Bangladesh police say fishermen have beaten to death 10 suspected pirates who were wounded in a gunfight with security forces.

Local police chief Bashir Ahmed says the wounded men were being brought to a police station late Wednesday when hundreds of angry fishermen snatched them from police and beat them to death.

He said Thursday that police were far outnumbered by the mob and could not save the suspected pirates.

The deaths occurred in southern Bhola district. The area is 65 miles (104 kilometers) south of the capital, Dhaka.

Piracy is common along the coast of Bangladesh. Fishermen complain that security forces are not doing enough to protect them from pirates.

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A wandering baby fur-seal wriggled through the cat-door of a Bay of Plenty house - and made himself at home on the couch.

A stunned Annette Swoffer thought she must have been hallucinating when she found the young pup hanging out with her cats in her kitchen on Sunday night.

The seal had made its way from the Welcome Bay waterfront, through the suburb's residential area, across busy Welcome Bay Rd, up a slip road, along Ms Swoffer's long driveway, under a gate, through the cat door and up some stairs before he was found in the kitchen about 9.30pm.

"I was in my office and I heard an awful racket down below... I thought the cats have brought a rabbit or something in so I went down and had a look - and there's a seal in my kitchen.

"I thought 'I'm hallucinating, this is just wrong'."

Stunned, Ms Swoffer called a friend who lives in a unit at the same property to come and verify what she was seeing.

"I'm looking and I'm definitely seeing flippers and not paws."

Calmly, the young pup then eased past Ms Swoffer's dog and cats before making himself at home on a couch and attempting to snuggle in for the night.

"Then it looks at me with those huge brown eyes. It was so cute, but I didn't touch it because you don't with wild animals."

Ms Swoffer called the SPCA.

"They were giggling away and I'm saying 'I'm not drunk, I'm not lying', there's a seal in my house."

The SPCA contacted the Department of Conservation, which was already looking for a seal reported hopping along Welcome Bay Rd.

Ms Swoffer said the pup was "really friendly" and not aggressive in the slightest - which is unusual for seals.

"I was standing there thinking 'this is really strange'," Ms Swoffer said.

Chris Clark, biodiversity programme manager for DOC, arrived to remove the young pup and release him back into the water.

It was not his first time doing so that day.

Mr Clark had already spent the afternoon capturing what he believed was the same seal after it traipsed through the Devonport Rd area between 11th and 12th Aves.

It ended up in a residential garden, scaring elderly residents.

He believed the pup had "obviously just weaned from its mum".

The pup had come up from Memorial Park and Mr Clark, with police help, eventually managed to coax it into a net and then release it into the Tauranga Harbour near Harbourside Restaurant that afternoon.

Mr Clark said that although seals can look "very cuddly", they were wild creatures and needed to be treated as such.

At Ms Swoffer's home, the seal was put in a net and box but as it was being driven away in the Doc vehicle, it escaped and made its way up to the front of the vehicle, accidentally turning on the radio and ending up on the front seat.

Mr Clark today said he was called out again about 9 o'clock last night after a seal was seen on Turret Rd but it had disappeared by the time he arrived.

Anyone who encounters a seal, or other wild animal, should call the DOC hotline 0800 DOC HOT before emergency services.

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A 10-year-old son of a woman who shot her two children and then killed herself during a police standoff at a Texas welfare office died on Thursday, a day after his sister succumbed to her wounds.

Timothy Grimmer died Thursday evening at a San Antonio hospital after he was removed from life support, Laredo police investigator Joe Baeza said. His sister Ramie, 12, who authorities say was also shot by mother Rachelle Grimmer, died Wednesday night at the same hospital.

Their father, Dale Grimmer, spent time at his son's bedside Thursday before consulting with doctors and deciding to pull Timothy off of life support, said Mary Lee Shepherd, the children's grandmother.

"He spent hours with Ramie and finally had to let her go," Shepherd said. "He's just concentrating on saying goodbye to his children."

Their mother, 38-year-old Rachelle Grimmer, shot the children Monday and then killed herself, ending a seven-hour standoff at the Texas Department of Health and Human Services office in Laredo. Authorities say she had asked to speak to a caseworker about why her food stamps application had been rejected and pulled a gun after being taken to a private room to speak.

Police say Grimmer let the roughly two dozen people in the building besides her children leave unharmed. During the standoff, she rattled off a litany of complaints about government, Baeza said.

The family had been living in a rundown trailer park, and Rachelle Grimmer had been seeking food stamps since July, shortly after they moved to Texas from Ohio.

The state Health and Human Services Commission released a timeline on Thursday of its contact with Rachelle Grimmer dating back to July 7, when Grimmer submitted an application for benefits.

At that point Grimmer was told she would not qualify for "emergency benefits," in which documentation requirements are postponed, because she said she received child support that exceeded her expenses for rent and utilities.

