Inmate who said he’d kill more linked to 2nd death
A Virginia inmate who warned prosecutors he would kill again if not given the death penalty for strangling his cellmate was involved in the death of another inmate, authorities said.
Wise County Commonwealth's Attorney Ron Elkins confirmed late Saturday that Robert Gleason Jr. was "involved" in the death of 26-year-old Aaron Alexander Cooper, though Elkins refused to elaborate. Gleason, who was already serving a life term for murder before killing his cellmate last year, has not been charged in the death.
Cooper died Wednesday in the recreation yard for inmates housed in segregation at the maximum security Red Onion State Prison in southwestern Virginia. Elkins is awaiting a report from the medical examiner on Monday, but he said authorities believe Cooper was strangled.
Authorities are trying to figure out how it could have happened, because each inmate is placed in a separate, small caged-in area for recreation. Elkins said authorities believe Cooper was strangled with a piece of clothing, towel or bed sheet that was somehow reached through the chain link fence that separates the inmates on the recreation yard.
Elkins said he didn't know when charges might be filed against Gleason.
Gleason is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 31 for killing his cellmate at Wallens Ridge State Prison last year. He fired his attorneys and pleaded guilty in May, telling prosecutors he would kill again if they didn't seek the death penalty in his case.
"I murdered that man cold-bloodedly. I planned it, and I'm gonna do it again," the 40-year-old Gleason told The Associated Press. "Someone needs to stop it. The only way to stop me is put me on death row."
Elkins said he may wait until after Gleason is sentenced to determine whether to charge him in Cooper's death. He was set to visit Red Onion Monday morning to review video surveillance of the incident.
"If he gets the death penalty I'm not really sure what we'll do," he said.
Death penalty cases are costly and time-consuming. Gleason has said he would not appeal his case if given the death penalty.
Gleason already was serving life for another murder when he killed 63-year-old Harvey Gray Watson Jr., a man with a history of mental illness who had been placed in Gleason's cell a week earlier.
Gleason said he begged correctional officers to move Watson, who he said sang, screamed profanities and masturbated in the 8-by-10-foot cell they shared for seven days. He said Watson also got inmates to give him cigarettes in exchange for drinking his urine or clabbered milk on the recreation yard.
On the eighth day — May 8, 2009 — correctional officers found Watson bound, gagged, beaten and strangled. His death went unnoticed for 15 hours because correctional officers had not followed proper procedure for inmate head counts at the high-security prison in southwestern Virginia.
Prison employees involved in that case have denied repeated requests for comment from the AP. Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor declined to discuss the situation, but said that two officers were disciplined and two others were fired. One of the fired officers was reinstated upon appeal.
Traylor said the department was investigating Cooper's death. He referred all questions regarding Gleason to the commonwealth's attorney.
Cooper was serving 34 years for crimes including carjacking and robbery.
Related info :
Murder, as defined in common law countries, is the unlawful killing of another human being with "malice aforethought", and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide (such as manslaughter). As the loss of a human being inflicts enormous grief upon the individuals close to the victim, as well as the fact that the commission of a murder is highly detrimental to the good order within society, most societies both present and in antiquity have considered it a most serious crime worthy of the harshest of punishment. In the US, a person convicted of murder is typically given a life sentence or even the death penalty for such an act. A person who commits murder is called a murderer ;[1] the term murderess, meaning a woman who murders, has largely fallen into disuse
Inmate who said he’d kill more linked to 2nd death
A Virginia inmate who warned prosecutors he would kill again if not given the death penalty for strangling his cellmate was involved in the death of another inmate, authorities said.
Wise County Commonwealth's Attorney Ron Elkins confirmed late Saturday that Robert Gleason Jr. was "involved" in the death of 26-year-old Aaron Alexander Cooper, though Elkins refused to elaborate. Gleason, who was already serving a life term for murder before killing his cellmate last year, has not been charged in the death.
Cooper died Wednesday in the recreation yard for inmates housed in segregation at the maximum security Red Onion State Prison in southwestern Virginia. Elkins is awaiting a report from the medical examiner on Monday, but he said authorities believe Cooper was strangled.
Authorities are trying to figure out how it could have happened, because each inmate is placed in a separate, small caged-in area for recreation. Elkins said authorities believe Cooper was strangled with a piece of clothing, towel or bed sheet that was somehow reached through the chain link fence that separates the inmates on the recreation yard.
Elkins said he didn't know when charges might be filed against Gleason.
Gleason is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 31 for killing his cellmate at Wallens Ridge State Prison last year. He fired his attorneys and pleaded guilty in May, telling prosecutors he would kill again if they didn't seek the death penalty in his case.
"I murdered that man cold-bloodedly. I planned it, and I'm gonna do it again," the 40-year-old Gleason told The Associated Press. "Someone needs to stop it. The only way to stop me is put me on death row."
Elkins said he may wait until after Gleason is sentenced to determine whether to charge him in Cooper's death. He was set to visit Red Onion Monday morning to review video surveillance of the incident.
"If he gets the death penalty I'm not really sure what we'll do," he said.
