Daily Articles

[h=1]Chris Dorner Identified: Officials Positively ID Charred Remains Of California 'Cop Killer'
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BIG BEAR LAKE, Calif. (AP) -- Officials say burned remains found in a California mountain cabin have been positively identified as fugitive former police officer Christopher Dorner.
San Bernardino County sheriff's spokeswoman Jodi Miller said Thursday that the identification was made through Dorner's dental records.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
Karen and Jim Reynolds say they came face to face with fugitive Christopher Dorner, not on a snow-covered mountain trail, but inside their cabin-style condo.
During a 15-minute ordeal just a stone's throw from a command post authorities had set up in the massive manhunt for the ex-Los Angeles police officer, the couple said Dorner bound them and put pillowcases on their heads. At one point, he explained that he had been there for days.
"He said `I don't have a problem with you, so I'm not going to hurt you,'" Jim Reynolds said. "I didn't believe him; I thought he was going to kill us."
Police have not commented on the Reynolds' account, but it renews questions about the thoroughness of a search for a man who authorities declared was armed and extremely dangerous as they hunted him across the Southwest and Mexico.
"They said they went door-to-door but then he's right there under their noses. Makes you wonder if the police even knew what they were doing," resident Shannon Schroepfer said. "He was probably sitting there laughing at them the whole time."
The search for Dorner began last week after authorities said he had launched a deadly revenge campaign against the Los Angeles Police Department for his firing, warning that he would bring "warfare" to LAPD officers and their families.
The manhunt brought police to Big Bear Lake, 80 miles east of Los Angeles, where they found Dorner's burned-out pickup truck abandoned. His footprints disappeared on frozen soil and hundreds of officers who searched the area and checked out each building failed to find him.
The notion of him holed up just across the street from the command post was shocking to many, but not totally surprising to some experts familiar with the complications of such a manhunt.
"Chilling. That's the only word I could use for that," said Ed Tatosian, a retired SWAT commander for the Sacramento Police Department. "It's not an unfathomable oversight. We're human. It happens. It's chilling (that) it does happen."
Law enforcement officers, who had gathered outside daily for briefings, were stunned by the revelation. One official later looking on Google Earth exclaimed that he'd parked right across the street from the Reynolds' cabin each day.
The Reynolds said Dorner was upstairs in the rental unit Tuesday when they arrived to ready it for vacationers. Dorner, who at the time was being sought for three killings, confronted the Reynolds with a drawn gun, "jumped out and hollered `stay calm,'" Jim Reynolds said during a Wednesday night news conference.
His wife screamed and ran downstairs but Dorner caught her, Reynolds said. The couple said they were taken to a bedroom where he ordered them to lie on a bed and then on the floor. Dorner bound their arms and legs with plastic ties, gagged them with towels and covered their heads with pillowcases.
"I really thought it could be the end," Karen Reynolds said.
The couple believes Dorner had been staying in the cabin at least since Feb. 8, the day after his burned truck was found nearby. Dorner told them he had been watching them by day from inside the cabin as they did work outside. The couple, who live nearby, only entered the unit Tuesday. "He said we are very hard workers," Karen Reynolds said.
After he fled in their purple Nissan Rogue, she managed to call 911 from a cellphone on the coffee table. Police said Dorner later killed a fourth person, a sheriff's deputy, during a standoff, and died inside the burning cabin where he took cover during a blazing shootout.
While authorities have not corroborated the couple's account, it matched early reports from law enforcement officials that a couple had been tied up and their car stolen by a man resembling Dorner. Property records showed the Reynolds as the condo's owners.
As coroners work to confirm that the body found inside the cabin was Dorner, the San Bernardino County sheriff has refused to answer questions about how one of the largest manhunts in years could have missed him.
During the search, heavily armed deputies went door to door to search roughly 600 cabins for forced entry. Many of the cabins were boarded-up summer homes.
Authorities said officers looked for signs that someone had forcibly entered the buildings, or that heat was on inside in a cabin that otherwise looked uninhabited.
Helicopters had landed SWAT officers in a lot near the Reynolds' condo, and through the weekend they stood in plain view from the cabin, gearing up in helmets, bulletproof vests, with assault weapons at the ready.
According to the Reynolds, the cabin had cable TV, and a second-story view that would have allowed him to see choppers flying in and out.
Timothy Clemente, a retired FBI SWAT team leader who was part of the search for Atlanta Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph, said searchers had to work methodically. When there's a hot pursuit, they can run after a suspect into a building. But in a manhunt, the search has to slow down. "You can't just kick in every door," he said. Police have to have a reason to enter a building.
Officers would have been approaching each cabin, rock and tree with the prospect that Dorner was behind and waiting with a weapon that could penetrate bulletproof vests. In his manifesto posted online, Dorner, a former Navy reservist, said he had no fear of losing his life and would wage "unconventional and asymmetrical warfare" and warned officers "you will now live the life of the prey."
Even peering through windows can be difficult because officers have to remove a hand from their weapons to shade their eyes. Experts said it is likely officers may have used binoculars to help examine homes from a distance, especially when dealing with a man who had already killed three people, including a police officer.
In many cases, officers didn't even knock on the doors, according to searchers and residents.
"If Chris Dorner's on the other side of the door, what would the response be?" Clemente said. "A .50 caliber round or .223 round straight through that door."

