Florida man feared dead after sinkhole swallows him

SEFFNER, Fla. (AP) ? A huge sinkhole about 30-feet across opened up under a man's bedroom and swallowed him, taking all of the furniture too.

Jeff Bush was feared dead after the floor gave way Thursday night. As he screamed for help, his brother Jeremy Bush jumped into the hole to try to help, but couldn't see him and had to be rescued himself. With the earth still crumbling, a sheriff's deputy reached out his hand and pulled Jeremy Bush to safety.

"The floor was still giving in and the dirt was still going down, but I didn't care. I wanted to save my brother," Jeremy Bush said through tears Friday as he stood in a neighbor's yard. "But I just couldn't do nothing."

The only thing sticking out of the hole was a small corner of a bed's box spring. Cables from a television led down into the hole, but the TV set, along with a dresser, was nowhere to be seen.

Officials lowered equipment into the sinkhole but didn't see any sign of life.

Jeremy Bush said it took him only seconds to get to his brother's room about 11 p.m. Thursday. He had just knocked on his brother's bedroom door, telling him they weren't working Friday. The brothers were employed by the Transportation Department and picked up trash along interstates and roads.

"I went in my bedroom, heard a loud crash, ran in that direction," he said. "I was getting ready to run into the room and I almost fell into the hole. I jumped into the hole and started digging for me. I started screaming for him."

Engineers worked to determine the size of the sinkhole. At the surface, officials estimated it was about 30 feet across. Below the surface, officials believed it was 100 feet wide.

From the outside of the small, sky blue house, nothing appeared wrong. There wear no cracks and the only sign something was amiss was the yellow caution tape circling the house.

There were six people at the home when it collapsed, including Jeremy Bush's wife and his 2-year-old daughter.

"It was something you would see in a movie. You wouldn't, in your wildest dreams, you wouldn't think anything like that could happen, especially here," he said.

Hillsborough County Sheriff's Deputy Douglas Duvall rescued Jeremy Bush.

"I reached down and was able to actually able to get him by his hand and pull him out of the hole. The hole was collapsing. At that time, we left the house," Duvall said.

Sheriff's office spokesman Larry McKinnon said authorities asked sinkhole and engineering experts to help with the recovery effort, and they were using equipment to see if the ground can support the weight of heavy machinery that was needed.

"We put engineering equipment into the sinkhole and didn't see anything compatible with life," Hillsborough County Fire Rescue spokeswoman Jessica Damico said. "The entire house is on the sinkhole."

Neighbors on both sides of the home have been evacuated.

___

Follow Lush at www.twitter.com/tamarlush

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/florida-man-swallowed-sinkhole-under-bedroom-163420414.html

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PFT: Falcons cut Turner, Robinson, Abraham

Reuters

Having cultivated Michael Johnson, the Bengals weren?t about to let him go.

The Bengals are going to hang onto the fifth-year defensive end by use of the franchise tag, guaranteeing him at least a one-year, $11.175 million deal if they don?t reach a long-term contract.

But that?s still the goal, according to Bengals coach Marvin Lewis.

?Obviously we are committed to re-signing Mike,? Lewis said in comments distributed by the team, ?and this move is part of the process to keep a young and promising defense together.

?Mike has worked hard to improve himself every year during his time as a Bengal, helping us to the postseason three of four years. We have every reason to believe he will continue to grow as a leader and productive player.?

The former third-round pick blossomed last year, with 11.5 sacks and growing as a run defender.

?This guy has come up in our system, he plays about 85 percent of our snaps, and he?s the kind of guy we love to have around,? defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer said. ?He?s hard-working and a great team player. He?s an outstanding run defender in addition to his pass rush production. He?s got great length and size, and great speed off the edge.?

