SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic - A Dominican infant born with a second head will undergo a risky operation Friday to remove the appendage, which has a partially formed brain, ears, eyes and lips. - The surgery is complicated because the two heads share arteries.
Led by a Los Angles-based neurosurgeon who successfully separated Guatemalan twins, the medical team will spend about 13 hours removing Rebeca Martinez's second head.
The 18 surgeons, nurses and doctors will cut off the undeveloped tissue, clip the veins and arteries and close the skull of the 7-week-old baby using a bone graft from another part of her body.
"We know this is a delicate operation," Rebeca's father, Franklyn Martinez, 28, told The Associated Press. "But we have a positive attitude."
CURE International, a Lemoyne, Pa.-based charity that gives medical care to disabled children in developing countries, is paying for the surgery and follow-up care.
Dr. Jorge Lazareff, director of pediatric neurosurgery at the University of California at Los Angeles' Mattel Children's Hospital, will lead the operation along with Dr. Benjamin Rivera, a neurosurgeon at the Medical Center of Santo Domingo. Lazareff led a team that successfully separated Guatemalan twin girls in 2002.
Doctors say if the surgery goes well Rebeca won't need physical therapy and will develop as a normal child.
Rebeca was born on Dec. 17 with the undeveloped head of her twin, a condition known as craniopagus parasiticus.
Twins born conjoined at the head are extremely rare, accounting for one of every 2.5 million births. Parasitic twins like Rebeca are even rarer.
Rebeca is the eighth documented case in the world of craniopagus parasiticus, said Dr. Santiago Hazim, medical director at CURE International's Center for Orthopedic Specialties in Santo Domingo, where the surgery will be performed.
All the other documented infants died before birth, making it the first known surgery of its kind, Lazareff and Hazim said.
Hazim said the surgery must be done now so the pressure of Rebeca's other brain doesn't prevent her from developing.
Rebeca shares blood vessels and arteries with her second head. Although only partially developed, the mouth on her second head moves when Rebeca is being breast-fed. Tests indicate some activity in her second brain.
Martinez and his 26-year-old wife, Maria Gisela Hiciano, say doctors told them before Rebeca was born that she would have a tumor on her head, but none of the prenatal tests showed a second head developing.
Martinez works at a tailor's shop. Hiciano is a supermarket cashier. Together they make about $200 a month. They have two other children, ages 4 and 1.
Lazareff says Rebeca's chances of survival are good. Still, he refuses to make a prognosis.
"We'll do everything we can to make this successful," he said.
On the Net:
Cure International: http://www.ccure.org/index.aspx
Japanese movie distributor cancels display of Hitler watercolor
Associated Press
TOKYO - A Japanese movie distributor on Wednesday canceled plans to a display a watercolor by Adolf Hitler, just one day after announcing it would be shown to promote a film loosely based on the Nazi dictator's life.
The undated, unnamed watercolor showing Vienna's Karlskirche, also known as Saint Karl's Church, was scheduled to go on exhibit for a week starting Saturday at a Tokyo theater to coincide with the Japanese premiere of "Max," written and directed by Menno Meyjes.
The 2002 film stars John Cusack as a German-Jewish art dealer who befriends aspiring painter Hitler in the chaos of post-World War I Germany.
Plans were to include another pencil sketch by Hitler before shipping the painting back to Germany for auction in May.
But a spokesman for the film's Japanese distributor, Toshiba Entertainment Inc., said Wednesday the exhibition was canceled because of difficulties getting the painting shipped from Germany to Japan in time for the movie's opening.
"Max" was criticized when it opened in the United States in December 2002 by some who worried it would humanize one of history's most reviled figures. The Jewish Defense League issued a statement asking American distributor Lions Gate to shelve it.
Toshiba Entertainment spokesman Yasuhisa Indo said the Japanese distributor received no protests about the film or accompanying exhibit. The movie will open as scheduled and run for at least one month, Indo said.
Meyjes has said "Max" is meant to alert people to the possibility that another Hitler could arise.
Hitler, who early in life had wanted to study fine arts, is believed to have produced thousands of drawings and paintings, many of them streetscapes and village scenes. Though his application to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts was rejected, records indicate he spent several years in the early 1910s trying to eke out a living from painting postcards and watercolors.
