Dec 24, 2008 | 12:40 PM
Category:
News
SoCal man killed by cops was 2004 murder suspect
By RAQUEL MARIA DILLON, Associated Press Writer Raquel Maria Dillon, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 2 mins ago
AP – Paramedics and SWAT team officers carry out a boy on a stretcher after being rescued from the a Chinese …
LOS ANGELES – A former child actor killed by police after a two-hour standoff as he held his 7-year-old son hostage in a restaurant was a suspect wanted for the 2004 murder of his girlfriend, authorities said Wednesday.
The boy was wounded.
The man killed was 38-year-old Manuel Benitez, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said in a statement. Police were searching for his mother, who may have been traveling with him.
Authorities had been seeking Benitez since the slaying of Stephanie Spears in Hawthorne more than four years ago. She had been beaten to death with a dumbbell.
Benitez had a son with Spears, named Benjamin, and the child had not been seen since Spears' death, according to Benitez' fugitive profile on the FBI Web site.
Benjamin suffered a gunshot wound to the thigh in Tuesday's standoff in suburban El Monte but was expected to survive, said sheriff's Lt. Liam Gallagher. He would not say who shot the boy.
Benitez was charged with murder and a California warrant was issued for his arrest in May 2005, the FBI Web site said. A federal warrant for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution was issued in March 2006. The FBI had offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.
El Monte police Detective Ralph Batres said the standoff began after an officer noticed a man take a boy off the sidewalk and head to a Chinese restaurant in a strip mall. Benitez ignored the officer's orders to stop and barricaded himself inside, Batres said.
Police said Benitez, who wore a camouflage jacket and had two handguns, held the boy hostage in a back room of the restaurant.
Gallagher said Benitez told police during negotiations that he was going to shoot police and harm the child.
Police closed nearby streets and shoppers were evacuated from neighboring stores as dozens of officers and emergency crews surrounded the restaurant.
Benitez was declared dead after police threw a flash-bang grenade into the restaurant and exchanged gunfire with him, Gallagher said.
The sheriff's statement said detectives were seeking the public's help in finding his mother, Elizabeth Velasco, who authorities believed may have been traveling with Benitez.
The FBI Web site said Benitez, who was featured on "America's Most Wanted" earlier this year, had been a child actor who used the name Mark Everett, one of several Benitez aliases listed in the sheriff's department statement.
As child actor Mark Everett, Benitez had small parts in the television shows "Highway to Heaven" and "Trapper John, MD," and the movies "Pee Wee's Big Adventure" and "Stand and Deliver," according to the FBI and The Internet Movie Database Web site.
The sheriff's statement said Benitez also went by the names Mike Evers and Manuel Velasco.
El Monte is a city of about 116,000 people 13 miles east of Los Angeles.
Dec 22, 2008 | 5:58 PM
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Dec 22, 2008 | 5:55 PM
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BRRRRRRRRRR.http://mymedia.myfoxkc.com/media01/00000/7
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Dec 22, 2008 | 1:16 PM
Category:
News
Baby Dolls Raise a Stink In More Ways Than One
By Brigid Schulte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 22, 2008; A01
So long, Betsy Wetsy. Baby dolls just got a whole lot more real.
Put her on her little pink plastic toilet. Press the purple bracelet on Baby Alive Learns to Potty. "Sniff sniff," she chirps in a singsong voice. "I made a stinky!"
This season's animatronic Baby Alive -- which retails for $59.99 -- comes with special "green beans" and "bananas" that, once fed to the doll, actually, well, come out the other end. "Be careful," reads the doll's promotional literature, "just like real life, sometimes she can hold it until she gets to the 'potty' and sometimes she can't!" (A warning on the back of the box reads: "May stain some surfaces.")
The mess made by the $39.95 Little Mommy Real Loving Baby Gotta Go Doll, ("Over 60 phrases and fun sounds!") is more hypothetical. Once she is placed on her little toilet, a magnet triggers a presto, change-o in the plastic bowl: "The 'water' in the toilet disappears, with the expected 'potty waste' appearing in its place," says manufacturer Mattel. "Your child can then flush the toilet. The 'water' will reappear, while the toilet makes a very realistic flushing sound!" And then comes the applause.
