Aug 11, 2005

Heat dashes Palestinian quest for longest sandwich

Palestinians abandoned a quest to build the world's longest sandwich on Wednesday after health officials told them their 750-meter construction risked rotting in the West Bank summer sun.

Hundreds of volunteers spread a 750-meter bun on tables along a dusty roadside in the West Bank city of Jenin, long a hotspot of Israeli-Palestinian violence.

But the attempt was called off for health reasons before volunteers got a chance to add 180 kg of mortadella meat, 350 kg of tomatoes and 250 kg of green peppers.

Organizers had planned to serve the sandwich to the poor, and said they were aiming to beat a record set in Portugal in 2004 for a 634-meter sandwich.

'We were planning to add the mortadella and stuffing at the last minute to rule out any possibility of rotting,' chef Ahmed Nazzal told Reuters. 'There must be a conspiracy against us by other competitors.'"

Aug 10, 2005

Embalmed fetus found in a laundry room

NEW ORLEANS -- New information was uncovered Tuesday about an embalmed fetus found in a laundry room at Charity Hospital Monday.

The male fetus was 20 weeks old, weighed less than one pound and could have been dead for more than a month, according to Orleans Parish Coroner Dr. Frank Minyard.

Minyard said the body had started to mummify, and he is especially concerned about the fact that it had been embalmed.

"They took organs out and stuffed the baby's cavity with cotton," Minyard said. "Usually a professional embalmer doesn't take all the organs out."

Minyard said most licensed embalmers work for funeral homes. He wants to know who embalmed the body and how it got to Charity.

"(The mother) evidently had some help, and they embalmed it themselves, or they took it to a funeral parlor," Minyard said. "We don't know."

One theory among hospital insiders is that a funeral home employee dumped the fetus at the hospital after being left with a prepared body that the family didn't have the money to bury.

"I'd like to know what happened to the organs," Minyard said.

Minyard is turning his findings over to police and the district attorney's office.

Right now, police do not consider the finding a criminal matter because the coroner didn't rule the baby's death a homicide.

Aug 8, 2005

Marilyn: Her Own Words?

"On Aug. 5, 1962, the body of Marilyn Monroe was found in the bedroom of her Brentwood home. The 36-year-old movie star was naked and facedown on her bed.
An autopsy conducted by Dr. Thomas Noguchi, then deputy medical examiner, concluded that death was due to acute barbiturate poisoning, and a psychiatric team tied to the investigation termed it a 'probable suicide.'

Today, 43 years later, fans from around the world will gather, as they have for decades, near Monroe's crypt at Westwood Village Memorial Park to celebrate her life and mourn her death. John W. Miner, 86, will mourn too.
But there is bitterness and frustration as well for the former Los Angeles County prosecutor, who was at her autopsy and was one of those looking into her death. He didn't believe that the actress took her life in '62 and he doesn't believe it now, and Miner says he's heard secret tapes that Monroe made in the days before she died that prove the actress was anything but suicidal.

Whether Monroe died by her own hand has been debated and dissected by books, documentaries, conspiracy theorists, and Hollywood and Washington insiders alike for years.
Enough credence was given to the various reports that in 1982, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office reexamined the case. Miner, by then in private practice, was among those interviewed.

The resulting report notes that Miner mentioned the tapes. However, he did not say he had a transcript. Although the report concedes that 'factual discrepancies' and 'unanswered questions' remained in the case, it did not find enough evidence to warrant launching a criminal investigation.
As head of the D.A.'s medical-legal section when Monroe"