Eideard

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An artist arrested for applying body paint to a nude model in New York’s Times Square will have charges against him dropped if his models strip naked only after dark, according to a court agreement.

Police arrested Andy Golub, 45, in July and charged him with violating public exposure and lewdness laws. He has been painting nude models for about three years.

Golub’s lawyer, Ronald Kuby, argued that New York laws do not prohibit public nudity in the name of art, and a compromise was reached that was the basis of the court ruling. Under the agreement, “he is permitted to paint bare breasts any time, anywhere, but the G-strings have to stay on until daylight goes out,” Kuby said after a hearing in Manhattan criminal court…

Golub, of Nyack, New York, said he likes to paint nude models because their bodies have energy and dynamism that he finds lacking in canvas.

“I feel that when I do live body painting it’s a good thing, a positive thing,” he said.

Charges against Golub will be dropped in six months if he abides by the terms of the agreement and is not arrested again. Charges against Karla Storie, a model from Texas arrested with him, will be dismissed if she too is not arrested again in the next six months.

Golub said he was planning to return to criminal court today and paint a nude model in a park near the courthouse. After the sun sets.

El Sabino Gordo bar where 20 were killed

Authorities in the northern Mexican city of Torreon said Saturday that they found 10 “mutilated” bodies inside the back of a truck…

The seven men and three women appear to have been killed several days ago in various locations outside the city and then later brought in, Notimex reported.

The news agency said authorities also had reports of human heads, found throughout Torreon, but it was not immediately clear whether those heads belonged to the bodies in the truck.

Separately, gunmen entered a downtown bar in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey and shot 20 people dead, police told the state-run news agency Saturday.

A preliminary investigation suggests that attack was sparked by a dispute between organized crime groups for control of the El Sabino Gordo nightclub, where drugs are allegedly sold, said Jorge Domene Zambrano, a public safety spokesman.

In a third incident, the bodies of 10 men and a woman were found Friday afternoon on the eastern outskirts of Mexico City, a Valle de Chalco municipal government official said in a statement.

The public security official, Javier Garcia, said the victims — all of whom were in handcuffs and bound with tape — had been shot.

Nationwide, there have been some 35,000 drug-related deaths since President Felipe Calderon began a crackdown on the cartels in December 2006, the Mexican government says.

So, uh, what numbers are meaningful? These deaths are generally characterized as being members of drug gangs – killing each other off. How much of the nation’s population is working for these gangs?

Is Calderon’s war on gangs an effective weapon? If so – when is there to be a qualitative change?

Wootton Bassett was the first town in more than 100 years to be granted
the “Royal” title in recognition of its parades for fallen soldiers

For several years, the flag-draped coffins of fallen servicemen and women have been met by large crowds who line the streets to pay their respects as they return to British soil.

But repatriation flights are to be diverted and will no longer be flown back to RAF Lyneham and through the small Wiltshire town of Royal Wootton Bassett, where they were saluted come rain or shine.

Instead, they will arrive back to RAF Brize Norton, where they will be driven through the back gate and then down side roads, neatly avoiding the nearby town of Carterton, as they make their way to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.

Andrew Robathan, Minister for Defence Personnel, Welfare and Veterans, admitted that the decision to avoid public scenes of emotion had been taken deliberately.

“The side gate was seen by the Ministry of Defence and the police as the most appropriate way to take out future corteges,” he told Radio Oxford…

A spokesman added: “Consideration has also been given to ensure the dignity and solemnity of the military repatriation ceremony is maintained and to those who are arriving at RAF Brize Norton about to deploy on operations.”

In other words, “we don’t want the silly buggers still serving in the British military to see what awaits them after a decade of dishonor!”

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Whoever killed four prostitutes, and possibly four other people, and then dumped their bodies in heavy underbrush along a beachfront causeway on Long Island appears to have a sophisticated understanding of police investigative techniques…

A series of taunting phone calls made to the teenage sister of one of the victims — calls that the police suspect came from the killer — were made from in or around some of the most crowded locations in New York City, including Madison Square Garden and Times Square, according to the people briefed on the case and to the mother of Melissa Barthelemy, that victim.

