A quick-thinking train engineer is being credited with saving the life of a 10-month-old poodle-terrier mix who was tied to the tracks by his elderly owner.

The unnamed Union Pacific Railroad engineer reportedly spotted someone walking away from the tracks near Mecca in Riverside County, California, after having left something behind.

He immediately activated the train's emergency braking system, and managed to stop just short of the defenseless puppy.

"It's probably one of the worst things I've seen," said Union Pacific Special Agent Sal Pina, who released the dog from the ties that bound him to the tracks. "I've never seen something like this."

Pina also caught up with the 78-year-old man responsible for the cruel act, and detained him.

Following a brief interview, however, it was quickly determined that the man was suffering from senility, and was unaware of his actions or their consequences.

He was eventually released to relatives without charges.

The dog, meanwhile, was picked up by Riverside County Animal Services and taken to the Coachella Valley Animal Campus for a thorough check-up and bath.

Named "Banjo" by his temporary caregivers, the pup is now up for adoption, and interested rescuers are invited to email Riverside County Animal Services at shelterinfo@rivcocha.org.

[H/T: Geekosystem, photos via Riverside County Animal Services]

They say the lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math. But who says that's always a bad thing?

51-year-old Maria Carreiro of Toronto thought she had won $40,000 in last week's Lotto Max drawing, but she got the number wrong.

Her real winnings had a few extra zeros and a comma tacked on to the end.

"When I went to the machine I just see 40 because I'd never won this amount of money," she told reporters attending her lottery check presentation ceremony. "I told [the clerk] can you check this for me please? He checks it. He doesn't even know himself and he's the store owner. I said ‘Never mind, I'll go home.'"

And go home she did.

"I went home and I told my daughter, ‘Oh I won $40,000,'" Carreiro recalled. "She's jumping off the bed too and then she calls her [sister] and says, 'Mommy won $40,000.'"

Just to be on the safe side — perhaps knowing that her mom wasn't the best with large figures — Carreiro's daughter decided to check the ticket one more time.

"She went on the computer and she checked the computer and she goes ‘Mommy, You're $40-million richer,'" Carreiro said.

After one last run to the store to verify, Carreiro called up her husband who soon thereafter quit both of his jobs.

Carreiro says she plans to distribute the cash among her three children and five grandchildren — right about she goes on a long-overdue honeymoon to Hawaii.

[screengrab via Global]

Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, a 52-year-old German conman, best known for his infamous posing as Clark Rockefeller, was found guilty of murdering a California man 28 years ago. Gerhartsreiter has lived for many years using the name Rockefeller and claimed to be an heir to their fortune.

The jury found Gerhartsreiter guilty of murdering the 27-year-old son of his former landlady in 1985, and burying his victim in the backyard of the victim's mother's house in San Marino, California. Gerhartsreiter's defense says that while Gerhartsreiter is a certifiable liar, he is not a murderer. The defense also suggested that it was possible that the victim's wife, who then disappeared without a trace, murdered her husband.

Over the past decade, Gerhartsreiter has gone by several different aliases in addition to Rockefeller and has led a fantastically insane life. After moving to the States at the age of 17 in 1978, he worked as a Wall Street venture capitalist, a Hollywood producer, and a cardiologist.

He now faces 26 years to life in prison. He was previously serving a five-year sentence in Massachusetts after being convicted in 2009 for kidnapping his 7-year-old daughter, before he was extradited to California for the Sohus murder trial.

[ABC, image via AP]

One thing that's essential in the ongoing discussion about how to regulate guns, everyone agrees, is to hear the voices of ordinary, law-abiding gun owners. So here's columnist Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post, explaining why proposed gun restrictions won't prevent gun crime:

As much as anyone, I am eager to do whatever will make a difference. But I'm unconvinced that what is being proposed will provide the solution we seek.

Universal background checks are a perfectly good idea, except that they won't stop the burglar who recently cleaned out our house of all our legally purchased rifles and shotguns, including an antique that had belonged to my great-grandfather, who, as sheriff of Barnwell County, S.C., confiscated the gun from the triple murderer he tracked for three days and finally killed. (I want that gun back, please.)

Those guns are now in circulation among an element of society that has no intention of submitting to a background check or any other well-intentioned effort to ensure that only good guys have guns.

Oops! From criminal hands back to criminal hands, in four generations. Too bad Kathleen Parker's good intentions didn't include burglar-proofing her arsenal.

