Pottsville man arrested in 1985 killing of Schuylkill Haven boy - Reading Eagle Newspaper
State police at Schuylkill Haven have arrested a Pottsville man in the 1985 killing of a 13-year-old boy whose body was found in a thicket months after he left home on a bicycle.

Joseph Geiger, 43, is accused of killing David Reed of Schuylkill Haven.

Geiger was arrested today — the 23rd anniversary of Reed’s disappearance — as he left his home to go to work.

Reed’s brother, Joseph J. Reed, 46, of Fort Myers, Florida … praised Trooper Robert S. Betnar for his determination and skill in helping to solve the case.

“He told me, ‘I will make this arrest,’ and I knew he would,” Reed said. “He should be with the FBI.”

Reed also credited his late sister, Virginia L. Meadow

s of Auburn, Schuylkill County, who pushed to keep the case alive. Meadows died last year.

‘Unacceptable’ errors led to deaths in fire aboard sub on Arctic patrol | UK news | The Guardian
…. At the time of the accident HMS Tireless had been taking part in an Anglo-American operation beneath the Arctic ice. After the fire the submarine was forced to surface through an area of thin ice. The injured sailor was airlifted by the Alaska National Guard to an airforce base in Anchorage.

When the submarine returned to its home port of Devonport in Plymouth, Cmdr Iain Breckenridge praised his crews and singled out the injured man.

“If it had not been for [his] outstanding efforts … the consequences of this incident may have been much worse,” the report said. “The small fires caused by the explosion could easily have taken hold and a major conflagration ensued, with very serious consequences, if [name withheld] had not had the stamina and presence of mind to use all available means to extinguish them.”

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, senior military commanders and other freed hostages also spoke — Uribe called the rescue mission “an unbelievable military achievement.”

“Today the armed forces of Colombia, the army of this country, our soldiers and policemen are entering the pages of heroes of humanity,” the president said. “They have written the name of Colombia on a golden mold of the democratic world.”

This is no exaggeration. Read the detailed account of how the Army infiltrated the rebels and set up a cinematic helicopter rescue.  Well done.

Hostage takers are complete bastards. If you doubt this, read some of the accounts of Ingrid Betancourt’s years in captivity.

The contrarian has to ask me, is the Colombian Army’s outstanding performance partly a justification of years of training assistance by the U.S. Army?

Technology is an invaluable tool for addressing some of these challenges. In a recent example, a team of Google engineers dedicated their 20 percent time over the last year and a half to build cutting-edge software for NCMEC that uses image and video recognition technology to help NCMEC analysts more effectively sort and review incoming reports of child exploitation.

These guys get my “hero” tag for putting their time into this project.

WESLEY CHAPEL, Fla. — A 62-year-old Florida man depended on his instincts when a bobcat attacked him, and it paid off — he survived, the bobcat didn’t.

The kicker: it attacked because it had rabies.

A mass grave believed to contain the remains of thousands of Jews killed by the Nazis has been found in southern Ukraine.

A Jewish community representative said on Tuesday the grave was found by chance last month when workers were digging to lay gas pipelines in the village of Gvozdavka-1, near Odessa, said Roman Shvartsman, a spokesman for the regional Jewish community.

He said that the Nazis established a concentration camp near the village in November 1941 and killed about 5,000 Jews at or near the site.

“Several thousand Jews executed by the Nazis lie there,” Shvartsman told The Associated Press.

Ukraine’s Jewish population was devastated during the Holocaust. Babi Yar, a ravine outside the capital Kiev where the Nazis slaughtered some 34,000 Jews over two days in September 1941, is a powerful symbol of the tragedy.

The good news here is that the story came out at all, because Ukraine is an independent country where Jews are not oppressed. This story might never have been made public in the old Soviet Union.

What atrocities will be dug up sixty-six years from today?

Technorati Tags: Babi Yar, glasnost

WARSAW, Poland (Reuters) — A 65-year-old railwayman who fell into a coma following an accident in communist Poland regained consciousness 19 years later to find democracy and a market economy, Polish media reported on Saturday.

Wheelchair-bound Jan Grzebski, whom doctors had given only two or three years to live following his 1988 accident, credited his caring wife Gertruda with his revival.