The locations, detectives say, were probably chosen because they allowed the caller to blend into crowds, so that if investigators pinpointed his location from the cellphone’s signal, they would be unable to pick him out of the crowd using any nearby surveillance cameras, one of the people said.

This fact, as well as the killer’s use of disposable cellphones to contact the four victims who have been identified — women in their 20s who advertised their services on Craigslist — suggested to some investigators that the killer was well versed in criminal investigative techniques, gleaned either through personal experience or in some other way, and could even be in law enforcement himself…

Also, the caller kept each of his vulgar, mocking and insulting calls to less than three minutes, according to the dead woman’s mother, Lynn Barthelemy. The caller made about a half-dozen calls over roughly five weeks to the victim’s sister.

One investigator said the brief duration of the calls thwarted efforts by the New York Police Department to use the signal to pinpoint the caller’s location and find him, something Lynn Barthelemy said they told her they tried to do four times…

Ms. Barthelemy’s body was one of four uncovered over the course of three days in December in the thick undergrowth along Ocean Parkway, near Gilgo Beach, in the town of Babylon. All were dumped in burlap sacks.

RTFA for a bit more detail. I guess back in the day before the multiplicity of CSI variants on TV it would have required a bit of research to know how forensic investigation has moved on since the days of Quincy.

We even had a suicide here in New Mexico that imitated an episode of CSI in an attempt to make it look like murder. Life imitates art, once again.

Cars, tractors, boats and the occasional entire house have been spotted floating on the surface of the Pacific Ocean in the aftermath of the March 11 Japanese tsunami triggered by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake.

The largest “island” of debris stretches 60 nautical miles (69 miles) in length and covers an expanse of more than 2.2 million square feet, according to the US Navy’s 7th Fleet, which is closely monitoring the floating rubbish.

“It is very large and it’s a maritime hazard,” Lieutenant Anthony Falvo, deputy public affairs officer for the US Navy’s 7th Fleet, told the Daily Telegraph. “The damage it can cause is anything from piercing the hull of a ship to leaving dents or getting wrapped up in propulsion systems.”

Experts have reportedly estimated that it could take up to two years for the floating tsunami debris to hit Hawaii and three years for the West Coast.

The US navy is currently working with civilian construction companies from Japan on attempts to start removing the floating debris from the ocean.

We look forward to American media coverage of the landing of the debris from this disaster on our shores. Sensationalism never misses a chance at the ghastly. Fox News probably has someone already stationed on the coast watching for bodies.

Relatives of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks have lost a bid to get the Supreme Court to rule on whether New York City must provide a proper burial for material taken from the World Trade Center site, because it could contain the ashes of victims.

The justices declined on Monday to hear an appeal of a lower court’s ruling in a suit brought by relatives of some of the people killed when the twin towers collapsed. Lower courts dismissed the suit against the city, saying it acted responsibly in moving materials from the site in Lower Manhattan to a landfill on Staten Island and then sifting through the material for human remains.

The plaintiffs wanted the ashes buried in a cemetery after they were sifted again. None of the remains of roughly 1,100 of the people who were killed in the attacks have been found.

I realize the cumulative loss is enormous. Americans should also look around at the world and the miserable history of our species killing large numbers of each other.

I am not surprised that Americans feel themselves more special than all those others. Still doesn’t justify the demand.

Mexican marines found 72 dead bodies at a remote ranch near the U.S. border, the Mexican navy said on Wednesday, the biggest single discovery of its kind in Mexico’s increasingly bloody drug war.

The marines came across the bodies of 58 men and 14 women on Tuesday at the ranch outside a town near the Gulf of Mexico in Tamaulipas state, some 90 miles from the Texas border, after a firefight with drug hitmen in which three gunmen and a marine died, a spokesman for the navy said.

One suspected trafficker was arrested, the navy said, and several escaped in SUVs.

“The bodies were dumped about the ranch and were not buried. We are still investigating how long they had been there,” the spokesman said. He declined to give more details.

