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US: Discovery of human bones raises questions about "cold case"

Human bones were recently discovered inside a building set to be torn down in Dow City, Iowa. That's raised a lot of questions. Whose bones are they? How did they get there? And, are they connected to a 14-year-old Crawford County "cold case".


Family

US: $45,000 Cash Discovery Leads to a Lesson in Honesty for New Bountiful Homeowners

Josh Ferrin cash
© Deseret NewsLincoln and his father, Josh Ferrin, who recently closed on a new home, unloads bags of money and ammo boxes to turn over to Dennis and Kay Bangerter, sons of the former owner.
He hit the mother lode, but not once did Josh Ferrin even think of laying claim on the more than $45,000 cash that he found in his garage.

In fact, he gave it all back.

"You can't make plans for money like this that's found in a situation like this," Ferrin said. "It just doesn't feel right to do anything but give it back."

Bizarro Earth

Iranian FM says Bushehr nuclear plant is operational

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© Stringer Iran / Reuters
Nuclear power plant has reached critical mass, will be powered up within weeks, Salehi says, echoing statements of senior Russian diplomat.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said that the Bushehr power plant is operational, Press TV reported on Wednesday.

"As we have previously announced, Bushehr power plant has reached the criticality stage, meaning it has been successfully launched," Salehi reportedly said.

Ambulance

Plane Crash in Argentina: 22 People Have Died

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A private jet of the Argentinian Sol Company crashed Wednesday night in in a desert region of Patagonia (South), killing 22 people - 19 passengers and three crew members - has announced an official source.

"We have not found any living person. No survivors. Everything is charred in thousands of pieces, " said Ismael Ali, director of the hospital in Los Menucos, who participated in the rescue operation.

Sol company said in a statement that Flight 5428 disappeared from radar screens while on the route "Cordoba, Mendoza, Neuquen, Comodoro Rivadavia" in southern Argentina.

The Company spokesman, Horacio Farre, confirmed that there are no survivors.

Laptop

5 Internet memes that could kill you

planking
© YouTube/pewpewpewlazers17An example of planking.

Given the abundance of kitschy memes circulating on the Internet (think "Rick-Rolling" or "LOLcats"), there are bound to be a few that perpetuate and encourage brazen, risky or downright insane activities. Such was the case when a man died earlier this week while trying to perform a stunt called "planking."

Planking is a popular game that involves laying prostrate in unusual -- and often precarious -- locations, while an accomplice documents and uploads the pose to the Internet. An Australian man, Acton Beale, was posing for a planking photo on a the guardrail of a seventh-story high-rise apartment balcony when he lost his balance and fell to his death. As a result, much media attention has been cast on the game and its risks.

But planking is just the latest Internet meme that poses potentially grave risks. Here is our list of the five Internet memes that have the most potential to go awry.

Bizarro Earth

Powerful and Primitive

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© Fred R. Conrad/The New York TimesMaureen Dowd
Oh, she wanted it.

She wanted it bad.

That's what every hard-working, God-fearing, young widow who breaks her back doing menial labor at a Times Square hotel to support her teenage daughter, justify her immigration status and take advantage of the opportunities in America wants - a crazed, rutting, wrinkly old satyr charging naked out of a bathroom, lunging at her and dragging her around the room, caveman-style.

Bad Guys

Fracking: Natural gas industry keeping water testing data from researchers

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Protesters against Marcellus Shale drilling march across the Rachel Carson Bridge in Pittsburgh in November 2010.

Despite having complained for years that studies on the effect of hydrofracking on drinking water supplies are deficient because they don't include pre-drilling water quality data on wells and water systems, the natural gas industry has been keeping that data away from researchers.

ProPublica reports:
The absence of baseline data was one of the most serious criticisms leveled at a group of Duke researchers last week when they published the first peer-reviewed study linking drilling to methane contamination in water supplies.

That study - which found that methane concentrations in drinking water increased dramatically with proximity to gas wells - contained "no baseline information whatsoever," wrote Chris Tucker, a spokesman for the industry group Energy in Depth, in a statement debunking the study.

Now it turns out that some of that data does exist. It just wasn't available to the Duke researchers, or to the public.

Vader

U.S.: 84-year-old man allegedly beaten by police officer after calling 911

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An Alabama police officer allegedly hospitalized an elderly man who called 911 to report an accident across the street from his house while his wife watched the entire beating from her wheelchair.

The Courthouse News Service reported that 84-year-old Dorsey Henderson of Fairhope, Alabama called 911 after investigating the car accident and discovering that the driver of the vehicle was severely intoxicated.

Henderson told the driver of the car he was under citizens arrest and needed to wait near his car until police arrived.

USA

Coming of Rage in Neverland

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© Mr. Fish
G. Gordon Liddy, noted Watergate thief and tournament-level egomaniac, once said that, "The press is like the peculiar uncle you keep in the attic - just one of those unfortunate things." Of course, such a quote, rather than maligning the press, ultimately serves only to label the quote's originator as a crackpot. Who else but a crackpot would want to shove another family member into the attic simply because he or she tends to ask a lot of questions about the world and expects a certain logic to be present in the answers?

It's a common phenomenon, this maligning of the press from the right wing, and it's what I love about blowhards like Liddy. Like the ancient geocentrists who believed that the Earth was the center of the universe and that all other heavenly bodies revolved around it, so much of the conservative ideology assumes that its stubborn refusal to tolerate any point of view that doesn't recognize the values of the GOP as originating from some fixed center at the very core of the moral universe is in adherence to some permanent truth and not merely proof that the GOP is too fearful and too unimaginative and too antiquated to be able to comprehend - let alone keep up with - a reality that, simply by being chemically based, is anything but immovable. That's why the conservatives perceive any criticism of their principles to be an attack on reality itself, and therefore believe that any disagreement with them is not only mad but also depraved and deliberately pernicious. It is also how they are able to so easily integrate the concept of absolute good and evil into their worldview.

Black Cat

IMF's Strauss-Kahn resigns amid sex charges

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© Reuters/New York State/HandoutAn NYPD prisoner movement slip for IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn is seen in this document released, May 18, 2011.
Washington - Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the embattled managing director of International Monetary Fund, resigned Wednesday, saying he wanted to devote "all his energy" to battle the sexual assault charges he faces in New York.

The IMF's executive board released a letter from the French executive Wednesday in which he denied the allegations lodged against him but said that with "sadness" he felt he must resign. He said that he was thinking of his family and that he wanted to protect the IMF.

"It is with infinite sadness that I feel compelled today to present to the executive board my resignation from my post of managing director of the IMF," the five-paragraph letter said. "I think at this time first of my wife - whom I love more than anything - of my children, of my family, of my friends. I think also of my colleagues at the Fund. Together we have accomplished such great things over the last three years and more.

"To all, I want to say that I deny with the greatest possible firmness all of the allegations that have been made against me. I want to protect this institution which I have served with honor and devotion, and especially - especially - I want to devote all my strength, all my time and all my energy to proving my innocence."