A caseworker interviewed Rachelle Grimmer July 22 to see if she was eligible for benefits. She was told then that she must provide documentation of her income, in this case child support.

"We closed the case on Aug. 8 because we hadn't received proof of her income," agency spokeswoman Stephanie Goodman said in an email. "If we had that, it's quite likely she would have been eligible for benefits."

On Nov. 16, Rachelle Grimmer called the agency's ombudsman to ask that someone look into her case. On Dec. 1, an agency supervisor called Grimmer, but got no answer and the voice mailbox was full.

Dale and Rachelle Grimmer divorced six or seven years ago, Shepherd said. Dale Grimmer flew to San Antonio Wednesday with his brother and father. She described him as shocked and devastated.

Shepherd said her former daughter-in-law had a history of mental illness and Dale Grimmer tried three times to have the children removed from her custody while they were living in Anaconda, Mont., and Ohio with no results.

"Many, many times he tried to tell people what was happening and nobody would listen," Shepherd said.

The Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services could not immediately verify her claims on Thursday.

Texas Department of Family and Protective Services reported finding two cases Wednesday involving Grimmer and her children.

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Despite a stark drop in the national unemployment rate reported Friday, economists warned it will take decades for the labor market to return to pre-recession employment levels if the economy's achingly slow growth continues.

The U.S. economy added 120,000 jobs in November -- falling short of economists' expectations -- while the unemployment rate dipped from 9.0 to 8.6 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday morning. But roughly half of the decline in the unemployment rate came from the 315,000 Americans who dropped out of the labor market last month, in part a reflection of the slow pace of the recovery, economists said.

"When unemployment is this high for this long, it's very likely that most of the people dropping out are doing so because they can't find work," said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, who has studied the shrinking labor force during the years since the recession began. "There is some movement here, that's true. But it's just so slow."

While November's job gains roughly kept pace with population growth, a more positive glimmer can be found in the upwards revisions of the past two months of employment growth. Job growth for September was revised up to 210,000 from 158,00, and October's gains were up to 100,000 from 80,000.

120,000 may not be 250,000 -- the lowest number most economists look to for a really healthy recovery -- but it's also better than zero, the headline number of new positions created in August, when fears of a double-dip recession really began to take hold.

"We've got a modest acceleration and more employment growth then we saw over the summer," said Nigel Gault, Chief US Economist at IHS Global Insight, a firm offering economic and financial analysis, forecasting and market intelligence.

Domestically, Gault said, things haven't turned out as bad as people feared. But the global picture emanating from Greece and China looks darker. "At the moment, the U.S. is doing better than most of the rest of the world. But let's say Europe drops into recession. How far and how long could we outperform them?"

Job gains came in retail, hospitality, health care and business services, with modest gains in temporary work -- which can sometimes be an indicator of future job growth. Manufacturing employment -- once heralded as the shining star of the recovery -- has remained essentially flat since July. Meanwhile, state and local government continued to shed jobs.

The job gains are not coming in primarily high-wage industries, and annual average wage growth is not keeping pace with inflation. Worker in the retail sector -- which had the biggest gains last month -- pull in median hourly wages of $10.94 an hour, according to the Labor Department, and that sector's growth is one factor that explains the 2 cents dip in average hourly earnings last month. Another key factor is that the weak labor market provides employees little leverage to bargain with their employers over pay, economists said.

Two million Americans have been out of work for 99 weeks or more -- up from 1.5 million last November -- according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The percentage of workers who are working part time but still seeking full-time work is also up from a year ago, according to a recent Gallup poll.

U.S. November Underemployment Up From a Year Ago

 

Editor's note: This article has been updated to reflect interviewing through Nov. 30. The general conclusions remain the same.

PRINCETON, NJ -- Underemployment, a measure that combines the percentage of workers who are unemployed with the percentage working part time but wanting full-time work, is 18.1% in November, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment. That is up from 17.8% a month ago and 17.2% a year ago. Many employers appear to have chosen to hire part-time rather than full-time employees for this holiday season.

Unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, is 8.5% in November -- up slightly from 8.4% in October, but down from 8.8% a year ago. Gallup's unemployment measure suggests the government is likely to report essentially no change for November 2011 in its seasonally adjusted unemployment rate.

An additional 9.6% of U.S. employees work part time but want full-time work, up from 9.4% in October. The current reading is significantly higher than the 8.4% of November 2010.

November Job Creation Index Remains Relatively Strong

Gallup's Job Creation Index for the week ending Nov. 27 is +15, based on 33% of workers nationwide saying their employers are hiring and 18% saying their employers are letting workers go. Gallup's Job Creation Index remains near its weekly high for the year (+16) and is consistent with jobless claims running below 400,000 during recent weeks. The index is far above the all-time weekly low of -11 measured in April 2009, but also below index values approaching +30 measured in early 2008, just after Gallup began tracking hiring and firing.

And the U.S. economy still needs to regain more than 6 million jobs lost during the recession -- plus some 4.6 million jobs to account for population growth -- to reach pre-recession employment.