 

[h=1]Meteor Streaks Across Russian Urals, Leaves Nearly 1000 Injured
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MOSCOW — With a blinding flash and a booming shock wave, a meteor blazed across the western Siberian sky Friday and exploded with the force of 20 atomic bombs, injuring more than 1,000 people as it blasted out windows and spread panic in a city of 1 million.
While NASA estimated the meteor was only about the size of a bus and weighed an estimated 7,000 tons, the fireball it produced was dramatic. Video shot by startled residents of the city of Chelyabinsk showed its streaming contrails as it arced toward the horizon just after sunrise, looking like something from a world-ending science-fiction movie.
The largest recorded meteor strike in more than a century occurred hours before a 150-foot asteroid passed within about 17,000 miles (28,000 kilometers) of Earth. The European Space Agency said its experts had determined there was no connection between the asteroid and the Russian meteor – just cosmic coincidence.
The meteor above western Siberia entered the Earth's atmosphere about 9:20 a.m. local time (10:20 p.m. EST Thursday) at a hypersonic speed of at least 33,000 mph (54,000 kph) and shattered into pieces about 30-50 kilometers (18 to 32 miles) high, the Russian Academy of Sciences said. NASA estimated its speed at about 40,000 mph, said it exploded about 12 to 15 miles high, released 300 to 500 kilotons of energy and left a trail 300 miles long.
"There was panic. People had no idea what was happening," said Sergey Hametov of Chelyabinsk, about 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) east of Moscow in the Ural Mountains.
"We saw a big burst of light, then went outside to see what it was and we heard a really loud, thundering sound," he told The Associated Press by telephone.
The shock wave blew in an estimated 100,000 square meters (more than 1 million square feet) of glass, according to city officials, who said 3,000 buildings in Chelyabinsk were damaged. At a zinc factory, part of the roof collapsed.
The Interior Ministry said about 1,100 people sought medical care after the shock wave and 48 were hospitalized. Most of the injuries were caused by flying glass, officials said.
Scientists estimated the meteor unleashed a force 20 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, although the space rock exploded at a much higher altitude. Amy Mainzer, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said the atmosphere acted as a shield.
The shock wave may have shattered windows, but "the atmosphere absorbed the vast majority of that energy," she said.
Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman Vladimir Purgin said many of the injured were cut as they flocked to windows to see what caused the intense flash of light, which momentarily was brighter than the sun.
There was no immediate word on any deaths or anyone struck by space fragments.
President Vladimir Putin summoned the nation's emergencies minister and ordered immediate repairs. "We need to think how to help the people and do it immediately," he said.
Some meteorite fragments fell in a reservoir outside the town of Chebarkul, the regional Interior Ministry office said. The crash left an eight-meter (26-foot) crater in the ice.
Lessons had just started at Chelyabinsk schools when the meteor exploded, and officials said 258 children were among those injured. Amateur video showed a teacher speaking to her class as a powerful shock wave hit the room.
Yekaterina Melikhova, a high school student whose nose was bloody and whose upper lip was covered with a bandage, said she was in her geography class when a bright light flashed outside.
"After the flash, nothing happened for about three minutes. Then we rushed outdoors. ... The door was made of glass, a shock wave made it hit us," she said.
Russian television ran video of athletes at a city sports arena who were showered by shards of glass from huge windows. Some of them were still bleeding.
Other videos showed a long shard of glass slamming into the floor close to a factory worker and massive doors blown away by the shock wave.
Meteors typically cause sizeable sonic booms when they enter the atmosphere because they are traveling so much faster than the speed of sound. Injuries on the scale reported Friday, however, are extraordinarily rare.
"I went to see what that flash in the sky was about," recalled resident Marat Lobkovsky. "And then the window glass shattered, bouncing back on me. My beard was cut open, but not deep. They patched me up. It's OK now."
Another resident, Valya Kazakov, said some elderly women in his neighborhood started crying out that the world was ending.