And that combination of factors would have made him highly sought after, which led the Bengals to tag him at the risk of losing right tackle Andre Smith.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/03/01/falcons-to-cut-dunta-robinson-michael-turner-john-abraham/related/

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Blackhawks Streak: Jonathan Toews Goals Help Chicago Extend Points Streak To 20 Games (VIDEO)

ST. LOUIS ? Jonathan Toews scored twice, and Ray Emery and Corey Crawford combined on a shutout as the Chicago Blackhawks extended their NHL-record season-opening points streak to 20 games with a 3-0 win over the St. Louis Blues on Thursday night.

Andrew Shaw also scored for Chicago, which was coming off a 6-0-1 homestand and improved to 9-0-2 on the road. The Blackhawks, who have won seven in a row overall, have earned 37 out of a possible 40 points this season with a 17-0-3 start.

Chicago has a point in its last 26 regular-season games since a loss on March 25, 2012, to Nashville.

Chicago, playing its first road game in 18 days, has won four in a row against St. Louis, which has lost three of four.

Crawford was pulled with an upper-body injury after making six saves in the first period. He missed four games earlier this month also with an upper-body injury and returned to the lineup Sunday, making 28 stops in a 1-0 win over Columbus. Coach Joel Quenneville said after the game that Crawford is day to day, and it wasn't the same injury that previously sidelined the goalie.

Emery made 15 saves over the final two periods, as he and Crawford finished with 21. He stopped Chris Stewart from close range midway through the second period. Kevin Shattenkirk hit the post on a second-period power play.

Toews scored his eighth goal of the season just 12 seconds into the game off a cross-ice pass from Brandon Saad. Marian Hossa started the play after Toews won the game's opening faceoff. The goal was the fastest at the beginning of a game by a Chicago player since Dave Bolland scored 10 seconds into a 4-1 win against Dallas on March 16, 2012.

Toews also scored on a scramble in the front of the net at 6:53 of the third period.

Shaw made it 2-0 early in the third period when he converted from the slot off a pass from behind the net by Bryan Bickell.

Jaroslav Halak made 20 saves for the Blues, who fell to 4-5-1 at home. St. Louis was 30-6-5 at home last season. Halak lost for the first time in regulation this season.

St. Louis is 0 for 13 on the power play over the past five games. The Blues' last home shutout was a 6-0 loss to Calgary on March 1, 2011.

NOTES: Bolland is out with an upper-body injury. ... St. Louis linemates Andy McDonald and Alex Steen both missed Thursday's game with injuries suffered in practice Tuesday. McDonald is week-to-week with a left knee injury, while Steen is day to day with an upper-body ailment. ... Chicago played its first road game since beating Nashville 3-0 on Feb. 10. ... Halak is 16-2-1 in his last 19 starts at home.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/28/blackhawks-streak-points-blues_n_2786671.html

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Indonesia: Religious Minorities Targets Of Rising Violence | Albany ...

A session of the People's Representative Council in Jakarta, Indonesia

By Albany Tribune -- (February 27, 2013)

The Indonesian government is failing to protect the country?s religious minorities from growing religious intolerance and violence, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono should respond much more decisively and adopt a ?zero tolerance? policy for attacks on religious minority communities.

The 107-page report, ?In Religion?s Name: Abuses against Religious Minorities in Indonesia,? documents the government?s failure to confront militant groups whose thuggish harassment and assaults on houses of worship and members of religious minorities has become increasingly aggressive. Those targeted include Ahmadiyahs, Christians, and Shia Muslims. Indonesian monitoring groups have noted a steady increase in such attacks, one group finding 264 violent incidents over the past year.

?The Indonesian government?s failure to take decisive action to protect religious minorities from threats and violence is undermining its claims to being a rights-respecting democracy,? said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. ?National leadership is essential. Yudhoyono needs to insist that national laws be enforced, announce that every violent attack will be prosecuted, and map out a comprehensive strategy to combat rising religious intolerance.?

Human Rights Watch conducted research in 10 provinces on the Indonesian islands of Java, Madura, Sumatra, and Timor, and interviewed more than 115 people of various religious beliefs. These included 71 victims of violence and abuses, as well as religious leaders, police officers, militant group leaders, lawyers, and civil society activists.

