How an earth do these pharmaceutical companies know the side-effects of taking drugs incorrectly? Do people volunteer to consume these things or do the companies wait for the emergency room reports?

It's those Hogwaller boys, they'll take anything. Especially that Boliver fellow, you know the certain-a-holic of the two that barely makes his meetings at the Western Auto.

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - A Colombian man accidentally shot his nephew to death while trying to cure his hiccups by pointing a revolver at him to scare him, police in the Caribbean port city of Barranquilla said on Tuesday.

After shooting 21-year-old university student David Galvan in the neck, his uncle, Rafael Vargas, 35, was so distraught he turned the gun on himself and committed suicide, police said.

The incident took place on Sunday night while the two were having drinks with neighbors.

Galvan started to hiccup and Vargas, who works as a security guard, said he would use the home remedy for hiccups of scaring him. He pulled out his gun, pointed it at Galvan and it accidentally went off, witnesses told local television.

"They were drinking but they were aware of what was going on," one witness said.

Man Allegedly Bites Off Girlfriend's Nose

TULSA, Okla. � A family sitting down to dinner had to call police and an ambulance after a man allegedly bit off the nose of his girlfriend, authorities said.

Jody Bennett came out of a back room of a north Tulsa residence on Thursday with a napkin over her face and said her boyfriend, identified as Greg Hill, had bitten her nose.

Medics responding to the house saw that Bennett's nose had been severed and called police.

"We looked around and tried to find a nose but couldn't find it," Cpl. Larry Edwards, a police spokesman, said. "I think he swallowed it."

An ambulance took Bennett, 37, to a local hospital where police talked to emergency room personnel about pumping Hill's stomach to see if the nose was inside, police Cpl. Shane Tuell said.

"They said, given the acid in the stomach, that it would be a futile effort to try and do that," Tuell said.

The nose is made primarily of cartilage and other soft tissues that stomach acid can dissolve quickly.

The couple live in California, and the other people at the house didn't know what led to the assault, Tuell said.

Officers used pepper spray on Hill, 45, after tussling with him as they tried to take him into the custody, Edwards said.

Hill denied biting Bennett's nose, police said.

He was booked into the Tulsa Jail on complaints of aggravated assault and battery, resisting arrest and destroying evidence.

Bennett could receive help from domestic violence groups to recover from her injury if she cooperates with Hill's prosecution should a criminal charge be filed, Tuell said.

Owner of dogs that killed Milam County woman indicted

Jose Hernandez, 52, faces charge of criminally negligent homicide.

By Tony Plohetski
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, February 18, 2006

A Milam County grand jury has indicted the owner of six dogs that fatally mauled a 76-year-old woman in November as she worked in her yard.

Jose Hernandez, 52, of Thorndale was indicted Thursday on a charge of criminally negligent homicide, a felony punishable by up to two years in state jail.

Authorities said Hernandez was arrested at his home shortly after grand jurors issued the indictment. He was released from the Milam County Jail after posting $25,000 bail Friday.

Hernandez could not be reached for comment.

Authorities said the six pit-bull-Rottweiler mixed-breed dogs attacked and killed Lillian Stiles as she was tending her yard atop a riding lawn mower.

Stiles' husband, Jack, was inside their house north of Thorndale watching a football game when the attack happened. He shot and killed one of the dogs.

Milam County Sheriff Charlie West said shortly after the incident that he did not think Hernandez would be charged with a serious crime because he and District Attorney Kerry Spears had been unable to conclude that Hernandez committed a felony.

West and Spears could not be reached for comment Friday.

West has said Hernandez kept the dogs in a pen behind a 3-foot chain-link fence. It was unclear how they got out.

Couple dies after heating with grill


An elderly couple who were using a charcoal grill to help heat their home were found dead early Sunday, apparently of carbon monoxide poisoning, officials said.

"We have no idea why they were using the grill for heat," said Lt. Kent Worley, a Fire Department spokesman. "It was an older house, so it didn't have central heat, but we don't know why they weren't using a space heater or another heat source."

Firefighters found the bodies of Clarence Johnson, 86, and Lottie Johnson, 95, in their bedroom. A neighbor who saw smoke called authorities.

Worley said the 18-inch grill had overturned and burned through the floor. He said the utilities in the home were in working order.

A nasty way to spend the night. It is reassuring that someone checked the contents of the coffin before burying or cremating it!!!

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11879199/?GT1=7850

PROSECUTORS SAY PLATE USED TO SUFFOCATE WOMAN
SPENCER, Wis. - A woman who died at her Spencer home was apparently suffocated by a ceramic decorative plate, shaped like an Easter bunny, that had been shoved down her throat, authorities said as they charged her husband with murder.

