UFC lightweight champion Benson Henderson will fight Gilbert Melendez on April 20, but he took on other competitors over the weekend. Henderson competed in the 2013 Pan Jiu-Jitsu Championships. He won his first two matches, but lost 8-0 to Jaime Soares Canuto.
Henderson, a brown belt in jiu-jitsu, decided to do the tournament for fun. It wasn't a break from training for the bout with Melendez. Henderson's coach said he did six rounds of MMA sparring on Saturday before competing on Sunday. Instead, it was just a little bit of competition.
FBI agents say a blackmail scheme concocted by another man who used photos of an underage girl in a catfish scam may have caused a Texas A&M professor to commit suicide. KPRC's Irika Sargent reports.
By Juan A. Lozano, The Associated Press
HOUSTON -- A Louisiana man denied on Tuesday that he used his daughter to lure a college professor into a sexually explicit online relationship and then blackmailed him.
The professor, James Arnt Aune, of Texas A&M University, jumped to his death from the roof of a campus parking garage in January after paying part of an alleged demand for $5,000, sending a text to the man saying "Killing myself now. And u will be prosecuted for black mail."
Authorities allege that Aune, 59, was one of many victims of the same scam by the man. The Associated Press isn't naming him to protect the identity of his daughter.
Aune, who headed the school's Department of Communication, battled depression in recent years. He struggled with the administrative duties of being a department head, and he was badly shaken by his 2007 battle with prostate cancer, his widow said. "He never really came all the way back," Miriam Aune said of his surviving cancer.
He began drinking heavily, and in December he started a sexually explicit online relationship with what he thought was an underage girl, according to prosecutors. He was soon contacted by a man purporting to be her outraged father, who threatened to expose Aune unless he paid him $5,000.
Aune paid the man $1,500, but he didn't know if he could come up with the rest, authorities say.
The alleged blackmailer pleaded not guilty Tuesday in a Houston federal courtroom to an extortion charge.
The 37-year-old Metairie, La., resident was ordered to remain in jail without bail, and his trial is scheduled for May 28. If convicted, he faces up to two years in jail.
'A weak moment' In the criminal complaint, prosecutors contend that the man's daughter told authorities in Louisiana in 2011 that her father took naked photos and videos of her and used them "to scam men" through MocoSpace, a social networking website mainly for mobile devices. On the site, "she would meet men, get their phone numbers and send them pictures and videos then (her father) would call them and say how she was his daughter and how she would need counseling and they had to pay for it."
At the time of that 2011 interview, her father was facing two counts of oral sexual battery and two counts of aggravated incest. The charges were dropped in February 2012 due to a lack of corroborating evidence, said Rachael Domiano, a spokeswoman for the 21st Judicial District Attorney's Office in Louisiana.
It wasn't clear from the criminal complaint if prosecutors believe the defendant's daughter actually interacted with Aune, or if her image was used to allegedly dupe him.
Miriam Aune, 56, told The Associated Press that investigators told her that the defendant communicated with her husband and other men, pretending to be his daughter.
She said her husband told her he began the online chats sometime in December and the defendant then asked for money.
According to court records, undated texts show Aune scrambling to put money on prepaid credit cards and asking for his forgiveness, saying "I am very sorry. It was a weak moment."
A week before his suicide, James Aune confessed to his wife. Miriam Aune said her husband never told her why he did it.
"I was just telling him there was nothing that we couldn't get through. We have two autistic children we have raised to adulthood. We've been through rough stuff. I thought we could get through this," Miriam Aune said.
According to a criminal complaint, the defendant continued bombarding Aune with profanity laced emails, texts and voicemails, including a Jan. 7 email in which he warned Aune that he had until noon the next day to pay or else "the police, your place of employment, students, ALL OVER THE INTERNET ...ALL OF THEM will be able to see your conversations, texts, pictures you sent ...."
On Jan. 8 at 9:21 a.m., the defendant texted, "3 more hours. If i don't hear from you the calls start," according the criminal complaint by FBI agent Nikki Allen. Just over an hour later, Aune replied with the text to say he was taking his own life.
