LOS ANGELES (AP) - A 2-year-old girl who fell into a large pot of hot soup was in critical condition Monday with burns over half her body.
The girl, whose name was withheld, fell head first into the soup during a party Saturday night, hospital officials said.
She was being treated at the Sherman Oaks Hospital Grossman Burn Center for second- and third- degree burns to her upper body and arms, said hospital spokeswoman Lysa Barry.
She was expected to undergo surgery Tuesday, Barry said.
Barry said the pot of soup was cooling on the floor during the crowded party when the girl fell.
Police said they were investigating the incident, which occurred at a home in Pacoima.
The family was celebrating the birthday of the girl's 5-year-old brother. The mother thought it would be easier to put the pot of soup on the floor and serve the family that way, KCAL-TV reported.
"It was an accident," the child's grandmother said through an interpreter. "I just want my little princess to be OK."
FRISCO CITY, Ala. (AP) - After nearly 13 tense hours, rescuers using a powerful drill and working under bright lights Monday saved a toddler trapped at the bottom of an abandoned well, bringing him out to cheers, tears and cries of "Praise the Lord!"
More than 100 people had gathered at the vacant lot, watching and praying through the night for 22-month-old Da'jour McMillian, who was playing with his older brother and sister near his grandparents' house when he disappeared down the 14-foot well that was overgrown with grass and unknown to neighbors and firefighters.
"The man who cuts the grass didn't even know about it," said firefighter Jimmy Brown.
Da'jour was hospitalized in good condition, after a night that Mayor Jim Cave said "seemed like an eternity."
Brown said when Frisco City firefighters and police arrived, they realized they needed help and called for a rescue team from Mobile with special training. An Alabama Power Co. drill was used to dig a shaft next to the one where the little boy was trapped. Rescue workers then tunneled over to the well to reach the child about 5:45 a.m.
A camera was dropped down the well to keep an eye on the boy during the rescue. The warm night helped ward off hypothermia. The main worry was that the child might not be able to breathe in the narrow hole.
"It wouldn't have taken but a little dirt on that child to suffocate him," said the mayor, who was at the site through the long night.
Brown said the child was "as happy as he could be" when he emerged from the well.
"When he came out he saw his momma, and he called out for his momma," said Tammy Howard, a cousin. "Oh, yes, it was a miracle."
The well and the hole dug for the rescue were filled in with red dirt to prevent another accident.
Several firefighters said the events at Frisco City, a town of 1,500 about 60 miles north of Mobile, reminded them of the 1987 rescue of 18-month-old Jessica McClure of Midland, Texas, who fell into an abandoned well and became trapped 22 feet down in a hole 8 inches wide. It took emergency crews 2.5 days to reach the little girl. Jessica recovered from her injuries.
Cave said the rescue was good news for a city that has seen heartache in recent years. Much of the town's business district was destroyed in a fire in 2001. The town is still clearing debris and repairing homes and businesses heavily damaged in September by Hurricane Ivan.
"We have had our share of problems," the mayor said. "But this morning we are thankful."
BOULDER CREEK, Calif. (AP) - A preliminary magnitude 3.6 earthquake struck near Boulder Creek in Santa Cruz County on Monday.
The "minor" quake hit at 2:02 p.m. and was centered about 10 miles west of Boulder Creek and about 25 miles southwest of San Jose, according to the United States Geological Survey.
The quake occurred 5.5 miles below the surface.
ENNIS, Mont. (AP) - Two Montana mountain climbers were killed when an avalanche swept them off Sphinx Mountain near here, Madison County officials said Sunday.
The victims were identified as Nathaniel Stevens and Bryan Nelson, both 25, of Missoula.
"The slide took them down," said Sheriff's Deputy David Clark. "They weren't totally buried. They took two 30-foot falls."
Witnesses said the men fell 30 feet to a ledge and then fell another 30 feet to the bottom, Clark said.
A third climber, Justin Elliott, also of Missoula, was not caught in Saturday's avalanche because he had stopped to tighten his boot, Clark said.
The three men were intending to ice climb and were traversing the north side of the mountain, which is in the Lee Metcalf Wilderness southeast of Ennis in the Madison Range.
Clark said the avalanche occurred about 9:30 a.m. Saturday during a snowstorm, and it may have been triggered by overhanging snow cornices breaking off. Clark said authorities were notified about three hours after the accident.
Four separate parties were on foot in the area intending to ice climb. One of them included an emergency medical technician, who was able to reach the victims and determined they were dead, Clark said.
Air and ground attempts to retrieve the bodies Saturday failed, Clark said, and officials used horses on Sunday to bring out the bodies.
U.S. Forest Service officials said some areas had heavy snow and strong winds on Thursday night. "That's what created the current avalanche conditions," said avalanche scientist Karl Birkeland of the Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center.
