This is London

The co-pilot of a Heathrow-bound plane was dragged kicking and screaming from the cockpit after suffering a mental breakdown while in control of the flight. He began yelling and “invoking God” as the Air Canada 767 flew at 37,000 feet over the Atlantic. He was held down by other crew members and a passenger, a member of the Canadian armed forces. The co-pilot then had restraints fastened to his wrists and ankles and was handcuffed to a seat. The flight from Toronto made an emergency landing in Shannon and the co-pilot, who had been crying and screaming according to witnesses, was taken off the plane. He was taken by ambulance to a psychiatric ward where he is being treated for a suspected nervous breakdown. Passenger Sean Finucane told of his shock as he witnessed the co-pilot being carried out of the cockpit in restraints. He said today: “He was very, very distraught. He was yelling loudly at times. When they tried to put his shoes on later he swore and he threatened people. His voice was clear so he didn’t sound drunk or anything. He was swearing and was very distressed.”

Mr Finucane, from Lancashire, told how the pilot kept shouting: “I need to talk to you God.” He described how passengers watched a crew member and the soldier carry the co-pilot out of the cockpit, through first class and into economy. The co-pilot then intermittently yelled obscenities and sobbed.

He must have had the chicken. Congratulations to the crew and the Canadian soldier for averting a potential disaster.

Michel Mastromarino, body snatcher

It sounds like a gruesome science fiction novel: body parts from corpses transplanted allegedly without the knowledge of loved ones. Imagine, having surgery to get a new lease on life.

Instead you find out what you got was something stolen, something diseased — a ticking time bomb in your body.

“I had last rights. I mean, I almost bought the farm,” said Betty Pfaff, a local woman who had a tissue transplant. In July 2005, Pfaff was rushed to Abington Memorial Hospital with a temperature of 106. Her family was told she probably wouldn’t make it. “The doctors couldn’t figure out what the problem was,” Pfaff said. They said they didn’t know about a man named Michel Mastromarino, who some call Frankenstein, Cahn reported. Mastromarino was arrested and charged with heading a multimillion-dollar operation some say was a butcher ring right out of a horror movie. They didn’t know about the Philadelphia funeral homes, where investigators said diseased cadavers were left in alleys then stripped of bone, skin and tissue to be sold. They said they didn’t know that, during a standard hernia operation, Pfaff had an infected piece of donor skin grafted onto her body — skin that came from unsanitary corpses.” I was in intensive care 11 days. I was on a ventilator. I was on dialysis,” Pfaff said. “I lost a year of my life.” But Mastromarino’s attorney told NBC 10 that his client is not guilty, that he’s the victim of unscrupulous funeral directors like James McCafferty, Louis Garzone and his brother, Gerald, in Philadelphia. ” Innocent until proven guilty,” said Gerald Garzone’s attorney. A recent grand jury report says, “The Garzones and McCafferty were paid approximately $250,000 over an 18-month period for their participation in the criminal scheme to steal and sell body parts.”

Innocent until proven guilty or, as in this case until admitting guilt. I’m just hoping he doesn’t have an eBay account.

Rep. Nick Lampson, says that Federal Emergency Management Agency tried to control the outcome of a scientific study on formaldehyde in trailers used to house victims of Hurricane Katrina.

“Someone from one of the agencies, the CDC, came to our committee and reported that he had information that indicated that good science wasn’t followed when a decision was made to allow people to live in basically travel trailers that were not designed to be lived in,” said Lampson…

The committee recently obtained internal CDC e-mail which showed that “despite the efforts of CDC professionals to bring these health risks to the public’s attention, those concerns were thwarted by CDC leadership for roughly eight months,” Rep. Bennie Thompson said…

“Any and all allegations that FEMA ignored or manipulated formaldehyde-related research are unfounded and false. Such activities are completely contrary to our mission and our commitment to the victims of disaster,” said Carlos Castillo, FEMA’s assistant administrator for disaster assistance…

You’re doing a heck of a job, Carlos.