“It was Gertruda that saved me, and I’ll never forget it,” Grzebski told news channel TVN24.

“For 19 years Mrs. Grzebska did the job of an experienced intensive care team, changing her comatose husband’s position every hour to prevent bed-sore infections,” Super Express reported Dr. Boguslaw Poniatowski as saying.

“When I went into a coma there was only tea and vinegar in the shops, meat was rationed and huge petrol lines were everywhere,” Grzebski told TVN24, describing his recollections of the communist system’s economic collapse.

“Now I see people on the streets with cell phones and there are so many goods in the shops it makes my head spin.”

Thank God for Ronald Reagan.

Technorati Tags: Poland, Berlin Wall

The inspector ran Speaker’s passport through a computer, and a warning _ including instructions to hold the traveler, don a protective mask in dealing with him, and telephone health authorities _ popped up, officials said. About a minute later, Speaker was instead cleared to continue on his journey, according to officials familiar with the records. The inspector has since been removed from border duty.

Well, this is encouraging…. top-notch border inspectors on the job!

And BTW, no, we don’t forgive you. If I had my way, you would be disbarred.

See Georgia State Bar Rule 4-108, Conduct Constituting Threat of Harm to Clients or Public; Emergency Suspension.

(a) Upon receipt of sufficient evidence demonstrating that an attorney’s conduct poses a substantial threat of harm to his clients or the public and with the approval of the Immediate Past President of the State Bar of Georgia and the Chairperson of the Review Panel, or at the direction of the Chairperson of the Investigative Panel, the Office of General Counsel shall petition the Georgia Supreme Court for the suspension of the attorney pending disciplinary proceedings predicated upon the conduct causing such petition.

Make contact with the State Bar of Georgia.

Technorati Tags: Andrew Speaker, TB

Random House | Books | Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris

ABOUT THIS BOOK

HE IS ONE OF THE MOST HAUNTING CHARACTERS
IN ALL OF LITERATURE.

AT LAST THE EVOLUTION OF HIS EVIL
IS REVEALED.

Hannibal Lecter emerges from the nightmare of the Eastern Front, a boy in the snow, mute, with a chain around his neck.

All the people who are getting exercised about the Simon & Schuster POD rights controversy would do better to direct their attention in this direction. To my mind, the popularity of books like this, that simply glorify evil, is a far more serious problem than a trifling Kabuki play about eminently negotiable rights.

Technorati Tags: Simon & Schuster, reversion, POD, Hannibal Rising, Thomas Harris

It could be a chilly Father’s Day for Oprah Winfrey ’s dad.

The talk queen tells us she’s “shocked” and “disappointed” that she had to hear it from the Daily News that her 74-year-old pop, Vernon, is writing a book about her.

Winfrey said she laughed recently when “one of my assistants said, ‘The Daily News is calling. They say they heard your father is writing a book about you.’ I said, ‘That’s impossible. I can assure them it’s not true.’

“But then my sister said, ‘I think you should call your father.’ I called him and it turned out he is writing a book. The worst part of it was him saying, ‘I meant to tell you I’ve been working on it.’ ”

Winfrey, 53, confided, “I was upset. I won’t say ‘devastated,’ but I was stunned.”

“The last person in the world to be doing a book about me is Vernon Winfrey,” she added. “The last person.”

Oprah was 14 and pregnant when she left her mother’s home in Milwaukee to live with her father in Nashville. Her baby died weeks after he was born. She has said before that she’s grateful to her father for helping her go on, for teaching her discipline and the importance of education.

Nevertheless, Vernon, who plans to call his book, “Things Unspoken,” was quoted as saying he should have been tougher on her, because Oprah was “out of hand and an unruly child.”

“I have a good relationship with him,” Oprah told us Sunday, when she received the Elie Wiesel Foundation Humanitarian Award at the Waldorf. Though she hasn’t seen Vernon since he accompanied her on a trip to Africa a few months ago,
she said, “We talk, we talk, we talk.”

That’s why “I would have preferred to have known my father was working on this. It would have been a nice gesture, a courtesy,” she said.

OK, Vern: you’re the dad. No matter how famous she gets, it’s your job to protect your daughter.

Technorati Tags: Oprah, Father’s Day