It's stark numbers like these that have led economists to dub the years since the Great Recession officially ended "the jobless recovery."

"After previous recessions, hiring soared. What has come roaring back this time is profits. They've reached a peak," said Gary Burtless, an economist at the Brookings Institute.

While many Occupy Wall Street protest camps have been cleared around the country, the income inequality that brought thousands of Americans to the streets since mid-September remains as strong as ever, according to this latest government snapshot. And even if job growth began to rebound in coming months, that income inequality, which has been growing for decades now, would still remain.

"Even if we could magically return to where things were in 2007 and the issues of the housing market disappeared, we would still have the three decades of cumulative growing inequality problems," said Lawrence Katz, Professor of Economics at Harvard University.

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A Pakistani woman is being held on suspicion of killing her husband, cutting him up and trying to cook the pieces, Karachi police said Friday.

Zainab Bibi, 32, was arrested in connection with the murder Tuesday of her husband Ahmad Abbas, police said.

Her 22-year-old nephew, Zaheer Ahmed, is accused of helping Bibi stab Abbas to death and carve his body into small pieces.

Police said she wanted to cook her husband's body parts so she could dispose of them without being caught.

Neighbors raised the alert when they detected a foul odor in the neighborhood, police said.

Pakistan's domestic satellite channel ARY News spoke to Bibi in the police station where she is being held in the southern city of Karachi.

In an interview broadcast late Thursday, she claimed to have killed her husband because he wanted a physical relationship with their daughter -- and said she did not regret her actions.

"I killed my husband before he dared to touch my daughter," she told ARY News.

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Either Monday or Tuesday the Senate will vote on a bill that allows the US military to imprison civilians with no formal charges and hold them with no trial.

The ACLU reports even US citizens wouldn't be immune as the legislation aims to declare national territory part of the "battlefield" in the War on Terror.

Termed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and drafted behind closed doors by Senators Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) the NDAA would:

1) Explicitly authorize the federal government to indefinitely imprison without charge or trial American citizens and others picked up inside and outside the United States;

(2) Mandate military detention of some civilians who would otherwise be outside of military control, including civilians picked up within the United States itself; and

(3) Transfer to the Department of Defense core prosecutorial, investigative, law enforcement, penal, and custodial authority and responsibility now held by the Department of Justice.

From the ACLU's website:

In support of this harmful bill, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) explained that the bill will “basically say in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield” and people can be imprisoned without charge or trial “American citizen or not.” Another supporter, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) also declared that the bill is needed because “America is part of the battlefield.”

In an effort to stop the bill, Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) is floating the Udall Amendment, which according to the ACLU is:

"A way for the Senate to say no to indefinite detention without charge or trial anywhere in the world where any president decides to use the military. Instead of simply going along with a bill that was drafted in secret and is being jammed through the Senate, the Udall Amendment deletes the provisions and sets up an orderly review of detention power. It tries to take the politics out and put American values back in.

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This year's game marks the end of a rivalry that dates back to 1894 between the two biggest universities in the Lone Star State, as A&M is preparing to leave the Big 12 for the Southeastern Conference next summer. So the bonfire and other traditions at both universities hold special significance.
The game, which is in College Station this year, is the end of not only a sports rivalry but also a tradition deeply embedded in both the state and universities' identities. Earlier this year, Texas Governor Rick Perry, a onetime A&M yell leader who is now a Republican presidential candidate, joked that he had promised his wife, Texas First Lady Anita Perry, that he would avoid controversial topics such as A&M's decision to leave the Big 12.
"It's really about more than just football," said Travis Springer, a senior at A&M who helped organize the bonfire, which is made from wood collected and chopped by students over several months and is topped with an outhouse decorated in UT burnt orange. Because of a widespread burn ban in Texas, the structure will not be set ablaze for this year's ceremony, but students and fans are visiting the site before the game.
In Austin on Monday night, about 2,000 students decked out in burnt orange crowded in the center of the University of Texas campus holding candles for their own tradition called the Hex Rally. Student groups, cheerleaders, dancers and a school choir led the rally for the football team as the marching band played school songs. Parents put orange-clad children on their shoulders for a better view of the band and dancers.
Former UT football player Ahmad Brooks pointed out that Texas has won 75 of the 118 matchups between the two teams.
"This is one team we have beat more than any other team in America," Brooks said to the roaring crowd of students and alumni, many of whom had their faces painted orange and white. "So, anyway, we're good."
Texas Coach Mack Brown called the night "historic."
"This will be a night you remember for your kids and your grandkids," Brown said. "It will be something that will go down in history."
The Hex Rally dates back to 1941, when a group of students from Texas sought the advice of a fortune teller before facing A&M, which was undefeated that year leading up to the game. Madame Augusta Hipple told the students to burn red candles before the game to send a curse to their opponents. Following her advice, the Longhorns cruised to victory. The tradition continued and eventually became an official university event in the 1980s.
The A&M bonfire dates back to 1909, but became disassociated with the university after the then-55-foot-high bonfire collapsed in 1999, killing 12. That year, Texas A&M won the Thanksgiving game against Texas, playing with determination. The bonfire is now run and organized independently from the university with a smaller structure than the one that toppled 11 years ago.

