Naked man with 'Samurai' sword held after stand-off

By Lori Preuitt, NBCBayArea.com

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- A naked man holding a "Samurai"-type sword was arrested after a bizarre New Year's Day stand-off with police.

Authorities were called to Ezie Street and Cas Drive in San Jose after several people called 911 to report a man standing in front of a home with an assault rifle just after 8 a.m. local time (11 a.m. ET).

As police rushed to the scene, witnesses said the man got in a car and drove to Southwest Expressway and Bascom Avenue. That's where police pulled him over.

Read more news on NBCBayArea.com

Police said the suspect immediately got out of his car and started yelling, "You're going to have to kill me."

He was naked and holding a large "Samurai"-type sword, according to police.

One witness told NBC Bay Area that the man was pacing back and forth waving the sword at times.

San Jose Police Department "Crisis Intervention Team" members were called to the scene and a stand-off began.

Coco Bennett, 29, was taken into custody?without incident just before 11 a.m. local time (2 p.m. ET).

Police said he would be evaluated by doctors.

An AR-15-type assault rifle was recovered, according to police.

Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/02/16295740-naked-man-wielding-samurai-sword-arrested-after-stand-off-with-police?lite

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Quadrantids create year's first meteor shower

Jan. 2, 2013 ? A little-known meteor shower named after an extinct constellation, the Quadrantids will present an excellent chance for hardy souls to start the year off with some late-night meteor watching. Peaking in the wee morning hours of Jan. 3, the Quadrantids have a maximum rate of about 80 per hour, varying between 60-200. Unfortunately, light from a waning gibbous moon will wash out many Quadrantids, cutting down on the number of meteors seen by skywatchers.

Unlike the more famous Perseid and Geminid meteor showers, the Quadrantids only last a few hours, so it's the morning of Jan. 3 or nothing. Given the location of the radiant -- northern tip of Bootes the Herdsman -- only observers at latitudes north of 51 degrees south will be able to see Quadrantids.

Watch the Quadrantids! Live Ustream Feed

A live Ustream feed of the Quadrantid shower will be embedded below on the nights of Jan. 2-4 (http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-msfc). The camera is mounted at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. During the day you will see either pre-recorded footage or a blank box -- the camera is light-activated and turns on at dusk (approx. 6 p.m. EST). ? Convert to your local time: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/tc.cgi

Do You Have Some Great Quadrantid Images?

If you have some great images of the Quadrantid meteor shower, please consider adding them to the Quadrantid Meteors photo group in Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/groups/quadrantids/). Who knows -- your images may attract interest from the media and receive international exposure.

More About the Quadrantids

The Quadrantids derive their name from the constellation of Quadrans Muralis (mural quadrant), which was created by the French astronomer Jerome Lalande in 1795. Located between the constellations of Bootes and Draco, Quadrans represents an early astronomical instrument used to observe and plot stars. Even though the constellation is no longer recognized by astronomers, it was around long enough to give the meteor shower -- first seen in 1825 -- its name.

Like the Geminids, the Quadrantids originate from an asteroid, called 2003 EH1. Dynamical studies suggest that this body could very well be a piece of a comet which broke apart several centuries ago, and that the meteors you will see before dawn on Jan. 3 are the small debris from this fragmentation. After hundreds of years orbiting the sun, they will enter our atmosphere at 90,000 mph, burning up 50 miles above Earth's surface -- a fiery end to a long journey!

Editor's note, Jan. 2, 10:45 a.m. EST: Tonight is the peak of the 2013 Quadrantid meteor shower. Best viewing will be in the northern hemisphere, but the shower can be seen at latitudes north of 51 degrees south. Meteor rates increase after midnight and peak between 3 a.m. and dawn, your local time. To view Quadrantids, go outside and allow your eyes 30-45 minutes to adjust to the dark. Look straight up, allowing your eyes to take in as much of the sky as possible. You will need cloudless, dark skies away from city lights to see the shower. The maximum rate will be about 120/hour. However, light from the waning gibbous moon will wash out fainter meteors, so don't expect to see this many. The peak rate of the Quadrantids has varied between 60-200, so its peak is not as consistent as other showers.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/0tMbonAFf2M/130102124016.htm

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Fiscal Cliff Deal Could Hurt Charitable Giving - Government ...