Miriam Aune doesn't excuse her husband's actions. She said it was his decision to go online and begin the conversations.
"It just shows you anybody can slip off the path. I know a lot of people are very surprised by this. He was very human with flaws, just like all of us," she said.?
? 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
HAVANA (AP) ? Pope Francis issued a strong critique of the church before the College of Cardinals just hours before it selected him as the new pontiff, according to comments published Tuesday by a Roman Catholic magazine in Cuba.
According to Havana Cardinal Jaime Ortega, then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio urged the Vatican to eschew self-absorption and refocus its energies outward.
"The church is called on to emerge from itself and move toward the peripheries, not only geographic but also existential (ones): those of sin, suffering, injustice, ignorance and religious abstention, thought and all misery," Bergoglio said.
Ortega said Bergoglio's comments were made to cardinals as they gathered to select Benedict XVI's replacement, and reflect his vision of the contemporary Catholic Church. He said Bergoglio later gave him a handwritten version and permission to divulge its contents.
"Cardinal Bergoglio made a speech that I thought was masterful, insightful, engaging and true," Ortega said.
Ortega added that the remarks offer insight about the direction in which the new pope could take the church following his March 13 election.
In his statements, the future pontiff also warned of the dangers of stagnation.
"When the church does not emerge from itself to evangelize, it becomes self-referential and therefore becomes sick. ... The evils that, over time, occur in ecclesiastical institutions have their root in self-referentiality, a kind of theological narcissism." Bergoglio said.
He also criticized "a mundane church that lives within itself, of itself and for itself."
Finally Bergoglio said that whoever became the new pope should be "a man who ... helps the church to emerge from itself toward the existential outskirts."
Orgeta first revealed Bergoglio's comments in a weekend Mass, and they were published Tuesday on the website of Palabra Nueva magazine, along with a photo of the two men embracing after Bergoglio had donned the papal white robes and rechristened himself Francis.
Dusting for prints from a fossil fish to understand evolutionary changePublic release date: 27-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Rachel Ewing raewing@drexel.edu 215-895-2614 Drexel University
Pennsylvania highway roadcut yields new species of armored fish from Devonian period
PHILADELPHIA (March 27, 2013) -- In 370 million-year-old red sandstone deposits in a highway roadcut, scientists have discovered a new species of armored fish in north central Pennsylvania.
Fossils of armored fishes like this one, a phyllolepid placoderm, are known for the distinctive ornamentation of ridges on their exterior plates. As with many such fossils, scientists often find the remains of these species as impressions in stone, not as three-dimensional versions of their skeletons. Therefore, in the process of studying and describing this fish's anatomy, scientists took advantage of a technique that may look a lot like it was stolen from crime scene investigators.
In the video (available at http://youtu.be/l7GwvrAaB4U), Dr. Ted Daeschler shows the fossil and a rubber cast made by pouring latex into its natural impression in the rock. Once the latex hardened, Daeschler peeled it out and dusted its surface with a fine powder to better show the edges of the bony plates and the shapes of fine ridges on the fish's bony armor a lot like dusting for fingerprints to show minute ridges left on a surface. With this clearer view, Daeschler and colleagues were better able to prepare a detailed scientific description of the new species.
This placoderm, named Phyllolepis thomsoni, is one of two new Devonian fish species described by Daeschler in the Bicentennial issue of the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, with different co-authors. The other new species is a lobe-finned fish discovered in northern Canada. This discovery is described at http://drexel.edu/now/news-media/releases/archive/2013/March/Fossil-Species-from-Fish-Eat-Fish-World/.
Both the Pennsylvania placoderm and the Canadian lobe-finned fish species are from the late Devonian period, at a time long before dinosaurs walked the Earth but, geologically speaking, not long before the very first species began to walk on land. Daeschler studies Devonian species in particular to help describe the evolutionary setting that gave rise to the first vertebrate species with limbs. He has dug for Devonian species in Pennsylvania since 1993, and in northern Canada since 1999.
