TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Two Carolina Panthers cheerleaders were arrested at a bar where witnesses told police the women were having sex in a restroom stall, angering patrons waiting in line.
Renee Thomas, 20, of Pittsboro, N.C., and Angela Keathley, 26, of Belmont, N.C., were taken to Hillsborough County Jail early Sunday. Witnesses said the women were having sex with each other in a stall at the club in the Channelside district.
They were kicked off the team Monday for violating a signed code that bans conduct embarrassing to the team or organization, Panthers spokesman Charlie Dayton said.
Thomas was charged with battery for allegedly striking a bar patron when she was leaving the restroom, then landed in even more trouble after police said she gave officers a driver's license belonging to another Panthers cheerleader who was not in Tampa.
Thomas, who made the trip to Florida for Sunday's game between the Panthers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, was released from jail on $500 bail before police learned she was not the person she claimed to be.
Detectives were trying to determine how Thomas got the driver's license of a third cheerleader.
Providing police with a false name is a misdemeanor. However, Thomas was charged Monday with giving a false name and causing harm to another — a third-degree felony punishable by probation or a jail term of 1 to 5 years, said police spokeswoman Laura McElroy.
Keathley, charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, was released on $750 bail about an hour before the Panthers played the Bucs at Raymond James Stadium.
The Panthers cheerleaders were not in town to perform at the game.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A woman who was a scientist for a drug company admitted in court Monday that she conspired with her lover five years ago to fatally poison her husband, a pediatric AIDS researcher.
Ann Miller Kontz, 35, was sentenced to 25 to 31.5 years in prison after her lawyer read a statement saying she felt "a deep sense of remorse and regret" for Eric Miller's death.
"I will struggle for the rest of my life with how this could have happened," the statement said.
Authorities said Kontz, who worked at GlaxoSmithKline, was having an affair with a co-worker when her husband was poisoned by arsenic, a colorless and usually tasteless poison once common in ant and rat killers.
Under a plea deal, Kontz admitted conspiring with the co-worker, Derril Willard, and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. The two had access to arsenic at their laboratory, police have said.
Miller, a researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, died Dec. 2, 2000. He was 30.
Less than a month before he died, he went bowling with Willard and two others and fell ill about an hour after drinking a beer he complained was bitter, according to authorities.
He was hospitalized for a week but doctors failed to diagnose the poisoning, investigators said. Two weeks later, he again became violently ill after eating a meal prepared by his wife, investigators said. This time, doctors detected high levels of arsenic in his system, but they were unable to save him.
Willard committed suicide about a month after Miller died.
Lawyers discussed a possible plea agreement for several weeks, said District Attorney Colon Willoughby, who declined to give details about the negotiations.
"We thought that this was in the family's and the community's best interest to resolve the case this way," he said.
The plea provided an abrupt end to a complicated case that included a fight over attorney-client privilege that reached the state Supreme Court.
That dispute ended with Willard's attorney revealing information implicating Kontz, which led to her indictment a few months later. In the statement, the lawyer revealed that Willard learned from Kontz that she had injected a syringe filled with an unnamed substance into Miller while he was hospitalized.
Kontz — who remarried after Miller's death — acknowledged in court Monday that she poisoned her husband at least twice before his death.
She and he had a daughter, Clare, who is now 5 years old.
FORT SUMNER, N.M. (AP) — Two southeastern New Mexico investigators have obtained DNA from a cowboy who claimed to be Billy the Kid.
Before dying in the 1930s, John Miller told friends and a son that he was the legendary Western outlaw.
Former Lincoln County Sheriff Tom Sullivan and Capitan Mayor Steve Sederwall obtained the DNA last May from Miller's remains, which are buried in Prescott, Ariz.
They say they will compare it with blood traces taken from a 19th-century bench that is believed to be the one the Kid's body was placed on after he was shot by Lincoln County Sheriff Pat Garrett on July 14, 1881. The bench was discovered on a Fort Sumner ranch.
Should the samples match, Sullivan and Sederwall say they could have a break that upends accepted historical accounts of the Kid's life and death.
"Wouldn't it be a coincidence if someone we dug up in Arizona, and who died in 1934 and claimed to be Billy the Kid, bled on that bench? That's like winning the lottery," Sullivan told the Albuquerque Journal.
Over the last century, at least two men surfaced claiming to be Billy the Kid — Miller and Ollie P. "Brushy Bill" Roberts of Hico, Texas. Those stories presuppose that Garrett killed the wrong man in Fort Sumner and lied about it.
Sullivan and Sederwall were rebuffed in their 2003 and 2004 efforts to exhume the remains of Billy the Kid in Fort Sumner and those of the outlaw's mother in Silver City.