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This is The Link to the Video

http://my.news.yahoo.com/video/sports-26298721/oklahoma-state-coaches-die-in-plane-crash-27305465.html

A former Oklahoma state senator was piloting the small plane that crashed in central Arkansas, killing Oklahoma State women's basketball coach Kurt Budke and his assistant Miranda Serna.

Olin Branstetter, 82, and his wife Paula were the other two passengers killed aboard the plane Thursday. FAA records show Branstetter, a veteran pilot, was the owner of the single-engine plane, which crashed in Perry County, about 45 miles west of Little Rock.

Budke and Serna were in Arkansas on a recruiting trip.

A deer hunter's wife called 911 at about 4:30 p.m. local time after the plane crashed into a steep ridge in a rugged area of national forest land, according to the report.

"She saw the airplane swirling. It basically nose-dived and crashed," said Mike Surrett, chief deputy criminal investigator at the Perry County Sheriff's Department.

"They were ejected. Debris was scattered over about a 300 or 400 yard area."

The wreckage was located at about 6:00 p.m. local time by a police helicopter. The cause of the crash is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Budke, 50, had been the Cowgirls' coach since 2005. Serna had worked as Budke's assistant for seven seasons, including time with him at Louisiana Tech University.

The school announced the team's games on Saturday and Sunday would be canceled in the wake of the crash.

"The Oklahoma State family is devastated by this tragedy," university president Burns Hargins said in a statement.

"Our hearts and prayers go out to the families of Kurt Budke, Miranda Serna and the other victims. Kurt was an exemplary leader and a man of character who had a profound impact on his student-athletes. He was an outstanding coach and a wonderful person. We send our deepest sympathies to his wife, Shelley, and their children, Sara, Alex and Brett."

The tragedy is the second in a decade to devastate the Stillwater, Okla., campus.

In 2001, a plane carrying members of the Oklahoma State men's basketball team crashed in a snowstorm in Colorado as the team returned from a game. Ten people, including two players, the team's radio play-by-play broadcaster, and several other athletic department employees, were killed.

Athletic director Mike Holder named Jim Littell as the team's interim head coach. Littell had been associate head coach.

"We are shocked by this terrible loss," Holder said. "Kurt Budke was an incredibly positive influence on his players and was a tremendous coach. He quickly turned our program around and put Cowgirl basketball on the map. Miranda was a tireless worker and great recruiter."

Budke went 80-16 at Louisiana Tech before arriving in Stillwater, where he turned around the Cowgirls program, going 112-83 in his six seasons. The team was 0-16 in Big 12 play during Budke's first year, but in 2009-10 the Cowgirls won 24 games and finished with a top 10 ranking for the first time in school history.

The team opened the season with a 96-60 victory over Rice on Sunday.

Serna played for Budke when he was at Trinity Valley (Texas) Community College in the 1990s and was the Cowgirls' recruiting coordinator.

The tragedy comes as Oklahoma State's undefeated and second-ranked football team prepares to play Friday night at Iowa State.

This is sad they were the heart of the team!

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After other claims of extraterrestrial life turning up in Siberia, the latest is from a Russian woman who says she kept a frozen alien corpse in her fridge.
The mysterious 'lifeform' was reportedly kept by Marta Yegorovnam in her fridge in the western Russian city of Petrozavodsk for two years, while she took five pictures to prove its existence.

The 'body', the third alien sighting in Russian in recent months, was reportedly retrieved by Miss Yegorovnam from a UFO crash site near her summer house in 2009.
She says she approached the flaming wreckage and crumpled metal which she described as 'unbearably hot' and near the twisted hulk lay the dead alien.

The 'creature' is two feet long, has an enormous head, large bulbous eyes and an appearance somewhere between a fish and a humanoid.
It also appears to have what looks like a string-like arm protruding from its body.

Students Timur Hilall, 18, and Kirill Vlasov, 19, admitted their 'find' was just a stunt and the alien was made from bread

Proof at last? This screen grab shows an apparent UFO on the ground in Siberia earlier this year with what appears to be an unearthly being to its right and four other beings directly in front of the glowing craft

Naturally, Miss Yegorovnam did what most would in the same situation and stored the alien in her fridge for two years, according to Unexplained Mysteries.

The website reported that two men turned up at her home a few days ago and confiscated the corpse for investigative purposes, claiming to be from the Karelian Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The footage was unearthed by noted paranormal writer and expert Michael Cohen.

Mr Cohen, 40, said: 'This could be an elaborate hoax, however the possibility that this might be a genuine alien should not be discounted.

