If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist it's another nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standards of nonconformity.

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Friday, April 11, 2008

Heroin seized in Waterville

WATERVILLE -- A Connecticut man who showed up Wednesday at District Court to face an assault charge was arrested by police in connection with heroin found last month near the Head Start school in the South End.

As an added bonus, police said, Darryl Copeland, 25, of Hartford, had 98 bags of heroin on him Wednesday, adding new, more serious charges.

Police had been waiting for Copeland to return, Deputy Chief Charles Rumsey said.

Nine packets of Blue Magic heroin were found March 4 behind the Kennebec Valley Community Action Program building.

Police said the discovery could have saved the life of a child who might have found the pretty packets and tasted the contents.

"It didn't take us very long to discover that the night prior to that heroin being discovered, Waterville police had actually detained Mr. Copeland right there on that corner for suspicion of an assault that had taken place in a cab," Rumsey said.

Copeland was interviewed and issued a summons to appear in court related to a fight that allegedly took place in the cab that night.

"His court date was today," Rumsey said.

He said investigators "put two and two together" after realizing that police had spoken to Copeland near where the heroin had been found.

Police ran Copeland's name and found he had arrests and convictions in Connecticut in 2002 for possession and sale of heroin, Rumsey said. A search warrant for Copeland and the vehicle in which he was a passenger was secured and police waited for the court date to arrive.

"When he came back up to Waterville for his court appearance today, we were watching and waiting for him," Rumsey said. "When he left the courthouse this afternoon Detective Chris Paradis and Office Dwayne Cloutier and a number of other police officers tailed him in the vehicle he was in from the courthouse down to the South End."

The car was parked near The Chez on Water Street, where police converged on the vehicle and searched Copeland and the car.

"In his right front pocket officers located 10 bundles of heroin -- there was 98 bags of heroin -- they are usually bundled 10 bags to a bundle," he said. "All marked Blue Magic and all packaged the very same way as the heroin that was recovered by KVCAP, which is a very unusual method of packaging heroin. We haven't seen it like this before."

He said the heroin is packaged in small glassine bags and stamped Blue Magic, then are encapsulated in black plastic, almost like a bubble pack.

Each bag is about one-tenth of a gram and sells for $25-30. Ten bags make up one gram of heroin. Copeland is charged with aggravated trafficking in heroin, a Class A felony, punishable by up to 30 years in prison for the 98 bags seized Wednesday. The charge is aggravated by the amount of heroin -- valued at about $3,000 -- and by its proximity to the Head Start school and the alternative education school on Silver Street, Rumsey said. He is charged additionally with possession of about three grams of cocaine and prescription pills. The charge related to the March 4 heroin case is Class B felony, furnishing drugs, punishable by up to 10 years. The charge is not aggravated further due to the relatively small quantity of drugs -- nine bags -- in that case, according to Rumsey said.

Bail was set at $31,500 cash.

Waterville Police Chief Joseph Massey said he was pleased with the resolution of the case. He said heroin found within 20 feet of any school touches a nerve.

"Officers Paradis and Cloutier have done a lot of work over the last month on this particular case and it all came together for them today," Massey said. "In addition, patrol officers were instrumental in being kind of the eyes and ears, relaying information to them as to what they were looking for -- how and who to identify when he came back to the city.

"What I like is the good, consistent effort to get drugs off the street, to arrest drug dealers and I think it's working," he said.

Copeland is scheduled to appear in Kennebec County Superior Court on July 8, but his initial appearance could be sometime this week.

Quoted from http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/news/local/4952592.html:

Heroin seized in Waterville

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Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Smelly stuff smears road Trail of cow manure is talk in 3 towns

 

By Morning Sentinel Staff

A 4-mile cow manure spill through three towns kept residents plugging their noses Monday and sent motorists to area car washes.

The mystery of who spilled the manure on Route 100A from Winslow to Benton and into Clinton remained unsolved as of Monday night.

But Benton Road Commissioner Kenneth Dudley tried to figure it out. He followed the manure spill, hoping to find the source -- or the destination -- and used his plow truck to scrape it off the road even though he isn't responsible for the state-owned highway.

"The Town Office called me and said that somebody'd come in there and complained in there and he called it 'cow poop,' so I thought I'll go look -- I'm coming into town anyways," Dudley said.

