'Nightmare': Dog dismembers 2-month-old child

By Bruce Smith, The Associated Press

SUMMERVILLE, S.C. -- A 2-month-old child was killed and dismembered by a dog in his family's South Carolina home as his father slept, authorities said Friday.

Aiden McGrew's mother called 911 when she got home around 11 a.m. and discovered the boy's leg was severed by a retriever-Labrador mix the family had taken into the home a few weeks earlier, Dorchester County deputies said.

The boy died at the hospital a short time later, Coroner Chris Nisbet said in a news release.


Nisbet said the boy was bitten and dismembered, but he refused to answer additional questions about the infant's injuries. An autopsy was scheduled for Saturday.

"Today is one of the saddest days in my 20+ years of being in the Dorchester County Coroner's Office as I report to all of you one of the worst deaths I have ever handled," Nisbet wrote in his email to the media, which had the subject line "Today's Nightmare."

McGrew's mother was taking the family's 7-year-old child to the doctor. The father was sleeping in a bedroom with a 3-year-old child, while the baby was in a swing outside that room, Dorchester County Sheriff L.C. Knight said.

Investigators are still trying to sort out how the attack unfolded. The father was being questioned by deputies Friday afternoon, Knight said.

"It's terrible. I don't want to go into details about exactly what happened because the investigation is still ongoing," Knight said. "It was a real bad scene."

The two other children in the home have been taken into protective custody, Knight said. Prosecutors are also following the case and the sheriff expects all the investigators will meet next week to discuss if any charges should be filed.

A woman answering a number listed for the home refused to talk about what happened and told a reporter to not call her back.

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Thai censors say out, damned spot, out to Macbeth film adaptation

The maker of 'Shakespeare Must Die' is appealing the decision, but Thai bureaucrats are nervous about the movie's political overtones.

The banning of a Thai cinema adaptation of William Shakespeare's 'Macbeth' is causing a stir in Thailand. The censors ruled that the movie ?has content that causes divisiveness among the people of the nation."

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In a country where the royal family is protected from criticism by possibly the world's strictest lese-majeste laws (designed to prevent public criticism or ridicule of royals), any drama featuring regicide might be deemed taboo. But?Shakespeare Must Die?seems also to have touched a raw nerve with its depiction of Shakespeare's ambitious but guilt-ridden usurper blended in with scenes of protest and violence redolent of Thailand's recent past.

The country has been beset by on again, off again street protests since 2005. To some, the Macbeth character in the movie is reminiscent of former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, whose apparent vaulting ambition prompted royalist suspicions that he had a real-life anti-monarchy agenda.

Thailand's Culture Ministry told director Samanrat Kanjanavanit that she could only proceed with a bowdlerized version of the government-funded movie, but the filmmakers held their ground.

A red-clad Grim Reaper in the movie was deemed too evocative of the red-shirt demonstrators who took to Bangkok's streets in 2010, in protests that turned violent with more than 90 killed. Another scene inspired by a gruesome massacre of student demonstrators in 1976 was also deemed unacceptable.

Director Samanrat, better known as Ing K., says the censorship makes little sense. "Why do they (the censors) find a 400-year-dead poet so threatening?,? she told the Monitor.? The original Macbeth was penned during a fractious period in English history, probably shortly after the 1605 "Gunpowder Plot," when Catholics aggrieved at religious discrimination sought to assassinate England's King James I, a Scot.

Now, four centuries later, Thailand's volatile politics could hold the key to the censors' anxiety over a now-archetypal tale about how power corrupts man. Mr. Thaksin was ousted from office in a 2006 coup backed by royalist street protestors and faces jail on corruption charges. But his sister Yingluck is the country's prime minister, after her Peua Thai party routed the royalist-leaning Democrats in a 2011 election.

Thailand's 84-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej is the world's longest-sitting monarch and remains popular, drawing vast crowds onto Bangkok's streets last December for his birthday celebrations. But the combination of color-coded antagonism ("red-shirts" for pro-Thaksin demonstrators, "yellow-shirts" for royalists)? and the King's age makes for nervy bureaucrats, and the censors' actions on the movie come after several recent high-profile jailings for lese-majeste.

While Ms. Yingluck's government has sparked renewed royalist ire by hinting that Thaksin could return to Thailand without having to do jail time, her administration simultaneously pledged not to amend Thailand's lese-majeste laws and to tighten censorship of websites containing allegedly offensive content.

Now it seems even The Bard of Avon is caught up in Thailand's censorship dragnet. Southeast Asia-based documentary filmmaker Bradley Cox saw his?Who Killed Chea Vichea? ? about a Cambodian trade unionist who was murdered in 2004 ? banned in Cambodia. Discussing?Shakespeare Must Die, Mr. Cox told the Monitor that ?it makes one think that the censors must not think that highly of the Thai people, if they feel that they cannot handle the imagery and messages contained in this movie.?

