Pooping dog forces emergency plane landing... -

Pooping dog forces emergency plane landing... - 



Twitter was abuzz Wednesday with pictures -- and complaints -- after a dog poo'd in the middle of a Philadelphia-bound flight, forcing an emergency landing.

Yes, you read right -- dog poop forced an emergency landing, according to passengers aboard US Airways Flight 598 from Los Angeles to Philadelphia. Those passengers took to Twitter to document the smelly ordeal.

Passengers said that the large dog went to the bathroom in the plane's aisle as many as three times, making people nearby physically ill.

"The second time after the dog pooped they ran out of paper towels, they didn't have anything else. The pilot comes on the radio, ‘Hey, we have a situation in the back, we're going to have to emergency land,'" passenger Steve McCall told Inside Edition.

The plane was diverted to Kansas City, Missouri, where a cleaning crew cleaned the messes, before eventually making its way to Philadelphia, according to passengers.

The emergency landing wasn't the only headache for those travelers. Before takeoff, Flight 598 was delayed on the tarmac at LAX for two hours for fuel problems.

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http://www.csnphilly.com/article/pooping-dog-diverts-philly-bound-flight

3 a.m. Northeast Georgia SWAT team drug raid tosses a flash-bang grenade into a 1-year-old's playpen -

3 a.m. Northeast Georgia SWAT team drug raid tosses a flash-bang grenade into a 1-year-old's playpen - 



Members of a Northeast Georgia SWAT team are "devastated" after a drug raid in which a flash-bang grenade landed in a 1-year-old's playpen, seriously injuring the child, the Habersham County sheriff said Friday.
The police officers involved have been called baby killers and received threats following the incident, Sheriff Joey Terrell said.
"All I can say is pray for the baby, his family and for us," he told CNN.
The SWAT team, made up of six or seven officers from the sheriff's department and the Cornelia Police Department, entered the Cornelia residence Wednesday before 3 a.m.
A confidential informant hours earlier had purchased methamphetamine at the house, the sheriff says. Because the suspected drug dealer, Wanis Thonetheva, had a previous weapons charge, officers were issued a "no-knock warrant" for the residence, Terrell said.
When the SWAT team hit the home's front door with a battering ram, it resisted as if something was up against it, the sheriff said, so one of the officers threw the flash-bang grenade inside the residence.
Once inside the house, the SWAT team realized it was a portable playpen blocking the door, and the flash-bang grenade had landed inside where the 19-month-old was sleeping, the sheriff said.
A medic on the scene rushed the baby outside to administer first aid, and a nearby ambulance was summoned. Authorities wanted to transport the baby via Life Flight to Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital, 75 miles southwest of Cornelia, but weather conditions wouldn't allow it. The baby was driven to the hospital.
A Grady official said it's hospital policy not to disclose patients' conditions, but the child's mother, Alecia Phonesavanh, told CNN affiliate WSB that doctors had put her son into an induced coma.
She further told the station the family was sleeping at her sister-in-law's house when police arrived, and the grenade seared a hole through the portable playpen after exploding on the child's pillow.
"He didn't deserve any of this," Phonesavanh told WSB. "He's in the burn unit. We go up to see him and his whole face is ripped open. He has a big cut on his chest."
Thonetheva, 30, was not at the home at the time of the raid, but the toddler's mother and father and their other three children were inside. Thonetheva's mother was also at the house, Terrell said.
The baby's family had moved into the Cornelia residence after their Wisconsin home burned, Terrell told CNN affiliate WXIA, and while the family members were aware of drug activity in the home, "they kept the children out of sight in a different room while any of these going-ons were happening."
Thonetheva was arrested at another Cornelia residence, along with three other people, shortly after the raid, Terrell said. He is charged with distribution of methamphetamine. Habersham County Chief Assistant District Attorney J. Edward Staples said Thonetheva could also be charged in connection with the baby's injuries.
Thonetheva was already out on bond for an October 2013 charge of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony -- the felony being distribution of methamphetamine, Staples said.
Because the Habersham County public defender's office is representing Thonetheva's co-defendant in the October case, they are unable to represent Thonetheva on the charges handed down this week, Staples said. It will take five to seven days to appoint him a new attorney, the prosecutor estimated.
Thonetheva made his first appearance before a magistrate Friday, but no bond was set because of the circumstances regarding the public defender. The court wouldn't have accepted a plea from Thonetheva because he has yet to speak to counsel, Staples said, adding that it will be up to a county Superior Court judge to set Thonetheva's bond after he's assigned a lawyer.
He is presently being held at the Habersham County Detention Center without bond. His rap sheet shows nine arrests since 2002 and includes charges of drug possession, carrying a concealed weapon, driving while his license was withdrawn and contempt of court.
Thonetheva faces no weapons charge in this week's incident, and as for drugs, Terrell said officers found only residue in the home.
No officers have been suspended, and Staples said he expects the review of the incident -- being conducted by Mountain Judicial Circuit District Attorney Brian Rickman -- to take about a week.