Luckily for all of us, she's no more embarrassed by that anecdote than she is by writing that Nancy Lanza "taught her son how to responsibly handle firearms." What the gun-control people don't understand, unless they listen to thoughtful gun owners, is how very, very hard guns are to control. Guns end up being shot at people in so many different ways, and there is just nothing the good guys can do to stop the bad guys, except maybe buying more guns after the bad guys take their previous batch of guns.

"Criminals will always have guns," Parker writes. Yes, they will. She's helped make sure of that.

A SWUG, or a Senior Washed Up Girl, is a young woman in her final year at a four-year collegiate establishment who has also given up the possibility of youth. They boldly abstain from dressing up, they rarely go to parties, and declare disinterest in romantic or sexual relationships. They want to sit on a couch drinking wine with fellow SWUGs. They are a movement and their interests include apathy and "not giving a fuck."

In a piece for The Cut, Justin Rocket Silverman delves deep into the world of this burgeoning new coven. It's insightful, often hilarious, and certainly worth a read, but in the meantime, here are some choice pull-quotes from the original article:

• Raisa Bruner, a Yale senior who wrote an article on the topic in the Yale Daily News, calls SWUG-life: "the slow, wine-filled decline of female sexual empowerment as we live out our college glory days."
• Sophomore Greg Kelley euphemistically and grossly defines a SWUG thusly: "It's a girl who has been through the meat grinder. A seasoned veteran who knows the ropes."
• Yale SWUG Michelle Taylor declares SWUG-identification reveals a fascinating life of the mind: "Saying ‘I don't give a fuck' at the right moment, it makes you a more complex person."

As Silverman notes, these young women aren't actually washed up; he imagines they will flock to New York or Los Angeles in a few months where they will once again dress up, dance, drink, and flirt: "But for the few months left of their senior year, the SWUGs of Yale can embrace an identity that gives them the joy of momentary apathy."

The super-popular, zietgiesty tumblr "What Should We Call Me" resonates with this attitude, as does a recent, puerile post on BuzzFeed: "Life in Your Early Twenties Vs. Your Late Twenties". The declarations of "aging" are being made at increasingly younger ages; it's now trendy to be a Cathy cartoon or a Liz Lemon at 24. BuzzFeed's listicle shows a leap from stereotypes that once categorized people in their 20s to cliches that characterized people in their 40s. Clubbing went from a Coachella-like, Day-Glo fueled rager to something that induced the declaration: "This is boring as hell." Bliss for later twenties was to take a day-long nap, hanging out with college kids meant fumbling with newfangled catch-phrases.

Certainly the SWUG-lifestyle and its continuation across the 20s is based firmly in some irony, but there is also an attention-seeking aspect. While this could have been some chill relaxing friend appreciation (touted by some SWUGs) and not a declared movement, SWUG-life is an assertive social brand. By setting up this category, there is a sense of achievement of this identification. The SWUG label is a rallying cry—a proud badge and a campus wide meme, championed by outlets like SWUG Diaries and Spinstagram/Spinstagran.

Declaring "‘I don't give a fuck' at the right moment," does not a "more complex person" make. Rather than embracing personal growth internally, there is a clamorous, exaggerated declaration that growing out of a social scene is the equivalent of being "washed-up" in the face of other's halcyon days. Overall, SWUG-life appears to be a melodramatic desire to make an identity out of boredom and dissatisfaction with the collegiate social scene.

It will be over soon, dear ones. Consider embracing your disinterest in Ivory Tower socializing as a sign of maturity, not an identification with apathy.

[The Cut, image via Pressmaster and Miya227/Shutterstock]

The owner of a flower shop in Washington who denied service to a gay couple is being sued for violating the state's consumer protection laws that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

What makes this lawsuit very different is the person behind it: None other than State Attorney General Bob Ferguson.

"As Attorney General, it is my job to enforce the laws of the state of Washington," Ferguson said in a statement. "Under the Consumer Protection Act, it is unlawful to discriminate against customers based on sexual orientation. If a business provides a product or service to opposite-sex couples for their weddings, then it must provide same sex couples the same product or service."

Barronelle Stutzman, who owns Arlene's Flowers and Gifts in Richland, earned herself headlines last month after she turned down a request from longtime customer Rob Ingersoll to provide flowers for his wedding because Ingersoll is gay.

"When it came to doing his wedding, I said, ‘I could not do it because of my relationship with Jesus Christ,'" she wrote on the store's Facebook page.

This was Stutzman's first denial of service in her 37 years as a florist.

"It really hurt because it was somebody I knew," said Ingersoll, who had been coming to Arlene's on a regular basis for nine years.

