What chu talkin bout Willis? Strange stories....

[bimmer84]

You got yer Mac n cheese. We got our Cheetos.

[Panoptes]

Just goes to show that even the dumbed down idiocy of America is now well entrenched in law enforcement.

Friggen idiot cops.

[Sharkbait]

No one was hurt, now that's funny.

[Newbomb Turk]

the use of Cheetos is sooo redneck.......

[Kansas]

Sarah Jessica Parker with her newborn twins. Matthew Broderick might to want to think about a paternity test.

[FVD]

Woman from Ocala killed as she leans from truck, hits head on mailbox


By Renee Lee


Published: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 6:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at 10:45 p.m.

An Ocala woman was killed early Tuesday in the Tampa Bay area after striking her head on a row of mailboxes while leaning out of a moving vehicle, according to Pinellas Park police.

Angela Gaskin, 20, was pronounced dead at Northside Hospital in St. Petersburg.

The driver was her boyfriend, Karl Norman Jeckel, 24, of Clearwater. The collision occurred around 1 a.m. in the 4600 block of Lake Boulevard.

Police say evidence shows that Gaskin leaned most of her body out of the pickup, after which her head hit a bank of mailboxes in the Lakes subdivision.

Gaskin had been living in Pinellas County, where she recently had moved in with Jeckel, according to police and Gaskin's relatives.

Police are treating the accident as a possible case of driving under the influence. They are awaiting Jeckel's toxicology results. No charges had been filed as of Tuesday.

Gaskin's mother, Valerie, said that Jeckel told her that he had been drinking before the crash.

Gaskin's sister, Christy Williams, called the accident a "freak of nature."

Williams, who at 24 is the oldest of Gaskin's siblings, said she was also closest to Gaskin.

"We were like best friends," said Williams, an Ocala resident. "She had a lot of friends, and she will be very greatly missed."

Valerie Gaskin said she knew something was wrong when two law enforcement officers came to her home in Citra before dawn Tuesday.

"She always wanted to have fun," Valerie Gaskin said. "Everywhere she went, she had a bunch of friends with her."

Angela Gaskin also is survived by sisters Melissa Williams, 22 and Nicole Suris, 15.

Born in Gainesville, Gaskin attended North Marion High School. Before moving in with Jeckel, Gaskin had spent time living in Ocala with the family of her close friend Stephanie Spicer.

"I think she traveled around looking for love," said Spicer's mother, Marian, about Gaskin. "She really did just love life."

Valerie Gaskin plans to have her daughter cremated as soon as an autopsy is completed. Arrangements are pending.

[MiamiTreo3]

Did you notice both of her sisters have different last names? Being from Florida, I just hang my head in shame, when I hear stories like this!

[YT]

Perhaps her sisters are married and using their husbands last names?

[Mainevent]

Karl Norman Jeckel

That's a serial killer name if I ever heard one.

[MiamiTreo3]

Perhaps her sisters are married and using their husbands last names?

Well one is 15. The 22 year old is possible but.....this is Florida. Ocala is pretty white-trashy. I got my dog from there.

[FVD]

White trashy places are always great places to find dogs.

I noticed the different last names but I didn't really think twice of it. I'm sure they're all half sisters.

[MiamiTreo3]

White trashy places are always great places to find dogs.

Except usually they chew tobacco and try and screw they're sister!!

[dsred]

Even if the guy was drunk, did he MAKE her stick her head out the window?

Sorry, no sympathy here. I'm sure this one will make the Darwin Awards.

[bimmer84]

Detroit newspapers sometimes read like the National Enquirer. What was this guy thinking?


Police find 150 dead dogs in Dearborn home's freezers
Steve Pardo / The Detroit News

Dearborn -- An estimated 150 dead animals have been found in freezers in the basement of a home where more than 100 live Chihuahuas have been rescued since Wednesday.

"Most of the freezers have been removed from the site," Chief Ronald Haddad said at a press conference this afternoon. "The hazmat crews will remove further debris to make sure we don't miss anything."

It brings the count of dogs removed, alive and dead, somewhere around "250-260" according to the chief.

Advertisement

City workers, along with Friends for the Dearborn Animal Shelter, removed 42 ailing and feces-covered dogs from the home Wednesday. They returned Thursday and found more than 60 more dogs.

The 56-year-old man living in the house was taken to a local hospital for observation. His family, which lives in Florida, was involved in his care and cooperating with officials.

The man could face criminal charges, including animal cruelty, Haddad said.

"Aggravated animal cruelty is a four-year felony," Haddad said. "It would be up to the prosecutor or the courts to render how many counts."

Neighbors had complained of an odor, but this week was the first time Dearborn officials got inside.

As authorities searched the home, area residents brought pet food donations and filled out adoption applications at the Dearborn Animal Shelter, which was housing the rescued dogs.

Margaret Metas dropped off four 20-pound bags of dog food at the shelter. She has two dogs at her Dearborn Heights home and said she didn't want to see any of the rescued dogs for fear she would want to keep one.