The many broken windows exposed residents to the bitter cold as temperatures in the city were expected to plummet to minus 20 Celsius (minus 4 Fahrenheit) overnight. The regional governor put out a call for any workers who knew how to repair windows.
Russian-language hashtags for the meteorite quickly shot up into Twitter's top trends.
"Jeez, I just woke up because my bed started shaking! The whole house is moving!" tweeted Alisa Malkova.
Social media was flooded with video from the many dashboard cameras that Russians mount in their cars, in case of pressure from corrupt traffic police or a dispute after an accident.
The dramatic event prompted an array of reactions from prominent Russians.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, speaking at an economic forum in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, said the meteor could be a symbol for the forum, showing that "not only the economy is vulnerable, but the whole planet."
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a nationalist leader noted for his vehement statements, blamed the Americans.
"It's not meteors falling. It's the test of a new weapon by the Americans," the RIA Novosti news agency quoted him as saying.
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said the incident showed the need for leading world powers to develop a system to intercept objects falling from space.
"At the moment, neither we nor the Americans have such technologies" to shoot down meteors or asteroids, he said, according to the Interfax news agency.
Meteoroids are small pieces of space debris – usually parts of comets or asteroids – that are on a collision course with the Earth. They become meteors when they enter the Earth's atmosphere. Most meteors burn up in the atmosphere, but if they survive the frictional heating and strike the surface of the Earth they are called meteorites.
NASA said the Russian fireball was the largest reported since 1908, when a meteor hit Tunguska, Siberia, and flattened an estimated 80 million trees. Chelyabinsk is about 5,000 kilometers (3,000 miles) west of Tunguska. The Tunguska blast, attributed to a comet or asteroid fragment, is generally estimated to have been about 10 megatons.
Scientists believe that a far larger meteorite strike on what today is Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula may have been responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago. According to that theory, the impact would have thrown up vast amounts of dust that blanketed the sky for decades and altered the climate on Earth.
The object hailed from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, becoming a meteor as it streaked through the earth's atmosphere, Bill Cooke, head of the Meteoroid Environments Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, said.
Paul Chodas, research scientist at the Near Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said that ground telescopes would have needed to point in the right direction at the right time to spot Friday's incoming meteor.
"It would be very faint and difficult to detect, not impossible, but difficult," Chodas said.
The 150-foot space rock that safely hurtled past Earth at 2:25 p.m. EST Friday was dubbed Asteroid 2012 DA14 and was discovered a year ago. It came closer than many communication and weather satellites that orbit 22,300 miles up.
The asteroid was invisible to astronomers in the United States at the time of its closest approach on the opposite of the world. But in Australia, astronomers used binoculars and telescopes to watch the point of light speed across the clear night sky.
Jim Green, NASA's director of planetary science, called the back-to-back celestial events an amazing display.
"This is indeed very rare and it is historic," he said on NASA TV. "These fireballs happen about once a day or so, but we just don't see them because many of them fall over the ocean or in remote areas. "
Experts said the Russian meteor could have produced much more serious problems in the area hosting nuclear and chemical weapons disposal facilities.
Vladimir Chuprov of Greenpeace Russia noted that the meteor struck only 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the Mayak nuclear storage and disposal facility, which holds dozens of tons of weapons-grade plutonium.
The panic and confusion that followed the meteor quickly gave way to typical Russian black humor and entrepreneurial instincts. Several people smashed in the windows of their houses in the hopes of receiving compensation, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.
Others quickly took to the Internet and put what they said were meteorite fragments up for sale.
One of the most popular jokes was that the meteorite was supposed to fall on Dec. 21, 2012 – when many believed the Mayan calendar predicted the end of the world – but was delivered late by Russia's notoriously inefficient postal service.

