Victim of chimpanzee attack transfers to face transplant clinic

By Calvin Palmer

The Connecticut woman who suffered horrific injuries when she was attacked by a 200-pound chimpanzee on Monday was today transferred to the clinic that performed the first face transplant in the United States last year.

Charla Nash, 55, of Stamford arrived at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio at about 4:00 p.m. She was accompanied by the clinic’s critical care team, spokeswoman Heather Phillips said.

Phillips was unable to say whether Nash, who suffered extensive injuries to her face and hands in the attack, would receive a face transplant.

Nash was attacked in Sandra Herold’s North Stamford driveway after she came to help Herold try to get the pet chimp inside. Police do not know what angered the 14-year-old chimp, named Travis, who was shot and killed by a police officer.

Nash underwent nearly eight hours of surgery by four teams of surgeons at Stamford Hospital.

Lead trauma surgeon Dr Kevin Miller said that, in his 10 years as a trauma surgeon, he had never seen facial injuries so severe.

Capt. Bill Ackley, one of the paramedics who attended to Nash, said her hands were horribly disfigured, but still attached to her wrists.

“I would liken it to a machine-type accident,” Ackley said. “She had some crushing injuries to her hands and some tearing injuries to her hands.”

Her head injuries “involved her entire face and scalp,” Ackley said. Nash’s eyes were injured, but Ackley would not say how extensively. Her hair had been ripped out.

“She just had disfiguring injuries,” he said. “Her nose was still there. There was some disfigurement. She did have injuries to her mouth that caused quite a bit of bleeding. It was very difficult to determine where everything was because of the blood.”

Nash did not talk, but was conscious. She was able to respond to requests to move her foot.

Nash was taken to Stamford Hospital, where the four teams of surgeons operated for more than seven hours to stabilize her.

[Based on reports by The Advocate and newsday.com.]

GPS device leads to conviction for murder of 12-year-old baby-sitter

By Calvin Palmer

A GPS device placed on her husband’s truck, by a wife who was suspicious he was having an affair, turned a first-degree reckless endangerment charge into second-degree murder.

George Ford of Piscataway, New Jersey, was today convicted of murder for intentionally running over a 12-year-old baby-sitter to keep her from talking about their time spent together.

Broome County Judge Joseph Cawley Jr. announced the guilty verdict after the non-jury trial.

The 44-year-old construction worker was charged with second-degree murder for killing Shyanne Somers of South Otselic in 2007.

Ford says the girl’s death was an accident.

Prosecutors says Ford was high on cocaine when he ran over Shyanne on an upstate New York road.

Before police knew about the GPS device, Ford was charged with first-degree reckless endangerment, a crime punishable by up to seven years in prison.

But after police downloaded data from the Tracking Key device that Ford’s wife had placed, he was charged with second-degree murder. Ford faces up to 25 years in prison.

[Based on reports by the Associated Press and The Daily Star.]

FBI finds Stanford in Virginia

By Calvin Palmer

R. Allen Stanford, the Texan billionaire at the center of an alleged $8 billion investment fraud, was today found by the FBI in Virginia.

FBI agents served papers from the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Stanford in Fredericksburg, it was confirmed.

FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said they had acted at the request of the SEC and that Stanford had not been arrested.

The complaint was served on Stanford by agents from the FBI’s office in Richmond, Virginia, Kolko said.

“The agents served Mr. Stanford with court orders related to the SEC civil filing against the Stanford Financial Group,” Kolko said.

Stanford, 58, and three of his companies were charged with fraud in a civil complaint filed in federal court in Dallas, Texas.

Stanford and two other executives were accused of fraudulently selling $8 billion in high-yield certificates of deposit in a scheme that stretched around the world.

While Stanford faces civil proceedings, it is understood that the FBI is also building a separate, parallel criminal case against him.

The scam is the second major fraud to hit America in three months after Bernard Madoff confessed that his $50 billion investment firm was “just one big lie”.

