Off the wall news.

[Old-Navy]

It's usually in Florida where one reads of lonely widows persuaded to pay extravagant prices for dance lessons, but Mimi Monica Wong, 61, is a different kind of dancing widow, according to an August Wall Street Journal report. A Hong Kong private banker with a top-drawer client list, Wong contracted to pay US$15.4 million over eight years for cha-cha and rumba lessons from two world-class instructors so she could excel on the international championship Latin dance circuit. However, she soured on their motivational approach ("lazy cow" and "(move your) fat arse" were allegedly part of their dialogue) and sued. In September, a court ordered Wong's $8 million advance returned, and she has since signed on with another instructor whose fee is a bargain: $21,000 a month. [Wall Street Journal, 8-3-06]

[cobychuck]

Atlantis shuttle's return flight triggers panic in Mexican village
Sep 22 5:08 PM US/Eastern



The Space Shuttle Atlantis's return flight prompted panic in a Mayan village in Mexico, with local residents inundating police with phone calls about a "ball of fire" in the sky and the "sound of an explosion," authorities said.
The emergency calls came in Thursday at about 5:15 am local time (1015 GMT), six minutes before NASA's Atlantis shuttle landed at Cape Canaveral in the US state of Florida, some 800 kilometers (497 miles) from Chunes, a small village on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.



"They asked us to search the area. A military unit confirmed that no small plane had crashed," said Abraham Oliva, director of public security for the municipality.

It was not until the evening, when authorities saw the television news, that they realized the suspicious sights and sounds had been produced by the shuttle as it streaked overhead, Oliva said.

[Old-Navy]

Trial judge Florentino Floro was fired by the Philippines supreme court in April, and his appeal rejected in August, after investigators found that he had claimed to rely on three mystic dwarves (Armand, Luis and Angel) for psychic powers and the ability to write while in a trance. (Floro protested media accounts of his firing to The Wall Street Journal in July, denying that dwarves helped him decide cases and writing that Armand, Luis and Angel are merely "spirit guides" and that he himself is "gifted" from God "to heal and to prophesy.") [BBC News, 8-18-06]

[Old-Navy]

"I shouldn't even be doing this," said Judge Gary F. McKinley in a Kenton, Ohio, courtroom in August. "I'm cutting you somewhat of a break," he told two star athletes of Kenton High who had just been convicted of vehicular vandalism in a prank that caused two men serious, life-long disabilities. The kids' sentence: 60 days in juvenile detention (plus community service), but only after football season. (The families of the victims were appalled, especially the family of the one who was brain-damaged.) [Columbus Dispatch, 8-16-06]

[Old-Navy]

Judge Paul E. Zellerbach was admonished by California's judicial agency in August for behavior in October 2004, when he left a jury deliberating a murder charge in order to attend an Angels-Red Sox playoff game and declined to leave the game when notified that the jury had reached a verdict (forcing everyone to return the next day). [Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, 8-16-06]

[Old-Navy]

In September, police in New Zealand dropped the dangerous-driving charge against the armless driver reported in News of the Weird in April, satisfied that he steers well enough with his left foot (though his speeding ticket remained). In August, though, the St. Petersburg Times profiled Michael Wiley, 39, of Port Richey, Fla., an enthusiastic driver despite having lost both arms and half a leg in a childhood accident. Wrote the Times, "He guides the key into the ignition with his mouth. Turns it with his toes. Shifts with his knee. Bites the headlight switch. Jams his stump of a left arm into the steering wheel and whips it around." On the minus side, his license was revoked long ago, and reckless driving charges flourish, including the latest, one day after the Times story ran. (And in September, he was charged with domestic assault, with his head.) [BBC News, 9-1-06]

[Old-Navy]

Reuters reported in August that a man was killed in his workshop on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro when he tried to open a rocket-propelled grenade (probably to recover scrap metal) with a sledgehammer. And two days before that, in the Indiana town of Brazil (near Terre Haute), a 31-year-old man was accidentally killed in the explosion of the pipe bomb he was carrying (probably to be used to help him catch fish in Birch Creek). [Reuters, 8-9-06] [WRTV (Indianapolis), 8-6-06]

[Old-Navy]

In July, according to a Canadian Press report, a Wal-Mart in St.-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, received a bomb threat and immediately dispatched about 40 employees on duty to look through the store to find the explosive. (Customers were allowed to leave, though, and ultimately, it was a false alarm.) [Globe and Mail-Canadian Press, 7-11-06]

[MIRCS]

In July, according to a Canadian Press report, a Wal-Mart in St.-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, received a bomb threat and immediately dispatched about 40 employees on duty to look through the store to find the explosive. (Customers were allowed to leave, though, and ultimately, it was a false alarm.) [Globe and Mail-Canadian Press, 7-11-06]

Isn't that the unionized WalMart?

