School bus liquor-store run gets cops' attention
Associated Press

Stupid People In Government

No cash for trash? French Quarter may stink again
Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS - Since Hurricane Katrina, the beer-soaked, urine-splashed, puke-puddled French Quarter of old has been scrubbed clean. But with the city facing tough financial times, it may no longer be able to afford to pay for all the services of an army of sanitation workers who pick up after the partying.
The timing couldn't be worse for tourism officials working to continue bringing visitors to one of the city's brightest post-Katrina spots during a recession - and with Mardi Gras right around the corner. 

The city's sanitation department has instructed contractor SDT Waste & Debris Services to halt its Disney-like services in the Quarter, including mechanical street sweeping and pressure washing, after Jan. 31. The company would still do basic trash pickup.
But eliminating the $4 million in extra services would take about 75 sanitation workers off the streets.
Tourism and business leaders say the city, even with its financial struggles, can ill afford a return to a stinkier, dirtier French Quarter.
"The French Quarter is the face of the city of New Orleans for many people," said Kurt Weigle, president of the Downtown Development District, which does its own sidewalk cleaning outside the Quarter. "As it goes, so goes people's perceptions of the rest of the city."

The Quarter was spared severe damage in Katrina because it is on relatively high ground near the Mississippi River, but Mayor Ray Nagin made cleaning up the touristy Quarter a centerpiece of the city's comeback. Nagin has defended his position, saying even without the extra cleanup, the Quarter would still have better services than it did before Katrina.
New Orleans' economy relies heavily on tourism and shop owners say they regularly hear visitors comment on the freshened Quarter, where trash as incidental as cigarette butts doesn't stay on the streets long. That's a far cry from before the storm, when a Sunday morning walk often included inhaling the nose-wrinkling stink of trash and what was left from the previous night's partying.
"I always thought that was part of the charm, that you had to smell puke, you had to smell all these different things while walking to work," said Gwen Rodriguez, who lives and works in the Quarter. "When anything went on, like a parade or whatever, the streets were even dirtier. (Tuesday) night, there was a parade in front of the store, and it was taken care of within moments. It was almost like it didn't happen."

When SDT took over the French Quarter cleanup, it put crews on the streets 20 hours a day. Bourbon Street, the main street for New Orleans' wild side, was downright spiffy one recent morning, void of any beer cups or vomit. SDT workers on litter patrol, also serving as a neighborhood watch of sorts, drove golf carts through the Quarter. A man in a black SDT shirt and hoodie swept sidewalk dirt or litter into a dust pan. Another worker pressure washed what he described as urine from a wall in a high-traffic area, leaving a lemony-smell and sudsy water in his work's wake. Water trucks and street sweeping machines also made the rounds.

Nagin, while sympathetic to concerns of tourism officials, said the city doesn't have the money to maintain much more than routine trash collection services. The city has relied on loans to balance its budget since Katrina with the goal of being self-sufficient by 2011. But Nagin and the City Council have been locked in a budget battle for months about how best to maintain basic city services while addressing an emergency fund depleted by Hurricane Gustav and trying to steady, if not improve, the city's financial standing to help it sell bonds for infrastructure projects and stave off large repayments from a pension fund deal that predated Nagin's administration.
A hiring and spending freeze Nagin imposed after Hurricane Gustav remains in effect, and Nagin spokeswoman Ceeon Quiett said that at a time when the city is struggling to maintain basic services, it cannot logically afford enhanced services.
"Once we set the revenues for the city, with all the services that we have to provide, we basically looked at everything and basically started to make some hard calls. And this is one of the hard calls," Nagin said. The City Council put off settling the issue until Monday.

Nagin, in an e-mail to two council members, said he'd be willing to continue enhanced services such as manual street cleaning, twice daily litter can pickups and special events cleaning for such occasions as Mardi Gras after Jan. 31, if the council met other budgetary conditions. Left out would be services like mechanical street and sidewalk cleaning, street flushing and pressure washing of streets and sidewalks.
Restaurateur Ralph Brennan said the enhanced services are important and that Quarter businesses shouldn't be asked to help pay for them - an option that's been bandied around. Brennan said he already pays for sanitation services and keeps the area around his businesses tidy. "Tourism's teetering right now," Brennan said. " ... I don't think we should mess with anything related to tourism now."

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Bullhead City eternal flame lasts only until gas bill arrives
Associated Press
BULLHEAD CITY - Officials in Bullhead City extinguished the eternal flame at the city's new veterans memorial park after receiving a $961 gas bill, but quickly did an about face after protests by veterans groups.

The Medal of Honor Memorial at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Park alongside the Colorado River was lit on Veterans Day in November. When the bill arrived in late December, city officials were stunned.
"It caught us by surprise," City Manager Tim Ernster said Thursday. "What we decided to do for the time being is to turn the flame on ... for special events, for Veterans Day, Fourth of July, Memorial Day - those types of activities." The flame was extinguished on Monday.
The local newspaper published a story in Friday's edition quoting city officials and disgruntled veterans who had worked to pay for and build the memorial before turning it over to the city. By midmorning Friday, the flame was back on. City spokesman Steve Johnson said it was re-lit after a meeting on Friday morning.
"What happened was really a miscommunication," Johnson said. "The issue came up one day and it was never intended to be shut off." Johnson said the flame is impressive, but city parks officials are looking at ways to put a smaller burner in place and only use the larger one at special events.
"We're looking at alternatives, because $1,000 a month in these economic times is certainly a consideration," Johnson said.

