Three buildings collapsed on 9/11, fire brought down Building 7 says report

NO PLANE flew into Building 7 at the World Trade Centre. But seven hours after the Twin Towers collapsed in flames on September 11, 2001, this third skyscraper fell too.

Like its larger neighbours, it fell rapidly, vertically, almost symmetrically, like an implosion. It took 5.4 seconds for its 47 storeys to complete their fiery descent.

Building 7 has preoccupied conspiracy theorists ever since. Many believe it was brought down by controlled explosions. And if it was, so were the Twin Towers. And if they’re willing to believe that, it is not such a big leap to conclude that the whole atrocity was a US Government plot. They have not been silenced by an official report that concludes their theories are bunkum. It didn’t help that it was released almost seven years later, in August last year.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology spent three years investigating Building 7. It names fire as the culprit. Fire – fuelled by office furnishings, aided and abetted by the thermal expansion of structural elements.

“Heating of floor beams and girders caused a critical support column to fail, initiating a fire-induced progressive collapse that brought the building down,” said the lead investigator, Shyam Sunder. The conclusion that this was an ”extraordinary event” – the world’s first known total collapse of a tower caused by fire – only emboldened the doubters.

Explosives? The institute concludes that the smallest blast capable of crippling the third tower’s critical column would have produced a “sound level of 130 to 140 decibels at a distance of half a mile”. No witness reported it.

The 9/11 Truth Movement points to the discovery of thermite, a potential explosive. The institute replies that the same metal compounds would have been present in the construction.

The institute’s finding is less sensational, but perhaps more alarming for people who frequent towers. Debris from the collapse of the first tower ignited fires on at least 10 floors of Building 7. These uncontrolled fires caused thermal expansion of steel beams on lower floors, damaging floor framing on multiple floors.

”Eventually, a girder on floor 13 lost its connection to a critical interior column that provided support for the long floor spans … Floor 13 [collapsed], beginning a cascade of floor failures …”

The really scary part? This happened at hundreds of degrees below what had been anticipated in fire-resistance ratings. The institute recommended urgent evaluation of towers, improved thermal insulation and resistance for building materials, and structural systems to prevent ”pan-caking” or progressive collapse.

- smh

Kangaroo tries to drown dog, attacks owner

A kangaroo startled by a man walking his dog attacked the pair, pinning the pet underwater and slashing the owner in the abdomen with its hind legs. The Australian, Chris Rickard, was in stable condition Monday after the attack, which ended when the 49-year-old elbowed the kangaroo in the throat.

Rickard said he was walking his blue heeler, Rocky, on Sunday morning when they surprised a sleeping kangaroo in Arthur’s Creek northeast of Melbourne. The dog chased the animal into a pond, when the kangaroo turned and pinned the pet underwater.

When Rickard tried to pull his dog free, the kangaroo turned on him, attacking with its hind legs and tearing a deep gash into his abdomen and across his face.

“I thought I might take a hit or two dragging the dog out from under his grip, but I didn’t expect him to actually attack me,” Rickard, 49, told The Herald Sun newspaper. “It was a shock at the start because it was a kangaroo, about 5 feet high, they don’t go around killing people.”

Kangaroos rarely attack people but will fight if they feel threatened.

Dogs often chase kangaroos, which have been known to lead the pets into water and defend themselves there.

Rickard said he ended the attack by elbowing the kangaroo in the throat, adding Rocky was “half-drowned” when he pulled him from the water.

via Kangaroo tries to drown dog, attacks owner – Yahoo! News.

Adopted guy traces dad, finds he is the son of Charles Manson

LIKE many adopted children, Matthew Roberts set about finding his biological parents with a mix of nerves and excitement.

In particular, he hoped that discovering his father’s identity would help him to work out what made him the man he had become.

But nothing could have prepared him for being told his dad was… serial killer CHARLES MANSON.

Now Matthew, who was given up for adoption as a baby, has told of his horror at finding out he was the sow Matthew, who was given up for adoption as a baby, has told of his horror at finding out he was the son of a monster.

He says: “I didn’t want to believe it. I was frightened and angry. It’s like finding out that Adolf Hitler is your father.

“I’m a peaceful person – trapped in the face of a monster.”

Matthew grew up in Rockford, Illinois, and didn’t know he was adopted until his sister told him when he was ten.

He loved his adoptive parents but always knew he was different. He says: “My parents were great people, but very conservative.

“They were products of the Fifties and I didn’t relate to them. My biological parents were products of the Sixties and I take on a lot more of those characteristics.”

He also reveals his adoptive father tried to discourage him from getting in contact with Manson, telling him: “Nothing good will come from this.”

… Matthew, who now lives in Los Angeles, began investigating his family history 12 years ago when he contacted a social services agency who located his mother, Terry, in Wisconsin.