[Old-Navy]

Isn't that the unionized WalMart?

No idea, but considering the "caliber" of Wally World employees, do you think they could actually find something???

[Old-Navy]

In September, following complaints of diners, the health department in Springfield, Mo., notified restaurants that Debby Rose's "assistance monkey" could not be permitted to dine with her (in a high chair), even though Rose said she suffers from a disabling social phobia that she can accommodate only if "Richard" (a bonnet macaque monkey) is with her. Monkeys are generally permitted under the Americans with Disabilities Act if they perform certain tasks, as capuchin monkeys have been trained to fetch groceries from shelves for wheelchair-using patrons. However, animals that provide only emotional support fall into a gray area, according to a U.S. Justice Department spokesperson quoted by the Springfield News-Leader. [ABC News-AP, 9-16-06]

[docbyers]

Isn't that the unionized WalMart?

No idea, but considering the "caliber" of Wally World employees, do you think they could actually find something???

I've found that most of the Wal-Mart employees here in Ohio can't find their butts with both hands, so I'm thinking that finding an explosive device may be out of their reach...  Maybe they're trained by the TSA!

[MIRCS]

Sorry it was the wrong one in Quebec.

Wal-Mart closing unionized store

Retailer cites breakdown in union negotiations as cause for shuttering store in Quebec.
February 9, 2005: 10:23 PM EST

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Wal-Mart is closing a store in Quebec that was closest to reaching a union contract after the retailer could not reach an agreement with the union representing workers there.

After months of negotiation with representatives of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Wal-Mart (Research) said it will shut down its store in Jonquiere in the spring.

"It's a deeply disappointing day for us," Wal-Mart spokesman Andrew Pelletier told CNN. "The store in Jonquiere has been struggling for sometime economically, and in our view the union's demands failed to take into account the fragile condition of the store."


The company did not disclose how many workers will be affected, but said they would be offered "very generous packages which will far exceed what is required by law," including severance pay and career counseling.

Wal-Mart said it met nine times with union officials in recent months, but that those efforts did not result in an agreement.

The company said in a statement that the union walked away from the bargaining table on Feb. 1 and asked for arbitration.

A spokesman for United Food and Commercial Workers Union of Canada did not return a phone call seeking comment.

Workers at another Canadian Wal-Mart in the city of St. Hyacinthe are unionizing and the company plans to challenge the process.

Under fire in the United States for its employment practices, the world's largest retailer announced last year that it was overhauling its practices on pay, promotions, diversity and how cashiers are notified of their breaks. In 2003, Wal-Mart was accused of hiring illegal immigrants through a contractor and underpaying those employees.

Wal-Mart Canada employs about 70,000 at 256 Wal-Mart stores and six Sam's Clubs.

Wal-Mart stock fell about 1.3 percent in active New York Stock Exchange trading. 

[docbyers]

Black bear eats family's Chihuahua
Children witness death of pet; wildlife biologist says incident was rare

By MARY M. RALL
Alaska Star

A predator-meets-prey encounter hit home for an Eagle River family who lost a dog to a roving black bear Aug. 1.
Ginger Fletcher, 36, lives off Greenhouse Street in Eagle River Valley alongside her three siblings and parents who built on plots of land homesteaded by the family decades ago.

Fletcher said the area has always seemed like an ideal place to raise her three children: Katie, 3, Colby, 6, and Chris, 16. She said she landscaped her yard last year creating an ideal area for her children to play with their many cousins on the family's 10 acres.

Bears are common in the area, Fletcher said, but she never imagined one would be so bold as to prey on her family's 9-month-old miniature Chihuahua, Casper.

She said Casper, weighing 3 pounds, was an indoor dog that only went outside to go to the bathroom or lay in the sun for a couple of hours on warm afternoons.

Casper was leashed outside for a few minutes to relieve himself around 6 p.m. Aug. 1 when it caught the attention of a black bear passing through the family's yard.

"He hadn't been out very long, and my son was getting ready to get him," Fletcher said. "My two little ones started screaming, 'There's a bear, there's a bear.'"

Fletcher said her youngest two children were kneeling on the living room sofa looking out the window when they noticed the black bear. She was in the kitchen when she heard them yell that the bear had taken an interest in the dog, which had begun to bark.

"He was a little dog, but he didn't really bark that often," she said. "I really didn't even hear him barking, so, I mean, it wasn't that much of a bark."

But it was enough to catch the bear's attention.

"When the dog started to bark, the bear turned around and started coming for the dog," Fletcher said. "He grabbed the dog and ripped him, basically, off the leash in front of my kids."

The gruesome scene caused a panic in her children, especially Chris, who began screaming for the bear to put down his dog.