'Russia is a hotbed of UFO activity and possible alien craft has been tracked by both military and civilian agencies.

'In all likelihood most alien beings would look strange to us, much like this specimen.'

This latest claim from Russia comes after footage filmed in August in the remote Irkutsk region of Siberia appeared to show a strange glowing craft and five aliens walking about in the snow.

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Searching for buried treasure in the San Francisco Bay Area is hardly a straightforward endeavor.

The most obvious spot to look is Treasure Island, but that was only constructed by the federal government in the 1930s--making it an unlikely candidate to find anything more substantial than a few pairs of trendy sunglasses accidentally dropped by concertgoers during the island's yearly music festival.

Drake's Bay, the oft-rumored West Marin hideout of famed British pirate Sir Francis Drake, seems like a better bet; however, the most famous piece of treasure ever found there, a brass plaque supposedly left by Drake himself, was later proven to be an elaborate hoax.

That pretty much leaves aspiring Northern California treasure hunters with only one option: storage units in Contra Costa County sold by reality television stars.

As unlikely as it sounds, when a San Jose man looked through the contents of a storage locker he bought from Dan and Laura Dotson, the hosts of the A&E reality series "Storage Wars," he was shocked to discover a chest filled with 1,700 gold doubloons valued at $500,000.

It's common practice in California for the contents of a storage unit to be auctioned off when the renter misses three consecutive months of payment. The unit's previous lessee was an elderly woman who passed away earlier this year. Payments lapsed after her death and the storage facility turned to the Dotsons' company, American Auctioneers, to handle the sale of the items left inside.

The lucky treasure hunter has declined to identify himself publicly. "I called the buyer, and the buyer wanted nothing to do with [publicity]," Dan Dotson told the San Jose Mercury News. "I talked with the manager of the storage unit and asked, 'Can I mention you,' and he said no. So I would like to share, but it would absolutely cost me an account."

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

The buyer purchased the unit for about $1,100, Dotson said. He also bought another unit owned by the same person for about $600. "He did a seasoned buyer move by buying both units," she said. "He also had a skilled eye to buy that unit with the Rubbermaid totes because whatever was inside was probably worth more than what's inside a cardboard box."

The box allegedly weighed so much it took three people to pick it up, which was a clue that something valuable was inside--or at least something heavy.

Unfortunately, American Auctioneers only videotapes a fraction of their up to 3,000 auction each year, and this one wasn't caught on tape.

The premiere of the second season of "Storage Wars" hits the air this Tuesday night at 10pm on A&E. Take a look at a preview below:

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The Texas duo was arrested on drug charges last Monday after a cop was summoned to a Whataburger, where a male acquaintance of Arie and Windham was passed out.

Arie, 44, who admitted providing the unconscious man with Hydrocodone, was arrested for delivery of a controlled substance. Windham, 30, was collared on a possession rap after he was found with the painkiller Soma. The pair was cuffed and stuffed into a police cruiser for the trip to get booked.

That’s when things got interesting, according to a spokesperson for Montgomery County Constable Precinct 4. When the officer looked in his rear view mirror, he “could no longer see Tina Arie,” who subsequently explained that she was resting her head in Windham’s lap because she was “tired.”

Suspicious, the officer pulled over to the side of the road to further investigate, according to a press statement. He discovered that, “despite being handcuffed behind their backs,” the pair were engaged in a sexual act. Windham’s jeans were undone “and Arie was servicing his exposed genitalia.”

It is unclear how Windham’s jeans were unfastened--or whether teeth were somehow involved in the undoing of said britches. A spokesperson said she was unaware whether the jeans were of the zipper or button-fly variety.

The lewd Houdini act (Lewdini?) abrupty ended when the cop “ordered them to cease sexual contact.” Though Arie and Windham could have faced an additional public indecency charge, they apparently caught a break when investigators opted not to tack on a misdemeanor count to the more serious felony narcotics charges.

Ain't no crime in a lil bump'n grind!

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Police flooded into the New York cradle of the US anti-Wall Street movement early morning driving out demonstrators and tearing down the tent camp in what officials said was a temporary eviction. The surprise crackdown at the birthplace of the movement, launched after similar evictions in other cities, signaled a tougher line by US authorities towards the two-month old protests against Wall Street and Washington elites.

Watch live streaming video from globalrevolution at livestream.com

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The used Chrysler minivan came fully loaded, with power steering, foldaway seats, tinted windows -- and half a million dollars' worth of cocaine.

