Man guilty in case of Fla. girl found in landfill

This photo provided by the family shows Somer Thompson. A man pleaded guilty Friday, Feb. 3, 2012 in abduction and slaying of 7-year-old Somer Thompson who was found in a landfill. Jarred Harrell, 26, was sentenced to life in prison. Somer, a second-grader, disappeared Oct. 19, 2009, while walking home from Grove Park Elementary School. She was with her sister and some friends, but ran ahead of them after they had a spat. Two days later, she was discovered in the landfill. (AP Photo/Family Photo)

This photo provided by the family shows Somer Thompson. A man pleaded guilty Friday, Feb. 3, 2012 in abduction and slaying of 7-year-old Somer Thompson who was found in a landfill. Jarred Harrell, 26, was sentenced to life in prison. Somer, a second-grader, disappeared Oct. 19, 2009, while walking home from Grove Park Elementary School. She was with her sister and some friends, but ran ahead of them after they had a spat. Two days later, she was discovered in the landfill. (AP Photo/Family Photo)

GREEN COVE SPRINGS, Fla. (AP) ? An unemployed restaurant worker pleaded guilty Friday in the abduction, sexual battery and slaying of a 7-year-old Florida girl who was found in a landfill, as dozens of her family and friends packed a crowded courtroom wearing shades of purple, the little girl's favorite color.

Jarred Harrell, 26, was sentenced to life in prison in the death of Somer Thompson, a second-grader who disappeared Oct. 19, 2009, while walking home from Grove Park Elementary School. She was with her sister and some friends, but ran ahead of them after they had a spat. Two days later, she was discovered in the landfill.

Harrell wasn't arrested until about three months after Somer's death. Initially, authorities interviewed convicted sex offenders within a 5-mile radius of Somer's suburban north Florida home, but didn't come up with any substantial leads.

On a hunch, they tailed nine garbage trucks from Somer's neighborhood to the landfill and picked through the trash as each rig spilled its load. They sorted through more than 225 tons of garbage before they spotted her legs sticking out of the garbage.

Harrell lived with his parents on a neighborhood street Somer took to get home. Police said Somer was lured into the home and later asphyxiated and tossed into a trash bin, though they have not released any more details about her death.

After Somer vanished, Harrell moved to Meridian, Miss., to live with an aunt.

He drew the attention of law enforcement two months before Somer disappeared, but he wasn't arrested. His roommates in Florida said they kicked him out for stealing and they discovered child pornography on his computer, which was turned over to investigators.

The Clay County sheriff's office said Harrell wasn't taken into custody then because detectives had to prove Harrell downloaded the child porn.

He only became a suspect in Somer's disappearance after the parents of one the roommates drove by Harrell's parents' home and noticed how close they lived to her home. When they saw Harrell's car in his parents' driveway, they told detectives.

Harrell pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. He also pleaded guilty to kidnapping, sexual battery, possession of child pornography and other sex charges, some stemming from an unrelated molestation case involving a 3-year-old.

The discovery of Somer's body touched off an outpouring of support in northeast Florida and southern Georgia for the Thompson family; days of vigils and fundraisers were held so Somer's mom could financially afford to stay home with her other children. A mountain of stuffed animals, balloons and notes to the family sprung up near a tree across from the little girl's home.

Somer's mother tearfully addressed the media during vigils.

"Somer was such a bright star that never got her chance to shine," her mother said at the time.

Like most little girls, Somer loved to dance, play dress up, draw and color. At her funeral, hundreds of purple balloons were released into the sky; purple flowers adorned her wooden casket and her family wore purple ribbons.

Somer had her brown hair in a ponytail with a red bow when she went missing. She was carrying a lunch box and wearing Hannah Montana backpack. It was purple.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-02-03-Girl%20in%20Landfill/id-538301adeef9447fb0688763d7b89413

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Al Jumuah ? Blog Archive ? Men's Well being ? Methods to Lose ...

