SAN DIEGO (AP) – A celebrity fashion designer has crashed her car through the front window of a hardware store in San Diego, injuring a customer inside.
Zandra Rhodes, whose clients have included celebrities such as Princess Diana, confirms she was in the crash Tuesday but didn’t want to discuss the cause of the accident.
San Diego fire spokesman Maurice Luque says a 42-year-old woman in the Meanley & Son Ace Hardware store was struck when the car smashed into the store, hitting a table that slammed into her. The woman was taken to a hospital but did not have life-threatening injuries.
Rhodes, who splits her time between homes in Del Mar and London, tells The San Diego Union-Tribune she wasn’t hurt.
It was not immediately know if any charges would be filed.
Well, it’s finally over. The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled 5-0 today that Democrat Al Franken won the more than 2.9-million vote Senate election there by a landslide 312 votes.
Hours later Republican incumbent Norm Coleman conceded defeat to the former comedian. Coleman said he “will abide by its results” and “now congratulate Al Franken and his victory in this election.”
Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty has indicated he will sign the official election certificate according to the state’s top court decision.
Now, Coleman, the former mayor of St. Paul, can decide on his rumored run to replace Pawlenty in the governor’s office next year, while Pawlenty ponders a presidential run in 2012.
Besides bringing an often-blue sense of humor to one of the world’s most exclusive clubs, Franken will be the 60th Democratic vote out of 100, preventing the possibility of any Republican filibuster if GOP members could ever agree on such a thing.
And providing that the recent Republican turncoat Arlen Specter votes with his new-found Democratic BFFs, which he’s warned he won’t always do. Which explains Rep. Joe Sestak’s developing primary challenge back home in Pennsylvania.
And providing that 91-year-old West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd keeps surviving his frequent hospitalizations. As reported by renowned Byrd expert Don Surber here, the longest-serving senator ever was released most recently today after recovering from a staph infection contracted while he was fighting a minor infection..
Texas Sen. John Cornyn,chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said: “I would like to commend both Norm Coleman and Al Franken on a hard-fought campaign. In particular, I would like to be among the first to welcome Al Franken to the United States Senate.”
B.S. Report–It comes as no surprise…it was inevitable from the start. Though Franken was behind when they began the recount there was no doubt that the Democrats that run Minnesota were going to “find” enough votes to make him the winner.
There's always room for another moron in the U.S. Senate
WASHINGTON — Aiming to keep the focus on climate change legislation, President Barack Obama put a plug in for administration efforts to make lamps and lighting equipment use less energy.
“I know light bulbs may not seem sexy, but this simple action holds enormous promise because 7 percent of all the energy consumed in America is used to light our homes and businesses,” the president said, standing alongside Energy Secretary Steven Chu at the White House.
Obama said the new efficiency standards he was announcing for lamps would result in substantial savings between 2012 and 2042, saving consumers up to $4 billion annually, conserving enough energy to power every U.S. home for 10 months, reducing emissions equal to the amount produced by 166 million cars a year, and eliminating the need for as many as 14 coal-fired power plants.
The president also said he was speeding the delivery of $346 million in economic stimulus money to help improve energy efficiency in new and existing commercial buildings.
Republicans took issue with Obama’s pitch.
“Conservation is only half the equation. Even as we use less energy, we need to produce more of our own,” said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. “We have to admit there’s a gap between the clean, renewable fuel we want and the reliable energy we need.”
The White House added the event to the president’s schedule at the last minute, just three days after the House narrowly approved the first energy legislation designed to curb global warming following furious lobbying by White House advisers and personal pressure by the president himself. (Read more.)
B.S. Report–Are you getting tired of the government telling you what to do and how to live? They now set the rules for the banking and financial industry. They own GM and are in control of what kinds of cars will be produced in the future. They already destroyed the housing market.
There isn’t an area of our lives that the Federal Government isn’t poking their noses into. Whether it’s how much water in your toilet bowl, when and where you can smoke, or what kinds of light bulbs we can use.
People, we have to stop this loss of liberty somewhere. Lets make sure that the government doesn’t control our health care and have the final say over whether we live or die.
