sorensen was killed by "multiple stab wounds to the back." Orlewicz then allegedly beheaded Sorensen's body with a hacksaw and burned the body with a blowtorch in an attempt to conceal his fingerprints.
The body was wrapped into a tarp that had been laid out in the garage ahead of time. Orlewicz then placed the head into a Rubbermaid container.
According to testimony at the arraignment, Orlewicz had trouble lifting the body into his pickup truck. So he asked Letkemann to come over and help him.
The body was then brought to Hidden Ridge Drive in Northville Township and his head dumped into the Rouge River near the Detroit/Dearborn border.
Worthy said her office is looking at other "persons of interest" in the case.
She also praised the law enforcement officials from scattered communities who pooled their resources to make the arrests in the case. She expressed her shock at the nature of the crime.
"Even though we have seen it all, or think we've seen it all, still a crime like this surprises us all," Worthy said during the news conference Monday. "It makes us think and ask a lot of questions about our society."

Three people have been killed and more than 30 injured in a stampede at a supermarket sale in China.
The stampede happened at a branch of the French chain Carrefour, in the city of Chongqing, state media said.
The shop was offering large discounts on cooking oil. A crowd that had been waiting hours for the store to open then burst through the doors.
Carrefour entered the Chinese market in 1995 and has since opened more than 100 supermarkets.
Prices soar
Queues at the store reportedly began at 0400 local time (2000 GMT Friday).
State media Xinhua said bargain-hunters were crushed underfoot in a sale to mark the 10th anniversary of the store's opening in the south-western city.
Some of those trying to get in reportedly slipped and were trampled.
At least seven of the injured are in a serious condition, Xinhua said.
An investigation has been launched by local authorities.
Cooking oil prices have soared by more than a third in the past year.
In Chongqing, Carrefour was reportedly offering 20% off rapeseed oil.
Carrefour, which is the world's second-biggest retailer, has been keen to expand in China as it booms and recently opened its 101st hypermarket in the country.

MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. -- A man who allegedly was fleeing police was attacked and killed by an alligator in a pond, Local 10 reported.
Miccosukee police, assisted by Sweetwater canine units, responded to a call on the Miccosukee Indian Reservation about vehicles being broken into.
Local 10's Todd Tongen said police captured one man, but another fled on foot and dove into a retention pond. Signs warned of the danger of live alligators in the pond behind the casino and hotel.
Eyewitnesses said they were shouting to the man to swim back to shore. When the man finally spotted the alligator, eyewitnesses said he screamed but then disappeared under the water.
The alligator and another smaller one were later trapped and brought to All American Gator in Pembroke Park.
Local 10 learned the larger alligator was well known on the reservation and employees had nicknamed it Poncho.
If an alligator either digests or kills a person it's a state law through Florida Fish and Wildlife that it be destroyed, so the alligator will be put in an incinerator or be buried, Tongen reported.
All American Gator Owner Brian Wood said he's been told to keep the alligator in storage until the Miami-Dade medical examiner can inspect the reptile.
"Some gators have a nasty disposition and he was a nasty gator. He seemed to have no fear of people which indicates that he was fed," said Wood.
The body was recovered Friday by divers 50 feet below at the bottom of the lake.
Local 10 learned the man was bitten on the head several times. Miccosukee police issued a no comment statement when Local 10 inquired about the victim's identity.

SEOUL (Reuters) - As South Korea's presidential election draws near, corpses are on the move.
Most South Koreans believe that the location of a family's ancestral grave can determine their fortunes and politicians take this to heart, with several moving graves ahead of elections to places that fortune tellers say will help them get votes.
"Every individual's destiny is influenced by where that persons ancestors are buried," said Park Min-chan, an expert in "poongsoo", which is a belief that placing objects in a harmonious way with their surroundings will help tap into the mystical power of nature.
Park was called in a few months ago by one of the three top-ranked candidates running for the December 19 election to move the graves of nine ancestors in order to secure a good outcome in the vote.
"I selected a site on a mountain. The mountain resembles a person reading a book," Park said in an interview with Reuters this week.
Another candidate for the vote moved family plots in 2005, local media reported, while presidential front-runner Lee Myung-bak's ancestors are deemed to be at rest in an already favourable spot.
More graves are almost certain to be moved ahead of the April vote for seats in parliament.
Poongsoo is similar to the Chinese practise of feng shui and both mean "a reading of wind and water". Korean followers of poongsoo, however, place more emphasis on the arrangement of grave sites than followers of feng shui, Park said.
Local media reported that former President Kim Dae-jung, who failed twice to win an open election for the presidency called in a poongsoo expert and moved his ancestral graves. Two years later he won the presidential election.
Most Koreans call in a poongsoo expert to locate family plots and afterwards, they typically do not move them.
But since poongsoo was widely used by Korea's royal families to make sure their power passed through the generations, many South Koreans are willing to accept political leadership hopefuls moving graves to better their fortunes at the polls, Park said.
Ancestor worship is strong in the country, even among many of those who follow Christianity
According to South Korea's culture ministry, in 2005 some 53.1 percent of South Koreans said they had a religious affiliation. Among the overall population, 22.8 percent are Buddhist, 18.3 percent are Protestant, 10.0 are Roman Catholic, and less than 1 percent belong to a fringe sect.
Park has given advice to many South Korean politicians and could even lend a hand to U.S. presidential candidates and advise them where their relatives should be buried if they want to win more votes.
"A propitious site for a grave would be the centre of a form, such as a mountain shaped like an object. Bodies buried on such sites with forms can bring huge luck to the descendants," Park said.

DETROIT -- The Wayne County Sheriff’s Department is investigating the discovery of a decapitated man’s body inside a manhole on Monday morning.
The Wayne County Water Department told Local 4 they found the headless body in a manhole in an alley near Kercheval and Montclair streets on Detroit’s eastside.
The water department said it was called to the area to investigate reports of backed up sewage.
Police said the body has been taken to the Wayne County Medical examiner’s office.
However, police said it will be difficult to ID the body because the head, hands and feet have been cut off.
Police said they were able to determine it was a white man, who was wearing only underwear.
A full-scale investigation has been launched.
Police have not released any other details at this time.
Stay with Local 4 News and ClickOnDetroit.com for further updates on this developing story.

MESA, Ariz. - A woman who stabbed her tied-up lover so she could drink his blood has been sentenced to 10 years in prison. Tiffany Sutton told Maricopa County Superior Court Judge David Udall that she was sorry for the incident and said she never meant to hurt anyone, but received the stiff sentence anyway after he called the crime especially heinous.

Sutton, 24, pleaded guilty to aggravated assault in August. She was arrested by Tempe police in February after she repeatedly stabbed her lover during an alcohol- and drug-fueled sexual tryst.
According to police reports, the victim, 46-year-old Robert McDaniel, agreed to be tied up during sex but became alarmed and asked to be untied when Sutton pulled out a knife and said she liked to drink blood. Sutton then attacked him, slicing his leg, puncturing his arm, shoulder and back and cutting his neck and stomach. When he escaped, she chased him with a pickax.
Sutton's attorney, Elizabeth Houck, told the judge at Tuesday's hearing that she suffers from a personality disorder that causes instability and has taken responsibility for her actions, according to the East Valley Tribune.
Houck wrote in a sentencing memo that prison records show Sutton thought she was a vampire for the first several weeks she was in jail.

MONARCH, S.C. -- Deputies said a man found a dead baby in a garbage can that was in a car wash parking lot on Tuesday night.
Bruce Littlejohn told deputies he was looking through the garbage bin for aluminum cans for recycling when he made the gruesome discovery.
“I was reaching down in there and I picked a pocketbook up,” said Littlejohn. “It looked like a baby doll.”
Littlejohn said the scene bothered him so much that it made him sick to his stomach.
Deputies roped off the Classic Car Wash parking lot with crime scene tape and began searching for clues as to who left the baby in the garbage can.
“It shocks your consciousness that anyone would discard a human life in this manner and not give it proper respect that it’s due,” said Union County Sheriff Howard Wells. “Someone is responsible.”
Deputies said they have not been able to determine if the baby is a boy or girl because of the condition of the body. They said an autopsy should help answer many of their questions, including whether or not the baby was born alive.
Investigators have asked area hospitals to be on the lookout for women asking for treatment who have just given birth.
Deputies asked anyone with information on this case to call the Union County Sheriff’s Office immediately.

HAYWARD, Calif. -- The discovery of body parts spread across Highway 880 early Thursday ground the southbound commute on the busy corridor in San Francisco's East Bay to a halt for more than two hours, backing up traffic for miles.
The California Highway Patrol originally reported that an animal had been hit and dismembered on the freeway between West A Street and West Winton Avenue in Hayward in the predawn hours, but closer examination when the sun came up around 7 a.m. revealed that the body parts were human. It was believed that the body may have been hit by several vehicles.
"We have an individual who we believe was a pedestrian on the freeway sometime early this morning," said CHP Officer Oscar Johnson. "We believe he was struck, but we are not ruling out a criminal investigation at this point."
CHP officers had the gruesome task of spreading out across the freeway to mark the body parts for the coroner. A tennis shoe surrendered by a spray-painted circle was a grim reminder of the accident's toll.
"The victim was possibly a Hispanic or African-American male in his 50s," Johnson said. "We believe he may have been a homeless individual or a transient."
The southbound lanes were immediately closed once the remains were identified, forcing thousands of cars to exit onto city streets backing up traffic for miles. The CHP reopened all four lanes of the freeway by 9:45 a.m., relieving the traffic bottleneck while continuing their roadside investigation.

DAVIE, Fla. -- Authorities say two people standing and arguing on a highway ramp in Davie were fatally struck by a car.
Florida Highway Patrol spokesman Sgt. Mark Wysocky says the man and woman were hit on the State Road 7 northbound ramp to Interstate 595.
FHP says 20-year-old Ramon Perez, of Port St. Lucie, and 36-year-old Marie Mary, of Lauderdale Lakes, got out of their car and fell to the ground in a violent struggle.
A northbound 2007 Toyota entering the highway from State Road 7 struck the pair.
Both victims died at the scene.
The driver of the Toyota, 20-year-old Amanda Dumont, of Plantation, wasn't injured.
It's not clear what the two were fighting about.

LONDON (Reuters) - A surge in naked sleepwalking among guests has led one of Britain's largest budget hotel groups to re-train staff to handle late-night nudity.
Travelodge, which runs more than 300 business hotels in Britain, says sleepwalking rose seven-fold in the past year, and 95 percent of the somnambulants are scantily clad men.
"We have seen an increased number of cases over the years so it is important that our staff know how to help sleepwalking when it arises," Leigh McCarron, the chain's sleep director, said in a statement.
One tip in the company's newly released "sleepwalkers guide" tells staff to keep towels handy at the front desk in case a customer's dignity needs preserving.
The company said naked wanderers often ask receptionists such questions as "Where's the bathroom?," "Do you have a newspaper?" or "Can I check out, I'm late for work?"
Studies have found that sleepwalking can be brought on by stress, alcohol, eating cheese or consuming too much caffeine. It generally takes effect an hour or two after going to bed, when people are first slipping into a deep sleep.
Asked Thursday why she thought 95 percent of its sleepwalkers were naked men, a Travelodge spokeswoman said: "We have more men staying with us than women, so that could be a factor."

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama said Wednesday he wanted to consider more 'tranquil' methods of execution.
Japan generally executes several convicts a year, always by hanging.
"I am fully aware that 'death by hanging' is written in the criminal code," Hatoyama said after a parliamentary committee meeting, Kyodo news agency said.
"A square part of the floor opens up and they fall with a thud," he said. "I honestly wonder if there isn't a more tranquil way of doing this," Kyodo quoted him as adding.
It was not clear what other methods he was considering.
It was not clear what other methods he was considering.
Lethal injection has hit problems in the United States, where the Supreme Court is set to rule on whether administering the commonly used three-chemical cocktail violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
All but one of the 38 U.S. states with the death penalty and the federal government use lethal injection, which has come under scrutiny after botched executions in California and Florida in which the condemned took over 30 minutes to die.
Electrocution was introduced in New York in 1888 as a more humane method of execution than hanging, but there have been instances of inmates catching fire, multiple jolts being needed to kill and bones being broken by convulsing limbs.
Hatoyama came under fire in September for suggesting those sentenced to death should be executed automatically, without having the penalty approved by the justice minister as is current practice.
He said Wednesday he would like to hear the opinions of those opposed to the death penalty. Opinion polls show most Japanese back capital punishment.

BELGRADE, Serbia (Reuters) -- A 23-year old Serb was found dead and half-eaten in the bear cage of Belgrade Zoo at the weekend during the annual beer festival.

The man was found naked, with his clothes lying intact inside the cage. Two adult bears, Masha and Misha, had dragged the body to their feeding corner and reacted angrily when keepers tried to recover it.

"There's a good chance he was drunk or drugged. Only an idiot would jump into the bear cage," zoo director Vuk Bojovic told Reuters.

Local media reported that police found several mobile phones inside the cage, as well as bricks, stones and beer cans.

A woman in Australia has been killed by her pet camel after the animal may have tried to have sex with her.