Local officials too often have responded to acts of arson and other violence by blaming the victims, Human Rights Watch said. Most perpetrators have received little or no punishment. In two cases, local officials refused to implement Supreme Court decisions granting minority groups the right to build houses of worship. While some national officials have spoken out in defense of religious minorities, others ? including the minister of religion, Suryadharma Ali ? have themselves made discriminatory statements.

Yudhoyono has failed to use powers at his disposal to defend religious minority communities and has not effectively disciplined cabinet members when they have encouraged abuses, Human Rights Watch said. Ali made discriminatory remarks about the Ahmadiyah and Shia in a March 2011 speech at a political convention, claiming: ?We have to ban the Ahmadiyah. It is obvious that Ahmadiyah is against Islam.?In September 2012, he proposed that Shia convert to Sunni Islam. Ali was not sanctioned for either comment.

?The government has shown a deadly indifference to the growing plight of Indonesia?s religious minorities, who reasonably expect their government?s protection,? Adams said.

Islamist militant groups, such as the Islamic People?s Forum (Forum Umat Islam) and the Islamic Defenders Front (Front Pembela Islam), have been implicated in attacks and arson on houses of worship and homes of members of minority religions. Such groups seek to justify violence by espousing an interpretation of Sunni Islam that labels most non-Muslims as ?infidels,? and Muslims who do not adhere to Sunni orthodoxy as ?blasphemers.?

Indonesian government officials and security forces have often facilitated harassment and intimidation of religious minorities by militant Islamist groups, Human Rights Watch said. That includes making blatantly discriminatory statements, refusing to issue building permits for religious minorities? houses of worship, and pressuring congregations to relocate.

Such actions are in part made possible by discriminatory laws and regulations, including a blasphemy law that officially recognizes only six religions, and house of worship decrees that give local majority populations significant leverage over religious minority communities. Sunni Muslim communities in areas of eastern Indonesia where Christians are a majority have also been victims of such regulations and in a few instances have had difficulty obtaining permission to build mosques.

Indonesian government institutions have also played a role in the violation of the rights and freedoms of the country?s religious minorities, Human Rights Watch said. Those institutions, which include the Ministry of Religious Affairs, the Coordinating Board for Monitoring Mystical Beliefs in Society (Bakor Pakem) under the Attorney General?s Office, and the semi-official Indonesian Ulema Council, have eroded religious freedom by issuing decrees and fatwas (religious rulings) against members of religious minorities and using their position of authority to press for the prosecution of ?blasphemers.?

The increasing violence against religious minorities ? and the government?s failure to take decisive steps against it ? violates guarantees of religious freedom in the Indonesian constitution and international law. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Indonesia ratified in 2005, provides that ?persons belonging to?minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with the other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion.?

The Jakarta-based Setara Institute, which monitors religious freedom in Indonesia, reported a rise in violent attacks on religious minorities, from 244 in 2011, to 264 in 2012. The Wahid Institute, another Jakarta-based rights monitoring group, documented 92 violations of religious freedom and 184 incidents of religious intolerance in 2011, up from 64 violations and 134 incidents of intolerance in 2010.

?Yudhoyono should endorse religious freedom as a fundamental principle of his administration and ensure that government officials are not promoting abuses against religious minorities,? Adams said. ?Indonesia?s donors should take up the failure to defend religious freedom as a matter of urgency.?

Source: http://www.albanytribune.com/27022013-indonesia-religious-minorities-targets-of-rising-violence/

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Met Police stalling on Grant Shapps probe - Political Scrapbook

With senior Conservatives warning of ?a crisis? if Maria Hutchings fails to win the Eastleigh by-election, it isn?t shaping up to be a good week for Grant Shapps, who as Tory chair is ultimately responsible for the party?s campaign in the marginal constituency.?And it just got worse.

A Labour MP responsible for an official complaint against Shapps has ramped up the pressure on the Metropolitan Police to investigate the production of software apparently designed to rake in huge sums in online advertising?revenue by?plagiarising content on a massive scale.?How To Corp, a?company owned and operated by the Shapps family, may have committed offences under the?Copyright, Designs and Patents Act.