The FBI is examining 14 companies for possible fraud in the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis.

The FBI did not identify the companies…

Power and other senior officials said the number of suspicious activity reports they review for potential investigation skyrocketed from 3,000 in fiscal year 2003 to about 35,000 in 2006, to 48,000 in 2007. And in the first quarter of fiscal year 2008, Power said, officials have already received 15,000 such reports, putting them on pace to receive 60,000 complaints this year…

Kenneth Kaiser, FBI assistant director for the Criminal Investigative Division, said the FBI has developed an initiative focused on subprime mortgage loan fraud and is working with investigators from other federal agencies.

Officials identified the states that are the “top 10 mortgage fraud hot spots” as California, New York, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Utah, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan.

Fraud is about the only possible charge. During the boom and bust in sub-prime mortgages, Congress and the White House refused to apply the same regulations that apply to bank mortgages – to the storefront hustlers and their investors.

They can’t be indicted for breaking laws that didn’t exist.

1) Hillary takes the Dem nomination.

2) Hillary wins a landslide victory.

And ….

My more longshot predictions:

1) McCain wins the Republican nomination. (Because like Bob Dole – it’s his turn.)

2) McCain picks Lieberman for VP.

Almost 1 million people whose votes don’t count went out to vote for Hillary. Yes, Florida voters might be naive locals, but they represent a cross section of the naive locals that make up the American voter.

Perkel, are you nuts??

DVORAK RESPONDS:
Saying McCain winning the nomination is a longshot prediction shows to me that you have not been following any threads of reality, which is ironic since you run the Church of Reality. And, as for Florida… it’s a state of retirees and strippers.

The bet is simple with the terms of the bet to be discussed privately on an Indian reservation. My position is that any Republican will win the Presidency in 2008. Now that you bring up the landslide concept I’ll make a second bet if you can define “landslide.” And since you parroted that ludicrous idea that Lieberman (already a loser as VP candidate) would for some perverse reason be the VP chosen by McCain, I’ll make a third bet and give you odds on that one.

PERKEL RESPONDS:
Actually the Lieberman part is the long shot. I agree than McCain will be the nominee because for Republicans, it’s his turn. Just like in 1996 it was Bob Dole’s turn. I’m also going to predict that one week from today (Feb 6th) that Obama drops out of the race.

The Republicans might win if Obama is the candidate. He has the shortest resume of all the candidates and even though liberals will give him an affirmative action vote, the Republicans won’t. If Hillary wins, which I’m predicting, then Hillary clobbers McCain. He’s admitted, as Romney point out, that he doesn’t know anything about the economy and he sees the Iraq war lasting 50-100 years.

Record labels and film studios cannot demand that telecoms companies reveal the personal details of people suspected of swapping copyrighted material on the internet, the European Court of Justice has ruled.

The court was asked to decide on the issue after Promusicae, an umbrella group representing the Spanish music and film industry, sued Telefónica, the telecoms group, for refusing to identify customers suspected of swapping copyrighted material.

Promusicae wanted to use the information to bring a lawsuit against individuals it believed to have been distributing music and films on KaZaA, a peer-to-peer internet network that allows users to share films, music and other media.

Telefónica refused, arguing that European law required only that the telecoms group give out private information about its customers in criminal proceedings or in matters relating to public security.

The long history of Europeans having to fight seriously repressive governments for privacy and freedom makes the question a bit more pointed than the American public seems to notice. So far.

Emma ‘IM Honey’ Schwanger is disappointed her grandson hasn’t started using the mashup hacks she wrote to combine her MySpace and Twitter accounts with Google Earth and her huge iTunes collection of old school rap on her iPhone.

Youngsters not happy oldies going online

THE older generations are moving in on the hi-tech, online world and the under-30s are not impressed.

Scott Seigal was awakened one morning by a mobile phone text message.

It was from his girlfriend’s mother.