He wrote to her straight away and their early exchanges will be familiar to adopted children everywhere.

She confirmed she was his mum and told him she had named him Lawrence Alexander – and that she would tell him his last name in time.

The jigsaw of his life was beginning to take shape but it was still missing a crucial piece – his father.

Terry remained tight-lipped about his identity but after Matthew pressed her for details in a string of letters, she eventually revealed the awful truth.

She said she met commune leader Manson in 1967 – two years before the infamous “Manson Family” murders in Los Angeles for which he is still in jail at the age of 75.

But back in 1967, Terry had been one of many who were transfixed by Manson’s charms.

Her father had tried to chase him away when he met Terry, calling him a “white-trash biker bandit” but she found him charismatic and hypnotizing.

via I traced my dad… and discovered he is Charles Manson | The Sun |Features.

Inmates escape, steal cigarettes, return to prison

The state Department of Correction said two inmates escaped a minimum security prison in southwest middle Tennessee on Nov. 7 to steal cigarettes before returning, WSMV-TV in Nashville reported.

Adam Garland and Michael Queener are accused of escaping through a window in their cell at the Turney Center Annex and crawling under a fence.

While out, the men stole cigarettes and tobacco products from a convenience store before returning to the prison by going back through the window that they had escaped from, officials at the corrections department said.

Officers later discovered the contraband, and an investigation began.

Queener was serving a 10-year sentence for aggravated robbery. Garland was serving a five-year sentence for attempted aggravated burglary and theft.

The men will now face escape and burglary charges.

The corrections department said an internal review is under way.

via Inmates Escape, Steal Cigarettes, Return – News Story – KTVU San Francisco.

 

 

Odd New Deep Sea Creatures (photos)

Chiasmodon niger, a deep sea fish sometimes called “the black swallower,” can devour fish larger than itself.

The funny looking roundnose grenadier.

As an adaptation to low temperatures, the Antarctic ice fish has no red blood pigments and no red blood cells.

Thus the fish’s blood is more fluid and the animal saves energy.

A cuttlefish, spotted at Lizard Island, near Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

Deep Sea Oddities and More from the Census of Marine Life

The 10-year Census of Marine Life project aims to exhaustively image the creatures of the oceans, cataloging the many diverse life forms found in the sea. Five of the Census’s 14 field projects aim to plumb the depths of the ocean, and recently turned up a variety of outlandish deep sea creatures. Here, a look at the newly discovered creatures, as well as other strange marine life uncovered and documented by the project.

via Deep Sea Oddities and More from the Census of Marine Life – FOXNews.com.

Keeping and displaying a famous dead person’s body parts is not cool

Galileo’s 2 missing fingers and a tooth found. Admirers removed parts in 1737, which will be put on display, museum says

Two fingers and a tooth removed from Galileo Galilei’s corpse in a Florentine basilica in the 18th century and given up for lost have been found again and will soon be put on display, an Italian museum director said Friday.

Three fingers, a vertebra and a tooth were removed from the astronomer’s body by admirers in 1737, 95 years after his death, as his corpse was being moved from a storage place to a monumental tomb — opposite that of Michelangelo, in Santa Croce Basilica in Florence.

One of the fingers was recovered soon afterward and is now part of the collection of the Museum of the History of Science, in Florence. The vertebra has been kept at the University of Padua, where Galileo taught for years.

But the tooth and two fingers from the scientist’s right hand — the thumb and middle finger — were kept by one of the admirers, an Italian marquis, and later enclosed in a container that was passed on from generation to generation in the same family, Paolo Galluzzi, the museum’s director, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

“But with time, the generations lost knowledge of what was actually inside the container,” and the family sold it, Galluzzi said. By 1905, all traces of the relics had disappeared, “leading scholars to hypothesize that these singular specimens had been definitely lost,” the museum said in a statement.

via Galileo’s 2 missing fingers and a tooth found – Science- msnbc.com.

This is sick. They should bury poor Galileo’s remaining parts with the rest of him and honor his contributions to history.

Crane wipes out house in tree battle

It was a test of strength that would top the bill of any sporting competition. The 150-year-old, 20ft oak vs the 50tonne, 90ft crane.

The young crane would have been firm favourite with the bookies but the mighty oak, though ageing and sickly, had one last fight in it – yanking the crane off its wheels and hurling the young pretender to the ground with the shudder of a mighty branch.

Alas, Kevin and Michelle McCarthy’s house stood underneath the titanic struggle. And, when part of the tree broke off, the crane was ’shockloaded’ and promptly collapsed on the McCarthys’ home in Santa Rosa, California.

via Crane wipes out house in tree battle | Metro.co.uk.

Patient trapped in a 23-year ‘coma’ was conscious all along

A man thought by doctors to be in a vegetative state for 23 years was actually conscious the whole time, it was revealed last night. Student Rom Houben was misdiagnosed after a car crash left him totally paralysed.

