Abaddon's Weird News of the World!

A baby died when a family of 12 leapt from their second floor balcony in Paris claiming they were fleeing the devil.

Eight more were injured, some seriously, in the tragedy when they jumped 20ft into a car park in Paris suburb of La Verriere.

The baffling incident occurred when a wife woke to see her husband moving about naked in the room, police said.

She began screaming 'it's the devil! it's the devil!', and the man ran into the other room where 11 others adults and children were watching television. One woman grabbed a knife and stabbed the man before others pushed him out through the front door.

When the man forced his way back in, they all began screamed in terror and leapt from the balcony screaming 'Jesus! Jesus!'

The naked man also leapt from the balcony, detectives said.

A four-month old baby died in his mother's arms, while a two-year-old was critically injured in yesterday’s incident.

Police said they had found no evidence of hallucinogenic drugs or unusual religious rituals.

Versailles assistant prosecutor Odile Faivre added: “A wife in the next room saw her husband moving around naked and began screaming that he was the devil.

“In the confusion following this apparent case of mistaken identity, the naked man's sister-in-law stabbed him in the hand and he was ejected through the front door of the flat.

“When he attempted to get back in, panic erupted and the other occupants of the flat fled by jumping out of the window.

“A number of points surrounding this incident remain to be cleared up,” Mr Faivre said.

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The president of Chile, Sebastian Pinera, apologized on Monday for writing a message linked to Nazism in the guest book of German President Christian Wulff.

Pinera said he had been unaware of the significance that the phrase "Deutschland ueber alles" ("Germany over all") now has within Germany.

"I was not at all aware that this phrase was associated with the dark past of the country, and therefore I am sorry," Pinera said from Santiago after returning from a tour of Europe.

Pinera wrote the phrase in the presidential guest book on Saturday, while visiting Wulff's office towards the end of his trip abroad.

The words come from the "Deutschlandlied," which has long been used as Germany's national anthem. However, the lyrics from the first verse, in which "Deutschland ueber alles" is sung, became associated with the Nazi era and were removed after the Second World War.

The Chilean leader said he learned the phrase as a boy at a German school, of which Chile has many, in the 1950s and 1960s. He said that he had thought it was associated with the unification of Germany under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in the 19th century.

Pinera said the note he wrote was intended as a message of thanks to Germany for help and support offered during the devastating Chilean earthquake in February as well during the rescue of 33 Chilean miners trapped underground earlier this month.

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Formaldehyde said:

It gets even weirder than that:

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/11-people-jump-from-paris-window-14985331.html

BTW 2nd floor is actually the third floor to Americans, so it's not the balcony with the planters. It is the one above it.

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Forma's article said:

“In the confusion following this apparent case of mistaken identity,

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PALM HARBOR — On the night of July 18, 1943, a Navy blimp on a routine patrol glided over the southeast coast of Florida. The Navy had assigned Airship K-74 and another blimp to monitor the seas from above, so that two ships could safely pass between the Florida Keys and Cuba.

At 11:40 p.m., the blimp's radar picked up a vessel 8 miles away. A few minutes later, the crewmen laid eyes on a German submarine silhouetted in the moonlight.

Like other airships, K-74 was commissioned to escort Merchant Marine ships from the air while looking for U-boats — though they were to avoid engaging them in battle. Nonetheless, the Navy had outfitted its blimps with depth charges and 50-caliber machine guns — just in case.

Lt. Nelson Grills, K-74's skipper, assessed the situation. The sub was headed straight for the ships he was guarding, a tanker and a freighter. He decided to attack.

The ensuing battle lasted only five minutes, but left an indelible mark on the life of radioman Robert Bourne. When it was over, the dirigible had floated to the water, punctured by gunfire from the sub. It was the only time in the Navy's history a blimp engaged in battle with a submarine.

Mr. Bourne, a radioman aboard K-74, issued several mayday warnings before all 10 crew members swam out of the flooded gondola.

Mr. Bourne died Oct. 13, of an infection. He was 88.

Brad Bourne of Palm Harbor said his father was an "easy-going guy" who was proud of his service in a unique battle.