Death penalty cases are costly and time-consuming. Gleason has said he would not appeal his case if given the death penalty.
Gleason already was serving life for another murder when he killed 63-year-old Harvey Gray Watson Jr., a man with a history of mental illness who had been placed in Gleason's cell a week earlier.
Gleason said he begged correctional officers to move Watson, who he said sang, screamed profanities and masturbated in the 8-by-10-foot cell they shared for seven days. He said Watson also got inmates to give him cigarettes in exchange for drinking his urine or clabbered milk on the recreation yard.
On the eighth day — May 8, 2009 — correctional officers found Watson bound, gagged, beaten and strangled. His death went unnoticed for 15 hours because correctional officers had not followed proper procedure for inmate head counts at the high-security prison in southwestern Virginia.
Prison employees involved in that case have denied repeated requests for comment from the AP. Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor declined to discuss the situation, but said that two officers were disciplined and two others were fired. One of the fired officers was reinstated upon appeal.
Traylor said the department was investigating Cooper's death. He referred all questions regarding Gleason to the commonwealth's attorney.
Cooper was serving 34 years for crimes including carjacking and robbery.
Related info :
Carjacking is a form of hijacking, where the crime is of stealing a motor vehicle and so also armed assault when the vehicle is occupied. Historically, such as in the rash of semi-trailer truck hijackings during the 1960s, the general term hijacking was used for that type of vehicle abduction, which did not often include kidnapping of the driver, and concentrated on the theft of the load, rather than the vehicle itself. During the later day car theft crime[clarification needed], typically, the carjacker is armed, and the driver is forced out of the car with the threat of bodily injury. In other rarer cases, the driver is kidnapped under the assault by a weapon and is retained as a passenger under duress, or made to drive his or her abductor. Women are particularly victimized in this latter method. The word is a portmanteau of car and hijacking.
Death toll from Pakistan floods rises to 1,100
The death toll from massive floods in northwestern Pakistan rose to 1,100 Sunday as rescue workers struggled to save more than 27,000 people still trapped by the raging water.
The rescue effort was aided by a slackening of the monsoon rains that have caused the worst flooding in decades in Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa province. But as flood waters started to recede, authorities began to understand the full scale of the disaster.
"Aerial monitoring is being conducted, and it has shown that whole villages have washed away, animals have drowned and grain storages have washed away," said Latifur Rehman, spokesman for the Provincial Disaster Management Authority. "The destruction is massive."
The flooding, which the U.N. estimates has affected 1 million people nationwide, comes at a time when the Pakistani government is already grappling with a faltering economy and a war against the Taliban.
The United States announced Sunday that it would provide Pakistan with $10 million in humanitarian assistance, a high-profile gesture at a time when the Obama administration is trying to dampen anti-American sentiment in the country.
The 1,100 death toll from the flooding could go even higher since rescue workers have been unable to access certain areas, said Adnan Khan, a disaster management official.
Almost 700 people have drowned in the Peshawar valley, which includes the districts of Nowshera and Charsada, and 115 others are still missing, Khan said.
The districts of Swat and Shangla have also been hit hard and have suffered more than 400 deaths, said Mujahid Khan, the head of rescue services for the Edhi Foundation, a private charity.
Residents of Swat were still trying to recover from a major battle between the army and the Taliban last spring that caused widespread destruction and drove some 2 million people from their homes. About 1 million of those were still displaced.
In Swat alone, the floods have destroyed more than 14,600 houses and 22 schools, said Khan.
Authorities have deployed 43 military helicopters and more than 100 boats to try to rescue some 27,300 people still trapped by the floods, said Rehman, the disaster management spokesman.
"All efforts are being used to rescue people stuck in inaccessible areas and all possible help is being provided to affected people," said Rehman.
But some residents stepped up their criticism Sunday of the government's response.
"The flood has devastated us all, and I don't know where my family has gone," said Hakimullah Khan, a resident of Charsadda town who complained the government has not helped him search for his missing wife and three children.
"Water is all around and there is no help in sight," said Khan.
The military deployed 30,000 army troops who helped rescue more than 20,700 people, said Khan, the disaster management official.
However, some people like Sehar Ali Shah who were rescued complained that authorities didn't provide shelter that would allow them to stay until the floodwaters receded.
"My son drowned, but I don't see the government taking care of us," said Shah after returning to his half-submerged house in the city of Nowshera. "The government has not managed an alternate place to shift us."
The flooding has also affected the central Pakistani province of Punjab, where troops rescued more than 1,400 people trapped by rising water, said Brig. Ahmad Waqas.
"We have lost everything: our houses, our crops, cattle," said Ahmad Hasan at a government relief camp in Taunsa Sharif district.
The threat of disease loomed as well as some evacuees in the northwest arrived in camps with fever, diarrhea and skin problems.
"There is now a real danger of the spread of waterborne diseases like diarrhea, asthma, skin allergies and perhaps cholera in these areas," said Shaharyar Bangash, the head of operations in Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa for World Vision, an international humanitarian group.
A variety of nations and aid organizations have begun to mobilize a response to the disaster.