The woman was found dead at the family's sheep and cattle ranch near the town of Mitchell in Queensland.

The woman had been given the camel as a 60th birthday present earlier this year because of her love of exotic pets.

The camel was just 10 months old but already weighed 152kg (336lbs) and had come close to suffocating the family's pet goat on a number of occasions.

It knocked her to the ground, lay on top of her and displayed what the police delicately described as possible mating behaviour.

"I'd say it's probably been playing, or it may be even a sexual sort of thing," the Associated Press news agency quoted Queensland police Detective Senior Constable Craig Gregory as saying.

Young camels are not normally aggressive but can become more threatening if treated and raised as pets.

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German left his dead mother seated in her favorite armchair at their shared home for two years because he could not face organizing a funeral, police in the southern town of Fuerstenfeldbruck said Friday.

The woman died of natural causes in the chair in July 2005 at the age of 92, a police spokesman said. A doctor called to the scene at the time gave the son a death certificate but he did not register the death.

Neighbors recently alerted police about the corpse. The man told police he could not bear to move his mother and said he never again entered the room where she was seated. Police have started an investigation for violating German burial law.

CARACAS (Reuters) - A Caracas family was forced to send a murdered son to the morgue in a taxi after waiting five hours for police who never arrived, Venezuelan media reported Wednesday.

Heavy rains threatened to wash away Kelvin Jose Pinango's body which was left near a creek in the poor 23 de Enero neighborhood after the 20-year-old was killed Monday in what appeared to be an attempt to steal his motorcycle, the newspaper El Universal reported.

"We dragged the body to the edge (of the creek) and after five hours we hired a taxi," one family member told the paper, asking not to be identified.

Caracas, one of the most dangerous cities in Latin America, reports dozens of murders each week.

IOSCO TOWNSHIP, Mich. -- Two people in Livingston County were killed in separate attacks by a pack of dogs Thursday.

The body of Edward Gierlach, 91, was discovered by his son in the driveway of his property in Iosco Township, about 55 miles northwest of Detroit, police said in a statement.

Gierlach lives in a nursing home in Fowlerville. Family told Local 4, he often visited the property on nice days.

The body of Sherry Harper, 56, was found alongside a road near the house, troopers said.

"She always walked, jogged. She just walked around you know its peaceful quiet. We didn't know they had pit bulls over there," said family friend Georgeann Hammond.

Investigators located the dogs believed to have attacked the victims at an area residence, where they were seized by animal control officers, state police said.

"Its hard to determine because once we collect them, some of them are related so they appear similar. It's hard to determine which dog did the attacks," said Det. Sean Furlong.

The dogs will be tested and animal control will decide how many of them should be euthanized.

COLUMBIANA COUNTY, Ohio -- Police said a local man, who was diagnosed as legally blind, died after crashing his all-terrain vehicle in Columbiana County.

The crash happened on Sunday evening just south of Lisbon on Steubenville Pike Road.

Columbiana County sheriff’s Deputies told NEWS9 that Charles Hoyle, 34, of Boardman was hanging out with friends when he made the decision that ended his life.

Chief Deputy Allen Haueter said Hoyle was with two friends behind a home on Steubenville Pike when he asked one of his friends if he could ride his ATV.

But Haueter said Hoyle didn’t have a license to drive, and that he was considered legally blind.

Haueter told NEWS9 the men helped Hoyle onto the ATV anyways and warned him to go slow, but Hoyle didn't listen.

“When the men put Mr. Hoyle on there, he took off, full acceleration,” said Haueter. “And they were screaming at him to hold back and stop, and they couldn't catch up to him. Then he struck a smaller tree and he hit a larger one head-on.”

Deputies said Hoyle was thrown from the ATV, and died of a head injury on scene.

Haueter also said Hoyle's friends admitted they all had been drinking prior to the accident.

“They advised they'd been drinking but they weren't at a point of no return,” said Haueter. "It shouldn't have happened. It's a tragic accident."

While Hoyle was considered legally blind, he did at one point have a driver’s license, but Haueter said that license expired in 2000.

ROSEVILLE, Mich. -- A young girl died during a hide-and-seek game, police said.

Allison Ireland, 10, of Roseville, was playing hide and seek Saturday with her cousins when she got tangled in a belt inside of the closet of her home.

Family members said she possibly hung herself as she jumped off a box. Her 3-year-old cousin discovered her.

"We heard him saying, 'Wake up, wake up, Ally. I want to play. I'm here, wake up, Ally.' And he came out and said, 'she won't wake up,'" said Heather Eisler.

"It is a shock. It is a shock. It's the worst thing that could happen. My mom could not even hold her head up," sister Alyssa Eisler said. "It's the worst thing that has ever happened in my life."

The father of an 18-year-old Redwood City man found his son dead after he fell into a waist-high vat of sulfuric acid early Sunday morning in a bizarre industrial accident, police said.

When Fernando Jimenez Gonzalez failed to come home after his shift at Coastal Circuits, his father went looking for him at the Redwood City manufacturing plant, said Sgt. Steve Dowden of Redwood City police. He found his body shortly before 2 a.m.

The teen was one of two employees working overnight at the circuit board manufacturing company.

Laura Boozer, a Coastal Circuits vice-president, declined to say why Gonzalez was at work at such a late hour. She also declined to comment on why police believe the young man apparently wasn't wearing any safety gear for his face, as is recommended for those working in close contact with hazardous chemicals.

"This has been a devastating experience for all of those involved, including the family - we're trying to find out more conclusively what happened so we can share it with the media," Boozer said.

Police believe Gonzalez passed out from chemical fumes as hesubmerged circuit boards into one of the plant's three acid-copper-plating tanks, Dowden said.

The other employee at the facility, located in a Redwood City industrial area, was uninjured. It's unclear why that worker didn't call emergency crews.

Signs with emergency numbers were posted on a chain-link fence surrounding the facility Sunday, but they included the outdated phone number of a man who retired several years ago. The plant closed after Gonzalez's death.

Occupational Safety and Health Administration officials are investigating the incident, classified as an industrial accident, Dowden said.

The company employs 75 people to produce circuit boards in as little as 24 hours.

BERLIN (Reuters) - A thief in Germany was charred beyond recognition by a 10,000 volt electric shock when he tried to steal a live copper cable, authorities said Monday.

Police in the western city of Duisburg found the 32-year-old man's blackened remains by a set of cable cutters and pile of non-live cables he had already stolen.

Only because one of his hands survived incineration were officers able to identify the man as German of Kazakh origin.

"His fingerprints were already logged on police files," a local police spokesman said. "The force of the shock was so great that the hand was severed from his body."

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Charges have been dropped against a Texas woman who was accused of giving her husband a sherry enema that killed him, the prosecutor in the case said on Wednesday.

Tammy Jean Warner had been scheduled to face trial for negligent homicide in the May 2004 death of Michael Warner, 58, but Brazoria County District Attorney Jeri Yenne said the charges were dismissed a month ago for lack of evidence.

The dead man had had "a severe alcohol issue" and it was not clear his wife had committed a crime, Yenne said in a telephone interview.

"Let's say I have lung cancer and I continue to smoke. If you provide cigarettes to me, is that negligent homicide?" Yenne said.

"I really wrestled with the consent issue and negligence issue. I didn't think it rose to the level of negligent homicide."

At the time of Warner's indictment in 2005, police told the Houston Chronicle the woman had given her husband two large bottles of sherry, which raised his blood alcohol level to 0.47 percent, or nearly six times the level considered legally drunk in Texas.

Warner admitted administering the enema but denied she caused the death of her husband, who was a machine-shop operator. The incident occurred at their home in Lake Jackson, near Houston.

She told the newspaper her husband was addicted to enemas and often used alcohol in that manner. Police said Warner had a throat ailment that left him unable to drink the sherry.

Yenne said a charge that Warner had burned her husband's will a month before his death was also dropped.

MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- An aspiring horror novelist was arrested after police discovered his girlfriend's torso in his closet, a leg in the refrigerator and bones in a cereal box, the city prosecutor's spokesman said Thursday.

Nearby they found the draft of a novel titled "Cannibalistic Instincts," said the official, who spoke on customary condition of anonymity.

Jose Luis Calva told police he had boiled some of his girlfriend's flesh but that he hadn't eaten it, the spokesman said.

The official also confirmed other details released by the prosecutor's office Wednesday night: that body parts were spread throughout the apartment, and that Calva is being investigated in the deaths of three women whose mutilated bodies had been found in and around the capital.

The prosecutor's office said Calva tried to escape when officers entered his apartment, but was struck by a car and hasn't recovered enough to give a formal statement to police.

Police had come to Calva's apartment Monday to investigate the disappearance of his girlfriend, Alejandra Galeana, a 30-year-old pharmacy clerk and single mother, according to the prosecutor's office.

The office said that parts of her dismembered body was discovered in a closet, the refrigerator and inside a cereal box.

Calva also is being investigated in the mutilation killings of an unidentified prostitute in April and an ex-girlfriend whose body was found in 2004, the prosecutor's office said.

APOLLO, Pa. -- An elderly woman was killed by the tour bus she was riding in Westmoreland County on Monday night.

Police said 75-year-old Betty A. Sherman, of Cheswick, got off of a tour bus on Route 66 North in Apollo around 7:10 p.m. Witnesses said as the bus was pulling away, Sherman tripped and fell into the path of the bus. She was struck and pinned by the right front wheel.

Sherman was returning from a casino in Wheeling, W.Va. The bus is owned by Myers Bus Lines of Export. Authorities did not immediately identify the driver.

PITTSBURGH -- Rescue crews freed a woman trapped under a sport utility vehicle in Brookline late Monday morning.

Police said the woman, whose name has not been released, feared her husband was cheating on her. They said she went to spy on him by crawling under an SUV outside her husband’s alleged girlfriend’s house in the 1300 block of Oakridge Street.

She apparently fell asleep under the vehicle and became trapped after someone let the air out of the tires.

Ray Ludchak was working on the house next door when he heard the woman’s cries for help. "I peered down to see a body beneath a vehicle," said Ludchak.

The couple has been married for 26 years. The woman was taken into custody to undergo a mental health evaluation.

Police are trying to determine who let the air out of the tires. So far, no charges have been filed.

MIAMI -- A judge sentenced a man to death Monday, nearly nine years after he left a 5-year-old girl to be eaten alive by alligators in the Everglades and tried to kill her mother.

Harrel Franklin Braddy, 58, attacked Shandelle Maycock and daughter Quatisha after he was released early from prison in another case for good behavior. He was convicted in July of first-degree murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, attempted escape and other charges.

Judge Leonard E. Glick also sentenced Braddy to three consecutive life terms on the kidnapping and burglary with an assault charges. He also got 30 years in prison on the attempted murder of Shandelle, 15 years on child neglect causing great bodily harm and five years on attempted escape.

Prosecutors said Braddy tossed Maycock in the trunk of his car in 1998 and drove her to a remote sugarcane field, choked her to unconsciousness and left her to die. She never saw her child again.

Braddy drove the girl to a section of Interstate 75 in the Everglades known as Alligator Alley and dropped her in the water beside the road, prosecutors said. She was alive when alligators bit her on the head and stomach, a medical examiner said.

Authorities found the girl's body two days later, her left arm missing and her skull crushed, prosecutors said. Maycock woke up bleeding and disoriented, but managed to flag down help.

Braddy's attorney, G.P. Della Fera, said Braddy knew Maycock from his involvement in church outreach programs.

The case took so long because Braddy repeatedly fired his lawyers and represented himself in court sometimes.

Maycock sobbed during the initial sentencing as she told jurors how her life without her only child would never be the same. The little girl she nicknamed Candy had just started kindergarten and loved writing her name and singing along with the church choir.

"Due to his own horrific actions, Harrel Braddy has caused a lot of pain to a lot of people, including the people who loved him and cared for him," Rifkin said in an e-mail. "The state is grateful that Quatisha's small voice was finally heard, and that the defendant received the sentence he so rightfully earned."

Braddy had been out of prison for a little over a year before the 1998 kidnapping. He was released early after serving 13 years of a 30-year sentence for several charges including attempted murder.

He wore an electric shock device and knee brace, making it difficult for him to bend his knee during the sentencing. The courtroom was filled with extra police officers, all measures taken after Braddy escaped from the courthouse in 1984 when he choked a Miami-Dade County corrections officer.

During two other escapes that year, Braddy kidnapped and robbed an assistant pastor and an elderly couple. At one point Braddy was on the run for more than a month before authorities found him in Georgia.

After he was arrested for kidnapping the Maycocks, he tried to escape from the interrogation room by bending an air conditioning grate.

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- A group of children playing in an Australian park Wednesday opened a suitcase they found floating in a pond and discovered the body of a youngster inside, police said.

Police divers searched the pond in the Sydney suburb of Rosemeadow and sought potential witnesses in a hunt for clues to who the boy was and how he died.

Detective Chief Inspector Gary Clark said identifying the body was difficult because it had been in the water for some time, but officials believed it was a boy between 5 and 10 years old. A forensic examination of the body would start on Thursday.

The Australian Associated Press news agency reported that one boy said he and his friends were riding scooters when they heard about something in the water.