Patrick Zurkowski, 38, was charged Monday in Marathon County Circuit Court with first-degree intentional homicide in the death of his wife, June Zurkowski, 40.

Assistant District Attorney Ken Heimerman said an autopsy found parts of the plate had broken off and lodged in the victim's throat, blocking her airway. The pieces were believed to be the bunny ears missing from a plate found in the home.

For more details, go to this link.

Inmates use mundane objects to craft weapons

Some objects pose danger for jail staff.

By Katie Humphrey
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, May 11, 2006

It's just a bar of soap.

But sometimes an inmate soaks it in water, softening it just enough to combine it with another bar of soap and mold it into a ball. Put that hardened soap ball in a sock, swing it around, and it becomes a dangerous weapon.

"When that thing dries and hardens, it's like a baseball," said Capt. David Bertling of the Williamson County sheriff's office, which operates the county jail in Georgetown, which houses about 650 inmates each day.

For the nearly 300 officers and staff that work in the correctional facility, trying to stay one step ahead of creative inmates is part of the job, said Detective John Foster, a spokesman for the sheriff's office. Corrections officers must maintain order while also making sure inmates receive medications, eat the proper meals, get to court on the right date and have clean uniforms, he said.

Inmates don't make weapons very often, but when they do, officers confiscate them, and the inmates can be charged with a felony for having a weapon in a correctional facility, Foster said. No one has been seriously injured in recent memory, but the jail staff members don't take any chances, he said.

After being booked into the jail, inmates are given a few essential supplies: clothing, bedding, soap, a comb, a toothbrush and toothpaste. Even those basic items can be crafted into dangerous objects, such as stabbing weapons called shivs.

Many inmates are in the county jail for a relatively short time, until they post bail or can be transferred to another facility after being sentenced, Bertling said. They can watch television, read and work out during recreation time.

But jail is boring, he said.

"They have nothing but time on their hands," Bertling said. "Idle hands are the devil's workshop."

Inmates cover the windows of individual cells with pieces of cardboard.

They wrap paper in a tight roll, attach a string ripped off a mop and fashion a "fishing pole" that can be used to pass notes, reach from cell to cell or poke unsuspecting officers. One inmate sculpted a very solid football out of toilet paper, using toothpaste as glue.

And something as simple as a staple or paperclip can be used to make tattoos when combined with ink from the flexible miniature gel pens inmates use to write letters, he said. They don't get regular pens with hard plastic barrels because those can be sharpened to make a shiv.

Officers do not carry guns or any other type of weapon in the jail. They don't even wear metal badges with pins, because inmates could grab them and then try to stab others, Foster said.

Weapons are particularly dangerous in the parts of the jail where inmates are housed in pods � a large room with tables, bunk beds and bathrooms � where there are 48 inmates watched by one officer.

No corrections officers have been seriously injured, he said, but they never know when an inmate might do something dangerous to staff, themselves or other inmates.

"It's not that everybody in jail is out to shank a corrections officer," Foster said. "But there is a high degree of danger that coincides with their job."

Soap-in-a-sock? Saw it on Full Metal Jacket

Arms Found Inside Fla. Alligator's Belly
SUNRISE, Fla. ? Wildlife officers captured an alligator Saturday they believe was responsible for fatally attacking a woman while she was out jogging.

The 9-foot, 6-inch alligator was trapped just under the bridge where Yovy Suarez Jimenez, 28, was last seen, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokeswoman Dani Moschella said.

Two human arms were found inside the alligator's belly, Moschella said.

Authorities still aren't sure how the alligator attacked Suarez. Witnesses had reported seeing a woman matching Suarez's description dangling her feet over the water's edge on Tuesday, but no one saw an attack.

A medical examiner said the alligator attacked while she was on land and then dragged her body into a canal.

Suarez's death is the 18th confirmed fatal alligator attack in Florida since 1948, Moschella said. Nine other deaths are unconfirmed.

For the opinion discussing this deadly weapon, click here.

Man impaled after falling from roof is hospitalized
Incident happened at construction site in western Travis County.

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, May 27, 2006

A man in his 20s who was on a roof at a construction site on Snake Eagle Cove in Bee Cave fell about 20 feet and was impaled on a metal post about 10:20 a.m. Friday, Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services spokeswoman Milissa Warren said.

The man was taken by STAR Flight from the site west of the RM 620-U.S. 79 intersection in western Travis County to Brackenridge Hospital, Warren said.

The man was listed as having life-threatening injuries.

