A skydiver from Jersey in the British Channel Islands fell over two miles to the ground during a routine skydive after both parachutes failed. He survived with only a punctured lung and broken ankle. He fell on to a blackberry bush (I nearly put the title as Bush Saves the Day but changed my mind).
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Well that explains why every time the President of France Jacques Chirac is always smirking when you see him around or talking to President Bush
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A Notorious Confusable quiz.
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I know how it is. You’re really, really, ridiculously good-looking, aren’t you? And you seemingly can’t stop the influx of people who are desperate to provide you with their cell phone numbers? Doesn’t it get a little annoying?
Don’t worry. There are lots of things that you can do to ensure that you never score another date again.
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ATLANTA – The biggest U.S. measles outbreak in a decade — 34 people stricken in Indiana and Illinois last year — was traced back to a 17-year-old girl who had traveled to Romania without first getting vaccinated, government health officials said Thursday.
The outbreak accounted for more than half of the 66 measles cases in the United States in 2005. Widespread use of the measles vaccine has dramatically reduced the incidence of the disease over the past four decades; in 2004, there were just 37 cases, the smallest number in nearly 90 years of record-keeping.
The Indiana girl became infected after visiting a Romanian orphanage while on a church-mission trip, health investigators said. The others became infected after they attended a church gathering with her the day after her return.
“Orphanages are known to be higher risk” for measles, said Dr. Philip Gould of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The main point is to ensure that people do get vaccinated, especially prior to leaving the country, going to a place that physicians suspect that measles is a risk.”
Thirty-three people in Indiana and one from Illinois became infected. Three people were hospitalized, but no one died.
Only two of the 34 people had been vaccinated against measles.
“The outbreak occurred because measles was imported into a population of children whose parents had chosen not to vaccinate their children because of safety concerns, despite evidence that measles-containing vaccine is safe and effective,” the CDC said.
Nearly all of the 32 other U.S. cases in 2005 originated abroad, including 16 involving U.S. residents infected while traveling overseas and seven involving foreigners who were infected before visiting the United States.
In the decade before a vaccine became available in 1963, about 450,000 measles cases and about 450 measles deaths were recorded in the U.S. each year. The disease — often characterized by a rash that begins on the face and spreads — can cause ear infections, diarrhea and pneumonia. It kills about one in 1,000 patients, according to the CDC.
The U.S. vaccination rate against measles is now more than 90 percent.
Suicides among U.S. soldiers in Iraq doubled last year over the previous year to return to a level seen in 2003, U.S. Army medical experts said on Tuesday. Twenty-two U.S. soldiers in Iraq took their own lives in 2005, a rate of 19.9 per 100,000 soldiers.
The figures cover U.S. Army soldiers only. They do not include members of other U.S. military services in Iraq such as the Marine Corps. Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, the Army’s surgeon general, cautioned against misinterpreting the figures, saying suicide rates tended to fluctuate from year to year.
In 2004, the rate was 10.5 per 100,000 and in 2003, the year of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the figure was 18.8 per 100,000.
“We think that the numbers are so rare to begin with that it’s very hard to make any kind of interpretation,” he said at a news conference to present a study on the mental health of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
“We have not made a connection between the stress on the force and some massive or even significant increase in suicides,” he said. While every suicide was one too many, Kiley said, the suicide rate among soldiers was lower than the average among civilians of the same age and gender. The survey, a snapshot of the morale and mental health of U.S. soldiers in Iraq in late 2005, found 13.6 percent of the soldiers reported symptoms of acute stress and 16.5 percent reported a combination of depression, anxiety and acute stress. Those rates were lower than in 2003 but higher than in 2004, the experts said.
WHEELING, W.Va. – Michael Warren had a lot of lose. The 20-year-old Wintersville resident who once tipped the scales at more than 300 pounds lost 125 pounds in 18 months to pursue a career in law enforcement.
He was sworn in as a deputy sheriff in Ohio County on Monday, two days after he married his high-school sweetheart of six and a half years.
“I got a wedding ring and a badge, and I closed on a house in one weekend,” Warren said.
Before embarking on his journey to better fitness, Warren said, he couldn’t do one push up and didn’t have the endurance to run very far. Now he can do 30 push-ups and runs nearly every day, managing to clock 1.5 miles in under 16 minutes.
He said his new wife Theresa, was the “angel on my shoulder” who helped him curb his urge to splurge.
“I’m sure she whacked my hands a few times,” he said Tuesday.