Ferguson, the AG, says Stutzman was given an opportunity [PDF] to change her mind before the lawsuit was filed [PDF], but she declined.

With the "unusual legal maneuver" now in place, Slog provides some context:

The case is set to emerge as the first major test of anti-discrimination protections since Washington State voters legalized same-sex marriage last fall. It is also a rare-if not unprecedented-instance of the government initiating a discrimination suit. With the florist's lawyers apparently itching for a fight, the case seems poised to reach the state supreme court, or even federal courts, as a test of conservative legal defenses in the name of religious liberty and moral conscience.

Though Washington voters approved the legalization of same-sex marriage back in November, Arlene's home county of Benton in conservative eastern Washington roundly rejected the referendum, with 63% voting against it.

Stutzman's lawyers have already vowed to defend their client's right to discriminate all the way to the federal court system, saying in a letter to the AG [PDF] that "a number of national non-profit organizations . . . are ready for a fight."

One of those organizations, NOM, has already released a statement, alleging that, "like clockwork, those who disagree with gay marriage are being fined and forced out of the public square — by the state-imposed redefinition of marriage."

On the flipside, the ACLU has said it is ready to file its own lawsuit against Stutzman unless she stops discriminating against gay people.

"Your refusal to sell flowers to Mr. Ingersoll and Mr. Freed for their wedding has hurt them very deeply," said ACLU attorney Michael R. Scott. "It is a disturbing reminder of the history of discrimination and disparate treatment that they and other gay men and women have experienced over the years."

[photo via SeattlePI, screengrab via KEPR-TV]

Early last week, authorities in Utah arrested Troy Knapp, the notorious "Mountain Man" outlaw who had been robbing and defacing cabins in the southern portion of the state for nearly a decade. Two days later, officers from the Maine Warden Service arrested a legend known to locals as "the backpack burglar," who had been living alone deep in the woods of Central Maine, burglarizing camps for 27 years.

In short: you can't tramp two steps into an American forest these days without tripping over the makeshift camp of some eremitic burglar who's spent the past X decades in solitude.

Maine's hermit, Christopher Knight, is thought to be responsible for more than 1,000 (that's one, zero zero…zero) burglaries since he started living in the woods in 1986. According to his unbelievable write-up in the Waterville Morning Sentinel, Knight was discovered around 1:15 Thursday morning, looting food from a camp that serves children and adults with disabilities. He had triggered an alarm connected to the dining hall's new surveillance system.

Officers reported that Knight was clean-shaven, wearing a pair of clean jeans and a clean shirt. (His campsite included a makeshift shower protected by firs.) He told police he had spoken to only one other human since 1986: a hiker he encountered on a trail in the mid-1990s with whom he'd exchanged a brief hello. He probably also used words like tubular and asked everyone to do the "Super Bowl Shuffle," though the article doesn't mention those details specifically.

Officers said that Knight, who offered no explanation as to why he decided to live alone in the woods for 27 years ("He said he frequently asks himself that same question," said a Maine State Trooper), expressed "shame and remorse" over his burglaries and added that he was relieved to longer be living in solitude. He's currently in jail on charges of burglary and theft.

As you can see, this is a crazy time to be an American. Hermit burglars are everywhere and the process of conversion to the hermit burglar lifestyle can happen overnight, for no clear reason. Conservatively, 40 to 90 percent of the current population of the United States is composed of hermit burglars. Anyone could be one. I could be one. Yo daddeh could be one. You could be one, and not even know it.

In light of recent developments Gawker has devised a short quiz to help you identify whether you are a hermit burglar:

1) Do you enjoy candy and potato chips?
When Knight was arrested, he was carrying potato chips and Smarties® (also a baseball cap, a poncho, and a wristwatch) he had just stolen from the Pine Tree Camp. If you have ever eaten potato chips and Smarties®, is it possible that the ones you ate were ones you had just stolen from an unoccupied camp?

2) Were you excited that the Northeast was experiencing warm spring temperatures this week?
Despite Knight's impressive tarp canopy system, law enforcement officers observed, in their strong Maine accents, that winters in a region where temperatures regularly dip below zero must have been rough. The sergeant who arrested Knight called his determination "phenomenal." Is it possible you are excited about the advent of spring because you live outside, in the trees?

3) Do you find some activities to be "too much work"?
Knight only ate what he could steal. He told authorities he didn't hunt and "tried fishing a few times" but found it was "too much work." Amen.