The FBI is convinced that the two huge frauds are just the tip of the iceberg. John Pistole, the Deputy Director of the FBI, told politicians on Capitol Hill last week that the agency was investigating 530 corporate fraud cases, including 38 directly related to the current economic crisis.

[Based on reports by The Times and Reuters.]

Man put on probation for cell phone photos under woman’s skirt

By Calvin Palmer

Noberto Branco kind of lived up to his name when a Connecticut bookstore’s video surveillance cameras apparently caught him taking photographs under a woman’s skirt with his cell phone.

Yesterday, Branco, 38, of Trumbull, was granted accelerated rehabilitation by Superior Court Judge Bruce Levin. He was charged with three counts of breach of peace and two counts of impairing the morals of a minor.

Accelerated rehabilitation means Branco did not admit his guilt but was placed on one year of probation by the judge.  If he commits no other crime during that period, the original charges against him will be dismissed.

Branco was also ordered to do 35 hours of community service and to have no further contact with the victim.

Branco’s arrest followed a complaint on August 22 last year by Borders bookstore on the Post Road, Fairfield. The store reported that a man had fled after taking photos from beneath a woman’s skirt. Two employees chased the man, but he eluded them, police said.

Officers later reviewed a surveillance video from the store and it allegedly shows the defendant approach the woman from behind, hold a camera phone beneath her skirt and take a picture while the woman’s attention was focused on her young daughter.

Police said seconds later the tape shows Branco again cautiously approached the woman from behind and placed the phone camera under her skirt. Branco allegedly followed the woman, who remained unaware of his proximity, as she looked at books in the children’s section of the store. He allegedly held the camera phone beneath her skirt at least one more time, police said.

Branco was eventually identified and charged last November.

Police say Branco told them his wife had recently given birth and he was not able to have sex with her for several months and his actions were “somewhat of a turn-on”.

His attorney and a psychological report said the incident was a one-off and out of character.

[Based on a report by the Connecticut Post.]

Nuclear testing site submits bid for world heritage status

By Calvin Palmer

Bikini Atoll, the site of the first hydrogen bomb test by the United States and the place that gave its name to the two-piece swimsuit, is seeking recognition as a world heritage site.

A proposal released today states: “Nuclear bomb tests at Bikini Atoll shaped the history of the people of Bikini, the history of the Marshall Islands and the history of the entire world.”

The 86-page document, which will be submitted to UNESCO’s World Heritage program, is the work of Bikini liaison official Jack Niedenthal and Australian-based consultant Nicole Baker.

A decision on whether the submission has been successful is unlikely to be made before June next year, Baker said.

To be successful, a world heritage nomination must demonstrate that the site has values that transcend national boundaries. Because of its role in the nuclear arms race during the Cold War, Bikini clearly passes that test, she said.

The atoll was the site of the first U.S. post-World War Two nucelar tests in 1946. Twenty-three nuclear devices were tested on the atoll between 1946 and 1958.

The detonation, codenamed Castle Bravo on March 1st, 1954, was the first test of a practical hydrogen bomb. It was the largest nuclear explosion ever set off by the United States and much more powerful than predicted, creating widespread radioactive contamination.

“Bikini is the only world famous, world class place out here,” Niedenthal said. “It’s got nuclear test buildings, craters and a bathing suit.”

French designer Louis Reard reportedly named his “bikini” swimsuit creation, introduced within days of the the first nuclear test on the atoll, because he believed it would also explode upon the world.

It was introduced just weeks after the one-piece “Atome” was widely advertised as the “smallest bathing suit in the world”, and it was said that the bikini “split the atome”.

[Based on a report by the Melbourne Herald Sun.]

Anti-gay U.S. preachers banned from entering Britain

By Calvin Palmer

Britain today banned two U.S. extremist anti-gay preachers from entering the country.

Fred Phelps and his daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper of the Westboro Baptist Church, based in Kansas, had planned to fly to Britain to stage a protest against a play being put on by a gay youth group.

