Wednesday, February 18, 2009
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Chris Brown going through fall out over allegations of abuse
Day 2 of the Chris Brown-Rihanna episode was fairly calm compared to its opening gambit.
Rihanna is recovering from her wounds, whatever they are, while Chris Brown must deal with the fallout from a percolating scandal.
Already he’s been dropped from a Wrigley’s gum campaign. But that’s just the tip of what could be an ugly iceberg.
Brown is now scheduled for an arraignment in the first week of March. Some reports question whether or not some kind of plea bargain will occur before that date. In many cases, especially with celebrities, jail can be avoided with big fines, public acts of contrition, and heartfelt visits to Oprah.
But those things can only work if everyone’s on the same page. It’s so far unclear if Rihanna will be willing forgive and forget. In the future both singers will be targeted for questions about what brought them in a rented Lamborghini to Hancock Park, got them into enough of a squabble to exit the supercar and have a fight on the street resulting in physical injury to Rihanna.
So far, publicists and lawyers have remained silent on the subject of what occurred. The only thing the handlers have going for them is that this happened in Los Angeles, where there is no tabloid press and an incurious mainstream press. If Chris and Rihanna had tussled in the New York tri-state area, I assure you, we would already know every detail of what happened.
And while Rihanna is the alleged victim in this scenario, it’s not the first time she’s made news in the last year. Last August, she accused her business manager of leaving her with no money in the bank. A brief public scuffle took place in the press, although there was no immediate solution other than the business manager getting fired.
Family of four to spend only $1,500 for one year
A family of four is trying to spend just $1,500 for their groceries, household items, and personal care expenses for an entire year and detail their attempt in a blog.
To accomplish their goal Heather and Bourne Spooner have developed a new system of shopping that includes stockpiling foods and paying close attention to coupons and sales, MyFOXBoston.com reported.
“My first inclination was, wow, that’s not that much money,'” Bourne told MyFOXBoston.com. “But, hey, if we can do it it’ll save us a lot of money.”
And save they have. The couple said so far this year their average grocery bill is only $125 a month, MyFOXBoston.com reported.
In addition to clipping coupons, the Spooners shop at specific stores for certain items and have adjusted the way they plan meals.
“If I have chicken and ground beef and cucumbers and carrots and peppers that I need to use this week, then I’ll take all of that and I will look for recipes for those items,” Heather told MyFOXBoston.com.
The Spooners also have sworn off dining out until their wedding anniversary, on Dec. 28.
McGrady out for the season
McGrady had an MRI on Wednesday, two nights after he went 1-for-9 from the field in Houston's 124-112 loss in Milwaukee. He sat out most of January to rest his knee, but said it's started to bother him again in the two weeks since he returned.
"The last couple of games, I've regressed," McGrady said during halftime of Wednesday's game. "I've felt pain."
The seven-time All-Star has missed a total of 17 games with soreness in the knee, the lingering effects of arthroscopic surgery last May. He visited renowned orthopedist James Andrews in December, after team doctor Tom Clanton said McGrady was suffering from general soreness in the knee.
"Everything's the same," McGrady said. "That's the problem."
The Rockets said McGrady is "expected to seek additional medical opinions in the coming days" and that his status will be reevaluated after the All-Star break.
McGrady said he's optimistic about returning this season. He said no doctor has so far suggested that he should sit out the rest of the year to let the knee heal once and for all. McGrady said he would only consider more surgery as a last resort.
"I have to, for myself and for this team, fix the problem to where I don't have it anymore," McGrady said. "I'm just trying to get all the information I can, to try to get back."
The Rockets said before Wednesday's game that the MRI earlier in the day revealed "no change in his left knee from prior diagnosis." McGrady acknowledged that he's suffering from the same injury that's bothered him all season.
"We'll see what happens after the All-Star break," he said. "I've been getting some good news and getting some bad news, some different views. I'm confused."
A new way to save fuel?
A mechanic in Sandy who took a look at the gas tank discovered about 35 pounds of pot, which Sandy police say is worth about $35,000. The packages of drugs were wrapped in plastic and could have been in the tank for several months.
The Nissan Armada had several different owners and was once a rental car. Police are trying to figure out who stashed the drugs in the tank. Police say the current owner is not a suspect.
Plane crash in NY nieghborhood still under investigation
Investigators say so far that it appears the pilot of Continental Connection Flight 3407 did nothing wrong before the final violent plunge to Earth in icy weather. Experts pointed out Tuesday that he had flown thousands of hours in a similar plane, which would have prepared him for such conditions.
