Eideard

Logan, Ohio — A man repeatedly shot his adult son and two sisters-in-law in his living room, killing them in front of his terminally ill wife, then fatally shot himself on the front porch as family tension about the cancer-stricken woman’s care apparently boiled over…

An earlier dispute about whether the woman should have been fed tea and toast or the orange her husband had peeled for her apparently set off the shooter Monday, 63-year-old Paul Gilkey…

The sick woman, 59-year-old Darlene Gilkey, witnessed the shootings from a hospital bed in her living room but wasn’t injured, the sheriff said. The family friction escalated into violence in the evening when Paul Gilkey went to a bedroom, retrieved a semiautomatic handgun and began threatening relatives, North said…

Gilkey, known as David or Dave because he went by his middle name, served a decade in prison beginning in 1974 for killing a man in Athens County in May of that year, according to court records. He also had a 1986 arrest for felonious assault, according to the sheriff…

Which didn’t keep him from having a gun in the house.

Darlene Gilkey was receiving hospice care through a company in nearby Lancaster, whose chief executive declined to comment Tuesday because of privacy restrictions. Investigators said she was taken to a hospital after the shootings rattled the normally quiet area.

I’m never surprised when people do something crazy and criminal. I am perpetually astounded over the candyass and cowardly politicians who are so cowed by the NRA and nutballs whose guns are grafted replacements for their sexual organs.

RTFA for the details.

Enjoy this weekend of the winter solstice and any other holiday you may be celebrating that brings family and friends together.

My family runs the gamut from Buddhist student to atheist, naturist philosophy to materialist dialectics. We all share the seasons and love.

Har!

Thanks, Ursarodinia

For wild animal lovers not content with watching tigers and gorillas during the day, a growing number of zoos are offering a more thrilling after-dark experience — overnight stays.

From Philadelphia to Denver nocturnal visitors are learning what happens when the gates slam shut, the sun goes down and the moon rises over some of America’s most well-known zoos…

The Philadelphia Zoo has been running its Roars and Snores Overnight Programs for about 20 years. The most popular theme program is the Night Flight Overnight Program where children aged five to 12 sleep in the zoo’s tree house.

The overnight stays are not only popular with young children. Teen programs are offered at many zoos for those young adults interested in the zoo industry. They are also a favorite venue for birthday sleepovers, family trips and with scout troops…

Most overnight stays include a night tour during which youngsters experience the mysterious sights and unusual sounds of the zoo without the usual distractions. A midnight snack and breakfast are also served…

Guests at the new overnight program at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Queens Zoo in New York make breakfast treats for parrots, bears, pigs, pumas and coyotes, and watch the keepers feed them to the animals the next morning, said Education Curator Tom Hurtubise.

With visitors at the Denver Zoo coming from as far away as Wyoming and Montana, Patterson said parents tend to be more worried about leaving their children than the children themselves. They have rarely had to call up a parent in the middle of the night.

“They love it,” Patterson said about the children. “For many, it’s their first overnight away from home. They are so excited that by the end of the day they are so tired that they have no opportunity to worry.”

Kids with groups of their peers, families sharing a learning experience together, any number of combinations can form up for a special adventure. Consider it. Add a special night to your kid’s memories.

In our neck of the prairie, the Albuquerque Zoo offers guided night walks for $10 – discounts available for the kiddies and old geezers like me.

Mammu Singh – one of the last and best – retired, now deceased

India has 1.2 billion people, among them bankers, gurus, rag pickers, billionaires, snake charmers, software engineers, lentil farmers, rickshaw drivers, Maoist rebels, Bollywood movie stars and Vedic scholars, to name a few. Humanity runneth over. Except in one profession: India is searching for a hangman.

Usually, India would not need one, given the rarity of executions. The last was in 2004. But in May, India’s president unexpectedly rejected a last-chance mercy petition from a convicted murderer in the Himalayan state of Assam. Prison officials, compelled to act, issued a call for a hangman…

The nation’s handful of known hangmen had either died, retired or disappeared. The situation was not too surprising, given the ambivalence within the Indian criminal justice system about executions. Capital punishment was codified during British rule, with hanging as the chosen method, but recent decades of litigating and legislating limited the actual practice to “the rarest of rare cases.”

