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Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Ex-Marine Kills 300-Pound Bear With Log

Chris Everhart just had a Father's Day he'll never forget.

Marine
(ABC News)

The ex-Marine saved the lives of his three young sons when a 300-pound bear attacked their Georgia campsite last weekend.

While cleaning up after dinner, the family came face to face with the large animal.

"From out of nowhere we heard this loud crash," Everhart said on "Good Morning America." "For a second, I didn't know what it was, but I realized it was a bear. I went to the back of the Jeep to get my pots and pans to scare the bear off."

At the same time, Everhart's 6-year-old son, Logan, tried to frighten the animal. Instead of running away, the bear turned on the boy. Logan's brother, Kyle, tried to help him.

"I threw about five rocks at the bear to keep him away," Kyle Everhart said.

Realizing his sons could be killed, Everhart grabbed a log and threw it at the bear's head, striking and killing him.

"I forgot all about pots and pans and picked up whatever I could to try to distract, fend off, do what I could to get this bear away," Everhart said.

Latest in a String of Bear Attacks

The Georgia campsite incident is the latest in a string of bear attacks. One week ago in Utah's American Fork Canyon, 11-year-old Sam Ives died after a black bear dragged him from his tent and fatally mauled him.

The same bear ripped through another couple's tent hours before the attack. It was later killed and airlifted out of the park.

In upstate New York Monday, a black bear was caught strolling in and out of yards in a small residential neighborhood.

Jim Karpowitz of the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources believes the abundance of bear sightings may be due to recent droughts.

"When it's hot and dry like this bears are short on food and they go looking for food and sometimes they create problems," he said.

For Everhart, the 300-pound bear that attacked his sons was almost a problem too big to handle.

"This one got a little too aggressive for me," he said. "If the bear had gotten near my kids, I would have just jumped on it. Knowing me, that's what I would have done, anything to make sure my kids were safe."

Original here

Biggest Diamond Heist Suspect Found With Rough Stones

By Eliot Van Buskirk

Last week, Milanese authorities found Leonardo Notarbartolo, the man accused of masterminding the world’s biggest diamond heist, in possession of approximately 2.2 pounds of rough, uncut diamonds.

Many of the stolen diamonds were never recovered, and Notarbartolo was detained for driving around with hundreds of diamonds stashed in his BMW, just a few months after being released from prison for the crime.

Case closed? Not so fast.

Due to the slippery nature of rough diamonds — and of Leonardo Notarbartolo himself — the alleged criminal mastermind could walk away scot free, with the confiscated diamonds back in his possession.

Ever the charmer, Notarbartolo claims he purchased the diamonds legitimately for a mere 10,000 euros, as he told Wired’s Joshua Davis last week through an intermediary. (Davis wrote about the heist in March.) On Monday, the alleged jewel thief contacted Davis again to say that the confiscated diamonds are not precious jewels, but rather industrial-grade diamonds used to manufacture cutting tools, which is why he paid only 10,000 euros for the whole pile.

“Notarbartolo is saying, ‘These are my diamonds. I got them legitimately. Give them back.’ And he’s hired a lawyer, Basilio Foti, to advocate for the return of the diamonds,” explained Davis.

Notarbartolo’s defense will likely hinge on the fact that rough, uncut diamonds are nearly impossible to trace. Polished diamonds typically have certified identities that accompany them during transport, and often contain laser-etched logos or certification numbers that are invisible to the naked eye.

A rough diamond, on the other hand, is pretty much a rough diamond. Because they’re soon to be cut and polished, which changes their characteristics, they’re not certified by the industry. “To say with certainty that any rough diamond is the same rough diamond that was in a vault six years go is almost impossible,” explained Davis, who has reported extensively on the diamond trade.

Despite the fact that the vast majority of the diamonds stolen six years ago were in rough form — and that the guy proven to have organized the crime was just found with a big pile of rough diamonds — authorities probably lack sufficient evidence to put Notarbartolo back behind bars, due to the early-untraceable nature of unpolished stones. Most likely, they will be forced to return the jewels to the convicted jewel thief and send him on his merry way.

“I don’t understand the Italian legal system, of course,” explained Davis, “but speaking on purely logical grounds, if you can’t prove that the diamonds are stolen, then you would logically have to give them back.”

