Man fatally shot wife in chest over fight about cigarettes
A Michigan man was charged with murder on Monday for fatally shooting his wife in the chest after the two had an argument over cigarette smoking.
Vashon Flowers, 46, allegedly shot Jamie Thomas-Flowers inside their Muskegon Heights home at about 6:30 a.m. on Sunday following an argument that took place when the husband came home with cigarettes, according to Muskegon Heights Police.
The couple had recently quit smoking, but Vashon arrived at the residence and said he wanted to smoke while drinking, cops said.
Vashon stormed out of the home and returned several hours later.
When the man came back, he kicked in the door and shot his wife four times in the chest before running away, according to police. He later surrendered to cops.
In addition to the murder charge, Flowers was also charged as a habitual offender due to prior felony convictions.
Muskegon County District Judge Raymond Kostrzewa denied bail during Flowers’ arraignment.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/05/20/man-fatally-shot-wife-in-chest-over-fight-about-cigarettes-cops/
Photo Credit: Getty Images
Man robbed by woman after refusing to pay for sex
A man was allegedly robbed at knifepoint in the Bronx by a woman he met on a dating app after he refused to pay for sex, police and sources said Tuesday.
The 60-year-old man had been messaging with the woman on an app called Skout, and the pair met around 3 a.m. Monday at an apartment on Holland Avenue near Pelham Parkway South, police and law enforcement sources said.
She allegedly performed sexual services on him, and demanded to be paid, police said. But the man refused — later telling cops he’d never agreed to pay — and she allegedly took out a knife and stole $100 from him, along with a Bluetooth device and three cellphones, the sources added.
She then allegedly forced the victim to withdraw money from an ATM inside a nearby deli but was scared off when the man told a store clerk to call 911.
The man was uninjured. His date is still in the wind.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/05/21/man-robbed-by-woman-after-refusing-to-pay-for-sex-sources/
Photo Credit: Getty Images
Doctors say Parents who raise kids as vegans should be prosecuted
Good thing the Duke and Duchess of Sussex don’t live in Belgium. Prince Harry and wife Meghan have been said to be considering raising baby Archie as a vegan, a diet Belgian doctors now say is dangerous for growing bodies.
They said parents who place their children on such restrictive diets should be prosecuted.
“It is not medically recommended and even forbidden to subject a child, especially during periods of rapid growth, to a potentially destabilizing diet,” reads the legal opinion published Thursday by The Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium, the Telegraph first reported.
Belgian doctors said that the animal fats and amino acids found in meat and dairy, both excluded in veganism, are vital for growth. Older children could possibly tolerate a vegan diet, authorities said, but only if it were accompanied by supplements and regular medical supervision. To raise children otherwise, the authorities concluded, would be unethical.
Currently, 3 percent of Belgian children are vegan, the Telegraph reported.
The public denouncement was prompted by government official Bernard Devos, following a string of deaths in Belgian day-care centers, schools and hospitals. The opinion will make it easier, legally, for Devos to separate children from parents who insist on the diet.
In 2017, two Belgium parents were convicted following the death of their 7-month-old baby. The infant subsisted on a gluten-free, lactose-free diet and weighed less than 10 pounds when it passed, the Independent reported at the time.
In America, pet owners have been called unethical for imposing veganism on pets.
Last month, an anti-vegan protester ate a raw squirrel outside a vegan festival.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/05/17/parents-who-raise-kids-as-vegans-should-be-prosecuted-doctors/
Photo Credit: Getty Images
Man wakes from boozy night out to find his penis chopped off
A man woke up after a boozy night to discover his penis had been hacked off — and he had no idea how it happened, it’s reported.
Tan Nan had allegedly been out with friends in Hunan, southern China when he became so drunk he fell asleep, according to local media reports.
When he came round the following morning he felt a sharp pain in his groin, then noticed his genitals had been chopped off, reported Chinese-language local paper STEN. Police are now investigating the bizarre case.
Nan allegedly told cops he had no idea who was responsible for the cruel prank.
According to the Sanxiang Metropolis Daily, the 44-year-old from Huaihua, Hunan, was bleeding profusely but several hospitals apparently turned him away as they were not equipped for such an operation.
Finally, he was taken to Changsha Hospital and treated by microsurgery experts, according to reports.
Local media reported that Dr. Wu Panfeng, who treated Nan, said usually parts of the body that had been amputated should be kept in a dry, refrigerated manner.
After seven hours of surgery, his manhood was reported to have been successfully reattached.
Now he is recovering and doing well, medics have said.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/05/21/man-wakes-from-boozy-night-out-to-find-his-penis-chopped-off/
Photo Credit: Getty Images
A teen is set to graduate from high school and Harvard within 11 days
Braxton Moral walked across the stage Sunday at his high school in Ulysses, Kansas, as a newly-minted graduate.
Less than two weeks later, the 17-year-old is set on May 30 to mark another milestone: receiving his undergraduate degree from Harvard University.
Moral’s parents enrolled him at the world-renowned institution when he was just 11, he told CNN.
“My parents noticed I was bored in school and needed something to inspire growth, so they ended up finding the Extension School,” he said.