The actions and even the lives of Capt. Marvin Renslow, 47, of Tampa, Fla., and the first officer, Rebecca Lynne Shaw, 24, of Seattle, are under close scrutiny as the National Transportation Safety Board tries to piece together how a routine flight went fatally wrong in its last 26 seconds.
The NTSB will look into the type of training they received, how they performed, how many hours they flew in the seven days before the crash, how much rest they had and what they did in the 72 hours before the accident, said board member Steve Chealander. That includes whether they drank any alcohol or took drugs.
Another NTSB investigator left in Buffalo will focus on any role the wintry weather had. Other investigators stayed in Buffalo to interview pilots who had recently flown with Renslow and Shaw; many fly regularly into the area.
With no obvious answer to the crash, the NTSB was preparing for a yearlong study of everything related to the plane and its cockpit crew to find out what combination of factors can eventually be blamed for the disaster.
The Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 was about six miles from Buffalo Niagara International Airport and on autopilot Thursday night when it lost its ability to fly, pitched sharply up and down and side to side before smashing into a home and bursting into flames, killing all 49 people aboard and a man in the house.
All but 20 percent of the plane had been removed from the site by Tuesday, NTSB chief investigator Lorenda Ward said. Crews finished gathering human remains Tuesday afternoon, said Dr. Scott Zimmerman of the Erie County Health Department said.
No evidence of a malfunction of the plane has emerged, Ward said.
The Colgan Air crew took a cautious approach to the flight, engaging deicing equipment 11 minutes after the flight left Newark, N.J., and leaving it on until the plane crashed, Chealeander said.
It appears Renslow disregarded the NTSB's and his airline's recommendation that autopilot not be used in icy conditions, Chealander said, adding that the decision did not violate airline rules because shutting off the autopilot is required only in severe icing conditions.
Renslow had begun flying the Dash 8 in December, accumulating 110 hours since then; Shaw had 774 hours in the plane model. Chealander stressed that pilots must train rigorously every time they switch plane types and that the relative lack of hours would not be considered significant.
Pilots are ordered to do about five weeks of training on a new aircraft, including oral examinations, simulator training and required time flying with another certified pilot, Chealander said.
"The training is very strict," he said. He said he sweated all five times he tested for a new aircraft.
"I still get nervous for it," Chealander said.
Colgan Air, based in Manassas, Va., did not return a call Tuesday seeking comment on training procedures. Renslow had 3,000 hours of flying experience with Colgan over 3 1/2 years, which is nearly the maximum a pilot can fly over that period of time under government regulations.
Shirley Phillips, associate professor of aviation sciences at Daniel Webster College in Nashua, N.H., has piloted a plane that Renslow had a lot of experience flying. It was a Saab twin-engine turboprop, a type Renslow flew for thousands of hours before he switched late last year to the Dash 8.
"They're both turboprops," she said. "As far as flying in icing conditions there really isn't anything you would do differently. The deicing mechanisms are the same."
The rules for flying in ice would also be the same, she said, adding that Renslow might have made a mistake when he opted to stay on autopilot even after noticing significant icing on the wings and windshield, as indicated by recordings.
Phillips also said it was not encouraging that an automatic safety mechanism meant to prevent a stall forced the autopilot off just before the plane hurtled earthward.
"The airplane shouldn't have gotten to those conditions where it turned the autopilot off," Phillips said.
Johnny Summers, a pilot on a Boeing 737 who has also flown turboprop planes, said flying in ice is fairly routine; planes are designed for it and pilots trained for it. However, Summers recalled that a few years ago, while flying a Twin Otter into Colorado Springs, he was forced to land about 60 miles short because of severe ice. The aircraft is a twin-engine turboprop that seats as many as eight, while the Dash 8 Renslow was flying could seat 74.
He could not remember whether the crew turned off the autopilot, but said all deicing and anti-icing equipment was immediately turned on.
"I wasn't nervous about it," Summers said. "It's not that spooky of a thing."
John Hansman, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who specializes in flight safety, said it was fair to focus on the autopilot as an issue because "that is the only thing so far that is against recommended procedures."
The NTSB's Ward said the agency was sending investigators across the country to interview those who supervised Renslow and Shaw and anyone who had trained them.
"In most investigations, people describe the flight crew as being very good," she said.
Investigators, though, know that the challenges in a sky emergency might be beyond anyone's capabilities.
"It comes down to, we're all human," she said.