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Source: http://aljumuah.info/?p=6571

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Harvard Educated Romney Disses Harvard Educated Obama (ContributorNetwork)

COMMENTARY | I watched former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's Florida victory speech Tuesday night. He's looking stronger since the South Carolina debates in an attempt to defeat Newt Gingrich and show that he's no "shrinking violet."

But his character attack against President Barack Obama ruined any respect I had for his speech, to say the least. On the president, Romney said, as reported at PBS, "Like his colleagues in the faculty lounge who think they know better, President Obama demonizes and denigrates almost every sector of our economy. I will make America the most attractive place in the world for entrepreneurs, for innovators and for job creators. And unlike the other people running for President, I know how to do that."

Well, that remains to be seen, Gov. Romney. However, I have a question: Why would a man who benefited from an elite education diss the elite education of another man?

Obama earned a JD from Harvard University. Romney earned a JD and an MBA from Harvard.

Character attacks pack a punch when they make sense. This one doesn't.

Is Gov. Romney implying he's not an intellectual and that because he's a businessman, he can relate better to the average Joe and Jill?

First, Romney is a multimillionaire. I don't have a problem with that. I'm proud of anyone who can build a reputable and profitable life for oneself. But Romney is a member of that famous "1 percent." How is that relatable to middle- and low-income Americans?

As Kathleen Parker wrote at The Washington Post, "It isn't that Romney can't connect with people, as has been pronounced repeatedly. It is that people can't connect with him. This also helps explain why the far less perfect Newt Gingrich can attract support against all reason, or at least against all reasonable expectations."

Second, how is attacking American education and American institutions the right move? What message does this send to young people? If you're uneducated, it's okay. Don't worry about it?

Writes Rick Shenkman, author of "Just How Stupid Are We?" writes, "It would appear that young people today are doing very little reading of any kind. In 2004, the National Endowment for the Arts, consulting a vast array of surveys, including the United States Census, found that just 43 percent of young people ages 18 to 24 read literature. In 1982, the number was 60 percent. A majority do not read either newspapers, fiction, poetry, or drama. Save for the possibility that they are reading the Bible or works of non-fiction, for which solid statistics are unavailable, it would appear that this generation is less well read than any other since statistics began to be kept."

Gov. Romney will attack the president on a variety of issues as part of his campaign, but attacking his education shouldn't be one of them.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20120201/pl_ac/10916433_harvard_educated_romney_disses_harvard_educated_obama

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Professor documents cancer battle in online videos (AP)

COLUMBIA, Mo. ? At first, David Oliver ignored the bump on his neck that he noticed while shaving. The medical school professor assumed it was calcified scar tissue from a previous surgery.

But the growth didn't go away, and his sore back grew more painful. A doctor's diagnosis confirmed the worst: He had a form of upper throat cancer called nasal pharyngeal carcinoma. It had spread to his lymph nodes and bones.

Then Oliver, who has spent a career teaching medical students and hospital workers how to care for dying patients, took an unusual step. He made a video to break the news to colleagues. And when the clip spread far beyond this Missouri college town, Oliver undertook a bigger mission: documenting his treatment in regular videos and promoting an unusually public conversation on medicine and mortality.

"If there was ever a time to be a good teacher, this is it," he said. "I've got a chance."

Oliver, a 69-year-old specialist on aging and a former health care executive, at first struggled to absorb the diagnosis in September. His cancer is considered treatable but not curable.

He wanted to avoid the inevitable stares from colleagues at the University of Missouri's medical school, even those whose jobs often required them to confront terminal illness. He knew there would be whispers in the hallway and uncertainty about how ? or even whether ? to discuss the disease.

Oliver's initial video was meant to "put them at ease when they saw me. I'm still David," he said. "I might have five years. I might have six months. But I want you to be comfortable."

The video quickly spread after Oliver's five adult children shared the three-minute clip with Facebook friends, who in turn shared it with their own friends. A short time later, he started a video blog and a YouTube site.