Steve McCabe, who?originally contacted the Met five months ago, has again written to the force, providing them with additional evidence ? including a PDF manual for the controversial ?Traffic Paymaster? software whose metadata reveals it was authored by??Grant?.

Scrapbook understands that the complaint is currently?in the hands of the Met?s Directorate of Legal Services, who are responsible for assessing the complaint before passing it on to investigators.?It has been suggested that?Shapps? high-profile role in the Conservative Party is a factor in the extensive delays. Indeed,?Scrapbook?has been attempting to elicit the status of the complaint from Scotland Yard for nearly six weeks without success.

They could always replace him with his deputy ??Michael ?blow job jokes on the campaign trail? Fabricant.

Source: http://politicalscrapbook.net/2013/02/met-police-stalling-on-grant-shapps-probe-for-political-reasons-how-to-corp-traffic-paymaster/

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Genetic tricks put a date on Homer's 'Iliad'

Biblioteca Ambrosiana via LGPN

This codex of Homer's "Iliad" was produced in the late fifth century or early sixth century.

By Joel N. Shurkin
Inside Science News Service

Scientists who decode the genetic history of humans by tracking how genes mutate have applied the same technique to one of the Western world's most ancient and celebrated texts to uncover the date it was first written.

The text is Homer's "Iliad," and Homer ? if there was such a person ? probably wrote it in 762 B.C., give or take 50 years, the researchers found. The "Iliad" tells the story of the Trojan War ? if there was such a war ? with Greeks battling Trojans.

The researchers accept the received orthodoxy that a war happened and someone named Homer wrote about it, said Mark Pagel, an evolutionary theorist at the University of Reading in England. His collaborators include Eric Altschuler, a geneticist at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, in Newark, and Andreea S. Calude, a linguist also at Reading and the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. They worked from the standard text of the epic poem.

The date they came up with fits the time most scholars think the "Iliad" was compiled, so the paper,?published in the journal Bioessays,?won't have classicists in a snit. The study mostly affirms what they have been saying, that it was written around the eighth century B.C.

That geneticists got into such a project should be no surprise, Pagel said.

"Languages behave just extraordinarily like genes," Pagel said. "It is directly analogous. We tried to document the regularities in linguistic evolution and study Homer's vocabulary as a way of seeing if language evolves the way we think it does. If so, then we should be able to find a date for Homer."

Who was Homer?
It is unlikely there ever was one individual man named Homer who wrote the "Iliad." Brian Rose, professor of classical studies and curator of the Mediterranean section at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, said it is clear the "Iliad" is a compilation of oral tradition going back to the 13th century B.C.

"It's an amalgam of lots of stories that seemed focused on conflicts in one particular area of northwestern Turkey," Rose said.

The story of the "Iliad" is well-known, full of characters such as Helen of Troy, Achilles, Paris, Agamemnon and a slew of gods and goddesses behaving badly. It recounts how a gigantic fleet of Greek ships sailed across the "wine dark sea" to besiege Troy and regain a stolen wife. Its sequel is Homer's "Odyssey."

Classicists and archaeologists are fairly certain Troy existed and generally know where it is. In the 19th century, the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann and the Englishman Frank Calvert excavated what is known as the Citadel of Troy and found evidence of a military conflict in the 12th century B.C., including arrows and a thick layer of burned debris around a buried fortress. Rose said it's not known whether the conflict was a civil war or a struggle between Troy and a foreign foe.

The compilation we know as the "Iliad" was written centuries later, around the date Pagel is proposing.

Decoding the words
The scientists tracked the words in the "Iliad" the way they would track genes in a genome.

The researchers employed a linguistic tool called the Swadesh word list, put together in the 1940s and 1950s by American linguist Morris Swadesh. The list contains approximately 200 concepts that have words apparently in every language and every culture, Pagel said. These are usually words for body parts, colors, necessary relationships like "father" and "mother."

They looked for Swadesh words in the "Iliad" and found 173 of them. Then they measured how they changed.