Legislation the Congress passed Tuesday to avoid the fiscal cliff ?limits how much wealthy people can claim in deductions for charitable contributions and other spending when they itemize their tax returns.

The legislation raises the top tax rate to 39.6 percent on household incomes above $450,000 but maintains current rates for everyone else, or about 98 percent of all Americans. It also delays for two months the $110-billion in federal spending cuts scheduled for 2013.

Throughout December nonprofits have been lobbying Congress and President Obama not to impose limits on the tax savings wealthy donors get when they make charitable contributions.

The Senate-crafted plan enacts limits that charities have opposed. It reinstates a provision eliminated in 2010 that reduces?itemized deductions by 3 percent of the amount that household income exceeds $300,000. Write-offs grow more limited the more taxable income a person has and could reduce the value of deductions by up to 80 percent for the highest-income taxpayers, according to the Tax Policy Center.

The 2010 limits have long been opposed by charities. Independent Sector noted that the limit could reduce giving in its February analysis of the idea, which was included in President Obama?s 2013 budget proposal.

The organization, which represents about 600 nonprofits, also signed a letter this summer from the Charitable Giving Coalition?to Sen. Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate, stating its opposition to the deduction limits.

The letter, signed by nearly a 30 of the nation?s largest nonprofit organizations, said the limits would ?result in fewer contributions flowing to America?s charities which are now being asked to provide even more services to the most vulnerable among us.?

The legislation also called for a serious overhaul of the tax code. That means charities could spend much of 2013 fending off tax changes they fear would deter giving. President Obama has long supported imposing a 28-percent limit on the value of itemized deductions taken by the wealthiest taxpayers, including those for charitable giving.

?Cutting spending has to go hand in hand with further reforms to our tax code so that the wealthiest corporations and individuals can?t take advantage of loopholes and deductions that aren?t available to most Americans,? President Obama said in a press conference near midnight Tuesday.

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Source: http://philanthropy.com/blogs/government-and-politics/fiscal-cliff-deal-could-hurt-charitable-giving/31559

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Happy new year, Cairo?

Residents speak of a tough year, and worry about a tougher one ahead.

By Dan Murphy,?Staff writer / December 31, 2012

An Egyptian woman holds a poster with Arabic that reads, "my Christian siblings.. happy new year.." in front of the presidential palace in Cairo, Egypt, Dec. 31.

Amr Nabil/AP

Enlarge

I'm back in Cairo after well over a year away, and my first thought was that little has changed.

Skip to next paragraph Dan Murphy

Staff writer

Dan Murphy is a staff writer for the Monitor's international desk, focused on the Middle East.?Murphy, who has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, and more than a dozen other countries, writes and edits Backchannels. The focus? War and international relations, leaning toward things Middle East.

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Getting out of Cairo airport is still a chaotic mess of taxi and hotel touts, though easy to navigate if you know the drill. Traffic was worse than I'd have expected for midday on Saturday, but Cairo zahma hardly has a predictable rhythm anyway. Parts of the city are always one flat tire away from being turned into a parking lot.

As I pulled into my old haunts, one thing that struck me was the apparent absence of the over-the-top commercialization of Christmas I was used to when I lived here years ago. Friends agreed, saying shops and hotels had reined in their use of the holiday, on the reasoning of "why take a chance?" Referring to bearded President Mohamed Morsi from the Muslim Brotherhood as "Morsi Claus" was apparently de rigeur, however, in certain activist and secular circles.

But enough with first impressions. Egypt had a tumultuous 2012 that was disillusioning, to put it mildly, for many of the young revolutionaries who supported the January 2011 uprising against Hosni Mubarak. While you can't see the economic pain of the past year by walking the streets of Cairo, just a few early conversations with friends and acquaintances make it clear that it's very real. In the fashionable districts of Cairo, shopkeepers say business is down. In more working class neighborhoods, the guys selling vegetables or clothing say likewise. Men who paint houses or fix plumbing say work is less steady, with customers putting off non-essential work.

And while in my few brief conversations with Egyptian contacts the focus has been disappointment with the new Muslim Brotherhood-backed constitution, or anger at Morsi and the Brothers' apparent accommodations to a military hierarchy that has cast a shadow over Egyptian politics for a generation, it is economic conditions that will make or break the emerging new Egyptian political order in 2013.