Police said about 10 children between 10 and 12 years old spotted the black suitcase floating in the pond, Clark said. They fished it out, opened it and police were called.

The park is surrounded by houses and is a spot for picnics, walking and cycling.

Man Arrested After Decomposed Bodies Found In Barrels

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Two decomposed bodies sealed in steel barrels were found late Friday on the property of a rural Monroe County man who faces a preliminary murder charge, police said.

Jerry E. Pelfree (pictured) was being held Saturday evening in Monroe County Jail without bond.

Medical examinations will be conducted Monday morning to help make a positive identification on the bodies. Bloomington police Capt. Joe Qualters said they believe one may be a man who was reported missing in July.

Monroe County Sheriff's Capt. Kenny Barnes said the other may be a missing Owen County man. They declined to name the missing men until their identities are confirmed.

Brown County Sheriff Buck Stogsdill said he received a phone call Wednesday afternoon from an acquaintance who claimed to have information about two killings and the location of the bodies. Stogsdill said the unnamed informant told him he may have witnessed one of the killings "sometime last spring."

"He basically told us the whole story -- where it occurred, where the bodies were at, and that they were in barrels, which proved to be true," Stogsdill said. "He kind of relayed like that it had been laid upon him by God to reveal this."

Bloomington police's Critical Incident Response Team went to the site and served a warrant Friday afternoon. They found the steel-drum barrels about 100 yards from Pelfree's home.

"The first phone call I got was that they had arrived on the property and that they had found the aforementioned barrels that had been described by the informant," Qualters said.

Barnes said the drums were sealed with plastic and other materials and covered with debris. Investigators couldn't immediately determine how the people died because of their condition.

"It would have been a pretty grisly find, I would imagine," said Gerald Messell, who lives nearby. "I wouldn't have wanted to have found it. He (Pelfree) seemed normal to me. (He would go) in and out and wave."

"I was shocked. I know the guy they have arrested," said neighbor Shannon Goldman. "He's even stopped here a couple of times."

Pelfree is expected to appear Monday morning in Monroe Circuit Court for a probable cause hearing.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Oscar the cat seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die, by curling up next to them during their final hours. His accuracy, observed in 25 cases, has led the staff to call family members once he has chosen someone. It usually means they have less than four hours to live.

"He doesn't make too many mistakes. He seems to understand when patients are about to die," said Dr. David Dosa in an interview. He describes the phenomenon in a poignant essay in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

"Many family members take some solace from it. They appreciate the companionship that the cat provides for their dying loved one," said Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor of medicine at Brown University.

The 2-year-old feline was adopted as a kitten and grew up in a third-floor dementia unit at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. The facility treats people with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease and other illnesses.

After about six months, the staff noticed Oscar would make his own rounds, just like the doctors and nurses. He'd sniff and observe patients, then sit beside people who would wind up dying in a few hours.

Dosa said Oscar seems to take his work seriously and is generally aloof. "This is not a cat that's friendly to people," he said.

Oscar is better at predicting death than the people who work there, said Dr. Joan Teno of Brown University, who treats patients at the nursing home and is an expert on care for the terminally ill

She was convinced of Oscar's talent when he made his 13th correct call. While observing one patient, Teno said she noticed the woman wasn't eating, was breathing with difficulty and that her legs had a bluish tinge, signs that often mean death is near.

Oscar wouldn't stay inside the room though, so Teno thought his streak was broken. Instead, it turned out the doctor's prediction was roughly 10 hours too early. Sure enough, during the patient's final two hours, nurses told Teno that Oscar joined the woman at her bedside.

Doctors say most of the people who get a visit from the sweet-faced, gray-and-white cat are so ill they probably don't know he's there, so patients aren't aware he's a harbinger of death. Most families are grateful for the advanced warning, although one wanted Oscar out of the room while a family member died. When Oscar is put outside, he paces and meows his displeasure.

No one's certain if Oscar's behavior is scientifically significant or points to a cause. Teno wonders if the cat notices telltale scents or reads something into the behavior of the nurses who raised him.

Nicholas Dodman, who directs an animal behavioral clinic at the Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine and has read Dosa's article, said the only way to know is to carefully document how Oscar divides his time between the living and dying.

If Oscar really is a furry grim reaper, it's also possible his behavior could be driven by self-centered pleasures like a heated blanket placed on a dying person, Dodman said.

Nursing home staffers aren't concerned with explaining Oscar, so long as he gives families a better chance at saying goodbye to the dying.

Oscar recently received a wall plaque publicly commending his "compassionate hospice care."

Lightning struck a diver's oxygen tank as he surfaced off Florida's Atlantic coast, killing him, authorities said.

The 36-year-old man was diving with three others Sunday off a boat near Deerfield Beach, about 40 miles north of Miami. He had surfaced about 30 feet from the boat when lightning struck his tank, said Deerfield Beach Fire Chief Gary Fernaays.

The other divers struggled to get the man back into the boat and radioed for help, Fernaays said. The victim, whose name was not immediately released, was rushed to the beach, where a rescue crew gave him CPR. He was later pronounced dead at North Broward Medical Center in Pompano Beach.

The Broward County Medical Examiner's Office planned an autopsy to determine if the man died by electrocution or drowned.

TORONTO (Reuters) - A Canadian contractor is looking for donations to fund a funeral after finding a mummified baby in the wall of a Toronto home.

Home renovator Bob Kinghorn found the tiny body, wrapped in an 80-year-old newspaper, as he was running a wire through the three-storey Kintyre Ave. home, in one of Toronto's older neighbourhoods.

"I opened it up, looked close and didn't believe it. But then I looked closer and I saw the fingers and the little toes. It was all wrapped up in the fetal position," he said.

"I'm going to take donations, and I want to try to bury the baby. I want to name him Baby Kintyre."

Police said they were examining the tiny corpse for "any abnormalities or evidence of trauma", although it was not yet clear how old the baby was, or how long the package had been tucked away in a cavity between floors in the house.

"This is being treated as a suspicious death at this time," said police spokeswoman Wendy Drummond.

Lame: Jonathan Powell, 17, was convicted in April of sexually assaulting a college student in Iowa City, Iowa, after his DNA was found in several places on her body. Powell explained the DNA by claiming that he had merely bumped into the woman accidentally while jogging and had become so "entangled" with her that he was unable to free himself for about "45 minutes." [Des Moines Register, 5-1-07]

In April, Donald Duncan Jr., 34, was convicted of invasion of privacy in Carlisle, Pa., after his wife discovered a hidden-camera video of two girls who were disrobing in a bedroom in the couple's house. Duncan said he had set up the camera because he suspected there were ghosts in the house and wanted proof. [Patriot-News (Harrisburg), 4-12-07]

Lawyer Charles Curbo filed a motion in Memphis, Tenn., in June, claiming that his client, Tony Wolfe, who was convicted of murder, failed to get a fair trial due to the ineffectiveness of Wolfe's lawyer (i.e., Curbo) because the lawyer was often too sleepy to do a good job. However, the prosecutor pointed out that part of Curbo's strategy had been to "wear down" witnesses "by extensive cross-examination" and that it was no wonder that he was exhausted. [Commercial Appeal (Memphis), 6-3-07]

Tiffany Weaver pleaded guilty in April to having stolen a lawyer's official ID and impersonating the woman in order to gain access to the jail in Baltimore so that she could visit her incarcerated boyfriend, but she denied, through her lawyer, that she and the boyfriend had had sex while they were together. "There was never any sexual intercourse," said attorney Ivan Bates. "There was no thrusting whatsoever." [Washington Examiner, 4-26-07]

Unclear on the Concept: After the owner of a wrought-iron business in Brussels, Belgium, abruptly turned away a 53-year-old Nigerian native who had applied for a job, the local labor office declared the owner racist. However, the man said he was just trying to protect the Nigerian from the owner's dog. "My dog is racist," he said. "Not me." [Reuters, 6-9-07]

Police in Kyoto, Japan, said in March that a man had been detained after firing a dozen rounds from his house toward a new, 11-story condominium building next door. The man explained that he was angry that the building was blocking the sunlight he had previously enjoyed. [Reuters, 3-22-07]

Pablo Castro, 26, was sent to the hospital twice in Decatur, Ala., on June 24, once after being stabbed in an argument and, after his release later that day, being stabbed again while arguing with a different person. [Decatur Daily, 6-26-07]

Tony Hicks was hospitalized in Knoxville, Tenn., for separate wounds on July 1, 2 and 3; he was hit by a car one night, then released from the hospital the next day, but was back in after an intruder attacked him in his home, and after his release the next day, he was back after police shot him in connection with a robbery. [WBIR-TV (Knoxville)-AP, 7-5-07]

A judge in London's Southwark Crown Court sentenced Mr. Bonney Eberendu, 36, to a mental health facility in June after he admitted that he was the one who smeared his feces inside at least six trains over a several-month period last year. Eberendu said the voices in his head had, on at least five occasions, instructed him to go kill someone and that, somehow, he was able to overcome the voices by doing what he did on the trains. [Metro (London), 6-11-07]

Twelve hundred troops from Poland were deployed to Afghanistan in June as part of a NATO buildup to patrol the Pakistan border, searching for Taliban forces, but Polish commanders admitted that they would not be combat-ready for several weeks because the keys to all their Humvees had been stolen. One commander said spare keys had been ordered. [Reuters, 6-7-07]

A BRITISH Airways passenger travelling first class has described how he woke up on a long-haul flight to find that cabin crew had placed a corpse in his row.

The body of a woman in her seventies, who died after the plane left Delhi for Heathrow, was carried by cabin staff from economy to first class, where there was more space. Her body was propped up in a seat, using pillows.

The woman’s daughter accompanied the corpse, and spent the rest of the journey wailing in grief.

Paul Trinder, who awoke to see the body at the end of his row, last week described the journey as “deeply disturbing”, and complained that the airline dismissed his concerns by telling him to “get over it”.

“It was a complete mess — they seemed to have no proper plans in place to deal with the situation,” said Trinder, 54, a businessman from Brackley, Northamptonshire.

The woman died during a nine-hour flight on a Boeing 747. Trinder was catching up on sleep when he was woken by a commotion and opened his eyes to see staff manoeuvring the body into a seat.

“I didn’t have a clue what was going on. The stewards just plonked the body down without saying a thing. I remember looking at this frail, sparrow-like woman and thinking she was very ill,” said Trinder.

“She kept slipping under the seatbelt and moving about with the motion of the plane. When I asked what was going on I was shocked to hear she was dead.”

The woman’s daughter and son-in-law arrived soon after and began grieving. Trinder said: “It was terrifying. I put my earplugs in but couldn’t get away from the fact that there was a woman wailing at the top of her voice just yards away. It was a really intense, primal sound.

“I felt helpless. Grief is a very personal thing; it’s not as if there was anything I could do or say.”

Trinder, chief executive of Capital Safety, which makes products for the building industry, holds a BA gold card and travels more than 200,000 miles a year with the airline.

He became particularly concerned about the state of the body. “When you have a decaying body on a plane at room temperature for more than five hours there are significant health and safety risks,” he said.

After the plane landed, those in first class remained on board for an hour before police and a coroner gave the all-clear.

“The police even started interviewing me as a potential witness, although I had no idea what had happened to the woman. I just kept thinking to myself: ‘I’ve paid more than £3,000 for this’,” Trinder said.

When contacted by BA about the complaint, Trinder says he was told he would not be compensated and should “get over” the incident.

BA said the dead woman was taken into first class because the rest of the plane was full.

A spokesman said: “When a customer passes away on board it is always difficult and we apologise for any distress caused.”

Other carriers use different procedures. Singapore Airlines has introduced “corpse cupboards” on its Airbus 340-500 aircraft. Cabin crews use the locker if there is no empty row of seats to place a corpse.

Franck and Ludivine Lamande of Cascade Township, Michigan, unwrapped a special DHL delivery on Thursday and found a bubble-wrapped human liver and part of a head. Shipped from China, the items were meant for a research lab. And apparently there may be more out there. From the Associated Press:
Authorities believe 28 more bubble-wrapped human organs and body parts could be dispersed across the country, the newspaper said. Two of five packages headed to the northern Michigan lab broke open, scattering their contents.

“There will definitely be a shock to people if they see these things, but there is no hazard to health,” (police Lt. Roger) Parent said.

All passports issued by the US State Department after January 1 will have always-on radio frequency identification chips, making it easy for officials – and hackers – to grab your personal stats. Getting paranoid about strangers slurping up your identity? Here’s what you can do about it. But be careful – tampering with a passport is punishable by 25 years in prison. Not to mention the “special” customs search, with rubber gloves. Bon voyage!

1) RFID-tagged passports have a distinctive logo on the front cover; the chip is embedded in the back.

2) Sorry, “accidentally” leaving your passport in the jeans you just put in the washer won’t work. You’re more likely to ruin the passport itself than the chip.

3) Forget about nuking it in the microwave – the chip could burst into flames, leaving telltale scorch marks. Besides, have you ever smelled burnt passport?

4) The best approach? Hammer time. Hitting the chip with a blunt, hard object should disable it. A nonworking RFID doesn’t invalidate the passport, so you can still use it.