Everest Climber's Death Sparks a Debate
By BINAJ GURUBACHARYA
Associated Press Writer
KATMANDU, Nepal � The story, an open secret in the crowded nylon city of Mount Everest base camp, trickled out from the high Himalayas: a British mountaineer desperate for oxygen had collapsed along a well-traveled route to the summit.
Dozens of people walked right past him, unwilling to risk their own ascents.
Within hours, David Sharp, 34, was dead.
The tale was shocking, an apparent display of preening callousness. Sir Edmund Hillary, who was on the team that first summitted Everest in 1953, called it "horrifying" that climbers would leave a dying man.
But in the small world of modern high-altitude mountaineers, there was barely any surprise at all.
That, in part, reflects the dangers inherent in climbing to a place where temperatures are so low that skin can freeze instantaneously and oxygen levels can barely sustain life. When things go wrong, there is little chance of rescue.
But, many climbers add, Sharp's death also reflects something else: a changed ethic in what was, until a couple decades ago, a tiny community where only the most experienced climbers would be found that high on a mountain � and where a dying climber would be abandoned only when a rescue threatened other lives.
In Sharp's case, about 40 people are thought to have walked past him as he sat cross-legged in a shallow snow cave. The few who stopped to check on him � and at least one team did give him oxygen � said he was so near death there was nothing that could be done.
"We've been seeing things like this for a very long time," said Thomas Sjogren, a Swedish mountaineer who helps run ExplorersWeb, a Web site widely read by climbers. "The real high-altitude mountaineers, the top people in the world who are doing new peaks and going to mountains you don't know much about, most of these people have become completely disgusted by Everest."
The top mountaineers "often help each other," said Sjogren, who has made many Himalayan climbs. "If you know him or you don't know him, it doesn't matter: you try to help him until he's confirmed dead."
But many of today's Everest climbers are on commercial expeditions, some paying tens of thousands of dollars to guides who are under fierce pressure to get their clients to the summit.
The situation grows more complicated when many climbers don't have the skills to help someone like Sharp, and perhaps shouldn't be on the mountain at all.
"The sheer pressure of numbers and accessibility to these mountains (have) changed the kind of people who go," said Lydia Bradey, a 44-year-old New Zealander who in 1988 became the first woman to summit Everest without supplemental oxygen.
As a result, Bradey said in a telephone interview, Everest climbers may be forced to decide whether to jeopardize their once-in-a-lifetime investment to help a dying person.
"If you're going to go to Everest ... I think you have to accept responsibility that you may end up doing something that's not very ethically nice," she said. "You have to realize that you're in a different world."
It's a world not meant for people at all, where oxygen levels are a tiny fraction of what they are at sea level, temperatures can drop to 100 degrees below zero, and winds can blow with the force of a gale. The area above about 26,000 feet is referred to simply as the death zone.
At those altitudes, the combination of exhaustion and low oxygen can leave even the best climbers lost in dreamy hallucinations of warmth and comfort.
The mountaineers who passed Sharp said he appeared unprepared for his solo climb to the summit, with limited oxygen supplies. Sharp, an experienced climber, had tried to summit Everest twice before in previous years.
The team of New Zealander Mark Inglis, the world's first double-amputee to reach the summit, stopped to give Sharp oxygen before continuing to the top.
"The trouble is that at 8,500 meters (27,887 feet) it is extremely difficult to keep yourself alive, let alone keep anyone else alive," Inglis told New Zealand television. "We couldn't do anything. He had no oxygen, no proper gloves, things like that."
Other climbers said Sharp, presumably incoherent, had also taken off his jacket.
Sharp, an engineer, died May 15, about 1,000 feet into his descent from the summit.
More than 1,500 climbers have reached the summit of Everest in the last 53 years and some 190 have died trying.
On May 10, 1996, a combination of bad weather, crowded routes and inexperienced teams left eight people dead on Everest in just one day, a horror that made headlines around the world.
While that day did much to expose the surreal vision of modern Everest � with its base camp cappuccino machines, bickering teams and barely experienced climbers being "short-roped" up the mountain by guides � it has done nothing to slow the commercialization of the mountain.
"People need to accept � the public as well as climbers � that people will die," said Alan Hinkes, the first Briton to climb all 14 of the world's 8,000-meter peaks.
"People don't understand or accept it," he said "They think they've bought into a theme park."

Teen accused of spiking rival's drink with bleach

18-year-old wanted lead role in play, police say.

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Friday, June 02, 2006
HURST � A teenager accused of spiking a fellow theater student's drink with bleach because she wanted the lead role in a school play has surrendered to authorities.

Katherine A. Smith, 18, of Hurst turned herself in Wednesday, more than a week after a warrant was issued for her arrest.

Smith was charged with tampering with a consumer product, a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. She was released after posting $2,500 bail.

