According to the latest news reports Brett Adam Crowley was found guilty of murdering his 81-year-old grandmother Violet and sentenced to life in prison..

Crowley was 17 when he stabbed his grandmother in the head and neck during an argument and his defense lawyer Catherine Cuthbert said he was provoked by his grandmother and had lost control during the incident. She said he was under a lot of stress and suffering depression over car and job loss.

Crowley was living with his grandmother because he was estranged from his family.
According to the local news agency the argument started when he arrived home on June 29th and his grandmother started criticizing him about not spending enough time at home and how he did not wash his clothes or make his bed.

She also accused him of siphoning petrol from other people’s cars and that’s when the argument became more aggressive. Crowley said to the police he swore at his grandmother and raised his arm to warn her away, but she slapped him and told him to show her more respect. News report say Crowley than pushed his grandmother backwards and forced her into a bedroom before punching her.

He went to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee, but, apparently his grandmother attacked him from behind. In his own words he then “flipped out completely” and grabbed a knife before again forcing his grandmother into the bedroom. Holding a pillow over her head he stabbed her twice and held her until she stopped moving.
When he realized what he had done, he tried to hang himself, unsuccessfully. He went to a party at his friend’s house before contacting police about his what he had done.

The jurors needed to decide whether Crowley had been provoked, whether he had intended to kill his grandmother and whether he was in control of his actions. It took them less than five hours to find him guilty. With time already served, Crowley will be eligible for parole in 2021.

Its paint may be chipping off, but the famous London Tower Bridge is not falling down - it’s merely getting an $8 million facelift. The British landmark, made famous by the nursery rhyme, “London Bridge Is Falling Down,” will be stripped of its old paint and repainted in its traditional blue and white.

The facelift will take over four years, according to the plan. Work on the landmark bridge will begin in June and will be completed in the winter of 2010. However, the bridge will remain open to traffic during the renovation.

The City Bridge Trust charity will fund the work on the landmark that was opened in 1894 by future King Edward VII and has become one of England’s most recognizable sites.

A Reading man whose minivan crashed after he climbed on its roof while driving about 55 miles per hour is in fair condition this weekend.

Police in West Reading say the 38-year-old man later stripped naked and led them on a chase along the highway.

Authorities are not identifying the man, who is not charged.

He remains in a Reading hospital recovering from what witnesses call a deep gash in his side.

Police say they used Taser jolts and pepper spray during the chase Friday but only subdued the man when they tackled him.

A man who had just received a 10-year prison term exchanged marriage vows with a woman in the courthouse before being led away in shackles.

Forrest Lynn Foreman, 49, was sentenced to 10 years jail on Friday after pleading no contest to making methamphetamine, but he wanted to marry 30-year-old Amie Gayleene Lang before beginning his sentence.

In a third-floor courtroom of the Bryan County courthouse, Calera Police Chief Don Hyde Jr, who is an ordained minister, performed the marriage ceremony after being asked to do so by a court clerk deputy.

“It was an emotional moment because the two had professed to love each other and do what was right and unite as a family,” Hyde said.

“It was a situation, that from talking to the two of them, he was going away a long time and they wanted to become legal as a couple.”
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Remember that old movie? Well something like that really happened and I have to say it was probably funnier than the movie it self. Apparently a German man who is afraid of rodents saw a mouse running through his house and scared to death ran out in his underwear and slippers in the middle of the night.

According to local news agencies, he panicked when he saw a mouse and ran out into the snowy night wearing only boxer shorts and slippers. He then called a police from a nearby Pay-phone.

Surprisingly enough they came and actually tried to catch the little fellow.

“He alerted the police from a public call box,” police in the central city of Göttingen said in a statement released late on Tuesday. “The 23-year-old man told the amazed officers that there was a mouse in his flat and that there was nothing he was more afraid of than the little rodents.”

Armed with traffic cones police officers ran through his house trying to catch the sneaky creature, while the freaked owner waited outside, but they failed.

The owner of the apartment decided he couldn’t share his home with the mouse and went to a friend’s house. “How the mouse spent the rest of the night remains a mystery,” police said. “Maybe it came out of hiding and spent the night dancing on the table.”

Something tells me the police came only because they needed something to laugh at.

When Durant police officers arrived to the Shady Brook Apartments on North 7th Street answering a call about a loud party they were in for a big surprise.

According to local news officers said that Tony Pelayo ate two marijuana joints trying to hide it from them. He was of course arrested for destroying the evidence.

Apparently, at the arrival they found two marijuana joints on the table, but Pelayo quickly took them. Officers said they asked him to hand them over but Pelayo said he couldn’t because he ate the evidence. He then proceeded to show police a leafy smile.

According to specialist ingesting and smoking cannabis does not have the same effect. It takes about one or two hours for ingested marijuana to start working but unlike the short term effect of smoked marijuana the effect of eaten lasts up to 10 hours. Also it can be far more potent than smoking the same amount.

One of the the most important effect of cannabis is an intensification of the emotional situation you are in. I think Pelayo is in for a long depressing night in jail.

Collin Baker is an average 16-year-old. Or is he? According to latest news Collin has been finally caught in Poland on his way to China. Apparently Colin ran away from home on a bike with nothing but £6 and a bag of crisps.

Police have been looking for him for six days since he set out by bike from his home in Holland.

He managed to pedal through Germany and into Poland unnoticed. He had only a book, a map, some crisps and a bottle of mineral water.

That’s where his journey has ended. Residents in Przemkow, noticed him and phoned the local police. According to local news “residents reported discovering a boy who ‘looked lost’, and spoke no Polish, at a bus stop.”