Critics in the two towns said the Kid's death and burial in DeBaca County were well established.
Sullivan has said the impetus for uncovering the truth about the Kid began more than a decade ago when he visited a Hico, Texas, museum dedicated to Roberts.
Sederwall said if Miller's DNA does not match the blood on the bench, investigators will try to exhume Roberts' remains, which rest in Hamilton, Texas.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The difference between the sexes has long been a rich source of humor. Now it turns out, humor is one of the differences.
Women seem more likely than men to enjoy a good joke, mainly because they don't always expect it to be funny.
"The long trip to Mars or Venus is hardly necessary to see that men and women often perceive the world differently," a research team led by Dr. Allan L. Reiss of the Stanford University School of Medicine reports in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
But they were surprised when their studies of how the male and female brains react to humor showed that women were more analytical in their response, and felt more pleasure when they decided something really was funny.
"Women appeared to have less expectation of a reward, which in this case was the punch line of the cartoon," said Reiss. "So when they got to the joke's punch line, they were more pleased about it."
Women were subjecting humor to more analysis with the aim of determining if it was indeed funny, Reiss said in a telephone interview.
Men are using the same network in the brain, but less so, he said, men are less discriminating.
"It doesn't take a lot of analytical machinery to think someone getting poked in the eye is funny," he commented when asked about humor like the Three Stooges.
While there is a lot of overlap between how men and women process humor, the differences can help account for the fact that men gravitate more to one-liners and slapstick while women tend to use humor more in narrative form and stories, Reiss said.
The funnier the cartoon the more the reward center in the women's brain responded, unlike men who seemed to expect the cartoons to be funny from the beginning, the researchers said.
The new insight could improve understanding of such conditions as depression, the researchers said.
"The bottom line is that I think it contributes to the foundation of understanding individual differences in humans," Reiss said. Humor is used by humans to cope with stress and to establish relationships, and it can even help strengthen the immune system.
Reiss' team studied the response of 10 women and 10 men to 70 black-and-while cartoons, asking them to rate the jokes for how funny they were. While the volunteers were looking at the cartoons their brains were being studied with an MRI to determine what parts of the brains were responding.
In large part, men and women had similar responses to humor, using parts of the brain responsible for the structure and context of language and for understanding juxtaposition.
In women, however, some areas were more active than in men. These included the left prefrontal cortex, which the researchers said suggests a greater emphasis on language and executive processing, and the nucleus accumbens, or NAcc, which is part of the reward center.
Reiss said he was surprised at the NAcc finding. The researchers theorized that because women were being more analytical they weren't necessarily expecting the cartoons to be as funny as did the men.
Then, when they saw the punch line, the reward center lit up, indicating something pleasant and unexpected.
Arnie Cann, a psychology professor at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, commented: "Given the findings in the current study, that women appear to use more executive functions, it could be that they are more engaged in scrutinizing the humor to decide if it fits their views on what is acceptable humor. Once they decide the humor is OK, they could be experiencing a relief-like response."
That would fit in with the finding that women experience more reward from the joke, said Cann, who was not part of Reiss' research team.
Reiss' research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
MIAMI (AP) — Two parents were acquitted Monday of manslaughter in the death of their 6-month-old daughter, who was fed a strict raw foods diet.
Joseph and Lamoy Andressohn were convicted of four counts of child neglect involving their four other children, who were also on the raw foods diet.
The jury deliberated less than two hours.
Woyah Andressohn weighed about 7 pounds, half the normal weight for her age, when she died in 2003. Prosecutors charged that the parents' unorthodox diet of wheat grass, coconut water and almond milk caused the girl to starve to death.
The defense argued that the girl's death was caused by DiGeorge syndrome, a rare chromosomal disorder that interferes with the development of a healthy immune system.
The four other children, two boys and two girls, are now in the custody of an aunt.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — A Missouri radio talk show host was arrested on murder charges Monday for allegedly poisoning his wife by spiking her Gatorade with a chemical found in antifreeze.
Prosecutors said James Keown, 31, began poisoning his wife when the couple moved to Massachusetts in January 2004, after he lied to her about being accepted to Harvard Business School.
Keown was arrested at the radio station where he worked in Jefferson City, Mo. He later made a court appearance via video and said he would not fight efforts to return him to Massachusetts.
Middlesex District Attorney Martha Coakley said the motive for the killing may have been financial: The couple was broke, and Julie Keown, 31, had a $250,000 life insurance policy. Her husband was never able to collect because the death came under investigation.
In May 2004, Julie Keown, a registered nurse, began experiencing nausea, vomiting and dizziness and developed a rash on her leg.