Harvard Extension School is mostly for nontraditional learners, be it someone with a job or who’s not in the age range of a typical college student, Moral said.
Most courses can be taken online, but Extension School students also must earn 16 credit hours in person at the iconic campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said Moral, who majored in government with a minor in English. Moral is currently a degree candidate from the school, a Harvard University spokesman confirmed.
An extraordinary vocabulary and a stunning memory
Studying for both high school and Harvard at the same time wasn’t easy, Moral said. But officials at his high school took a lot of the load off, allowing him to spend a couple hours each day working on Harvard’s coursework, he said.
Moral has always been drawn to law and politics, and he’s now hoping to go to law school, preferably at Columbia University, he said.
“I am, of course, excited to end this chapter of my life and anxious to begin the next,” he said.
Moral’s older sister, 29-year-old Brittney Jo Seger, told CNN her brother has always been talented.
“When he was little, his vocabulary was extraordinary,” she said. “Something my mom, sister and I noticed early on was his memory. That’s one of the things that makes him incredible. But he can look at anything or read anything, and he will instantly remember it forever.”
“This didn’t always benefit us older kids!” she joked.
Watching Moral walk across the stage during his first graduation was bittersweet, Seger said, because their parents couldn’t be there due to their mother’s health issues.
“My mother got a kidney transplant the week before, and my mother and father couldn’t be there because of that. We are a very close family, so we gathered together to help honor him in such a special time,” Seger said. “We can’t wait for Harvard graduation next week and for Brax to start a new chapter in his life and focus on his love for politics.”
Moral is also publishing a book, “Harvard in the Heartland,” about his experience as “an intellectually gifted boy from a small farming town in Western Kansas,” according to the book synopsis.
via: https://pix11.com/2019/05/21/a-teen-is-set-to-graduate-from-high-school-and-harvard-within-11-days/
Photo Credit: pix11.com
High school student named valedictorian while homeless, earns $3M in scholarships
MEMPHIS, Tenn. – A teenager in Memphis, Tennessee, exceeded the goals he set for himself – and then some.
Tupac Mosley, 17, a Raleigh Egypt High School graduate was not only named valedictorian, but he told WHBQ he received about 50 scholarships for more than $3 million. He said he was accepted into more than 40 colleges. Mosley reportedly chose Tennessee State University where he will major in electrical engineering.
Mosley said his goal was to receive $1 million in college scholarships.
WHBQ reports Mosley became homeless his senior year. “After my father passed, we fell behind on bills and we ended up getting evicted from our home February 21 of this year,” the teen said.
Mosley told the TV station he and his family have been staying at a place called For the Kingdom — a camping site and nonprofit organization that helps urban children and teens.
During his speech at graduation, he thanked his teachers for always believing in him.
The teen had a very important message: “Never let your current situation, whatever circumstances you’re going through, be a mountain that you can’t climb.”
Photo Credit: pix11.com
North Carolina class teaches kids as young as 6 to use guns
“There was no other class like this,” said Michael Pegram, firearm trainer. “So, I decided to come up with it.”
Aiden, 9, is a graduate of one of Pegram’s gun safety classes near Mint Hill, North Carolina.
The children spend four hours both in classroom time and shooting.
They start with a Nerf gun and work up to a .22 or a 9 mm.
“It’s the parent’s choice of what their kids should be around,” Pegram said. “I’m just offering a class to let them learn to be safe if they’re going to be around them.”
Some students start as young as 6-years-old.
“A lot of times they’re not shooting 9 mm, but once in a blue moon if they know what they’re doing and I know they can do it, we have done that,” Pegram said.
Pegram has had some social media feedback and he said there’s extremes on either side.
“People are extremely against it or they’re extremely for it,” he said.
Aiden said he’s learned about safety.
“If you see a gun, tell your parents and never, never point a gun at people,” he said.
Which for Pegram, is what it’s all about, taking the unknown away from kids.
“They don’t have the knowledge to be safe when they do come across guns,” Pegram said.
Pegram says he didn’t think there would be any opposition to what he was doing.
He says he was surprised by the negative comments on social media.
Photo Credit: kmov.com/CNN
10-Foot-Tall Stone Jars ‘Made by Giants’ Stored Human Bodies in Ancient Laos
Article via LiveScience
More than 100 giant stone jars, thought to have been used in burial rituals thousands of years ago, have been rediscovered at ancient sites in forests, on hillsides and along mountain ridges in remote central Laos.
The carved stone jars are scattered across miles of the rugged, tiger-haunted Xiangkhouang province, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) north of Laos’ capital, Vientiane, in South Asia. They have been dubbed “jars of the dead” by researchers.
Several human burials, thought to be around 2,500 years old, have been found at some of these sites in Laos, but nothing is known about the people who originally made the jars. [In Photos: Exploring the Mysterious Plain of Jars Site]
An expedition of archaeologists from Laos and Australia visited the Xiangkhouang region in February and March this year to document known jar sites and to search for new jars-of-the-dead sites and stone quarries.