Honoring A Rich History of Pennsylvania Paleontology
Daeschler, a vice president and associate curator at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, and an associate professor in Drexel's College of Arts and Sciences, and co-author Dr. John A. Long, a leading authority on placoderms from Flinders University in Australia, named the species in honor of Dr. Keith S. Thomson.
Thomson, the Executive Officer of the American Philosophical Society, has been a mentor and colleague to many Devonian fossil researchers, including Daeschler. Thomson has formerly held positions including President and CEO of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Director of the Oxford University Museum, and Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Yale University.
Asked for comment on the discovery named in his honor, Thomson noted his long professional connection with the Devonian fossil beds in Pennsylvania that Daeschler studies:
"The Devonian beds around Renovo PA were worked extensively by my old professor at Harvard, Alfred Sherwood Romer and his associates, in the 1950s. They got some very good material of fishes but gave up on the site as a potential source of the very earliest four-legged vertebrates. In 1965 Romer suggested that I have a go but there had been no major erosion on the sites and therefore nothing much new had become exposed. I moved on to other things, but [in 1993] when Ted asked about possible projects in PA I gave him all the old notebooks, including mine, and off he went. In the intervening period there had been some major roadwork, new exposures were made, and on the Sunday evening of his very first weekend trip Ted came to the house and showed me a part of the shoulder of a tetrapod. Once we had looked at every which way and decided there was no other explanation, he causally reached into his bag and said "in that case, I have another one." The rest is history -- a history of very hard, careful, work, a whole team of collectors, some local, and brilliant discoveries of superb material particularly of fishes of every kind. So I am delighted by the success of this work over the past twenty years and flattered to become associated with it by having a species named after me. (There is a certain symmetry to this as long ago I named one of the species that had been collected by Romer after my wife!)"
###
Video is available at http://youtu.be/l7GwvrAaB4U.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Dusting for prints from a fossil fish to understand evolutionary changePublic release date: 27-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Rachel Ewing raewing@drexel.edu 215-895-2614 Drexel University
Pennsylvania highway roadcut yields new species of armored fish from Devonian period
PHILADELPHIA (March 27, 2013) -- In 370 million-year-old red sandstone deposits in a highway roadcut, scientists have discovered a new species of armored fish in north central Pennsylvania.
Fossils of armored fishes like this one, a phyllolepid placoderm, are known for the distinctive ornamentation of ridges on their exterior plates. As with many such fossils, scientists often find the remains of these species as impressions in stone, not as three-dimensional versions of their skeletons. Therefore, in the process of studying and describing this fish's anatomy, scientists took advantage of a technique that may look a lot like it was stolen from crime scene investigators.
In the video (available at http://youtu.be/l7GwvrAaB4U), Dr. Ted Daeschler shows the fossil and a rubber cast made by pouring latex into its natural impression in the rock. Once the latex hardened, Daeschler peeled it out and dusted its surface with a fine powder to better show the edges of the bony plates and the shapes of fine ridges on the fish's bony armor a lot like dusting for fingerprints to show minute ridges left on a surface. With this clearer view, Daeschler and colleagues were better able to prepare a detailed scientific description of the new species.
This placoderm, named Phyllolepis thomsoni, is one of two new Devonian fish species described by Daeschler in the Bicentennial issue of the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, with different co-authors. The other new species is a lobe-finned fish discovered in northern Canada. This discovery is described at http://drexel.edu/now/news-media/releases/archive/2013/March/Fossil-Species-from-Fish-Eat-Fish-World/.
Both the Pennsylvania placoderm and the Canadian lobe-finned fish species are from the late Devonian period, at a time long before dinosaurs walked the Earth but, geologically speaking, not long before the very first species began to walk on land. Daeschler studies Devonian species in particular to help describe the evolutionary setting that gave rise to the first vertebrate species with limbs. He has dug for Devonian species in Pennsylvania since 1993, and in northern Canada since 1999.
Honoring A Rich History of Pennsylvania Paleontology
Daeschler, a vice president and associate curator at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, and an associate professor in Drexel's College of Arts and Sciences, and co-author Dr. John A. Long, a leading authority on placoderms from Flinders University in Australia, named the species in honor of Dr. Keith S. Thomson.