On August 20, 2004, she was admitted to a hospital, where tests showed her kidneys were damaged. She was released several days later, and when her parents visited on Aug. 26, she was feeling better. On Sept. 3, Keown told friends she was doing "pretty well" but thought she might need a kidney transplant, Coakley said.
The next night, she was brought back to the hospital, where she slipped into a coma. She was pronounced dead four days later.
A preliminary autopsy the following day showed she had ingested a lethal dose of ethylene glycol about eight to 10 hours before she was admitted to the hospital. But it took another year of toxicological testing and investigation before prosecutors had the proof they needed to bring charges against James Keown, Coakley said.
In the meantime, he had moved back to Missouri, where he covered the Capitol for Jefferson City radio station KLIK and hosted the "Party Line" talk show.
Keown had told fellow reporters that his wife had died, but he did not say how. He was known around the Capitol as a friendly and hardworking reporter.
"It's devastating for us," said Scott Boltz, market manager for Cumulus Media Inc., which owns KLIK. "It was just devastating for our staffers and the community at large. He showed up for work every day. He worked hard."
Shawna Keown, 21, said at her brother's hearing in Jefferson City that he was innocent. "The truth will come out," she said. "We hope for the best and I believe in him."
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — The married owners of a group home for the mentally ill were convicted Monday of enslaving its residents, forcing them to work naked and perform sex acts, and illegally billing their families and the federal government for therapy.
Arlan Kaufman, 69, and his wife, Linda, 62, were convicted of 30 federal charges, including health care fraud, Medicare fraud, forced labor and holding clients in involuntary servitude at the Kaufman House Residential Treatment Center. Arlen Kaufman was also found guilty of making a false representation.
The convictions could put the two in prison for the rest of their lives.
The couple showed little emotion but briefly hugged and kissed before being led from the courtroom to jail. The jury is to return Tuesday to hear arguments on the prosecution's request the couple forfeit $289,727.
Federal prosecutors contended the Kaufmans controlled the lives of the mentally ill residents, including forcing them to work on their farm and deciding who could wear clothes.
The couple was accused of forcing residents to masturbate, fondle each other and shave each other's genitals — activities Arlan Kaufman videotaped.
The Kaufmans claimed that nude therapy sessions and other treatment methods had therapeutic value for schizophrenic patients, and that having residents act out problem behavior helped them avoid repeating it. Arlan Kaufman insisted at trial that the residents' behavior was voluntary.
Prosecutors called it abuse and said it spanned more than 20 years while the couple billed Medicare more than $216,000. The Kaufmans incorporated their unlicensed treatment center in 1980 and ran it until their arrests in October 2004.
Justice Department lawyer Kristy Parker told jurors the residents were turned into "uncompensated actors in a never-ending pornographic movie."
The defense had portrayed them as respected professionals who had raised three children of their own.
"It was therapy. No one was harmed. They were helped," Arlan Kaufman's attorney, Tom Haney, told jurors.
Linda Kaufman's attorney, Steve Joseph, argued prosecutors had no solid evidence against her. He noted that in one videotaped session, she was reading a newspaper and didn't even look at the nude resident.
The Kaufmans face up to 20 years in prison for each of the conspiracy, forced labor and involuntary servitude charges; up to 10 years for each health care fraud charges; and up to five years for each of the other charges. No sentencing date has been set.
ORANGE, Calif. (AP) — Jacob Authier has achieved legend status at Chapman College not through scholarly or athletic pursuits, but by something he doesn't do: wear anything other than sunglasses and black nipple paint on his upper body.
The 20-year-old junior at this 5,100-student private university began going around shirtless a bit more than a year ago. The film major rents out his muscled chest and back for student political campaign slogans and birthday wishes at $1 per message, and usually comes through with special decorating schemes on holidays.
He died his nipples green for St. Patrick's Day and had a heart scratched with a pocket knife on his chest for Valentine's Day — a display that earned him an appointment with the dean of students.
"He just wanted to make sure I was OK," Authier said.
An online group formed in his honor — the Club Dedicated to the Fellow Without a Shirt — has 509 members and is exceeded in popularity only by the George Bush Is Not My Homeboy club.
Authier said he rarely wore shirts indoors while growing up in Coalinga. His decision to go topless at school was a gradual transition.
His shirtlessness spawns varying reactions. Some professors insist he cover up in class, which he does.
But Rabbi Mark Miller said he hasn't enforced a classroom dress code because students seemed unbothered by the Shirtless Guy.
"He reminds me of something I think about when I attend Bob Dylan concerts," Miller said. "He's definitely moving to the beat of the song — but it's not the song that's being played at that moment."