For his followers, the updates alone weren't enough. Questions soon followed.

A viewer from Japan, his stepdaughter's former study abroad teacher, wanted advice on how to comfort his own friend with cancer. Medical students probed for suggestions about patient care. A college professor in Florida asked permission to use the video in class.

A former Vietnam War protester who four decades ago entered the then-nascent field of gerontology, Oliver spent decades sharing lessons on how to die. Now, buoyed by the power of social media, he was showing others how to live.

Anyone who expected to feel sorry for Oliver was quickly disabused of that notion after watching his first diary entry. A die-hard Missouri Tigers fan, Oliver made sure to highlight the two "puke buckets" he planned to obtain for chemotherapy and radiation treatments: one emblazoned with the rival Kansas Jayhawks logo, the other bearing an Oklahoma Sooner, another foe.

Beyond the humor, Oliver realized his illness provided a chance to help prepare patients and their loved ones, to trade whispers for matter-of-fact observations, to push the conversation from the shadows into the virtual public square.

The second video installment featured Oliver getting his head shaved, his full crop of grayish-blond hair falling to the salon floor before the chemo drugs took their toll.

By the third video, his bald head was gleaming. Oliver stood behind a dozen pill bottles containing a wide range of drugs ? from the steroid dexamethasone to morphine. He talked about dealing with "chemo brain," the persistent mental fog that trails the otherwise lucid professor post-treatment.

In mid-December, a noticeably subdued Oliver appeared on camera to chronicle the 21 days between his three chemotherapy treatments to that point. He talked about the highs of the first few days, fueled by energy-boosting steroids that made him feel "ready to run a triathlon." Then comes the crash, Oliver explained, five days of agony marked by dizziness, diarrhea, constipation, mouth sores, confusion, tingling, hand cramps, rashes and disorientation.

"It's a trick," he said about the initial euphoria. "The Kryptonite comes. Superman is dead on the fifth day."

Ever the professor, he used a bar graph to illustrate his three-week cycles.

Four months of treatment have also given Oliver a window into modern health care from the patient's perspective. He hasn't liked all that he's seen, particularly the limited interaction between doctors and nurses. He makes sure that his caregivers are also watching his video dispatches.

"I'm in a position to be extremely critical while they're giving me treatment," Oliver said. "They consider me an advocate. They want me to help with their patient training."

Oliver, a former executive at Heartland Health System in St. Joseph, knows he can engage with his doctors on a level of familiarity that most patients cannot. That's another motivation for his videos, to help level the playing field.

"I'm not intimidated by physicians. I realize they are people like everybody else," he said. "They make mistakes like everybody else. ... This is my opportunity to talk about these flaws and disappointments."

As the disease lingers, he and his wife of 16 years, Debra Parker Oliver, must also plan for life after his death.

A few short months ago, that talk consisted mostly of retirement, visits with the grandchildren and their next ocean cruise. Now it means stressful sessions with financial advisers and making plans for his memorial service.

"I am not afraid to die," Oliver said. "I am a gerontologist. I know that none of us get out of this alive."

His wife, an associate professor and former hospice worker who also works in the family and community medicine department, is less certain.

"Maybe he's not afraid to die, but he's afraid of dying," she said, her husband by her side. "The idea of this man being confined to a bed, maybe not being able to speak, is much more scary than what you are willing to admit."

On a recent visit to the Ellis Fischel Cancer Center, the couple received some encouraging news: A scan showed no visible lesions, meaning all were less than 1 centimeter in length. He will return later this month for two final rounds of chemotherapy followed by three months of freedom from medical procedures before getting another scan.

Best of all, the good news buys him time.

Time for a long-awaited cruise to Istanbul and Rome. Maybe time to travel to the NCAA basketball tournament in March to watch his beloved Tigers as the team seeks its first-ever Final Four berth.

The cancer is "still there. It will grow back," he said. "Eventually it will grow back and kill me."