CINCINNATI (AP) - The projectiles are lighter than horseshoes and safer than lawn darts, but the idea's the same: Players try to hit a target several paces away.
The game is called cornhole, or corn toss, because players try to throw cloth bags filled with corn into a hole. It is an Ohio phenomenon that is catching on elsewhere around the Midwest and beyond.
"It's easy to play, you don't have to dig a pit, drive stakes or tear up your lawn," said Mike Whitton, founder and president of the American Cornhole Association.
You don't have to work up a sweat, either. About the worst thing that could happen is you could spill your beer. (Although it is not a drinking game by definition, alcoholic beverages often are consumed. The Christian Moerlein Brewing Co. sponsors tournaments, and the game is played at some Ohio bars.)
Beanbag games in various forms have been around for generations. Local players say the corn bag game originated in Cincinnati - specifically the city's west side, where Whitton grew up - although many lay claim to it.
Portable goals have let the backyard game travel to tailgate parties, bars and college campuses, and an industry has sprung up supplying boards, bags, clothing and other paraphernalia.
The idea is to throw a bag filled with corn into a 6-inch hole in a wooden ramp 30 feet away. A bag in the hole scores three points, a bag left on the platform scores one.
As simple as that sounds, it was a scoring dispute at a family picnic that led to the formation of the American Cornhole Association, which claims to be the arbiter of the game, sanctioning tournaments, selling equipment and publishing the "official" rules of play.
Whitton said the association has more than 3,500 members, and his business has been shipping equipment to such places as North Carolina, Florida, Nebraska and Oklahoma.
Christy's Bierstube, Rathskeller and Biergarten, which caters to University of Cincinnati students, has installed a game court. Teams also compete in leagues at Tommy's on the River, a bar and restaurant on the city's waterfront.
Many of the players at Tommy's are twentysomethings who work at Procter & Gamble Co. or Sara Lee, are new in town and are looking to meet people, said Donna Frey, a bartender at Tommy's.
The game is so popular around Cincinnati that nearly 400 teams competed for the $2,000 first prize in the Cornhole Classic in February, and organizers are planning a Holiday Cornhole Classic for Thanksgiving weekend.
The game has also taken root at the University of Kentucky.
"You can't go up and down the street without seeing boards and bags," said Del Proctor of Lexington, Ky., president of the Sigma Phi Epsilon chapter. "I have some family in Cincinnati, and they've been playing a couple of years. It seems to have migrated down here through the students."
The game is not very physical, he said, but "it gets people away from PlayStation and Xbox."
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) - A jury convicted a truck driver Monday of killing and decapitating a housekeeper nearly a dozen years after he was mistakenly freed in a rape case due to mislabeled evidence.
Douglas S. Belt, 42, was convicted of capital murder, attempted rape and arson for the slaying of 43-year-old Lucille Gallegos. Belt faces a possible death sentence when the trial's penalty phase begins Tuesday.
Prosecutors said Belt had a pattern of violent behavior that began in the late 1980s and ended with Gallegos' slaying in the Wichita apartment where she worked in June 2002.
Last year, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation admitted that Belt was mistakenly cleared of a 1991 rape when another person's DNA sample was accidentally labeled with his name in an agency lab. His own sample had been labeled "unknown."
The mistake was discovered after Belt's arrest for the housekeeper's death when a DNA sample matched the blood evidence from the 1991 case, as well as several other rape cases. Bureau director Larry Welch later apologized, saying the mistake allowed Belt "to remain free and to continue criminal activity."
Belt has been charged with seven other rapes between 1989 and 1994 in Kansas, as well as three counts of aggravated sexual assault in Illinois.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) - A freelance journalist taking pictures of voters waiting outside the Palm Beach County elections headquarters was arrested after ignoring a deputy's orders to stop, sheriff's officials said.
In response, a voting rights group sued to have a court order Elections chief Theresa LePore and the sheriff's office to allow reporters access to voters.
"There is no justification for an elections official to seize authority to suspend the First Amendment of the United States Constitution," said Ralph G. Neas, president of People for the American Way Foundation, the group that brought the lawsuit.
James S. Henry, of Sag Harbor, N.Y., was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest without violence. He was released on $500 bond Monday.
Sheriff's Deputy Al Cinque tried to stop Henry as he shot pictures of about 600 people standing in line to vote Sunday afternoon. Henry began running away, but Cinque tackled him, The Palm Beach Post reported.
The deputy pinned Henry, 54, to the ground, yelling for him to stop moving, then punched him in the back. Cinque handcuffed Henry's left arm, pulled him to his feet and punched him again as Henry tried to hand him identification cards, according to the paper.