For Ing K., the censors' reaction to the movie says a lot about Thailand, where the government and the opposition are at odds over a reconciliation proposal that, to some, could mean impunity for those involved in recent political violence. ?We don't want to look at ourselves," she lamented, ?we want to forget about painful events in our history."

The trailer for "Shakespeare Must Die:"

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Spring Cleaning: Google Shuts Down Patent Search Homepage, One Pass, Google Related & More

googleEver since Larry Page took over as Google's CEO, the company has shut down more and more of its products that were only being used by a limited number of users. Today, the company announced another round of "spring cleaning." In the process, Google is shutting down a number of APIs, as well as its Google Flu Vaccine Finer, Google Related, Google Sync for BlackBerry, the mobile web app for Google Talk and One Pass, its payment platform for online news publishers.

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IMF announces $430 billion to boost resources

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde smiles during a G-20 news conference at the IMF and World Bank Group Spring Meetings in Washington, Friday, April 20, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde smiles during a G-20 news conference at the IMF and World Bank Group Spring Meetings in Washington, Friday, April 20, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Mexico's Central Bank Gov. Agustin Carstens, standing at rear, Mexico's Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade, left, International Monetary and Finance Committee (IMFC) chairman Tharman Shanmugaratnam, and IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde finish a G-20 news conference at the IMF and World Bank Group Spring Meetings in Washington, Friday, April 20, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The International Monetary Fund says it has raised more than $430 billion in an effort to assure finance markets that it has sufficient firepower to handle any new problems from Europe's prolonged debt crisis.

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde announced the new figure at the conclusion of the discussions among finance officials of the Group of 20 major economic powers on Friday. She said that some countries including Russia, India, China and Brazil had made private pledges but did not want to issue public commitments until they had conferred with officials in their home capitals.

But she said when the public and private commitments were combined, the total raised would exceed $430 billion, nearly doubling the IMF's available resources to make loans to nations in trouble.

Lagarde called the fundraising a "huge effort" that would increase the current $485 billion in funds available for loans to a figure above $1 trillion.

"We have the necessary tools in the tool box and we will use this wisely," she told reporters at a news conference wrapping up discussions among finance ministers and central bank governors of the G-20 countries. The group includes traditional economic powers such as the United States and Germany and emerging powers such as China and Brazil.

The United States was represented in the talks by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

Lagarde said the extra resources would create to the stability of the global economy. Finance officials hope that the sizable increase in IMF resources will reassure financial markets that there will be a backstop should another, larger European country get into trouble in repaying its government debts.

Already three European nations ? Greece, Ireland and Portugal ? have been forced to accept IMF rescue packages along with sizable bailout support from other nations using the euro currency. But the concern is that Spain and Italy, much larger economies, are now facing economic difficulties. If either of those nations needed rescue packages, the costs would be far higher than what has been raised so far.

The fund raising effort exposed splits inside the 188-nation IMF. The United States and Canada refused to participate in boosting the IMF's resources, seeking to keep pressure on Europe to do more.

And the four countries that did not publicly reveal their contributions ? China, Russia, India and Brazil ? all expressed reservations about pledging additional resources until the IMF implements a 2010 agreement to give emerging market nations more of a say in how the IMF operates. There are doubts whether the deal to boost the voting power of China and other emerging countries can be achieved by the deadline of the fall meetings of the IMF.

Associated Press

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Sophia Vergara's Mom's House In Foreclosure!

sophia1_wide.jpg
Sure, Sofia Vergara has fame and fortune, but she?s not bailing her mother out of debt.

Sofia?s mom, Margarita, had a home in the Biscaya IV Condominiums in Aventura, Fla., retailing at $140,000. But after owing the condo company just over $13,000 back in December, the home was foreclosed on when Sofia, 39, apparently didn?t offer financial assistance.

Happy Mother?s Day!

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'Prometheus,' Hologram Tupac Proof-Positive Of Nerd-tastic Future

On this week's 'Talk Nerdy,' are the new 'Prometheus' viral video and Tupac's Coachella hologram proof that the future has arrived?
By Josh Wigler


Michael Fassbender as David 8 in "Prometheus"
Photo: Twentieth Century Fox

The future is now — just ask Tupac or Michael Fassbender.

Earlier in the week, nerd culture scored two big victories: one, the arrival of Hologram Tupac, who performed from beyond the grave at the Coachella music festival. Shortly thereafter came the announcement of David-8, a new line of androids from Weyland Industries set to launch on the upcoming "Prometheus" voyage.