"He was screaming so loud that a car that was going by Eagle River Road heard the screaming," said his grandmother, Evelyn Johnson. "He didn't know what was going on, and he called 911, and the police came."

Chris's screaming also caught the attention of his uncle, Kurt Johnson, who grabbed his gun and drove to the Fletchers not fully realizing what was happening.

Fletcher said she was recovering from knee surgery and was trying to respond as quickly as she could to protect and shield her children from the scene unfolding before them.

"He started to tear the dog apart in the front yard to eat it, and that's when I was trying to keep the kids away so they wouldn't see what was happening," she said, adding that she called her parents for help.

"By the time we got there, the bear was on the hill eating the dog," Johnson said. "We were going to shoot it, but by then the dog was dead. There wasn't anything we could do."

Anchorage area wildlife biologist Rick Sinnott said the family would have been legally within their rights to shoot the bear, but he would advise extreme caution in such a situation.

"You're allowed to shoot a bear in defense of life or property," he said. "Obviously if it's attacking a dog that would be the time to do it, but you have to know what you're doing," he said, adding that a misfired gun in a residential area could pose more of a threat to humans than to a bear.

Sinnott said it's not uncommon for bears to pass through Eagle River as a thoroughfare between Fort Richardson and Chugach State Park, which both have large bear populations. However, he said it is extremely unusual for them to prey on dogs, especially one tethered to a house.

"They walk past thousands of dogs. They are walking through and by people's backyards all the time. If they wanted to eat dogs, they could fill up on dogs every day. They wouldn't have to be tied up. Just about any dog could be pulled down by a bear," Sinnott said. "It's pretty unusual. Bears, for the most part, are after the easy stuff like garbage and birdseed. They'll even go into chicken coops, eat the chicken food and leave the chickens alone."

He said while Casper's being eaten is tragic, it doesn't necessarily mean the bear that ate him is dangerous or going to do it again.

"One time I wouldn't call it a threat. If we see a pattern, if it does it again and we think it's the same bear, then obviously that's definitely a whole different situation. It might have killed it just because it was yapping at it," Sinnott said, adding that there have not been any additional reports of area bears attacking dogs.

But that is no reassurance to Johnson, who said she has seen bears become increasingly bolder throughout her years in the area.

"It's really scary," she said. "The bears, they've taken over this area. Every year we have at least three bears roaming through the yard."

Sinnott said increased bear activity is in large part due to the changes in hunting laws that have occurred over the years.

"People were shooting bears just as a matter of course back in the '40s and '50s and '60s," he said. "Hunting has been closed down throughout pretty much all the Anchorage Bowl and the Lower Eagle River Valley. We've had several generations of bears that have grown up without being hunted.

"You don't necessarily have to shoot at an animal and miss it to teach it that guns are dangerous. All you have to do is shoot the bears that are very bold or very stupid and the other bears are just the naturally wary bears," Sinnott added. "So if you don't shoot the bold bears and you don't shoot the stupid bears, the ones that take the chances come into town and find out we have all this great garbage and birdseed and stuff here and start getting into trouble."

He said it's the human's responsibility to be the more responsible one by keeping bear attractants such as birdseed, garbage and dog food secure from April through October when bears are most active.

Fletcher said her family has always taken such steps, but it hasn't prevented bears from passing close to her home or climbing onto her car in the middle of night. As a result, she said her younger two children are frightened to go out and play in their yard or commit to a new family dog.

"We're kind of in a situation where this house was built, the yard was landscaped for the kids and we can't really use it for that with the bears," Fletcher said. "It was upsetting to lose a pet, but to me, the hardest part was that my kids had to watch that. How do you explain that?"

She said the one small relief she has is that she doesn't think Casper suffered.

"Ripping him from the leash and stuff, I think it must have been pretty quick," Fletcher said.

[docbyers]

Water turned off at place offering sex parties
Associated Press
Sept. 28, 2006 08:05 AM

COOPERSBURG, Pa. - There won't be any wet T-shirt contests at a strip bar here - the water's been turned off.

The borough turned off the water to the Silhouette Showbar on Monday, with more than $700 owing on the club's water bill, and the building cannot be occupied without water, Borough Manager Daniel Stonehouse said.

Stonehouse said the action concerning the pending water bill is unrelated to the borough's legal efforts to shut down the bar's Club Kama Sutra, which has been offering Saturday night sex parties.

Lehigh County Judge Edward Reibman has scheduled a hearing later this week on the borough's request for an injunction against the club. Borough officials argue that it's in a part of town zoned for a bar, restaurant and hotel, but not a private club.

The borough notified the bar Sept. 5 that the club violates the zoning ordinance and gave the operators 10 days to appeal. They declined to do so, saying they had not violated any zoning laws.