Murder case prompts cancellation of Miss Savannah competition
Associated Press
SAVANNAH, Ga. - This year's Miss Savannah competition was called off because of the bad press surrounding the most recent titleholder, who is accused of killing her boyfriend.
Sharron Nicole Redmond, 22, is charged with murder in the Dec. 16 slaying of Kevin Shorter. Police said Redmond shot Shorter during an argument over another woman.
"We have quickly realized that our potential contestants and eventual winner would be under intense scrutiny and pressure," the pageant's board of directors announced in a letter. "This environment is no place for a local contestant to adequately prepare for the Miss Georgia Pageant."
The competition had been set for Jan. 31. Organizers said they plan to hold another pageant next year.
Redmond assumed the Miss Savannah title in August when the original titleholder, Andrea Bailey, was crowned Miss Georgia and went on to compete in the Miss America competition.
Redmond is scheduled for a hearing on Monday.
11 Cubans are reported stopped at sea in a 1950s Buick
Associated Press
MIAMI - Eleven Cubans trying to sail to Florida in a 1950s Buick converted into a tailfinned boat were intercepted at sea by the Coast Guard and will be sent back to their homeland, exile activists said Wednesday.
Marciel Basanta Lopez and Luis Grass Rodriguez, the two men who turned the classic car into a floating vessel, tried a similar stunt last summer and got caught: They set out for Florida in a 1951 Chevy pickup with pontoons made out of empty 55-gallon drums and a propeller that pushed it along at about 8 mph.
On Monday, the men set out again, with four other adults and five children, relatives said. The Coast Guard intercepted the group late Tuesday en route to the Florida Keys, picking them up about 10 miles off Marathon, which is about 90 miles southwest of Miami, activist Arturo Cobo said.
Cobo said the Coast Guard sank the Buick. The Coast Guard refused to confirm the floating car's status, but it used machine gun fire to sink the first vehicle-powered barge.
"My uncle is very brave," Eduardo Perez Grass, a nephew of Grass Rodriguez, said in Havana, adding that the others on board were Grass Rodriguez's wife and son; Marciel Basanta's wife and their two children; and a third couple with two children.
The Buick's doors had been sealed to keep water out and it was powered by its original V-8 motor, said Eduardo Perez Grass, who was among those on the earlier attempt to reach the United States.
"My cousin isn't crazy. He wants to be free," Basanta Lopez's cousin Kiriat Lopez, who lives in Lake Worth, told The Miami Herald.
Under U.S. immigration policy, Cubans who reach U.S. shores generally are allowed to stay while those caught at sea are usually returned. Immigration officials interview Cubans intercepted at sea to determine if they have a credible fear of persecution at home, but most are still returned.
Russian industrialist buys FabergDe eggs, other items from family of the late Malcolm S. Forbes
Associated Press
NEW YORK - A Russian industrialist privately purchased the Forbes collection of historic FabergDe art pieces, including nine rare Imperial Easter Eggs, for an undisclosed sum and ahead of a scheduled auction.
The eggs, all commissioned by Russian czars in the late 1800s, and more than 180 other FabergDe pieces were bought by Victor Vekselberg, Sotheby's said Wednesday.
Sotheby's had estimated the entire collection at up to $90 million. The Coronation Egg - the most valued piece - could fetched as much as $24 million at auction, Sotheby's said.
The private sale negotiated by Sotheby's on behalf of the Forbes family "happened very quickly," said Diana Phillips, an auction house spokeswoman. She wouldn't disclose the purchase price but said: "It was a very serious offer that the Forbes family accepted." Sotheby's had planned to auction the items in April.
Carl Faberge, who created jewelry for European royalty in the 19th century, was commissioned by Czar Alexander III in 1885 to create an Easter gift for his wife, Czarina Marina Feodorovna. Nicholas II continued the tradition, and the collection grew.
The eggs, about 5 inches tall, are intricately designed and individually crafted. The Coronation Egg is made of gold enamel and contains a replica of the coach Czarina Alexandra rode into Moscow in 1897.
Only the Kremlin owns more Faberge Imperial eggs - at 10.