Sheriff's office spokesman Paul Miller said Monday that Henry "tripped over his own feet" as he ran away. He was heading toward the building's front door, and the deputy "has to use whatever reasonable force is necessary under the circumstances," Miller said.
Miller said the deputy had asked Henry to move to another area to snap pictures.
"His actions were compromising the elections process and intimidating people that were attempting to wait to vote," Miller said. "He was in their faces."
LePore was enforcing a law that prohibits reporters from coming within 50 feet of a polling place's front door to interview or photograph voters.
LePore, who lost her re-election bid in August, became known nationally four years ago for designing the infamous "butterfly ballot." Some say its complicated design caused thousands of Palm Beach voters who intended to support Vice President Al Gore for president to miscast their ballot.
Assistant Palm Beach County Attorney Leon St. John said LePore began enforcing the 50-feet law because she received "numerous complaints by voters about being photographed and interviewed."
Miller said he did not know of other journalists being stopped.
Henry, who is also an attorney and the managing director of a consulting firm, is working on a book about "electoral democracy," according to his Web site. He did not respond to messages Monday seeking comment.
PATTERSON, Ga. (AP) - Ashlyn Blocker's parents and kindergarten teachers all describe her the same way: fearless. So they nervously watch her plunge full-tilt into a childhood deprived of natural alarms.
In the school cafeteria, teachers put ice in 5-year-old Ashlyn's chili. If her lunch is scalding hot, she'll gulp it down anyway.
On the playground, a teacher's aide watches Ashlyn from within 15 feet, keeping her off the jungle gym and giving chase when she runs. If she takes a hard fall, Ashlyn won't cry.
Ashlyn is among a tiny number of people in the world known to have congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis, or CIPA - a rare genetic disorder that makes her unable to feel pain.
"Some people would say that's a good thing. But no, it's not," says Tara Blocker, Ashlyn's mother. "Pain's there for a reason. It lets your body know something's wrong and it needs to be fixed. I'd give anything for her to feel pain."
The untreatable disease also makes Ashlyn incapable of sensing extreme temperatures - hot or cold - disabling her body's ability to cool itself by sweating. Otherwise, her senses are normal.
Ashlyn can feel the texture of nickels and dimes she sorts into piles on her bedroom floor, the heft of the pink backpack she totes to school and the embrace of a hug. She feels hunger cravings for her favorite after-school snack, pickles and strawberry milk.
That's because the genetic mutation that causes CIPA only disrupts the development of the small nerve fibers that carry sensations of pain, heat and cold to the brain.
"There are all kinds of different nerve cells that help us feel different sensations," says Dr. Felicia Axelrod, a professor of pediatrics and neurology at New York University School of Medicine. "You can have one sense removed, just like you can lose your hearing but still smell things."
Specialists such as Axelrod don't know how many people suffer from CIPA. As director of a treatment center that specializes in CIPA and related disorders, Axelrod has 35 patients with the disease on file. Only 17 of them are from the United States. Japan has the world's only association for CIPA patients. It has 67 members.
In Patterson, a rural town of 800 people in southeast Georgia, John and Tara Blocker had no idea the disorder existed before they took Ashlyn to the doctor for a bloodshot, swollen left eye when she was 8 months old.
The doctor put drops in Ashlyn's eye to stain any particles that might be irritating it. The infant smiled and bounced in her mother's lap while the dye revealed a massive scratch across her cornea.
"They put the dye in her eye and I remember the look of puzzlement on all their faces," Ashlyn's mother says. "She was not fazed by it by any means."
Tests by a geneticist led to Ashlyn's diagnosis. To have the disorder, Ashlyn had to inherit two copies of the mutated gene - one from each parent.
Ashlyn's father, a telephone technician, and mother, who holds a degree in physical education, were largely on their own in learning to cope with their daughter's strange indifference to injury.
Many things they couldn't anticipate. Ashlyn's baby teeth posed big problems. She would chew her lips bloody in her sleep, bite through her tongue while eating, and once even stuck a finger in her mouth and stripped flesh from it.
Family photos reveal a series of these self-inflicted injuries. One picture shows Ashlyn in her Christmas dress, hair neatly coifed, with a swollen lip, missing teeth, puffy eye and athletic tape wrapped around her hands to protect them. She smiles like a little boxer who won a prize bout.
Her first serious injury came at age 3, when she laid her hand on a hot pressure washer in the back yard. Ashlyn's mother found her staring at her red, blistered palm.
"That was a real reality check for me. At that point I realized we're not going to be able to stop all the bad stuff," Tara Blocker says. "She needs a normal life, with limitations."
So when Ashlyn goes to her kindergarten class at Patterson Elementary School, she gets daily check-ups with school nurse Beth Cloud after recess. Cloud and Ashlyn's mother discussed having her wear a helmet on the playground, but decided it would look too odd.