Read more - 

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/30/us/georgia-toddler-injured-stun-grenade-drug-raid/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

How Britain Calculates Its Hooker "GDP Boost": 60,879 Prostitutes x 25 Clients Per Week x £67.16 Per Visit -

How Britain Calculates Its Hooker "GDP Boost": 60,879 Prostitutes x 25 Clients Per Week x £67.16 Per Visit - 



First it was Italy which, as we reported last week, had decided to "boost" its GDP by adding the estimated impact of cocaine and hookers. And now, riding on the coattails of this economics gimmick designed solely to make the economy appear more solvent, it is Britain's turn, whose Office for National Statistics will also add add up the "contribution" made by prostitutes and drug dealers.

According to the Guardian "for the first time official statisticians are measuring the value to the UK economy of sex work and drug dealing – and they have discovered these unsavoury hidden-economy trades make roughly the same contribution as farming – and only slightly less than book and newspaper publishers added together."

How big of a "contribution" by hookers and coke are we talking?

Illegal drugs and prostitution boosted the economy by £9.7bn – equal to 0.7% of gross domestic product – in 2009, according to the ONS's first official estimate.

A breakdown of the data shows sex work generated £5.3bn for the economy that year, with another £4.4bn lift from a combination of cannabis, heroin, powder cocaine, crack cocaine, ecstasy and amphetamines.
Here's the problem: since one can't put down on their tax return form that they have paid sex or deal drugs for a living, the ONS will have to estimate the economic contribution by these illegal professions. This is how it has gone about doing it:

According to the estimates there were 60,879 prostitutes in the UK in 2009, who had an average of 25 clients per week – each paying on average £67.16 per visit.
That's right: there is now an excel model to calculate what the hypothetical GDP boost to a nation is. Making things even more surreal, and confirming the GDP calculation is officially a statistical joke, here is how drugs are accounted for:

The statisticians reckon there were 2.2 million cannabis users in the UK in 2009, toking their way through weed worth more than £1.2bn. They calculate that half of that was home-grown – costing £154m in heat, light and "raw materials" to produce.
The models will need updating: "The ONS will work in the coming months to bring the data more up to date. The figures will then be included in the broad category of household spending on "miscellaneous goods and services" alongside life insurance, personal care products and post office charges."

It is unclear if the ONS will pay for its agents to conduct due diligence in various brothels, or alternatively conduct "inhouse" sessions at the headquarters.

What is clear is that quite soon the largest marginal provider of "growth" not just in Britain but all of Europe will be otherwise illegal activities:

The more inclusive approach brings the ONS into line with European Union rules, and will eventually allow comparisons of the size of the shadow economy in different member states.

Joe Grice, chief economic adviser at the ONS, said: "As economies develop and evolve, so do the statistics we use to measure them. These improvements are going on across the world and we are working with our partners in Europe and the wider world on the same agenda.

"Here in the UK these reforms will help ONS to continue delivering the best possible economic statistics to inform key decisions in government and business."
"Best possible" indeed.

Some are already using puns to justify the new methodology:

He said the ONS would attempt to "fill in the gaps" left by available studies but it would be impossible to measure illegal activities as accurately as other components of GDP. Other activities are measured using questionnaires but the response rate in the sex and drugs trades are unlikely to be high.
It is indeed unlikely.

Others are already spinning the justification:

Alan Clarke, a UK economist at Scotiabank, said that although the government would not feel the benefit of illegal work in terms of income tax take, there would be a spending boost. "A drug dealer or prostitute won't necessarily pay tax on that £10bn, but the government will get tax receipts when they spend their income on a pimped up car or bling phone."
Others are openly scratching their head at the New Hooker and Blow Normal:

Steve Pudney, professor of economics at the University of Essex, said he was sceptical about the methods used by the ONS to estimate the size of the drugs market.

"In my view, the ONS estimate of the size of the drug market is unlikely to be very accurate. It rests on some heroically large assumptions which would be difficult to test, and it also uses a measure of demand that is likely to understate systematically the true scale of drug use."

He added: "They are using a demand-side approach which loosely involves multiplying a survey estimate of the number of drug users by another estimate of the amount consumed by the average user.

"Average retail prices of drugs come from other sources – mainly police/customs/security service intelligence sources – and, multiplying this by the estimated demand, gives the size of the market in cash terms."
What Steve doesn't seem to get is that at this point all GDP numbers are about as made up as can be, and are merely fabricated on the spot to justify the prevailing economical narrative. Case in point: the history of Q1 2008 GDP revisions over time, as we showed earlier:



If nothing, it will certainly provide comedians with fresh joke fodder. This should at least boost their take home pay and result in higher disclosed taxes.

And since this is just the beginning for a world which is slowly coming to grips with just how insolvent its non-shadow economy is, we eagerly look forward to the next bold move by economist everywhere: estimating the number of undocumented drug dealer and prostitutes and adding them to the monthly nonfarm payroll total. Think of it as a Birth/Death adjustment. Only more like a Blowjob/Drugs adjustment.

Read more -