In other words, Leonardo Notarbartolo, who famously liberated $120 million in diamonds and cash from a bank so “secure” it didn’t even need live security guards, may finally have found a suitable second act: freeing himself after being caught red-handed, six years later, with hundreds of what could very well be the very same diamonds.

Original here

7 Fatal Injuries (That People Somehow Survived)

By Son Tran

The human body is a miracle; though you may disagree if you're sitting there in the throes of an allergy attack or a hangover.

The truth is your body can take a lot of abuse, and we've all heard amazing stories of people living through hacked off limbs, extreme temperatures and even falling out of airplanes. So how much punishment can the human body take? Well, under certain circumstances you can apparently survive...

#7
Getting Cut... In Half

When you work on the railroad, you probably know that something terrible can happen. Maybe you'll break a bone, or lose a limb. Or maybe you'll lose the entire lower half of your freaking body

That's what happened to Truman Duncan, who, after falling off of a moving train, was dragged underneath the wheels. They severed his body in half at the waist, incredibly leaving him alive and conscious to hear the machinery grinding his body in two as he was dragged 75 feet.

Truman decided that screaming like a little girl was neither manly nor helpful and instead pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911 from right there under the train. Then, because it took rescuers 45 minutes to get him out from under the train, he placed a few calls to his family as well.


Jesus, how do you start that conversation?

Doctors are unsure how he managed to survive the accident but suspect that the weight of the wheels may have kept him from bleeding to death (though not very well--he lost about half the blood in his body). It may also have been due to his Kryptonian ancestry, but we're just speculating. Still, it took 23 surgeries over four months before Truman could leave the hospital, minus his legs, pelvis and a kidney.

Today, Truman is back at work at a desk job. He says he can still do the things he did before the accident like swimming, playing with his kids and screaming, "Fuck you!" at every train he passes.

#6.
Getting Shot... And Shot... And Shot

Despite what the NRA would have you believe, guns do kill people. Just not all people.

After all, we've seen Bruce Willis get shot like five or six times in four movies, so clearly you can shrug off a couple of slugs. Rapper 50 Center got shot nine times and lived to rap another day. So how many shots can a man take before we declare him to be either a superhero or a zombie?

How about 19?

New Yorker, Joseph Guzman, took that many slugs and walked away (alright, he didn't exactly walk). Joseph's problems began back in 2006 when he was out at a bachelor party with some friends.

According to Joseph, his friends had left the party reading quotes from the bible to each other and were on their way to assist the homeless. According to the police, the group was shooting off flamethrowers and wheeling a giant cannon down the street toward an orphanage. The truth is probably somewhere in between.

One way or another, the cops started shooting. And once you get started with the shooting, well, it's kind of hard to stop. Fifty rounds were fired at Joseph. Thirty-one of them missed, but the police probably figured that the ones that hit home were more than enough to do the job.


"Another one? Anderson, are you throwing the bullets
back in here just to fuck with me?"

Joseph was rushed to the hospital where doctors discovered the 19 bullet-holes in his body. The attending physician later testified that Joseph was "probably in severe pain." Dr. Obvious likely went on to say that the red stuff pouring out of Joseph's body was "probably blood."

After they determined that he was indeed bleeding, the doctors found seven bullets still inside him. He had been hit in the legs, chest, abdomen and one bullet shattered his cheekbone. A liter and a half of blood was drained from his chest and then he was given a tetanus shot, which is something we wish we could take credit for making up.

By the way, not only did he survive the shooting, Joseph was still strong enough to be described as "combative" when he was wheeled into the hospital, possibly due to the doctor asking him if he was in any pain. Today, Joseph walks with a limp and a cane, but fortunately shows no signs of tetanus.

#5.
Getting Shot... By A Rocket Propelled Grenade

If you've watch news coverage of a war--or seen a war movie--over the last couple of decades you probably saw the bad guys using the above Rocket Propelled Grenades, which is a kind of shoulder-fired missile about the size of the head of a baseball bat.

They're designed to take out tanks and jeeps and other things made of metal. You can imagine what happens when one of them hits a human being, unless that human being is living in the video game universe or is named Channing Moss.


We believe that's an "I survived a bazooka to the torso" awareness wristband

Moss was in the army busy putting his boots far up Taliban asses, when his convoy was caught in an ambush. In addition to the machine gun fire, the enemy also unleashed several of the ever-popular RPGs at the Humvee he was riding in. Moss felt something hit him in the side and when he looked down saw that he had a fucking smoking rocket jutting out from his body.