The federal agency took the action to finger teen as the person behind a rash of bomb threats e-mailed to his high school, court documents revealed this week.

Gregg Keizer, Computerworld

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation planted spyware on the computer used by a Washington state teenager to finger him as the person behind a rash of bomb threats e-mailed to his high school, court documents revealed this week.

The 15-year-old, a former student at Timberline High School in Lacey, Wash., pleaded guilty Monday to making the bomb threats, as well as to identity theft charges, according to The Olympian. He was sentenced to 90 days in juvenile detention and must pay the school district US$8,852 to cover expenses. The first e-mailed bomb threat was sent June 4.

In several of the messages, the student taunted school authorities and police for their inability to trace the e-mails to him. "Seeing as how you're too stupid to trace the e-mail back lets [sic] get serious," an e-mail on June 5 said, according to an unsealed search warrant application filed with a Seattle federal court in mid-June. "Stop pretending to be 'tracing it' because I already told you it's coming from Italy. That is where trace will stop, so just stop trying."

Within days, however, the FBI had obtained a warrant that allowed the agency to infect the student's computer with a program it called a Computer & Internet Protocol Address Verifier (CIPAV). "If a warrant is approved, a communication will be sent to the computer being used to administer [the MySpace] user account 'Timberlinebombinfo,'" said FBI Special Agent Norman Sanders in the June 12 filing.

The CIPAV, said Sanders, would "cause any computer -- wherever located -- to send network-level messages containing the activating computer's IP address and/or MAC address, other environmental variables and certain registry-type information to a computer controlled by the FBI."

"I'd call that spyware," said Roger Thompson, chief technology officer at Exploit Prevention Labs. "Or it's pretty darn close."

The warrant did not spell out whether the CIPAV could, for instance, capture keystrokes or inject other code into the compromised system, as do commonplace Trojan downloaders. "The exact nature of [the CIPAV's] commands, processes, capabilities and their configuration is classified as a law enforcement sensitive investigative technique," said the warrant applications.

Sanders, however, did say that after making its initial data harvest, the CIPAV would shift into a silent "pen register" mode in which it only recorded the IP addresses, dates and times of each communication. The contents of those communications -- such as e-mail messages -- would not be captured and passed to the FBI, the affidavit said.

It was also unclear exactly how Sanders expected to get the CIPAV onto the suspect's computer, although the warrant application hinted that it would be delivered through MySpace's own messaging service. "The CIPAV will be deployed through an electronic messaging program from an account controlled by the FBI," the warrant application read. "The electronic message deploying the CIPAV will only be directed to the administrator(s) of the 'Timberlinebombinfo' account [on MySpace]."

The FBI may have used an exploit -- one already in circulation or one of its own -- to plant the CIPAV on the student's machine, said Thompson. Or it might have just gone the simple route, and counted on the suspect's curiosity to get him to launch an attached file or click on a link to a malicious site.

Even if his computer had security software installed and active, the CIPAV could have gotten through, Thompson argued. "In order to evade antivirus, all you've got to do is use a new version of [a piece of malware]. The bad guys do it all the time."

It's also possible, speculated Thompson, that the FBI asked security vendors to whitelist their CIPAV to let it through any defenses. "They've always talked about things like this, whether it was Magic Lantern or Carnivore. But the last time I saw anything from [the FBI] was three, four years ago, and it was pretty rudimentary stuff."

Magic Lantern was the name given to a 2001 FBI effort to develop a keystroke and encryption keylogger. Carnivore, meanwhile, is the label for e-mail tapping software from the same time frame.

When asked if he would agree to whitelist CIPAV, or had in the past when he was with PestPatrol, an antispyware developer acquired in 2004 by CA Inc., Thompson said: "I don't know. We never had to face that decision, because we were never asked."

Woman Dragged Behind Car in Denver, Leaving Mile-Long Blood Trail

DENVER — A woman was tied to a vehicle with a rope and dragged through suburban streets in a gruesome crime that left a trail of blood more than a mile long, police said.

Neighbors discovered the woman's body before dawn Monday about 20 miles south of Denver. On Tuesday, sheriff's deputies were still trying to learn her identity.

The victim's face was unrecognizable and an orange tow rope was found around her neck, said Nancy Foley, who lives next door to the house where the body was found.

"I was trying to sleep last night, thinking about how this poor lady was dragged, treated worse than an animal," Foley said. "She was really mangled."

Preliminary autopsy results indicated the woman died of asphyxiation and head injuries from being strangled while dragged by a vehicle, sheriff's spokeswoman Kim Castellano said. Toxicology results could take three weeks.

Castellano said investigators Tuesday detained several witnesses for questioning. No one had been arrested or identified as a possible suspect, she said.

A photo of an unidentified couple was found nearby, but investigators did not know whether it was connected to the death, Castellano said.

Woman’s body found behind bookcase

NEW PORT RICHEY, Florida (AP) — A woman’s body was found wedged upside-down behind a bookcase in the home she shared with relatives who had spent nearly two weeks looking for her.

A spokesman for the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office said Mariesa Weber’s death was not suspicious. Family members said they believe she fell over as she tried to adjust the plug of a television behind the bookshelf.

Weber, 38, came home October 28 and greeted her mother, then wasn’t seen again. Her family thought she had been kidnapped and contacted authorities. Family members scoured her room for clues but found nothing, although they did notice a strange smell.

Late one night Weber’s sister went into her bedroom and looked behind a bookcase, where she saw the woman’s foot. Using a flashlight, the family saw Weber was wedged upside-down behind the unit.

“I’m sleeping in the same house as her for 11 days, looking for her,” her mother, Connie Weber, told the St. Petersburg Times. “And she’s right in the bedroom.”

Both Weber and her sister previously had adjusted the television plug by standing on a bureau next to the shelf and leaning over the top. Her family believes Weber, who was 5-foot-3 and barely 100 pounds, may have fallen headfirst into the space.

“She’s a little thing,” her mother said. “And the bookcase is 6 feet tall and solid. And she couldn’t get out.”

The sheriff’s office said Weber appeared to have died because she was unable to breathe in the position she was in.

Undignified Deaths

A 54-year-old man was killed while running to catch his bus in Greater Manchester, England, in May; he accidentally ran smack into a lamppost and fell into the street, where the bus ran over him. [BBC News, 5-9-07]

Mummified baby found in storage unit

DELRAY BEACH, Florida (CNN) -- The partially mummified body of a baby, wrapped in 1950s newspapers, was found Monday by a woman going through her deceased parents' belongings in a southeast Florida storage facility, according to police.

"It was a baby boy, partially mummified," said Delray Beach police spokesman Jeff Messer. "The woman was pretty upset when she found it. You could make out the features pretty clearly." The child had hair, he said.

The body was in a small suitcase, which was placed inside a larger suitcase, said Messer, who viewed the remains.

"It was spooky," Messer said.

The baby was wrapped in a newspaper called The Daily Times, dated January 9, 1957, police said. Authorities are not sure where it was published, but were checking the New York and New Jersey area because the couple lived there before retiring in Florida.

The body was "very well preserved. In my experience, I have not seen remains in that condition after such a long time," said Police Lt. Mark Woods.

The Palm Beach medical examiner's office was bringing in a forensic anthropologist to determine the baby's age and cause of death. The medical examiner previously declined comment.

The storage bay had been rented since 1996, Messer said. The woman's father died in 2002 or 2003, and his wife died last year, he said. The couple lived in Delray Beach at one point. Woods said their belongings were stored in the warehouse after they moved to Florida in the middle to late 1980s.

The daughter was notified by the warehouse owner that rent on the storage bay was overdue and the contents would be sold at auction if the account was not brought up to date, police said. She flew from New Jersey to examine the contents of the storage bay and made the gruesome discovery.

Police said the woman did not disturb the remains or remove the newspapers they were wrapped in.

The daughter, who told police she did not know of any stillbirths or abortions in the family, gave them permission to search the storage area without a warrant, Messer said. It was described as being about the size of a one-car garage and was filled with furniture and housewares.

Police are treating the warehouse as a crime scene.

Fatter corpses cause hazard for mortuaries

SYDNEY (Reuters) - More than two-thirds of Australians living outside major cities are overweight or obese, and extremely obese corpses are creating a safety hazard at mortuaries, according to two studies released Sunday.

Nearly three quarters of men and 64 percent of women were overweight in a study of people in rural areas. Just 30 percent of those studied recorded a healthy weight, said research published in the Medical Journal of Australia.

"Urgent action is required at the highest level to change unhealthy lifestyle habits by improving diet, increasing physical activity and making our environments supportive of these objectives," wrote the lead researcher, Professor Edward Janus.

The figures were much higher than for the general population, where statistics show about 3.2 million of Australia's 21 million people are obese.

Meanwhile, pathologists are calling for new "heavy-duty" autopsy facilities to cope with obese corpses that are difficult to move and dangerously heavy for standard-size trolleys and lifting hoists.

The bodies presented "major logistical problems" and "significant occupational health and safety issues," according to a separate study, which found the number of obese and morbidly obese bodies had doubled in the past 20 years.

Specially designed mortuaries would soon be required if the nation failed to curb its fat epidemic, providing "larger storage and dissection rooms, and more robust equipment," said Professor Roger Byard, a pathologist at the University of Adelaide.

"Failure to provide these might compromise the post-mortem evaluation of markedly obese individuals, in addition to potentially jeopardizing the health of mortuary staff."

In the past year, there have also been requests for larger crematorium furnaces, bigger grave plots as well as super-sized ambulances, wheelchairs and hospital beds.

Philippines wedding guest 'eaten'

At least three people have been arrested in the Philippines for allegedly killing and eating a man and serving his flesh to wedding guests.

Eladio Baule and at least two relatives are accused of killing another relative, Benjie Ganay, after a row over the bride - Mr Baule's daughter.

Some reports say Mr Baule became angry when Mr Ganay accidentally touched the bride's backside.

Police only heard about the case when one of the men involved confessed.

Junnie Boyot told police that he and others, including Mr Baule, drove Mr Ganay to a secluded spot, where at least one of them stabbed the victim to death, before roasting his body.

Mr Boyot admitted that he and his companions then ate pieces of Mr Ganay's flesh before returning to the wedding to serve it to guests.

Police say that Mr Ganay went missing after the wedding reception on 17 July, which was held in a remote village in the south-western island of Palawan.

Narra town police chief Senior Superintendent Perla Bacuel said it was the first time she had ever heard of such a strange case.

Teenage girl stoned to death for loving the wrong boy

Iraq - A 17-year-old girl has been stoned to death in Iraq because she loved a teenage boy of the wrong religion.

As a horrifying video of the stoning went out on the Internet, the British arm of Amnesty International condemned the death of Du’a Khalil Aswad as "an abhorrent murder" and demanded that her killers be brought to justice.

Reports from Iraq said a local security force witnessed the incident, but did nothing to try to stop it. Now her boyfriend is in hiding in fear for his life.

Miss Aswad, a member of a minority Kurdish religious group called Yezidi, was condemned to death as an "honour killing" by other men in her family and hardline religious leaders because of her relationship with the Sunni Muslim boy.

They said she had shamed herself and her family when she failed to return home one night. Some reports suggested she had converted to Islam to be closer to her boyfriend.

Miss Aswad had taken shelter in the house of a Yezidi tribal leader in Bashika, a predominantly Kurdish town near the northern capital, Mosul.

A large crowd watched as eight or nine men stormed the house and dragged Miss Aswad into the street. There they hurled stones at her for half an hour until she was dead.

The stoning happened last month, but only came to light yesterday with the release of the Internet video.

It is feared her death has already triggered a retaliatory attack. Last week 23 Yezidi workmen were forced off a bus travelling from Mosulto Bashika by a group of Sunni gunmen and summarily shot dead.

An Amnesty International spokesman in London said they receive frequent reports of honour crimes from Iraq – particularly in the predominantly Kurdish north.

Most victims are women and girls who are considered by male relatives to have shamed their families by immoral behaviour.

Kurdish authorities have introduced reforms outlawing honour killings, but have failed to investigate them or prosecute suspects, added the Amnesty spokesman.

Kate Allen, the organisation’s UK director, said: "This young girl’s murder is truly abhorrent and her killers must be brought to justice.

"Unless the authorities respond vigorously to this and any other reports of crimes in the name of 'honour', we must fear for the future of women in Iraq."

Schoolgirl killed in minibus horror

Hong Kong - A six-year-old schoolgirl was killed in front of her mother yesterday after her coat was caught in the door of a minibus that drove off and dragged her for 12 metres. The girl suffered severe head injuries after she was caught under the bus as she got off in Prince Edward Road, Kowloon City.

Police said the child and her mother, 42, were on their way to the Heep Woh Primary School, which she attended in the afternoons, when they got off the bus near Embankment Road about noon. "The girl followed her mother out of the bus. Her overcoat got trapped between the door and the vehicle. The bus moved off and she was pulled down to the ground and her head was run over by the near-side ," Vincent Wong Kwok-yan, of Kowloon West traffic unit, said. "I don't think the driver knew. Her mother chased after the bus and hit it and then the driver stopped." Mr Wong said it appeared the driver pulled off as the child was disembarking and failed to check whether she had cleared the door. The girl was pronounced dead at Kwong Wah Hospital at 12.30pm.