The U.S. delivered thousands of food packages, four rescue boats and two water-filtration units to the northwest, said Rehman.
"This is much needed stuff in the flood-affected areas and we need more of it from the international community," said Rehman.
The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad also announced it will provide 12 prefabricated steel bridges to temporarily replace those damaged by the water.
But some residents wondered how they would ever recover from such a disaster.
"I won't be able to cover my losses for 10 years," said Shair Dad, a timber shop owner in Nowshera who lost most of his wood in the floodwaters.
Related info :
Clean-up activities following floods often pose hazards to workers and volunteers involved in the effort. Potential dangers include: water polluted by mixing with and causing overflows from foul sewers, electrical hazards, carbon monoxide exposure, musculoskeletal hazards, heat or cold stress, motor vehicle-related dangers, fire, drowning, and exposure to hazardous materials.[12] Because flooded disaster sites are unstable, clean-up workers might encounter sharp jagged debris, biological hazards in the flood water, exposed electrical lines, blood or other body fluids, and animal and human remains. In planning for and reacting to flood disasters, managers provide workers with hard hats, goggles, heavy work gloves, life jackets, and watertight boots with steel toes and insoles
Death toll in Pakistani floods surges past 800
Flooding in Pakistan has killed more than 800 people in a week, a government official said Saturday as rescuers struggled to reach marooned victims and some evacuees showed signs of fever, diarrhea and other waterborne diseases.
In neighboring eastern Afghanistan, floods have killed 64 people and injured 61 others in the past week, while destroying hundreds of homes and huge stretches of farmland, an Afghan official said.
In Pakistan, the flooding caused by record-breaking rainfalls caused massive destruction, especially in the northwest province, where officials said it was the worst deluge since 1929. The U.N. estimated Saturday that some 1 million people nationwide were affected by the disaster, though it didn't specify exactly what that meant.
The information minister for Pakistan's northwest province, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, said reports coming in from various districts across the northwest showed that more than 800 people had died due to the flooding. Many people remain missing.
Floodwaters were receding in the northwest, Pakistani officials said, but fresh rains were expected to lash other parts of the country in the coming days.
In the Nowshera area in the northwest, scores of men, women and children sat on roofs in hopes of air or boat rescues.
"There are very bad conditions," said Amjad Ali, a rescue worker in the area. "They have no water, no food."
A doctor treating evacuees at a small relief camp in Nowshera said some had diarrhea and others had marks appearing on their skin, causing itching. Children and the elderly seemed to have the most problems, Mehmood Jaa said.
AFP
"Due to the floodwater, they now have pain in their bodies and they are suffering from fever and cough," Jaa told The Associated Press.
In Charsadda, Nabi Gul, who estimated he was around 70 years old, stood shaken at the site of what was once his house and now was just rubble.
"I built this house with my life's earnings and hard work, and the river has washed it away," he said in a trembling voice. "Now I wonder, will I be able to rebuild it? And in this time, when there are such great price hikes?"
In eastern Afghanistan, floods destroyed about 800 homes and hundreds of acres (hectares) of farm land, damaged hydropower dams and partially destroyed more than 500 other houses, according to Matin Edrak, director of the Afghan government's disaster department.
Most of the flooding was in eight provinces, including Kabul, he said.
The Afghan government is distributing $2,000 in compensation to the families of each victim and is providing shelter, blankets, food and other aid to flooding victims.
Meanwhile, in Pakistan, rescuers were using army helicopters, heavy trucks and boats to try reaching flood-hit areas, the U.N. said. It reported that thousands of homes and roads were destroyed, and at least 45 bridges across the northwest were damaged.
The destruction is slowing the rescue effort, said Lutfur Rehman, a government official in Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa, the northwest province.
"Our priority is to transport flood-affected people to safer places. We are carrying out this rescue operation despite limited resources," he said, adding they needed more helicopters and boats.
Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry, the head of the Pakistan Meteorological Department, said that no more rain was expected in the next few days for the northwest and that floodwaters there were receding. But Punjab province in the east, Sindh province in the south, and Pakistan's side of the disputed Kashmir region all could expect a lashing over the next three or four days, he said.
Flooding has already affected some of those regions, with more than 21 people dying in Kashmir. A plane crash that killed 152 people in Islamabad on Wednesday also occurred during stormy weather.
Related info :
Pakistan is the sixth most populous nation in the world. Below is a list of such famous people who belong or relate in some way to this nation. See Category:Pakistani people for an alphabetical list of Pakistanis with categories.
Kingpin’s death could mean more violence in Mexico
One of the world's most powerful drug cartels took a major hit when soldiers killed a top kingpin in a gunbattle, and his death will likely will mean more violence as factions fight for the cocaine and methamphetamine empire that he left behind.
The death of Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel during an army operation also challenges a long-held notion that Mexican government officials at the highest levels have been helping the Sinaloa cartel win the drug war. Coronel was the No. 3 of the gang led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, Mexico's most-wanted drug lord.
The attack was an exclusively Mexican operation, unlike other recent raids targeting top drug lords that have relied on U.S. intelligence, Mexican and U.S. officials said Friday. After month of intelligence work, the Mexican army zeroed in on Coronel at his mansion Thursday in a ritzy suburb of Guadalajara.