 

Whoa. And just by a few thousand miles. Insane!

Dude, I'd like to keep in touch with you via email. If you don't mind ofc

 

[video=youtube_share;WaQIPBqoQ-Q]http://youtu.be/WaQIPBqoQ-Q[/video]

You decide what's that

 

[video=youtube;7rHEU2wSrhI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rHEU2wSrhI[/video]

 

[email protected]

 

[h=1] Egypt: Hot Air Balloon Crashes Near Luxor, Killing 18 Tourists
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CAIRO, Feb 26 (Reuters) - Eighteen Asian and European tourists died when a hot air balloon crashed early on Tuesday near the ancient Egyptian town of Luxor following a mid-air gas explosion, officials said.

Tourism official Ahmed Aboud said the balloon was at around 1,000 feet (300 metres) above Luxor, famous for its pharaonic temples and tombs of the Valley of the Kings, including Tutankhamen's, when the blast happened.

The pilot survived by jumping from the basket when it was 10-15 metres from the ground, said Aboud, head of an association representing Luxor balloon operators.

The pilot was being treated for burns, Aboud said by telephone. One of the tourists aboard the balloon also survived the accident, which Aboud said was caused by an explosion in the hose between the balloon's burner and its gas canister.

Mohamed Mustafa, a doctor at the hospital where the wounded were being treated, said the dead included tourists from Britain, Japan and Hong Kong. Three more were hurt, he added.
Luxor province's governor told Al Jazeera Mubasher Misr that some of the bodies had yet to be identified.

Konny Matthews, assistant manager of Luxor's Al Moudira hotel, said she heard a boom around 7 am (0500 GMT). "It was a huge bang. It was a frightening bang, even though it was several kilometres away from the hotel," she said by phone. "Some of my employees said that their homes were shaking."

The balloon came to ground on the west bank of the Nile river, where many of the major historical sites are located.

U.S. photographer Christopher Michel, who was on board another balloon, told Britain's Sky News television that the balloon was one of eight flying at the time.

"We heard a loud explosion behind us. I looked back and saw lots of smoke. It wasn't immediately clear that it was a balloon," he said.

Hot air ballooning at dawn is a popular draw with tourists, a mainstay of the Egyptian economy, but visitor numbers have fallen sharply since a 2011 uprising that toppled veteran President Hosni Mubarak. Two years of political instability have scared off many foreign tourists.

Tourism accounted for more than a 10th of Egypt's gross domestic product before the revolt. In 2010, around 14.7 million visitors came to Egypt, but this slumped to 9.8 million people the next year. (Reporting by Tom Perry and Alexander Dziadosz; Additional reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by David Stamp and Jon Boyle)

 

[h=1]Santa Cruz Shooting: 2 Police Officers Shot And Killed During Sexual Assault Investigation; Suspect Also Killed
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SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — Two police detectives were shot and killed while investigating a sexual assault complaint, and a suspect was also fatally shot after a brief chase, authorities said.
The veteran officers, one male and one female, were shot around 3:30 p.m. as they went to a suspect's home to follow up on the case. Their deaths were confirmed by Santa Cruz County Sheriff Phil Wowak.
A suspect was shot and killed a short time later while authorities were pursuing the gunman, the sheriff's office said.
After the officers were shot, nearby residents received an automatic police call warning them to stay locked inside. About half an hour later, more than a dozen semi-automatic shots echoed down the streets in a brief barrage of gunfire that killed the suspect.
Police Chief Kevin Vogel said Sgt. Loren Butch Baker, a 28-year veteran, and Detective Elizabeth Butler, a 10-year veteran, were shot and killed.
"There aren't words to describe this horrific tragedy," he said. "This is the darkest day in the history of the Santa Cruz police department."
The suspect who was killed in the shooting was identified as 35-year-old Jeremy Goulet, who was arrested Friday after a co-worker at a Santa Cruz coffee shop alleged he went to her house and made inappropriate sexual advances. The Santa Cruz Sentinel reported that he was fired the next day.
To investigate the complaint, the detectives went to the house where Goulet was living and an altercation ensued, leading to the officers being fired upon, authorities said.
The detectives called for backup and neighbors also summoned police. Responding officers located Goulet a short time later. The sheriff's office said he was killed in the gunfire that followed.
After the shootings, police went door-to-door in the neighborhood, searching homes, garages, even closets to determine whether there might be additional suspects.
Police, sheriff's deputies and FBI agents filled intersections, some with guns drawn, in what is ordinarily a quiet, residential neighborhood in the community about 60 miles south of San Francisco.
A store clerk a few buildings away from the shooting said the barrage of gunfire was "terrifying."
"We ducked. We have big desks so under the desks we went," said the clerk, who spoke on condition of anonymity and asked that her store not be identified because she feared for her safety.
Two schools were locked down during the shooting. The students were later evacuated by bus to the County Government Center about half a mile away.
As darkness fell, helicopters and light aircraft patrolled above the neighborhood, which is about a mile from downtown Santa Cruz and the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. The campus of University of California, Santa Cruz, is about five miles away.
The city's mayor, Hilary Bryant, said in a statement that the city was shocked over the shootings.
"Tonight we are heartbroken at the loss of two of our finest police officers who were killed in the line of duty, protecting the community we love," the statement said. "This is an exceptionally shocking and sad day for Santa Cruz and our Police Department."
Goulet worked as a barista at a coffee shop in the Santa Cruz harbor. He was convicted in Portland, Ore., in May 2008 of peeping at a 22-year-old woman who was showering in her condominium and of carrying concealed weapon, according to a Portland newspaper, The Oregonian. He was put on probation but, after a dispute with his probation officer, was sentenced to two years in jail.
The violence comes amid a recent spate of assaults in the city, which community leaders had planned to address in a downtown rally scheduled for Tuesday. That, along with a city council meeting, was canceled after teary-eyed city leaders learned of the deaths.
Those shootings include the killing of a 32-year-old martial arts instructor who was shot outside a popular downtown bar and restaurant; the robbery of a UC Santa Cruz student who was shot in the head; a 21-year-old woman who was raped and beaten on the UC Santa Cruz campus; and a couple who fought off two men during a home invasion.