The dolls, which are being heavily advertised on television, are expected to be the season's big sellers. Since the dolls were introduced to stores this fall, managers at Wal-Mart, Target and Toys R Us have reported trouble keeping them in stock. And Baby Alive, listed as one of the Hot Toys of 2008 by Hottoys2008.com, was sold out at Wal-Mart, eToys.com and the AOL shopping site a week before Christmas.
But not everyone thinks dolls need to be this real. Some things, they argue, are better left to the imagination. This battle over whether pooping dolls are an appropriate toy is only the latest skirmish in a long war between child development experts and toymakers. Psychologists say the best toys encourage children to pretend and use make-believe (witness the fact that children often love the boxes their expensive toys come in more than the toy itself). But toymakers want to use the latest technology to make and sell ever-more realistic toys. (Baby Alive's movements are the result of sophisticated robotics controlled by the same kind of microprocessor that navigates satellites and runs nuclear power plants.)
"Retailers have bought heavily into these dolls," said Reyne Rice, trend specialist with the Toy Industry Association. "They feel that these are some of the more popular items for girls this year." Although most baby dolls are sold in the last six weeks of the year and firm sales figures won't be available until early next year, Rice said indicators look good for big Christmas sales.
The buzz is on parent online discussion groups across the country. As with the Tickle Me Elmo and Cabbage Patch Kids crazes of Christmases past, one mother was so distraught that the pooping dolls were sold out online just after Thanksgiving that she prepared to rise at 5 a.m. to scour stores in a 100-mile radius of her house.
At a Toys R Us in Northern Virginia last week, Salma Bangoura filled her shopping cart with stainless steel pots and pans for her 7-year-old daughter's play kitchen. Her daughter desperately wants the Baby Alive, she said, and Bangoura is considering buying it for her for Christmas. "She wants the toilet," she said, shrugging. "It's so interesting. It comes with its own food. It's not gross, as long as it's not real."
But at a Target not far away, Gay Hee Lee, shopping for her 2-year-old niece, picked the Baby Alive box off the shelf only to quickly put it back. "That," she said, "is just so wrong."
Perhaps here is where one needs to ask a question: Does a toilet -- and what one uses it for -- make a good toy?
And, given the boundaries of good taste, is it even a good idea?
Clearly, to toymakers, the answer is yes.
"For us, the peeing and pooping is pretty magical," said Kathleen Harrington, senior brand manager for Hasbro's Baby Alive dolls. "As adults, we might be a little grossed out. But it's so magical and so funny and so silly for these girls. This little doll is coming to life, so the little girl doesn't believe it's just a doll. It's her baby." Harrington calls it part of the doll's "Wow!" factor.
But to some child development experts, the answer is a resounding no.
With 5,000 toys introduced into the market every year, "what happens is that there's huge competition to get noticed. And what that means to toys is that they get more and more and more and more outrageous," said Susan Linn, professor of child psychology at Harvard and director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. "This toy is shocking enough that it's going to be noticed. But at best, this toy is unnecessary. At worst, it's really gross."
But Jim Silver, editor of Time to Play, a Web magazine that reviews toys, says children want reality.
"By the time they're 5 or 6, they don't want a play cellphone, they want a real cellphone," Silver said. "A baby doll is all about nurturing. So what Mom went through with them, they want to go through with their dolls. And how do you do real potty training without pooping?" Silver said he laughed when he first saw the pooping dolls and wondered if they were necessary. Although he said he has been sworn to secrecy about next year's new toys, an early peek shows reality is only going to get more real. "You're going to see the envelope pushed to make baby dolls as real as possible without being offensive in any way.
And, he said, it's not as if the toymakers don't know what they're doing. Mattel's Little Mommy dolls, he said, are the biggest-selling baby dolls on the market, with annual sales upwards of $50 million. Baby Alive dolls, which debuted in 1973 and were retooled and reintroduced to the market a couple of years ago after a decade-long hiatus, are the No. 2 seller.
It's the kind of trend that makes Linn angry enough to write books, such as her recent "The Case for Make Believe."