"Mom said he used to wake up with nightmares, but that was years ago," said Bourne, 61.

The Navy built and used 135 "K-class" blimps during World War II, using them for surveillance and deterrence between 1942 and 1945 off the coasts of the United States, South America and North Africa.

"The advantage was its endurance. It could stay aloft much longer than a conventional aircraft," said Hill Goodspeed, a historian at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola.

But airship K-74 has gone down in history as evidence that blimps also can attack. The U-boat it engaged, later identified as U-134, was damaged by machine gun fire and unable to descend. Within two days of the skirmish with the blimp, it was sunk by aircraft.

Mr. Bourne told his family about bobbing for 20 hours in the water with crewmates, arms linked and knives drawn, kicking at sharks.

"My dad talked about how they all got in a circle with their back to each other," his son said. "They learned to kick the sharks in the snout when they got close enough."

A high point came when a U.S. plane flew low over them and tipped a wing to acknowledge their presence. Help was on the way.

But just after the men waved back, they watched in horror as a shark made a beeline for aviation machinists mate Isadore Stessel, who had cut himself while escaping the gondola.

"They saw the fin and tail going through the water toward him," said Brad Bourne. "He bobbed up, his face full of blood. Then he went under and they never saw him again."

Thanks in part to the maydays Mr. Bourne got off before the airship sank, the remaining nine crew members were rescued by a naval destroyer. Mr. Bourne was awarded a commendation and a Purple Heart for chemical burns from spilled fuel.

He grew up in Fort Wayne, Ind., and Tampa. Around 1950 he married Earline Jackson, who was as unflappable as he was. Mr. Bourne used his radio training in a career with the Federal Aviation Administration at MacDill Air Force Base and Tampa International Airport.

The couple settled into a comfortable routine, taking their two sons on vacations to Crystal River or the Pinellas County beaches.

After Earline died, the stacks of bills grew on the dining room table, drudgery his wife had always handled. Still, Mr. Bourne enjoyed riding to doctor's appointments with his son or on other errands. Not long ago, father and son made a trip to the National Aviation Museum, where Mr. Bourne found himself and his former airship in enlarged photographs on the wall.

Mr. Bourne discovered that he loved to cook, and watched the Food Channel and read cooking magazines.

A few weeks ago, a television show about sharks reminded him of the war. He started to reflect on that night in 1943 again, then said, "Well, I don't want to talk about that now."

In July 1997, 54 years after K-74 fought the U-boat, Mr. Bourne, his former skipper, Grills, and family and friends of Isadore Stessel took a Coast Guard patrol boat offshore from Fort Lauderdale. They laid a wreath at sea for Stessel, the only casualty in the Navy's use of blimps in warfare.

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SAO PAULO -- A man accused of raping 40 women turned himself in, only to be let go because Brazilian law prohibits voters from being arrested five days before elections unless they are caught red-handed, authorities said Wednesday.

Brazil, the largest country in Latin America, is holding a presidential runoff election Sunday.

Police in Rio de Janeiro said they tracked the 34-year-old man down through a cell phone that was stolen from one of the rape victims, but could not keep him in jail Tuesday because he was not arrested while committing a crime.

The man has denied the crimes, which happened in 2003 and between 2005 and 2007.

The law prohibits arrests to protect voters and candidates ahead of elections. Candidates can't be detained 15 days before the vote.

"It exists to guarantee voters and candidates are not subjected to any kind of pressure," said Silvio Salata of the Brazilian Bar Association in Sao Paulo.

The no-arrest provision was included in the Brazilian electoral code enacted in 1932 after a period in which election fraud and arrests to intimidate voters were common.

The prohibition on arrests of voters and candidates also runs for 48 hours after the end of voting.

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GIG HARBOR, Wash. -- A 4-year-old boy shot his mother with a shotgun Monday afternoon, Kitsap County sheriff's deputies told KIRO 7 Eyewitness News.

Police and medics were called to a house in the 10400 block of Glenwood Road in Gig Harbor after a report that the woman's 4-year-old son shot her.

