WhiteBoard News for Tuesday, October 17, 2000

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Reuters):

When Chong Lih Ying reaches a chubby, dimpled arm for
the furry Garfield toy dancing in front of her she
looks like just another baby.

But it's only thanks to Malaysian surgeons that she can
perform the feat at all. In a 15-hour operation five
months ago, they sewed an arm on to the baby's
malformed left limb -- the donor was her identical twin
sister.

"I never expected in my career as a hand and
micro-surgeon to receive such a call," said Dr. V.
Pathmanathan, lead surgeon, said recently. "It was
actually a tremendous opportunity to do something that
was never done before."

Lih Ying was born without an arm. Her twin sister had
severe brain damage and died at birth.

When Lih Ying was four weeks old, Pathmanathan and his
team of 55 from Selayang Hospital attached the sister's
limb to Lih Jeng's stump -- and became the first in the
world to transplant an arm on to a baby.
===========

Barnoldswick, England (Electronic Telegraph):

A dog owner believes that her pet has developed the
ability to sort and deliver letters, apparently by
"reading" the names of the people to whom they are
addressed.

Denver, a five-year-old cocker spaniel, collects the
mail as it drops through the door of his home in
Barnoldswick, North Yorks, and then takes it to the
various members of his owner's family. The spaniel,
trained as a Disability Assistance Dog, had already
learned to do the shopping, gather up clothes for the
washing machine, respond to the telephone, and collect
newspapers.

Denver was supposed to take all the mail to his owner,
Jeannie Crangle, who is confined to a wheelchair. But
he began to distinguish between her name and those of
her boyfriend and carer, Timothy Johnson, and son,
Peter Hurst, a soldier.

Miss Crangle, 45, said: "Denver is bright and does a
lot of the chores but reading the mail was one thing he
was not trained to do." She believes he can distinguish
between the lengths of the names.
==========

San Diego, California (APBnews.com):

Mike Grogan was enjoying a wedding rehearsal in the
upscale beach community of La Jolla when U.S. Marshals
showed up to spoil the party by arresting the would-be
groom.

The problem, according to deputies, was that there is
no Mike Grogan, who claimed to be a former professional
football player and ex-Navy Seal. Instead, they say,
the groom-to-be was really notorious con artist James
Rubin Rowe, and he already had a wife, whom he had left
along with a trail of alleged fraud victims in Seattle.

These and many other crimes had earned Rowe a spot on
the Marshals' "15 Most Wanted" list.

Rowe, 39, was scheduled for arraignment today in San
Diego. After his prosecution here, he will be
extradited to his native Seattle, where authorities say
he bilked investors of millions of dollars in schemes
such as the purchase of several sporting goods stores.
He was tracked down in San Diego when one of his former
victims recognized him while negotiating a car deal.

Marshals deputies said Rowe had an uncanny ability to
assume new identities and, in a very short time,
convince women to marry him and investors to open their
checkbooks. During various cons, he had posed as
federal agents, a professional skier, a Nietzschean
scholar, a Navy Seal, and former New England Patriots
football player, authorities said. At the time of his
arrest, he was wearing a Super Bowl ring.

"He was extremely skilled at convincing people that he
really was who he said he was," Denny Behrend,
supervisor deputy for the Marshals' Seattle office,
told APBnews.com today.
=========

Ottawa, Canada (The Ottawa Citizen):

When the man said he had a gun and wanted the cash,
corner store clerk Jonathan Raymond, working the
graveyard shift, just laughed.

"I just didn't think he was serious," Mr. Raymond said
hours after it happened. "I told him to (buzz) off, you
know. Like, I got better things to do and that's not a
funny joke so (buzz) off."

The man didn't. Instead, as Mr. Raymond continued to
fill the beer fridges of the Couche Tard store at 882
St-Rene St. in Gatineau at about 1:30 a.m. yesterday,
the 32-year-old man grew increasingly frustrated as he
attempted to convince Mr. Raymond that this was,
indeed, a robbery.

He wasn't alone. The situation was annoying Mr.
Raymond, too.

"Finally, I just said: 'Lookit, I'm not going to give
you the cash unless you show me a great big knife or a
gun,' " Mr. Raymond said. "I wasn't even scared. For
some reason, I just didn't believe him. This guy ...
The guy was a really bad robber."

Taking Mr. Raymond up on his offer, the man showed the
19-year-old the butt of a gun he had inside his coat.
Still, Mr. Raymond did budge.