"This is part of a greater trend to create toys that do everything," she said. "And in the process of marketing those toys to children and flooding the market with those toys, what we're doing is depriving children of opportunities for creative play. And that's the foundation of learning, of critical thinking, of creativity, of developing the capacity to wrestle with life, to make meaning of it. It's essential to their human development. What's happening is that toymakers are designing these toys that look great in ads but in fact really add nothing to children's inner life or their creative play."
High on Linn's Christmas toy shopping list: crayons, paper, blocks, stuffed animals and dolls that don't talk or move, much less say "Hurry, hurry" when they're about to mess their pants. "A really, really good toy is 90 percent child and 10 percent toy," she said. "But those are not the bestsellers."
What both sides of the play wars agree on is that children at the age of playing with baby dolls, generally ages 3 or 4 to 7, are endlessly fascinated by bodily functions, thus the popularity of such books as "Walter the Farting Dog," booger-green slime and squishy, squeezable, see-through toys that allow children to feel animals' guts, on shelves now. And potty training -- either because children are going through it or because they remember what it was like -- is a big, big deal.
That, manufacturers say, is why they're creating realistic dolls.
"Potty training is an important developmental milestone for nearly every child," Michael Shore, vice president of World Wide Consumer Insights for Mattel, wrote in an e-mail. "At around the age of two, many kids are demonstrating signs of readiness which include key motor skills, language skills, the ability to follow directions, etc. At this age, research has proven that dolls serve as effective tools to teach by imitation rather than relying entirely on a potty training child's limited language skills."
Shore goes on to explain that the Little Mommy Gotta Go Doll was "uniquely designed with innovative features to model both types of potty training behaviors: 'poop and pee' " and that these "unique actions" help encourage "successful potty training."
Indeed, potty training dolls have become all the rage since 2006, when writer Teri Crane (the self-proclaimed "Potty Pro") published her book "Potty Train Your Child in Just One Day," and her doll-using method was endorsed by TV's Dr. Phil McGraw. Now, the market is saturated with dolls like Potty Patty, Potty Scotty and anatomically correct, vanilla-scented Emma and Paul dolls.
Child development experts, not surprisingly, are again on the opposite side of market forces in the potty wars. Claire Lerner is director of parenting resources at Zero to Three, a nonprofit organization that promotes the health and development of infants and toddlers. She said that such claims of instant potty training are "unfair and exploitive" and that whether a child uses a doll, potty training, as it has for centuries, takes the time that it takes.
"Toilet training in this country has taken on a life of its own and become so much more complex than it really needs to be," she said. "And parent anxiety about it has just, unfortunately for everybody, often made it much more stressful. Toymakers are clever. They tune into what's on the minds of parents." In her view, children don't need a doll to learn how to use a toilet. And they don't need a doll that poops to have fun. "You just don't need to go that far," she said.
That's something Alexandria mom Nancy Vigna, a military planner, thinks. But the pooping Baby Alive is the only thing her 4-year-old daughter, Corinne, really wants for Christmas, Vigna said. (That and a Barbie cash register.) "The last thing she needs is another doll," Vigna said. Her daughter is so enamored with diapering that she pines to change her younger brother and plasters her baby dolls' behinds so thoroughly that they look like they're wearing cocoons. "This is the baby doll she's been waiting for. It makes a real mess," Vigna said, sighing. "I'm not looking forward to it."
Then Vigna had to excuse herself. Her 21-month-old son, like Baby Alive, had just made a stinky in the bathtub, and she had to go.
Dec 21, 2008 | 5:23 PM
Category:
Weather
Just a reminder for those that like me have pets to take extra care of them with this cold,a little extra food,check their water bowl twice a day for freezing,extra hay in the doghouse,and bring them inside if possible especially at night.And don't forget the birds and squirrels they need a little more help too.
Dec 16, 2008 | 5:55 PM
Category:
News
Fla. police close books on '81 Walsh killing
6 mins ago
AP – Reve Walsh displays a photo of her son, Adam, as her husband, John Walsh, discusses the 1981 murder of …
HOLLYWOOD, Fla. – A serial killer who died more than a decade ago is the person who decapitated the 6-year-old son of "America's Most Wanted" host John Walsh in 1981, police in Florida said Tuesday. The announcement brought to a close a case that has vexed the Walsh family for more than two decades, launched the television show about the nation's most notorious criminals and inspired changes in how authorities search for missing children.