"I absolutely believe that this will have an impact on ... the Sinaloa federation's capability to move their drugs, at least in the short term," said Dave Gaddis, deputy chief of operations that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. "They will require time to rebuild."
Continuing the raids Friday, soldiers killed Coronel's nephew, Mario Carrasco Coronel, in a shootout in the suburb of Zapopan.
The Defense Department said in a statement that Carrasco Coronel was one of his uncle's possible successors. He opened fire on soldiers, wounding one, before he was killed, the department said.
The elder Coronel, who had a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head, is considered one of the founders of Mexico's methamphetamine trade, building clandestine laboratories in the country and smuggling the drug into the United States. He controlled meth and cocaine trafficking routes that extended from Mexico's Pacific coast and inland up to Arizona.
Gaddis said a battle over who will control those routes next is "a distinct possibility." Sinaloa cartels rivals are already thought to be encroaching into some of the territory that Coronel dominated, including the Pacific port of Manzanillo that has been a major entry point for meth precursor chemicals, he said.
"It would be reasonable to suspect that either a new trafficking group or components of the current Sinaloa drug trafficking organization would try to take over the area that he once controlled," Gaddis said in an interview with The Associated Press. "And that may spawn some resistance from people have worked for him."
And experts said Coronel's death would not mean the imminent destruction of the Sinaloa cartel, which some U.S. law enforcement officials believe has become the most powerful drug trafficking organization in the world.
Mexican police once captured "El Chapo" Guzman himself, only to see him escape from a high security prison in a laundry truck. He has since become one of the world's richest men and Forbes magazine even listed him as one of the "World Most Powerful People." U.S. law enforcement officials say he has won control over trafficking routes in Ciudad Juarez after a bloody fight with the Juarez cartel in the border city.
AP
Most recently, the Sinaloa cartel co-opted several other cartels into an alliance to destroy the Zetas gang. That could help Sinaloa keep control of the southern Pacific trafficking routes that Coronel ruled, said George Grayson, an expert on Mexico's drug war at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. One of Sinaloa's new allies — La Familia — has a growing presence in the so-called Pacific route, he said.
"It's a blow but it's not a knock out punch," Grayson said.
President Felipe Calderon's government has brought down several kingpins since he deployed thousands of troops in 2006 to fight traffickers at their strongholds.
Those victories have nearly always unleashed waves of violence that have terrified ordinary citizens and sapped popular support for Calderon's drug war, an effort supported by millions of dollars in U.S. aid for equipment and training. Nearly 25,000 people have been killed by drug violence during Calderon's government.
Cartels have fought back with brash attacks against security forces and even their families. In December, hit men gunned down the mother aunt and siblings of a marine killed in a raid that took out kingpin Arturo Beltran Leyva. And Leyva's death opened a new front in the drug war, turning the picturesque central town of Cuernavaca into a bloody battleground for control over his cartel.
This time, the army was careful not to reveal the name of the only soldier killed in the raid on Coronel's home.
The government was subdued in victory, making no comment at all beyond the initial announcement that the capo was dead. Defense Department officials said the government did not want to compromise the safety of its security forces or compromise its intelligence strategies by discussing the attack.
Calderon — who at the time of the operation had been attending a public event just miles away in the same Guadalajara suburb — made no public appearances Friday. This, even though Coronel's downfall gives him ammunition against those who have long alleged that the Sinaloa cartel is protected by top government officials.
Coronel's death "does lay that perception to rest," Grayson said.
The insinuations have come from Mexican analysts, politicians from Calderon's own National Action Party and countless banners put up by rival gangs. Scandals ensnaring top officials have fueled the suspicions.
In May, the newspaper Reforma reported that secret police documents containing the names and contact numbers of federal officers were found in the car of an associated of "El Chapo" Guzman. The government never confirmed or denied the report. Two years ago, Mexico's former anti-drug czar and several other high-ranking officials were arrested for allegedly protecting the Beltran Leyva gang, which as the time was allied with the Sinaloa cartel.
The suspicions have increasingly provoked violence against government security forces, including a July 15 car bomb that killed a federal police officer and two other people in Ciudad Juarez. The Juarez cartel claimed responsibility for the bomb and threatened more attacks against unless federal police who protect the Sinaloa cartel are arrested.
Washington officials have always dismissed insinuations that Calderon favors any cartel.
"The government of Mexico has given full attention to combatting the drug trafficking threat from the Gulf cartel, the Beltran Leyva organization, the Sinaloa or Pacific organization, La Familia Michoacana all equally," Gaddis said.
And Calderon has always insisted that he is aggressively trying to root out corrupt officials who protect any criminals. Two months ago, Mexican marines arrested the captain of Manzanillo — the port where Coronel brought in many of his meth shipments — on charged of drug trafficking ties.
Mexico's military made clear they had long been learning details that proved crucial to bringing Coronel down, including his habit of traveling with only one bodyguard, Iran Francisco Quinonez, who was captured in the raid.