Because there was a policy against evacuating people with bombs inside them, due to the whole explosion problem, his commanding officer told the helicopter crew the RPG was just some shrapnel.

When the doctors at the field hospital found out he had a whole, working rocket inside him, there was the usual panic and screaming until someone finally calmed down enough to try and save his life. This was despite the fact that the army manual called for him to be dumped far away from everyone and treated last. Seriously, nothing makes you more unpopular to a group than having a live bomb inside you.


Upon closer inspection it turned out Channing had a bit of luck on his side, in that the exploding warhead part of the rocket was not in his body, just the rocket and detonator. So instead of the big exploding part, there was only the little exploding part left inside of him. A note on his file also states that the rocket propellant was "mostly expelled."

Doctors finally sawed the fins off the rocket and then pulled the tube out of him, along with the wads of clothing and equipment that had been crammed into his guts by the impact. Incredibly, the huge projectile missed his vital organs and Channing lived.

We mentioned Bruce Willis earlier; what's great about Channing's story is if in Die Hard 5 you saw John McClane take a missile to the abdomen and walk away good as new, you'd be screaming bullshit so loud they'd have to drag you out of the theater.

#4.
A Gaping Hole... In Your Brain

Come on, you knew we couldn't leave this one out.

Number one on the list of things you don't want blasting a hole through your skull and brain is a giant cannon ball. However, a very close second on this list is a large metal spike. Just ask Phineas Gage.

Gage worked on a railroad crew back in the old-timey days. Part of his job was to blast holes in rocks with dynamite. Because this wasn't considered dangerous enough, the procedure also called for packing dirt in the holes with a metal pole after the dynamite was inserted, maybe to get the dynamite good and angry or something. The pole was called a "tamping iron" because calling it a "pointy suicide stick," while more accurate, tended to scare the employees.


"Nothing can ever go wrong with this."

Probably to no one's surprise, one day this practice of smacking a metal bar against live dynamite caused an explosion. This resulted in the tamping iron, which was three-feet, eight-inches long and weighed about 13 pounds, being shot through Phineas's cheekbone and exiting through the top of his skull.


Looks bad but you probably don't feel much after the first 12 inches

Sometimes people get impaled by objects but miss the vital organs. Phineas was not this lucky, unless you consider the brain to not be a vital organ. When they found the tamping iron 30 yards away it had pieces of bone and brain stuck to it.

Because medical science was about on par with the science of blasting holes through rock at the time, the only treatment Phineas received was having the huge tunnel through his brain cleaned out and wrapped in bandages, with the occasional draining of pus. Amazingly, five months after the accident Phineas was back to leading a fairly normal life, except for the giant hole in his head and probably a lot of new hats.

His friends and family also reported that he was kind of a dick after the accident, and scientists have come up with all kinds of theories about the damage affecting his impulse control. But, holy crap, some of us turn into dicks after missing morning coffee. Can we not cut a guy some slack after surviving a fucking spike through the skull?

#3.
Getting Punctured with a Dozen Nails... In Your Brain

Alright, so how does a guy top the whole "spike in the brain" thing? Two spikes?

How about 12?

Back in 2006, a guy in Oregon got really depressed, probably because he realized he lived in Oregon. He decided it was time to end his life and after ruling out faster, better, more proven alternatives, he decided he would end it all by shooting himself in the head with a nailgun (we've all been there, right?). We're going to go out on a limb and assume that he was probably a bit disappointed when the first nail pierced his skull and he found himself still alive and in Oregon.

He was serious about ending it all though and kept pulling the trigger on the nail gun like a guy waiting for an elevator. By the time he was done, he had a dozen nails embedded in his head. It's unclear why he stopped but a good guess is because it really hurts to shoot nails into your skull.


"Eh, a gun is a gun, right?"

He finally went to the hospital and complained to the doctors that he had a headache. While this was technically true it's kind of like telling someone your buddy is a bit of a douche bag and then the guy turns out to be Spencer Pratt.

The nails had gone so far into his brain that the doctors couldn't even see them until they X-rayed his head. Not only did they find 12 nails, but the nails were fired into both sides of his head--which meant he had to switch hands at some point (apparently nailguns get pretty heavy after a while). Doctors had to remove the nails with needle-nosed pliers and a drill. Yeah, the whole scenario was pretty much sponsored by Home Depot.