"Who could take a 6-year-old and murder and decapitate him? Who?" an emotional John Walsh said at Tuesday's news conference. "We needed to know. We needed to know. And today we know. The not knowing has been a torture, but that journey's over."
Walsh's wife, Reve, at one point placed a small photo of their son on the podium.
Police named Ottis Toole, saying he was long the prime suspect in the case and that they had conclusively linked him to the killing. They declined to be specific about their evidence and did not note any DNA proof of the crime, but said an extensive review of the case file pointed only to Toole, as John Walsh long contended.
"Our agency has devoted an inordinate amount of time seeking leads to other potential perpetrators rather than emphasizing Ottis Toole as our primary suspect," said Hollywood Police Chief Chadwick Wagner, who launched a fresh review of the case after taking over the department last year. "Ottis Toole has continued to be our only real suspect."
Toole had twice confessed to killing the child, but later recanted. He claimed responsibility for hundreds of murders, but police determined most of the confessions were lies. Toole's niece told the boy's father, John Walsh, her uncle confessed on his deathbed in prison that he killed Adam.
Wagner acknowledged numerous missteps in the investigation and apologized to the Walshes.
"I have no doubt," John Walsh said. "I've never had any doubt."
Many names have been mentioned in connection to the case in the years since the killing, including serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, but Toole's has persistently nagged detectives. John Walsh has long said he believed the drifter was responsible, saying investigators found at Toole's home in Jacksonville a pair of green shorts and a sandal similar to what Adam was wearing.
Toole died in prison of cirrhosis in 1996 at the age of 49. He was serving five life sentences for murders unrelated to Adam's death.
The Walshes, who appeared Tuesday flanked by their other children, long ago derided the investigation as botched. Still, John Walsh praised the Hollywood police department for closing the case.
"This is not to look back and point fingers, but it is to let it rest," he said.
Adam Walsh went missing from a Hollywood mall on July 27, 1981. Fishermen discovered his severed head in a canal 120 miles away two weeks later. The rest of his body was never found.
Authorities made a series of crucial errors, losing the bloodstained carpeting in Toole's car — preventing DNA testing — and the car itself. It was a week after the boy's disappearance before the FBI got involved.
"So many mistakes were made," John Walsh said in 1997, upon the release of his book "Tears of Rage," which harshly criticized the Hollywood Police Department's work on the case. "It was shocking, inexcusable and heartbreaking."
For all that went wrong in the probe, the case contributed to massive advances in police searches for missing youngsters and a notable shift in the view parents and children hold of the world.
Adam's death, and his father's activism on his behalf, helped put faces on milk cartons, shopping bags and mailbox flyers, started fingerprinting programs and increased security at schools and stores. It spurred the creation of missing persons units at every large police department.
"In 1981, when a child disappeared, you couldn't enter information about a child into the FBI database. You could enter information about stolen cars, stolen guns but not stolen children," said Ernie Allen, president of the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, co-founded by John Walsh. "Those things have all changed."
The case also prompted national legislation to create a national database and toll-free line devoted to missing children, and led to the start of "America's Most Wanted," which brought those cases into millions of homes.
What it also did, said Mount Holyoke College sociologist and criminologist Richard Moran, is make children and adults alike exponentially more afraid.
"He ended up really producing a generation of cautious and afraid kids who view all adults and strangers as a threat to them and it made parents extremely paranoid about the safety of their children," Moran said.
Dec 12, 2008 | 11:34 PM
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News
Dec 12, 2008 | 11:30 PM
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News
Dec 12, 2008 | 12:57 AM
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News
1950s pinup model Bettie Page dies in LA at 85
By BOB THOMAS Bob Thomas – 54 mins ago
AP – This undated photo provided Thursday, Dec. 11, 2008 by CMG Worldwide shows Bettie Page. Page, the 1950s …
LOS ANGELES – Bettie Page, the 1950s secretary-turned-model whose controversial photographs in skimpy attire or none at all helped set the stage for the 1960s sexual revolution, died Thursday. She was 85.
