Daily Rotten Archives February 11, 2004 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 FBI releases instructions from the necklace bomber Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | Submitted by: buck_fabies "The FBI yesterday released the partial text of handwritten notes that were found in a car belonging to an Erie pizza deliveryman-turned-bank robber who was killed in August when a bomb clamped around his neck exploded. Among other things, the notes read: 'Stay calm and do as instructed to survive,' and 'Do not delay.' ... The nine pages of notes offered detailed instructions to pizza deliveryman Brian Douglas Wells on how to rob the bank and directions to four locations in the Erie area... Wells, 46, robbed a PNC Bank branch in the Summit Towne Center shopping complex, about a mile from Erie, after telling employees he was carrying a bomb. When troopers pulled him over and handcuffed him a short time later, Wells told them that a dark-skinned man had fastened the bomb to him, started its timer and forced him to hold up the bank. Erie's police bomb squad was minutes away when the device exploded." Read article... Australian receives sharkectomy at hospital emergency room Australian Age | Submitted by: buck_fabies "A man attacked by a small shark swam 300 metres, walked to his car and drove to a local surf club to get help while the shark was still attached to his leg. The wobbegong, or carpet shark, attacked 22-year-old Luke Tresoglavic on Tuesday as he was snorkelling on a reef off Caves Beach, south of Newcastle... 'Once I got on to shore, a couple of people tried to help me but I could not remove it, it was stuck there. So I got up into my car and then drove to the clubhouse and luckily the guys down there had a clue what to do.' ... With blood oozing from 70 needle-like punctures in his leg, he drove to hospital, taking the dead shark with him." Read article... Girl accidentally dragged to death sltribune.com | Submitted by: optional "Even veteran police officers were having a hard time coming to terms Tuesday with the death of 8-year-old Allison Sousa, who was accidentally dragged to her death when her coat sleeve got caught in a car door... Allison had been standing by a group of mailboxes along the rural road four miles west of Cedar City, waiting with two other children for a school bus. Her aunt - Patricia Hilliard, 44 - drove up to pick up her mail. According to Gower, Allison opened the rear passenger door of Hilliard's car and asked for a ride to North Elementary School in Cedar City. But Hilliard said she couldn't take her, and when Allison closed the door, it caught the sleeve of her coat. Allison died after being dragged three miles at the side of the car. The aunt, unaware that her niece was caught in the door, headed south about a half-mile on Iron Springs Road, turned west onto state Route 56 and drove 2 1/2 more miles before a truck driver, who saw the trapped child, was able to get her to stop." Read article... Boy blinded to make invisibility potion The Age | Submitted by: Cupcake "Four Nigerian men were charged with plucking out the eyes of a 13-year-old schoolboy for use in witchcraft, the state news agency reported today. They face charges ranging from criminal conspiracy to grievous bodily harm and permanent disfigurement for the attack on the boy, who was taken to hospital in the north-eastern state of Bauchi. Police suspect the attack was commissioned by one of the defendants to make a charm believed to make people invisible... If found guilty, the defendants could have their own eyes removed under the Islamic sharia code." Read article... Mel Gibson's hellbound, non-Catholic wife MSNBC | Submitted by: Editfish "[Mel Gibson] was interviewed by the Herald Sun in Australia, and the reporter asked the star if Protestants are denied eternal salvation. 'There is no salvation for those outside the Church,' Gibson replied. 'I believe it.' He elaborated: 'Put it this way. My wife is a saint. She’s a much better person than I am. Honestly. She’s, like, Episcopalian, Church of England. She prays, she believes in God, she knows Jesus, she believes in that stuff. And it’s just not fair if she doesn’t make it, she’s better than I am. But that is a pronouncement from the chair. I go with it.' Gibson also said in the interview that he was nearly suicidal before he made his controversial film... 'when you get to that point where you don’t want to live, and you don’t want to die, it’s a desperate, horrible place to be. And I just hit my knees. And I had to use The Passion of the Christ to heal my wounds.'" Read article... Catholics fuck up Tibetan monk ceremony WOOD-TV 8 Grand Rapids | Submitted by: Reid Fleming "During a performance of a visiting group of Tibetan monks Tuesday night, a large group of Catholics, not affiliated with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Grand Rapids, started praying loudly and disrupting the event... As the monks were on stage at St. Adelbert's Basilica in Grand Rapids, about 150 people, members of the St. Margaret Mary Church in Allendale, started reciting the Rosary very loudly, causing a disturbance and putting an end to the monks' performance... Members of St. Margaret Mary say they felt offended that Tibetan monks, who don't believe in the same God as them, would hold a performance at a Catholic basilica and raise money for their cause." Read article... Suspicious story of spontaneous Italian combustion Register UK | Submitted by: Reid Fleming "The small village of Canneto di Caronia