Coronel and Quinonez were the only ones in the house when soldiers stormed in, backed by helicopters hovering overhead. The army said Coronel grabbed a gun and opened fire, provoking a shootout in which he and the soldier were killed.
Related info :
Kingpin: Life of Crime is a first-person shooter developed by Xatrix Entertainment (now Gray Matter Interactive) and published by Interplay Entertainment in June 1999. The game begins with the player character wounded and beaten up by the Kingpin's henchmen, and the story follows his thirst for revenge. Released shortly after the Columbine High School massacre, the game attracted controversy which led it to be dropped from various retailers, despite receiving moderate critical acclaim. The game was ported to Linux by Xatrix employee Ryan "Ridah" Feltrin.
Mother’s death in NYC fire is ruled a suicide
A single mother who died in a mysterious fire with her four children committed suicide and her teenage son's death was a homicide, the medical examiner ruled Thursday, clearing up questions about whether the boy had been responsible for the deaths.
Leisa Jones died from smoke inhalation in the mysterious blaze at her Staten Island home last week in a case briefly believed to be an accidental fire before it became a homicide investigation.
Firefighters responding early July 22 found the charred bodies of Jones and two daughters, ages 7 and 10, in a front room, and that of her 14-year-old son, C.J., slumped over a bed in a back bedroom. A 2-year-old son pulled out alive died at a hospital of smoke inhalation.
Police said later that day that the throats of the two girls and C.J. had been slashed. They also said a razor had been found under C.J.'s body and that he had a history of playing with fire. It was theorized that he might have killed his family, set the blaze and cut his own throat.
But an initial round of autopsies found that Jones and C.J. both had ingested some type of drug, according to two law enforcement officials.
Also, a badly damaged note with the words "am sorry" that was found in an another room was written by Jones. It remained unclear whether it was a suicide note, but that discovery — combined with the initial drug evidence — led to suspicions she killed her children.
The pills did not cause their deaths. C.J. died from his neck wound and his death was ruled a homicide, said Ellen Borakove, spokeswoman for the city medical examiner's office.
Related info :
Suicide (Latin suicidium, from sui caedere, "to kill oneself") is the term used for the deliberate self-destruction by a living being, resulting in their own death. Such actions are typically characterised as being made out of despair, or attributed to some underlying mental disorder which includes depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism and drug abuse.[1] Financial difficulties, interpersonal relationships and other undesirable situations play a significant role.[2]
Over one million people commit suicide every year. The World Health Organization estimates that it is the thirteenth-leading cause of death worldwide.[3] It is a leading cause of death among teenagers and adults under 35.[4][5] There are an estimated 10 to 20 million non-fatal attempted suicides every year worldwide.[6]
Views on suicide have been influenced by broader cultural views on existential themes such as religion, honor, and the meaning of life. The Abrahamic religions consider suicide an offense towards God due to religious belief in the sanctity of life. In the West it was often regarded as a serious crime. Conversely, during the samurai era in Japan, seppuku was respected as a means of atonement for failure or as a form of protest. In the 20th century, suicide in the form of self-immolation has been used as a form of protest, and in the form of kamikaze and suicide bombing as a military or terrorist tactic. Sati is a Hindu funeral practice in which the widow would immolate herself on her husband's funeral pyre, either willingly, or under pressure from the family and in-laws.[7]
Medically assisted suicide (euthanasia, or the right to die) is currently a controversial ethical issue involving people who are terminally ill, in extreme pain, or have (perceived or construed) minimal quality of life through injury or illness. Self-sacrifice for others is not always considered suicide, as the goal is not to kill oneself but to save another; however, Émile Durkheim's theory termed such acts "altruistic suicide."[
3 NJ teens charged with videotaped immigrant death
Dusk fell around Salvadoran immigrant Abelino Mazaniego as he sat on a bench on a promenade in an upscale New York suburb after finishing his restaurant shift. As night encroached, so did a group of teenagers, including one with a cell phone videocamera at the ready.
Then, authorities say, they beat him unconscious, with the camera rolling.
Days later, the 47-year-old father of four was dead — but not before the video had been circulated among teenagers in Summit, N.J., authorities say. And not before a nurse in the emergency room where he was taken the night of July 17 was accused of pilfering several hundred dollars from his wallet.
The attacks on Mazaniego's body and dignity resulted in days of escalating court actions that culminated Tuesday in murder charges against three young men, ages 17, 18 and 19. A fourth teenager believed to have videotaped the attack hasn't been charged, but authorities weren't divulging details on the teen's involvement or potential culpability.
In Summit on Tuesday evening, a young girl sobbed, trembled, and clutched the waist of an older woman as they stood in a group of five people in front of a shrine of sunflowers, votive prayer candles, handwritten notes and a photo of Mazaniego that had been placed on the bench where he was attacked. Speaking quietly in Spanish, a woman with red-rimmed eyes said she was Mazaniego's wife of 29 years, and the rest were family members. She declined to give her name, saying she was too upset and scared to speak about the attack.