 

[h=1]Family Of Mike Drea, Vietnam Veteran Killed In Action, Gets Class Ring Back
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More than 40 years after a family lost their son and brother in Vietnam, they have been reunited with his cherished class ring.
After his brother, Jerry, was killed in an explosion in Vietnam in 1970, Joe Sain received a box of belongings from the military, including a class ring that didn’t belong to Jerry, the Wisconsin State Journal reported. While Sain was determined to return the ring, no one with the initials “M.D.,” which were engraved on the ring, was listed among those who died in the explosion.
The initials didn’t match anyone’s listed of those killed because the ring belonged to Terrance Lee Drea, who went by “Mike," according to the paper.
After his mother fell ill, Sain was inspired to renew his search. In November, he contacted a number of Weston High Schools, which was also engraved on the ring, and finally found the one in Wisconsin that Terrance, AKA Mike Drea, attended. He recently connected with Mike’s sister, Mary, and flew out to return it to her.
While Drea’s family had to wait more than four decades to get the sentimental piece of jewelry back, other veterans have been surprised nearly double that amount of time when an important keepsake arrived on their doorsteps.
Back in January, William Kadar, 92, a World War II veteran who served in France, was finally reunited with his Army-issued duffel bag nearly seven decades after it went missing, the Associated Press reports.
A French teen found the bag in his grandfather’s home and sent it to the vet's home in Indiana. It still has Kadar’s name and serial number stenciled on it.
"It's given us a deeper understanding of what he and others went through," Kadar's granddaughter Amy Parsons, told the AP. "We don't have that perspective in the U.S. as much. (Kadar) always said, `It's a miracle I came home.'"

 

'Harlem Shake' FAA Investigation: Colorado College Students' Dance In Plane Triggers Federal Inquiry

[video=youtube;xG6p0z_W2Bo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xG6p0z_W2Bo[/video]

"Harlem Shake" videos are all fun and games -- until the Feds get involved.
It seems a version of the popular dance video meme, filmed mid-February by enterprising Colorado College students aboard a Frontier Airlines flight headed for San Diego, has raised a few eyebrows over at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
ABC Denver affiliate KMGH confirmed the investigation with the FAA, which initially started the inquiry after viewing the video on YouTube.
Frontier Airlines spokeswoman Kate O'Malley added to KMGH that "[a]ll safety measures were followed and the seat belt sign was off" at the time the video was filmed.
“They are still looking into it, it’s still open,” FAA spokesman Tony Molinero said of the agency's probe, according to Colorado College student newspaper The Catalyst. “I don’t know where the [investigators] were told about it, but when they saw the video they just decided to look into it because it is better to be safe than sorry.”
For the uninitiated, the meme revolves around one person, typically wearing a helmet and dancing alone for approximately 15 seconds while "Harlem Shake," by New York-based DJ Baauer, plays in the background. When the bass drops, the solitary dancer is joined by a crowd of other dancing people. What's the point? There isn't one.
Colorado College seems to have perfected the art of the "Harlem Shake." The airplane version currently has in excess of 400,000 views on YouTube. Another version, filmed at the campus' Tutt Library, has nearly 200,000 views.

 

[h=1] Tara Willenborg Murder: Indiana Teen Was Sexually Assaulted Before She Was Slain, Police Say
[/h]I've got to admit she looks pretty hot.