4) Do you consume electronic media?
By affixing a radio antenna to the top of a tree (30 feet in the air), Knight was able to listen to talk radio. He favored Rush Limbaugh, so write your own joke down on a postcard and shoot it into space. He also briefly set up a television, but discarded it because it was a drain on his batteries. Do you enjoy the radio and/or television?

5) Is your home sort of organized, but not as neat as it could be, if you're honest with yourself?
The Sentinel describes Knight's campsight as "neat and orderly," noting that he even set mouse traps inside his tents to protect his food from animals. But it was still a dirty old tent in the fucking woods. Kind of like the hovel you live in, no?

6) Would you call this animal a "regular crab"?
The term favored by non-eremites is "hermit crab."

7) Did you ever go to camp?
Knight estimated that he had broken into Pine Tree Camp more than 50 times since he moved into the woods, stealing "thousands of dollars of meat, beer, coffee, and other supplies" since 1986. So, while he went to camp a lot, he never attended it. Which did you do?

8) Did you have an awkward yearbook photo?
The Sentinel writes that Knight's photo from his senior yearbook "shows him standing with his arms crossed and no hint of a smile on his face." Maybe you also live alone in the woods and steal?

9) Have you ever pooped in a pan OR stolen anything?
To our knowledge, Knight never pooped in a pan. The Utah guy did, though.

10) Do you have trouble remembering the last time you spoke to a person who was not a hallucination or a raccoon friend you think of as "like a person"?
Until Thursday, which the exception of that weird mid-nineties fling, Knight had not—since 1986. If it has been more than a year since your last verbal exchange with another human being, that's a sign that perhaps your life has gone off track.

If you responded "Does a wild mountain man shit in the woods?" to one or more of these questions, there's a good chance you are a hermit burglar. Walk into the nearest police station, say "I'm the man you've been looking for all these years," and calmly lie down on the ground.

If you responded "No" to all of the above questions, you are most likely not a hermit burglar. But be careful because literally any time you leave your house, you run the risk of just walking and walking until you reach the woods and then setting up camp there and learning the language of the winds and never, ever leaving (until cops drag you out).

[Morning Sentinel // Art by Jim Cooke]

Bitcoin finally crashed! And then it didn't. After two weeks in the spotlight, the anonymous techno-libertarian dweeb-currency rocketed past $250 yesterday—only to lose more than half its value over just a few hours today. Only to rally back up to around $200 again, just over the last hour or so. That's millions of dollars. Traded on a Magic: the Gathering site.

Or some of it, anyway. Mt.Gox, once the foremost place on the internet for exchanging collectible fantasy game cards, is now the most popular Bitcoin exchange on the internet. Today, it was trading at as low as $105, and quick nervy day traders likely made a mint: it's back up to near $200.

Of course, for most real Bitcoin enthusiasts—not just the Russians and Cypriots and schemers who are said to be putting all their money into it—this was to be expected. Like "the man who gave his life to Bitcoin," they're in it for the long haul—the promise of an encrypted, anonymous future economy, unencumbered by messy things like "a central bank" or "stability"—and not just the get-rich-quick possibilities of an insanely volatile market.

So as the charts (this one via Business Insider) began to look like this—

—the subreddit /r/bitcoin responded with encouragement. "HOLD SPARTANS!," a photoshopped image from the 300, has been the top post on the board all day. (For much of the day, the second most popular link was "Are We the First Winery in the US Accepting Bitcoin? Yes. (Why We're Doing This, and Are We crazy?)").

The fantastic Twitter account @Bitcoin_TXT relayed quotes from the Bitcoin communities on Reddit and elsewhere. Bitcoiners were generally in a conspiratorial mood:

And there was some infighting:

But generally, everyone could agree on one thing:

This past Saturday, a reddit user named Naratto used the Confession Bear—a meme with which reddit users admit often-true secrets like being obsessed with a brother, loving Justin Bieber, enjoying the smell of one's own balls—to talk about a murder. "My sister had an abusive meth addict boyfriend," Naratto claimed. "I killed him with his own drugs while he was unconscious and they ruled it as an overdose."

Surely, Naratto was joking, right? Right? It's a Breaking Bad synopsis posted on a photo of bear. But Naratto's fellow redditors weren't so dismissive, immediately excavating Naratto's personal information and posting his biographical data on the site. This information dump was reliable enough to freak out Naratto, who confirmed its accuracy in an aggrieved follow-up post, by writing, "I made a meme about something and it was turned into people revealing my PERSONAL INFORMATION. It was quite rude and VERY uncalled for." Soon after, Naratto deleted his profile and disappeared entirely.