The new finds show that the mysterious culture that made the stone jars was geographically more widespread than previously thought, said Louise Shewan, an archaeologist at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and one of the expedition leaders.
The largest and best-known jar site is the famous Plain of Jars, located in relatively open country near the town of Phonsavan. That site contains around 400 carved stone jars, some as tall as 10 feet (3 m) and weighing more than 10 tons (9,000 kilograms), and the first archaeological investigation of it was made in the 1930s.
But Shewan said that the majority of the jar sites usually contained fewer than 60 carved stone jars, and were found in forested and mountainous terrain surrounding the Plain of Jars, spread over thousands of square miles.
Ancient stone jars
Shewan told Live Science that the search for new jar sites took the expedition into “extremely rugged, forested terrain,” as the researchers looked for ancient relics reported by local people.
Relying on local knowledge meant the archaeologists could avoid the ever-present danger of unexploded Vietnam War-era bombs, she said. U.S. warplanes dropped an estimated 270 million cluster bombs on Laos during the war. The Laos government agency that oversees clearance efforts reports that more than 80 million unexploded bombs are scattered around the country.
Although the region is best known for the stone jars on the Plain of Jars, most of the ancient jar sites are in heavily forested and mountainous areas.
Credit: Plain of Jars Archaeological Project
The latest expedition, in addition to accurately mapping many of the reported sites in the Xiangkhouang region, found 15 new jar sites, containing a total of 137 ancient stone jars.
Shewan said that the newly discovered jars were similar to those found on the Plain of Jars, but some varied in the types of stone that they were made from, their shapes and the way the rims of the jars were formed.
Burial rituals
Local legends include a story that the enormous stone jars were made by giants, who used the vessels to brew rice beer to celebrate a victory in war.
Australian and Lao archaeologists found more than 137 ancient stone jars at 15 new sites in the remote and rugged Xiangkhouang region.
Credit: Plain of Jars Archaeological Project
But archaeologists think that at least some of the carved stone jars were used to hold dead bodies for a time, before their bones would be cleaned and buried. [Top 10 Weird Ways We Deal with the Dead]
Although the remains of elaborate human burials have been found at some of the jar sites, archaeologists aren’t sure if the jars were made for the purpose of the burials or if the burials were performed later.
Excavations in 2016 revealed that some of the stone jars were surrounded by pits filled with human bones and by graves covered by large carved disks of stone. These appear to have been used to mark the grave locations.
The latest expedition also found buried disks and other artifacts. Those included several beautifully carved stone disks, decorated on one side with concentric circles, human figures and animals. Curiously, the stone discs were always buried with the carved side face down.
“Decorative carving is relatively rare at the jar sites, and we don’t know why some disks have animal imagery and others have geometric designs,” expedition co-leader Dougald O’Reilly, an archaeologist at Australian National University in Canberra, said in a statement.
The excavations around some of the stone jars also revealed decorative ceramics, glass beads, iron tools, decorative disks that were worn in the ears and spindle whorls for cloth making. Researchers also discovered several miniature clay jars that looked just like the giant stone jars and that were buried with the dead.
The scientists will now use the data and photographs from the new jar finds to reconstruct the sites in virtual reality at Monash University; then, archaeologists across the globe can use the VR to examine the sites in detail.
Whitney Houston will have new music and a hologram tour
Article via CNN
Seven years after she died, Whitney Houston is set to go on tour.The singer, who died in 2012 at the age of 48 after an accidental drowning, will get the hologram treatment, her estate announced Monday.
Pat Houston, the pop star’s sister-in-law, former manager and now president and chief executive officer of her estate said in a statement, “Whitney prided herself on her family and that included her fans.”
“She adored her audiences and that’s why we know she would have loved this holographic theatrical concept,” Pat Houston said. “An event at this level is something special and Base Hologram’s track record to be fully authentic and respectful made them the perfect partner. This upcoming tour will allow audiences to experience Whitney’s amazing voice and passion for music for a long time to come and help them share that magic with future generations.”Base is the company behind another planned celebrity hologram tour.Last year Amy Winehouse’s estate announced plans to produce a hologram concert tour to celebrate the singer’s legacy.
Grammy-winning singer Winehouse died of accidental alcohol poisoning in 2011. She was 27.Brian Becker, chairman and chief executive officer of Base Entertainment and Base Hologram said in a statement that “Whitney Houston was unquestionably one of the most important singers of any generation.”
“She was a talent beyond words, and her influence and artistry transcended all boundaries – music, fashion, and film,” he said.
“Her career inspired so many musicians across all genres and generations and we are honored that her family is entrusting part of her legacy to us. We look forward to working with them and helping to share her magnificent gift with audiences of all generations.”
The announcement comes on the heels of news last week that Houston’s estate signed a deal with Primary Wave Music Publishing to acquire 50% of the estate’s assets including royalties from music and film, merchandising and the rights to her name and likeness. There are also plans for other projects including a new album and a possible Broadway musical.Pat Houston told the New York Times she’d been approached about other deals in the past and turned them down.
“Everything is about timing for me,” she said. “It’s been quite emotional for the past seven years. But now it’s about being strategic.”