They took the language of the Hittites, a people that existed during the time the war may have been fought, and modern Greek, and traced the changes in the words from Hittite to Homeric to modern. It is precisely how they measure the genetic history of humans, by going back and seeing how and when genes alter over time.

For example, they looked at cognates, words derived from ancestral words. There is "water" in English, "wasser" in German, "vatten" in Swedish, all cognates emanating from "wator" in proto-German. There are occasionally different types of linguistic mutations: For example, the Old English "hund" later became "hound," but eventually was replaced by "dog," which is not a cognate.

"I'm an evolutionary theorist," Pagel said. "I study language because it's such a remarkable culturally transmitted replicator. It replicates with a fidelity that's just astonishing."

By documenting the regularity of the linguistic mutations, Pagel and the others have given a timeline to the story of Helen and the men who died for her ? genetics meets the classics.

More Homeric history:

---

Joel Shurkin is a freelance writer based in Baltimore. He is the author of nine books on science and the history of science, and has taught science journalism at Stanford University, the University of California at Santa Cruz and the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.

This report was published by Inside Science News Service as "Geneticists Estimate Publication Date of the 'Iliad' on Feb. 26. Copyright 2013 American Institute of Physics. Reprinted with permission.

Source: http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/27/17124075-genetic-techniques-used-on-ancient-texts-to-estimate-age-of-homers-iliad?lite

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Big East breakup picks up speed

NEW YORK (AP) ? The breakup of the Big East's football and basketball schools appears to be on the fast track.

The major college football members will meet in Atlanta on Friday to discuss the departure of the seven basketball schools that are planning to leave the conference and create a new league.

According to media reports Thursday, the basketball schools plan to have their new conference up and running for the 2013-14 school year and will pay the football schools to keep the Big East name and play its conference tournament at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Big East Commissioner Mike Aresco told the AP in a phone interview no deal has been completed between the two groups but "some of this stuff is clearly coming down to the wire."

Aresco will be meeting with the presidents and athletic directors from the football members. The members that do not have FBS football programs will not be part of the meeting.

The seven Catholic schools that are breaking away from the football part of the rebuilt Big East include some of its founding members and signature schools, such as Georgetown, St. John's and Villanova. The other departing schools are Seton Hall, Providence, DePaul and Marquette.

Big East football is in the midst of a major makeover, with 2013 scheduled to be another season with lame duck members.

Next year, Big East football will have holdovers Connecticut, Cincinnati, South Florida, Temple, Rutgers and Louisville, along with newcomers Central Florida, Memphis, Houston and SMU.

In 2014, Louisville and Rutgers are likely on the way out ? the Cardinals to the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Scarlet Knights to the Big Ten ? and Tulane and East Carolina will join. Navy is schedule to join the Big East for football in 2015, and the conference is looking to add another member ? Tulsa is the front-runner ? to get to an even 12.

The Big East is also putting the finishing touches on a new TV deal with ESPN.

The network last week matched an offer made by NBC for the TV rights to the conference. The deal will be for seven years and pay the league about $130 million, though that figure would come down if the seven Catholic schools are not in the league next season.

It had been presumed that the seven basketball schools would stay in the current Big East for another year, because time is getting tight to start a new conference. But with a TV deal reportedly waiting for them, it seems they're ready to ramp up the process.

The seven basketball schools reportedly have an offer from Fox to broadcast its games that could earn the schools about $3 million per year, depending on how many more members they bring on. Butler, Xavier and Creighton are being talked about as potential targets.

A faster-than-expected divorce between Big East football and basketball puts Notre Dame in an uncertain situation.

The Fighting Irish have announced they will leave the Big East and join the ACC in everything but football and hockey, but no timetable has been set for their departure.

Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick has said that he expected the Irish to stay in the Big East through next season. But what does that mean if the Big East is now the basketball-only schools?

A phone message left for Swarbrick was not immediately returned Thursday night.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-02-28-Big-East-Breakup/id-81c0ec2a93634bce85d3cfe31c7f2f62

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