This is the same community that's ardently defended the right to online anonymity and privacy, even as a protection for despicable privacy-violating behavior. Yet users allowed this personal information to be preserved even after reddit moderators deleted it, leaving this list of what we know about Naratto, the user who joked (yes, joked, right?) about murder with a bear:

He's a 24-year-old male with ties to San Diego, California.
His middle name is Ryder
His birthdate is 2/11/89.
He has an older sister who is approximately 29 years old.
He's a former US Navy Fire Controlman 2nd Class.
In 2008 he worked construction on a house on top of a hill at 4985 Mt. Helix Dr. in El Cajon, CA, driving a hydraulic skid-steer.
Used to own a snake named Kitty.
Claims to be bipolar.
Favorite Movie: Rampage (Probably the 2009 film).
Favorite Song: "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida."
His favorite sandwich at Mama's Grill in Clairemont, San Diego is called the Outlaw.

Using all this information—again, provided by reddit's own membership—it's possible to show that Naratto's background matches that of a 24-year-old named Colton Goodbrand.

Here's how the two connect.

• A Twitter account with the handle @Narratto belongs to a Colton R. Goodbrand from San Diego, California. The bio: "Neo-Hippie. Smoking pot for the greater good!" (@Narratto is spelled with one more additional "r" than the reddit account, perhaps because the alternate was already taken.)

  Although it was apparently hacked in July 2011, producing a lingering trail of Spam links, this Twitter account dates back to November 2010. So it wasn't just created to associate the name Colton Goodbrand and a photo with the currently contentious handle. More than likely, the owner either can't access it or forgot about it, which is perhaps why @Narratto isn't deleted entirely or altered.

• Public records confirm a Colton Goodbrand with a February 1989 birthdate held an address in San Diego, California.
• Colton "Colt" Goodbrand has a lingering MySpace profile that lists his birthday as Feb 11th, 1989, his hometown as the Pacific Beach, and his occupation as Firing Control for the US Navy. There are also photos of someone described as Colton's sister.

  Like Twitter's Colton R. Goodbrand, MySpace Colt alludes to recreational drugs ("In the past month have you been on Drugs: FUCK NO drugs are for looooosers lol," "Number of Drugs I have taken: Not gonna go into that...") and Canada. Photos look like the same person.

• There's also an extant Naratto on Help.com from 2010.

  This Naratto profile matches biographical data for both reddit's Naratto and Colton Goodbrand, including San Diego, CA, a job in the US Navy FC3, and the hobby of smoking pot. Like MySpace Colton, he says he went to college briefly and mentions Canada. He too is prone to working out emotional conflicts online, here asking for advice about a messy work disagreement with his mother, who he wrote ran a medical-marijuana dispensary collective in San Diego.

• Colton Goodbrand's mother Michelle ran a California medical marijuana dispensary from 2010 until 2012.

  This is according to Goodbrand's own LinkedIn profile, which cites her as the president of the since-shuttered company, California Healing. Public records confirm that Colton is related to this Michelle. On MySpace, a less professional-looking Michelle is friends with Myspace 2009 Colton.
• Help.com Naratto says that his favorite sport is Shito-Ryu Karate-Do. On YouTube, there's a December 2012 video of Colton Goodbrand demonstrating karate. The onscreen text identifies him as "Colton Ryder," reddit Naratto's middle name.
  

Both MySpace Colton and Help.com's Naratto grumble online about their car problems. Colton Goodbrand's Facebook has been recently deleted. Various other references match.

In the Gawker's comments section, Gizmodo emeritus editor Joel Johnson posted a message from someone he believes is Naratto's sister, who wrote: "My brother lives in another country, not sure what he does online. It's an ill-advised prank. I know no one who has overdosed and my brother is a scrawny gamer." Canada qualifies as another country. There's a Naratto on World of Warcraft. And Naratto's still-archived reddit comments include Nintendo and GameCube references. (Colton's sister didn't respond to our email or Facebook messages, though her YouTube channel is what's hosting the karate video.)

So why again do we care? Oh right, Naratto purportedly confessed to a murder. While this could all be a very badly misconstrued joke, Naratto never entirely backed away from his Confession Bear scenario. "There is SOME truth behind it, but I'm not saying what was true and what wasn't," he posted in a follow-up. He was peeved that his fellow redditors had aggregated his personal information, but he seemed far more upset about having his identity tied to whatever truth was behind the statement, typing, "Sure you can find information about ME, but linking me to something that happened is completely different."

