Montana woman fends off bear attack with zucchini

FRENCHTOWN, Mont. — Police say a Montana woman fended off a bear attack with an unlikely weapon — a zucchini.
Missoula County Sheriff's Lt. Rich Maricelli says a 200-pound black bear attacked one of the woman's dogs just after midnight Wednesday on the back porch of her home about 15 miles west of Missoula.
When the woman, whom police did not name, tried to separate the animals, the bear bit her in the leg.
Maricelli says the woman reached for the nearest object at hand on the porch's railing — a large zucchini that she had harvested from her garden.
The woman flung the vegetable at the bear, striking it and forcing it to flee.
Maricelli says the woman did not need medical attention. Wildlife officials were trying to locate the bear on Thursday.

US Navy pilots grounded after video shows them dunking $33m helicopters in lake

The U.S. Navy has launched an investigation after video showing two pilots dunking a pair of $33million MH-60 Romeo helicopters into a lake was posted online. The video - taken by a stunned tourist at Lake Tahoe- shows the two helicopters skimming the surface of the water. One appears to lose control, spinning and crashing into the water in a near-disaster. But the pilot quickly regains control, pulling the aircraft from the water back into the air.
They were forced to land at a nearby airport to be repaired. The damage to the state-of-the-art machines - the Navy's newest helicopter - is estimated at between $50,000 and $500,000, according to local reports. The Navy has confirmed that the footage is genuine. The helicopters were from North Island's Helicopter Maritime Strike 41 squadron. Navy spokesman Lieutenant Aaron Kakiel said that though the footage only captures one helicopter crashing, both actually hit the water as they did not have enough hovering power to hold their position.

Now an investigation has been launched into the entire September 13th flight. The Navy would not identify the pilots or say whether they were supposed to be hovering over Lake Tahoe. A spokesman did say that the lake is not a normal training area for Navy pilots. They have been grounded until the investigation is concluded. Depending on the outcome, they could lose their flying qualifications.
Retired Navy jet pilot Steve Diamond said that there may have been more to the incident than meets the eye. 'Somebody has to be a total moron to do it in total view of tourists and in a recreational area, when everyone has a camera these days,' Diamond, who retired in 2002, he said. 'We don’t really have morons flying naval aircraft, it’s possible they were troubleshooting a problem, you don’t know... It’s easy to make a snap judgment, but there are other possibilities.'

Billboard Error Creates Pubic Embarrassment

If you ever wondered how much difference just one letter can make when it comes to a message, ask the thousands of people who drove by a digital billboard near the intersection of Ironwood and Indiana 23 between Thursday and Monday morning.
The ad urged people to go to the “southbendon.com” website for a look at the “15 best things about our pubic schools.” That’s right, the billboard said “pubic” instead of “public” schools. The letter “L” had been left out of the word public.
Lee MacMillan, of South Bend,Indiana said his wife spotted the error on Saturday while sitting in traffic.

“She got home and said, ‘I can’t believe it said what I think it said,’æ” MacMillan recalls.
“So we were out driving around yesterday and sure enough, it had that typo in it. So we took a picture and the rest is history, as they say,” MacMillan adds.
MacMillan posted the picture he took on Facebook. He also e-mailed it to his neighbor, South Bend School Superintendent Jim Kapsa.
Responsibility for the spelling error has been claimed by the Blue Waters Group. The company does work for the city of South Bend’s redevelopment commission to promote the city.
“I feel terrible. It’s a mistake we made, and we’re guilty of it, and responsible for it, and we take full responsibility for the error,” said Patrick Strickler, president of the Blue Waters Group.
“Four people looked at it, eyeballed it and didn’t see the mistake, and those people all work for me,” Strickler explained. “We take responsibility for it. We simply blew it. We did not see the missing ‘L.’
He said he became aware of the problem Monday morning.
“We jumped on it, and immediately had it taken down by Burkhart. They took it out of rotation and began to repair it,” Strickler said.
“We’re the ones who made the mistake, not the city or the school,” Strickler emphasized.
As of late afternoon on Monday, a representative from the Blue Waters Group indicated the content of the billboard had been fixed and the digital message was up and running again.

JOKE: Murphy and O'Brien go out into the woods

Murphy and O'Brien go out into the woods, they come to a clearing and see an abandoned well.

Murphy said 'I wonder how deep that well is?'

O'Brien said, 'There's one way we could figure it out'.

Murphy says, 'What's that?'

O'Brien says, 'We drop something down it, we time how long it takes to hit the bottom, you multiply that time 32 feet per second squared, the rate at which objects fall in a vacuum, subtract a little for wind resistance and we've got the depth of the well'.