A 17-year-old Indiana girl found slain in her bedroom was sexually assaulted before she was murdered, prosecutors say.
Tara Willenborg, of Clarksville, was pronounced dead on Saturday after her fiance discovered her body early that morning in the couple's apartment, WDRB reports.
On Sunday, about a mile from the crime scene, police arrested 49-year-old Richard Hooten, a convicted sex offender with an unrelated warrant out for his arrest.
Clark County Prosecutor Steve Stewart was preparing charges for the case.
"Obviously, this girl suffered a horrible death. In addition to a murder charge, we certainly anticipate charges of rape and/or criminal deviant conduct," Stewart told the News and Tribune.
Willenborg's fiance discovered her body in their apartment. Willenberg's father told WDRB that she was a former Jeffersonville High School cross-country athlete and had just earned her GED two weeks ago.
There were no signs of a forced break-in, and some reports indicate that Willenborg and Hooten knew each other previously.
"They just had an acquaintance. I think they had just met recently," Darrell Rayborn of the Clarksville Police Department told WAVE.
Hooten also has a previous cocaine-related charge, according to WLKY. He was being held in the Clark County Jail.

 

I agree! I fucking live in Indiana... that kind of trash / slag is all-too-common, unfortunately. A real monster.

 

[h=1]Nicholas Joy, Mass. Teen Skier Missing For 2 Days, Found Alive In Maine After Building Snow Cave
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CARRABASSETT VALLEY, Maine -- Maine wardens say a 17-year-old skier who was found alive and well at Maine's Sugarloaf ski resort Tuesday. He survived two nights in the wild by building a snow cave for shelter while walking toward the sound of snowmobiles during the day.
The Maine Warden Service says a snowmobiler found Nicholas Joy, of Medford, Mass., Tuesday morning on a trail off the western side of Sugarloaf Mountain. He was taken to a hospital for evaluation.
Joy was reported missing Sunday afternoon after he and his father took separate trails from the top and he failed to show up at the bottom.
Wardens say Joel Paul, a snowmobiler from Massachusetts who was not part of the search party, found the boy.
Sugarloaf General Manager John Diller says Joy and his parents had a tearful reunion.
Joy and his father split up after taking a chairlift to the top of the mountain and took separate trails down in what was going to be the last run of the day, Lt. Kevin Adam, the search coordinator, said Monday. They planned to meet in the Sugarloaf parking lot and drive back to Massachusetts, and the father called for help when his son didn't show up, Adam said.
The search was hampered Monday by high winds and blowing snow that limited visibility and caused the search to be called off at nightfall. Joy was located a short time after the search resumed Tuesday by Joel Paul, a snowmobile rider from Massachusetts, the warden service said.
One or two skiers get lost and are reported missing at Sugarloaf most winters, with skiers sometimes spending a night in the outdoors before being found. In a highly publicized case three years ago, four teenage snowboarders got lost after going out of bounds into ungroomed expert terrain, but they survived a cold night in dense woods and deep snow by continually moving around to stay warm.

 