Page was placed on life support last week after suffering a heart attack in Los Angeles and never regained consciousness, said her agent, Mark Roesler. He said he and Page's family agreed to remove life support. Before the heart attack, Page had been hospitalized for three weeks with pneumonia.
"She captured the imagination of a generation of men and women with her free spirit and unabashed sensuality," Roesler said. "She is the embodiment of beauty."
Page, who was also known as Betty, attracted national attention with magazine photographs of her sensuous figure in bikinis and see-through lingerie that were quickly tacked up on walls in military barracks, garages and elsewhere, where they remained for years.
Her photos included a centerfold in the January 1955 issue of then-fledgling Playboy magazine, as well as controversial sadomasochistic poses.
"I think that she was a remarkable lady, an iconic figure in pop culture who influenced sexuality, taste in fashion, someone who had a tremendous impact on our society," Playboy founder Hugh Hefner told The Associated Press on Thursday. "She was a very dear person."
Page mysteriously disappeared from the public eye for decades, during which time she battled mental illness and became a born-again Christian.
After resurfacing in the 1990s, she occasionally granted interviews but refused to allow her picture to be taken.
"I don't want to be photographed in my old age," she told an interviewer in 1998. "I feel the same way with old movie stars. ... It makes me sad. We want to remember them when they were young."
The 21st century indeed had people remembering her just as she was. She became the subject of songs, biographies, Web sites, comic books, movies and documentaries. A new generation of fans bought thousands of copies of her photos, and some feminists hailed her as a pioneer of women's liberation.
Gretchen Mol portrayed her in 2005's "The Notorious Bettie Page" and Paige Richards had the role in 2004's "Bettie Page: Dark Angel." Page herself took part in the 1998 documentary "Betty Page: Pinup Queen."
Hefner said he last saw Page when he held a screening of "The Notorious Bettie Page" at the Playboy Mansion. He said she objected to the fact that the film referred to her as "notorious," but "we explained to her that it referred to the troubled times she had and was a good way to sell a movie."
Page's career began one day in October 1950 when she took a respite from her job as a secretary in a New York office for a walk along the beach at Coney Island. An amateur photographer named Jerry Tibbs admired the 27-year-old's firm, curvy body and asked her to pose.
Looking back on the career that followed, she told Playboy in 1998: "I never thought it was shameful. I felt normal. It's just that it was much better than pounding a typewriter eight hours a day, which gets monotonous."
Nudity didn't bother her, she said, explaining: "God approves of nudity. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, they were naked as jaybirds."
In 1951, Page fell under the influence of a photographer and his sister who specialized in S&M. They cut her hair into the dark bangs that became her signature and posed her in spiked heels and little else. She was photographed with a whip in her hand, and in one session she was spread-eagled between two trees, her feet dangling.
"I thought my arms and legs would come out of their sockets," she said later.
Moralists denounced the photos as perversion, and Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, Page's home state, launched a congressional investigation.
Page quickly retreated from public view, later saying she was hounded by federal agents who waved her nude photos in her face. She also said she believed that, at age 34, her days as "the girl with the perfect figure" were nearly over.
She moved to Florida in 1957 and married a much younger man, as an early marriage to her high school sweetheart had ended in divorce.
Her second marriage also failed, as did a third, and she suffered a nervous breakdown.
In 1959, she was lying on a sea wall in Key West when she saw a church with a white neon cross on top. She walked inside and became a born-again Christian.
After attending Bible school, she wanted to serve as a missionary but was turned down because she had been divorced. Instead, she worked full-time for evangelist Billy Graham's ministry.
A move to Southern California in 1979 brought more troubles.
She was arrested after an altercation with her landlady, and doctors who examined her determined she had acute schizophrenia. She spent 20 months in a state mental hospital in San Bernardino.
A fight with another landlord resulted in her arrest, but she was found not guilty because of insanity. She was placed under state supervision for eight years.