San Jose psychologist Charles Preston had no clue there was a cellophane-wrapped stash of "snow" hidden inside the frame when he bought the pristine-condition, 2008 van last year from Thrifty Car Sales in Santa Clara. True, the windows wouldn't roll down all the way. But he had no reason to suspect it was because the door panels were crammed with kilos of coke.
He found out 15 months later when he went to a mechanic to get his brakes checked, and immediately turned the contraband over to police. Now, he's terrified a drug cartel still may be gunning for it.
"People make jokes -- oh, you should have sold it," Preston said of the cocaine. "But honestly, I've never been so scared in my life, even when I was mugged in New York."
San Jose police said Preston's worries about the unusual discovery are warranted.
"It's absolutely dangerous," said Sgt. Jason Dwyer, a police spokesman. "If somebody is motivated to track down that van and doesn't want any witnesses, then some physical harm could come to the owner. That's a lot of dope to be misplaced."
Preston bought the van in May 2010 for what he figured was a bargain -- $14,000 in cash -- and uses it to haul food he pays for out of his own salary to feed people living on the street.

The moment he drove the white van off the lot, he 
noticed the window on the driver's side wouldn't quite go down all the way and the passenger's side window also stuck a little. But he figured he could live with it since the Town and Country van had an excellent air-conditioning system. He also said he'd never bought a used car before, so he didn't realize he might have been able to bring it right back to the dealer for a free repair.

'My hands went numb'

About 15 months later, in August, the brakes started making funny noises, so he brought the van to DHT Collision & Service Center in downtown San Jose to have it checked.

When he went to pick it up, one of the managers said he noticed the window problem and offered to check it out.
"This insulation isn't supposed to be here," the manager said, digging behind the panel. But it soon became clear that the tablet-sized objects wrapped in purple and clear cellophane weren't installed by the manufacturer.
"I'm, like, dumbfounded," said Preston, who works at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. "Honest to God, my hands went numb."
Police quickly arrived and found 14 packages of cocaine hidden in the doors. After impounding the van for closer examination, they found five more above the back wheels, Preston said.
"They told me, 'You're so lucky, you'd be in jail for the rest of your life if you got searched in a traffic stop and they found this.' "

But they also told him something chilling: Take the van back in to the repair shop to check for tracking devices because somebody is probably looking for it. Then get rid of it.
When Preston tried to return the coke-mobile to Thrifty Car Sales this summer for one without drugs, he said a manager was anything but solicitous. She told him he could trade in the van, but only for the current Blue Book value -- about $4,000 less by his estimation than he originally paid. He had put about 6,000 miles on the van.
Preston refused to take a loss on the vehicle.
"It took me a long time to save the $14,000 for the van," he said. "I should get what I paid for it in trade-in value."
Ron Battistella, the owner of Thrifty Car Sales, said that's not what he wanted conveyed to Preston, and he's now willing to replace the van with a drug-free ride.
Preston can't wait.
"I just want to get rid of the van. I don't want it in front of my house," he said. "Somebody could just come and want the car and run me off the road. When I drive now, I'm always looking around."

Origin unknown

Police have been unable to track down the cocaine's history or identify the dealers. It previously had been owned by a rental car agency so it's conceivable someone who rented it packed it with cocaine.

"The way it was packaged is indicative of a long-distance transport, perhaps across state lines or from Mexico to the U.S.," Dwyer said. "It could even be from one side of town to the other, depending on how paranoid the dealers are. They might do that in the off chance they got pulled over."
If there's one silver lining, Preston said, it's that the story could be an asset in social situations.
"When someone says, 'Tell me about yourself,' " he said, "I'll finally have something interesting to talk about."

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Over the past 30 years, politicians, sports stars and community leaders heaped praise on Jerry Sandusky and the charity he founded for troubled youngsters, The Second Mile. It was a model program, and the acclaimed football coach was its driving force.

Now, prosecutors say that very success enabled Sandusky to find boys and sexually assault them.

Sandusky, 67, was charged last weekend with molesting eight boys over a 15-year period in a scandal that rocked the Penn State campus and brought down the university’s beloved football coach, Joe Paterno.

In the aftermath, some are wondering if The Second Mile can survive amid questions about its role in the alleged cover-up.

Sandusky was a star assistant coach at Penn State from the 1970s to the 1990s, and many assumed he would lead the team one day, or even head to pro football. He founded The Second Mile in 1977 for youngsters from broken homes and troubled backgrounds, building it into an organization that helped as many as 100,000 children a year through camps and fundraisers.

Among the big-time athletic figures listed as honorary directors were Cal Ripken Jr., Arnold Palmer, former Pittsburgh Steeler Franco Harris and Philadelphia Eagles coach Andy Reid. President George W. Bush praised the group as a “shining example” of charity work in a 1990 letter. (Sandusky’s reaction: “It’s about time, George! This is long overdue,” he recalled in his autobiography, “Touched.”)

But prosecutors said that running the charity gave Sandusky “access to hundreds of boys, many of whom were vulnerable due to their social situations.”

He invited youngsters for overnight sleepovers at his home and took them to restaurants and bowl games. He wrestled in the swimming pool with kids who craved the attention. And he gave them gifts: golf clubs, sneakers, dress clothes, a computer and money, according to the indictment from the Pennsylvania attorney general.

The good-guy aura around Sandusky was so great that when some children questioned behavior that didn’t seem right, no one took the complaints seriously.