ADELPHI, Md. – (AP) – The makers of Tylenol, Excedrin and other medications are trying to dissuade regulators from placing new restrictions on their popular painkillers, including possibly removing some of them from store shelves.
The Food and Drug Administration has assembled more than 35 experts to discuss ways to prevent overdose with acetaminophen – the pain-relieving, fever-reducing ingredient in Tylenol and dozens of other prescription and over-the-counter medications.
Despite years of educational campaigns and other federal actions, acetaminophen is the leading cause of liver failure in the U.S., sending 56,000 people to the emergency room annually, according to the FDA.
The agency today asked its experts to consider a range of options: adding a “black box” warning label to the products, lowering the drug dosage in some products, or pulling certain types of medications off the market.
The drugs that could be pulled off shelves are combination medications, such as Procter & Gamble’s NyQuil or Novartis’ Theraflu, which combine acetaminophen with other ingredients that treat cough and runny nose.
The FDA says patients often pair them with a pure acetaminophen medication, like Tylenol, exposing themselves to unsafe levels of the drug.
But the industry group that represents Johnson & Johnson, Wyeth and other companies defended the products today, saying they pose a relatively small risk to patients. (Read more.)
JUNE 30–Meet Robert Tite. In an apparent drunk driving first, the Ohio man is facing criminal charges for allegedly piloting a bulldozer while intoxicated. Tite, 57, was nabbed last Friday after he drove the heavy machinery onto a neighbor’s property and uprooted trees and dug up a swath of lawn. Tite, pictured in the below mug shot, was arrested by Huron County Sheriff’s Office deputies and charged with operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated, criminal damage, and resisting arrest.
Cops responded to the crime scene after the neighbor called 911 to report, “Bob Tite was driving a bulldozer through his yard,” according to a sheriff’s report. After posting $18,000 bond, Tite was released Saturday from jail, and is scheduled for a July 21 court hearing. Tite’s bulldozer joins a motorized bar stool, a Zamboni, and a lawnmower as among the more unique vehicles allegedly driven by a plastered motorist. (3 pages) (Read more.)
Sitting in a Durham County jail cell, Frank M. Lombard, the Duke University researcher accused of offering his adopted 5-year-old son for sex, awaits a trip to Washington, D.C., this week to face federal criminal charges.
After waiving an extradition hearing Friday morning, he was locked in the Durham jail Saturday without bail.
Federal authorities say Lombard, 42, of 24 Indigo Creek Trail, performed sexual acts on his son and invited an undercover investigator online to fly to North Carolina and do the same.
Lombard owns the home with another man, according to Durham County property records. The pair bought the home, which sits at the end of a narrow path lined with trees and multicolored homes, in May 2007, the records show. The co-owner has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
A bag of baseball equipment, a pair of tennis rackets, a skateboard and a child’s bike lay on the home’s front porch Saturday. No one answered the door as a dog barked inside.
Lombard, associate director of Duke’s Center for Health Policy, was arrested Wednesday evening at his home. Investigators seized two webcams, five computers and a sex toy, among other items, after searching his home.
The 5-year-old and another child in the home were placed in protective custody.
Lombard has not faced a criminal charge but has speeding infractions and other driving offenses.
Lombard, a licensed clinical social worker with a master’s degree in social work, is a health-disparities researcher who studies HIV/AIDS in the rural South.
Neighbors of Lombard had nothing to say about him Saturday to a reporter who visited Eno Commons, a co-housing community in north Durham.
Residents ordered the reporter to leave the neighborhood, which emphasizes communal life.
A roadblock with a “no trespassing” sign and a Subaru greeted visitors Saturday to Indigo Creek Trail, a private street in the 22-home neighborhood.
Co-housing communities allow residents have a say in the area’s design, and they manage and maintain the community together. Decisions are made through consensus, and residents share common space.
“We care deeply about our children and want them to grow up in a friendly and stimulating environment,” a Web site about the neighborhood says.
B.S. Report–This is Duke University, home of the lacrosse team members that were wrongfully accused of rape by a black stripper. As most of us can remember, that was quite a gigantic news story that lived on the front pages for weeks. These young men were vilified by the press and the administration at Duke even before the facts of the case were known.