No one knows how much time remains. If it's more than a year, he added, "we can produce a lot more videos."

___

Online:

David's Cancer Journey, http://dbocancerjourney.blogspot.com

___

Follow Alan Scher Zagier at http://twitter.com/azagier

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/cancer/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120202/ap_on_re_us/us_professor_cancer_videos

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Washington State Senate approves same-sex marriage bill

Elaine Thompson / AP

Members of the gallery applaud as the Washington state Senate passes a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage, Feb. 1, in Olympia, Wash. The measure now heads to the House, which is expected to approve it.

By msnbc.com staff, King5.com and the Associated Press

Senators voted 28-21 to approve a bill to legalize gay marriage in the state. Four Republicans crossed party lines and voted with majority Democrats for the measure. Three Democrats voted against it.

The measure now moves to the House, where there is enough support for the bill to pass. Gov. Chris Gregoire says she will sign the bill if it makes it to her desk, Seattle TV station King 5 reported.

Legislators debated the measure for two hours Wednesday night at the capitol in Olympia before voting.

The Senate adopted a series of amendments intended to clarify religious exemptions in the legislation, the Seattle Times reported.

Opponents promise a referendum in November if the bill is signed into law.

Any challenge to the bill can't be filed until after it is passed by the full Legislature and signed into law by Gregoire. Opponents then must turn in 120,577 signatures by June 6.

If opponents aren't able to collect enough signatures, gay and lesbian couples would be able to be wed starting in June. Otherwise, they would have to wait until the results of a November election.

Before last week, it wasn't certain the Senate would have the support to pass the measure, as a handful of Democrats remained undecided.

But after the first public hearing on the issue Jan. 23, a previously undecided Democratic senator, Mary Margaret Haugen of Camano Island, said she would be the 25th and deciding vote in support of the bill, all but ensuring its passage.

PhotoBlog: Washington State clears gay marriage bill hurdle

Same-sex marriage is legal in New York, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and the District of Columbia.

Lawmakers in New Jersey and Maryland are expected to debate gay marriage this year, and Maine could see a gay marriage proposal on the November ballot.

The debate over same-sex marriage in Washington state has changed significantly since lawmakers passed Washington's Defense of Marriage Act in 1998, which banned gay marriage. The constitutionality of DOMA was ultimately upheld by the state Supreme Court in 2006, but earlier that year, a gay civil rights measure passed after nearly 30 years of failure.

The quick progression of domestic partnership laws in the state came soon after, with a domestic partnership law in 2007, and two years of expansion that culminated in 2009 with the so-called "everything but marriage law" that was upheld by voters after opponents filed a referendum to challenge it.

Under the measure that passed Wednesday, the more than 9,300 couples currently registered in domestic partnerships would have two years to either dissolve their relationship or get married. Domestic partnerships that aren't ended prior to June 30, 2014, would automatically become marriages.

Domestic partnerships would remain for senior couples where at least one partner is 62 years old or older. That provision was included to help seniors who don't remarry out of fear they could lose certain pension or Social Security benefits.

? 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/01/10294578-washington-state-senate-approves-same-sex-marriage-bill

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Lilly Ledbetter: Three Years Ago Today, Fairness Prevailed

I grew up in Possum Trot, Ala., chopping cotton in the springtime and picking it in the fall. The work was hard on our hands and the sun was hot on our skin. But we learned early on -- boys and girls alike -- that we had to do a good day's work for a good day's pay.

Years later I was hired as an overnight manager at a Goodyear factory. I thought the same principle I learned in my poor, rural town still was true, so I worked just as hard as everyone else.

I got some treatment you might expect as a young woman at a factory in the South -- so I worked even harder to prove to the men around me that I was smart and good at what I did. I took pride in my job. And twice a month I went to my mailbox and found the paycheck I thought I'd earned.