"I was down to Waterville and I came through and it was quite messy in the road just about where the town line was and it disappeared on that flat. I lost it near Bellsqueeze Road. I don't really know where it went to. I didn't smell nothing at first. I had a guy with me and he said he could sure smell it."

The trail of manure in the northbound lane of Route 100A started in Winslow, just south of the Benton town line, continued past Libby's Variety store, the Town Office and Dan's Used Cars, then headed toward Clinton.

Once in Clinton it traveled another couple of miles and turned west off the paved road just before a red farmhouse.

The manure followed a snowy field up to the red horizon where the sun was setting around 4:45 p.m. Farm equipment was parked next to a big pile.

At Libby's store, owner Bob Libby was eating a sandwich for supper and hadn't counted on it being accompanied by the odor of manure.

"I just got in and I said, 'What in hell smells?'" he recalled.

His wife, Diane, came into the store after walking the dog. She said people had been talking about the manure spill all day.

"Some lady came in and she had a sizable amount on her car," she said. "She got some coins to go to the car wash."

Stopping at Libby's on her way home from work, Pamela Hall, like everyone else in town, was talking about the stench in the road. She said she drove for what seemed like miles, with the odor never letting up.

"It's like, phew," Hall said. "I began to think maybe I stepped in something. I couldn't imagine what it was because the smell went on so long."

Diane Libby preferred to look at the positive side of the situation.

"It's good country air, that's all," she said. "We're going to have some good green grass along the side of the road."

Smelly stuff smears road Trail of cow manure is talk in 3 towns

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Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Men who use mobile phones face increased risk of infertility

 

by JENNY HOPE - Last updated at 21:01pm on 23rd October 2006

Phone the doctor: Men who use mobile phones could face increased risk of infertility. Men who use mobile phones could be risking their fertility, warn researchers.

A new study shows a worrying link between poor sperm and the number of hours a day that a man uses his mobile phone.

Those who made calls on a mobile phone for more than four hours a day had the worst sperm counts and the poorest quality sperm, according to results released yesterday at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine annual meeting in New Orleans.

Doctors believe the damage could be caused by the electromagnetic radiation emitted by handsets or the heat they generate.

The findings suggest millions of men may encounter difficulties in fathering a child due to the widespread use of mobile phones and offers another possible explanation for plummeting fertility levels among British males.

Sperm counts among British men have fallen by 29 per cent over the past decade, a drop which has also been blamed on increasing obesity, smoking, stress, pollution and 'gender-bending' chemicals which disrupt the hormone system.

The latest study backs up previous research which indicated a link between mobile phone use and sperm quality, but it is the biggest and best designed to date.

US researchers in Cleveland and New Orleans, and doctors in Mumbai, India, looked at more than 360 men undergoing checks at a fertility clinic who were classified into three groups according to their sperm count.

Men who used a mobile for more than four hours a day had a 25 per cent lower sperm count than men who never used a mobile.

The men with highest usage also had greater problems with sperm quality, with the swimming ability of sperm - a crucial factor in conception - down by a third.

They had a 50 per cent drop in the number of properly formed sperm, with just one-fifth looking normal under a microscope.

Professor Ashok Agarwal, director of the Reproductive Research Center at the Cleveland Clinic, Ohio, who led the study, said "Almost a billion people are using cell phones around the world and the number is growing in many countries at 20 to 30 per cent a year.

"In another five years the number is going to double. People use mobile phones without thinking twice what the consequences may be.

"It is just like using a toothbrush but mobiles could be having a devastating effect on fertility. It still has to be proved but it could have a huge impact because mobiles are so much part of our lives."

Altogether 361 men in the study were divided into four groups, with 40 never using a mobile, 107 men using them for less than two hours a day, 100 men using them for two-four hours daily and 114 making calls for four or more hours a day.

The main finding was that on four measures of sperm potency - count, motility, viability and morphology, or appearance - there were significant differences between the groups.

The greater the use of mobile phones, the greater the reduction in each measure. Prof Agarwal said "This was very clear and very significant. Many in the lowest group for sperm count would be below normal as defined by the World Health Organization."

The WHO says a normal sperm count is above 20 million per millilitre of seminal fluid. "There was a significant decrease in the most important measures of sperm health with cell phone use and that should definitely be reflected in a decrease in fertility" he said.

Motility measures the swimming ability of sperm, viability measures whether non-swimming sperm are still alive while morphology is the appearance compared to the norm.