Today, even prison officials encourage death row inmates to draft appeals. “At times, we also help the person draft the petition,” said K. V. Reddy, president of the All-India Prison Officers Association, who opposes capital punishment. “Normally, everybody sympathizes with a person who has spent a number of years in prison…”

It seemed the search had reached a dead end, at least figuratively. Then Mammu Singh’s eldest son, Pawan Kumar, decided to enter the family business. Ten days after his father’s death, Mr. Kumar applied for government certification as a hangman.

“I just want to continue the family legacy,” Mr. Kumar said recently, inside the tiny room where he lives inside a low-income housing complex. “I’m the fourth generation. You don’t see many volunteers coming forward. I’m serving my country.”

The pay is not very good for hangmen, partly because of the paucity of hangings, but also because the job is considered contract work. Still, Mr. Kumar works as a hawker, selling clothes from the back of his bicycle, and he welcomed the possibility of a $75 monthly retainer for being a hangman.

The workload could increase in the future. India has put to death at least 50 convicts since becoming an independent nation in 1947. And the trends suggest that the number of people convicted on capital charges could rise. Nationally, India had 345 people on death row by the end of 2008, according to national crime statistics…

Mr. Kumar…has been invited for an interview with prison officials this month.

My feelings are always mixed over capital punishment. Years ago it was demonstrated that it served little to deter capital crimes. And it costs more – generally – to deal with the sum of appeals generated by a death penalty. But, I can’t help feeling it is just compensation to the body politic for some crimes.

The display case at the National Museum of American History holds a section of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, a tactile reminder of the individual lives lost to the virus.

It also serves as entry into two exhibits that mark the 30th anniversary of the first report on AIDS by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The first exhibit is part of the museum’s “Science in American Life” section and focuses on the early phases of AIDS, from 1981 to 1987, as well as its impact on public health policy and politics. In the second exhibit, display cases in the museum’s Archives Center showcase oral histories and artifacts that attempt to bring attention to AIDS and its human toll.

The images in both exhibits immediately bring to mind the passions and anxieties of the 1980s, as the gay and medical communities grappled with the unknown illness. The government acknowledged the beginnings of the epidemic in June and July 1981, when the CDC reported five cases of pneumocystis carinii pneumonia in Los Angeles and 26 cases of Kaposi’s sarcoma in Los Angeles and New York…

The museum’s Archives Center has collected such totems of the crisis as the Hub Cutter, the mailboxlike receptacle for needles that is now commonplace, education panels that Planned Parenthood used for lectures in schools and anti-gay articles that called AIDS a “gay plague…”

The display includes posters from the movies “Long Time Companion” (1990) and “Philadelphia” (1993), and a videotaped discussion with basketball star Magic Johnson and television host Arsenio Hall.

“We wanted to answer the question: How does popular culture reflect the moment?” said Franklin A. Robinson Jr., a curator with the Archives Center.

Bob Witeck, an activist and co-founder of a communications firm specializing in gay issues, said the Smithsonian observation is timely. “Right now 9/11 has to be explained to younger people — HIV and AIDS far more so.”

My cousin died in 1984. Before the US military “realized” they shouldn’t be so helpful to those dying of this disease. The Navy provided superb care – as well as they were able. They transferred him so he might die with his parents in their home.

Thanks, Ursarodinia

The close-knit community on the Mediterranean island of Malta could be on the verge of a fundamental change that may affect the very fabric of its society. In a referendum on Saturday, the citizens of this deeply Roman Catholic country will decide whether to introduce divorce.

Malta is the only country – apart from the Philippines and the Vatican City – where divorce cannot be carried out. Instead, people must either become domiciled abroad or, if one of the parties is not Maltese, they could apply for a divorce in their own country. That divorce can be recorded in Malta.

Couples can apply for a legal separation thought the courts, or seek a Church annulment – a complex process that can take up to nine years…

According to the Labour opposition leader Joseph Muscat – who is in favour of divorce – two legal separations a day pass through the Maltese courts. On top of this, the courts regularly record foreign divorces.

With at least 95% of a population of more than 400,000 being Roman Catholic, divorce has never made it past the strong religious beliefs of the Church, politicians and the public itself. But that might be about to change. Last year Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, an MP with the Nationalists, presented a private member’s bill along with Evarist Bartolo, an MP with the opposition Labour party…

Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando…thinks the current system is unjust. “Malta is the only country in the world which doesn’t have divorce but does recognise those obtained abroad. Therefore, if you have the means you can get divorced but if you don’t, then you can’t.

