Author: Serkadis

Accused of fatally shooting his wife, former soldier Joseph Jesk stood hunched over and wailing as a Cook County judge set his bail at $1 million.

The sobs of the 23-year-old Oak Lawn man soon turned into stoicism as his attorney Michael Clancy described the late Saturday shooting of Jesk’s wife, Heather, as a “tragic accident.”

“At no time did this young man intend to harm his wife,” Clancy said, but he declined to elaborate.

Prosecutors said Jesk and his wife argued in the basement of their home in the 4600 block of 101st Street in Oak Lawn after attending a fundraiser Saturday along with other family members.

One of the guests followed the couple downstairs about 10:40 p.m. and saw Jesk holding a handgun, prosecutors said. That man ran upstairs fearing for his safety, prosecutors said.

Seconds later, Jesk fired at his wife’s forehead, leaving her in a pool of blood before running out a side door, prosecutors said.

The couple’s two daughters, an 11-month-old and a 2-year-old, were not home at the time of the shooting, authorities said.

Clancy said the couple’s family were working together to take care of the young girls displaced by the killing.

After the shooting, Jesk phoned 911 and told police he’d “killed the only person he’d ever loved,” authorities said.

He was found with a folding knife near the Oak Lawn Metra station on 95th Street, police said.

As prosecutors recounted the details of the case in the cramped courtroom, family members from both sides wiped away tears and held their heads in their hands.

Jesk, standing next to his attorney, bent over and cried.

Cook County Judge Joan O’Brien barred Jesk from seeing his daughters and from contacting Heather Jesk’s parents. She also ordered him to turn over any weapons he owns and his firearm owner’s identification card.

O’Brien also allowed a request by Assistant State’s Attorney Marem Nava for a search warrant on Jesk’s car, which was parked at the house where the shooting took place and where police could see a rifle inside.

The handgun believed to have been used to shoot Heather Jesk was found at the scene, authorities said.

Saying she didn’t have the authority, O’Brien declined a request by Clancy to have Jesk placed in the hospital facility at the Cook County Jail and to undergo a psychiatric evaluation because he might have indicated to police he was suicidal.

Clancy said Jesk has been looking for work after returning in January from an 11-month tour of duty in Iraq with the Army, where he was trained as a heavy artillery officer.

Army officials did not reveal the circumstances behind Jesk’s discharge.

He had been “upset from time to time” about his service, Clancy said, but he was “not so sure” post traumatic stress disorder was a factor.

He said the couple may have argued while leaving a relative’s benefit fundraiser at 115 Bourbon Street in Merrionette Park late Saturday, but that any angst had fizzled out by the time the couple arrived in Oak Lawn.

They had recently closed on their own condominium and were looking forward to getting out of Jesk’s grandfather’s Oak Lawn home, Clancy said.

“It was a happy day for them,” he said. “I think they were very happy with each other and their relationship.”

Authorities said Jesk had no previous criminal record. He is scheduled to next appear in court March 18.

Read the original article from SouthTown Star.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

News from the Valley of the Kings (Kate Phizackerley)

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Filed under: Minivan/Van, Geneva Motor Show, Crossover, Mazda

Mazda‘s Nagare design theme has infiltrated nearly every model in its lineup, with only a few lone hold-outs. Here in Geneva, one of the last unmolested models has finally gone under the knife and the result is the 2011 Mazda 5.

In addition to the new smiling fascia, five-point grille, deeper chin spoiler and flared front fenders, the new 5 gets a trio of dramatic, wave-live character lines sweeping from the front door and terminating into the deeply drawn rear tailamps. The combination ditches the somewhat anonymous profile of the previous model, it’s just a shame the rear looks disproportionately top heavy.

The interior gets a quick once over, with thicker, wider seats, power sliding doors and a reworked center stack, with the standard seven seats carrying over and the new 2.5-liter four-cylinder from the new Mazda3 finding its way underhood when it hits the States later this year.

Live photos by Drew Phillips / Copyright (C)2010 Weblogs, Inc.

Continue reading Geneva 2010: 2011 Mazda5 gets swoopy in Switzerland

Geneva 2010: 2011 Mazda5 gets swoopy in Switzerland originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 06:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Shoveling Ferret

The posts are at the following addresses

Part 1:
http://shovelingferret.blogspot.com/2010/02/commentary-on-recent-tutankhamun.html
Part 2:
http://shovelingferret.blogspot.com/2010/02/commentary-on-recent-tutankhamun_18.html
Part 3:
http://shovelingferret.blogspot.com/2010/02/commentary-on-recent-tutankhamun_19.html
Part 4:
http://shovelingferret.blogspot.com/2010/02/commentary-on-recent-tutankhamun_8728.html

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Next time you order a Chicken McNuggets from McDonalds, you might want to look closely at it before popping it into your mouth. A Virginia mother made the gruesome discovery of a nicely battered and fried chicken head in her nuggets. Yech.