[h=1] North Korea Threatens Pre-Emptive Nuclear Strike Against U.S.
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UNITED NATIONS -- North Korea vowed on Thursday to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the United States, amplifying its threatening rhetoric as U.N. diplomats voted on whether to level new sanctions against Pyongyang for its recent nuclear test.
An unidentified spokesman for Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry said the North will exercise its right for "a preemptive nuclear attack to destroy the strongholds of the aggressors" because Washington is pushing to start a nuclear war against the North.
Although North Korea boasts of nuclear bombs and pre-emptive strikes, it is not thought to have mastered the ability to produce a warhead small enough to put on a missile capable of reaching the U.S. It is believed to have enough nuclear fuel, however, for several crude nuclear devices.
Such inflammatory rhetoric is common from North Korea, and especially so in recent days. North Korea is angry over the possible sanctions and over upcoming U.S.-South Korean military drills. At a mass rally in Pyongyang on Thursday, tens of thousands of North Koreans protested the U.S.-South Korean war drills and sanctions.
Army Gen. Kang Pyo Yong told the crowd that North Korea is ready to fire long-range nuclear-armed missiles at Washington.
"Intercontinental ballistic missiles and various other missiles, which have already set their striking targets, are now armed with lighter, smaller and diversified nuclear warheads and are placed on a standby status," Kang said. "When we shell (the missiles), Washington, which is the stronghold of evils, .... will be engulfed in a sea of fire."
The U.N. Security Council was considering a fourth round of sanctions against Pyongyang in a fresh attempt to rein in its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
The resolution was drafted by the United States and China, North Korea's closest ally. The council's agreement to put the resolution to a vote just 48 hours later signaled that it would almost certainly have the support of all 15 council members.
The statement by the North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman was carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency.
It accused the U.S. of leading efforts to slap sanctions on North Korea. The statement said the new sanctions would only advance the timing for North Korea to fulfill previous vows to take "powerful second and third countermeasures" against its enemies. It hasn't elaborated on those measures.
The statement said North Korea "strongly warns the U.N. Security Council not to make another big blunder like the one in the past when it earned the inveterate grudge of the Korean nation by acting as a war servant for the U.S. in 1950."
North Korea demanded the U.N. Security Council immediately dismantle the American-led U.N. Command that's based in Seoul and move to end the state of war that exists on the Korean Peninsula, which continues six decades after fighting stopped because an armistice, not a peace treaty, ended the war.
In anticipation of the resolution's adoption, North Korea earlier in the week threatened to cancel the 1953 cease-fire that ended the Korean War.
North Korean threats have become more common as tensions have escalated following a rocket launch by Pyongyang in December and its third nuclear test on Feb. 12. Both acts defied three Security Council resolutions that bar North Korea from testing or using nuclear or ballistic missile technology and from importing or exporting material for these programs.
U.S. U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice said the proposed resolution would impose some of the strongest sanctions ever ordered by the United Nations.
The final version of the draft resolution, released Wednesday, identified three individuals, one corporation and one organization that would be added to the U.N. sanctions list if the measure is approved.
The targets include top officials at a company that is the country's primary arms dealer and main exporter of ballistic missile-related equipment, and a national organization responsible for research and development of missiles and probably nuclear weapons.
The success of a new round of sanctions could depend on enforcement by China, where most of the companies and banks that North Korea is believed to work with are based.
The United States and other nations worry that North Korea's third nuclear test pushed it closer to its goal of gaining nuclear missiles that can reach the U.S. The international community has condemned the regime's nuclear and missile efforts as threats to regional security and a drain on the resources that could go to North Korea's largely destitute people.
The draft resolution condemns the latest nuclear test "in the strongest terms" for violating and flagrantly disregarding council resolutions, bans further ballistic missile launches, nuclear tests "or any other provocation," and demands that North Korea return to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It also condemns all of North Korea's ongoing nuclear activities, including its uranium enrichment.
But the proposed resolution stresses the council's commitment "to a peaceful, diplomatic and political solution" and urged a resumption of six-party talks with the aim of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula "in a peaceful manner."
The proposed resolution would make it significantly harder for North Korea to move around the funds it needs to carry out its illicit programs and strengthen existing sanctions and the inspection of suspect cargo bound to and from the country. It would also ban countries from exporting specific luxury goods to the North, including yachts, luxury automobiles, racing cars, and jewelry with semi-precious and precious stones and precious metals.
According to the draft, all countries would now be required to freeze financial transactions or services that could contribute to North Korea's nuclear or missile programs.
To get around financial sanctions, North Koreans have been carrying around large suitcases filled with cash to move illicit funds. The draft resolution expresses concern that these bulk cash transfers may be used to evade sanctions. It clarifies that the freeze on financial transactions and services that could violate sanctions applies to all cash transfers as well as the cash couriers.
The proposed resolution also bans all countries from providing public financial support for trade deals, such as granting export credits, guarantees or insurance, if the assistance could contribute to the North's nuclear or missile programs.
It includes what a senior diplomat called unprecedented new travel sanctions that would require countries to expel agents working for sanctioned North Korean companies.
The draft also requires states to inspect suspect cargo on their territory and prevent any vessel that refuses an inspection from entering their ports. And a new aviation measure calls on states to deny aircraft permission to take off, land or fly over their territory if illicit cargo is suspected to be aboard.

 

[h=1]U.S.-South Korea Military Drills Begin As North Korea Threatens War
[/h]

