Woman's Lost Pug Given As Christmas Gift

Rob Velevis holds a laptop with a photo of the couple's 18-month-old pug, Sc...
By MATT CURRY, AP
10 hours ago

DALLAS — The holidays were sad enough for Kim Velevis and her husband after their lovable pug "Scooter" dug its way out of the backyard and disappeared on Christmas Eve. But the real blow came with the new year: A letter from an anonymous woman who had found the friendly dog and gave it to her daughter as a Christmas present. To compensate for Velevis' loss, a $20 bill was enclosed.

"The puppy has a different name now, but he has plenty of food and toys. My daughter adores him. He sleeps with her every night," said the letter, which arrived Wednesday.

Velevis, 28, said she feels for the guilt-ridden woman, who described herself as a nearly penniless alcoholic. But she wants the dog back.

"We knew the first thing our Scooter would have done is find people," Velevis said. "He must have wandered up to this sick lady who, in desperation and in an attempt to fix her own life, ruined ours."

Velevis, who is 5 1/2 months pregnant with her first child, said she and her husband brought the wrinkly faced pooch home in July 2006 when he was about 8 weeks old.

Scooter could still be nearby. The typewritten letter, which carried a Tulsa, Okla., postmark, said the woman found the dog while visiting her daughter in Dallas. She wrote that her ex-husband has custody of the girl.

The woman, who discovered an address on the pug's collar, described a series of difficulties in her life.

"I lost custody because of problems I had with alcohol, and I have lost everything else," she wrote. "I have been sober for 6 months, and I am trying to turn myself around, but I have lost everything. My little girl wanted a pug dog like your little dog (very much!)"

The woman wrote that she cannot ask for forgiveness, "but I do want you to know that he does have people who love him and are taking care of him."

Velevis said she has no interest in pursuing charges against the woman and would be glad to purchase the woman's daughter another dog.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Man Using GPS Drives in Front of Train
12 hours ago

BEDFORD HILLS, N.Y. — A Global Positioning System can tell a driver a lot of things ��� but apparently not when a train is coming. A computer consultant driving a rental car drove onto train tracks Wednesday using the instructions his GPS unit gave him. A train was barreling toward him, but he escaped in time and no one was injured.

The driver had turned right, as the system advised, and the car somehow got stuck on the tracks at the crossing. He jumped out and tried to warn the engineer by waving. He got out of the way just before the train slammed into the car at 60 mph, Metro-North railroad spokesman Dan Brucker said Thursday.

The car was pushed more than 100 feet during the fiery crash.

Some 500 train passengers were stranded for more than two hours during the Wednesday evening rush hour. The accident also heavily damaged 250 feet of rail, Brucker said.

The railroad said that the driver was issued a minor summons for obstructing a railroad crossing and that he and his rental company would be liable for the damage, estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Glowing Pig Passes Genes to Piglets

A researcher holds up two piglets born from a cloned pig under ultraviolet l...
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, AP
32 minutes ago

BEIJING — A cloned pig whose genes were altered to make it glow fluorescent green has passed on the trait to its young, a development that could lead to the future breeding of pigs for human transplant organs, a Chinese university reported.

Two of the 11 piglets glow fluorescent green from their snout, trotters, and tongue under ultraviolet light, according to Northeast Agricultural University, located in the city of Harbin.

Their mother was one of three pigs born with the trait in December 2006 after pig embryos were injected with fluorescent green protein.

"Continued development of this technology can be applied to ... the production of special pigs for the production of human organs for transplant," Liu Zhonghua, a professor overseeing the breeding program, said in a news release posted Tuesday on the university's Web site.

The birth of the glowing piglets proves such transgenic pigs are fertile and able to pass on their engineered traits to their offspring, Liu said.

"The smooth birth of these transgenic fluorescent green pigs testifies to the mature development of our country's use of somatic cell nuclear transfer technology to produce transgenic pigs," Liu said.

Calls to the university seeking comment Wednesday were not answered.

Robin Lovell-Badge, a genetics expert at Britain's National Institute for Medical Research, said the technology "to genetically manipulate pigs in this way would be very valuable."

Lovell-Badge had not seen the research from China's cloned pigs and could not comment on its credibility. He said, however, that organs from genetically altered pigs would potentially solve some of the problems of rejected organs in transplant operations.

He said the presence of the green protein would allow genetically modified cells to be tracked if they were transplanted into a human. The fact that the pig's offspring also appeared to have the green genes would indicate that the genetic modification had successfully penetrated every cell, Lovell-Badge added.

But he said much more research and further trials — both in animals and in humans — would be necessary before we could see the benefits of the technology.

Other genetically modified pigs have been created before, including by Scotland's Roslin Institute, but few results have been published.

Tokyo's Meiji University last year successfully cloned a transgenic pig that carries the genes for human diabetes, while South Korean scientists cloned cats that glow red when exposed to ultraviolet rays — an achievement they said could help develop cures for human genetic diseases.