"She had a very turbulent life," Todd Mueller, a family friend and autograph seller, told The Associated Press on Thursday. "She had a temper to her."
Mueller said he first met Page after tracking her down in the 1990s and persuaded her to do an autograph signing event.
He said she was a hit and sold about 3,000 autographs, usually for $200 to $300 each.
"Eleanor Roosevelt, we got $40 to $50. ... Bettie Page outsells them all," he told The AP last week.
Born April 22, 1923, in Nashville, Tenn., Page said she grew up in a family so poor "we were lucky to get an orange in our Christmas stockings."
The family included three boys and three girls, and Page said her father molested all of the girls.
After the Pages moved to Houston, her father decided to return to Tennessee and stole a police car for the trip. He was sent to prison, and for a time Betty lived in an orphanage.
In her teens she acted in high school plays, going on to study drama in New York and win a screen test from 20th Century Fox before her modeling career took off.
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Dec 12, 2008 | 12:53 AM
Category:
News
Yep.
Dec 10, 2008 | 10:27 PM
Category:
News
Suicide on TV condemned in Britain
By GREGORY KATZ, Associated Press Writer Gregory Katz, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 3 mins ago
Play Video AP – UK TV station shows man's death
AP – This is an undated handout photo issued Tuesday Dec. 9, 2008 by British TV channel Sky Real Lives, …
LONDON – The scene is difficult to watch, even for viewers inured to the subject of dying by a steady diet of violent Hollywood and television fare. Craig Ewert, a former computer scientist from Chicago, is shown lying in bed with his wife at his side while he takes barbiturates. He asks for a glass of apple juice to mask the bad taste and help him swallow. Then he uses his teeth to turn off his ventilator — and dies on camera.
Britain's obsession with reality television reached new heights — or depths — Wednesday night with the broadcast of the assisted suicide of the 59-year-old terminally ill American at a Swiss clinic.
Showing the final moment of death had long been a final taboo, even for no-holds-barred British TV, where sex and violence are common, and the broadcast unleashed debate on an issue that strongly divides public opinion.
Photographs of Ewert's final moments dominated Britain's newspaper front pages Wednesday — "SUICIDE TV" screamed one tabloid — and prompted a debate in Parliament, where Prime Minister Gordon Brown was quizzed about the propriety of the decision to air the program.
Before he died, Ewert said taking his own life would mean less suffering for himself and his family.
"If I go through with it, I die as I must at some point," he says in the documentary, which chronicles his 2006 decision to take his own life after being diagnosed with degenerative motor neuron disease.
"If I don't go through with it, my choice is essentially to suffer, and to inflict suffering on my family, and then die."
Care Not Killing, an anti-euthanasia group aligned with the Catholic Church and other religious organizations in Britain, denounced the broadcast as "a cynical attempt to boost television ratings" and persuade Parliament to legalize assisted suicide.
"There is a growing appetite from the British public for increasingly bizarre reality shows," said the group's director, Peter Saunders. "We'd see it as a new milestone. It glorifies assisted dying when there is a very active campaign by the pro-suicide lobby to get the issue back into Parliament."
Mary Ewert wrote in the British press Wednesday that her husband had been enthusiastic about having his final moments televised.
"He was keen to have it shown because when death is hidden and private, people don't face their fears about it," she said, adding that he wanted viewers to understand that assisted suicide allowed him to die comfortably rather than enduring a long, drawn out and painful demise.
The documentary by Oscar-winning director John Zaritsky has previously been shown on Canadian and Swiss TV and at numerous film festivals, where it provoked little controversy. But it struck a raw nerve in Britain, where the divisive debate over assisted suicide remains unresolved.
Zaritsky said it would have been "less than honest" to make the film without showing the actual suicide because it would have left viewers wondering if the death was unpleasant, cruel, or carried out against Ewert's will.
"By putting it out there, and putting it out there in its entirety, people can judge for themselves," he said, adding that the documentary gives viewers an insight into how assisted suicide would work if it is legalized in more places.
Originally called "The Suicide Tourist," the film was renamed "Right to Die?" for its British broadcast on Sky TV's Real Lives digital channel, which draws far fewer viewers than the network's myriad news, sports or movie shows. Still, it generated enormous publicity, with clips shown throughout the day on Sky News and rival channels.