Phelps, 79, and Phelps-Roper, 51, had targeted a performance of The Laramie Project, about the death of an American man killed for being homosexual, being staged tomorrow at Queen Mary’s College in Basingstoke, Hampshire.

The pair have been known to picket US soldiers’ funerals, holding up banners with phrases such as “God Hates Fags” because they believe that their deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan are punishment for America’s tolerance of gays.

Confirming the pair’s ban, a UK Border Agency spokesman said: “The Home Secretary has excluded both Fred Phelps and his daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper from the UK. Both these individuals have engaged in unacceptable behaviour by inciting hatred against a number of communities.

“The Government has made it clear it opposes extremism in all its forms. We will continue to stop those who want to spread extremism, hatred and violent messages in our communities from coming to our country.

“That was the driving force behind the tighter rules on exclusion for unacceptable behaviour that the Home Secretary announced on October 28 last year.

“The exclusions policy is targeted at all those who seek to stir up tension and provoke others to violence regardless of their origins and beliefs.”

Any other church members who try to enter Britain are also likely to be stopped, the agency said.

It emerged that the pair were due to enter the UK to launch their demonstration when they made an announcement on their Web site.

“God hates the Queen Mary’s College, and the fag-infested UK, England, and all having to do with spreading sodomite lies via The Laramie Project, this tacky bit of cheap fag propaganda masquerading as legitimate theater,” it said.

Learning of the British ban, the group responded in the true Christian spirit: “God Hates the UK — Land of the Sodomite Damned.”

It is no wonder that Westboro Baptist Church has been described as “the most evil religious sect in the world”.

[Based on reports by The Times, AFP and The Daily Telegraph.]

Father-at-13 Alfie a victim of a scam claims friend of girlfriend’s family

By Calvin Palmer

A High Court judge in London yesterday imposed reporting restrictions on the story of “father at 13” Alfie Patten.

Australia’s The Sydney Morning Herald is not subject to those restrictions so it was able to reveal today that 13-year-old Alfie Patten is the victim of a scam, his girlfriend having been told to pretend he was the father of her baby so their families could strike lucrative deals with the media.

That claim comes from a close friend of Chantelle’s parents, Clive Sim and was reported by the Daily Mail in London.

Both Alfie and Chantelle’s parents are believed to have netted thousands of pounds in media deals, the Daily Mail said.

But a number of other older teens have since claimed to be Maisie’s father.

Sim, 39, said Chantelle was told by her mother to say Alfie was the father so they could cash in on the story. 

The schoolgirl was ordered to keep quiet about sleeping with other boys so the story could be sold to newspapers for thousands of pounds, the DailyMail reported.

“Penny told Chantelle to keep quiet about other boys because they wouldn’t get any money,” said Sim, who has reportedly known Chantelle’s parents for years. “They know that Alfie being the dad makes a better story. I think there’s a big scam going on here.”

Sim claimed Alfie was being “exploited” by the families to make as much money as possible, the Daily Mail said.

“It’s all pretty sordid … Alfie may not be an angel and nor is Chantelle.

“But at the end of the day they are only children and it is the adults around them making bad decisions based on money, not their welfare.”

The reporting restrictions order in the UK was made by Mrs Justice Baron in the Family Division. It does not prevent publication of details already in the public domain, but bans the revelation of any new information.

That probably explains why the Daily Mail’s story cited by The Sydney Morning Herald does not appear in its online edition and Google links to the story result in “Sorry, the page you have requested does not exist or is no longer available.”

The “father at 13” story broke on Friday when The Sun published a front-page splash following the birth of a baby girl to 15-year-old Chantelle Stedman in Eastbourne, East Sussex.

It has been reported that 13-year-old Alfie Patten is to undergo a DNA test to determine whether he is the father of baby Maisie.

A statement by the court said the ban had arisen “as a result of press intrusion” and also “because of allegations made by at least two others that they may be the putative fathers of Maisie”.