Thomson, the Executive Officer of the American Philosophical Society, has been a mentor and colleague to many Devonian fossil researchers, including Daeschler. Thomson has formerly held positions including President and CEO of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Director of the Oxford University Museum, and Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Yale University.
Asked for comment on the discovery named in his honor, Thomson noted his long professional connection with the Devonian fossil beds in Pennsylvania that Daeschler studies:
"The Devonian beds around Renovo PA were worked extensively by my old professor at Harvard, Alfred Sherwood Romer and his associates, in the 1950s. They got some very good material of fishes but gave up on the site as a potential source of the very earliest four-legged vertebrates. In 1965 Romer suggested that I have a go but there had been no major erosion on the sites and therefore nothing much new had become exposed. I moved on to other things, but [in 1993] when Ted asked about possible projects in PA I gave him all the old notebooks, including mine, and off he went. In the intervening period there had been some major roadwork, new exposures were made, and on the Sunday evening of his very first weekend trip Ted came to the house and showed me a part of the shoulder of a tetrapod. Once we had looked at every which way and decided there was no other explanation, he causally reached into his bag and said "in that case, I have another one." The rest is history -- a history of very hard, careful, work, a whole team of collectors, some local, and brilliant discoveries of superb material particularly of fishes of every kind. So I am delighted by the success of this work over the past twenty years and flattered to become associated with it by having a species named after me. (There is a certain symmetry to this as long ago I named one of the species that had been collected by Romer after my wife!)"
###
Video is available at http://youtu.be/l7GwvrAaB4U.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
FILE - In this April 16, 2012 file photo North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple speaks in Bismarck, N.D. Dalrymple signed legislation Tuesday, March 26, 2013 that that would make North Dakota the nation's most restrictive state on abortion rights, banning the procedure if a fetal heartbeat can be detected ? something that can happen as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. (AP Photo/Dale Wetzel, File)
FILE - In this April 16, 2012 file photo North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple speaks in Bismarck, N.D. Dalrymple signed legislation Tuesday, March 26, 2013 that that would make North Dakota the nation's most restrictive state on abortion rights, banning the procedure if a fetal heartbeat can be detected ? something that can happen as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. (AP Photo/Dale Wetzel, File)
Map identifies states with time-based restrictions on abortions.
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) ? North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple said his decision to sign strict new abortion laws, including the nation's toughest restriction on the procedure, was not based on "any religious belief or personal experience" and that he believes legislators have a right to ask such questions about abortion restrictions.
The Republican governor signed three anti-abortion measures on Tuesday ? including one banning abortions as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, or when a heartbeat can be detected. By doing so, Dalrymple positioned his oil-rich state as a primary battleground in the decades-old fight over abortion rights.
Within minutes of signing the laws, unsolicited donations began pouring into the state's lone abortion clinic to help opponents prove the new laws are unconstitutional. The governor urged lawmakers to set aside cash for an inevitable legal challenge.
"Although the likelihood of this measure surviving a court challenge remains in question, this bill is nevertheless a legitimate attempt by a state legislature to discover the boundaries of Roe v. Wade," Dalrymple said in a statement, referring to the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion up to until a fetus is considered viable ? usually at 22 to 24 weeks.
In an interview later Tuesday, Dalrymple told The Associated Press that the courts opened the door for a challenge by picking a specific moment in the timeline of gestation. He also said he studied the fetal heartbeat bill and "educated myself on the history and legal aspects as best I could. My conclusion is not coming from any religious belief or personal experience."
Dalrymple seemed determined to open a legal debate on the legislation, acknowledging the constitutionality of the measure was an open question. He asked the Legislature to set aside money for a "litigation fund" that would allow the state's attorney general to defend the measure against lawsuits.
He said he didn't know how much the likely court fight would cost. But, he said money wasn't the issue.
"The Legislature has decided to ask these questions on additional restrictions on abortions, and I think they have the legitimate right to ask those questions," he said.