Chimpanzee attack prompts new pet law
Police shot and killed a 200-pound chimpanzee in Connecticut Monday after it attacked a 55-year-old woman, leaving her in critical condition with major, "life-altering" injuries to her face and hands.
Police say Charla Nash was visiting the home of the primate's owner, 70-year-old Sandra Herold, when the chimp attacked. Herold saved her friend's life by stabbing the 14-year-old chimpanzee with a knife and bludgeoning him with a shovel. The chimp was eventually killed by a police officer who responded to a 911 call and shot the animal as it opened the door and entered his patrol car.
Herold says she loved her chimp, Travis, like a child, and she has reportedly called the incident a "freak thing." But animal experts say chimpanzees are enormously powerful primates that, though highly evolved, remain wild animals despite attempts to domesticate them.
"Travis is just one story out of many, and all of them end badly," Dr. Virginia Landau, vice president of The Jane Goodall Institute and director of its Chimpanzoo Program, told FOXNews.com.
"He wanted to be the boss. In the wild, he'd be working his way up the social ladder and be taking on females in the group to make them more submissive."
Landau estimated that up to 400 chimpanzees are kept as pets in the U.S. They have "dagger-like" canine teeth, Landau said, and any attack can prove fatal. And at 200 pounds — well above the average weight of an adult male chimpanzee in the wild — Travis was likely very imposing.
"It's a weapon in the wild," Landau said of the animal's large canine teeth. "It's a nasty hurt and they have a special jaw set up to allow their teeth to rip into flesh. It's not something you want to be on the receiving end of."
Following Monday's attack, which Herold reportedly called "horrific," two U.S. congressmen — Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., and Mark Kirk, R-Ill. — and The Humane Society of the United States renewed calls for the passage of the Captive Primate Safety Act. If passed, the bill would make it illegal to buy or transport a pet primate across state lines.
The measure — introduced in 2005 two weeks after a man was mauled by two chimpanzees in California — passed the House of Representatives in June by a vote of 302 to 96. It also passed a Senate committee, but it was not enacted before Congress adjourned. Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and David Vitter, R-La., who introduced a Senate version of the bill, did not immediately return requests for comment Wednesday.
"The tragedy that took place in Connecticut definitely highlights the problem of people keeping primates as pets and will hopefully spur calls at the federal level for action," said Beth Preiss, director of the Humane Society's Exotic Pets Campaign. "There's a real need for action."
Preiss said the bill has stalled in Congress, apparently due to a lack of visibility on the issue.
"There are other priorities," she said. "But if people thought this wasn’t a real problem, they'll see it is a real problem and hopefully it'll lead to swift passage of the legislation."
The crux of the problem, Preiss said, is the "patchwork" of state and local laws concerning primates kept as pets. In Connecticut, primates are allowed with a state permit. Other states, including Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Oklahoma, do not have statewide restrictions on raising primates as pets.
"They're wide open for any exotic pet; you could have a tiger," Preiss said.
Twenty states and the District of Columbia ban keeping primates as pets, but others, including Michigan, Illinois and Virginia, prohibit some exotic animals but allow primates.
"We think primates belong on that list," Preiss said.
Landau added, "But as along as people can go in and out of states, they're going to do it."
Police say they are considering filing criminal charges against Herold. A pet owner can be held criminally responsible for an attack if he or she knew or should have known that an animal was a danger to others. Police said the chimpanzee was agitated earlier in the day of the attack and was given an anti-anxiety drug that had not been prescribed. Travis also had Lyme disease, a tick-borne illness that can lead to arthritis and meningitis in humans.
Herold disputed those police reports on Wednesday, telling The Associated Press that she "never, ever" gave the animal the anti-anxiety drug Xanax.
Dave Salmoni, host of Animal Planet's "After the Attack," said the disease could have caused mild behavioral changes in the animal, but it's unlikely it led to the attack.
"You're generally going to see lots of conditions before you're going to see a crazy rampage," he said. "The diseases would have to be pretty heavily set in for it to actually cause that drastic of a change."
With or without a condition like Lyme disease, Salmoni said chimpanzees are among the most dangerous animals to interact with and should be treated as such. Salmoni, who survived a lion attack in 1998 while working at Bowmanville Zoological Park near Toronto, supports the passage of the Captive Primate Safety Act.
"If you have a captive chimp and you're going to interact with him the way that [Herold and Nash] were, it's not 'if,' it's 'when' — it will attack," Salmoni told FOXNews.com.
"If you interact with a chimpanzee like that for that long, it will eventually turn on you. There's no question."