“The court received information that the private and family life of the mother and baby had been disrupted to such an extent that the court was concerned about the mother and baby being unable to lead a normal family life,” the statement said.

“It was equally important to the court that the young putative father should be able to live his life and return to school.”

The restrictions remain in place until 6:00 p.m. on 10 March, when a further hearing is scheduled.

[Based on reports by the Press Gazette and The Sydney Morning Herald.]

Five held in custody over beating to death of Baytown teenager

By Calvin Palmer

Five teenagers, four of them high school students, accused of beating a Baytown teenager to death because they believed he had damaged a car were remanded in custody by a Houston judge this morning.

State District Judge Herb Ritchie also ordered that, if any of the five are able to post their $100,000 bail, they are not to have any contact with each other or anyone else involved in the case.

Kevin Jerome Powell, 18, was attacked in the early hours of Monday morning.  His attackers used a pistol and the lid of a barbecue grill, said Baytown police spokesman Lt. Eric Freed.

Investigators have not found any evidence that Powell vandalized the damaged car, a 1995 Buick Roadmaster, said Freed.

Arrested later that day and charged with murder were La Porte residents Marcus Jason, 18, a student at Dewalt Alternative School; Joshua Rider, 19; Joshua Ashford, 17, an 11th-grader at La Porte High School who owned the Buick; Charles Merritt, 18, who also attends La Porte High; and Cedrick Fears, 17, a Baytown resident who attends High Point High School.

Powell was visiting a friend at the Autumn Ridge apartment, 501 Massey Tompkins, late Sunday, the same time the five were visiting a friend at that complex, Freed said.

Powell’s body was found about 7 a.m. Monday at a neighboring complex — Tompkins Green Apartments at 605 Massey Tompkins. A resident saw the body between a hedge and a parked truck. Police said they believe Powell was killed hours earlier.

Officers had been dispatched around midnight Sunday to investigate a reported disturbance at the Autumn Ridge complex, where they found the severely damaged Buick.

Police were dispatched again at 12:45 a.m. after shots were fired. One minute later, another call was reported — an assault in progress.

Residents of the Tompkins Green Apartments said they reported hearing a commotion and saw a man being chased by a group of men, one of whom was carrying a pistol.

When police arrived, Freed said, they detained a group of young men running from the complex. One of those detained, Freed said, owned the Buick and told authorities that the group had heard a commotion and found the vehicle damaged. The teens were subsequently released.

After Powell’s body was discovered, the teens were brought in for questioning. Freed said each of the five gave statements to police, saying they took turns assaulting Powell.

If convicted, each faces five years to life in prison for the first-degree felony.

[Based on a report by the Houston Chronicle.]

Venezuela seizes Stanford bank to stem massive withdrawals

By Calvin Palmer

Venezuela seized a local bank owned by R. Allen Stanford today to stem massive online deposit withdrawals as the impact of the $8 billion fraud case against the Texan billionaire spread through Latin America.

The Venezuelan government said it would quickly sell the bank — Stanford Bank Venezuela, one of the country’s smallest commercial banks — and that it had already been approached by potential buyers.

In recent days, depositors at the bank had worried over the fraud case targeting a sister company, Stanford International Bank, even though the companies’ assets are separate.

Depositors withdrew cash using Internet banking services. The bank takes deposits and makes loans only in Venezuelan currency.

“Most depositors of Stanford Bank Venezuela are from the highest income classes,” Finance Minister Ali Rodriguez said. “They move their funds on the Internet, and this allowed for a massive withdrawal that pushed the bank into a precarious state.”

“The authorities were forced to take the decision to intervene and there will be an immediate sale,” he added.

Industry officials have said the fall of a bank, whose deposits represent only 0.2 percent of Venezuela’s banking system, is unlikely to cause much disturbance in the rest of the sector.

Two days after the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused Stanford, 58, of perpetrating “a fraud of shocking magnitude,” SEC officials were still in the dark about his whereabouts — as were close members of his family.