Mazaniego was "a hardworking, punctual, friendly employee," said Colin Crasto, manager and chef at Dabbawalla Indian restaurant, across the street from where the attack took place, and where the victim had worked for three years as a cook's assistant. A photo of Mazaniego was taped to the front window, with a message saying he had been the sole supporter of his family and asking patrons to donate money to help his family.
Along Summit's main thoroughfare, a place of upscale clothing and jewelry stores, real-estate brokerages advertising million-dollar homes, and luxury SUVS parked along the street, merchants and residents said the attack was an anomaly for the town, a vibrant mix of nationalities that considers itself welcoming of immigrants.
"I know bad things happen all the time, everywhere, but it's unusual here," said Neil Rodriguez, the manager of The Wine List, who knew Mazaniego, as he worked a few doors down. Recalling Mazaniego as a "genial, really nice gentlemen," Rodriguez said that, as a Hispanic, he was bothered that the incident was being portrayed by some as racially motivated.
"It's a random act of violence, there's not a lot of racial strife in this town," he said. "I'd like to see the parents that produced such monsters," he added, referring to the alleged attackers.
Khayri Williams-Clark, 18, and an unidentified 17-year-old, both of Summit, were arrested Wednesday on manslaughter charges. Williams-Clark pleaded not guilty to the charge Friday.
Now they're charged with murder, along with Nigel Dumas, 19, of Morristown. A spokesman for the public defender's office, which is representing Williams-Clark and the 17-year-old, declined to comment Tuesday and said the office hadn't yet received an application to represent Dumas.
The 17-year-old is being held in the Union County juvenile detention center, while Williams-Clark is being held at the Union County jail on $100,000 bail, prosecutors said. Bail for Dumas, at the same jail, has been set at $250,000. Authorities wouldn't say how many teens were in the group or whether there would be more charges. They also weren't discussing theories on the motive for the beating — whether it was Mazaniego's background, a thrill killing or some other reason.
But it apparently wasn't an attempt to get the $640 in cash that Mazaniego was carrying.
Police found the victim after the beating and took him to the hospital, where, officials say, nurse Stephan Randolph, 39, of Flemington, took the money out of the unconscious victim's wallet.
Family members noticed the missing money and told authorities, who charged Randolph with third-degree theft Monday, six days after Mazaniego died.
Randolph could not be reached for comment by The Associated Press this week; a phone listed in his name rang unanswered.
Related info :
Death is the termination of the biological functions that define a living organism. The word refers both to a particular process and to the condition that results thereby. The nature of the latter has been for millennia a central concern of the world's religious traditions and of philosophical enquiry. Belief in some kind of afterlife or rebirth has been a central aspect of many religious traditions. Since contemporary science has yet to identify the origin and nature of consciousness, any view about the existence or otherwise of consciousness after death remains speculative.[1]
Phenomena which commonly bring about death include predation, malnutrition, accidents resulting in terminal injury, and disease. Death of an entire species is known as extinction. Human activity has increased the number of extinctions in recent times, one cause, for example, being the destruction of ecosystems as a consequence of the spread of industrial technology.[2]
Almost all animals fortunate enough to survive hazards to their existence eventually die from senescence. Rare and remarkable exceptions include the hydra and the jellyfish turritopsis nutricula, both thought to be, in effect, immortal.[3] Causes of death in humans as a result of intentional activity include suicide, homicide and war. From all causes, roughly 150,000 people die around the world each day.[4]
Physiological death is now seen as less an event than a process: conditions once considered indicative of death are now reversible.[5] Where in the process a dividing line is drawn between life and death depends on factors beyond the presence or absence of vital signs. In general, clinical death is neither necessary nor sufficient for a determination of legal death. A patient with working heart and lungs determined to be brain dead can be pronounced legally dead without clinical death occurring. Precise medical definition of death, in other words, becomes more problematic, paradoxically, as scientific knowledge and medicine advance.
World’s Largest Dinosaur Graveyard Linked to Mass Death
Scientists have revealed what may be the world's largest dinosaur graveyard.
The dinosaurs may have been part of a mass die-off resulting from a monster storm, comparable to today's hurricanes, which struck what was then a coastal area.
The findings could help solve a mystery concerning why the badlands of western Canada are so rich in dinosaur fossils.
The roughly 76-million-year-old fossil beds apparently hold thousands of bones over an area of at least 568 acres (2.3 square km), skeletons that belonged to a roughly cow-sized, plant-eating horned dinosaur known as Centrosaurus. This treasure trove provides the first solid evidence that some horned dinosaur herds were much larger than previously thought, with numbers easily in the high hundreds to low thousands, said senior research scientist David Eberth, a paleontologist and geologist at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta.
The "mega-bonebed," which consists of 14 smaller bonebeds, lies in northern Alberta near Hilda, Canada, right by the border with Saskatchewan. The graveyard was actually discovered in 1997, but confirmation of the discovery's size was detailed this month in the book "New Perspectives On Horned Dinosaurs" (Indiana University Press, 2010). [Illustration of centrosaur herd]
Alberta is extraordinarily rich in fossils, such as those of duck-billed dinosaurs, horned dinosaurs including Triceratops, ankylosaurs, raptors related to Velociraptor, and tyrannosaurids such as Albertosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex. The area was home to a remarkable diversity of other animals as well, including birds, pterosaurs, alligators, turtles, lizards and mammals - in fact, scientists recently found mammal tooth marks on dinosaur bones in Alberta.