The televised suicide in Britain follows a well-publicized case in Florida, where a teenager killed himself on camera last month and broadcast the chilling images live on an Internet site.
Ewert, who was living in Britain when he became ill, went abroad to end his life because assisted suicide is illegal in Britain.
In the film, he says he wanted to take action before the disease, which destroys cells that control essential muscle activity such as speaking, walking, breathing and swallowing, left him completely incapacitated.
The documentary shows Ewert and his wife going about their daily routine: Mary cleans her husband's teeth, bathes, shaves and feeds him as he bows his head.
Speaking in a reedy voice and breathing deeply from plastic tubes attached to his nose, Ewert said he felt like "empty shell."
He said some people might say: "No, suicide is wrong, God has forbidden it. Fine, but you know what? This ventilator is God."
Before the pair leave for Switzerland, he is wheeled through a local park.
"I see the plants, and they're dying, and I'm dying too," he muses. "They'll be coming back next spring — I'm unlikely to."
"I think I can take my bow, and say: Thanks, it's been fun."
In an emotional message to his adult son and daughter, who appear in the program, Ewert asked for understanding.
"I would hope that this is not a cause of major distress to those who love me," he said, using a voice-activated computer to speak. "This is a journey I must make."
At the same time, he acknowledged, "My dear sweet wife will have the greatest loss, as we have been together for 37 years in the greatest intimacy."
The program shows Ewert being interviewed by Dr. Hans-Jurg Schweizer in Zurich, Switzerland. Schweizer, who is responsible for filling out the lethal prescriptions, gives his approval and wishes him a "happy journey."
Later, Ewert is set up on a small yellow bed in a nondescript room; as the technicians get ready, his wife says her goodbyes.
"Have a safe journey," she says, tearing up. "See you sometime."
Ewert chokes down the lethal cocktail, slurping apple juice through a pink straw to blot out the taste as the ninth movement of Beethoven's symphony plays in the background. His wife holds his hand as he begins dying.
Dignitas, a well-known assisted suicide group in Switzerland, where suicide is legal in some circumstances, aided Ewert.
The group's founder Ludwig A. Minelli said the presence of cameras and filmmakers did not in any way influence Ewert's decision.
"Ewert, because of his illness and his declared intent right from the start to shorten his own suffering, never once considered the possibility of abandoning his assisted suicide," said Minelli.
The case came up during the prime minister's question time Wednesday when legislator Phil Willis, who represents Ewert's district, complained that the film promoted a crime.
He asked Brown if the prime minister believed the show was "in the public interest" or simply a case of "distasteful voyeurism."
Brown did not venture an opinion, saying only that the government's "television watchdogs" will scrutinize the show after it is broadcast.
Public opinion polls suggest that 80 percent of Britons believe the law should be changed to allow a doctor to end a patient's life in a case like Ewert's, but opposition from influential religious groups remains strong and the anti-suicide law remains in place.
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Nov 3, 2008 | 6:44 PM
Category:
News
Beware of Dirty Debt Collection Practices
Getting the Money at All Costs Causes Some Debt Collectors to Break the Law
By JENNIFER PIRONE and LEE FERRAN
Nov. 1, 2008 —
In tough economic times, millions of Americans are in debt. Some of them have been contacted by collections agencies.
Many of those interactions have been far less than pleasant for the consumer and, sometimes, they're even illegal.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, consumer complaints about debt collectors are on the rise. Americans have reported being harassed, threatened and even coerced into paying debts that are not their own.
Collections agents often do not work directly for the company to which the consumer owes money. Rather, they are outside professionals with a single goal: collect the outstanding debt.
Buffalo news reporter Fred Williams spent three months working undercover as a collector to see what some collectors are trained to do, and found that some of the tactics were dishonest or illegal.
According to Williams, he was taught to use "implied threats, misrepresentation, pretending to be someone you're not [and] pretending to be law enforcement."
"People would misrepresent themselves, claim to be connected with a law firm or even imply that they were with law enforcement," he said.
Williams added that what bothered him the most was a perfectly legal collection strategy.