It's unclear if that nebulous "something that happened" was, well, anything. Colton didn't return an email sent to an old address. Reached by phone late yesterday, Michelle Goodbrand said "Good luck with that" when asked about a familial overdose, and hung up. She did not return a follow-up message.

Thanks, reddit.

[photos via QuickMeme and YouTube]

Taco Bell has a new goal: food that won't kill you, or at least not as quickly. On Wednesday, the fast food restaurant announced its plan to have 20% of its combo meals contain just one-third of the federal government's recommended dietary guidelines. Or roughly 700 calories and 500 mg of sodium. But why one third? Because they want it to be one of three meals you (healthily) consume each day, which goes against the whole "fourth meal" concept but whatever. And when can we expect the relatively healthy-ish combos to take up one fifth of the Taco Bell's combo menu? In 2020, just seven short years away.

"Our customer tastes and needs are evolving," says Greg Creed, CEO at Taco Bell. "They want more balanced options."

So, Americans' tastes and needs have evolved past Cool Ranch Doritos Tacos and "loaded grillers" (loaded baked potatoes wrapped in tortillas)? Maybe, though at least one nutritionist who spoke to USA Today isn't buying it.

"Does anyone actually go to Taco Bell who is worried about calories or sodium?" poses Robyn Flipse, a registered dietian and nutritionist. "I think their target is looking for something that is convenient, low-cost and fills them up...I just don't see anything that supports that people go to Taco Bell wishing it was a little healthier."

Then again, who are we to doubt the people that not only brought us the 1000 calorie Volcano Nachos but also single-handedly saved the U.S. economy?

[Image via AP]

Sexsomnia? Surely that must be some made-up Scandinavian thing, right? Wrong. It's become fairly well-documented disorder over the past few years. The term was invented in 2003 to describe the roughly 7.6% of people with sleep disorders who reported initiating sex while asleep.

One of those 7.6% is apparently a Danish man who was recently acquitted of molesting two 17-year-old girls because the court found he suffered from the disorder.

According to reports from the Glostrup court, the 31-year-old man groped the two girls while they were sleeping in his Copenhagen apartment after a 2011 party. The girls quickly awoke the man and later reported him to police.

But after the defendant's testimony, in which he made a credible case that he had no recollection of the assault, and the presentation of medical tests showing the man actually suffered from sexsomnia, the court found the man not guilty. Prosecutors apparently bought the story, too, and have no plans to appeal the decision.

[Associated Press//Image via Shutterstock]

A horrific accident in Palm Harbor, Florida left a two-and-a-half year old girl a triple amputee. The girl's father was driving his riding lawn mower down his driveway when his daughter crossed in front of him, apparently slipping and falling. The girl's mother attempted to flag the father down and yelled for him to stop, but couldn't be heard over the engine. The father then accidentally ran the girl over, reportedly dragging her down the driveway and into the street before he noticed what he'd done.

The girl instantly lost both of her legs below the knees and part of one hand. According to police, the father immediately wrapped her in a blanket and called 911. The girl was airlifted to Tampa General Hospital, where's she's being treated for her injuries. Her parents travelled with her and, as you might expect, are currently being treated for hysteria.

[Image via ABC Action News]

Bakeries. Bread lines. Hospitals. These are the targets against which the Syrian government is said to have been conducting "indiscriminate and in some cases deliberate" air strikes—killing more than 4,300 civilians since July of last year, according to a new report by the New York-based human rights group Human Rights Watch. "In village after village, we found a civilian population terrified by their country's own air force," Ole Solvang, an HRW researcher said. The 80-page report, written by human-rights workers who visited dozens of sites of attacks in Aleppo, Idlib and Latakia, found strong indications that the government was deliberately and repeatedly targeting hospitals, and using ballistic missiles and cluster bombs that "should, at a minimum, be banned in populated areas." Syrian rebels were not exempt from criticism—they "did not take all feasible measures to avoid deploying forces and structures such as headquarters in or near densely populated areas"—but "an attacking party is not relieved from the obligation to take into account the risk to civilians." The toll on civilian life in Syria after two years of civil war has been immense. "I buried 12 of my family members... including my father, my mother, and my sister; my brother's wife as well," a man named Ahmed told HRW. "Walid, my brother, was cut into pieces. We didn't recognise him at first. We buried my brothers' children also. The youngest was 40 days old." [NYT | AJE | CNN]

This past Sunday, a 17-year-old girl in Nova Scotia named Rehtaeh Parsons died after hanging herself two days earlier. Parsons' mother says her daughter committed suicide because she was raped—and subsequently bullied and ostracized—in 2011. No charges were ever brought against her rapists: The police said the case was a matter of "he said, she said," and the pictures taken did not qualify as child pornography.