in Sicily has become the front line in the war of annihilation between humanity and Terminator-style roboappliances. For three weeks terrified residents have battled for their very survival against spontaneously-combusting TVs, fridges and cookers which have damaged twelve houses and provoked a full-scale evacuation of the hamlet. Mobile phones have mysteriously burst into flames, and even furniture - not previously noted for malevolent intent, except in the form of particluarly vicious sofabed mechanisms - has joined the struggle to purge mankind from the face of the planet. Experts are baffled, particularly so since the fires continue unabated even when the power is disconnected." Read article... Schoolgirls arrested for framing homeless man Sacramento Bee | Submitted by: Reid Fleming "Three 12-year-old girls were hauled out of school in handcuffs after police accused them of making up a story that sent a homeless man to jail for eight months... Last spring, the girls, then 11, told police they were stalked and attacked by Eric Nordmark, a 36-year-old hitchhiker, at a park in the Garden Grove region of Los Angeles. Nordmark was jailed on seven counts of assault and child molestation. One of the girls later admitted she and her friends made up the story to cover for her tardiness at school. The charges were dropped, and Nordmark was released." Read article... and This article... Swastikas finally gone from Windows font Register UK | Submitted by: zsoul "Microsoft today released a critical update to remove 'unacceptable symbols' from Bookshelf Symbol 7 font... This has hardly been a Blitzkrieg on Microsoft's part. The company has been aware of the presence of the Mark of the Beast since December. At the time it promised an immediate utility to remove the characters. It also passed the buck onto the hapless Japanese (from whose happy land the font apparently originated), and launched a damage-prevention campaign by contacting Jewish organisations before the whole thing got out of hand." Read article... Raelians still not giving up on cloning hoax News Corporation | Submitted by: Jonny Plasma "Clonaid yesterday claimed it had successfully created its sixth child, following the birth of a baby boy in Sydney last week... Head of the Clonaid project, biochemist Brigitte Boisselier, who is in Australia to monitor the birth, said the boy had been released from hospital and was being monitored by a local pediatrician... Clonaid was founded by the Raelians, a religious sect that believes extraterrestrials created life on Earth through genetic engineering. Boisselier is a 'bishop' in the movement, led by former French journalist Claude Vorilhon, who now calls himself 'Rael.'" Read article... Ashcroft blocked from patients' abortion records Chicago Sun-Times | Submitted by: Reid Fleming "A federal judge in Chicago has struck a blow to the Bush administration's fight to defend the constitutionality of a ban on a late-term procedure that anti-abortion activists call partial-birth abortions. U.S. Chief District Judge Charles P. Kocoras blocked a move by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to obtain medical records from Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where dozens of the controversial procedures have been performed in the past two years." Read article... Rumsfeld's memory not great on Iraqi WMD claims Sydney Morning Herald | Submitted by: Reid Fleming "Donald Rumsfeld said today he did not recall British Prime Minister Tony Blair's pre-war claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction ready to be deployed in 45 minutes. 'I don't remember the statement being made, to be perfectly honest,' Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news conference. General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he didn't remember the statement either." Read article... and This article... Cheney's men investigated in Valerie Plame scandal Guardian UK | Submitted by: Reid Fleming "Vice President Dick Cheney's political future was at stake yesterday in Washington, where a grand jury investigation was questioning administration officials about his office's role in leaking the name of a CIA operative for political motives... informed sources said last night that three of the five officials who are the real targets of the probe work or worked for Mr Cheney... The case centres around the leaking to the press in July of the name of Valerie Plame, apparently in response to public questioning of the US case for war against Iraq by her husband, Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador." Read article... Bush letting the army go broke until after November election Military.com | Submitted by: Graehme de Parke "The military will have no money to pay for the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for three months beginning Oct. 1 because the White House is declining to ask Congress for funding until December or January, well after the presidential election... The fiscal year - the government's spending year - runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30 annually. Funds for 2004, therefore, run out Sept. 30, 2004... President Bush is not asking Congress for a 2005 supplemental until December or January, according to Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters Tuesday the decision not to request a supplemental rested with the White House. He could not explain why the administration would allow a three-month gap in funding the war on terror, ostensibly its top priority." Read article...