One day I opened that mailbox and found something that would change my life. An anonymous coworker -- to this day, I don't know who -- had left a pencil-written note on a torn piece of paper with some numbers on it. It showed how much more my male coworkers were making, even though they had less education, training and experience.

I'd been at Goodyear almost 20 years, and was still making 20 percent less than the lowest-paid male supervisor in my same position. I'd been praised and promoted by my bosses, but rewarded with much smaller raises than my male coworkers got.

It hit me in the gut like a ton of bricks. I immediately thought of the countless overtime hours that I worked every chance I could, and realized I was paid for them based on an unfair salary. All those good days of work hadn't earned me the good day's pay I deserved.

It was about fairness, and it was against the law. It was about supporting my family -- school, doctors' bills, groceries and the mortgage. It was about my local economy, and the money I didn't have to spend in the community.

And it was about my retirement: Since that's based on our salaries, too, I'm still shortchanged long after I've stopped working. Because my Goodyear pension isn't enough to pay two bills, I burned through my small 401(k) in two years before I became eligible for Social Security.

So I went to court, and won. The company appealed and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court, where Goodyear won by one vote. The Court said I should have filed my complaint within six months of the first unfair paycheck I'd received almost two decades earlier. There was nothing the men could do that I couldn't -- but I couldn't fight for fair pay if I didn't even know I was being paid unfairly. Like so many women, I've never asked for or gotten a handout. I've only asked for a fair shot.

Barack Obama heard about my case and went to work. His grandmother worked in a bank her whole life, including long after she'd hit the glass ceiling. She even had to train the men who were paid higher salaries to do the work she'd showed them how to do. And he never wants his two girls to be disrespected in the same way.

As a senator he fought to give women enough time to file a complaint after we learn we're being discriminated against and underpaid. He believes we should reward hard work and responsibility. He stands up for the middle class because he's struggled, too. And he continues to fight because he knows what happened over a generation can't be fixed overnight.

I had to wait more than a decade and a half before I even knew I was being discriminated against. Within a week and a half after President Obama was inaugurated, he signed his name to the law that bears mine. Three years ago today, he made it the very first one he enacted.

I'll never see a cent of the salary I lost over all those years at Goodyear. My case is over and the Lilly Ledbetter law won't help Lilly Ledbetter. But in recognizing what's right and fair, President Obama's leadership has given me a much richer reward: knowing that my daughter, my granddaughter and every other woman in America will never again feel helpless when they don't get an equal day's pay for an equal day's work.

?

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lilly-ledbetter/lilly-ledbetter_b_1242981.html

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Review: Odd experimentation reveals muddled result (AP)

"Purple Naked Ladies," The Internet (Odd Future)

The producer duo of Matt Martians and Syd Tha Kyd, of the group OFWGKTA, misses the mark with their new album "Purple Naked Ladies," a spacey foray into digital sounds that results in more confusion than clarity.

Since it was recorded on Odd Future's own label, the two artists, known together as The Internet, have obviously been given a wide berth to play around with sounds and schemes. And they do. To a fault. The digital soundscape quickly becomes muddy and the musical purpose lost.

Some songs like "Fastlane" offer a more traditional R&B approach. "Ode To A Dream" also promises something cohesive, with nice vocal features from Kilo Kish and Coco O. But the latter half of the song devolves into a swirl of reverse-played beats and tinny electronic drum hits. It's hard to image this as a radio staple, or even a playlist favorite.

On "Violet Nude Women," it often sounds like there are no fewer than six instrumental sounds vying for attention, each attempting to elbow the others out of the way and take prominence. The melody is light and playful, but it soon gets lost as disparate noises collide.

The Internet is essentially a proof of concept group. They are decent producers, but they'll need a star up front to truly shine.

CHECK THIS TRACK OUT: "She Dgaf," is the lone plausible track for repeated play, curse words aside. It's got a nice hook and some semblance of a beat, something most other tracks on this album lack.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/internet/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120130/ap_en_mu/us_music_review_the_internet

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