MADRID, Spain (AP) — A section of a highway bridge under construction in southern Spain collapsed on workers Monday, killing at least six of them and injuring three, officials said.
One worker was still missing, said Daniel Barbero, a town councilor in Almunecar, near where the accident happened.
Portuguese Foreign Ministry spokesman Antonio Carneiro Jacinto told The Associated Press in Lisbon that five Portuguese workers were among the dead. The sixth was Spanish, Barbero said. Their names were being withheld until their families could be informed.
The section that fell was nearly 200 feet long and 40 feet wide, the national news agency Efe reported, quoting emergency workers.
The cause of the accident was not immediately known.
HYAK, Wash. (AP) — A rockslide with boulders as big as refrigerators closed Washington state's principal commercial east-west highway, and traffic backed up for miles along alternate routes, officials said.
Unlike a slide in September, the one that happened before dawn Sunday on Interstate 90 caused no injuries. The mountainside remained unstable, with additional rock expected to come tumbling down onto the road, transportation officials said.
Temperatures were near freezing and the area southeast of Seattle had about seven inches of snowfall the previous night.
A transportation department spokesman, Michael P. Westbay, said as much rock and other debris could come down as the hundreds of tons that hit the road's westbound lanes in the Cascade Range on Sept. 11, crushing a Volvo and killing three 28-year-old women on their way home from a concert.
"This area is on the list of at least 2,500 potential rock fall areas that the state has been monitoring," Westbay said. It was scheduled to be reinforced using a method called rock bolting next spring.
Drivers were advised to avoid the area if possible as workers struggled to clear debris near Snoqualmie Pass. About 28,000 motorists cross the pass on an average weekday.
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — When District Judge Edward Grant heard a request to send Ricky Ewing to prison for his aggravated assault conviction, he was only too happy to oblige.
After all, the request came from Ewing himself.
Grant initially agreed Friday to the prosecutor's recommendation of four to six years supervised probation in a halfway house for Ewing, 44, who was convicted of beating up his girlfriend and interfering with deputies during a standoff in January 2004.
But Ewing spoke briefly with his attorney, Joe Bustos, who told Grant that Ewing would rather go to prison than to a halfway house. Bustos then asked for a two- to four-year sentence.
Ewing was sentenced to 4.5 to six years in the Wyoming State Penitentiary.
EARLSBORO, Okla. (AP) — The Hanna High School basketball team can take some consolation: It didn't get shut out.
It did, however, lose 112-2 on Friday night to Earlsboro.
"It was embarrassing to watch," Earlsboro coach Jim Walling said. "But you can't just tell your kids not to score. I've been coaching 27 years and have never been involved in something like this."
The Wildcats led 42-0 after one quarter and 73-2 at halftime. Walling pulled his starters in the second half, and game officials kept a running clock, stopping it only for free throws.
Each player on Earlsboro's 10-man boys' roster scored. Seven players finished in double figures.
SEATTLE (AP) — For her fifth birthday, Hansa was served a cake of cornmeal, carrots, grapes, raisins, bamboo leaves and pumpkin frosting.
The treat may not sound appetizing to most birthday girls, but it was perfect for the 3,900-pound elephant calf at Woodland Park Zoo.
Hansa was the first elephant born at the 100-year-old Woodland Park Zoo, which has no male elephants. Chai, a 26-year-old Asian elephant, gave birth to her Nov. 3, 2000, after mating with a bull at a zoo in Missouri.
Young Hansa has been a favorite among visitors ever since she arrived. On Saturday, dozens of admirers — many children — turned out to celebrate her birthday.
At 5, the young pachyderm knows her name and will come when called. She's learned several commands, such as backing up, turning in a circle and opening her mouth and raising her trunk when asked. She will even present her feet for inspection.
"She is very smart, a very quick learner, and very focused," said Pat Maluy, head zookeeper, who has helped care for Hansa since birth.
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — A wealthy Sri Lankan presidential candidate has an appealing offer for voters: He will buy a cow for every home if he is elected.
"Even families who live in flats, who could make suitable arrangements to look after a cow, will receive a gift of cow," Victor Hettigoda was quoted as saying by The Island newspaper on Friday.
Anusha Vitanapathirana, a spokesman for Hettigoda, confirmed the report.
Hettigoda is one of 13 candidates vying for the tropical island's top executive post in the Nov. 17 presidential election. The leading candidates are Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse and former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.
Hettigoda said his plan was a sure way to fight malnutrition and help people prosper, and suggested that excess milk could be converted into cheese and butter or even exported.
Hettigoda owns an herbal medicine empire with 3,500 employees.
Posted in Backpage on Tuesday, November 8, 2005 12:00 am
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