Frankly, both sound like ridiculous sci-fi concepts that could only occur in the far-off future. But one of those things actually happened. Even if you're not a hip-hop fan, the fact that a walking, talking, swear-slinging Tupac Shakur appeared before Coachella attendees for nearly five full minutes 16 years after his death should illicit an avalanche of geek-gasms. It certainly did for "Talk Nerdy" co-host Eric Ditzian.

"Holo-pac is the beginning of something very new," Ditzian said in Splash Page's latest Hero of the Week column. "It's a sci-fi nerd's dream come true, in a sense — a game-changing technology no longer part of a fictional realm but in our own."

He's right, of course. For years, we've watched men, women and aliens alike appear via holographic image on the bridge of the USS Enterprise, as an urgent message issued through the eternally adorable R2-D2 and so on. Messages from fully formed individuals based in another place, perhaps even in another time, coming our heroes' way through the inexplicable powers of science fiction. None of that was real, of course, because let's be serious: Did we ever expect to see these kinds of things happen anywhere other than in Space, the Final Frontier or in the land of a Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far Away? I certainly didn't.

Tupac — with a little help from Dr. Dre and friends — proved me wrong.

But it says a lot that even with the newfound discovery of Holo-Pac, I remain equally obsessed, if not more so, with "Prometheus." Ridley Scott's first science-fiction film since 1982's "Blade Runner" is easily my most anticipated film of 2012. That says a lot, considering this is the same year that sees Earth's mightiest heroes together onscreen for the first time, the same year that Bane might break the Bat on behalf of Christopher Nolan. The first two "Alien" films are permanent fixtures in my otherwise evolving list of all-time favorite movies, but it wasn't until I saw the David-8 advertisement — a viral video that sees Michael Fassbender's cybernetic character explain his own capabilities and uses as a robot, eerie and fascinating and beautiful in every sense of those words — coupled with Tupac's digital return, that I realized why I'm so excited for "Prometheus."

Maybe it's the power of a good Guy Pearce speech. Or maybe I've just binged on one too many geek movies in my day. But I look at the list of achievements accomplished by Pearce's "Prometheus" character — Sir Peter Weyland, a pioneer in many fields including terraforming and robotics — and I can't stop thinking that maybe, just maybe, we're not so far off from having a Broca Dialectical Implant (the first language tool that requires absolutely no learning on the user's part) or developing faster-than-light space exploration vehicles.

No, at the moment, there are no functional hoverboards as promised by the movies, and the Nike Air McFlys do not yet lace themselves up without assistance. And maybe we'll have to wait a bit longer than 70 years to meet an android with the same emotional depth as David. But right now, we do have a long-deceased music legend performing from beyond the grave via hologram. If we brought Tupac back in 2012, then what can't we accomplish by 2073?

It's not a robot ... but we're getting pretty damn close.

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Foot for Foot, Apple Stores Rake in 17x More Cash Than Other Retail Outlets [Factoid]

We all know Apple stores are wildly successful. But how successful? When comparing the revenue-per-square-foot of Apple's retail hub to any other business, Apple generates more cash from sales by an average factor of 17. More »


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Stressed-out monkeys show it in their genes ( video)

A new study demonstrates a link between social class and genetics in non-human primates.

Stressed-out monkeys tend to have a lower quality of life. But why? It turns out the answer might be in their genes.

Skip to next paragraph Harry Harlow shows what happens when a young rhesus macaque is scared.

Rhesus monkeys have a clear social ranking system. Those in the highest ranking group have the best access to food, water, and grooming. The opposite is also true: those in the lowest group have a difficult time when resources are scarce.

Researchers began with 49 captive female rhesus macaques of medium social rank. They sorted the monkeys into ten new groups, so that the monkeys sorted themselves into diverse social classes. Afterward, the scientists collected blood samples from the animals.

Blood samples showed a significant relationship between gene expression and social rank. So much so that, 80 percent of the time, the researchers were able to predict an individual monkey's social status just by looking at its genes.

Notably, it appeared that genes associated with the immune system were more active among low-ranking group members. This immune system activity could be tiring for the animals over time.

On the positive side, immune system activity levels did not seem fixed. As the researchers added new group members, altering the social stratification, gene expression changed. As the monkeys moved up in the world, they became less stressed.

This finding demonstrates an important linkage between the social world and individual physiology.

?If an individual is able to improve their social environment, the genome is pretty plastic, which is kind of optimistic,? Jenny Tung a geneticist at Duke University and the study's lead author told The New York Times.

In future studies, Tung plans to explore the question of the health impacts of social rank-associated gene expression.

This study appears in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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