Although the men were seeking fertility treatment at a clinic in Mumbai, not all would have had a problem - it could be their partners, he added.

Prof Agarwal said the most likely mechanism was damage to sperm-making cells in the testes caused by electromagnetic radiation or heat, although a fall in hormone production could also affect sperm motility and sperm DNA.

He said: "These cells in the testes have been shown to be susceptible to electromagnetic waves in previous research in animals.

"Somehow electromagnetic waves may be causing direct damage to these cells and that perhaps causes a decrease in sperm production."

Mobiles may also increase temperature in the groin, if a man was wearing it on a belt or carrying it around in a pocket.

Prof Agarwal said it was too early to advise men trying to start a family about whether they should limit their mobile phone use. He said "We still have a long way to go to prove this but we have just had another study approved."

More than 40 million people in Britain are thought to use mobile phones. Alasdair Philips, director of the consumer pressure group Powerwatch said "It's a plausible link between the amount of time spent using a mobile phone and a possible effect on male fertility.

"The eyes, breasts and testicles are the areas of the body most likely to absorb the energy and many men carry their mobiles attached to their belt."

Sending text messages uses less power than talking but it can be a more intense emission of radiation, especially on trains, he said.

"I've seen men on trains spending two or three hours continually texting with their mobile phones held in their laps, and they press Send in the same position when it starts to seek a signal.

"This needs a considerable amount of power within what is effectively a metal box. We advise people to send a text with their arm outstretched next to the window when traveling on a train" he added.

He said local heating of the groin triggered by a mobile phone might also be involved in affecting sperm quality.

"Sperm is very temperature sensitive as shown by many studies, and a short-term rise in temperature could be responsible" he added.

However, Dr Allan Pacey, senior lecturer in andrology at the University of Sheffield, said "This is a good quality study but I don’t think it tackles the issue.

"If you’re using your phone for four hours a day, presumably it is out of your pocket for longer. That raises a big question: how is it that testicular damage is supposed to occur?"

He said mobile phone use may be a marker for other lifestyle factors known to affect sperm quality.

"Maybe people who use a phone for four hours a day spend more time sitting in cars, which could mean there’s a heat issue. It could be they are more stressed, or more sedentary and sit about eating junk food getting fat. Those seem to be better explanations than a phone causing the damage at such a great distance" he added.

Men who use mobile phones face increased risk of infertility | the Daily Mail

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Monday, January 21, 2008

Fire officials seek ban of novelty lighters

By Morning Sentinel Staff

The State Fire Marshal's Office will hold a news conference Tuesday to support a ban of the sale of novelty cigarette lighters in Maine, according to the Department of Public safety.

A collection of novelty lighters was purchased at Maine stores during the past year.

Some emit a flame four inches high, and adults and children have been burned using them, department spokesman Stephen McCausland reported Friday.

The news conference will take place in the Statehouse, Hall of Flags, at 2:30 p.m.

Quoted from http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/news/local/4671857.html:

Fire officials seek ban of novelty lighters

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Thursday, January 17, 2008

Sex toy triggers bomb scare in Sweden

 

Vibrating sex toy triggers bomb scare in Swedish apartment garage

updated 4:55 p.m. ET, Wed., Jan. 16, 2008

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - A Swedish bomb squad called out to disarm a suspicious package on Wednesday did not find a ticking bomb. But they did find a vibrating sex toy.

A janitor alerted police after he found the package in a garage of an apartment building in Goteborg, the country's second-largest city, police spokesman Jan Strannegard said.

The package was humming and vibrating suspiciously, so police took no chances and sent out a team of explosives experts. After having cordoned off the area, they opened the package with bomb disposal equipment, only to find the battery-operated device inside.

"The package was vibrating when the janitor found it, but I think it had sort of died out by the time it was disarmed," Strannegard said.

Sex toy triggers bomb scare in Sweden - Weird news- msnbc.com

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Friday, January 11, 2008

ABC News: 50-Pound Face Tumor: One Man's Nightmare

 

By DAN CHILDS
ABC News Medical Unit

Jan. 11, 2008

To see the face of 32-year-old Huang Chuancai is to witness a rare genetic condition in its most terrible form.

Chinese doctors say Huang, of China's southern Hunan province, suffers from a disease known as neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder of the nervous system that primarily affects the development and growth of neural cell tissues.