He had no way of letting experts, family or friends know he could hear every word they said.

‘I screamed, but there was nothing to hear,’ said Mr Houben, now 46.

Doctors used a range of coma tests, recognised worldwide, before reluctantly concluding that his consciousness was ‘extinct’.

But three years ago, new hi-tech scans showed his brain was still functioning almost completely normally.

Mr Houben describes the moment as ‘my second birth’.

Therapy has since allowed him to tap out messages on a computer screen.

Mr Houben said: ‘All that time I just literally dreamed of a better life. Frustration is too small a word to describe what I felt.’

His case has only just been revealed in a scientific paper released by the man who ’saved’ him, top neurological expert Dr Steven Laureys.

‘Medical advances caught up with him,’ said Dr Laureys, who believes there may be many similar cases of false comas around the world.

The disclosure will also renew the right-to-die debate over whether people in comas are truly unconscious.

Mr Houben, a former martial arts enthusiast, was paralysed in 1983. Doctors in Zolder, Belgium, used the internationally accepted Glasgow Coma Scale to assess his eye, verbal and motor responses. But each time he was graded incorrectly. Only a re-evaluation of his case at the University of Liege discovered that he had lost control of his body but was still fully aware of what was happening.

He is never likely to leave hospital, but as well as his computer he now has a special device above his bed which lets him read books while lying down. Mr Houben said: ‘I shall never forget the day when they discovered what was truly wrong with me – it was my second birth. ‘I want to read, talk with my friends via the computer and enjoy my life now that people know I am not dead.’ Dr Laureys’s new study claims that patients classed as in a vegetative state are often misdiagnosed.

‘Anyone who bears the stamp of “unconscious” just one time hardly ever gets rid of it again,’ he said. The doctor, who leads the Coma Science Group and Department of Neurology at Liege University Hospital, found Mr Houben’s brain was still working by using state-of-the-art imaging.

He plans to use the case to highlight what he considers may be similar examples around the world. Dr Laureys said: ‘In Germany alone each year some 100,000 people suffer from severe traumatic brain injury. ‘About 20,000 are followed by a coma of three weeks or longer. Some of them die, others regain health.

‘But an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 people a year remain trapped in an intermediate stage – they go on living without ever coming back again.’ …

via Patient trapped in a 23-year ‘coma’ was conscious all along | Mail Online.

Always be grateful for what you have.

Man Marries Virtual Girlfriend … With Public Reception

The man reportedly fell in love with a virtual girl named Nene Anegasaki and plans to hold a public wedding reception in Tokyo.

Since the girl doesn’t really exist, SAL9000 reportedly took his Nintendo DS to Guam for a legal ceremony and honeymoon, and will livecast the upcoming wedding reception online, MyFoxDFW.com reported.

SAL9000 met his “bride” on the video game Love Plus, which requires players to take out the virtual girl on dates, buy her gifts and make their girlfriends happy like they would in real life.

The player can increase their abilities by studying, working out and solving problems of their virtual girlfriend, but if they fail to make their girlfriend happy, the game will restart after 100 days.

via Man Marries Virtual Girlfriend … With Public Reception – Local News | News Articles | National News | US News – FOXNews.com.

 

Do you get a tax break with that Sal?

 

Killers who killed victims to sell their body fat arrested in Peru

Peruvian police say they have broken up a group who they claim killed people in order to steal their body fat.

Officers say a gang in the remote jungle had been killing people for their fat, draining it from their corpses and offering it on the black market for use in cosmetics.

Eusebio Felix Murga, director of Criminal Police, told a news conference in Lima that the criminal organisation which trafficked “human fat” had been disbanded.

Pictures from a Peruvian police handout video show officers in Huanuco province leading suspects to the spot where they allegedly buried their victims, and unearthing and measuring buried remains.

However, medical experts have expressed doubts about an international black market for human fat, as in most countries it could be obtained so readily and in such amounts from people who are willing and ready to donate it.

- via itn

Four people were arrested in Peru in an investigation into the killing of people for their body fat, which was perhaps sent to Europe to be used in cosmetics.

International authorities said they are looking for at least five other people in the alleged ring, which would lure victims with a job offer and kill them. Body was fat was extracted and sold for about $60,000 a gallon.

The disappearances of 60 people have been linked to the alleged scheme. Peruvian investigators said one of the suspects has been killing for human fat for more than 30 years.

They said they suspected the body fat was being sent to Europe, although no hard link was developed. Some of the at-large suspects are Europeans.

Such fat is regularly used to treat wrinkles but it is usually extracted from another part, such as the stomach or buttocks, of the patient's body. One doctor told The Times of London to use fat from another person could result in a risk of “life-threatening consequences.”

via Fat killers – UPI.com.