Smith is accused of putting bleach in a Mountain Dew and then handing it to a sophomore in February, a day after the opening of L.D. Bell High School's production of "Ha!" a trio of one-act comedies.

Test results confirmed that the drink contained components of bleach, according to police reports.

Smith was the understudy and wanted the lead role played by the 15-year-old, police said. But the girl did not take a sip because of the odor and told an assistant principal, who contacted police.

After being questioned, Smith was placed in an alternative school, Hurst-Euless-Bedford district spokeswoman Judy Ramos said.

On Wednesday, police said the investigation took more than three months because of problems with testing the drink.

Water???? Trial starts in two weeks

Check out Gilbert v. State, 769 SW2d 535.

Woman Attacked Dog Breeder With Dead Chihuahua, Cops Say
Thursday, June 08, 2006

ST. PETERS, Missouri � A woman angry that her new puppy had died pushed her way into a dog breeder's home and repeatedly hit her on the head with the dead Chihuahua, authorities said.

The 33-year-old woman told police she had taken the puppy to a veterinarian, who said it was only 4 weeks old and needed to be returned to its mother. But before she could return the puppy, it died.

Early Wednesday, the woman went to the breeder's home, pushed her way inside and began fighting with the breeder as she tried to make her way to the basement to get another puppy, police said.

The breeder wrestled the woman out of her house to the front porch, where the woman then hit the breeder over the head numerous times with the dead puppy, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported, citing police.

As she drove away, the woman waved the dead puppy out of the car's sunroof and yelled threats at the breeder, police said. She later called the breeder and threatened her and her family, according to court records.

Police said they are considering felony burglary charges against woman and misdemeanor assault charges.

That dog won't hunt.

Study: TVs hazardous to kids in more ways than one
Toppling TVs cited as a concern for children's head and other injuries.
By Mary Ann Roser
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, June 19, 2006

Parents hear lots of warnings about children and television, but a new alert has nothing to do with what the kids might be watching.

The TV set itself could be dangerous, says a study published this month by the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Many children are injured by climbing on TVs and toppling them.

"It was surprising how frequently we saw it and how frequently there was a brain injury with it," said Dr. Todd Maxson, a report co-author.

Maxson is leaving Dallas to become medical director of a trauma and injury prevention program that's being created at Children's Hospital of Austin. He will educate parents and others about preventable childhood injuries, and toppling TVs will certainly be a topic, especially now that he's armed with the data, he said.

The study urges parents to use straps to secure their TVs to supporting furniture.

U.S. emergency room doctors treated 2,600 children younger than 5 who were injured by falling televisions in 2005, said Arlene Flecha, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

At Children's Medical Center Dallas, the researchers examined the cases of 26 children who came to the ER after being injured by a falling TV during the year that ended in October 2004. Most of the children ? 14 ? had head injuries, and nine required hospitalization.

None died, although two spent time in the intensive care unit, according to the study, published in the June issue of the journal Academic Emergency Medicine.

The researchers, Maxson and two other doctors at UT Southwestern, interviewed the parents. The parents told the doctors that none of the TVs was secured. Eighty-five percent of the parents said they had no idea that the TVs could cause such injuries.

"Prevention is the key, but unless we know what we're dealing with, it's hard to prevent," said Dr. Floyd Ota, the lead author and an assistant professor of pediatrics. "Our study was the first that talked to parents at the time of the event . . . and we found that most of them were caused by the toddler climbing on the furniture. Someone was trying to grab something."

The median age of the child was 40 months. All but one of the injuries happened at home.

Although nearly two-thirds of the TVs in the study were in the 20-inch to 30-inch range, the researchers said they could not determine whether size had anything to do with the hazard.

" 'The bigger the TV, the worse the injury' makes sense, but we don't know," Ota said. "We don't have enough cases."

Dr. Pat Crocker, chief of emergency medicine at Brackenridge and Children's hospitals in Austin, said he sees similar injuries locally.

Although most aren't serious, "we have had at least one skull fracture that I recall, and I think a more serious intracranial bleed," Crocker said.

Even more common are injuries caused by kids climbing on bookcases and dressers, he said.

"TV, dressers and bookcases ? anything heavy a young child can pull down or climb up ? should really be secured to prevent the accident," Crocker said.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission estimated in 2004 that 8,000 to 10,000 people, most of them children, are treated every year in U.S. emergency rooms for injuries linked to furniture tip-overs. About six die of those injuries.

The Dallas researchers propose that warning labels be put on TVs to make more parents aware of the hazard. They said a campaign by the product safety commission in the 1980s and 1990s led to voluntary labels on vending machines after many adolescents were injured or killed from tip-overs.

Today, vending machines are commonly secured to the floor or the wall to prevent such accidents, the study says.