In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, Stanford’s 81-year-old father James said he understood that authorities were searching for his son, but insisted he had no idea where his son could be.

“I’d spoken to him a week or so ago — he’d called — about problems with the business climate in general, but nothing of this magnitude,” he said. “I cannot imagine, I cannot believe, I will not believe what is being alleged actually happened.”

“I cannot believe that my son would run,” he added.

Reports also emerged yesterday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating whether Stanford was involved in laundering drug money for Mexico’s powerful Gulf cartel.

ABC News, citing unnamed federal officials, said Mexican police detained one of Stanford’s private planes and found checks inside believed to be linked to the ultra-violent cartel.

Stanford and his company Stanford Financial Group invested heavily in politics, spending about $2.4 million in campaign contributions to lawmakers and political committees since 1989, according the Washington-based watchdog group Center for Responsive Politics.

Stanford donated $4,600 to the Obama campaign. The value of Stanford’s campaign contribution has been donated to Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.

The $28,150 that McCain collected since 2000 placed him third among recipients of donation from Stanford and his firm. Sen.McCain (R-Ariz.) also promised yesterday to return the funds or donate them to charity.

The other top recipients of donations include Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.)($45,900) and Republican Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas ($41,375). Nelson received $45,900 and promised yesterday to give his donations to charity. Sessions received $41,375

The center also noted that Stanford Financial Group contributed the most during the 2002 election cycle, when federal lawmakers were debating a bill aimed at curbing financial fraud by better connecting information gathered by state and federal regulators. It passed the House but not the Senate.

[Based on reports by Reuters, AFP, Orlando Sentinel and Chicago Tribune.]

Chimpanzee attack woman makes small progress after seven hours of surgery

By Calvin Palmer

The victim of Monday’s attack by a chimpanzee showed small signs of progress yesterday after undergoing more than seven hours of surgery on her face and hands by four teams of surgeons at Stamford Hospital, Connecticut.

Paramedics say Charla Nash, 55, lost her nose, eyes and jaw in the savage attack by the 200-pound chimpanzee, Travis, owned by her friend Sandra Herold.

“While she remains in critical but stable condition, her vital signs are improving,” Dr Kevin Miller, an attending surgeon at Stamford Hospital, said at a news conference. “We are thankful that we are able to report that Charla Nash has made good but small progress.”

Scott Orstad, a spokesman for the hospital, said that Nash’s family was consulting with her doctors on what steps to take next. One option might be a face transplant, but he said that decision had not been made.

“I don’t know if they’ve gone to that level,” he said. “The doctors are still determining whether that may be necessary. That rumor is still kind of premature. The final decision has not been made yet.”

There were no announced plans to transfer Nash from Stamford Hospital.

Charla Nash’s injuries were so horrific — Sandra Herold told a 911 dispatcher that her pet was eating Charla — that the hospital was providing counseling to the staff members who treated her.

Orstad said some members of the team that initially treated Nash had already sought counseling.

“Members of the staff have said this is something they’ve never experienced in their career,” Orstad said.

Police are looking into the possibility of criminal charges against Herold because pet owners can be held criminally responsible if they know an animal poses a danger to others.

Connecticut law requires primates weighing more than 50 pounds to be registered with the state. But Dennis Schain, a spokesman for the State Department of Environmental Protection, said Herold’s chimp was exempted because he did not appear to present a public health risk and was owned before the registration requirement began.

Yesterday, a former Stamford resident, Leslie Mostel-Paul, 52, claimed that Travis bit her hand in November 1996 when she tried to pet him in the parking lot of a local doctor’s office.

Mostel-Paul says she contacted police, but her complaint was brushed aside.

“If the police had taken care of what they needed to, this woman wouldn’t be lying in intensive care right now,” Mostel-Paul said. “He shouldn’t have been in the house.”

Stamford Police Capt. Richard Conklin said he had no record of the incident and could not confirm or deny its validity.

[Based on reports by The New York Times and New York Daily News.]