Troy Craig recalled attending a weeklong sleep-away camp run by The Second Mile on the Penn State campus in the early 1990s. He was never sexually abused, but in other ways the coach’s behavior seemed inappropriate at the time, said Craig, 33, who is now a disc jockey in State College.

Sandusky “had a way of, whether it was a hug or a hand on the leg in the car as we were driving, or just a way of putting his arm around you,” Craig said. “I said this back then to people I knew. Everybody found it hard to believe, or that I was overreacting. I remember feeling as if I was the only one that thought anything was amiss.”

Through his attorney, Sandusky has maintained his innocence.

Experts on pedophiles aren’t surprised by the stories that have shocked so many people.

Richard J. Gelles, dean of the school of Social Policy & Practice at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and author of several books on abuse and violence in families, said pedophiles typically engage in a “grooming” process in which they select a potential victim and proceed to “break down the inhibitions and establish trust.” Gelles said it is no accident so many people saw a “good” Jerry Sandusky.

Sandusky “covered himself by being so beloved that nobody would think he would do something as awful as this,” Gelles said.

The mother of one alleged victim told the Centre Daily Times that that disconnect enraged her.

“I just lived with this for so long, and it killed me when people talked about him like he was a god, and I knew he was a monster,” said the woman, whose name has not been released.

Thomas Day was 15 when he began a Second Mile fitness program in 1996. Scrawny and not doing that well in school, he was suddenly getting one-on-one encouragement from big college football players who helped run the program. Day met Sandusky only a few times but remembers him as a mythical figure around The Second Mile.

“I remember being kind of envious of kids who got to spend more time around him,” said Day, who never witnessed any abuse.

Day said he has trouble sleeping this week because of the scandal.

“These guys took me in and made me in to the man I am today,” Day said. He went on to work as a mentor with the program, served with the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq, and is working on his second master’s degree at the University of Chicago.

Sandusky also had the support of many other powerful figures in the community. The group’s current board includes state Sen. Jake Corman, and attorneys, prominent business leaders, and community volunteers. Corman didn’t respond to a message seeking comment.

The grand jury said that Penn State officials in 2002 told Jack Raykovitz, executive director of The Second Mile, that there had been an issue with Sandusky and a minor. But the charity took no action against Sandusky because, it said this week, Penn State did not find any wrongdoing.

And in 1998, Sandusky was investigated after he was accused of “behaving in a sexually inappropriate manner” with a boy in a shower at the football team’s facilities, the grand jury said. The report said an attorney for Second Mile who was also university counsel, Wendell Courtney, was aware of the allegations.

Phone calls seeking comment from Courtney on Saturday rang unanswered, and emails sent to him were returned as undeliverable.

The Second Mile said that Sandusky told the organization in 2008 he was being investigated, and that from then on the charity separated him from programs involving youths.

But the word about Sandusky may not have reached other youth programs he was involved with.

Sandusky held summer football camps – both at Penn State satellite campuses and at other Pennsylvania schools – for years after he was banned from taking youths onto the main campus by the school’s athletics director and senior vice president. Both officials have now been charged with failing to tell police about a 2002 allegation that Sandusky had sexually assaulted a boy in the showers of the football building.

Sandusky held the football camps through his Sandusky Associates company from 2000 to 2008 at Penn State’s Behrend satellite campus near Erie. There were never any complaints, according to a spokesman. Still, Behrend’s athletics director said he wishes someone had told him about the 2002 allegation.

“You definitely would know that person doesn’t belong here on the campus,” Brian Streeter said. “It’s a sick feeling even to think about it.”

The very success of The Second Mile meant there was plenty of money for Sandusky to lavish on boys. A review of tax forms filed by The Second Mile shows that out of almost $3.3 million in revenue during the 2008-09 year, salaries, wages, and payments to directors totaled almost $1.4 million, along with $190,000 for “camp food” and $288,000 for “other expenses.”

Sandusky is no longer on the payroll; his last payment was $57,000 in 2007-08, according to tax records. Over the years the payments to Sandusky totaled hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Records from The Second Mile show that the organization asks staff members and volunteers to sign a statement affirming they have never been suspected of child abuse. They must also submit a criminal background check. Officials from the Second Mile didn’t respond to a question about whether any such checks were ever done on Sandusky.

The Second Mile said in a statement that it has done “everything in our power to cooperate with law-enforcement officials.” But Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly said that during the grand jury investigation there was an “uncooperative atmosphere” from some officials at Penn State and The Second Mile. And Gov. Tom Corbett said he believes there will be an investigation into what Second Mile officials knew.

Deborah Small, an associate professor of marketing and psychology at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, said she doesn’t think The Second Mile will survive the scandal.

“There’s too much moral hypocrisy going on,” she said. “No one’s going to want to be associated with them.”