Related posts:

1. One Last Time: Chicken Skin Is NOT A Contraceptive
2. Get Your Free KFC Chicken Today
3. You’re Never Farther Than 107 Miles from McDonalds

Last month, Google announced plans to roll out 1 Gbps Internet connections to at least 50,000 Americans in a pilot program designed to test the technology and new ways of getting that speed to private homes as cheaply as possible. At the same time, it also set plans in motion by asking local administrations from around the country to apply for the program to be r… (read more)

The Newsletter is available online on the EEF website.
http://www.egyptologyforum.org/EMC/EMC_Newsletter_6_Sept-Dec_2009_English.pdf
http://www.egyptologyforum.org/EMC/EMC_Newsletter_6_Sept-Dec_2009_Arabic.pdf

Previous editions can be found here:
http://www.oddthing.co.uk/html/cairo_news.html

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Art Musum Journal (Stan Parchin)

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art presents the special exhibition Tutankhamun’s Funeral from March 16 to September 6, 2010. The installation features 60 objects used in the mummification and religious rituals associated with the boy-king’s burial. Most of the artifacts are derived from the museum’s permanent collection.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

geos.ed.ac.uk

The following extract is from the newly published book by A. Dodson & S. Ikram (eds.) 2009
Beyond the Horizon. Studies in Egyptian Art, Archaeology and History in Honour of Barry J. Kemp (Publications of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Cairo: 347-61).

Environment, Insects and the Archaeology Of Egypt*
Eva Panagiotakopulu
University of Edinburgh
Paul Buckland
University of Bristol

Introduction

Egypt lies in the overlap zone between two biogeographic realms, the Ethiopian (Afro-Tropical), which also includes the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula, and the Palaearctic, represented by the warm temperate zone of the Mediterranean. Apparent in its now much depleted vertebrate fauna (cf. Manlius 2000; Manlius and Gautier 1999) and in its flora, where Mediterranean elements extend down into Middle Egypt (Zahran and Willis 1992), the overlap is also evident in its less well-studied insect faunas. Intuitively the Nile provides a natural pathway for African elements to reach the Mediterranean and this would have been more so during the early Holocene when stronger monsoonal circulation made much of the present desert savannah (e.g. Haynes et al. 1989). Yet there are surprisingly few southern species in Egypt’s invertebrate fauna, which is overwhelmingly circum-Mediterranean in its affinities. Egypt has approximately 2,700 recorded species of beetle (Coleoptera). Using the ground beetles, Carabidae, as an example, of the ~200 species recorded from Egypt, >95% are also found in Europe and the Near East, and a similar calculation for the water beetle families Dytiscidae and Haliplidae shows ~42 species of which 64% also occur in Europe. The scale of this overlap declines as distance from the Mediterranean coast increases, but Upper Egypt still shows affinities with the Palaearctic as well as the Ethiopian Realm. Two major factors influence this pattern. One is the complex history of the Nile and its floodplain, with periods during the Quaternary when its flow appears to have failed completely (Said 1993; Butzer 1998). The other is the scale of destruction and
redistribution of biota by human activity.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Work on Orland Park’s former police station is expected to begin this month, after the village board on Monday night approved a $310,123 contract with Construction Solutions of Illinois for exterior work.

The Alsip-based company was the lowest of 10 bidders for the project to rehab the exterior of the 28-year-old building.

“The work will be done by the end of summer,” assistant village manager Ellen Baer said.

The contractor will install a new roof and do tuckpointing and repairs to a wall. The next lowest bidder was FBG Corp., at $347,000. The village had budgeted $518,093 for the project.

Village officials hope to eventually house offices for the village and its recreation department at the building, 14600 Ravinia Ave., along with the not-for-profit Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, which is now at 143rd Street and LaGrange Road.

But it will be next year before the village can start rehabbing the interior of the building, Baer said.

In the meantime, the village hopes to soon strike a deal with Recording for the Blind so the organization can begin renovating part of the building for its new recording studio. Baer said she has sent a proposed lease agreement to the non-profit for review.

Read the original article from SouthTown Star.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

Flossmoor may need to look at cutting back on services and staff in the next few years to address budget shortages due to pension obligations and shrinking revenue.