The driver, surnamed Wong, 48, was arrested for dangerous driving causing death. He was released on HK$5,000 police bail and ordered to report back on February 8.

Police: Woman Killed Man Over Spare Change

CINCINNATI -- Police say a man was shot to death Monday night over a quarter.

Investigators said late Monday that they believe that Donald Francis was looking for spare change from passersby when he approached Geraldine Beasley in the parking lot of a gas station at Eighth and Linn streets.

Police said Beasley, 62, became angry with Francis, pulled out a gun and shot him.

"He asked her for a quarter," Chief Tom Streicher said. "That's apparently all there was to it."

Francis, 44, died in the gas station parking lot a few steps away. “This crime is a tragedy and absolutely appalling,” said Georgine Getty, Executive Director of the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless, in a news release. “Unfortunately it’s all too common that homeless people are the victims of crime.” Getty said that Francis' death was a hate crime.

Beasley appeared in court on Wednesday, where she was arraigned on a murder charge and ordered held on $500,000 bond.

Motorcyclist Ejected, Falls 48 Feet To Death

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- A motorcyclist was killed Sunday when he was ejected from his bike and fell from an elevated entrance ramp to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, the Broward Sheriff's Office said.

Greg Ritter, 37, of Lauderhill, was operating a 2002 Suzuki motorcycle southbound on the U.S. Highway 1-Interstate 595 connector ramp to the airport when he apparently lost control and crashed into a concrete barrier.

Witnesses said that after Ritter lost control of his motorcycle, he fell about 48 feet from the concrete wall of the elevated ramp, landing on the grass next to northbound U.S. 1 shortly after 6:30 p.m.

After Ritter was ejected, the Suzuki continued operating upright against the barrier for a distance of more than 900 feet, then traveled across two lanes and crashed on the pavement, according to the BSO.

There were several other motorcycles traveling near Ritter at the time of the crash, but it was unclear if he knew any of the other bikers.

Paramedics arrived and pronounced Ritter dead at the scene. The BSO said Ritter was wearing a helmet at the time of the crash.

'Maniac' on trial for 49 murders

MOSCOW, Russia (Reuters) -- A Moscow court began trying a supermarket porter who prosecutors say murdered 49 people over a 14-year period, which would make him Russia's worst serial killer in a decade.

His lawyer said 33-year-old Alexander Pichushkin had confessed to most of the murders, but it was unclear how many. The jury must decide whether or not he is of sound mind.

"My client understands that he is to blame for most of these murders," Pichushkin's lawyer, Pavel Ivannikov, told reporters outside the courtroom after a fifteen-minute hearing.

Pichushkin scowled as he was brought into Moscow City Court under heavy guard for a preliminary hearing at which he opted to be tried by a jury, instead of a panel of judges.

If convicted, Pichushkin -- called the "Bitsevsky Maniac" by Russian media after the Moscow park where many of the alleged victims were killed -- would be Russia's most deadly serial killer since Andrei Chikatilo, convicted in 1992 of 52 murders.

Prosecutors say Pichushkin befriended many of his victims in Bitsevsky park by inviting them to drink vodka with him, then bludgeoned them to death with a hammer. Some of the victims had fragments of glass pressed into their skulls.

Prosecutors also say Pichushkin confessed to the murders in police custody. Russian media reported that for every person he killed, he placed a coin on a chess board and that he had been planning to cover all 64 squares on the board.

The trial was adjourned until September 13 to allow time for a jury to be selected. It is expected to be lengthy, as it will hear from at least 41 relatives of the alleged victims and a total of 98 other witnesses.

During the hearing, relatives of two of the alleged victims sat just meters from Pichushkin. The accused occasionally stretched his arms and stared out from the glass enclosure where he was held, without displaying any emotion.

In a red and white checked shirt and jeans, he looked older than his age, with gray peppering his dark hair. Speaking quietly before the hearing, one middle aged man, Alexander Fyodorov, recalled his family's efforts to track down his missing brother, who would be 47 this year.

"I want Pichushkin to sit in prison for the rest of his life," he said. Although Russia has not formally abolished the death penalty, it has been observing a moratorium on capital punishment.

Another elderly woman who was also in the court, Tamara Klimova, came home from holiday to discover her husband was missing. The body was not found for five years. Prosecutors now believe he was killed by Pichushkin.

"I would like him to be handed over to the people so that they can tear him apart," Klimova told reporters.

Kenyan villagers find heads on poles

NAIROBI, Kenya (Reuters) -- Villagers found heads placed on poles and body parts scattered in bushes in six murders the media blamed on Tuesday on an outlawed sect notorious for killing and extortion.

People in the country's central region found the heads and other remains after attacks on Sunday and Monday.

The media blamed the killings on Mungiki, a banned group that has fought weeks of battles with local minibus taxi operators who are resisting its demands for protection money.

With presidential elections due in the east African nation in December, many commentators suspected a political hand behind violence threatening the government's authority.

"[Mungiki] is out to demonstrate that it can operate and strike with impunity anywhere and everywhere," the Daily Nation newspaper said on Tuesday in a front page editorial, below pictures of four of the six men who were decapitated.

"It is out to show the police and other government organs are feeble, helpless and unable to protect anyone who defies it."

Police said they would hold a briefing later on Tuesday.

Fear spread fast through the villages of Murang'a and Kiambu with some families fleeing the area as the victims' remains were discovered.

"I had gone out to answer a call of nature at around 3 a.m. when I switched on my torch and saw the head of a human being placed on the roof of my chicken pen," Robert Kiunjuri, a teacher in Kianjogu village, told the Nation.

The 50-year-old victim's headless body had been dragged to the nearby home of a chief, where it was dumped at the gate.

Another head was found perched atop a telephone pole about a mile (kilometer) away, and another found after villagers heard two dogs fighting over it.

In neighboring Kiambu, one head was left at a bus stop in the center of the main town, local media said. A torso and three amputated legs were discovered in a ditch in a nearby village.

The victims all appeared to be local laborers and peasant farmers with no known links to the shadowy sect.

Mungiki, whose name means "multitude" in the local Kikuyu language, was banned in 2002 after members armed with knives and clubs killed more than 20 people in a Nairobi slum.

The group instills fear by promoting archaic Kikuyu rituals like swearing oaths, and many Kenyans believe it has been supported by corrupt politicians in the past.

"The police cannot claim to be seriously investigating Mungiki if they are not calling in for questioning such political leaders," the Nation said. "Ultimately, the government must take full responsibility for failing to contain what is now clearly a national security issue."

Train kills man trying to kill woman

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A man trying to kill his girlfriend by stopping a car in front of an approaching train was himself killed Monday when the train hit the vehicle and launched it into him as he tried to flee, police said.

The girlfriend survived.

The man drove the car in front of a group of other vehicles stopped at a railroad crossing in the San Fernando Valley neighborhood of Sunland, Officer Mike Lopez said.

The driver, who was seen arguing with his girlfriend, parked the car on the tracks and jumped out, leaving her behind, Lopez said.

A northbound commuter train hit the rear of the car, hurling it into the man. The girlfriend was taken to the hospital, where she was in stable condition, Lopez said.

"She gets hit by a train and lives. He gets hit by his own car and he dies," Lopez said.

The train was heading from downtown to Lancaster in northern Los Angeles County at the time of the 12:08 p.m. crash, said Denise Tyrrell, a spokeswoman for Metrolink.

There were no injuries on the train, which carried 132 passengers and crewmembers, Tyrrell said. The train had superficial damage.

The train's speed wasn't immediately known. The limit in the area is 79 mph, Tyrrell said. At that speed, it would take one-third of a mile to stop, she said.

It is highly unusual for someone to survive being struck by a train, Tyrrell said.

"The train to your car is like your car to a soda pop can. It's just not going to be a fair fight," Tyrrell said.

Man, 65, dies in golf course accident

FALLBROOK, Calif. (AP) -- A 65-year-old golfer died Tuesday after his golf cart plunged 75 feet off a cliff and crashed into a road below, authorities said.

The man teed off with three friends on the second hole of the Pala Mesa Resort Golf Course in northern San Diego County at around 10 a.m. and then got into his cart.

The vehicle veered off the concrete pathway, traveled down a 25-foot embankment and went over the edge of a cliff, California Highway Patrol spokesman Tom Kerns said.

The recently retired real estate agent from Irvine was ejected shortly before the cart hit the road beneath the cliff and died on impact, Kerns said. His name was not immediately released.

No one else was involved in the crash.

Investigators will inspect the golf cart for mechanical failures, Kerns said.

Surgeon Amputates Boy's Arm On Side Of Highway

HIALEAH, Fla. -- A surgeon had to amputate a teenager's arm to free him from a truck crash after the boy was pinned underneath a cement truck.

Nearly a dozen Miami-Dade Fire rescuers tried to free 17-year-old Leonardo Sanchez after the cement truck he was riding in with his father flipped on its side Saturday on the Palmetto Expressway in Hialeah.

The cement truck ended up being pinned against a guardrail with Sanchez underneath the truck.

In order to free him a surgeon was flown to the scene and was forced to amputate Sanchez' arm while the boy lay under the truck on the highway to save him.

It was not the first time the doctor has faced this kind of emergency surgery.

"My first time was in Oklahoma City with the Oklahoma City bombings with the search and rescue team," said Dr. David Shatz, the surgeon who performed the amputation.

Sanchez was airlifted to Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital where he remains in the intensive care unit.

The teen was riding in his father's cement truck in a plastic lawn chair because there was no passenger seat.

The boy's father, Aurelio Sanchez, faces several charges because he had an expired license and registration, Local 10 reported.

Naked Couple Killed In 50-Foot Fall

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Police in South Carolina said the deaths of two people whose naked bodies were found on a Columbia street were accidental.

Authorities said it appeared that the man and the woman, who were both 21, may have been having sex when they fell from the sloped roof of a downtown office building.

Police said a cab driver found the couple alive at about 5 a.m. Wednesday morning. However, they were pronounced dead at the hospital.

Autopsies were scheduled for Thursday.

The victims have been identified as Brent Tyler and Chelsey Tubleston.

Texas crowd kills passenger in vehicle that struck child

AUSTIN, Texas - A crowd attacked and killed a passenger in a vehicle that had struck and injured a child, police said Wednesday.

Police believe 2,000 to 3,000 people were in the area for a Juneteenth celebration when the attack occurred Tuesday night. The man who was killed had been trying to stop the group from attacking the vehicle's driver when the crowd turned on him, authorities said.

The Austin Police Department identified the victim as David Rivas Morales, 40. The child was taken to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

Police spokeswoman Toni Chovonetz said she had no further information, including how many people were involved.

The driver, who was able to get away, is cooperating with investigators, police said.

Juneteenth marks the day Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston in 1865 to share news of the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves two years earlier on Jan. 1, 1863.

Teens Die In Oil Tank Explosion In Forest

MEEKER, Colo. -- Authorities said that two Western Slope teenagers were killed over the weekend when an oil storage tank they were jumping on exploded.

Rio Blanco County Undersheriff Michael Joos said the teens were killed Saturday night at a party in the Routt National Forest near Chapman Reservoir, about 135 miles west of Denver.

The victims were identified as Samuel Hedemark, 17, of Phippsburg and Christopher King Fuller , 19, of Yampa. Their bodies were found 150 yards away from the tank.

Investigators said vapor from inside the storage tank may have been forced out through relief valve by the pressure of the teens jumping on the top.

Joos said deputies were investigating whether a campfire or a cigarette lighter may have ignited the vapor.

Joos said one of the teens was found with cigarettes, marijuana and a lighter. He said the tank contained 160 barrels of oil. It was not yet clear what kind of oil was inside.

A dog was also killed in the explosion, but no other injuries were reported.

Joos said 16 teens were at the party but only six or seven remained when officials arrived. Officials with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation were working to identify and interview all of the teens who were present.

Alcohol was a factor in the incident, according to Joos.

Hedemark and Fuller were both recent students at Soroco High School in Oak Creek, Colo.

Amusement park worker thrown from moving ride, killed

NEW YORK (AP) -- An amusement park worker was thrown off a gyrating ride and killed, and park officials acknowledged Saturday that a safety precaution put in place after a fatal accident on the ride in 2004 wasn't followed.

Gabriela Garin, 21, of White Plains, New York, was killed Friday night after fastening some late-arriving riders into their seats on the Mind Scrambler, the same ride where a 7-year-old girl was killed three years ago at the landmark Playland Amusement Park in Rye. The ride was immediately shut down for the rest of the summer.

It was the fourth fatality at the park in just over three years.

Garin was operating the ride, a spider-arm-style attraction that spins riders around in two-seat cars, park spokesman Peter Tartaglia said. She had changed shifts with a new ride operator but stayed to take on a few new passengers before leaving for the night, he said.

The woman told the operator she would fasten the last riders into the car, and the new operator, whose name wasn't immediately available, stepped into a booth and started the ride, Tartaglia said.