"We were coached to tell them to take money out of their IRA, which is very expensive," he said, "or even skip a mortgage payment and use that money to pay their debt to us. ... It was perfectly legal to give people really bad financial advice.
"They treat everyone like deadbeats," Williams said. "I'm going to assume you're lying and try to get the money because that's my job."
Heather Thomas claims she was a victim of such intimidation tactics.
Thomas answered her ringing doorbell one day to find her neighbor in tears. The neighbor told her that a debt collector had just called and claimed that the police were coming to arrest Thomas.
"She just wanted to let me know that they were on their way," Thomas told "Good Morning America." "Right after that, the phones started ringing and it was a debt collector."
Thomas did not know it is illegal for debt collectors to tell anyone -- including neighbors -- about someone's debt.
In a voice mail, the debt collector said that she should call back by 5:00 p.m. or they would call "the detectives."
"I panicked," Thomas said. "I started crying. I didn't know what to do."
Terrified, Thomas searched the Internet for a lawyer and found Jerry Jarzombek.
At Jarzombek's request, Thomas started recording the calls. In one, the debt collector said Thomas had broken the law and that they could take her to court.
"Right now, we have the ability to file charges against you with the evidence that we have," the collector said. "You did, you did break the law, whether you admit it or not."
"It's one of the worst I've seen," Jarzombek told "Good Morning America." "You cannot be arrested for non-payment of a consumer debt."
It is also illegal for collectors to threaten jail time.
"They are trained to manipulate you into being scared," she said, "so afraid that you'll do anything. It was all a lie. It was all just to scare me. Intimidate me."
According to the ACA International, the association that represents debt collectors, good collectors denounce unethical practices and treat consumers with dignity and respect while educating them about their rights and responsibilities.
But not all agencies are "good collectors." According to "Good Morning America" consumer correspondent Elisabeth Leamy, there are several other rules that debt collectors have reportedly broken.
They are not allowed to call before 8:00 a.m. or after 9:00 p.m.
They must mail you a letter giving the details of your debt within five days of calling.
It is illegal for collectors to threaten anyone with violence.
Regardless of their tactics, however, Leamy said there is a simple way to get the calls to stop all together.
"All you have to do is ask for the name and address of their company," she said. "Then write a letter saying, 'Do not call me anymore,' and send it certified mail. By law, they must obey your wishes. The debt does not go away, but the harassment does."
Oct 31, 2008 | 5:43 PM
Category:
Political
Oct 31, 2008 | 12:36 PM
Category:
News
CHAPEL HILL -- Shawn Turschak of Chapel Hill was tired of someone stealing McCain-Palin campaign signs from his yard.
So the man with a degree in electrical engineering hooked up a third sign to a power source for an electric pet fence Monday. Turschak also put up a surveillance camera.
The News & Observer of Raleigh reports that Tuesday, a 9-year-old boy with an Obama-Biden sign grabbed the McCain-Palin sign and got a jolt.
The boy's father, Andrew Noble, then showed up at the Turschak's door, upset his son had been shocked. Soon an Orange County sheriff's deputy also showed up at the Turschak's home.
Noble says his son just wanted to see how the sign was put together. Turschak says the boy intended to swap out the signs.
Sheriff Lindy Pendergrass said he doesn't plan to file charges.
Oct 20, 2008 | 8:30 PM
Category:
News
89-year-old charged with keeping kids' ball
Mon Oct 20, 3:07 pm ET
Play Video AP – Elderly woman charged after taking boy's ball
BLUE ASH, Ohio – Police in Ohio say an 89-year-old woman is facing a charge of petty theft because neighborhood children accuse her of refusing to give back their football.
Edna Jester was arrested last week in the Cincinnati suburb of Blue Ash.
Police say one child's father complained that Jester kept the youngsters' ball after it landed in her yard. Police Capt. James Schaffer says there has been an ongoing dispute in the neighborhood over kids' balls landing in the woman's yard.
Jester said Monday she has received many calls and didn't have time to discuss the matter any more.
Jester is to appear in court next month. The maximum penalty for a petty theft conviction in Ohio is six months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000.