"The FabergDe Egg collection," said Vekselberg, "represents perhaps the most significant example of our cultural heritage outside Russia. The religious, spiritual and emotional content captured by these FabergDe eggs touches upon the soul of the Russian people."
Malcolm S. Forbes, the late publisher and editor of Forbes magazine, collected the eggs from the 1960s until his death in 1990. His family had said the auction would free it from the upkeep of the collection.
In a statement issued by Sotheby's, the family said it was "delighted that the advent of a new era in Russia has made possible the return of these extraordinary objects. It is an astonishingly romantic ending to one of the great stories in art history."
The eggs and other choice pieces from the collection, including stone carvings, gold cigarette cases and gem-studded picture frames, will be displayed at Sotheby's New York galleries - on a date to be announced later - before Vekselberg returns the collection to Russia.
Vekselberg is chairman of the board of directors of Renova, an investment and business development company. He was instrumental in forging a Russian-U.S. partnership that acquired the controlling rights to Tyumen Oil Company, now Russia's third largest oil and gas company.
On the Net:
Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/faberge
Sotheby's: http://www.sothebys.com/
Peru beauty contestant says she was lured to West Africa for tryst with Gabon's president
Associated Press
DAKAR, Senegal - Peru is investigating claims that a Peruvian beauty pageant contestant was lured to the West African nation of Gabon to become 67-year-old President Omar Bongo's lover - and was stranded for nearly two weeks after she refused.
A spokesman for Bongo, Vincent Mavoungou Bouyou, told The Associated Press on Wednesday by telephone from the capital, Libreville, that he was unaware of the allegations.
The Peruvian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Ivette Santa Maria, a 22-year-old Miss Peru America contestant, was invited to Gabon to be a hostess for an alleged "Miss Humanity" pageant there.
The Peruvian Foreign Ministry identified the contest's purported organizers as being from Argentina and Switzerland.
Contestant Santa Maria described the episode to The Associated Press in an interview on Wednesday, saying she had been taken to Gabon's presidential palace hours after her Jan. 19 arrival with her boyfriend.
Gabon's president quickly joined her in a paneled room in the palace, Santa Maria said.
"He pressed a button and some sliding doors opened, revealing a large bed," she said. "I told him I was not a prostitute, that I was a Miss Peru. I started to cry and panicked."
Santa Maria said she fled the room and was running around the grounds of the palace when guards offered to drive her back to her hotel.
When she returned to the hotel, pageant organizers and government officials apologized for "any misunderstanding," Santa Maria said. Without money to pay the hotel bill, however, she was stranded in Gabon for 12 days until international women's groups and others intervened.
Santa Maria spoke to the AP in Bogota, Colombia, on her way home to Peru.
She denied reports she was held in Libreville by force, and said the Gabonese president never tried to force himself on her, once he realized she was not there for sex.
"He never touched me and didn't try to stop me from leaving," she said.
Santa Maria's parents had contacted Peru's Foreign Affairs Ministry on Monday seeking help, the ministry said.
Peru's U.N. ambassador in New York contacted his Gabonese counterpart to express his country's "serious concern," the ministry said.
Bongo has kept a tight grip on power in this oil-rich former French colony since becoming president in 1967. He has faced similar allegations in the past.
In 1995, Italian fashion designer Francesco Smalto testified in Paris that he furnished Bongo with call girls, flying them regularly from France in 1992-1993.
At least two opposition newspapers were shut down and French newspapers were banned temporarily in Gabon after reporting on that alleged scandal.
AP reporter Kim Housego in Bogota, Colombia contributed to this report.
Tourist fined, jailed for trashing area near Yellowstone geyser
Associated Press
CHEYENNE, Wyo. - A tourist pleaded guilty to driving his pickup truck across fragile soil near a Yellowstone National Park geyser and was sentenced to jail and fined Tuesday.
Adam Ray Elford, 22, of Vancouver, Wash., pleaded guilty before U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen E. Cole in Mammoth Hot Springs to driving off-road, damaging park resources, having a loaded gun in his truck, improper food storage and driving on a suspended license.
"The judge said it was the worst, most egregious case of resource damage he's ever seen in the park," federal prosecutor Don White said. "The judge has been here in the park over 20 years."