He looked up, noticed Garin still on the ride and shut it down 15 to 20 seconds after it began, Tartaglia said. But Garin, who started working at the park when she was 14, already had been thrown from it, he said.

Garin was "a very conscientious worker," Tartaglia said.

Emergency workers responded quickly, "but there wasn't very much anybody could do for her," Westchester County Police spokesman Kieran O'Leary said. Garin was pronounced dead at the scene around 9:30 p.m., he said.

The attraction, in a darkened tent with flashing lights, was the scene of another deadly accident May 22, 2004. Stephanie Dieudonne, 7, wriggled free of the restraining bar on one of the cars, knelt on the seat and fell soon after the ride started, according to investigators.

The amusement park was not cited for any violations or required to make improvements to the ride after the girl's death, but officials announced plans to add seat belts, more lighting and a second attendant.

In 2005, a 7-year-old boy was killed when he climbed out of his boat ride and fell, investigators said. A 43-year-old man drowned after wading into a lake on July 4, 2006, at the county-owned Playland, a National Historic Landmark that opened in 1928.

Playland is on Long Island Sound, about 25 miles north of midtown Manhattan. Featuring more than 50 rides, a pool and a beach, it draws more than 1 million visitors a year.

5 die in dairy farm manure pit

BRIDGEWATER, Virginia (AP) -- Exposure to methane gas led to the deaths of five people, but whether they suffocated from the fumes or drowned in 18 inches of liquefied cow manure may never be known, authorities said.

No autopsies were planned, in part because investigators believed the deaths on a Rockingham County dairy farm were accidental, said Capt. J.B. Wittig of the county sheriff's department. Authorities said they could not rule out the possibility that the five drowned or died of another cause.

"It was very, very quick," Wittig said of the deaths.

The victims were identified as Scott Showalter, 34; his wife, Phyillis, 33; their daughters Shayla, 11, and Christina, 9; and Amous Stoltzfus, 24.

Authorities said Showalter entered a manure pit to unclog a pipe Monday evening and was quickly overcome by the methane. Stoltzfus, apparently believing Showalter had a heart attack, went in after him and also passed out.

Another farm worker alerted Showalter's wife, who rushed to the pit followed by Shayla and Christina.

"They all climbed into the pit to help," Sheriff Donald Farley said.

The victims had no warning of the deadly gas that had built up in the pit.

"You cannot smell it, you cannot see it, but it's an instant kill," said Dan Brubaker, a family friend who oversaw the construction of the pit decades earlier.

Farmers typically take pains to ventilate manure pits where methane often gathers. On Tuesday, a cousin of Scott Showalter questioned whether runoff from a pile of cattle feed could have trickled into the pit and accelerated the formation of the gas.

"It rained, and some of it ran down into this holding pit, it fermented and made a toxic gas," said Bruce Good, who saw Showalter about once a week.

The sheriff said Showalter apparently was transferring manure from one small pit to a larger holding pond when a pipe clogged. About once a week, waste is pumped from the roughly 9-foot-deep pit into a larger pond.

Showalter shimmied through the 4-foot opening into the concrete enclosure, which is similar to an underground tank.

"It was probably something he had done a hundred times," Farley said.

The deaths struck hard in this picturesque farming region dotted with red barns, gleaming silos and church steeples that peek above rolling fields.

The Showalters were well known in the community where neighbors do each other's laundry. Their two surviving daughters were being cared for by family members, and friends tended to the family's animals the day after the tragedy.

"The cows have to be milked twice a day, even in an ordeal like this," said Frank Showalter, Scott's great-uncle, standing a few feet from where his relatives died.

The Showalters milked 103 cows on their farm west of Harrisonburg in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. They belonged to a conservative Mennonite church whose members shun many of the trappings of modern society but drive cars, use telephones and, according to police, take modern farm-safety precautions.

Fellow church members were in shock Tuesday, said the Rev. Nathan Horst, a Mennonite bishop.

"We've never had a tragedy of this magnitude," he said.

Woman dies in Mich. fireworks accident

MELVINDALE, Mich. (AP) — A 27-year-old woman died after a commercial-grade aerial firework exploded in her face as her fiance and 8-year-old son watched, police say.

Danialle Barse was unfamiliar with the device she was using Monday night, said Mike Welch, a detective for police in the southern Detroit suburb of Melvindale.

"She basically killed herself in front her children and her fiance," Welch said.

Barse and another woman were trying to set off a 3-inch mortar bomb in the parking lot of the car wash where Barse worked when the firework exploded, Welch said.

"She stuck her head over the top of it and it went off," he said.

One round hit the Lincoln Park woman, while the other 25 mortars continued to explode in sequence, keeping rescuers at bay, Welch said.

"The bombs were still going off as I ran up to try and drag her out of the way." witness Jason Dobrovalski told WDIV-TV. "But after I'd seen what had happened, I just ran back to try to save myself because it was too late."

Some fireworks confiscated at the scene were purchased in Ohio, but the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was investigating where the commercial-grade fireworks came from, Welch said.

No one at the car wash had permission for a fireworks display, Welch said.

Melvindale police and ATF agents seized about 5,000 pounds of illegal fireworks from a convenience store on Tuesday afternoon, Welch said. He said no arrests were made and investigators did not know whether the device that killed Barse came from the store.

Services for Barse, who also was the mother of twin 2-year-old boys, were scheduled for 7 p.m. Friday at John Molnar Funeral Home in Southgate.

Blinded by love, HK man stabbed in eye by girlfriend

HONG KONG (Reuters) - A Hong Kong woman who blinded her boyfriend in one eye in a fight six years ago has been jailed for jabbing a chopstick into his other eye, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Last November, Po Shiu-fong, 58, accused long-time boyfriend Kwok Wai-ming, 49, of having an affair, the South China Morning Post reported.

During the row, Po stabbed a plastic chopstick into his left eye, which she had already blinded six years ago when she poked it with her finger.

"Po became hysterical when she saw the wound and mopped it with a towel. The pair then went to bed," the paper said.

"The next morning they had another argument in which she grabbed a chopstick and stabbed Kwok's right eye," it said.

Two days later, he sought medical treatment and filed a police report against Po, whom he had dated since 1993.

The paper said he didn't report the attack six years ago, telling the court his silence was "a love sacrifice".

Kwok lost 10 to 20 percent vision in his right eye, the paper said.

Po was jailed for six months on Tuesday.

"If I forgive her, God would not forgive me," the paper quoted Kwok as saying. "No matter what, nothing could compensate for the loss of my eye."

Pool Drain Pulls Small Intestine Out Of Young Girl

A six-year-old Edina, Minn. girl has been hospitalized after a horrific accident at a swimming pool.

Abigail Taylor was severely injured Friday when she sat over an open drain hole in a wading pool at the Minneapolis Golf Club.

Now Abigail's father has a warning to other families: Pool and hot tub drain accidents are a hidden danger that many of us don't understand.

Abigail has big brown eyes, a dazzling smile and at just six years old she has already competed in local swim meets.

"She loves to swim," said her father Scott Taylor.

Her love of swimming is why her family didn't think twice when she played at a kiddie pool similar at the family's golf club on Friday night.

Scott said as Abigail was getting out of the pool, she fell.

"She more or less blacked out, she passed out, fell face-first onto the pool decking," he said. The family thought it was a seizure.

An ambulance rushed her to Children's Hospital in Minneapolis. Several hours later a surgeon said Abigail was lucky to be alive.

"The suction had caused a two inch tear in her rectum and had basically disemboweled her by pulling out her small intestines, almost all of it," said her father, Scott.

Her father said a search of the pool filter turned up Abigail's intestine. He said Abigail was seriously wounded because the cover of the drain had been removed.

In most public pools the drain cover is screwed in and can not be pulled off. According to the Consumer Products Safety Commission, the pressure on some pool drains can be as strong as 300 pounds per square inch.

"It never even crosses anybody's mind that potental at the bottom of that pool is enough force to literally disembowel a child, an adult," said Scott.

Abigail will have to be fed intravenously for the rest of her life and will have to have a colostomy bag.

"We view it as a miracle that she's still with us," her father said.

She is improving, Wednesday morning she stunned her family by asking this question:

"She said 'Am I going to be on the news?' She said, 'Why do you ask?' She said 'Because I want to make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else,'" recalled Scott.

Since 1990, 170 people mostly children have been caught in drains and 27 of them have died. Legislation is pending that would require pools and hot tubs to have multiple drains to ease the suction.

Some pools have a safety vacuum cutoff which shuts down if someone is trapped. New drain covers which cost less than fifty dollars can also help.

According to the Associated Press, an official at the golf club expressed sympathy for the family and said he didn't think anything was wrong with the pool, but referred questions to the club's attorney, who declined to comment.

Afghan prison bodies discovered

An underground prison containing hundreds of bodies has been discovered in Afghanistan.

The prison, a former military barracks on the outskirts of the capital, Kabul, dates from the Soviet occupation of the 1980s, officials say.

A senior police officer in Kabul says that many of the bodies were found blindfolded with arms tied.

The find was revealed by a 70-year-old Afghan who worked for the Russians and only recently returned to the country.

There has been no immediate response from Russia to the news of the find.

"This is a big mass grave from the Russian days," police chief Gen Ali Shah Paktiwal told the BBC, adding that there were hundreds of dead bodies inside.

He said the base, on the northern outskirts of Kabul, belonged to the communist defence ministry.

"There are at least 15 rooms full of dead bodies," he said, adding that as the base was large there could be further rooms yet to be discovered underground.

Many of the victims' remains were found with rope or cloth around their eyes and hands, suggesting they had been blindfolded and bound.

The old man who led police to the site of the grave is reported to have told police that he had seen people killed by firing squad at the barracks.

The underground prison is the second Soviet-era mass grave to be found near the capital.

In 2006, a grave was discovered by Nato-led forces near the capital's notorious Pul-e-Charkhi prison.

Belgian guest finds frozen bodies

A Belgian man has been arrested after a dinner guest helping to clear up after the meal opened a freezer and found the bodies of the host's wife and stepson.

The 42-year-old host had invited guests for dinner at his home in the city of Verviers, 125km (78 miles) east of Brussels, prosecutors said.

A woman guest left the table to put leftovers in the freezer and alerted the authorities to the discovery.

Police said they were aware of domestic abuse issues between the wife and host.

'Ill at ease'

Christine Wilwerth, at the Verviers prosecutor's office, said the suspect had indicated he had had a quarrel with his wife and she had been stabbed.

However, he had no initial explanation for the 12-year-old boy's death.

Ms Wilwerth said: "It was a lady who at the end of the meal at a friend's house, and after washing the dishes... decided to take the leftovers of the meal down to the basement to store in the deep freeze.

"Once she opened the deep freeze, she discovered the bodies."

Guests then alerted police but refrained from telling the host.

He seemed "ill at ease", Ms Wilwerth quoted the guests as saying.

"The couple was already known to police for domestic violence," Ms Wilwerth said.

It was not immediately clear how or when the deaths occurred but Ms Wilwerth said the time of death could date back several weeks.

Killers fed farm worker to lions

A South African farmer and one of his employees have been found guilty of murder for beating a farm worker and throwing him into a lion enclosure.

Mark Scott-Crossley and Simon Mathebula pleaded not guilty to murder. A third man is being tried separately once he recovers from suspected tuberculosis.

Scott-Crossley is white, while his accomplice, and the victim, are black.

Trade unionists say the case highlights continuing abuse of farm labourers and racial tensions in rural areas.

Beaten

The courtroom in the small town of Phalaborwa, on the edge of the Kruger National Park, was packed as the trial reached a dramatic conclusion.

Judge George Maluleke ruled that Scott-Crossley and his employee, Mathebula, had murdered Mr Chisale, in January of last year.

Mr Chisale, a father of three, had returned to the farm from where he had been sacked two months earlier, to pick up some personal belongings.

At the farm he was beaten up, tied with rope and electrical wire and then driven, at night, in Scott-Crossley's car to Mokwalo White Lion Project at Hoedspruit, about 400km (250 miles) north-east of Johannesburg.

There he was thrown over the fence and devoured by the lions.

The only remains recovered from the enclosure were a few bones and some shredded clothing.

Publicity

Throughout the trial, Scott-Crossley denied being present during the beating and said Chisale was already dead by the time he was thrown into the lion's enclosure. The judge said that the convicted men will be sentenced later.

Much of the testimony revolved around whether Scott-Crossley ordered the killing, as his workers had testified, and whether Chisale was still alive when he was thrown to the lions.

The story has attracted widespread publicity in South Africa, and protesters have demonstrated during the six-week trial outside the court in Phalaborwa in north-east South Africa demanding life sentences.

A bomb scare on Thursday morning resulted in the court building being searched by bomb disposal experts, and tight security measures were put in place inside and outside the court building, according to the South African Press Association.

5 Somali children killed playing with land mine

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- Five children walking to Friday prayers in Somalia's capital were killed when one of them picked up a land mine and threw it against a wall, witnesses said.

The children were between the ages of 7 and 12, said Khasaye Nor Abdulkadir, who was hit in the thigh with shrapnel.

"One of them picked up the land mine hidden under the ground and then they gathered," Abdulkadir told The Associated Press. "Another child took it and threw it against a wall and it went off."