The tale probably involved caulk at some point as well

We'd like to say he is doing fine today, but last we heard he left the pysch ward against his doctor's wishes. Damn, we were so sure the 12 nails to the head story would have a happy ending.

#2.
Getting Stuck Under Water... For an Hour

Your body has some pretty basic needs: food, water, air, some basic broadband Internet access. Of these the most important is without a doubt air. While you can go for weeks without food and days without water, most people get a serious case of death if they go for more than 15 minutes without breathing. Even guys who spend all their time training to hold their breath only last about 11.5 minutes and they need two months to recover afterward to ponder whether they need a different hobby.

This is why Michelle Funk caused the Journal of the American Medical Association to use the word "miraculous" when she was pulled out of the water after she staying under for more than an hour. A medical journal using the word "miracle" is the equivalent of "WTF?" in non-medical speak. If her awesome last name and amazing mutant half-fish abilities weren't impressive enough, consider she was only two-years-old when this happened.


"What the fuck?"

This was back in 1986, she had been playing near the creek when she fell in and by the time they found her an hour later, she had a core body temperature of 66 degrees and no heartbeat, both of which is supposed to mean "dead" according to everything science thinks it knows about the body.

Doctors warmed Michelle's blood with a heart-lung machine (it actually removes the blood from the body to do it, which to the untrained eye would also seem like something you wouldn't live through). We assume that Michelle's blood was the consistency of a Slushie when it first came out.

It took more than three hours before doctors were finally able to detect a heartbeat. No one is really sure how she survived, although one of the doctors thinks the cold water helped to freeze her so that her brain didn't suffer any permanent damage. This basically means she survived drowning to death by freezing to death first.

Michelle has fully recovered and is living somewhere in Utah, pretty much a living "fuck you" to the world of medical science.


"Screw it, we're going with 'miracle.'"

#1.
Dislocation... Of Your Head

Alright, so we've confirmed that you can survive a whole range of foreign objects in your skull. How can we top that? Well...

The word "decapitation" is one you never want to hear in your prognosis. It usually signals something really bad has happened to you, like a teen horror movie, or a French revolution. Shannon Malloy, however, was past her teens and nowhere near France when she was in a car crash a few years back, but still had the word "decapitation" turn up in her medical charts. OK, so her head didn't go rolling away like a bowling ball, but it was pretty close.

When she was brought to the hospital after her accident, doctors discovered that she had severed every single ligament and tendon connecting her skull to her spinal cord. Her head was basically flopping around, connected to her body only by skin and muscle tissue (they call it an "internal decapitation"). The spinal surgeon who treated her said he had never seen anyone survive such an injury, because the head is a fairly important part of your body.


Yet her child remains unimpressed

However there was some good news for Shannon. Her spinal cord itself was actually still in good shape. Doctors worked hard to set her skull back on to her spine which is apparently no easy task as she told people she felt her skull slip off about five times during the procedure. We don't know what is worse, the fact it took them five tries to get it right or the fact that she was awake while they tried.


Actual photo of the surgery

Doctor Butter Fingers finally managed to get her skull in place though and they screwed everything in good and tight. Eventually she recovered from the ordeal and even avoided being paralyzed. She has suffered from some sight and speech impairment, but really what can you ask for considering, you know, decapitation.

Original here

My alcoholic boy, facing death at 22

Gary Reinbach

A MOTHER has made public the plight of her son who became a teenage alcoholic and is now dying because he is not allowed a liver transplant.

Gary Reinbach started drinking alcohol with friends when he was 13. Now 22, his is one of the worst cases of cirrhosis of the liver among young people that his doctors have seen.

His predicament may serve as a wake-up call to a generation of young drinkers who are downing large volumes of cheap alcohol.

Doctors at University College hospital (UCH), in London, have given Reinbach the most advanced therapies, including a one-off treatment with an artificial liver from San Diego, California. But all have failed and they believe only a transplant will save him.

Reinbach, from Dagenham, Essex, does not qualify for an organ because official guidelines state that heavy drinkers must prove that they can be abstinent outside hospital before they are considered. His condition is so severe that he cannot be discharged to prove he can remain sober.

His mother has chosen to speak out in an attempt to reverse the verdict that he is not entitled to a liver transplant, which would give him a 75% chance of survival. Without one his chance is about 30%, according to his doctors.