The two, of course, are not mutually exclusive. While Morsi has spoken of a need to restore a battered Egyptian economy, neither he nor anyone else has been better able to provide stability or bread than the military was when it was running Egypt from February 2011 until June of this year.

On one level, they can be forgiven. The past year has seen certain post-Mubarak assumptions (or hopes) seriously ruptured. A popular Egyptian view of the military as protector of the nation was eroded. In February, more than 70 people died following a soccer match in Port Said at which security, the responsibility of the army, was conspicuous by its absence.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/Tu7VnNfLF20/Happy-new-year-Cairo

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Fla. man pleads guilty in NY in dinosaur dispute

FILE - This photo released by the U.S. Attorney's office shows the fossil of a Tyrannosaurus bataar dinosaur at the center of a lawsuit demanding its return to Mongolia. Florida resident Eric Prokopi has pleaded guilty, Thursday, Dec. 27, 2012, at Federal Court in New York to smuggling this fossil and others into the United States. In return for his cooperation, prosecutors say they will recommend leniency. (AP Photo/U.S Attorney Office for the Southern District of New York, File)

FILE - This photo released by the U.S. Attorney's office shows the fossil of a Tyrannosaurus bataar dinosaur at the center of a lawsuit demanding its return to Mongolia. Florida resident Eric Prokopi has pleaded guilty, Thursday, Dec. 27, 2012, at Federal Court in New York to smuggling this fossil and others into the United States. In return for his cooperation, prosecutors say they will recommend leniency. (AP Photo/U.S Attorney Office for the Southern District of New York, File)

NEW YORK (AP) ? A Florida fossils dealer pleaded guilty to smuggling charges Thursday and agreed to give up a celebrated $1 million dinosaur skeleton seized by the U.S. government earlier this year for its eventual return to Mongolia.

Eric Prokopi, 38, said he would surrender the 70 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton known as "Ty" and give up any claims to six other dinosaurs and various other bones in a cooperation deal that might win him leniency from charges that carry a potential prison sentence of up to 17 years.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Martin S. Bell read a list of the dinosaurs to Magistrate Judge Ronald L. Ellis, saying a second substantially complete Tyrannosaurus skeleton was found at Prokopi's Gainesville, Fla., home, while a third was believed to be in Great Britain.

Bell said the government will also get to keep a Chinese flying dinosaur that Prokopi illegally imported; a skeleton of a Saurolophus, a duckbilled, plant eating dinosaur from the late Cretaceous period; and two Oviraptor skeletons, one found at Prokopi's home and the other at another residential dwelling in Florida. The Oviraptors have parrot-like skulls.

"It's among the larger dinosaur shopping lists you'll see today," Bell told the magistrate judge.

In a release, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said: "Fossils and ancient skeletal remains are part of the fabric of a country's natural history and cultural heritage, and black marketers like Prokopi who illegally export and sell these wonders, steal a slice of that history. We are pleased that we can now begin the process of returning these prehistoric fossils to their countries of origin."

The government accused Prokopi of smuggling bones into the country illegally from Mongolia before assembling them into a skeleton that was sold by Dallas-based Heritage Auctions for $1.05 million, a deal that was suspended pending the outcome of litigation. The government said the dinosaur skeleton was mislabeled as reptile bones from Great Britain.

Prokopi remains free on bail pending a sentencing scheduled for April 25. After his plea Thursday, he immediately went with prosecutors to their offices without commenting.

In a statement last spring, Prokopi defended his handling of the dinosaur, saying the value of the bones was labeled much lower than the eventual auction price because "it was loose, mostly broken bones and rocks with embedded bones. It was not what you see today, a virtually complete, mounted skeleton."

Prokopi pleaded guilty to conspiracy for importing the Chinese flying dinosaur, entry by goods by means of false statements for importing Mongolian dinosaurs and one count of interstate and foreign transportation of goods converted and taken by fraud.

In describing his crimes, Prokopi said he wrote an email to a fossils dealer in China in 2010, instructing him to mislabel customs documents to make it appear that the bones of a Chinese flying dinosaur were worth less than they were.

He said that from 2010 to 2012, he arranged for shipments of fossils from Mongolia to be described in customs documents as if their country of origin were Great Britain.

The magistrate judge asked Prokopi if the country of origin on the documents was an important fact.

"Well, apparently," Prokopi said, prompting a brief discussion between the prosecutor and Prokopi's defense lawyer.