A 16-year-old girl's leg was blown off in the blast, said Sheik Abukar, an imam of a mosque near the blast site.

The Somali capital has seen little peace since government troops backed by Ethiopian forces drove an Islamic movement out of the city in December. Roadside bombs, attacks on government installations, assassination attempts and gunbattles have become common, and civilians are caught in the crossfire.

Battles in Mogadishu between March 12 and April 26 alone killed at least 1,670 people.

Japan boy 'severs mother's head'

A teenage Japanese boy has been arrested after walking into a police station carrying a severed human head and claiming to have killed his mother.

The 17-year-old went to a police station in the town of Aizuwakamatsu, north of Tokyo, carrying the head in a sports bag, Japanese media said.

The beheaded body of a woman was later found at the boy's home, police said.

This is the latest in a series of grisly killings in Japan, a country renowned for its low crime rate.

On Monday a severed human leg was discovered in a small river in central Tokyo.

In January, a 32-year-old woman was arrested after she confessed to killing her husband, dismembering him with a saw and dumping body parts around Tokyo.

'It's horrifying'

In the latest case, the boy, said to be a local high school student, reportedly told police he killed his mother with a knife during the night as she slept, and had acted alone.

Japanese press said the boy lived with his young brother, separately from their parents. Their mother was believed to have been visiting them on Monday.

The teenager was reported to have undergone psychiatric treatment at some point in the past.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki expressed his alarm at the reports. "If it's true, it's horrifying," he said.

Aizuwakamatsu is located in Fukushima prefecture, some 200km (125 miles) north of Tokyo.

Part of Human Leg Found in Tokyo River

TOKYO — A severed human right leg was found in the Nihombashi River in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward on Monday afternoon, police said. Investigators are trying to identify the person to whom the body part — the portion below the knee — belongs, suspecting the person may have been the victim of a crime, police said.

The naked leg is believed to be that of an adult. However, the sex of the person and other details remain unknown as the body part has been blackened by sludge, they said. There is a small cut on the leg, but no major external wounds. As the cut surface is partly decomposed, it is likely that several days have passed since the leg was severed, police said.

MY GIRLS WED A SCOTSMAN? OVER YOUR DEAD BODY...

A DRUNKEN jibe about Scots provoked a horrific murder, an Australian court heard yesterday.
A fight broke out in a campsite after a woman was teased about her daughters "marrying Scotsmen".
And within hours, traveller Bill Smith, 34, had been hacked to death by up to eight people armed with a tomahawk, a samurai sword, an iron bar and a pole with a scythe-like hook on the end.
Adam Jones, a Romany, is charged with the murder at Tuggerah Village Caravan Park in New South Wales. His parents, wife and son also face charges.
Jones, 43, known as "Big Adam", told police the fatal fight began in October 2005 when he joked that two of Mary Smith's daughters were likely to marry Scots.
He claimed: "Mary hates Scotsmen, absolutely has a hatred of the Scots and I was just giving her a bit of a frisk."
The two families had been having a drink and some "friendly banter" - but the comments sparked fury. The Supreme Court in Sydney was told Big Adam and Bill Smith - Mary's brother-in-law - looked ready to fight until Jones's son, "Little Adam", pulled out a knife.
It was agreed the issue would be "sorted" the next day.
But the court heard about eight people were seen attacking Mr Smith in the early hours of the morning.
Big Adam tried to take all the blame - and arrived at Blacktown Police Station later that morning to tell officers: "I think I've killed somebody."
He later claimed he was attacked by Mr Smith after going to the caravan park's toilet block.
Jones told police that a "hollering", screaming group began throwing things at him. He said Bill Smith seemed about to give him "a real pasting" and had swung an unidentified weapon at him.
Jones said he hit Bill Smith several times and possibly Smith's older brother, Noah.
He told police in a taped interview: "It's a terrible thing that happened and I don't deny I done it but I seriously, seriously tell you now I didn't mean to kill him. The only way I could see to get away from there was to hit Bill and probably Noah."
He added: "I was panicking, I was scared and I'd have hit man, woman or child 'cause I wanted out. I just wanted to get away."
Jones, his parents and his son have pleaded not guilty to murder and the malicious wounding of Noah Smith.
Jones's wife, Lydia, has denied being an accessory after the fact of murder and malicious wounding.
The trial continues.

Execution delayed for man who roasted wife
INDIA'S Supreme Court today ordered a stay on a death sentence of a former politician who roasted his unfaithful wife in the oven of a city restaurant.

The Supreme Court said the stay on the death sentence was valid until it completed hearing an appeal against the verdict on Sushil Sharma, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

The Delhi High Court in February had confirmed the capital punishment handed down to Sushil Sharma by a lower court in 2005, officials said. He had challenged the verdict.

Sharma shot 29-year-old Naina Sahni, a pilot, and stuffed her dismembered corpse into the tandoor, a large clay oven used widely in northern India, of the state-run Bagiya restaurant in the heart of New Delhi in 1995.

He loaded kilos of clarified butter called ghee into the oven in an attempt to incinerate the evidence, but the smell of burning flesh brought police to the restaurant.

Sharma, who was an officer of the India's ruling Congress party's youth wing, was expelled from the movement after he fled from police.

He was arrested after a five-week chase across India.

Serial Killers See Murder Case Dropped
SOUTH Australia's infamous Snowtown killers, John Bunting and Robert Wagner, emerged from their jail cells today to have a murder charge against them dropped.
Bunting is serving life for 11 murders and Wagner life for 10.

But in the South Australian Supreme Court today, the crown moved to tender no evidence against the pair, Australia's worst serial killers, over the death of Suzanne Allen.

Ms Allen's dismembered body was found in 1999 in plastic bags buried in the backyard of a suburban Adelaide home where Bunting lived at one stage.

Both Bunting and Wagner had been charged with her murder but in 2003 the jury in the long-running trial could not reach a verdict in relation to her death, leaving open the option of a new trial.

Their defence counsel argued she died of natural causes.

Today's court appearance lasted less than a minute with the pair dressed casually for the occasion.

Wagner, 35, was represented by counsel from his trial but Bunting, 41, was unrepresented.

They made no comment as they were led into the dock, in the same courtroom where they were convicted almost four years ago.

But almost as soon as they arrived they were ushered out by correctional services officers, Justice Ann Vanstone accepting the crown's nolle prosequi, formally bringing an end to all proceedings.

The crown's move brings to an end one of the most shocking cases in Australia's legal history, which began in May 1999 when the remains of eight people were found dismembered and stuffed inside six plastic barrels in a disused bank vault at Snowtown, a small, sleepy town north of Adelaide.

The discovery was shortly followed by the excavation of two more bodies buried, one on top of the other, in the backyard of Bunting's former home.

Three years later, police linked Bunting and Wagner with the death of another man found in 1994 in a shallow grave at Lower Light, north of Adelaide and a man found hanging from a tree in Adelaide in 1997.

At their trial, the court heard Bunting and Wagner had an incessant hatred of paedophiles and homosexuals, the prime targets in their killings.

But as the number of victims - and the extent to which they were tortured - increased, they preyed upon a wider circle that included those they referred to as "wastes" and "low-lifes".

Two other men were jailed in relation to the killings.

James Spyridon Vlassakis is serving life with a 26-year non-parole period for his part in four of the killings while Mark Ray Haydon is serving a 25-year sentence with a non-parole period of 18 years for assisting the killers.

Dead babies find shocks Germany

German police are holding a woman suspected of manslaughter after the bodies of nine new-born babies were found buried in a garden.

The 39-year-old woman is believed to be the mother of the children found in Brieskow-Finkenheerd, in Brandenburg state, near the border with Poland.

Police officers with sniffer dogs were searching the site for further remains.

The grim discovery of little bodies found buried in flower pots and buckets has shocked Germany.

It is thought that the babies were born, and died, between 1988 and 2004.

"We are looking at a crime on a scale that, as far as I can remember, has never been seen in the history of the Federal Republic," Brandenburg Interior Minister Joerg Schoenbohm said in a statement.

"We have to ask ourselves how this incredible crime remained hidden over all these years. It's a question directed at relatives, neighbours, doctors and the authorities."

The bodies were discovered after someone clearing a garage at the site found human bones stored in a fish tank, police said.

According to Reuters, the woman has said she was the mother of the babies but has not admitted killing them. A court spokesman said her statement was confused.

Other discoveries

The woman has been identified in the German press only as Sabine H. She is reported to be a jobless dental assistant who moved from the house, where her mother and eldest sister live, to nearby Frankfurt an der Oder.

Bild newspaper said she met her first boyfriend, a former East German army officer and Stasi employee, when she was 17 and they had a daughter in 1984. She had two more children in the following two years.

Teen becomes Indiana's youngest coroner

PORTLAND, Ind. - With her father as a role model and a love of the television show "CSI," a high school senior has become Indiana's youngest certified death investigator.

Amanda Barnett, 18, was certified last month and is one of four deputy coroners working for her father, Jay County Coroner Mark Barnett.

"It's kind of weird to (my friends)," she said. "To other people it's disgusting, but I think it's interesting, and somebody's got to do it."

Amanda Barnett said her goal has been to follow in her father's footsteps since his first campaign for coroner 15 years ago, and she has attended numerous coroner conventions with him. Her father accompanied her on some of her first calls.

"I'll ask her what she's doing and why," Mark Barnett said. "She might catch something that I don't think of."

She had to receive special permission to attend a certification class given by the Indiana State Coroners Training Board because she was only 17 when it began. She scored 97 percent on the test, submitted four case reports and attended an autopsy.

"I think it's great that someone her age is interested in the field," said Lisa Barker, executive director of the state training board. "She was a very good student."

Barnett will soon graduate from high school, and she said she plans to attend Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis in the fall to become a forensic nurse examiner.

German man found after 7 years dead in bed

BERLIN (Reuters) - The decomposed corpse of a German man was found alone in his bed after nearly seven years, police in the western city of Essen said Thursday.

The police said in a statement the man was 59 and unemployed at the time of his death. He most likely died of natural causes on November 30, 2000, the date he received a letter from the Welfare Office found in the apartment, police said.

Next to the dead man's bed police found cigarettes, an open television guide and Deutschemark coins, which came out of circulation after the euro was introduced in 2002.

The man's apartment was in a building with offices and apartments, many of which are now empty.

"No one missed him. No missing person report was ever filed," the police said.

Perth Girls get Life for Murder

Two teenage girls in Western Australia have been sentenced to life in prison for killing a friend to see whether they would feel remorse at the deed.

The girls, aged 16 at the time of the murder, strangled Eliza Jane Davis then buried her under a house.

They told police they knew it was wrong to kill but it "felt right", and they did not regret Davis's death.

Perth Children's Court president Denis Reynolds said the murder was "gruesome and merciless in the extreme".

Shallow grave

The pair, who cannot be named because of their age, killed 15-year-old Davis while the three were staying at the same house in the coal-mining town of Collie, south of Perth, on 18 June 2006.

They had been discussing how neither would feel bad about committing murder when they decided to kill Davis, who was sleeping in another room, a court heard in April.

They dressed in old clothes then strangled Davis with speaker wire and buried her body under the house, the court heard.

The girls confessed to police after deciding the grave was too shallow and that they would inevitably be caught.

Earlier, they had reported Davis as missing and pretended to help with the search for her body.

Their lawyers said experts were baffled as to the motivation behind the attack.

The girls were jailed for life, with a minimum sentence of 15 years.

Body Found Sliced In Half On Railroad Tracks

DENVER -- Denver police are investigating the gruesome discovery of a body sliced in half on the railroad tracks near South Santa Fe Drive, between Yale and Evans avenues.

The body was spotted by a Burlington Northern employee who called police at 4:30 a.m.

The man's body was face down across one rail of the track and it had been severed across the torso. Police were trying to determine how the body ended up on the tracks and if the man was alive when he was run over. They were also working to identify him.

RTD light rail trains had to slow down in the area because police were working along the tracks, but RTD Spokesman Scott Reed said the trains remained on schedule.

Man wants electoral voice for "living dead"

LUCKNOW, India (Reuters) - A villager is campaigning in northern India for the rights of people declared legally dead by cheating relatives seeking to steal their assets.

Lal Bihari, a lower caste villager who lost his father's inheritance due to an unscrupulous uncle, formed the "Union of the Dead" in 1980 to fight for the rights of thousands he says have fallen victim to scams by relatives.

He is contesting as an independent in a month-long election in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, which ends on Tuesday.

In 1976, an uncle allegedly connived with corrupt local officials to fudge village records and declare Bihari dead. The uncle then won the inheritance of Bihari's father.

"It was only as late as in 1994 that I succeeded in proving myself alive," Bihari, 52, said.

Like many poor in India, it was very hard for him to get a court ruling to reverse the decision, due to corruption and a backlog of millions of cases in the judiciary.

"Nearly 3,000 others are fighting their independent battles in other parts of U.P. (Uttar Pradesh) to prove that they are alive," Bihari said.

Senior state government official V.K. Sharma said as per records, there are 313 cases of persons who have been wrongly declared as dead even though they are alive.