Thousands die in flood
Back when these centrosaurs lived, Alberta was warm and lush, and encompassed lowlands on the western coast of the Western Interior Seaway, a vast inland sea that divided what is now North America in half. The way the fossils are linked together in the same layers of earth within these bonebeds suggests all these centrosaurs were wiped out simultaneously.
The likely culprit in this scenario was a catastrophic storm, which could quickly have routinely made the waters flood up as high as 12 to 15 feet (3.6 to 4.6 meters), if experiences with modern floodplains are any guide.
"The flooding could have reached more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the shoreline," Eberth told LiveScience. "The landscape basically just drowns."
The flat area would have provided no high ground for escape, leading to thousands of animals drowning in the rising waters.
"It's unlikely that these animals could tread water for very long, so the scale of the carnage must have been breathtaking," Eberth said. "The evidence suggests that after the flood, dinosaur scavengers reentered the area, trampling and smashing bones in their attempt to feast on the rotting remains."
Fossil mystery solved
These storms could also help explain why fossils are so abundant in the badlands of western Canada overall, "and why they are often found preserved so exquisitely," Eberth said.
Coastal floodplains such as those seen in modern Bangladesh can cover vast areas, with flooding killing hundreds of thousands of livestock, not to mention the human tragedies that occur.
"Because of their size and the scale of the flooding, dinosaurs could not escape the coastal floodwaters and would have been killed in large numbers," Eberth explained. "In contrast, fish, small reptiles, mammals, and birds may have been able to escape such seasonal catastrophes by retreating to quiet water areas, the safety of trees and burrows, or simply by flying away."
The researchers now hope to take lessons they have learned in Alberta to compare it to other parts of the world in an effort to pinpoint signs of past catastrophes elsewhere.
Related info :
Fossilization is an exceptionally rare occurrence, because most components of formerly-living things tend to decompose relatively quickly following death. In order for an organism to be fossilized, the remains normally need to be covered by sediment as soon as possible. However there are exceptions to this, such as if an organism becomes frozen, desiccated, or comes to rest in an anoxic (oxygen-free) environment. There are several different types of fossils and fossilization processes.
Due to the combined effect of taphonomic processes and simple mathematical chance, fossilization tends to favor organisms with hard body parts, those that were widespread, and those that existed for a long time before going extinct. On the other hand, it is very unusual to find fossils of small, soft bodied, geographically restricted and geologically ephemeral organisms, because of their relative rarity and low likelihood of preservation.
Larger specimens (macrofossils) are more often observed, dug up and displayed, although microscopic remains (microfossils) are actually far more common in the fossil record.
Some casual observers have been perplexed by the rarity of transitional species within the fossil record. The conventional explanation for this rarity was given by Darwin, who stated that "the extreme imperfection of the geological record," combined with the short duration and narrow geographical range of transitional species, made it unlikely that many such fossils would be found. Simply put, the conditions under which fossilization takes place are quite rare; and it is highly unlikely that any given organism will leave behind a fossil. Eldredge and Gould developed their theory of punctuated equilibrium in part to explain the pattern of stasis and sudden appearance in the fossil record. Furthermore, in the strictest sense, nearly all fossils are "transitional," due to the improbability that any given fossil represents the absolute termination of an evolutionary path.
Fossil Bones Suggest Ancient Marsupials Plunged to Death
More than 20 marsupials, some still suckling newborns, plunged to their deaths 15 million years ago through a vertical cave entrance obscured by vegetation, new fossil evidence suggests.
Researchers discovered the remains along a cave floor [image] in Australia, revealing nearly the complete life cycle of this extinct wombat-like marsupial.
In addition to well-preserved fossils of Nimbadon lavarackorum, the team also found the remains of galloping kangaroos, primitive bandicoots, a fox-sized thylacine and forest bats. The animals either fell to their deaths or survived the fall before being entombed and unable to escape, the evidence revealed.
Revealing skulls
By comparing the skulls of 26 different Nimbadon individuals that died in the cave at varying stages of life, the researchers found the wild baby animals developed in much the same way as marsupials today, probably being born after only a month's gestation and crawling to the mother's pouch to complete their early development.
The skulls also suggested early in life, there was an emphasis on the development of bones at the front of the face, to help the baby suckle from its mother. As the marsupial grew older and it started eating leaves, the rest of the skull developed and mushroomed in size as a result of a series of bony chambers around the brain.
Even so, the team found its brain was pretty small and stopped growing relatively early in life.
"We think it needed a large surface area of skull to provide attachments for all the muscle power it required to chew large quantities of leaves, so its skull features empty areas, or sinus cavities," said study team member Mike Archer of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney. "Roughly translated, this may be the first demonstration of how a growing mammal 'pays' for the need to eat more greens - by becoming an 'airhead.'"
Mob behavior?