Madeline Hanshaw, 44, his mother, said: “Gary didn’t know what he was doing when he was 13. He didn’t know it would come to this when he was 22. He didn’t know he was going to die. All his friends who were drinking with him are still at home, they are fine.”

Hanshaw, who works as a kitchen assistant, says she worked full-time when her son was growing up and was initially unaware of the extent of his drinking. This is the first time he has been hospitalised for alcohol damage.

One of Reinbach’s doctors, Professor Rajiv Jalan, a consultant hepatologist at UCH, said: “This is a young man who has never known any better. He has been drinking for eight or nine years and did not see what was coming to him. We feel this boy deserves a transplant because it is the first time he has come to the hospital with an alcohol-related problem.

“Most of us feel that if the patient has been abstinent for a period of time, and not a repeat offender, they should be given an opportunity. The debate is whether there should be exceptions to that rule.

“Gary has been in hospital for 10 weeks now and is teetering on the brink of death. He is in a catch22 situation because, if he does not get better, he is going to die in the hospital. He is never going to have the time to demonstrate he has been abstinent [outside hospital].”

There was an outcry when George Best, the late Manchester United footballer, was given a liver transplant in 2002, only to return to binge drinking within a year. He was criticised for putting people off organ donation. More than 8,000 Britons are awaiting an organ transplant, 259 of whom require livers. More than 400 people died on the waiting list last year.

The shortage of organs has been exacerbated by them being given to overseas patients who pay for the transplants. This year the health department was forced to investigate after it emerged that in the past two years the livers of 50 British donors had been given to foreign patients.

Binge drinking among young people has led to a sharp rise in deaths from cirrhosis of the liver in the 25-34 age group and hospital admissions among young people have been increasing. In 2007-8 the London Ambulance Service NHS Trust dealt with 8,126 alcohol-related calls for 11 to 21-year-olds, a 27% increase on 2004-5.

Reinbach’s doctors say cheap alcohol has contributed to the crisis. Raj Mookerjee, a consultant hepatologist at UCH and another of Reinbach’s doctors, said: “Young people can readily avail themselves of cheap alcohol in large volumes.

“Gary was drinking when his mother thought he was at school. He was drinking with several other people. In less than 10 years he has developed advanced cirrhosis. This backs the suspicion we have had for a long time that the liver is more susceptible at a young age.”

Reinbach enjoyed playing football and golf when he was younger but these sporting outings turned into binge-drinking sessions.

Hanshaw added: “I think it is too easy for young people to get alcohol. You can buy a bottle of whisky for about £7.”

A spokeswoman for NHS Blood and Transplant said: “This case highlights the dilemma that doctors [face] because of the shortage of donated organs. They have to make tough decisions about who is going to get the most benefit and who is going to take best care of this precious gift.”

Original here

Long-lost Love Letter Led to Couple Marrying After 16 yrs...

By Daily Mail Reporter

A couple have married after they were reunited when a long-lost love letter sent ten years ago was found unopened behind a fireplace.

Steve Smith and Carmen Ruiz-Perez, both 42, walked down the aisle on Friday following a separation of 16 years.

The pair fell in love and got engaged in their 20s after Carmen moved to England as a foreign student.

Newly weds: Steve Smith and Carmen Ruiz-Perez have married after a long lost love letter brought them back together after 16 years apart

Newly weds: Steve and Carmen have married after 16 years apart

But after a year-long relationship the couple drifted apart when she had to move back to France.

A few years later Steve wrote to her in a bid to rekindle their romance - but Carmen's mother put it on the mantlepiece and it slipped down the back of the fireplace.

It remained there unopened for the next decade until the fireplace was removed for renovations.

Carmen - who had remained single and never forgot the love of her life - was given the letter in which Steve had written: 'I hope you are well. I was just writing to ask if you ever married and if you ever still thought of me?

'It would be great to hear from you, please great in touch if you can. Steve XXX.'

Factory supervisor Steve said: 'I didn't write much because I assumed she would be remarried. I never thought it would take ten years to hear back.'

Carmen said she was initially too nervous to call as so much time had passed but plucked up the courage and the pair arranged to meet.

They met up in Paris a few days later and have now wed - 17 years after they first fell in love.

Steve, of Paignton, Devon, said: 'When we met again it was like a film. We ran across the airport into each other's arms.