With his wife’s help, Warren said he limited his daily intake to no more than 30 grams of fat a day and worked up to running a mile or two every day, lifting weights and doing bench presses.
Warren, a self-professed band geek, was studying music education at Cleveland State University when he decided to pursue a career in law enforcement. He transferred to the Weirton campus of West Virginia Northern Community College to study criminal justice before taking an internship with the Steubenville Police Department.
Jim Tully, a criminal justice professor, said Warren excelled in the classroom.
“He set the standard in every course,” Tully said. “In class, he demonstrates leadership.”
Warren’s wife said she is proud of her husband.
“He didn’t think he had the confidence, but he showed what can be done if you really want to do something,” she said.
Warren said he is in a job surrounded by people who are committed to fitness. There’s no way he would ever slip back to the days when he ate just “to pass time,” he said.
“I’m happy to be where I am now.”
The worst windstorm in more than a decade tore through the Pacific Northwest, leaving more than a million people without power Friday and killing at least six.
Winds gusted to a record 69 mph about 1 a.m. at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, breaking the old mark of 65 mph set in 1993. Winds were clocked at 90 mph near Westport on the coast.
Power was knocked out at one of the airport’s concourses until late Friday morning. Dozens of flights were canceled, including all American Airlines service through the morning hours. Flights were also canceled at Portland International Airport in Oregon, and Amtrak canceled service between Seattle and Portland after downed trees and mudslides blocked the tracks.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer went unpublished for the first time since a 1936 labor strike, because electricity was knocked out at its printing press, managing editor David McCumber said. The Seattle Times, which shares the press, had only about 13,000 copies available Friday morning. Late Friday, a Times’ spokeswoman said Saturday editions of both papers would be printed and delivered.
Seattle public schools were closed Friday, as were numerous smaller school systems and The Evergreen State College in Olympia.
A 41-year-old Seattle woman died Thursday after she became trapped in her basement while it flooded. Neighbors had called for help after they heard screaming.
A 28-year-old man was killed while he slept when the top of a tree snapped off and crashed into his home in a trailer park in McCleary, 18 miles west of Olympia.
Elsewhere in Washington, two people died in traffic accidents involving windblown trees.
And on the Oregon coast, an elderly couple died in a house fire caused by candles they were using during a power outage.
A family of six was sickened by carbon monoxide from a generator set up in a garage after the storm knocked out power, police said Friday. Four children and two adults were hospitalized. Three of the children were listed in critical condition late Friday, while the other child and parents were in good condition.
Puget Sound Energy, Washington’s largest private utility, had 700,000 customers without power on Friday. Some won’t have their lights back on for days, spokesman Roger Thompson said.
In Oregon, about 350,000 customers lost power, and repairs to restore all of them could stretch into next week, utility officials said.
The Oregon Department of Transportation closed three major highways crossing the Cascade Range because of fallen trees or downed power lines.
The Evergreen Point floating bridge, which links Seattle and its eastern suburbs, was closed early Friday for minor repairs, but reopened before the evening commute. The Hood Canal floating bridge, which links Washington’s Kitsap and Olympic peninsulas, and the Tacoma Narrows Bridge were reopened early Friday after being closed Thursday evening because of heavy winds.
It was the most intense storm to hit the region since the Inauguration Day storm of Jan. 20, 1993, which killed five people and caused about $130 million in damage, said Clifford F. Mass, a University of Washington atmospheric sciences professor.
Faced with grim testimony of poorly trained executioners operating in cramped, dimly lit quarters, a federal judge declared California’s execution procedure unconstitutional. The state’s “implementation of lethal injection is broken, but it can be fixed,” U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel ruled Friday in San Jose, extending a moratorium on executions in the nation’s most populous state.
The decision is the latest in a nationwide challenge to lethal injection — the preferred execution method in 37 states — and came as Florida Gov. Jeb Bush suspended all executions there after a bungled execution this week. Missouri’s injection method, which is similar to California’s, was declared unconstitutional last month by a federal judge.
Fogel said the California case raised the question of whether the three execution drugs administered by the San Quentin State Prison are so painful that they “offend” the ban on cruel and unusual punishment. He said he was compelled “to answer that question in the affirmative.”
The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld executions — by lethal injection, hanging, firing squad, electric chair and gas chamber — despite the pain they might cause, but has left unsettled the issue of whether the pain is unconstitutionally excessive.
California has been under a capital punishment moratorium since February, when Fogel called off the execution of rapist and murderer Michael Morales amid concerns that condemned inmates might suffer excruciating deaths.