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Reporting from Bastrop, Texas, and Los Angeles—

Beleaguered firefighters battling one of the most destructive Texas fire seasons on record found themselves punished not only by searing weather, but by lax brush clearance and dwindling budgets.

With no end in sight to scores of blazes — the largest had burned 785 homes and was only 30% contained Wednesday — fire officials pleaded for more equipment, and experts urged property owners to do a better job of protecting their homes.

"We needed resources yesterday," Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said, noting that he and Gov. Rick Perry — who was in California for a debate of GOP presidential contenders — were requesting that the federal government declare the state a major disaster area.

President Obama called Perry to assure the governor that requests for additional assistance would be quickly assessed, the White House said. Officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency were in Texas preparing financial assessments to help pay the cost of fighting the fires.

It is unclear what the federal government's share of the cost will be. In the last week, FEMA agreed to cover 75% of the expenses of fighting eight fires across the state.

The Texas Forest Service has been spending about $1.5 million a day on fighting the fires this week, agency spokesman Gary Lacox said. That does not include spending by local fire districts and volunteer fire departments.

As state officials scrambled to summon resources, the magnitude of the wildfires — at least 122 as of Wednesday — continued to overwhelm even the most experienced firefighters.





Officials in hard-hit Bastrop County were confident that firefighters would gain control of the state's largest and most destructive blaze as winds ease and residents are allowed back into fire-ravaged neighborhoods, perhaps by week's end. Some residents had done little to prepare for fire.

Ken Gold, a battalion chief from Denton, said residents in a subdivision burned by the Bastrop fire east of Austin had left homes blanketed in six-inch piles of pine needles as dry as matchsticks.

"They kind of let nature be nature," Gold said. "It didn't seem very fire-aware."

The loss of one blue house particularly pained him.

It was a single-story, wood-frame home with a yard full of pine trees. He and his crew spent an hour scraping away pine needles and hosing down the area with water from an above-ground pool. Before he could finish, the fire snaked through the 30-foot-tall pine trees behind him.

"I was calling for help," Gold said. "But everyone was busy somewhere else."

Flames crept within a few feet of the crew.

"Then it got real hot real fast and we had to go," Gold said.

About two hours later, he returned. There was nothinPresident Obama called Perry to assure the governor that requests for additional assistance would be quickly assessed, the White House said. Officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency were in Texas preparing financial assessments to help pay the cost of fighting the fires.

It is unclear what the federal government's share of the cost will be. In the last week, FEMA agreed to cover 75% of the expenses of fighting eight fires across the state.

The Texas Forest Service has been spending about $1.5 million a day on fighting the fires this week, agency spokesman Gary Lacox said. That does not include spending by local fire districts and volunteer fire departments.

As state officials scrambled to summon resources, the magnitude of the wildfires — at least 122 as of Wednesday — continued to overwhelm even the most experienced firefighters.

Officials in hard-hit Bastrop County were confident that firefighters would gain control of the state's largest and most destructive blaze as winds ease and residents are allowed back into fire-ravaged neighborhoods, perhaps by week's end. Some residents had done little to prepare for fire.

Ken Gold, a battalion chief from Denton, said residents in a subdivision burned by the Bastrop fire east of Austin had left homes blanketed in six-inch piles of pine needles as dry as matchsticks.

"They kind of let nature be nature," Gold said. "It didn't seem very fire-aware."

The loss of one blue house particularly pained him.

It was a single-story, wood-frame home with a yard full of pine trees. He and his crew spent an hour scraping away pine needles and hosing down the area with water from an above-ground pool. Before he could finish, the fire snaked through the 30-foot-tall pine trees behind him.

"I was calling for help," Gold said. "But everyone was busy somewhere else."

Flames crept within a few feet of the crew.

"Then it got real hot real fast and we had to go," Gold said.

About two hours later, he returned. There was nothing left but some propane tanks and the pool. All Gold could do was sit in the driveway and stare.

The Bastrop fire forced thousands of residents to evacuate and killed two people. Michael Farr, 48, who worked for Austin's electrical department, was found dead at his home in Smithville. The other body was found several miles away and had not been identified late Wednesday.

Lake Travis Fire Rescue Chief Jim Linardos, a Redondo Beach native who worked for years in the North Lake Tahoe area, said Central Texas faced some of the same wildfire risks as California, but lacked the fire-prevention efforts and resources that help California firefighters immediately tackle blazes.
g left but some propane tanks and the pool. All Gold could do was sit in the driveway and stare.

The Bastrop fire forced thousands of residents to evacuate and killed two people. Michael Farr, 48, who worked for Austin's electrical department, was found dead at his home in Smithville. The other body was found several miles away and had not been identified late Wednesday.

Lake Travis Fire Rescue Chief Jim Linardos, a Redondo Beach native who worked for years in the North Lake Tahoe area, said Central Texas faced some of the same wildfire risks as California, but lacked the fire-prevention efforts and resources that help California firefighters immediately tackle blazes.

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