"I said: 'Look man, you're really annoying me now.
That's a toy gun.' "

Undeterred, the man said Mr. Raymond, who is about
five-foot-six and weighs about 150 pounds, should touch
the gun if he didn't believe it was real.

"So I touched it," Mr. Raymond said. "Then I start to
get a little scared because he's not quitting and I'm
not sure if it's plastic or not and, anyway, some guns
have plastic handles.

"But now I figure I'm not going to give him the money
anyway. I mean, if he hadn't done anything with the gun
yet, he won't. So when he asked for the money again, I
said (buzz) off, again."

At that point, Mr. Raymond says two men came into the
store to make a purchase. With the would-be robber
standing there, Mr. Raymond served the customers and
they left. Then Mr. Raymond and the robber just stared
at each other for a while before the man stepped away,
presumably to plan his next move.

However, when the man wasn't looking, Mr. Raymond
called 911 calmly and told them what was going on. The
robber noticed the call and bolted.

So Mr. Raymond chased the man and tackled him in the
parking lot.

"The guy started choking me, so I choked the hell out
of him," Mr. Raymond said. "Then I noticed he had a cut
on his hand, so I said: 'Let's calm down and we'll go
inside and wash that off and call the cops.' "

The man agreed, but when they got up he bolted again.

This time, Mr. Raymond, who has worked at the store on
the graveyard shift for 2 1/2 months, was joined by the
two men who had left the store. They had come back to
see what all the noise was about.

The three tackled the robber about a half a block away
from the store and held him until police arrived.

The gun turned out to be a fake.

He will appear in court today for a bail hearing. Until
then, police won't release his name.
==========

Westport, California (AP):

Four women held a topless prayer vigil against clear
cut logging in the small north coast town of Westport
on Sunday.

Standing on a remote roadside on the north-facing slope
of DeHaven Valley, the women hoped to call attention to
logging they say will create debris and wash into
DeHaven Creek below.

Led by Dona Nieto, who goes by her performance art
moniker "La Tigresa," the women braved the chilly north
coast breeze as logging was scheduled to continue
around them.

"The loggers will have to drive through a gauntlet of
bare-breasted women," said activist Daryl Cherney who
helped coordinate the protest.

"They are burning sage, saying prayers and invoking the
name of the goddess and reminding the men of the god
within each one of them," Cherney said.

The decision to partially disrobe for the sake of trees
actually began Thursday when Nieto stood on a roadside
by herself with some flowers, chanting poetry to any of
the loggers who would listen and occasionally screaming
"rape" when she heard the sound of falling trees in the
background.

Stunned loggers brought a sheriff's deputy to the site
Friday, only to find two topless women burning smudge
sticks and holding crystals. Dismayed loggers halted
operations for the day, Cherney said.

Logging continued Saturday, so Nieto put out the call
and four protesters showed up on the roadside Sunday.
They promised to return Monday and have been given
permission by the land owner to stand on the road to
bring attention to the trees falling around them.

Calls placed by The Associated Press to the company
that partially owns the Hawthorne Timber Co. were not
immediately returned.
==========

London, England (Ananova.com):

The last living member of the Dracula family wants a
job with the blood transfusion service in Britain.

Ottomar Rudolphe Vlad Dracula - or Prince Kretzulesco
to friends - is leaving his German castle after
neo-Nazis tried to set it on fire and made death
threats.

He thinks he will be welcomed by British blood
transfusion chiefs - once he convinces them he is in
favour of modern methods of blood donation.

He said: "I could do great things with the British
blood service people. I plan to come over first and do
a special event for free, to lend my name to getting
people to donate blood - to save lives."

Dracula has already worked helping to collect blood
with the German Red Cross. He is leaving Germany
because people have tried to set fire to his castle in
Schenkendorf, Brandenburg, 10 times. Swastikas and Nazi
slogans have been daubed on the walls of Castle Dracula
Estate, which he has turned into a tourist attraction.

Born Ottomar Berbig, Dracula was working as an antique
dealer in Berlin, when he was approached by one of his
regular customers, Katharina Olympia Caradja, a
Romanian princess and blood relative of the original
Count Dracula.

She asked if she could adopt him - a common practice
among royal families with no male heir. But since
acquiring the name in the late 1980s, Dracula has had a
difficult time making ends meet.

"I'm sure Britain would be different. I could work with
someone to create another Castle Dracula. There are
lots of castles and old stately homes which could
benefit from being turned into a Dracula home. I am the
only person in the world with the name and I am going
to use it for good causes."
==========

Chow
SuperChef
WhiteBoard News Service Bureau Chef
www.joeha.com/whiteboard