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korean state media said Monday that Pyongyang had carried through with a threat to cancel the 60-year-old armistice that ended the Korean War, as it and South Korea staged dueling war games amid threatening rhetoric that has risen to the highest level since North Korea rained artillery shells on a South Korean island in 2010.
Enraged over the South's joint military drills with the United States and recent U.N. sanctions, Pyongyang has piled threat on top of threat, including vows to launch a nuclear strike on the U.S. Seoul has responded with tough talk of its own and has placed its troops on high alert.
The North Korean government made no formal announcement Monday on its repeated threats to scrap the armistice, but the country's main newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, reported that the armistice was nullified Monday as Pyongyang had earlier announced it would.
The North followed through on another promise Monday, shutting down a Red Cross hotline that the North and South used for general communication and to discuss aid shipments and separated families' reunions.
The 11-day military drills that started Monday involve 10,000 South Korean and about 3,000 American troops. Those coincide with two months of separate U.S.-South Korean field exercises that began March 1.
Also continuing are large-scale North Korean drills that Seoul says involve the army, navy and air force. The South Korean defense ministry said there have been no military activities it considers suspicious.
The North has threatened to nullify the armistice several times in times of tension with the outside world, and in 1996 the country sent hundreds of armed troops into a border village. The troops later withdrew.
Despite the heightened tension, there were signs of business as usual Monday.
The two Koreas continue to have at least two working channels of communication between their militaries and aviation authorities.
One of those hotlines was used Monday to give hundreds of South Koreans approval to enter North Korea to go to work. Their jobs are at the only remaining operational symbol of joint inter-Korean cooperation, the Kaesong industrial complex. It is operated in North Korea with South Korean money and knowhow and a mostly North Korean work force.
The North Korean rhetoric escalated as the U.N. Security Council last week approved a new round of sanctions over Pyongyang's latest nuclear weapons test Feb. 12.
Analysts said that much of the bellicosity is meant to shore up loyalty among citizens and the military for North Korea's young leader, Kim Jong Un.
"This is part of their brinksmanship," said Daniel Pinkston, a Seoul-based expert on North Korea with the International Crisis Group think tank. "It's an effort to signal their resolve, to show they are willing to take greater risks, with the expectation that everyone else caves in and gives them what they want."
Part of what North Korea wants is a formal peace treaty to end the Korean War, instead of the armistice that leaves the peninsula still technically in a state of war. It also wants security guarantees and other concessions, direct talks with Washington, recognition as a nuclear weapons state and the removal of 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea.
Pinkston said there is little chance of fighting breaking out while war games are being conducted, but he added that he expects North Korea to follow through with a somewhat mysterious promise to respond at a time and place of its own choosing.
North Korea was responsible for an artillery attack that killed four South Koreans in 2010. A South Korean-led international investigation found that North Korea torpedoed a South Korean warship that same year, killing 46 sailors. Pyongyang denies sinking the ship.
Among other threats in the past week, North Korea has warned Seoul of a nuclear war on the divided peninsula and said it was cancelling nonaggression pacts.
South Korean and U.S. officials have been closely monitoring Pyongyang's actions and parsing its recent rhetoric, which has been more warlike than usual.
One analyst said Kaesong's continued operations show that North Korea's cutting of the Red Cross communication channel was symbolic. More than 840 South Koreans were set to cross the border Monday to Kaesong, which provides a badly-needed flow of hard currency to a country where many face food shortages, according to Seoul's Unification Ministry.
"If South Koreans don't go to work at Kaesong, North Korea will suffer" financially, said analyst Hong Hyun-ik at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea. "If North Korea really intends to start a war with South Korea, it could have taken South Koreans at Kaesong hostage."
Under newly inaugurated President Park Geun-hye, South Korea's Defense Ministry, which often brushes off North Korean threats, has looked to send a message of strength in response to the latest comments from Pyongyang.
The ministry has warned that the North's government would "evaporate from the face of the Earth" if it ever used a nuclear weapon. The White House also said the U.S. is fully capable of defending itself against a North Korean ballistic attack.
On Monday, Park told a Cabinet Council meeting that South Korea should strongly respond to any provocation by North Korea. But she also said Seoul should move ahead with her campaign promise to build up trust with the North.
North Korea has said the U.S. mainland is within the range of its long-range missiles, and an army general told a Pyongyang rally last week that the military is ready to fire a long-range nuclear-armed missile to turn Washington into a "sea of fire."
While outside scientists are still trying to determine specifics, the North's rocket test in December and third atomic bomb test last month may have pushed the country a step closer to acquiring the ability to hit the U.S. with weapons of mass destruction. Analysts, however, say Pyongyang is still years away from acquiring the smaller, lighter nuclear warheads needed for a credible nuclear missile program.
But there are still worries about a smaller conflict, and analysts have said that more missile and nuclear tests are possible reactions from North Korea.
North Korea has a variety of missiles and other weapons capable of striking South Korea. Both the warship sinking and island shelling in 2010 occurred near a western sea boundary between the Koreas that North Korea fiercely disputes. It has been a recurring flashpoint between the rivals that has seen three other bloody naval skirmishes since 1999.
Last week, Kim Jong Un visited two islands just north of the sea boundary and ordered troops there to open fire immediately if a single enemy shell is fired on North Korean waters.
Kim was also quoted as saying his military is fully ready to fight an "all-out war" and that he will order a "just, great advance for national unification" if the enemy makes even a slight provocation, according to the North's official Korean Central News Agency.

 

Just curious... not trying to be a prick or anything, but what is this thread for?

 

Daily articles?

View attachment 1982

 

i hate you davzee

never fuckin mind lol