Yesterday, Leah Parsons talked to the CBC radio about how the incident changed Rehtaeh, as well as her daughter's disappointment with the police after she turned to them:

"She said 'nobody gives, nobody gives, nobody cares.' And it just gave voice to the boys and everyone else who didn't believe she was raped. It validated them, and again, negated her."

After an outpouring of online outrage, the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police), reports that hackers, claiming affiliation with the decentralized hacking group Anonymous, have threatened to disclose the names of the boys involved in the harassment. RCMP Corporal Scott MacRae:

"Anytime people are going to use social media to identify people that can be a concern for the police and the public. Social media is a form for people to express opinion, good and unfortunately bad. When people are going to use the social media world for harmful or potentially threats or criminal activity, police will certainly have to take a look and investigate. Right now we don't see anything on the social media so we'll have to basically make a determination if that does happen at that time."

After saying there would not be a review of the case, Justice Minister Ross Landry has changed his position and asked his department to present him with some options for a review. In a statement, he said:

"It's important that Nova Scotians have faith in the justice system and I am committed to exploring the mechanisms that exist to review the actions of all relevant authorities to ensure the system is always working to the best of its ability, in pursuit of justice."

[CBC Radio | Global News, image via image via Rehtaeh Parsons's Facebook Memorial Page]

Customers at a Home Depot in West Covina, California, were unable to do a thing to stop a man determined to saw off his arms using tools he picked up in the store's aisles.

"He walked into the saw area, picked up a couple of saws in the saw area and started cutting both of his arms," said Cpl. Rudy Lopez of the West Covina Police Department.

The man had apparently sawed all the way down to the bone before police arrived to find him lying unresponsive in a pool of blood.

Pasadena Fire Captain Art Hurtado who happened to be shopping in the store with his wife said he initially thought "it was just going to be a crime scene and a fatality," but he soon discovered the man was still alive, if just barely.

Assisted by the officers, Hurtado managed to get the bleeding under control using makeshift tourniquets constructed from towel strips and quarter-inch nylon rope.

The man, who had no ID on him but was said to be in his 40s, was rushed to a nearby hospital where he underwent overnight surgery.

His condition remains unknown.

There are several psychological disorders that can bring an individual to conduct self-amputation.

For instance, a person suffering from body integrity identity disorder will arrive at the conclusion that living as an amputee will make them happier.

Associated disorders include xenomelia, which is defined as "the oppressive feeling that one or more limbs of one's body do not belong to one's self," and apotemnophilia, which is defined as "A compulsion to become, or appear to be, an amputee."

[screengrab via ABC News]

If you've ever wanted to hijack a plane—but been prevented by your crippling fear of flying—you can now do it from the ground! All you need is an Android phone, a radio transmitter, flight management software, and some basic hacking skills, and you can control an entire passenger jet from the comfort of your living room. Not that you, uh, should! But you could.

At least, that's what German security consultant Hugo Teso told the crowd at Amsterdam's Hack in the Box security conference. In a presentation called "Aircraft Hacking: Practical Aero Series," Teso explained how with his phone, a radio transmitter, and some flight management software he purchased on eBay, he was able to—hypothetically—hijack and command a plane.

The Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) also has no security; it "is used for exchanging text messages between aircraft and ground stations via radio (VHF) or satellite." [...] Anyone with the right tools and a little know-how can read and send these ACARS messages. [...] the ACARS datalink allowed for "real-time data transmission" and all communications between planes and airports are sent unencrypted. Teso used ACARS to exploit and break into the airplane's onboard computer system and then upload Flight Management System (FMS) data. FMS could be uploaded by software defined radio and ground service providers.

In a nutshell: one of the protocols used by aircraft to communicate with the ground has no security, and someone with a little bit of knowledge and expertise can piggyback it into the onboard computer system, upload their own data, and use a specially-designed Android app that Teso created—called Planesploit—to... well, to do almost anything:

Once he was into the airplane's computer, he was able to manipulate the steering of a Boeing jet while the aircraft was in "autopilot" mode. The only countermeasure available to pilots, if they even realized they were being hacked, would be to turn off autopilot. Yet many planes no longer have old analog instruments for manual flying. Teso said he could take control of most all airplane systems; he could even cause the plane to crash by setting it on a collision course with another plane. He could also give the passengers a serious adrenaline rush by making the oxygen masks drop down.