___

Associated Press writer Maria Cheng in London contributed to this report.

2 Bring Corpse to Store to Cash Check
By MARCUS FRANKLIN, AP
1 hour ago

NEW YORK — Two men wheeled a dead man through the streets in an office chair to a check-cashing store and tried to cash his Social Security check before being arrested on fraud charges, police said.

David J. Dalaia and James O'Hare pushed Virgilio Cintron's body from the Manhattan apartment that O'Hare and Cintron shared to Pay-O-Matic, about a block away, spokesman Paul Browne said witnesses told police.

"The witnesses saw the two pushing the chair with Cintron flopping from side to side and the two individuals propping him up and keeping him from flopping from side to side," Browne said.

The men left Cintron's body outside the store, went inside and tried to cash his $355 check, Browne said. The store's clerk, who knew Cintron, asked the men where he was, and O'Hare told the clerk they would go and get him, Browne said.

A police detective who was having lunch at a restaurant next to the check-cashing store noticed a crowd forming around Cintron's body, and "it's immediately apparent to him that Cintron is dead," Browne said.

The detective called uniformed New York Police Department officers at a nearby precinct. Emergency medical technicians arrived as O'Hare and Dalaia were preparing to wheel Cintron's body into the check-cashing store, Browne said. Police arrested Dalaia and O'Hare there, he said.

Cintron's body was taken to a hospital morgue. The medical examiner's office told police it appeared Cintron, 66, had died of natural causes within the previous 24 hours, Browne said.

"He was deceased in the apartment when he was removed by these two," Browne said.

Dalaia and O'Hare, both 65, were being held by police and faced check fraud charges, Browne said.

A call to a telephone number listed for Cintron at the apartment he shared with O'Hare went unanswered Tuesday evening. Police said they didn't have an address for Dalaia or attorney information for him or O'Hare.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Twins Unwittingly Got Married in Britain
By THOMAS WAGNER, AP
4 hours ago

LONDON — Twins who were separated at birth got married without realizing they were brother and sister, a lawmaker said, urging more information be provided on birth certificates for adopted children.

A court annulled the British couple's union after they discovered their true relationship, Lord David Alton said.

"Everyone has a right to knowledge about their lineage, genealogy and identity. And if they don't, then it will lead to cases of incest," Alton told The Associated Press during a telephone interview Friday.

Alton first revealed details of the unusual case last month during a five-hour debate about a bill that would change regulations about human embryology.

"I was recently involved in a conversation with a High Court judge who was telling me of a case he had dealt with," Alton said according to a transcript of the Dec. 10 debate. "It involved the normal birth of twins who were separated at birth and adopted by separate parents.

"They were never told that they were twins. They met later in life and felt an inevitable attraction, and the judge had to deal with the consequences of the marriage that they entered into and all the issues of their separation."

Alton gave no additional details and would not reveal the name of the judge who told him about the case.

The High Court's Family Division declined to discuss or confirm Alton's account about the twins.

Alton, an independent legislator who works at Liverpool's John Moores University, said the siblings' inadvertent marriage raises the wider issue of the importance of strengthening the rights of children to know the identities of their biological parents, including kids who were born through in vitro fertilization.

Under British law, only a mother has to be named on a birth certificate. Such certificates also are not required to identify births that result from IVF or to identify the sperm donor.

In addition, British law does not require parents to ever tell children that they were the result of donated sperm.

Alton believes this should be changed.

Alton said he favors an amendment to the Human Fertility and Embryology bill — which is still being debated in the House of Lords — that would require birth certificates of children born from donated sperm to say that and to identify the genetic father.

Referring to the twins' case, he said: "If you start trying to conceal someone's identity, sooner or later the truth will come out. And if you don't know you are biologically related to someone, you may become attracted to them and tragedies like this may occur."

Troubled Actor Brad Renfro Dies at 25

Brad Renfro attends the New York Premiere for Alfie, held at the Ziegfeld Th...
By JACOB ADELMAN, AP
9 hours ago

LOS ANGELES — Actor Brad Renfro, whose career began promisingly with a childhood role in "The Client" but rapidly faded as he struggled with drugs and alcohol, was found dead Tuesday in his home. He was 25.

Paramedics pronounced him dead at 9 a.m., said Craig Harvey, chief investigator for the Los Angeles County coroner's office. The cause of death was not immediately determined, Harvey said, but an autopsy could be conducted as early as Wednesday.

Renfro had reportedly been drinking with friends the evening before his death, Harvey said.

Renfro's lawyer, Richard Kaplan, said he did not know whether the death was connected to any problems with addiction.

"He was working hard on his sobriety," Kaplan said. "He was doing well. He was a nice person."