Marines guarding a nearby checkpoint reached the ranch after a wounded man approached them and asked for help. The soldiers came under fire as they neared the ranch, the navy said in a statement.

After the firefight, marines seized assault rifles, bullets, uniforms and vehicles from the ranch — including one with forged army license plates…

Tamaulipas has become one of Mexico’s bloodiest drug flashpoints since the start of the year as rivals from the Gulf cartel and a spinoff group, the Zetas, fight over smuggling routes into the United States…

The Zetas were members of Mexico’s elite special forces trained to fight drug cartels, but they switched sides in the 1990s and became one of the country’s most feared gangs led by Heriberto Lazcano, known as “The Executioner.”

Of course, the Zetas are one of the most dangerous groups of criminals in Mexico. Like the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan, they were trained to a large extent by the United States.

Great job of qualifying recruits, guys.

This is from their “gallery” – which doesn’t include the garage

A Maryland funeral home has lost its license after investigators found about 40 bodies stacked on top of each other, leaking fluid, in a garage, a state official said.

The state Board of Morticians and Funeral Directors revoked the license of Chambers Funeral Home & Crematorium in Riverdale, Maryland after an April 26 visit to the site.

Hari Close, president of the the state funeral board, told CNN Tuesday that some of the bodies were cadavers who had been donated to a local university for research. Other bodies came from other funeral homes, Close said…

When investigators inspected the funeral home they were warned by an employee, who told them, “Don’t get upset about all the bodies in there,” according to documents released by the state funeral board.

Inside the room was a “large pile, approximately 12 by 12 feet, of body bags containing human remains strewn on the floor of the garage in front of a removal van. There was visible leakage from the body bags as well as a pungent odor,” the documents said.

“The investigator also observed writing on some of the body bags,” they said. “However, fluid leakage from the body bags caused the writing to smear and become illegible. As a result, it was not immediately possible to determine the identity of the remains.”

There will be a hearing at the end of the month to determine whether the funeral home will get its license back, Close said.

The state of the bodies is a crime. Whether or not they get their license back – of course – is a question of politics.

Gangsters might consider using the pyramids for human sacrifice

Police found nine human heads and nine headless bodies in the Mexican state of Guerrero on Sunday, and some of the remains were of soldiers.

The heads were found in Chilpancingo, the state’s capital, and the bodies were found at a different location in Chilpancingo, officials said. Information on whether the heads belonged to the bodies wasn’t available.

Police identified eight soldiers and one high-ranking former police officer among the victims, Zeferino Torre-Blanca, governor of Guerrero told CNN on Sunday…

Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said this month that organized-crime killings climbed to 5,376 in 2008, more than double the 2,477 such deaths in 2007.

On Friday, the United States and Mexico pledged to beef up efforts in the war against drugs.

Well, I guess we can breathe a sigh of relief, now.

Mexican police found 24 bodies dumped outside a small town near the capital in one of the most grisly discoveries yet in a rash of recent drug gang killings. The victims, left on grassy wasteland close to the town of San Pedro Atlapulco in the State of Mexico, had their hands tied and had been shot in the head, local police told Reuters. The method of execution is common among Mexico’s drug gangs.

Mexico has been blighted by a steady rise in brutal drug gang murders ever since President Felipe Calderon deployed the army to crush smuggling cartels in late 2006. A fresh spurt in violent killings has shaken the nation in recent weeks.

The latest victims were dumped a few paces from a road that runs through a rundown rural area about an hour’s drive from Mexico City. Mexican media said they were blindfolded and their bodies showed torture marks.

August, the bloodiest month of the drug war, saw around 450 people killed, mostly rival gang members or police officers, including 11 people believed to have been decapitated by Gulf cartel hitmen who left their headless corpses piled up near the southern city of Merida.

Mexico is the easiest foreign country for my family to visit – and don’t. It’s just down the road a piece from where we live. I think I’d probably travel halfway round the world before visiting Mexico…

Until – and unless – they bring an end to corruption and gang rule.