Murphy says, ' What are you going to drop down it?' Then O'Brien looked all around and he saw this big heavy log lying on the ground. Next he squats down by the log and, using his legs correctly, he gets it up onto his shoulders and staggers over to the edge of the well, tips it up, drops it into the well and they start to count, 'One hippopotamus, two hippopotamus, three .................... '

SPLASH!!!!

Murphy said, 'Three seconds!'

O'Brien said, 'Quick, multiply that time 32 feet per second squared!'

'288 feet!', Murphy said. 'Subtract a little for wind resistance, let's say 18 feet. The depth of that well is 270 feet deep'.

As he finished the calculation Murphy shouts, 'LOOK OUT!!' and he pushed O'Brien backwards and a goat ran between them and jumped head first down the well.

Murphy said, 'My God, I've never seen anything like that'.

Just then a farmer walks into the clearing and said, 'What's going on here boys?'

O'Brien says, 'We just figured out the depth of this well to be about 270 feet deep and then the strangest thing happened. A goat ran between the two of us and jumped head first down into the well.'

The farmer says, 'Thank heaven it wasn't one of my goats.'

Murphy says, 'How do you know it wasn't?'

And the farmer says, 'Because all of my goats are tethered to big heavy logs.'

�� Got Caption ?? 9/27

Woman Allegedly Tampered With Parachute of Love Rival, Killing Her,

A Belgian woman went on trial on Friday charged with the murder of a fellow skydiver and love rival who plunged to her death after her parachute was sabotaged.

Els Van Doren, 38, smashed into a back garden from some 4,500 meters (14,764 feet) in November 2006 because both her main and reserve chutes failed to open after she jumped from a plane with defendant, Els Clottemans, 26, their lover, Dutchman Marcel Somers, and another man.

Clottemans, an elementary school teacher, is accused of cutting through key parts of the parachute system the weekend before the jump to remove her rival and have Somers for herself.

Lawyers for Clottemans, who herself only spoke in court to confirm basic details such as her date of birth and profession, issued a statement expressing their firm belief that their client did not kill a woman she regarded as a friend.

In a red top and black trousers and flanked by two police officers, Clottemans showed no emotion as Prosecutor Patrick Boyen read the 68-page indictment.

Interest in the case was so great that a live television feed was laid on in a larger room in the courthouse in Tongeren, a town in eastern Belgium. Several police guarded the entrance.

Laying out details of the love triangle, Boyen said that bachelor Somers entertained Van Doren, a married mother of two, most Saturdays and the younger Clottemans often on Fridays.

Boyen said Clottemans was an experienced skydiver and would have known how to sabotage a parachute and that she had the opportunity to do so when she and Van Doren were with Somers a week before the fatal drop.

Van Doren's pilot chute, a small parachute deployed to pull the main chute out, was detached from that, while a line that should have connected the reserve chute to the harness was free.

Experts ruled that both items had been deliberately cut and that it could been done in just 30 seconds with scissors.

Psychiatric experts have identified signs that Clottemans suffers from a psychopathic disorder.

Clottemans' lawyers say that is no hard evidence against their client, whom they say investigators intimidated and belittled in hours of questioning.

"She was continually accused of lying by investigators. The investigators had formed their own version of the truth and were no longer prepared to deviate from that."

The trial, which is likely to feature video of the fall shot from a camera on Van Doren's helmet, is due to last four weeks.

VIDEO: Tilt-Shift Video Bathtub IV

Tilt-shift lenses sit off-center of the film (or sensor) plane of your camera to produce photos with extremely limited depth of field, giving the effect of a macro shot of a tiny scene

Three Taiwanese men accused of kidnapping and eating Golden Retriever

Taiwanese police have accused three men of kidnapping and eating a golden retriever. The dog's owner, surnamed Chen, was devastated when her 18-month-old pet "Sister Q" went missing while she and her mother were sweeping a neighborhood temple on Sep. 18. Chen had tied the dog to a pillar outside of the temple. The dog was gone before they finished.

Through surveillance tapes, Chen later saw three men working at a nearby sanitary ware factory transport her dog away on two bikes. Sister Q appeared happy to see the men and willingly followed, wagging her tail. The men disappeared from view and the dog was never seen again.

Chen appealed to Taipei County police for help. Through their investigation, police discovered that the trio had worked at the factory for less than half a year. Two men had already fled soon after kidnapping the dog. The remaining man, nicknamed "A-Chun," was still working at the factory. A-Chun denied any wrongdoing when questioned, however, the sister of one of the fugitive men admitted that they killed the dog shortly after kidnapping it and likely ate it.

Chen was so disturbed she couldn't sleep for days. She insisted on taking the case to court, accusing the men of animal abuse. According to article 25 of the Animal Protection Act (APA), unlawful killing of canines will result in fines of up to $2100.

VIDEO: LMBO..DOG WEARING HIKING BOOTS