"Another round of probe is currently underway and we suspect many more such cases could be unearthed," he said.

In 1980, Bihari added 'Mritak', or "dead," to his name.

He even got his wife to apply, unsuccessfully, for a widow's pension.

He once staged the kidnapping of a cousin so that a criminal case could be brought against him -- and therefore prove legally he was alive.

"But even that did not happen as my relatives understood my intention behind the desperate move and knew that there was no danger to the cousin's life," he added.

Bihari has contested other elections, including one parliamentary election in 1989 against then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

"Even my physical presence in the electoral fray did not help me to prove that I was alive," he lamented.

Victory came years later in 1994, when a local revenue official restored his status as "alive" in the same land records where he had been shown as "dead."

Motorists drove around dead body on road

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - More than two dozen Israeli motorists maneuvered around the dead body of a road accident victim lying in the middle of a busy intersection, failing to stop to help in an incident captured by a traffic camera.

In footage broadcast by Israeli television stations on Monday and in a series of photographs on newspaper front pages, motorcyclist Moshe Yisraeli was seen trying to squeeze between two trucks at a junction on a highway near Tel Aviv Sunday.

He never made it. The camera captured his body lying near the centre of the four-way intersection, his motorcycle meters away on its side.

Some 30 cars and trucks slowed down and then carefully drove around the prone motorcylist in a stream of traffic that continued for nearly two minutes before a driver stopped his vehicle and approached the body.

An ambulance crew later pronounced Yisraeli, 63, dead at the scene.

Israelis have a reputation for rushing to the scene of accidents or Palestinian bombings to help victims, and the apparent apathy shown in Yisraeli's case touched off a public debate over whether Israeli society has become uncaring.

"It's hard for me to think that no one helped him. I prefer to believe that people were in shock and didn't understand what had happened," Yisraeli's daughter, Tali, told reporters.

Horror story for family filmgoers

A FAMILY film audience was stunned to get an unintended glimpse of a horror movie, which left some parents shaken and the cinema chain apologising for the mix-up.

Moviegoers in Holtsville, New York were expecting to see The Last Mimzy, the PG-rated tale of a brother and sister who discover a mysterious box of toys and become endowed with superhuman powers to help preserve humanity's future.

Instead, they saw the opening scene of The Hills Have Eyes 2, the 18-rated sequel to a recent remake of a 1977 horror classic by Wes Craven. The Hills Have Eyes 2, which centres on National Guard troops who stumble on a clan of mutant cannibals, starts with a chained woman giving birth to a mutant.

"There were kids that were crying, people trying to cover the kids' eyes, they were caught off guard," said Anthony Rasco, who was in the audience when the scene was unexpectedly shown at the Island 16 multiplex last Thursday.

Another patron said his three-year-old son left with lingering, and unsettling, questions.

"My wife is eight months pregnant, and he's been asking: 'Is that what mommy's going to have?'" said Frank Doll, 31.

Staff stopped the movie, gave the audience members vouchers, and started The Last Mimzy about half an hour late.

National Amusements Inc, which operates the Island 16 and about 1,500 other movie screens in the United States and elsewhere, expressed "deepest apologies" in a statement.

"We are working with our theatre's managers to correct this situation and ensure that it does not happen again."

Body hanging from tree mistaken for Halloween decoration

FREDERICA, Delaware (AP) -- The apparent suicide of a woman found hanging from a tree went unreported for hours because passers-by thought the body was a Halloween decoration, authorities said.

The 42-year-old woman used rope to hang herself across the street from some homes on a moderately busy road late Tuesday or early Wednesday, state police said.

The body, suspended about 15 feet above the ground, could be easily seen from passing vehicles.

State police spokesman Cpl. Jeff Oldham and neighbors said people noticed the body at breakfast time Wednesday but dismissed it as a holiday prank. Authorities were called to the scene more than three hours later.

"They thought it was a Halloween decoration," Fay Glanden, wife of Mayor William Glanden, told The (Wilmington) News Journal.

"It looked like something somebody would have rigged up," she said.

Marauding pit bulls attack six

CARY, Illinois (AP) -- A 10-year-old boy was in critical condition Sunday after three pit bulls escaped from a home and went on a rampage, attacking six people before police shot and killed dogs, authorities said.

No charges had been filed Sunday, but McHenry County Sheriff Keith Nygren said it was being investigated as a crime scene.

Neighbors said the attacks started late Saturday afternoon when children going door-to-door for a fund-raiser arrived at the home of Scott Sword, 41, who owned the dogs.

"We had music playing, and I heard this bizarre sound," said Debby Rivera, who lives three houses away. "I looked out the window, and I saw a young boy. The dogs were just jumping on him."

"The screams were horrible," she said. The dogs were "relentless, like they were possessed."

The pit bulls attacked the two children, and when the dogs' owner tried to stop them, the dogs turned on him and bit off his thumb, Nygren said. The boy's father also tried to protect his son and was attacked. The dogs went after another neighbor as well.

"The scene sprawled over a couple blocks; it was a very chaotic scene," said Lt. Michael Douglas of the Cary Fire Protection District.

Residents threw rocks at the dogs and honked car horns to try to distract them from attacking before police arrived and shot the animals.

Jim Malone said he and a neighbor tried to beat the dogs back with baseball bats. "He'd hit them, they'd run, and they'd come back," Malone said. "This went on for 15 minutes."

The boy who was attacked, Nick Foley, was hospitalized in critical condition Sunday. His friend Jordan Lamarre, also 10, was in serious condition. Nick's father was listed in good condition. Sword and two others were treated for injuries and released.

Last week, another 10-year-old boy in Colorado was mauled by a pack of pit bulls that attacked him in his own back yard. The boy was in critical condition after the attack, and the hospital said Sunday his family had requested no further information about his condition be released.

The attack in the Denver suburb of Aurora came two days after the City Council banned pit bulls and other "fighting dogs." Owners who already had the dogs could keep them if they paid a $200 annual license fee.

Missing child found in shot croc

BEIJING, China (AP) -- A crocodile shot to death in south China during a search for a missing 9-year-old student was found to contain the child's remains, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The crocodile was shot Saturday in a park in Beihai, a city in the Guangxi region, by investigators looking for the missing child. Investigators confirmed that human remains found in the reptile were that of the student, the report said.

The child, surnamed Liu, disappeared Friday after Liu and three other children climbed over the fence around a pool in the park that had been used to stage crocodile shows, Xinhua said.

"The children shot the animals with catapults and beat them with wooden sticks," the agency said. "One of the irritated crocodiles bit Liu's clothes and dragged him into water, where he was eaten by a swarm of crocodiles."

Snipers used pork to lure the reptiles from the pool on Saturday and shot the first one that crawled ashore, the report said.

No other details were given, and it wasn't immediately clear what would happen to the other crocodiles.

Local residents said the park's owner had hired a keeper for the crocodiles, but it was not clear why the man was not at the site when the students broke in, the report said.

The manager and the keeper were being held by police.

Davie Boy Imitates Movie, Tries Flying Out Window

DAVIE, Fla. -- A 4-year-old boy broke his leg after he jumped out of a second-floor window while trying to imitate a character from his favorite movie Wednesday night.

Gustavo Osario was alone in his bedroom at his home on Cedar Creek Place when he tried to fly out of the window. He said he got the idea from watching his favorite movie, "The Little Vampire."

Osario's father said his son watched the movie last week and told him he wanted to fly like the main character, but his father didn't believe him. He said he arrived home and found his son curled up in the driveway.

Osario was taken to the hospital and treated for a broken leg. He was using a walker to move around his home.

Trapeze artist plunges to his death during show

MONTEBELLO, California. (AP) -- A circus performer fell about 40 feet to his death during a performance in Southern California, authorities said.

The 35-year-old trapeze artist died Monday night, said Sgt. Jacqueline Gonzalez of the Los Angeles County Police Department. The man was performing with Circus Vasquez, a troupe that had traveled to California from Mexico for the show at the Whittier Narrows Recreation Area in unincorporated Los Angeles County, Gonzalez said.

His name was being withheld pending family notification.

Authorities said the man was performing without a net when he fell.

Los Angeles County firefighters happened to be at the show to monitor the next performance, which involved fire, Gonzalez said. The firefighters responded, but the man died at the scene, she said.

Investigators with the Los Angeles County sheriff's department were investigating.

Skulls Found In Chicago Apartment Check Out With Police

CHICAGO -- Four human skulls were discovered in a man's apartment, one boiling in a pot of water, but authorities said charges aren't likely.

"It doesn't seem to be anything nefarious at this time," police Lt. Perry Nigro said. The 26-year-old owner of the skulls makes anatomical models for a living and appeared to be using them for medical purposes, Nigro said.

"As weird as it is, it doesn't seem like anything is wrong," Nigro said.

Police searched the apartment after someone who wanted to buy a mannequin in the home visited late Tuesday and saw the skulls on a porch and inside, with one boiling on the stove.

The man left and called police, Nigro said.

The skulls were turned over to the Cook County medical examiner's office, Nigro said.

The skulls' owner told authorities that he imported them legally from China.

Marines Drop High Schooler After Violent Essay

Boy Charged After Teacher Read Essay

CHICAGO -- Allen Lee was on the verge of realizing a dream to become a Marine after signing enlistment papers this month. But one violent, profanity-laced English essay later, the 18-year-old's future with the Marine Corps appears to be over.

Because of pending criminal charges stemming from his essay, Lee's recruiter told him Friday that the Marine Corps has discharged him from his contract, said Sgt. Luis R. Agostini, spokesman for the Marine Corps Recruiting Station Chicago.

"Basically, he is no longer an applicant to become a Marine," Agostini said.

The senior at suburban Cary-Grove High School was charged this week with two misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct after the principal turned his creative writing essay over to police.

Lee initially faced just one charge, but an amended complaint filed Thursday cited a second passage.

"In light of recent events (at Virginia Tech), that is part of the context of what happened that makes the reaction all the more reasonable," said Tom Carroll, first assistant state's attorney in McHenry County.

Lee, who has a 4.2 grade-point average and never has been in trouble before, is being tutored at administrative offices while school officials decide his future, said his lawyer, Thomas Loizzo.

The charges are a product of paranoia, born of the massacre of 32 students at Virginia Tech by a social outcast who then killed himself, Loizzo said.

"Once the dust settles, once they look at this through clearer glasses, we think that the state will do the right thing and dismiss the charges," Loizzo said.

The essay, written Monday, reads in part, "Blood, sex and booze. Drugs, drugs, drugs are fun. Stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, s...t...a...b...puke. So I had this dream last night where I went into a building, pulled out two P90s and started shooting everyone, then had sex with the dead bodies. Well, not really, but it would be funny if I did."

The teacher told students: "'Be creative; there will be no judgment and no censorship,"' Thomas Loizzo said. "There was never any warning from the teacher that if she determined the paper to be offensive, she would then pass it along to the authorities."

School district spokesman Jeff Puma declined to discuss the specifics of the essay or Lee's future, citing privacy concerns.

"The essay was inappropriate in that it caused a question about safety," Puma said.

The charges could result in a $1,500 fine and as many as 30 days in jail if Lee is convicted.

Lee hopes to re-enlist if the charges are cleared and he's allowed to return to school, said his other attorney, Dane Loizzo.

Lee wrote in a statement provided by his attorney that he has completed military entrance exams, including a psychiatric evaluation.

"If I'm qualified to defend the country, I believe I'm qualified to attend school," he wrote.

Sixth-grader admits stabbing ducks with pencil

WICHITA, Kansas (AP) -- A sixth-grader stabbed to death a mother duck and two ducklings that had nested near a school, distressing the other children and alarming officials who said the boy needs mental health treatment.

Students at Wilbur Middle School had named the mother duck Lucy and were monitoring her and her brood, making sure no one disturbed the nest in a grassy creek bed. Their mutilated bodies -- stabbed with a pencil -- were found this week.

An announcement over the public address system led the boy to admit the killings, officials said. They said he had also talked about the act to classmates and didn't understand why it was wrong.

The boy, whose name was not released, was suspended Wednesday. His return to the school will hinge on a hearing.

School officials were responding "the way we do whenever we believe that a child might be a risk to himself or others," said Liz McGinness, who coordinates the district's mental health crisis team.

She said his parents were being told they must seek outside mental health care. "We really don't mince words on this," she said. "We know that animal cruelty is a very serious, significant behavior."

No decision has been made on possible criminal charges. Killing mallard ducks is illegal this time of year, and even in hunting season, the way they were killed would be illegal, officials said.

Mark Rankin, assistant director of law enforcement for the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, said the boy may not be charged because of his age. A hunting violation charge could bring an adult up to seven days in jail and a $250 fine, while animal cruelty carries up to a year in jail and $10,000 in fines, he said.

Kris Meckenstock said his seventh-grade son helped monitor the nest and "just can't believe somebody could be so mean."

"By the same token, I think that kid obviously needs help," Meckenstock added. "My thought is, we need to look a little bit further and find out why somebody would have those tendencies."

Wilbur students and staff held a ceremony Thursday "to share their grief for these animals," McGinness said.

Eight dead as canoeists sucked into turbines