Kitsap County sheriff's Deputy Scott Wilson said the boy loaded a shotgun cartridge into a 12-gauge semi-automatic shotgun and pulled the trigger.

The woman sustained injuries from birdshot shells, shot from the shotgun, on her left side.

The woman's boyfriend was not home at the time of the shooting, but arrived soon thereafter.

He told police that he gave the boy a cartridge earlier Monday so the boy could handle it.

The boy was curious about firearms, according to the boyfriend.

Police said the shooting happened in a bedroom, and that the mother had her back turned to her son.

She did not hear him load the cartridge into the weapon, because she was on the telephone. According to police, the woman did not even know that her son had gained access to the shotgun.

The boy and his 2-year-old sister were at home at the time of the shooting.

The mother is at Tacoma General hospital, KIRO 7 Eyewitness News Reporter Kevin McCarty reported. She is expected to be released from the hospital Monday night.

KIRO 7 Eyewitness News crews were told a sheriff's chaplain was at the scene to help answer questions from the family.

The Kitsap County Sheriff's Office is investigating the shooting as an accidental discharge of a shotgun.

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A STOWAWAY crocodile on a flight escaped from its carrier bag and sparked an onboard stampede that caused the flight to crash, killing 19 passengers and crew.

The croc had been hidden in a passenger's sports bag - allegedly with plans to sell it - but it tore loose and ran amok, sparking panic.

A stampede of terrified passengers caused the small aircraft to lose balance and tip over in mid-air during an internal flight in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The unbalanced load caused the aircraft, on a routine flight from the capital, Kinshasa, to the regional airport at Bandundu, to go into a spin and crash into a house.

A lone survivor from the Let 410 plane told the astonishing tale to investigators.

Ironically the crocodile also survived the crash but was later killed with a machete by rescuers sifting through the wreckage.

British pilot Chris Wilson, 39, from Shurdington, near Cheltenham, Glocs was acting as the plane's first officer alongside Belgian pilot Danny Philemotte, 62, who was owner of the plane's operator Filair.

The plane smashed into an empty house just a few hundred metres from its destination.

"According to the inquiry report and the testimony of the only survivor, the crash happened because of a panic sparked by the escape of a crocodile hidden in a sports bag,” news organisation Jeune Afrique reported.

"One of the passengers had hidden the animal, which he planned to sell, in a big sports bag, from which the reptile escaped as the plane began its descent into Bandundu.

"The terrified air hostess hurried towards the cockpit, followed by the passengers."

The plane was then sent off-balance "despite the desperate efforts of the pilot", said the report.

"The crocodile survived the crash before being cut up with a machete."

The plane was a Czech-made Let L-410 Turbolet, one of more than 1,100 produced as short-range transport aircraft and used mainly for passenger services.

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the croc had been hidden in a passenger's sports bag - allegedly with plans to sell it - but it tore loose and ran amok

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An old man wearing a flat cap, brown cardigan, and thin-rimmed glasses boarded a plane in Hong Kong and arrived in Canada as a young Asian man.

The police were alerted when the ‘old man’ did not step out of the plane at the Vancouver airport in Canada, preceding reports of suspicion by the airliner’s staff triggered because of the man’s young-looking hands.

Canadian authorities believe that the man whose identity could not be disclosed under Canadian privacy laws had stepped on the plane in the silicone mask of an old man and had removed the disguise in the restroom in mid-air.

The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) released an intelligence report that delivered information regarding the imposter on board the plane from Hong Kong.

When the flight landed, Border Services Officers took the passenger for interrogation.

The Asian man allegedly denied the accusation of concealment of true identity and said he had only one bag with him. However, when the officers came out with two more of his bags, one of which the silicone mask was kept, he gave up resistance.

Jennifer Bourque, regional communications officer for CBSA, later confirmed after checking on records that someone had attempted to fly to Canada under a false identity. The agency said the imposter boarded the flight using a passport that belongs
to another person. The man is currently in CBSA custody for further investigation.

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A young man who boarded a plane to Canada in disguise probably didn’t come up with the Mission Impossible-style ruse himself — he was probably helped by a human smuggler — his lawyer says.

