Ohio wants special car plates for sex offenders

CINCINNATI (Reuters) - Lawmakers in Ohio said on Wednesday they want to force convicted sex offenders to use a fluorescent-green licence plate on their cars so they can be easily identified.

A Republican and a Democrat in the state legislature in Columbus have joined forces to propose the law, which echoes measures in several U.S. states that require convicted drunken drivers to use a yellow, pink or red plate on their cars. "The fluorescent-green licence plate will make the most egregious sex offenders easily identifiable," state Democratic Rep. Michael DeBose said in a statement. Police said the green plates would allow them to track sex offenders, who are already required to register with the local sheriff's office and are prohibited from living within 1,000 feet (300 metres) of a school.

"It will give Ohio families a great peace of mind knowing that their children will be able to recognise where this danger exists," Summit County Sheriff Drew Alexander said.
Alexander joined the politicians at a news conference in Columbus, the state capital, to praise the proposed law. Opponents of the proposed law argue the use of a special plate would stigmatise everyone who shared the offender's car -- including their spouse or children.
The proposed law will be debated in committee before a decision is made whether to put the proposal to a vote.

New Star Trek Movie in 2008

Captain's log: December 25, 2008.

Paramount Pictures has set a Christmas Day 2008 release date for the 11th "Star Trek" feature, to be filmed by "Mission: Impossible III" director J.J. Abrams. Shooting will begin in the fall, Paramount said Tuesday.

The screenplay, from "M:I 3" scribes Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, is said to follow James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock during their Starfleet Academy years and into their first space mission.
The previous film in the series, the 2002 box office bomb, "Star Trek: Nemesis," was directed by Stuart Baird

For more go to http://www.reuters.com/article/filmNews/idUSN2625638120070227

Salmonella Outbreak Linked To Peanut Butter

Government scientists struggled Thursday to pinpoint the source of the first U.S. salmonella outbreak linked to peanut butter, the kid favorite packed into millions of lunchboxes every day.

Nearly 300 people in 39 states have fallen ill since August, and federal health investigators said they strongly suspect Peter Pan peanut butter and certain batches of Wal-Mart's Great Value house brand — both manufactured by ConAgra Foods Inc.
Shoppers across the country were warned to throw out jars with a product code on the lid beginning with "2111," which denotes the plant where it was made.

How the dangerous germ got into the peanut butter was a mystery. But because peanuts are usually heated to high, germ-killing temperatures during the manufacturing process, government and industry officials said the contamination may have been caused by dirty jars or equipment. "We think we have very strong evidence that this was the brand of peanut butter. Now it goes to the next step of going to the place where the peanut butter was made and focusing in on the testing," said Dr. Mike Lynch, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The suspect peanut butter was produced by ConAgra at its only peanut butter plant, in Sylvester, Ga., federal investigators said. ConAgra said it is not clear how many jars are affected by the recall. But the plant is the sole producer of the nationally distributed Peter Pan brand, and the recall covers all peanut butter — smooth and chunky alike — produced by the plant from May 2006 until now. "We're talking a lot of jars of peanut butter," said Dr. David Acheson, chief medical officer of the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

FDA inspectors visited the now shut-down plant Wednesday and Thursday to try to pinpoint where the contamination could have happened. The FDA last inspected the plant in 2005. Testing was also being done on at least some the salmonella victims' peanut butter jars, but investigators said some may have already been discarded. The highest number of cases were reported in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Tennessee and Missouri. About 20 percent of all the ill were hospitalized, and there were no deaths, the CDC said.

About 85 percent of the infected people said they ate peanut butter, and about a quarter of them ate it at least once a day, the CDC's Lynch said. It was the only food that most of the patients had all recently eaten. Salmonella sickens about 40,000 people a year in the U.S. and kills about 600. It can cause diarrhea, fever, dehydration, abdominal pain and vomiting.
But most cases of salmonella poisoning are caused by undercooked eggs and chicken. The only known salmonella outbreak in peanut butter — in Australia during the mid-1990s — was blamed on unsanitary plant conditions.