He also signed into law measures that would makes North Dakota the first state to ban abortions based on genetic defects such as Down syndrome and require a doctor who performs abortions to be a physician with hospital-admitting privileges.
Lawmakers endorsed a fourth anti-abortion bill last week that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy based on the disputed premise that fetuses feel pain at that point. The governor stopped short of saying he would sign it, but said: "I've already signed three bills. Draw your own conclusion."
The signed measures, which take effect Aug. 1, are fueled in part by an attempt to close the Red River Women's Clinic in Fargo ? the state's only abortion clinic.
Tammi Kromenaker, the clinic's director, called the legislation "extreme and unconstitutional" and said Dalrymple "awoke a sleeping giant" by approving it. The clinic, which performs about 3,000 abortions annually, was accepting cash donations and continued to take appointments Tuesday, she said.
"First and foremost, abortion is both legal and available in North Dakota," she said. "But anytime abortion laws are in the news, women are worried about access."
The Center for Reproductive Rights announced Tuesday that it has committed to challenging the fetal heartbeat bill on behalf of the clinic. The New York-based group already represented the clinic for free in a lawsuit over a 2011 law banning the widely accepted use of a medication that induces abortion. A judge has temporarily blocked enforcement of the law, and a trial is slated for April in Fargo.
Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem told the AP that lawyers from his office would defend any lawsuits that arise but an increase to the agency's budget would likely be necessary. He did not have a dollar amount.
The state has spent about $23,000 in legal costs to date defending the 2011 legislation, according to agency records obtained by the AP.
Julie Rikelman, litigation director for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said the group has provided three attorneys to argue that case. But in the recent round of legislation, the fetal heartbeat measure is the priority because it would effectively ban abortion in the state, she said.
"The impact is very, very clear," she said. "It would have an immediate and very large impact on the women in North Dakota."
Rikelman said the center also would support the clinic in other litigation, if need be and at no cost.
Kromenaker said other states have spent millions of dollars defending legislation, if the case reaches the nation's highest court. Rikelman said it's impossible to put a dollar amount on the impending legal fight in North Dakota.
"Litigation is so unpredictable," she said. "It could be very quick with a ruling in our favor."
North Dakota's law, since it would ban most abortions as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, goes further than a bill approved earlier this month in Arkansas that establishes a 12-week ban ? prohibiting them when a fetal heartbeat can be detected using an abdominal ultrasound. That ban is scheduled to take effect 90 days after the Arkansas Legislature adjourns.
A fetal heartbeat can generally be detected earlier in a pregnancy using a vaginal ultrasound, but Arkansas lawmakers balked at requiring women seeking abortions to have the more invasive imaging technique.
North Dakota's legislation doesn't specify how a fetal heartbeat would be detected.
Doctors performing an abortion after a heartbeat is detected could face a felony charge punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. Women having an abortion would not face charges.
The legislation to ban abortions based on genetic defects also would ban abortion based on gender selection. The Guttmacher Institute, which tracks abortion laws throughout the country, says Pennsylvania, Arizona and Oklahoma also have laws outlawing abortion based on gender selection.
The Republican-led North Dakota Legislature has endorsed a spate of anti-abortion Legislation this year. North Dakota lawmakers moved last week to outlaw abortion in the state by passing a resolution defining life as starting at conception, essentially banning abortion in the state. The measure is likely to come before voters in November 2014.
Dalrymple attended a groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday for a new diesel refinery in western North Dakota and made no public appearance to explain his signing of the abortion legislation.
Even though they're still priced at a cool $1500 plus tax, it seems there's a whole lot of people who really want to get hold of Google Glass. The 'If I had Glass' competition offered 8,000 eager early adopters a chance to get in on the ground floor, and now those lucky thousands have been chosen.
The Explorer Program is only for individuals, so companies such as JetBlue that came up with pretty awesome looking suggestions will have to wait it out for now. But, in the coming days the lucky individuals that have been chosen to hand over their money for Glass will be notified of their success. Google says that the response has been 'enthusiastic.'
So, if you entered, and you win, be sure to let us know. We just hope that LeVar Burton was one of them.
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Public release date: 27-Mar-2013
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