Photographs of the Asian man, who got onto a flight in Hong Kong last week while wearing a mask that made him appear to be an elderly Caucasian, have been splashed across TV newscasts and newspapers since news of his stunt emerged.

But on Saturday, lawyer Lee Rankin slammed immigration officials for “parading” his client in front of the media, accusing them of leaking the confidential report about his exploits — and possibly endangering his safety.

“It should be disturbing to Canadians . . . that somebody who’s a potential asylum-seeker should be treated in such a dehumanizing way,” Rankin told Postmedia News.

He said his client is a Chinese national in his early 20s who doesn’t speak English.

“It’s unlikely that this method of concealment and documentation is something he dreamt up on his own,” he added.

“I believe that he had assistance. . . . I don’t want to comment specifically, but 99.9 per cent of people arriving in Canada, particularly by air, they’re relying on smugglers, who basically direct them where to go, provide documentation, tell them what to do.”

The Chinese man boarded the Air Canada flight in Hong Kong on Oct. 29, according a confidential intelligence alert from the Canada Border Services Agency that was first obtained by CNN.

It’s believed he had somehow swapped boarding passes with a U.S. citizen and passenger who was born in 1955.

The young traveller removed his mask during the flight. Upon arriving in Vancouver, he was met by border services officers, and he has now requested asylum.

The incident has put a spotlight on Air Canada’s security procedures, and led to promises of a full investigation from the federal government.

Rankin, however, accused immigration officials of trying to make an “example” of his client.


“I awoke to see this poor guy’s face on CNN with his eyes blacked out,” he said.

“It’s a distasteful form of parading a prisoner who’s completely at the mercy and control of the Canadian government,” he said.

“We would see this in a third-world country.”


Rankin said that any notoriety could have repercussions for the man if he loses his appeal bid and is returned to China, where he could face retribution.


Rankin, who has been an immigration lawyer for 21 years, said he has been speaking to his client through a translator.

He said that while he did not wish to reveal private details of his client, many Chinese asylum-seekers come from the Fujian province in China, an area that sees many political dissidents and Falun Gong practitioners.

Rankin said an asylum-seeker would typically face detention of between a week and a month, while authorities work to confirm his identity and get identity papers from China. At that point, he would be released into the community, while his refugee bid is processed.

“This happens every day of every week in Canada. People are arriving by airplane, our land border, or sometimes by leaky boats. They go through the process of establishing their identity.”


Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for Air Canada said late Saturday evening that initial reports that the man had boarded the flight with an Aeroplan card instead of a passport was “totally unfounded.”

“There are multiple identity checks before departure at the Hong Kong International Airport, including Chinese government-run Hong Kong passport control, in addition to the final passport check at the gate which all Hong Kong originating passengers must undergo,” Angela Mah said in an email to Postmedia News. “The facts relating to this passenger’s acceptance on board the aircraft are still being investigated. Air Canada Security is currently conducting its own internal investigation.”

On Saturday, Canadians flying out of the same Hong Kong airport the man departed from expressed everything from admiration to concern over his cloak-and-dagger trip to Canada.

“I think he’s brave. He must have had a reason to do it,” said Ting-hao Hu, 21, who was among those lining up at Air Canada kiosks at the Hong Kong International Airport.

“In my mind, he’s just trying to escape from something or he wouldn’t have done something like that,” said Hu, who is an arts and music student at Carleton University in Ottawa

Paul Bourgeois, a 50-year-old businessman from Moncton, said Saturday he found the entire situation “mind-boggling.”

“There are so many people, so many passport checks at a number of locations,” he said as he waited at the Hong Kong airport. “For anyone to have got through wearing a mask is mind-boggling.”


Security at the Hong Kong International Airport is usually very stringent.

Passengers must first have their boarding passes and passports checked by as many as two guards before they are able to enter the “departures hall.”

Once in the hall, boarding passes and IDs are checked again before passengers walk through metal detectors while hand luggage passes through X-ray machines.

Next, passengers must hand over their passports and stand face-to-face with a Hong Kong immigration official to be cleared for departure —a seemingly daunting task for someone wearing a mask.