Afterward, Prokopi said the labeling of the relics was purposefully "vague and misleading so that they didn't bring attention to the shipment."

The magistrate judge asked him what would have happened if he had labeled them accurately.

"Probably nothing," Prokopi said, pausing and then adding, "or it may not have been allowed to be imported."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/b2f0ca3a594644ee9e50a8ec4ce2d6de/Article_2012-12-31-APFN-US-Dinosaur-Dispute/id-e01a8a52fedc4ac8a08fe55dd6524040

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INTERVIEW: Scott Ian speaks words about his ?Speaking Words? tour

Anthrax main-man Scott Ian isn?t about to quit metal and hit the after-dinner speaking circuit or anything, at least not just yet. But following a successful one-off spoken word show in London last November he has booked a 16-date spoken word tour of the UK. He?s calling it Speaking Words, because a spoken word tour sounds too ?fancy pants?, and it?ll give him a chance to air some of the stories accrued over a 30-plus year career as a touring musician. Who knows: this could be the start of something big, Scott Ian as a stand-up comic or talk show host. Who knows But if not, well, it?ll be pretty cool to hear all about how Anthrax?s ordinarily inflappable riff-master ended up with a load of shit in his pants the first time he met Lemmy, and all that sort of thing.

Have you gone mad, public speaking is terrifying?
Scott Ian: ?Y?know it?s weird, I know a lot of people are terrified but I don?t find public speaking terrifying for some crazy reason. Maybe there is something wrong with me [laughs].

Is this something you?ve wanted to do for a while?
Scott Ian: ?Yeah, it?s something I?ve always wanted to do, and I?ve always been trying to figure out how can I do this, how would I ever make this possible. I?ve seen Rollins do it all these years; I saw Rollins, maybe on the first time he ever did a tour I went to see what it was going to be about. I mean, I am a huge fan of Rollins? music and I had read all his books at the time, so I really knew that he had a point of view and something he needed to express and he did it really well. It?s something that I always wanted to do and I finally had the opportunity this year; doing this one-off show in London. I was approached by the band?s agent, who basically put it together, and asked, ?Are you interested in doing this?? And I said, ?Absolutely. I?ve been kinda waiting for this to happen but I didn?t know how to kick-start it.? I did the one show in London and I enjoyed myself so much, I had such a good time with it that I was like, ?Can I do more of this? How do we do more of this?? They came back and said, ?There?s a lot of interest in it, do you wanna do a tour?? I was like, ?Sign me up! Let?s find a window when it works and go and do it.??

Where did you get the material from? Was it something that you had sketched out in advance?
Scott Ian: ?No! I did absolutely zero rehearsal. I didn?t even know how to prepare for it, truthfully. The show was booked months in advance, and I had all these months to think about it, and think, ?Okay, I?m going to put a whole show together . . . ? Because I am friends with a lot of stand-up comedians and a lot of writers, and I am a big fan of comedy and certainly live stand-up comedy. I?ve seen my friends do it and I think that it?s the most challenging thing in the world just to sit down, write jokes, get on stage and make people laugh. I mean, I think that?s the hardest thing in the entertainment industry. It doesn?t get any more raw than that, and I am certainly not a joke writer nor am I a stand-up comedian but I just feel that my life is in so many ways ridiculous. The last 32 years of my life spent in a metal band; I?ve got so many stories, whether it?s shit that I?ve done, people that I?ve met, stories that I know from other people . . . I?ve kinda been in this bubble for so long. I sit around in bars with my friends and I?ll get around to telling stories, as we all do, and most of my friends are in this industry or connected to it somehow, so we all have stories and we all sit down and tell stories to each other and crack each other up. I always felt that people need to hear this stuff. This shit is hilarious. It?s just a really fun thing for me to do, to relate to people on that level. That?s what it is. That?s what the material is; it?s shit that I have been through in my life.?

How much of it is biographical?
Scott Ian: ?I don?t go as far back as the whole, ?I grew up in New York and this is what happened to me as a child . . .? It?s not that. Maybe someday I?ll get into that but right now it?s just a lot of crazy stories and crazy shit, and just stuff to share that I think an audience of people who are a fans of my band would be interested in. In fact, you certainly don?t have to be a fan of my band or a metal fan because the stories are just so inherently ridiculous [laughs], and inherently funny, that it doesn?t matter if you listen to this kind of music. Some of it is about me meeting my heroes through the years . . . If you have any sense of humor at all I tend to think that you?ll find some humor in this.?