For many of its sufferers, the disease means abnormal growth of these tissues and, as a result, facial disfigurement. But Huang's case could well be the most extreme case of such disfigurement in the world today.

Before surgical intervention, 50 pounds of tumor tissue had pulled and twisted Huang's face into a distorted form, nearly unrecognizable as human. According to wire reports, doctors found that the heavy mass that droops from his head and face had deformed his backbone, stunting his growth. The tumor had totally covered his left eye, while his left ear hung down to his shoulder, and his right ear and jaw were completely engulfed.

Now, after more than two decades of suffering the horrific advance of his tumor, Huang is recovering from a second round of surgery on Monday to remove the massive growth. The initial operation, which took place last July, was a risky one-and-a-half-hour procedure that removed the largest of Huang's tumors, which weighed about 33 pounds.

While many more operations will be needed to remove all the excess tissue, Huang is reportedly hopeful that the treatments will allow him to lead a more normal life.

"I hope that when my illness is cured, I can go back home and have a nice spring festival with my family," he told Reuters.

Unfortunately, plastic and cosmetic surgeons say, it is highly unlikely that the surgeries will result in a normal appearance.

There is "zero chance of [Huang] looking normal, since the muscles, nerves, eye, bone and sometimes brain can be involved," notes Dr. Henry Kawamoto, clinical professor of plastic surgery at UCLA and director of the university's craniofacial clinic.

"I doubt that this patient will look 'normal' as suggested by [past media coverage]," agrees Park Avenue plastic surgeon Dr. Darrick Antell. "The patient would certainly be substantially better, but the degree of the problem is so large that 'normal' is unlikely in my opinion."

ABC News: 50-Pound Face Tumor: One Man's Nightmare

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Officer Helps Stranded Motorist, Then Arrests Him

 

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. -- A Portsmouth police officer helped a stranded motorist get his car started, then arrested the driver for marijuana the officer said he found in the car.

Patrick Kimball, 21, of Eliot, Maine, pleaded guilty on Monday to two misdemeanor counts of drug possession. Prosecutors said that in November, an officer helped Kimball pour gas into his car, then got in and helped start it up.

While in the car, the officer said he saw a bag of marijuana in plain view. Police said several more bags were found in a later search of the car and of Kimball.

Prosecutors asked for a one-year jail sentence with six months suspended. A sentencing hearing will be held in one month.

Officer Helps Stranded Motorist, Then Arrests Him - Portland News Story - WMTW Portland

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Friday, January 4, 2008

Atheist Files Discrimination Suit Against Wal-Mart

SANFORD, Maine -- A Lebanon man said he was fired from Wal-Mart for refusing to dress up as Santa Claus.

Christopher Nolan, 27, claimed he was asked to dress as Santa last month at the Sanford Wal-Mart but would not, saying he was an atheist and didn’t believe in Christmas.

Nolan has filed a discrimination claim against the store with the Maine Human Rights Commission.

The commission’s investigation into the allegation could take as long as two years.

Quoted from http://www.wmtw.com/news/14971563/detail.html:

Atheist Files Discrimination Suit Against Wal-Mart - Portland News Story - WMTW Portland

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Thursday, January 3, 2008

Cost of coitus: Male monkeys pay for sex

 

PARIS (AFP) - Selling sex is said to be humankind's oldest profession but it may have deep evolutionary roots, according to a study into our primate cousins which found that male macaques pay for intercourse by using grooming as a currency.

Michael Gumert of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore made the discovery in a 20-month investigation into 50 long-tailed macaques in Kalimantan Tengah, Indonesia, New Scientist reports on Saturday.

On average, females had sex 1.5 times per hour.

But this rate jumped to 3.5 times per hour immediately after the female had been groomed by a male -- and her partner of choice was likely to be the hunky monkey that did the grooming.

Market forces also acted on the value of the transaction.

If there were several females in the area, the cost of buying sex would drop dramatically -- a male could "buy" a female for just eight minutes of nit-picking.

But if there were no females around, he would have to groom for up to 16 minutes before sex was offered.

The work supports the theory that biological market forces can explain social behaviour, the British weekly says.

"There is a very well-known mix of economic and mating markets in the human species itself," said Ronald Noe of France's University of Strasbourg.

"There are many examples of rich old men getting young attractive ladies."

Cost of coitus: Male monkeys pay for sex - Yahoo! News

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