“This, to me, is unjust and unacceptable.”

Mr Orlando sees the referendum as more than just a vote on divorce – for him it’s a debate on the Church’s role in society and the amount of political and social influence that it carries in Malta.

“I appreciate the fact that the Church should be allowed to exercise spiritual influence, but I can’t accept a situation where the Church also wields political and administrative power,” he says.

Some parishioners say they have been told by their priests that they will be denied Holy Communion and confession if they vote for divorce, he continues.

“The local Catholic Church is going to suffer, even after the referendum.”

I hope there’s isn’t anyone out there who expected the Catholic Church to be any more willing to enter modern society – in Malta – than it is everywhere else in the real world. Individual freedom to choose, to live, is not allowed the flock by its shepherds.

UPDATE: The referendum passed. Bravo, Malta!

U.S. forces administered Muslim religious rites for Osama bin Laden aboard the USS Carl Vinson, pictured, on Monday in the Arabian Sea, a senior defense official said.

The official, who discussed the matter on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, declined to specify the methods of identification, but two Obama administration officials said DNA evidence confirmed the death.

The officials claimed the DNA evidence provides a match with 99.9% confidence…

The U.S. is believed to have collected DNA samples from bin Laden family members in the years since the 9/11 attacks that triggered the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan. It was unclear whether the U.S. also had fingerprints or some other means to identify the body on site…

The body was photographed before being buried at sea, although no images have been released by the Obama administration.

The U.S. official who disclosed the burial at sea said it would have been difficult to find a country willing to accept the remains. Obama said the remains had been handled in accordance with Islamic custom, which requires speedy burial…

Burial at sea also removes any focal point, access for worship by nutballs still devoted to Bin Laden’s murderous ideology.

It was not clear Monday whether the Obama administration intended to release its photos of bin Laden’s body.

In July 2003, when U.S. forces killed Saddam Hussein’s sons, Odai and Qusai, in a gunbattle in northern Iraq, the U.S. military released graphic after-death photographs in an effort to prove to Iraqis that they were dead.

I think most rational people know that jihadists aren’t especially interested in scientific proof. Evidence rarely means little to True Believers.

Immigration officials have arrested three people in connection with the charging of up to $60,000 to arrange fake marriages for illegal immigrants, authorities said.

In all, 21 suspicious visa petitions were traced back to the business, MPEagle Consultants, which is alleged to have charged $15,000 to $60,000 for its services, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said.

The three suspects — all members of one family — owns an immigration-consulting business that caters primarily to Indian nationals who sought marriage certificates and work visas, according to federal authorities.

Authorities said Ajit Kumar Bhargava, 61; his wife, Nisha Bhargava, 56; and their daughter, Runjhun Bhargava, 30; were arrested on suspicion of immigration fraud charges after being named in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court. They are Yorba Linda residents.

Federal authorities said they launched their investigation in September 2009 after they noticed suspicious similarities among the business’ visa applications. In some cases, the same “spouses” and marriage witnesses were used, according to authorities.

Looks like ripping off illegal aliens from India is a lot more profitable than ripping off illegal aliens from Mexico.

A dog rescued off the Japanese coast floating on top of a house is on her way back to her owner Monday.

The dog wagged its tail and jumped up to a woman described by local media as a relative of the owner as she collected her to deliver back to her family for what promises to be a warm reunion.

It turns out the lucky dog’s name is “Ban,” and she was originally living in Kessenuma before being separated from her master after the March 11 earthquake, tsunami and subsequent fire that swept through the coastal village…

An employee at the Miyagi Animal Care Center told CNN by phone that the owner had been staying in a temporary relocation center in Sendai since being evacuated from Kessenuma.

The 50-year-old man reportedly recognized Ban after footage of the brown and black dog was shown being hugged by Japanese rescue workers while being unloaded from a boat in Shiogama Port this past Friday.

Japanese Coast Guard teams had spotted Ban during a helicopter patrol over debris fields nearly two kilometers off shore. When a patrol boat got the hungry and shivering dog, they found no identification on her other than a brown collar.

Best news I’ve read, today.

Regular readers of this blog know how I feel about the importance, positive effects of humans and their companion relationship with other animals. Fortunately – for our species – I think most people feel that way.