How did the London show go?
Scott Ian: ?At the London show, I did no rehearsal and I kept getting more and more stressed out about it as it got closer. I was really starting to stress out about it, like, ?What the fuck am I gonna do? I don?t know how to do this. I have no fucking idea what I am doing. I gotta get on stage in a couple of days.? And then my wife and I, and my son flew to London and got in about three days before the show. I got in a panic about two days before; I had really no clue. I had planned sharing some stories. I was going to invite my friends over and regale them with my witty tales: I never did any of that. My wife Pearl just said to me, ?You know these stories. All this stuff is in your brain.? And that totally calmed me down, ?cos I do know ?em, it?s not like I was going to walk on stage and forget everything that had happened to me over the last 30 years.?

And there was a Q&A, too, right?
Scott Ian: ?I winged it. I mean, I just walked on stage and an hour-and-a-half flew by. So I said, ?All right, let?s do Q&A.? And that added almost another hour on because people ask questions and those questions lead me down other paths and they open other doors to tell stories. And I had been pretty clear about it, people could ask me anything they want.?

Is that not a bit dangerous? Was there not something that you?d dread getting asked?
Scott Ian: ?No. I don?t care. If it?s something I don?t wanna answer I?ll say, ?Sorry! I?m not answering that one.? It?s hard for me to imagine what someone would ask that I would be afraid of answering.

Can you see this Speaking Words business taking your career to weird new places, like Rollins. Could you see yourself acting or writing?
Scott Ian: ?Well I pretty much write all the time. I think the actual impetus for me to start to stand up in front of people and do this was I started compiling a lot of these stories earlier this year, and like writing them out long-form, literally typing them out, because someday I will do a book so I might as well start now having all these stories and anecdotes and things like that . . . In case I ever forget. I?ll already have that part [of the book] done. And it was kinda during that that I thought it would be fun to share this with people, get on stage and talk to people about it but still not really having any idea of how to do that because . . . Well I guess I could have called my agent and said, ?Hey, I want to do a spoken word show.? And we could have worked it out. But it just seemed so out of the ballpark. It?s just weird how it worked out that my agent put on these three shows; they did one with me, one with Chris Jericho, and one with Duff McKagan. It was just his idea to do this, that all three of us had something to say, and I was like, ?God, this is such perfect timing for you to come up with this idea. I?m always writing, and I already do write for DC Comics; I?ve got one series for them about Lobo and I am writing another one about The Demon, so I always get to write. As far as acting? That?s a whole different ball game. Of course, I would love to try it, but, [laughs] I?m not going to go out there and start going to acting classes, going on auditions. That?s not something that I am interested in at all. But if the producers of The Walking Dead called me and said, ?We want you to be on the show? I?d go do it and figure it out as I went but it?s not something I am actively pursuing or anything like that.?

Of course you?ve already appeared on The Walking Dead, albeit briefly.
Scott Ian: ?Yeah, but that?s pretty easy though! For me it was, anyway; I have been dreaming about that my whole life.?

**Scott Ian?s Speaking Words tour kicks off on 24 May 2013 at O2 Academy, Oxford
www.Scott-Ian.com**

Source: http://www.decibelmagazine.com/featured/interview-scott-ian-speaks-words-about-his-speaking-words-tour/

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Parents React To 'Les Mis?rables,' Can't Stop Crying (VIDEO)

What does it say about a movie when it makes you cry more than attending a family member's funeral? And, though this question may best be saved for a psychoanalyst, what does that say about your family?

There's no clear answer to either of those questions, but there is this: Blubbering away because of a movie can be hilarious.

Thanks to brothers Ryan and Kevin Ferguson, who accompanied their parents to watch the latest Hollywood remake of "Les Mis?rables," footage of such blubbering exists. And it's glorious.

Actual quote from Papa Ferguson, mid-sob: "We've been to funerals and been less upset... We've been to funerals of family members and cried less."

As an added bonus, it seems the weeping may have constituted a part of the couple's 28th wedding anniversary. Congratulations, you two! Way to keep your feelings alive!

[h/t: Digg]

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/31/parents-react-to-les-miserables_n_2388373.html

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