Fogel found evidence that the last six men executed at San Quentin might have been conscious and still breathing when lethal drugs were administered.
A four-day hearing in September revealed that prison guards were inadequately trained to participate in executions. One prison official who was part of the execution team had been sanctioned for smuggling drugs into San Quentin.
Drugs were not properly accounted for, at times they weren’t properly mixed and unused drugs were not returned to the prison’s pharmacy. Executioners worked in the crowded chamber under dim lights.
Fogel ordered anesthesiologists to be on hand, or demanded that a licensed medical professional inject a large, fatal dose of a sedative instead of the additional paralyzing agent and heart-stopping drugs that are normally used. But no medical professional was willing to participate.
Morales, 47, of Stockton, raped and brutally beat a 17-year-old Lodi girl 25 years ago.
In Florida, Angel Nieves Diaz, 55, was put to death Wednesday for murdering the manager of a Miami topless bar during a holdup in 1979.
Medical examiner Dr. William Hamilton said Diaz’s execution took 34 minutes — twice as long as usual — and required a rare second dose of lethal chemicals because the needles were inserted clear through his veins and into the flesh in his arms. The chemicals are supposed to go into the veins.
Hamilton, who performed the autopsy, refused to say whether he thought Diaz died a painful death.
“I am going to defer answers about pain and suffering until the autopsy is complete,” he said. He said the results were preliminary and other tests may take several weeks.
Missing a vein when administering the injections would cause “both psychological and physical discomfort — probably pretty severe,” said Dr. J. Kent Garman, an emeritus professor of anesthesia at the Stanford School of Medicine in California.
An inmate would remain conscious for a longer period of time and would likely be aware of increased difficulty breathing and pain caused by angina, the interruption of blood flow to the heart, Garman said.
Bush created a commission to examine the state’s lethal injection process in light of Diaz’s case, and he halted the signing of any more death warrants until the panel completes its final report by March 1.
The medical examiner’s findings contradicted the explanation given by prison officials, who said Diaz needed the second dose because liver disease caused him to metabolize the drugs more slowly. Hamilton said that although there were records that Diaz had hepatitis, his liver appeared normal.
Executions in Florida normally take no more than about 15 minutes, with the inmate rendered unconscious and motionless within three to five minutes. But Diaz appeared to be moving 24 minutes after the first injection, grimacing, blinking, licking his lips, blowing and appearing to mouth words.
As a result of the chemicals going into Diaz’s arms around the elbow, he had an 12-inch chemical burn on his right arm and an 11-inch chemical burn on his left arm, Hamilton said.
Florida Corrections Secretary James McDonough said the execution team did not see any swelling of the arms, which would have been an indication that the chemicals were going into tissues and not veins.
Florida got rid of the electric chair after two inmates’ heads caught fire during executions in the 1990s and another suffered a severe nosebleed in 2000. Twenty people have been executed by lethal injection in Florida since the state switched from the electric chair in 2000.
Florida’s death row has 374 inmates, while California’s is the largest, with more than 650 inmates.
Here are some more videos for today:
While two footballers were tackling in a match one of the players legs snapped. Looks horrible.
While this girl was hitting the toy to get the sweets out at a kinder party a man goes to help and gets hit in the balls with the stick.
Ice skating girl gets ice burned!
These two iceskaters were skating until the man knocks the girl onto the ice ring floor sliding her across on her bare skin across the ice.
A skateboarder trys grinding down a handrail but falls of the board in the air and then landing on his face at the bottom, must have hurt.
Two girls iceskating bump right into each other pretty fast.
This is a bad snow mobile accident, while racing another snow mobile comes flying through the air and lands on somone elses head.
Fat guy gets mad with computer!
This fat office worker goes in a tantrum with his computer and starts hitting and and kicking his monitor around the office.
Tree cutters drop tree on truck!
Tree cutters were cutting large trees down but half off the tree landed in the back of somones truck.
Funny Parody of Gangster’s Paradise
…also a great way to learn about Amish people.. LOL
Tyson took a bite off somones ear during a boxing match, now thats got to be against the rules.
Girl caught on cctv photocopying herself!
What was this girl thinking, she just got her clothes off and started making photocopies of her private parts. What if the boss came in!
This person was spinning round in the air on the pole and when he let go he landed back onto the pole with his back and bounces off.
This biker trys riding his bike vertically up a half pipe and ends up coming of the side and landing on a rail.
This person trys to see how fast he can go on his bike down this hill but near the bottom he loses control. This must have hurt.