ConAgra spokesman Chris Kircher said the company randomly tests 60 to 80 jars of peanut butter that come off its Sylvester plant's line each day for salmonella and other germs, and "we've had no positive hits on that going back for years." But he said the plant was shut down as a precaution for further investigation. "We're trying to understand what else we need to do or should be doing," Kircher said. An estimated 974 million pounds of peanut butter are sold each year in the U.S., and peanut butter and jelly is the most popular sandwich among children. Peter Pan is one of the nation's top three brands, though well behind market leader Jif. Great Value peanut butter is also produced by some other manufacturers for Wal-Mart.

In a measure of peanut butter's popularity, ConAgra's hot line was swamped with so many calls after the recall was announced on Wednesday that many people got a busy signal. School officials in Houston confiscated students' sandwiches from home and replaced them with those made at schools. And in Georgia, a lawmaker representing one of the nation's biggest peanut-producing areas warned colleagues to throw out jars of peanut butter that he recently handed out.
The outbreak was detected by the CDC and state health agencies when they noticed spikes in the cases of people sickened by an unusual type of salmonella, starting in August. Once peanut butter emerged as a link, the CDC notified the FDA.

Salmonella commonly originates in the feces of birds and animals, and could be introduced at a multitude of stages in the peanut butter-making process. But many safeguards are in place.
While rodents and birds commonly get into peanut storage bins, germs are killed when raw peanuts are roasted. When making peanut butter, the nuts are again heated — above the salmonella-killing temperature of 165 degrees — as they are ground into a paste and mixed with other ingredients before being squirted into jars and quickly sealed. "The heating process is sufficient to kill salmonella, should it be present," said Mike Doyle, director of the University of Georgia's Center for Food Safety, in the state that produces nearly half of the nation's peanuts.
Experts say the point in the process where salmonella could be introduced and survive would be as the product cools down, is placed in the jars and then sealed. At most plants, those steps take just minutes.

But "there is quite a lot that happens after that heat step ... before it's put in jars. So there's definitely an opportunity for contamination after the roasting," the FDA's Acheson said.
Acheson speculated a small, on-again, off-again source of contamination caused the outbreak, which would explain the relatively small number of illness. That "will make finding it in peanut butter difficult. But that's not going to stop us from looking," he said.

Other states reporting cases are Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and West Virginia.

The strain in this outbreak, Salmonella serotype Tennessee, is comparatively rare, as is salmonella contamination of peanut products, said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. It may have taken a long time to identify peanut butter as the source because "it's just not one of the first things you'd suspect," Smith DeWaal said.
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To get a refund, consumers should send lids and their names and addresses to ConAgra Foods, P.O. Box 57078, Irvine, CA 92619-7078. For more information, call (866) 344-6970.

For more on this go to Yahoo.com news section.

Cross-dressing lawyer hangs up his dress

A male lawyer who appeared in court dressed in women's clothes as a protest against what he said was New Zealand's overly-masculine judiciary was suspended Wednesday after being found to be in contempt of court.

The High Court found Rob Moodie, a 68-year-old, balding man who appeared in court in dresses and toting a handbag, was in contempt for circulating suppressed documents outside the court in one of his cases.

Moodie officially changed his name to "Miss Alice" as part of his protest against the "old boys network" that he said runs the nation's judiciary, and was granted an award for the most bizarre conduct by a lawyer in 2006 by London's The Times newspaper.

The protest began after a coroner's inquest largely blamed a farming couple for the collapse of a bridge on their property built by the army. Moodie obtained documents apportioning much of the blame for the collapse to faulty wood used by New Zealand Defense Force engineers, and posted the report on the Internet despite a judge's order it not be distributed.