His friends’ parents have posted greetings on his MySpace page for all the world to see.

And his 72-year-old grandmother sends him online instant messages every day so they can better stay in touch while he is at university.

“It’s nice that adults know some things,” says Seigal, 18.

He especially likes instant messaging with his grandmother because he is “not a huge talker on the phone”.

Increasingly, however, he and other young people are feeling uncomfortable about their elders encroaching on what many young adults and teenagers consider their technological space.

[Argh! It seems the young’uns proved their point since your old Uncle Dave didn’t remember that Eideard posted this same item last week. Now you kids, get off my lawn!]

Greeter Thomas ‘Wal-Mart Tommy’ Plunkbender shows his commitment to WM at the announcement

This is just so damn thoughtful and considerate of them to give back to society like this that we should just plain give them a Nobel Prize or a set of towels or something. Please note that any moran who suggests Wal-Mart might be doing this to increase sales volume and profits will be arrested and sent to Gitmo for obvious anti-American activities.

Wal-Mart chops prices in bid to boost shopping

Wal-Mart announced Tuesday that it will chop prices between 10 to 30% this week on groceries, electronics and other home-related products in an effort to keep its cash-strapped consumers excited about shopping.

While its rivals, including Target (TGT, Fortune 500), have seen sales decelerate dramatically in recent weeks from a consumer spending slowdown, Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500) has been benefiting from more shoppers trading down to its discount stores.

The world’s largest retailer recently reported that its December same-store sales rose 2.4%, which was at the high-end of its expectations for the month.

Britain’s spy headquarters for listening in on signals around the world was severely disrupted by last year’s floods that inundated large parts of England.

Staff at the agency — which works on counter-terrorism, military and other security operations — managed to keep their most important operations running but feared their work could have been hit even more had the flooding got worse.

GCHQ is based near the city of Cheltenham in Gloucestershire, western England, which was the worst hit county by flooding last June and July. At the time, officials played down the impact of the rising waters.

The site is powered by an electricity sub-station which came within inches of flooding, but officials said it would have been able to continue using back-up generators.

The politicians and military whizbangs who built this doughnut never noticed they were siting it in a flood plain. Did they not think of asking someone who lived there?

Though the River Chelt was “relocated” decades ago – that didn’t change its original course. And in flood conditions? It’s back – of course.

Not the High School Yearbook Photo

I’m am dying of laughter at the notion that Hillary, because she won Florida, has a shot at winning against any Republican candidate short of the nomination of Himmler. I am not a gambler, thus I take bets from various naive locals who do not have a sense of the nation. Marc, are you willing to bet on that laughable assertion you made in the renegade post below?

STOCKTON, Calif. – The house was ravaged — its floors ripped, walls busted and lights smashed by owners who trashed their home before a bank foreclosed on it. Hidden in the wreckage was an abandoned member of the family: a starving pit bull. The dog found by workers was too far gone to save — another example of how pets are becoming the newest victims of the nation’s mortgage crisis as homeowners leave animals behind when they can no longer afford their property. Pets “are getting dumped all over,” said Traci Jennings, president of the Humane Society of Stanislaus County in northern California. “Farmers are finding dogs dumped on their grazing grounds, while house cats are showing up in wild cat colonies.” The abandoned pets are overwhelming animal shelters and drawing fury from bloggers, especially as photos of emaciated animals circulate on the Internet. The first people to enter an abandoned house, such as property inspectors and real estate brokers, have discovered dogs tied to trees in backyards, cats in garages, and turtles, rabbits and lizards in children’s bedrooms. The San Joaquin Animal Shelter in Stockton is fielding more desperate calls from animal owners about to be evicted. Many call as a last resort after being turned down by various rescue groups with no room for more animals.

“They’re usually breaking down on the phone,” said Kathy Potter, a shelter dispatcher. “I’m quite direct with them that there’s a 50-50 chance the animals might be put down.” Still, shelter operators say, half a chance is better than none.

And it can only get worse.