Investigators said Elford and a companion drove a 2000 Toyota four-wheel-drive pickup around two barriers Oct. 10 and spun "doughnuts" on fragile soil known as sinter surrounding Lone Star Geyser south of Old Faithful before getting stuck.
Elford was given 90 days in jail, with all but 20 suspended. He also was fined $1,560 and ordered to pay restitution.
Damage was initially estimated at $2,900, and Cole asked park officials for an updated estimate after winter snows melt. He said Elford would be responsible for the full amount. In addition, Elford was ordered to reimburse his court-appointed attorney and pay a towing bill of $380.
According to White, Elford and Austin B. Olsen, 19, of Battle Ground, Wash., removed a barrier, drove down a path reserved for hikers and bicyclists, removed another barrier, then drove into a meadow by crossing a thermal channel and steam vent about 100 yards from the geyser. The truck became mired in ruts 6 to 8 inches deep.
"He told the judge this is what they do all the time in Washington, drive around barriers," White said. "They saw one here so they decided to do the same."
The pair, unable to dislodge the truck, camped overnight, built a fire, shot a gun in the middle of the night to scare off any nearby bears, then in the morning asked arriving tourists to help tow them out.
The tourists refused, but gave the two a ride to the ranger station at Old Faithful Village.
Workers spent more than 80 hours trying to repair the damage before the snow fell.
"The judge said it will never be the same," White said.
Olsen's case is pending.
On the Net:
Yellowstone National Park: http://www.nps.gov/yell/
TV channel weighs demand for JFK-Johnson film inquiry
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES - Former aides to President Johnson met with History Channel executives Wednesday to demand a re-examination of a program that accused Johnson of conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination.
"We can't let stand the blatant falsity of the allegation in that program," Larry Temple, special counsel in the Johnson White House and president of The LBJ Foundation, said after the meeting in New York.
The aides, along with former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and Johnson's widow, Lady Bird Johnson, want an independent probe of the claims in "The Guilty Men," which the channel aired in November.
Temple, along with journalist Bill Moyers; Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America; and Tom Johnson, chairman of the LBJ Foundation, met for an hour with Nickolas Davatzes, president of A&E Television Networks, which includes History Channel.
Davatzes and History Channel executive vice president Dan Davids agreed to consider their request, Tom Johnson said Wednesday.
"They made no commitment whatsoever" to an investigation, he said. "I told them we would not accept a whitewash … and are not yet abandoning the potential for litigation."
No indication was given of when a History Channel decision would be made, he said.
Davatzes and Davis listened to the concerns presented "and took them very seriously," according to a History Channel statement Wednesday. "The History Channel strives to present history in an accurate manner."
Kennedy's killing remains a controversial event and the channel presented a series of programs that looked at many conspiracy theories about Kennedy's death, some contradictory, the statement said.
"The History Channel does not endorse any specific theory," it said.
Tom Johnson said the executives expressed concern that the issue had been "ratcheted up" by letters from Ford, Carter and Mrs. Johnson to the chief executives of NBC, Hearst Corp. and The Walt Disney Corp., which own A&E Networks.
The letters pressed the case for an investigation by independent journalists or historians of "The Guilty Men," one of a series of documentaries aired by History Channel to mark the 40th anniversary of Kennedy's murder.
"I assured them (Davatzes and Davids) that those were very heartfelt letters," Tom Johnson said. "I also conveyed my disappointment that I had been unable to get an earlier hearing on this."
The Johnson camp expects a probe will find the film falsely accused Johnson of conspiring to kill Kennedy, Temple said, and wants either an on-air program or a statement retracting the allegations.
The documentary "clearly has resulted in misleading a lot of people, particularly young people, who have written to the LBJ Library asking, 'How can you have this monument to a murderer?"' Temple said.
When the Kennedy series aired, the History Channel said in a statement that the point of view in "The Guilty Men" was "meticulously researched."
"By presenting different viewpoints we enable our viewers to decide to agree or disagree with them and to arrive at their own conclusions," the channel said.
The advocates for President Johnson made no effort to censor the program or organize a subscriber or advertiser boycott, but sought only to have their views given airtime, Tom Johnson said.