The final check comes at the gate; airline staff members usually ask to see passports in addition to boarding passes.

An airport spokesman declined to comment when contacted.

Travellers said they weren’t overly concerned about security issues raised by the incident.

“I don’t think he was a threat,” said Joel Matlin, president of the Toronto-based home security company Alarm Force. “He wasn’t armed and he wasn’t violent.”

Sheila McFarlane, a retired politician headed home to Vancouver Island, agreed.

“I think it’s a one-off. It won’t happen again,” she said. “If he was a danger in any way, if he was carrying a gun, or a bomb or a knife, then I’d be concerned.”

But Bourgeois, the Moncton businessman, said he was worried that Canadian immigration officials would grant the man refugee status.

“If Canada doesn’t say ‘no’ to this guy, we’re going to be the destination of choice for all people looking to move somewhere else,” he said. “As much as I feel for these people, if Canada is known for having such open doors, then I see serious problems down the road.”

Matlin, from Toronto, agreed.

“Send him back. He should taking the right channels,” he said. “We are a community of immigrants, but we should not give this man special treatment because of his eccentric behaviour.”

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Designed for anyone who has far too much money and loose change, this is the piggy bank of all piggy banks. Its a real piglet that has been taxidermied and inserted with what all piglets probably dream of as babies, a coin storage unit and a cork plug. Make your plush overpriced apartment complete with this little guy.

The piglet bank will take up to 12 months to produce from the time of order. We expect half the money up front and half when the piglet had been completed. Just so you know that we don’t actually kill the Piglets, they die of natural causes and these are the ones that we use.
Price $4000
(not including postage and packing)

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Call of Duty: Black Ops may be a fictional tale of secret Cold War operations, but the game got an official rebuke from Cuba today.

In the game's opening mission, U.S. special ops soldiers are sent to assassinate Fidel Castro in Cuba in 1961 during the Bay of Pigs incident. That didn't sit well with the state-run news website Cubadebate, which criticized Black Ops saying that the violent first-person shooter game glorifies assassination and could transform U.S. kids into sociopaths, the Associated Press reports.

"What the United States couldn't accomplish in more than 50 years, they are now trying to do virtually," said an article on the site says. The article also criticized what it characterized as numerous actual attempts by the CIA to assassinate Castro.

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Auntie said:

Singer James Blunt has told the BBC how he refused an order to attack Russian troops when he was a British soldier in Kosovo.

Blunt said he was willing to risk a court martial by rejecting the order from a US General.

But he was backed by British General Sir Mike Jackson, who told him "I'm not going to have my soldiers be responsible for starting World War 3".

Blunt was ordered to seize an airfield - but the Russians had got there first.

In an interview with BBC Radio 5Live, to be broadcast later on Sunday, he said: "I was given the direct command to overpower the 200 or so Russians who were there.

"I was the lead officer with my troop of men behind us ... The soldiers directly behind me were from the Parachute Regiment, so they're obviously game for the fight.

"The direct command [that] came in from General Wesley Clark was to overpower them. Various words were used that seemed unusual to us. Words such as 'destroy' came down the radio."

'Mad situation'
The confusion surrounding the taking of Pristina airfield in 1999 has been written about in political memoirs, and was widely reported at the time.

But this is the first time Blunt has given an account of his role in the incident.

Blunt, who was at the head of a column of 30,000 NATO troops with his unit, told Pienaar's Politics it was a "mad situation".

He said he had been "party to the conversation" between senior officers in which Gen Clark had ordered the attack.

"We had two hundred Russians lined up pointing their weapons at us aggressively, which was... and you know we'd been told to reach the airfield and take a hold of it.

"And if we had a foothold there then it would make life much easier for the NATO forces in Pristina. So there was a political reason to take hold of this.

"And the practical consequences of that political reason would be then aggression against the Russians."

Court martial
Asked if following the order would have risked starting World War 3, Blunt, who was a 25-year-old cavalry officer at the time, replied: "Absolutely. And that's why we were querying our instruction from an American general".

"Fortunately, up on the radio came General Mike Jackson, whose exact words at the time were, 'I'm not going to have my soldiers be responsible for starting World War 3', and told us why don't we sugar off down the road, you know, encircle the airfield instead.