"It's not much. It's only four bags, but it will feed them today," the 81-year-old said. "I couldn't handle the 40-pound bags. I couldn't get them off of the shelf and into the cart. ... They're just too heavy."

Shelter volunteers told people interested in adopting the dogs it would be about a week before they could go to homes. Friends for the Dearborn Animal Shelter is accepting donations on its Web site to help.

The Associated Press contributed.

[Panoptes]

Mermaid Sightings Claimed in Israel

Radford livescience's Bad Science Columnist livescience.com ? 1 hr 41 mins ago

Locals and tourists in the Israeli town of Kiryat Yam have been flocking to the coast in hopes of glimpsing a creature that most people believe only exist in fairy tales.


An alleged mermaid, said to resemble a cross between a fish and a young girl, only appears at sunset. It performs a few tricks for onlookers before disappearing for the night.

One of the first people to see the mermaid, Shlomo Cohen, said, "I was with friends when suddenly we saw a woman laying on the sand in a weird way. At first I thought she was just another sunbather, but when we approached she jumped into the water and disappeared. We were all in shock because we saw she had a tail."

The sightings apparently began several months ago.

$1 million reward

The town's tourism board is of course delighted with their newfound fame and local mystery fauna. Taking a cue from the town of Inverness, Scotland (on the shore of Loch Ness), the Kiryat Yam government has offered a $1 million reward for the first person to photograph the creature. Town spokesman Natti Zilberman thinks the reward money is well-spent. "I believe if there really is a mermaid then so many people will come to Kiryat Yam, a lot more money will be made than $1 million."

Of course, if the mermaid does not exist -- perhaps it is a hoax, an optical illusion, or a simple misperception of a known animal -- then the town's reward money will remain safe and unclaimed, while the economy benefits from the influx of tourists vying to get a photo that will leave them set for life.

It's not clear what people are seeing, though the power of suggestion and imagination can be strong. Identifying animals in water is inherently problematic, since eyewitnesses by definition are only seeing a small part of the creature. When you add in the factor of low light at sunset and the distances involved, positively identifying even a known creature can be very difficult -- to say nothing of a mythological one!

Mermaids have long held fascination for seafaring peoples. There are a few dozen significant historical claims of actual mermaid sightings. Most of them are clearly myths and legends, such as "true" stories about lovely young women who married sailors but were later discovered to be shape-shifting mermaids (such as in the film "Splash").

Other reports date back centuries, and offer no proof or evidence other than a curious story. For example, a Capt. Richard Whitbourne claimed he saw a mermaid in Newfoundland's St. James harbor in 1610. Another story, from 1830 Scotland, claimed that a young boy killed a mermaid by throwing rocks at it; the creature looked like a child of about 3 or 4, but had a salmon's tail instead of legs. The villagers supposedly had it a funeral and buried it in a small coffin.

P.T. Barnum's mermaid

Hoaxers have worked to satisfy the public's appetite for mermaids; the fact that none have ever actually been found is only a minor inconvenience.

The great showman P.T. Barnum introduced a mermaid to astounded crowd in the 1840s: his infamous "FeeJee Mermaid", actually a taxidermy fake. The head and torso of a small monkey was grafted onto the body and tail of a fish. It was bizarre and strange - --certainly nothing anyone had seen before - but a far cry from the banners and posters suggesting a beautiful, half-naked woman.

Other mermaid fakes appeared throughout the centuries. Some were manatees that had been dressed up to resemble a human form and exhibited for profit.

Whether the Israeli mermaid sighting is genuine, a hoax, or an innocent mistake exploited for tourism, the reality of finding a real mermaid might be different than people imagine, as shown by a song from the Newfoundland band Great Big Sea, which sings folk-rock versions of traditional sea shanties. One of their most popular songs, titled "The Mermaid," tells of a lonely sailor who courts a mermaid:

"I love the girl with all me heart / But I only like the upper part / I do not like the tail!"

Top 10 Mythical Beasts
The Surprising Realities of Mythical Creatures
The Science of Fairy Tales

Benjamin Radford is managing editor of the Skeptical Inquirer science magazine. He wrote about mermaids in his book Lake Monster Mysteries: Investigating the World's Most Elusive Creatures. His books, films, and other projects can be found on his website. His Bad Science column appears regularly on LiveScience.

Original Story: Mermaid Sightings Claimed in Israel
LiveScience.com chronicles the daily advances and innovations made in science and technology. We take on the misconceptions that often pop up around scientific discoveries and deliver short, provocative explanations with a certain wit and style. Check out our science videos, Trivia & Quizzes and Top 10s. Join our community to debate hot-button issues like stem cells, climate change and evolution. You can also sign up for free newsletters, register for RSS feeds and get cool gadgets at the LiveScience Store.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090814/sc_livescience/mermaidsightingsclaimedinisrael