Help Net explained more of the app's functions:

• Please go here: A way of interacting with the plane where the user can dynamically tap locations on the map and change the plane's course.
• Define area: Set detailed filters related to the airplane, for example activate something when a plane is in the area of X kilometers or when it starts flying on a predefined altitude.
• Visit ground: Crash the airplane.
• Kiss off: Remove itself from the system.
• Be punckish: A theatric way of alerting the pilots that something is seriously wrong - lights start flashing and alarms start buzzing.

[via Computer World]

Authorities in Suffolk County arrested 21-year-old Brittany Ozarowski for grand larceny Wednesday, alleging she methodically raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for unnecessary "cancer treatments" and used the proceeds to buy heroin.

While planning $50-per-person dinner-and-dance fundraisers and accepting donations on BrittanyOzarowski.com—where she claimed to have suffered nerve damage, "severe muscle abnormalities," and cancer of the ovaries, stomach, spine, and brain—the woman reportedly scammed her family, too: Her father cleaned out an IRA to give her $25,000, and a grandmother sold her house to give Ozarowski $100,000 for nonexistent treatments at Sloan-Kettering.

But Ozarowski's real affliction was an addiction to opiates, says Suffolk County district attorney Thomas Spota: "There was no cancer, no chemotherapy, no radiation, and no medical bills. There was just heroin." [NY Post]

Dr. Ben Carson, the Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon and rising Republican star, announced Wednesday that he will no longer be speaking at the commencement for Johns Hopkins School of Medicine after making some inflammatory comments about gay marriage. On a Fox News appearance, Carson compared gay marriage to bestiality and pedophilia.

Dean Paul Rothman shared Carson's email with the school:

"Given all the national media surrounding my statements as to my belief in traditional marriage, I believe it would be in the best interest of the students for me to voluntarily withdraw as your commencement speaker this year."

After Carson said that "no group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality" has the power to change the definition of marriage, students at JHU protested his choice as commencement speaker. Even though he apologized in an email last week, noting that his "36-year association with Johns Hopkins has unfortunately dragged our institution into the spotlight as well" students still demanded he step down.

Carson has long been recognized as a prominent neurosurgeon and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In more recent days, he had been a celebrated conservative, especially after he confronted President Obama directly at a National Prayer Breakfast in February.

[The Huffington Post | Media Matters, image via AP]

One of the North Carolina state representatives who co-sponsored a Constitution-overriding bill to declare an official state religion made it fairly clear to a constituent that it was unlikely Islam would be picked as the Tar Heel State's One True Belief System.

Writing to Rep. Michele Presnell (R-Burnsville) with concerns about the since-killed House Resolution 494, constituent Britt Kaufmann asked the first-term lawmaker why she was so adamant to establish a state religion in North Carolina.

"The famed ACLU is telling Rowan County they may not pray before commissioners meetings," Presnell responded. "We pray in Raleigh before our legislative meetings, U.S. Congress prays in Washington DC, why can they not pray?" Kaufmann wrote back to ask if, in same vein, Presnell would "be comfortable with a public prayer to Allah before a legislative meeting in Raleigh."

Presnell replied bluntly: "No, I do not condone terrorism."

In an astonishing bit of Orwellian doublespeak, she then went on to warn that "we just need to start taking a stand on our religious freedom or it will be whisked away from us."

The Council on American-Islamic Relations called on other Republicans to reject Presnell hateful (and nonsensical) remark.

"If the Republican Party hopes to reach out to minority groups, it must clearly and forcefully repudiate such bigoted comments by its representatives," a spokesperson said in a statement.

[H/T: Huffington Post via Wonkette, photo via WRAL]

What will Boston look like a few hundred years from now? It will look like... water, probably. Inspired by The New York Times' "What Could Disappear," photoillustrator Nickolay Lamm has put together some amazing images of American cities as they might appear in coming centuries, depending on how much humanity manages to reduce its carbon footprint. Above, Boston's Back Bay under 25 feet of water—a worst-case scenario for the year 2300, if no pollution controls are instituted.

To make his images, Lamm consulted with maps produced by Climate Central that plot where, exactly, the flooding will occur as the sea level rises. Note that his projections are based on what you would see at low or medium tide, not high. Here's the Jefferson Memorial under 25 of water:

Here's the Harvard campus:

And Miami's Ocean Drive:

And Jefferson under, successively, five, 12 and 25 feet of water:

[Nickolay Lamm for Storagefront.com]