"And after a couple of days the Russians there said 'hang on we have no food and no water. Can we share the airfield with you?'."

If Gen Jackson had not blocked the order from Gen Clark, who as NATO Supreme Commander Europe was his superior officer, Blunt said he would still have declined to follow it, even at the risk of a court martial.

He said: "There are things that you do along the way that you know are right, and those that you absolutely feel are wrong, that I think it's morally important to stand up against, and that sense of moral judgement is drilled into us as soldiers in the British army."

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The U.S. military launched what is billed as its largest-ever spy satellite on Sunday.

A Delta IV Heavy rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 5:58 p.m. on Sunday, carrying what an Air Force press release called a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).

While the Air Force did not give further detail on the mission, Bruce Carlson, director of the NRO, said in a September 13 speech that his agency would be putting “the largest satellite in the world” aboard a Delta rocket for a launch from Cape Canaveral this fall.

The NRO “designs, builds and operates the nation's reconnaissance satellites” and services the satellite intelligence needs of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Department, according to the agency’s website.

"This mission helps to ensure that vital NRO resources will continue to bolster our national defense," said Brig. Gen. Ed Wilson, commander of the 45th Space Wing, which was in charge of the launch.

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SAN DIEGO — A sophisticated cross-border tunnel equipped with a rail system, ventilation and fluorescent lighting has been shut down by U.S. and Mexican officials — the second discovery of a major underground drug passage in San Diego this month, authorities said Friday.

The tunnel found Thursday is 2,200 feet long — more than seven football fields — and runs from the kitchen of a home in Tijuana, Mexico, to two warehouses in San Diego's Otay Mesa industrial district, said Mike Unzueta, head of investigations at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Diego.

In Mexico, the tunnel's cinderblock-lined entry dropped 80 to 90 feet to a wood-lined floor, Unzueta said. From the U.S. side, there was a stairway leading to a room about 50 feet underground that was full of marijuana.

"It's a lot like how the ancient Egyptians buried the kings and queens," Unzueta said.

Unzueta said the tunnel discovered Thursday and another found in early November are believed to be the work of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, headed by that country's most-wanted drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

"We think ultimately they are controlled by the same overall cartel but that the tunnels were being managed and run independently by different cells operating within the same organization," Unzueta said.

The passage found Thursday is one of the most advanced to date, with an entry shaft in Mexico lined with cinderblocks and a rail system for drugs to be carried on a small cart, Unzueta said.

Authorities seized more than 20 tons of marijuana. Three men were arrested in the United States, and the Mexican military raided a ranch in Mexico and made five arrests in connection with the tunnel, authorities said.

U.S. authorities have discovered more than 125 clandestine tunnels along the Mexican border since the early 1990s, though many were crude and incomplete.

U.S. authorities do not know how long the latest tunnel was operating. Unzueta said investigators began to look into it in June on a tip that emerged from a large bust of marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine by the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department.

U.S. authorities followed a trailer from one of the warehouses to a Border Patrol checkpoint in Temecula, where they seized 27,600 pounds of marijuana. The driver, whose name was not released, was arrested, along with two others who went to a residence in suburban El Cajon that had $13,500 cash inside.

"That (trailer) was literally filled top to bottom, front to back," Unzueta said. "There wasn't any room for anything else in that tractor-trailer but air."

Three tons of marijuana were found in a "subterranean room" and elsewhere in the tunnel on the U.S. side, authorities said. Mexican officials seized four tons of pot at a ranch in northern Mexico, bringing the total haul to more than 20 tons.

The discovery of the cross-border tunnel earlier this month marked one of the largest marijuana seizures in the United States, with agents confiscating 20 tons of marijuana they said was smuggled through the underground passage. One of the warehouses involved in the tunnel discovered Thursday is only a half-block away.

Several sophisticated tunnels have ended in San Diego warehouses. ICE began meeting with landowners last month to warn them about leasing space to tunnel builders.

"These owners of warehouses, they need to know their customers, they need to know who's in there leasing these things," Unzueta said.

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