The High Court on Wednesday found Moodie guilty of contempt of court, suspended him for three months, fined him and ordered him to pay costs. Moodie announced after the ruling he would quit the law altogether, and end his cross-dressing protest because he no longer needed to appear "in a 19th-century Alice in Wonderland environment that allows pomp, self-importance and deference to the court to eclipse the truth."

For more go to Yahoo.com news section.

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's DAy to everyone out there who visits the blog. I hope everyone has a great day.

Dead pets give birth to diamond ring

According to Yahoo.com news section: Sue Rogers will never be without her dead dogs and cat after having a diamond ring made from their ashes.

Rogers, from Devon paid 3,200 pounds for the ring made from carbon extracted from the ashes of Lucky, an old English sheepdog, a golden retriever cross called Sam and a tom cat, Patch, a newspaper said Saturday. "I am delighted with my ring as it means I can have my pets with me at all times," Rogers told the Daily Mail newspaper.

"My animals meant the world to me and even though they are gone they are still with me. It's a beautiful ring and such a brilliant idea."Rogers, 44, had previously kept the ashes of her pets on her mantelpiece until she learnt of LifeGem UK, which makes diamonds from the remains of humans and pets.

A small amount of carbon from each set of ashes was heated at temperatures of 3,000 degrees Celsius to help make a rough diamond.The stone was then polished and certified before being set in a gold band.

For more go to www.yahoo.com and check their news section.

Rare white tiger triplets born at Argentine zoo

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Three rare white tiger cubs delighted visitors at the Buenos Aires zoo on Thursday, tumbling in the grass of their enclosure in their first public appearance since being born late last year.

Zookeepers said the birth of the blue-eyed Bengal tiger triplets represented an important contribution to saving the animals from extinction.

"There are only about 250, not even 300, animals of this variety in captivity, so every birth in the Buenos Aires zoo contributes to saving this type of Bengal tiger," chief veterinarian Miguel Rivolta told Reuters Television.

Rivolta said the zoo's breeding record showed the tigers had exactly the right environment and diet, which includes 10 kg (22 pounds) of mutton twice a week as well as fresh poultry meat.
White tiger mother Bety gave birth to the cubs, two females and one male, on December 23 but Thursday was the first time zoo visitors were able to see them.

White tigers are a genetic variation of the better-known orange Bengal tigers.

Between 5,000-7,000 tigers live in the wild, down from 100,000 at the start of the 20th-century. Poaching, deforestation and over-hunting of their natural prey have hit their numbers.
"There's a big party every time there's a birthday at the zoo," Rivolta said. "It's a step forward for the conservation project."

For more on this go to http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/tigers_argentina_dc

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Character Triggers Boston Bomb Scare

Authorities have arrested two men in connection with electronic light boards depicting a middle-finger-waving moon man that triggered repeated bomb scares around Boston on Wednesday and prompted the closure of bridges and a stretch of the Charles River. Meanwhile, police and prosecutors vented their anger at Turner Broadcasting Inc., the parent company of CNN, which said the battery-operated light boards were aimed at promoting the late-night Adult Swim cartoon "Aqua Teen Hunger Force."

Boston officials condemned Turner for not taking proper steps to end the bomb scares earlier and for not issuing an adequate apology to the city.

Turner Broadcasting said in written statements the devices had been placed around Boston and nine other cities in recent weeks as part of a guerrilla marketing campaign to promote the show.
"We apologize to the citizens of Boston that part of a marketing campaign was mistaken for a public danger," Phil Kent, CEO and chairman of Turner Broadcasting System Inc., said in one of two statements issued by the company.

"As soon as we realized that an element of the campaign was being mistaken for something potentially dangerous, appropriate law enforcement officials were notified and through federal law enforcement channels, we identified the specific locations of the advertisements in all 10 cities in which they are posted. We also directed the third-party marketing firm who posted the advertisements to take them down immediately."

For more on the story visit here:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/31/boston.bombscare/index.html