It was particularly galling that so many professors at Duke signed a petition against the accused students even as the facts of the case were beginning to exonerate the accused. It was like Clarence Thomas–but in reverse.
The reason this is noteworthy is because this case is flying under the radar. Yes, it’s being reported but it’s not exactly on the front burner. The accused is obviously gay, a protected minority among the media, and his adopted son is apparently black, which once again brings in a racial component.
This alleged crime is despicable and there seems, at this point anyway, to be credible evidence against this man, but unlike the professors, we’re going to wait to hear some facts before we comment on this further.
EARLY salary figures from Simon Cowell’s “American Idol” contract negotiations are leaking out and they’re eye-popping.
Cowell, who reportedly made $36 million last year for judging the hit competition show, has been offered three or four times that amount — between $100 million and $144 million per year — by co-producers Fox and 19 Entertainment to stick with “Idol” when his contract expires next May, according to The Guardian, a London newpaper.
Fox declined yesterday to comment about the salary negotiations.
While $36 million may seem like a lot of money for five months worth of snarky comments and eye-rolls, it’s only a fraction of the estimated $900 million that “Idol” rakes in a year. As the lynchpin of the show — without him there would be no one to hate and no dramatic tension with Paula Abdul — Cowell believes he’s due for a raise. (Read more.)
Indian scientists are flying through storm clouds as part of a new plan to seed them with rain-inducing chemicals to try to control the timing of the annual monsoon, whose late arrival is causing havoc this year.
B.S.–No, no, no. Not these Indians…
As Britain sweltered in temperatures of up to 32C (90F), the late monsoon means that India is suffering temperatures as high as 49C, which have caused severe crop damage, water and power shortages, and at least 100 deaths.
In Delhi some residents have been sleeping in their air-conditioned cars — with engines running — during power cuts of up to 12 hours a day. The government of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh has ordered all churches, mosques and Hindu temples to pray for rain.
The crisis illustrates how vulnerable India remains to the elements, especially the monsoon, which dominates the lives of the estimated 740 million people living in the countryside.
The Government is now hoping to change that by funding a three-year experiment to work out how best to seed the monsoon clouds that sweep across the sub-continent between June and September.
The Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, based in the western city of Pune (Poona), launched the cloud aerosol interaction and precipitation enhancement experiment (Caipeex) on May 17. “I’m not saying the cloud-seeding is the only solution,” J. R. Kulkarni, the manager of the programme, told The Times. “But in several different parts of the globe it has now been attempted and found to be successful, so it will definitely help to ease the situation.” (Read more.)
They're trying to bring in monsoons on a schedule in Delhi, India
A top Republican senator has ordered an investigation into the Environmental Protection Agency’s alleged suppression of a report that questioned the science behind global warming.
The 98-page report, co-authored by EPA analyst Alan Carlin, pushed back on the prospect of regulating gases like carbon dioxide as a way to reduce global warming. Carlin’s report argued that the information the EPA was using was out of date, and that even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased, global temperatures have declined.
B.S.–This is simply an example of how crooked the EPA is…they want to ram through new laws empowering government to make all sorts of decisions for us by regulating industry–despite the fact that their own research questions global warming.Here is the report they released just months ago…
B.S.–And here is the report they suppressed…
“He came out with the truth. They don’t want the truth at the EPA,” Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla, a global warming skeptic, told FOX News, saying he’s ordered an investigation. “We’re going to expose it.”
The controversy comes after the House of Representatives passed a landmark bill to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, one that Inhofe said will be “dead on arrival” in the Senate despite President Obama’s energy adviser voicing confidence in the measure.
According to internal e-mails that have been made public by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Carlin’s boss told him in March that his material would not be incorporated into a broader EPA finding and ordered Carlin to stop working on the climate change issue. The draft EPA finding released in April lists six greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, that the EPA says threaten public health and welfare. (Read more.)
B.S. Report–Forget, for a second, the deviousness involved in shelving Carlin’s work on the report. This also shows the sheer idiocy of government because one hand doesn’t know what the other hand is doing. Why would anyone want government to have more power over our lives?