“We won’t need to do so with the 2011 budget, but after that it’s anyone’s guess depending on what happens on the revenue side and what happens in Springfield,” Mayor Paul Braun said after Monday night’s village board meeting, where the village’s preliminary budget for the 2010-11 fiscal year was discussed.

Braun said he was referring to the Legislature dealing with the hot-button issue of pension reform.

“Pensions account for about 20 percent of our (property) tax levy right now,” the mayor said after the meeting.

He’s also concerned about legislators possibly doing away with the 1 percentage point of the sales tax that now goes to municipalities.

“That would be a big hit on our revenue,” Braun said.

For now, Flossmoor is deferring nearly all capital projects for fiscal year 2010-11, which starts May 1.

Village manager Bridget Wachtel said engineering for a downtown streetlights project and planning for a downtown streetscape improvement program are on hold to save about $60,000.

“All that’s in the fiscal year 2011 budget’s hopper is leftover projects from fiscal year 2010,” Wachtel said.

Read the original article from SouthTown Star.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

Miami Herald

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Twitter has made the big announcement anticipated for several months now, it has opened, or rather, extended access to its data ‘firehose,’ but only to seven startups for now. Twitter revealed that it would open up its firehose API to more partners a couple of months ago. Until now, it has partnered with Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, enabling fu… (read more)

It’s been nearly a decade since we first heard about John Zuccarini — an internet character who made his name by registering a ton of typosquatting domain names, and was sued a bunch of times for it, but avoided dealing with things for a while by being impossible to find. And, even when he was found, he was notoriously vague in answering questions. From a bit of testimony from back in the day:

Question: What is your current address?

Zuccarini: 957 Bristol Pike, Apartment D-6, Andalusia, Pennsylvania, 19020.

Q: Is that where you currently reside?

Zuccarini: Not necessarily.

Q: Where do you currently reside?

Zuccarini: I don’t have – that’s my legal address. I really don’t have a permanent address at this time.

Q: Where do you currently reside?

Zuccarini: Right now, I am staying at the Millennium Hotel in New York.

Q: When you are not in New York for a deposition, where do you live? Where have you lived in the past two weeks?

Zuccarini: I have been living in various places.

Q. What are the various places that you have been living?

Zuccarini: Friends’ places. You know, that type of thing. Different hotels.

Q. 957 Bristol Pike is not your residence?

Zuccarini: No, it’s not. It’s my legal address. I have a lease on the apartment and that’s where I have – some things are sent there which I get.

Q: Do you live in Pennsylvania?

Zuccarini: I don’t know. I don’t have a permanent address so I can live anywhere. I don’t live anywhere right now. I can’t give you a permanent address.

Eventually, the FTC ordered that thousands of his sites should be shut down. And then it fined Zuccarini $1.9 million. But, still no one could find him. A year and a half later, he was finally found and arrested leading to an eventual guilty plea. Of course, that didn’t stop him. In 2007, he was fined yet again by the FTC, this time for typosquatting on domain names that kids were likely to visit — and sending them to hardcore porn sites. Yeah. He’s that kind of evil.

Anyway, going all the way back to a decade ago, when various companies were filing lawsuits against him, one such lawsuit involved Office Depot, which was none too pleased about Zuccarini’s registration and use of offic-depot.com. Office Depot sued and won, but given Zuccarini’s slippery nature, was unable to collect its judgment. Eventually, Office Depot handed over the judgment to a company called DS Holding, who then wanted to get paid. It eventually asked a court in Northern California to hand over some of Zuccarini’s other domains to fulfill the judgment. The court agreed, but Zuccarini appealed, claiming that the court in California had no jurisdiction over his domain names.



Eric Goldman points us to the ruling in the case where the court finds that, indeed, domain names are considered property, and that jurisdiction should be based on where the registrar registry of that domain is located (pdf) rather than wherever John Zuccarini may be hiding at the moment. Since, in this case, the registry was VeriSign, and VeriSign is in Northern California… the court was ruled to be the proper jurisdiction. Update: Originally, we noted that this said it was where the registrar was located, but it actually goes further — saying that it’s where the registry is located. Way back when, the two things were the same (and they were all Network Solutions), but now you have different registrars for top level domains, but one registrar that maintains the overall database of each top-level domain name. This ruling says that while in the past people might focus on the registrar, it also applies to the registry.