"The abundance of Nimbadon fossils also suggests that they travelled in family groups or perhaps even larger gatherings," Archer said today. "It's possible that this also reflects the beginning of mob behavior in herbivorous marsupials, such as we see today in grey kangaroos."
The team, led by Karen Black of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, has literally just "scratched the surface" of the cave, "with thousands more bones evident at deeper levels in the deposit," Archer said.
Details of the find at the site known as AL90 in the Riversleigh World Heritage fossil field in Queensland are published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
The research was supported by the Xstrata Community Partnership Program North Queensland and the
Related info :
Fossil sites with exceptional preservation — sometimes including preserved soft tissues — are known as Lagerstätten. These formations may have resulted from carcass burial in an anoxic environment with minimal bacteria, thus delaying decomposition. Lagerstätten span geological time from the Cambrian period to the present. Worldwide, some of the best examples of near-perfect fossilization are the Cambrian Maotianshan shales and Burgess Shale, the Devonian Hunsrück Slates, the Jurassic Solnhofen limestone, and the Carboniferous Mazon Creek localities.
Water Source Discovered for Desert Oasis near Death Valley
A
bout 10,000 gallons of water per minute gush up from the desert floor at an oasis near Death Valley, Nevada, but only after the water completes a slow 15,000-year underground journey, a new study suggests.
Until now, scientists were puzzled over the source of water for the oasis called Ash Meadows in Nevada. The new research suggests the water flows from the north to the south through an underground crack in the Earth's crust known as the Gravity Fault, which acts as a guide for the water. That conduit connects the Nevada Test Site with Ash Meadows, which is located about 90 miles (145 kilometers) northwest of Las Vegas.
"Since the crust in Western states is being pulled apart east to west, it creates north-south fault lines such as this one that guides groundwater from one geographically closed basin to another," said Stephen Nelson, a geologist at Brigham Young University in Utah.
That underground connection with the Nevada Test Site could spell trouble for the desert paradise in the future, because of radioactive water contaminated by nuclear testing. But the radionuclide-laden waters likely won't reach the oasis for thousands of years.
The water bubbling up at Ash Meadows every minute, has temperatures ranging from 86 to 95 degrees F (30 to 35 degrees C). That suggests the water comes from at least one third of a mile (half a kilometer) below the surface, when taking into account the ambient air temperatures and cooling of the water on the way up.
The water also must cross an average of 31 to 37 miles (50-60 km) between the Nevada Test Site and Ash Meadows, Nelson said. He added that the flow of water has slowed due to the current dry conditions, but could speed up sometime in the future during a colder and wetter period.
Finding the source
Geologists originally thought that Ash Meadows water came from Spring Mountains. But the water would have had to flow west and southwest across geographical barriers such as fault lines running north-south.
Nelson and his colleagues sifted through more than 4,000 published water samples in the region, and narrowed the pool down to 246 distinct groundwater sources. They then compared the chemical fingerprints of those sources against that of the water from Ash Meadows.
Only the Nevada Test Site's water had a matching profile of dissolved minerals, as well as comparable ratios of hydrogen and oxygen isotopes, which are atoms with different numbers of neutrons. The isotopic ratios served as additional chemical fingerprints that proved the connection between the Nevada Test Site and Ash Meadows.
The U.S. government set off many nuclear bombs at the Nevada Test Site over the course of four decades. That included perhaps 800 below-ground nuclear tests that dumped some radioactive materials into the water aquifer that feeds Ash Meadows.
"That's going to come out eventually, but if the water in Ash Meadows has been in the ground for 15,000 years, it's not going to be anytime soon - unless the climate gets wetter and flushes the system out," Nelson told LiveScience.
Nowhere else in the world
For now, Ash Meadows represents a liquid bounty in the desert that has become a home for 24 unique animal and plant species found nowhere else in the world.
Among those species is the highly endangered Devils Hole pupfish, an iridescent blue inch-long fish that has made its home in what amounts to a vertical cave filled with water. The fish population numbered barely 120 this spring before spawning season, but has been on the rebound since a disaster with some fish traps several years ago.
"If you want to understand what the long-term possibilities are for those species, you want to understand where the water is coming from and how likely it is to be affected by humans or natural climate change," Nelson said.
The study is detailed in the May 28 issue of The Journal of Hydrology.
Related information:
In geography, an oasis (plural: oases) or cienega (southwestern United States) is an isolated area of vegetation in a desert, typically surrounding a spring or similar water source. Oases also provide habitat for animals and even humans if the area is big enough.
The location of oases has been of critical importance for trade and transportation routes in desert areas. Caravans must travel via oases so that supplies of water and food can be replenished. Thus, political or military control of an oasis has in many cases meant control of trade on a particular route. For example, the oases of Awjila, Ghadames and Kufra, situated in modern-day Libya, have at various times been vital to both North-South and East-West trade in the Sahara. The word oasis came into English via Greek ὄασις oasis, borrowed directly from Egyptian wḥ3t or Demotic wḥỉ. It was not borrowed from Coptic ouaḥe (*/waħe/), as is sometimes suggested; the Greek word is attested several centuries before Coptic existed as a written language.