Although the Warren Commission concluded Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole assassin involved in the Nov. 22, 1963, shooting of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, claims of more extensive plots continue to get attention. Johnson was Kennedy's vice president.
Norwegian prince causes flap by misplacing Portugal
Associated Press
OSLO, Norway - Norway's Crown Prince Haakon caused a stir in his debut as royal host by placing Portugal on the Mediterranean Sea in a speech delivered in honor of that country's visiting president.
In fact, Portugal's entire coastline is on the Atlantic Ocean, and the blunder forced a public apology from the palace on Wednesday.
The 31-year-old prince was filling in for his father, King Harald V, by hosting an official visit Tuesday by Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio. It was the first time Haakon hosted a state visit.
In his speech at a palace banquet for the president, Haakon said, "Norway and Portugal lie at opposite ends of Europe. You are placed on the Mediterranean's warm beaches. We are as far north as it is possible to be."
Palace spokesman Sven G. Gjeruldsen apologized for the error. He told the Norwegian news agency NTB that the prince had meant to say that Portugal was far to the south, near the entrance to the Mediterranean. He refused to say whether the prince apologized to Sampaio or who had written the speech.
The text of the prince's speech, including the error, was still posted in Norwegian on the palace Internet site in the late afternoon Wednesday.
On The Net:
www.kongehuset.no
Peru police investigate possible infant sacrifice to earth god
Associated Press
LIMA, Peru - A decapitated baby boy found on a hilltop near Lake Titicaca may have been killed last week in a human sacrifice ritual, police said Wednesday.
The remains of the infant, believed to have been 7 months old, were discovered Tuesday in the Yunguyo area near the Bolivian border, a police officer in the regional capital of Puno told The Associated Press.
Investigators believe the killing may have been a ritualistic sacrifice meant to appease a pre-Columbian earth god, because the body was found on the hilltop surrounded by flowers, liquor bottles and containers of blood.
Highland Indians consider many Andean hilltops to be the homes of deities. Tradition says the first Inca rose from Lake Titicaca.
Police were led to the remote rural site by villagers upset by the killing, which took place last week, police said.
Peruvian anthropologist Juan Ossio told the AP that human sacrifices date back to the Chavin culture, which flourished in Peru between 900-200 B.C. Human sacrifices remained an official part of Peruvian cultures until the Spanish conquered the Incas 500 years ago, he said.
"Sacrifices were made for more than a thousand year and it is hard to get rid of deeply rooted beliefs," he said.
Anthropologists occasionally encounter reports of human sacrifices while conducting research in Peru, although it is more common to hear about old people being buried alive in an effort to appease the earthen gods, he said.
The ritualistic killing of llamas in an effort to bring good crops is also common in the region around Lake Titicaca, he said.
Man who stowed away on cross-country flight from New York to Dallas sentenced
Associated Press
FORT WORTH, Texas - A man who shipped himself in an airline cargo crate from New York to Dallas because he was homesick and didn't want to pay for a plane ticket was fined $1,500 Wednesday and placed on probation for a year.
Charles D. McKinley was also sentenced to four months under house arrest.
McKinley, a 25-year-old shipping clerk at a New York warehouse, pleaded guilty in November to stowing away on a cargo jet and could have gotten a year in prison and a $100,000 fine. He had no comment Wednesday.
The fine was far more than what it would have cost to fly first-class.
U.S. Magistrate Charles Bleil said McKinley committed a crime that was "wrong and stupid," but his intent was to save money, not breach airline security.
McKinley traveled overnight about 1,500 miles by truck, plane and delivery van before popping out of the wooden box Sept. 6, much to his parents' surprise, at their home in DeSoto, a Dallas suburb. The shaken deliveryman called police.
McKinley said he took a cell phone, which did not work, but no food or water. He said he occasionally got out of the 42-by-36-by-15-inch crate. He also said someone else helped him by closing the box and shipping him. The $550 freight charges were billed to his employer.
"This is a young man who made, as the judge said, a foolish, stupid mistake. And he's lucky to be alive," federal prosecutor Fred Schattman said.
The box was carried in the pressurized, heated cabins of the planes but could just as easily have been placed in the lower, unpressurized holds, said Richard G. Phillips, chief executive of Pilot Air Freight.