“It turned out that he had been cycling for 6 days and had covered 600 miles cycling along small country roads,” said the local police spokesperson Daria Solinska.

Collin Said that he had left home and is heading for China because he did not like his mother’s new husband. He was determined to get to China by bike even though he had only £6 with him: “I want to go there, because I’ve never been there,” he said.

At the moment he is in a care center for minors, before local police decides what they’ll do with him.

They say good things happen to good people, but apparently these days even the bad guys have luck. An alleged drug kingpin Khanh Nhat Bui won $1.35 million on lotto, just as the police investigation closed in on him for involvement in international heroin trafficking syndicate.

Police targeted Bui and his family for a long time. During the raids on the family properties in 2005, $350,000 was seized in cash. The investigation continued after that and finally in December last year Bui was charged for Heroin trafficking.

The investigators believe he brought blocks of heroin from Vietnam and distributed it to his dealer network.

His former associate revealed the win: “Everyone in the community knows that Ca (Bui’s nickname) won the Lotto. Ca told me that he won $1.35 million,” and legal sources confirmed that Bui won lotto prize in 2006 in the middle of police investigation.

I guess money really does stick to money.

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A hermit (from the Greek erēmos, signifying “desert”, “uninhabited”, hence “desert-dweller”; adjective: “eremitic”) is a person who lives in seclusion and/or isolation from society. According to Sociologist Isacco Turina modern hermits no longer wear long beards and hide away in caves, they live in apartments and surf the Internet just like you or me.

“At the risk of sounding like a caricature, the average hermits are the sort of people who belong on the plains,” he said. “However,” he added, “many have found it is perfectly possible to be totally alone in the middle of a bustling city.”

While working on his new book ‘The New Hermits, The Flight from the World in Modern Italy’ Professor Turina tracked down 37 hermits. He said that most of them were “around 55 years old, and that they had decided to drop out of the rat race when they were between 35 and 50.”

“More people are opting to lead a hermit’s life and turn their backs from the modern world, “although there is no institutional guide on how to do it,” adding that “around 60% of hermits are female.”

As professor Turina said there are now as many as 1000 hermits in Italy, with several hundred more dotted across Europe and the US. According to him, their return started in 1983 when the Vatican offered “full recognition” to hermits who were willing to devote their lives to the solitary “praise of God”.

A company called Spiritour even offers “hermit holidays” in the dunes of Morocco, while Ictus Voyages have a similar retreat in the Sinai desert. Who knows, maybe we could use a break from our lives. I know I certainly would.

According to reports at least 48 people from India’s Kottayam district have lost their sight after staring at the sun hoping to see an image of the Virgin Mary that allegedly appeared above the house of a former hotel owner in Erumeli.

The house has been the subject of rumors for months. The hotel owner, who has since moved, reportedly claimed other miracles happenings in his home, like the statues of the Virgin Mary in his house crying with tears of honey, and bleeding oils and perfumes.

Despite the warnings from the city, the health authorities and church officials regarding the dangers of looking at the sky and exposing the eyes to the sun, 48 cases of sight-loss caused by photochemical burns on the retina have been recorded since Friday.

“All our patients have similar history and symptoms,” said Dr. Anamma James Isaac, an ophthalmologist at the St. Joseph’s ENT and Eye hospital. “they have developed photochemical, not thermal, burns after continuously gazing at the sin.”

According to Dr James Isaac the patients are mostly girls in 12-26 age group. The youngest patient is 12 and the oldest 60. “Most of them were looking at the sun between 2 and 4 pm, when UV1 and UV2 rays are harshest,”
“Most patients may hopefully improve their vision. But there may be long-term effects on the retina,” he added.

All churches in the area have disowned the miracle, but despite warnings, and the potentially harmful effects of the sun to their eyes, believers are still flocking in front of the house where the divine image is said to have appeared. Apparently there are quite a few people still seeking the miracle.

Can fate really be that blinding?

And he did. November 4th wasn’t a good day for documentary filmmaker John Andrews but yesterday certainly was. A little bit over 4 months after the accident that left him paralyzed from the neck down, Andrews walked out of Madonna Rehabilitation Center.

A bike crash bruised his spinal cord and he found out about his condition while in MRI chamber: “I started insisting that they unstrap me, and then the doctor explained to me I wasn’t strapped. That’s how I found out I was paralyzed,” Andrews said.

He was really worried about his family, and how he was going to care for his nine year old son, but he was determent to get back on his feet.

“I decided after a while, if my body didn’t work, I would have to use my mind,” he said.

Only two days later, the plastic surgeon who was working on Andrews’ face noticed his toes moving.

On January 3rd he took his first steps and made a promise that he’d walk out of the hospital. Remembering the first time he felt his weight supported on his feet Andrews said: “That was the day I began to have hope I would walk again.”

In a TV interview Andrews said that a work on a documentary about his wife’s battle with stage 3 breast cancer helped a lot, and “mentally prepared him to take on this challenge.”

“Even though the odds are against you beating something like that, you can face a challenge and be able to overcome it,” he said.

He made a promise, and he kept it. But as he said, his recovery wasn’t always easy: “There were times I felt frustrated, but I was able to just chip away little by little. Eventually, you see the big picture,” Andrews said. “I think what I lost physically, I was able to gain some things mentally.”

John’s case is the best proof that the power of mind is really an amazing thing. So before you quit to fast think is it really impossible? Maybe there really isn’t anything we can’t do once we set our minds to it.