While the court does explain that this appears to be exactly what our anti-cybersquatting laws say when it comes to jurisdiction, that does lead to some other interesting legal questions when it comes to jurisdictions. It seems like it could be somewhat troubling if your domain is officially located wherever the registrar is in other types of cases, as suddenly anyone registering a domain name needs to take into account the location of the registrar in case of a lawsuit.

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Filed under: Geneva Motor Show, Europe, Crossover, Nissan

Nissan won’t have its official press conference for a few hours, but we’ve already snagged these shots of the production Juke, an oddly styled smaller-than-you-think crossover that’s poised to hit North America for 2011. In person, the Juke is perhaps less bizarre than one might think, with the exuberance of its alien face reined in with comparatively modest alloy wheels, traditional doors and Volvo C30-like taillamps. If you’re wondering where the Juke fits into the Nissan lineup that already has the Murano, Rogue and the Qashqai, this vehicle is markedly smaller than the Murano and actually appears smaller than the Rogue.

The interior is pure Nissan, though it looks like the Japanese automaker has put a few more dollars into some of its interior plastics and materials than it has in the past. In particular, the new HVAC controls have a crisp and colorful display, and the transmission tunnel has a quasi motorcycle-tank look about it.

For Europe, the Juke is available with a pair of 1.6-liter gasoline engines in either normally aspirated or turbocharged direct-injected form, as well as a 1.5-liter diesel, the latter of which is unlikely to make it to North America. The compact CUV will be made in both front- and all-wheel drive configurations, the latter being a newly developed torque-vectoring system dubbed ALL-Mode 4×4-i that is capable of splitting power 50:50 from front-to-rear as well as side-to-side.

We expect to see the Juke make its North American debut in New York. While you’re waiting, check out our high-res galleries below and the official press release after the jump.

Live photos by Chris Paukert / Copyright (C)2010 Weblogs, Inc.

[Source: Nissan]

Continue reading Geneva 2010: Nissan Juke poised to bring the small and funky to America

Geneva 2010: Nissan Juke poised to bring the small and funky to America originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 05:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For 56 years, the iF product design award has served as an internationally recognized trademark for outstanding design. Across the globe, the iF brand, with offices in Hanover, Munich, Taiwan, Korea and Brazil, is an established symbol for exceptional design achievement.

KeControl C3, KEBA’s newest generation of controls which has had its debut on the SPS/IPC/DRIVES fair in Nuremberg in November 2009, has been selected as a winner of the iF product design awards 2010 and thus carries the iF quality seal—out of a total of 2,486 entries from 39 different nations.

The products of the KeControl C3 family are PC-based control systems with real time capacity, which offer top performance in combination with a minimum footprint. With their Intel Atom and Core 2 Duo processors, the devices offer differing clock frequencies in a range of 1.2 – 2.26 GHz and hence the precise adjustment of performance to differing needs. The control device is available with two different housings, the smaller of which has a volume of around 1.5 liters and therefore only requires minimal space. The larger version has two integrated PCIe slots and thus facilitates the installation of customized extension cards. In this way existing proprietary hardware may be used further and links can be established with external components via Profinet RT, Ethernet/IP or CAN. Data can be conserved in the easily accessible internal CF or SSD memories, or be stored via an SD interface located on the front side of the housing. As a result of the use of non-rotating memory, the data is better protected than on standard hard disks. An integrated, two-line LCD facilitates the issue of messages during start-up and ongoing operation, while an on-board graphic card with DVI interface allows connection to an external display. Peripheral devices can be connected to the two USB 2.0 interfaces (high-speed) and the controls networked via the two gigabit Ethernet connections. Two real time Ethernet interfaces permit the linkage of I/Os, sensors and drives, either via SERCOS III or EtherCAT. KeControl C3 offers an especially robust aluminum housing, which is foreseen for simple DIN rail installation without screws.

Flow volume: 80]1200 l/min – Max differential pressure: 16 bar

The ACG pumps are used for a number of different
uids:
Lubrication oil, fuel oil, vegetable oil, hydraulic oil and other hydraulic uids, glycol, polymers, emulsions, and any non aggressive uid with suf cient lubricating properties.

When so required the ACG pump may be certied according to any of following classi cation societies: DNV, BV, LRS, ABS, RS, GL, RINA, KR, NK or CCS.

Typical applications are:
Lubrication of diesel engines, gears, gas and steam turbines, hydro tur bines and paper machines.

Circulation for cooling and ltration in large machineries, hy drau lic systems and transformer oil for insulation in transformers.

Transfer onboard ships, in oil fac to ries, re feineries, tank farms etc. Fuel supply duties for diesel engines.