As they were: The couple were in a relationship in 1993 when Carmen was studying in the UK but drifted apart when she returned to France

As they were: The couple were in a relationship in 1993 when Carmen was studying in the UK but drifted apart when she returned to France

'We met up and fell in love all over again. Within 30 seconds of setting eyes on each other we were kissing.

'Now we're married, I'm just glad the letter did eventually end up where it was supposed to be.'

Carmen, who is now living with Steve in Paignton, said the wedding was the pinnacle of an 'amazing' love story.

She added: 'I never got married and now I'm marrying the man I have always loved.'

Oldest UK television discovered


By Rory Cellan-Jones
Technology correspondent, BBC News

Advertisement

Rory Cellan-Jones meets the owner of Britain's oldest working TV

Britain's oldest working television has been tracked down in a house in London.

The 1936 Marconiphone is thought to have been made in the months that Britain's first "high-definition" television service began.

The set belongs to Jeffrey Borinsky, an electrical engineer and collector of antique television and radio sets.

He bought the set, which has a 12-inch (30cm) screen from another collector 10 years ago and is still working on restoring it to its original state.

The screen is mounted inside a wooden cabinet. The image from the cathode ray tube, mounted vertically inside the cabinet, is reflected onto a mirror.

The few controls include volume and vertical hold, but there is no channel changer, as there was only one channel when it was made: the BBC.

Modern in part

The set appears to be in good condition, but Mr Borinsky aims to replace a number of modern components with originals.

"The cabinet was beautifully restored by the previous owner," he explained,' but my aim is to gradually restore its electronics to its true 1936 magnificence," he said.

TV camera at Alexandra Palace
Marconi also made the "Instantaneous Television Camera" shown in 1936

But the Marconiphone 702 still works as a modern television.

It has been hooked up to a Freeview box so that it can show digital channels, although Mr Borinsky has had to install a standards converter so that a modern television signal can be seen.

Mr Borinsky only keeps the set turned on up to two hours at a time, and he uses it to view films from the 1930s and 1940s.

He says he enjoys watching the kind of pictures that might have been seen by the original owners.

The National Media Museum in Bradford has a similar set, but does not use it to show television pictures for fear of damaging it.

Iain Logie Baird, the curator of television at the museum, said it is a thrill to see the Marconiphone working.

"It's very exciting to see the image the way people would have seen it in 1936, before television became ubiquitous as it is today," he said.

Mr Logie Baird, grandson of the television pioneer John Logie Baird, says this set would have been of huge local interest when it was first acquired at a cost of 60 guineas - the equivalent of £11,000 today.

"Television was a very exciting thing, it was something that the whole neighbourhood would come over to watch. People would crowd into the home of the owner."

The set was discovered as the result of a competition run by Digital UK, the body overseeing the switch to digital television. The aim was to publicise the message that just about any television, however old, can be used to show digital channels.

Original here

Facebook Party Raided By Police Helicopter, Dogs, 70 Cops

By Colin Fernandez

A teenager whose party became a riot after it was gatecrashed by 150 revellers who saw it advertised on Facebook has boasted about how much it cost to break up.

It took 70 police officers, a helicopter and specialist dog handlers to stop the troublemakers after drunken youths began fighting in the street.

The helicopter alone costs around £500 for every hour it is in the air and estimates for the police operation as a whole have been put at up to £10,000.

But far from regretting the damage and disturbance caused by the party, one of the teenage organisers said: 'It was wicked.'

Jordan Wright, 17, said: 'I have no regrets at all. It was a great party and a great night. I am well proud that people are saying it cost the police £10,000.

'My mates are saying what a sick party it was - the best yet. Seventy or eighty police officers came down for a house party. I have put my street on the map.'

Facebook party

No regrets: Jordan, second left, with friends at the party

Police officers (on the right) take on troublemakers at a teenage party in Farnborough, which was gatecrashed by more than 100 people

Chaos: Police officers (on the right) take on troublemakers at a teenage party in Farnborough, which was gatecrashed by more than 100 people

The stepfather of the other host spoke of his dismay that she seemed 'proud' of the mayhem she caused - which he called 'stupid, unnecessary and embarrassing'.

Seva Nurueva, 15, held the gathering jointly with neighbour Jordan at their adjoining homes in Farnborough, Hampshire.