And when teacher's aide Sue Price puts ice in Ashlyn's chili at lunch, her dozen classmates get ice in theirs too.
Infections with no outward symptoms also concern them. They heard of a case where a child with CIPA had appendicitis that went untreated until her appendix burst.
"It's a lot to take in. It opens your eyes to things you wouldn't normally think about," says Tara Blocker. "If she sees blood, she knows to stop. There's only so much you can tell a 5-year-old."
GALVESTON, Texas (AP) - Fifteen endangered tortoises were stolen from a wildlife theme park along the Texas Gulf Coast.
Police investigating the theft Monday said they believe the 13 red-footed and two Indian star tortoises were taken Friday night.
They were in a storage facility at Moody Gardens, a tourist attraction in Galveston that includes an aquarium and indoor rainforest, and were going to become part of the exhibits there.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service confiscated the tortoises about a year ago from a Houston airport. They were on a plane bound for Japan from Venezuela.
BELSANO, Pa. (AP) - Forget "Kramer vs. Kramer." A legal fight brewing between doughnut maker Krispy Kreme and a seasonal ice cream stand could be called "Kreme vs. Kream."
Jack and Christine Hoover have run the Krispy Kream stand in Cambria County's Blacklick Township since 1968, keeping the name that had been in use since the stand opened in 1961.
Recently, the Hoovers received a letter from Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc. complaining of trademark infringement and indicating that more "formal steps" would be taken if they don't stop using their name. The Winston-Salem, N.C., based Krispy Kreme registered its name in 1951.
The Hoovers have hired a lawyer hoping to lick the doughnut company, but they worry that Krispy Kreme's dough may prevail.
"We're well known for our ice cream, and we have a large sign in the front picturing a boy holding an ice cream cone, not a doughnut," Jack Hoover said. Krispy Kream doesn't sell doughnuts.
The Hoovers say customers might think the ownership of the stand has changed if they have to change the name.
Krispy Kreme, however, said that's not the company's problem.
"Unfortunately, this business is using a fully protected trademark, and we have to protect it," spokeswoman Amy Hughes said. "It can create confusion."
GLEN RIDGE, N.J. (AP) - A man who broke into a woman's house helped himself to some food and wine, then settled in for a nap - until police arrested him.
The woman called police shortly after 6 a.m. Wednesday to report something odd at her home.
The first officers to arrive saw an open kitchen window, with the curtain on the grass outside. They also found a black leather jacket, a plaid flannel shirt, a red baseball cap, and three unopened bottles of wine.
The officers searched the house, finally finding the man asleep on the basement floor holding a bowl of food the woman said was from her refrigerator, police Chief John Magnier said.
The suspect was handcuffed and arrested.
"I guess he got a little too comfortable," Magnier said Wednesday. The suspect was charged with burglary and held on $1,000 bail.
"He's still getting a good meal," Magnier said. "It's not in a bowl, though."
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) - A local dentist has hit on a sweet idea: He plans to keep local kids from eating too much candy and gather sweets for the troops in Iraq.
Dr. Michael Stuart said he'll be at the Kmart parking lot Monday afternoon to buy candy from trick-or-treaters for $1 per pound. Flyers advertising the offer have been distributed to about 20 elementary schools in the Billings area.
Stuart, a father of seven, said he doesn't expect the kids to turn over all of their goodies.
"We fully expect the children to pick out the good stuff they like and bring us the remainder," he said.
Lisa Kreiger, who handles patient services for the dental practice, said she and other staff members have worked on the project since September. The staff also is working with Oral B and the United Way to get toothbrushes to send to the troops, along with the candy.
Stuart said the buyback will offer kids money, keep them from eating too much candy and "it will bring a smile to the faces of our troops."
BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) - A Brazilian legislator wants to make it illegal to give pets names that are common among people.
Federal congressman Reinaldo Santos e Silva proposed the law after psychologists suggested that some children may get depressed when they learn they share their first name with someone's pet, Damarias Alves, a spokeswoman for Silva, said last week.
"Names have importance," said Alves. The congressman "wants to challenge people's assumptions that it's acceptable to give animals human names," she said.
If the law is passed, pet stores and veterinary clinics would be required to display a sign noting the prohibition of human first names for pets.
Brazilians who break the law would be subject to fines or community service.
Alves admitted the law's chances of passage were slim but said Silva hoped the bill would call attention to his other efforts to protect animals.
"He's proposed many laws to protect wildlife in Brazil, but this is the only one that has ever gotten any attention," Alves said.
Posted in Backpage on Tuesday, November 2, 2004 12:00 am Updated: 11:03 pm.
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