Renfro recently completed a role in "The Informers," a film adaptation of a Bret Easton Ellis novel that stars Winona Ryder, Brandon Routh and Billy Bob Thornton.

"Brad was an exceptionally talented young actor and our time spent with him was thoroughly enjoyable," Marco Weber, president of the film's production house, Senator Entertainment, said in a statement.

The actor served 10 days in jail in May 2006 after pleading no contest to driving while intoxicated and guilty to attempted possession of heroin.

The latter charge stemmed from his arrest in Los Angeles' Skid Row area, when he attempted to buy heroin from an undercover officer in 2005.

For several years he was better known for that drug bust and the resulting criminal case than for acting.

After one court appearance, he talked to reporters about drug rehabilitation, saying he was "tired of paying the consequences" for drinking and drug use and eager to get clean.

"It's definitely been an eye-opener," he said of his rehabilitation program.

Other run-ins with the law included a 1998 charge of cocaine and marijuana possession, for which he avoided jail time in a plea deal. He was also placed on probation in January 2001 and ordered to pay $4,000 for repairs to a 45-foot yacht he and a friend tried to steal in Florida in August 2000.

He was arrested again in May 2001 and charged with underage drinking, violating the terms of his probation, and was ordered into alcohol rehabilitation the following March.

A native of Knoxville, Tenn., Renfro's film career began when he was 12, acting opposite Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones in "The Client." His other credits included "Sleepers," "Deuces Wild," "Apt Pupil" and "The Jacket."

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Watch What You Put on Trailer Hitches

Del. Lionel Spruill, D-Cheasapeake, looks through papers at his desk on the ...
By BOB LEWIS, AP
9 hours ago

RICHMOND, Va. — It's one thing to dangle fuzzy dice from a rear view mirror, but decorating a trailer hitch with a large pair of rubber testicles might be a bit much in Virginia.

State Del. Lionel Spruill introduced a bill Tuesday to ban displaying replicas of human genitalia on vehicles, calling it a safety issue because it could distract other drivers.

Under his measure, displaying the ornamentation on a motor vehicle would be a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum fine of $250.

He said the idea came from a constituent whose young daughter spotted an example of the trail hitch adornment and asked her father to explain it.

"'I didn't know what to tell her,'" Spruill said the constituent told him before Spruill vowed to stop such displays.

"I said, 'Sir, I'm going to be a laughingstock, but I'm going to do it,'" he said.

The Virginia General Assembly has some experience with offbeat bills. Three years ago, it drew widespread attention with an unsuccessful effort to outlaw baggy pants worn so low they expose underwear.

Spruill, 61, said the indignity of the "droopy drawers" debate wouldn't deter him. He said he won't hesitate to bring a set of $24.95 trailer testicles with him for a legislative show-and-tell.

"I'm going to do it," Spruill told a handful of reporters after Tuesday's House session adjourned. "I'm going to bring them out here and show them to you till they tell me to stop."

China imposes online gaming curbs
World of Warcraft
Some 1.5 million people play World of Warcraft in China
Gamers in China are facing new limits on how much time they can spend playing their favourite online game.

The government in Beijing is reported to be introducing the controls to deter people from playing for longer than three consecutive hours.

The measures are designed to combat addiction to online role-playing games such as World of Warcraft and Lineage II.

More than 20 million Chinese play games regularly, mainly in net cafes.

Extreme devotion

Games are serious business in China. Last year, Chinese players spent almost US$500m on online games.

The government has been encouraging the growth of online gaming. It is hosting a two-day games conference in September in Beijing in the hope of attracting more foreign investment.

But the phenomenal popularity of online games has fuelled concerns that some people may be losing themselves in the virtual worlds of massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG).

In one extreme case, a player killed a fellow player who had stolen his virtual sword. The gamer received a suspended death sentence in June.

The measures announced by the Chinese authorities are due to be introduced from October.

Central control

The new system will impose penalties on players who spend more than three hours playing a game by reducing the abilities of their characters.

Gamers who spend more than five hours will have the abilities of their in-game character severely limited.

Internet users in China (courtesy New Synergy Consulting)
More than 20 million people play online games in China
Players will be forced to take a five-hour break before they can return to a game.

"The timing mechanism can prevent young people from becoming addicted to online games," said Xiaowei Kou, of the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP), the body which regulates online gaming.

All the biggest online game operators in China have said they will adopt the new system.

According to the Interfax-China news agency, the gaming firms said they were prepared to sacrifice short-term revenues to create a healthy environment for online gamers.

The operators face little choice as they need government approval to offer online gaming.

Among the games affected in initial trials of the system is the MMORPG game, World of Warcraft, which has 1.5 million players in China alone.

Other games include The Legend of Mir II, The Legend of Mir 3G, Lineage II, Westward Journey Online, Fantasy Westward Journey Online, MU, JX Online, First Myth Online, The World of Legend and Blade Online.