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The Religion Of Peace - Islam

Afghan held for sister's alleged abortion in shed
Associated Press 
KABUL, Afghanistan - The mother and brother of a 14-year-old girl who was raped are facing prosecution for allegedly performing an abortion on her in a cattle shed in central Afghanistan, officials said.
The brother, who has been arrested by police, has confessed to cutting her stomach open with a razor blade and removing and burying the fetus. He has said he acted alone. The mother has not yet been detained because she lives in a remote area, several hours' drive from the provincial capital, Provincial Police Chief Ewaz Khan said.
The girl was in critical condition Friday at Bagram Air Base outside Kabul, having been flown there the night before for treatment, said Capt. Elizabeth Mathias, a spokeswoman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Bagram doctors said the girl had been about five months pregnant when she underwent the "traumatic c-section," according to Mathias.

The abortion was performed about nine days ago, using no anesthesia. The incisions were stitched up with a thick string usually used to sew up potato sacks, said Gulam Mohammad Nader, one of the doctors who treated the girl in the provincial capital. He said the wound became dangerously infected.
The girl's 20-year-old brother, Ali, told The Associated Press in a phone interview from prison that he now regretted his actions. "I had thought it was simple," he said. Ali, who did not want his last name used, said his mother was against the abortion, though she did not try to prevent it.
Mohammad Nasir Fayaz, administrative head of the district where the family lives, said the girl told him that her mother was involved. The mother could not be reached for comment. It was not clear if the two had obtained lawyers yet.

Abortion is illegal in Afghanistan except if the mother's health is in danger. Even in those cases, a panel of three doctors has to approve the operation, said Dr. Abdullah Fahim, a spokesman for the health ministry. Families in the deeply conservative country - where there are strong taboos against sex outside of marriage - often got to extreme lengths to conceal rape, which can destroy a victim's reputation and future. Girls who are raped have little chance of ever getting married and married women are often shunned by their husbands.
The victim and her family are tainted with the shame of the act and the woman is often accused of having consented to the sex.
"I told my sister that this was bad for us, for our family, and bad for the community," Ali told the AP.
Nader said the girl told him that she had not known her mother and brother's plan when they took her into the cattle shed. She said the two of them wrestled her to the ground and held her down while they cut her stomach open. She blacked out for much of the ordeal, but she said she remembered seeing her brother hold up the fetus. Police have recovered the body of the fetus and the man suspected in the rape is in custody, Khan said.

The ad hoc abortion was discovered when the girl failed to recover after about four days at home and her father brought her to a small hospital near their village, Nader said. The father told doctors there she had been attacked by a dog, but physicians discovered the truth upon examining her. A doctor there called provincial health officials who told them to get her to Bamiyan as quickly and quietly as possible. "I told him to keep it low profile, because I was worried they (the parents) would kill her" to keep it quiet, said Ihsanullah Shahir, the head of the province's health department.
She arrived at Bamiyan hospital Tuesday. Nader, the physician, said she had been flow to Bagram because Bamiyan Hospital did not have specialized equipment needed to repair damage done to her internal organs.

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Simply Too Freaky To Categorize

Texas death row inmate pulls out good eye, eats it
Associated Press
HOUSTON - A Texas death row inmate with a history of mental problems pulled out his only good eye and told authorities he ate it.
Andre Thomas, 25, was arrested for the fatal stabbings of his estranged wife, their young son and her 13-month-old daughter in March 2004. Their hearts also had been ripped out.

He was convicted and condemned for the infant's death. While in the Grayson County Jail in Sherman, Thomas plucked out his right eye before his trial later in 2004. A judge subsequently ruled he was competent to stand trial.

A death-row officer at the Polunsky Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice found Thomas in his cell with blood on his face and took him to the infirmary. "Thomas said he pulled out his eye and subsequently ingested it," agency spokesman Jason Clark said Friday. Thomas was treated at East Texas Medical Center in Tyler after the Dec. 9, 2008 incident. Then he was transferred and remains at the Jester Unit, a prison psychiatric facility near Richmond southwest of Houston. "He will finally be able to receive the mental health care that we had wanted and begged for from Day 1," Bobbie Peterson-Cate, Thomas' trial attorney, told the Sherman Herald Democrat. "He is insane and mentally ill. It is exactly the same reason he pulled out the last one."

At his trial, defense lawyers also argued he suffered from alcohol and drug abuse. Thomas does not have an execution date. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in October upheld his conviction and death sentence for the death of 13-month-old Leyha Marie Hughes. Also killed March 27, 2004, were his wife, Laura Christine Boren, 20, and their son, 4-year-old Andre Lee.

Thomas, from Texoma, walked into the Sherman Police Department and told a dispatcher he had just murdered the three and had stabbed himself in the chest. Thomas told police how he put his victims' hearts in his pocket and left their apartment, took them home, put them in a plastic bag and threw them in the trash. Court documents described the three victims as having "large, gaping wounds to their chests."

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Sitter charged with baby's death in dryer
Associated Press
GRETNA, La. - A Louisiana baby sitter is charged with second-degree murder after prosecutors say she put a baby into a spinning clothes dryer for disturbing her television watching.
Nineteen-year-old Arielle Smith was indicted by a grand jury Thursday for the baby's September death in the New Orleans suburb of Harvey. Authorities said 5-month-old Andre Jenkins died at the scene from skull fractures and burns suffered in the dryer.
Prosecutors said Smith was watching the baby and two older children at her home. She told police the children were being rambunctious and interfering with her television watching. Investigators said Smith put the baby in the dryer and turned it on for 3 minutes while the two older children were put in another room.
Smith's attorney declined comment.

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More to come.....