Around a month before the event she had invited friends - but ignored her stepfather's instructions to keep the details off the internet.

By 10pm on Saturday youths from miles around descended on the gathering. Revellers smashed a table in Jordan's home and fights broke out outside.

Officers had to be called in from the Hampshire and Surrey forces to disperse the crowd.

Jordan said: 'My mum is saying that after this I have got to have my 18th birthday party in a hall instead of at home but I am going to invite even more people to that.

'She says "no way" but just you watch me. Seva was crying most of the night. She invited about 40 people and I invited about 200 on Facebook.

'She says the party was good but now she regrets it. But I don't. I don't really care. It was a great party.

'The only thing I would change another time would be that the DJ could have got there earlier and the police shouldn't have gatecrashed the party. The party would have gone off the Richter Scale if the police hadn't arrived.'

facebook party kids

Teenagers Seva Nurueva (right) and Jordan Wright in the garden where the Facebook party began

Deborah Hunter, who lives on the street, said: 'We came home after an evening out and were confronted by hundreds of youths - male and female - spilling out on to the street from a party that was being held at the two houses. It escalated into a riot.

'There were more than 50 police officers in a shoulder-to-shoulder formation, pushing a crowd of 150 kids down the street. It was scary.

'It could have been really nasty had police not stepped in. There were children as young as 14 who were drunk.'

Miss Nurueva's stepfather, who does not wish to be named, said he warned her not to publicise the party on Facebook.

He said yesterday: 'As soon as two kids know, 200 know, that's why I told her not to put it on Facebook.

'I think the kids were proud because they got on to the news. I told them it's nothing to be proud of. It was stupid, unnecessary and embarrassing.'

He described violent scenes that erupted as partygoers poured into the quiet residential area.

'One girl hit the other on the head with a bottle. I couldn't control it,' he said. 'At half past ten the police turned up.'

He said officers confiscated cans of drink from revellers, before sealing off the road and marching in riot formation to clear the crowd. They finally left at 4am, after making five arrests.

Jordan was unrepentant last night about the trouble. He said: 'I have no regrets at all. I am well proud that people are saying it cost the police £10,000. My mates are saying what a sick party it was - the best yet.'

Well, I've Sold The Paper To The Chinese


By T. Herman Zweibel

As the longtime publisher of this news-paper, it is my duty and unrestrained pleasure to inform you spittle-soaked readers that I have sold The Onion and all of its various holdings to a syndicate of industrious China-men from the deepest heart of the Orient. One of their representatives oozed and crawled from his dank hut to visit me in person at my bedside last week, and make known his superiors' desire to expand their clammy clutch into the Western world. After subjecting me to a good 20 minutes of infernal bowing and other assorted chinky-dinkery, he offered to pay me what I've been assured is an appropriately absurd parcel of riches to take this tiresome publication off my feeble hands for good.

Naturally, I accepted his heathen bargain without the slightest twinge of regret, and why on earth not? When my ancestor Friedrich Siegfried Zweibel founded The Mercantile-Onion in 1756, he did so with the express purpose of fleecing its porridge-brained readers out of as much precious capital as could be wrung from their grubby, desperately toiling fingers, and I say bully and bully again to that. I may be a news-paper-man through and through, but I still have enough sense in my 141-year-old skull to abandon some silly centuries-old loyalty to the periodical page when there are spacious coffers to be stocked.

Oh, how heavenly it shall be to never again hear the ungodly shriek of a printing press, or breathe the insufferable stench of a news-room full of unwashed scribes churning out mindless pap on the subject of photo-play actresses and their adopted African brood. And as far as the whimpering clods who have the temerity to call themselves "readers" are concerned, I do not suppose I shall miss their ilk in the slightest. Why, just imagining their pallid, toothless faces fills me with such colossal rage that at this very moment my nurse-maid is administering to me a near-lethal dose of laudanum just so I may find the composure to reach the end of this missive.

Any-way, I wish you all the best of luck making sense of the dis-jointed drivel contained in this inaugural issue of the Chinese Onion. If the new owner-ship does not suck the very blood from your veins, they'll surely dizzy you into stupefied obedience with their unnatural black Orient arts. Oh, and in accordance with the contractual terms of the buy-out, let me remind you all that Yu Wan Mei Fish Time is the best Fish Time, perfect eating for you and me and so delicious. That is all.

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