Seven dead in Grand Rapids shooting

UPDATE (WZZM) (11:45PM) - Grand Rapids Police Chief Kevin Belk has confirmed that the suspect in the mass killings in Grand Rapids today has taken his own life.
Rodrick Shonte Dantzler had two hostages remaining in a NE side home.  Those hostages are all safe and are being evaluated.  A third hostage was released earlier.
Belk says that this has been a very difficult day for all of Grand Rapids and police.  Dantzler fired on police during a chase earlier in the day.
We'll have more in a complete wrap up on the WZZM 13 Morning News starting at 5:00am.
UPDATE (WZZM) (11:30PM) - Unconfirmed from scanner traffic: the suspect in the mass shootings in Grand Rapids is down and the two remaining hostages are safe.
GRAND RAPIDS (WZZM) - The suspect in a Grand Rapids mass murder is holed up in a home with hostages on Rickman NE.
Rodrick Shonte Dantzler had three people as hostages.  Police Chief Kevin Belk says that a 53-year-old female hostage has been released.  There are two more hostages in the home.
Police had been chasing the suspect's vehicle on highways on the north end of Grand Rapids.  The suspect left the vehicle near I-96 and Plainfield and the chase continued on foot.
The suspect entered a home and the standoff began. 
The chase caused a crash at the corner of Fulton and Division in downtown Grand Rapids, when the suspect fired shots at police.
Two other people have been injured in the subsequent chase.
Grand Rapids Police Chief Kevin Belk tells our crew on the scene that a total of seven people are dead, including two children.  Four bodies were found in the 1200 block of Brynell NE. One was a child.   
At a second location in the 2000 block of Plainfield NE, three bodies were found including one child. 
Police say the suspect in the shootings is Rodrick Shonte Dantzler, a black male, 6'2", 260lbs, 34 years old.   Police believe he is armed and extremely dangerous. 
Dantzler has an extensive criminal record, including a felony assault less than murder, misdemeanor assault and battery, domestic violence and breaking and entering.
We will have more when it becomes available.
http://www.wzzm13.com/news/article/171179/14/Seven-dead-in-Grand-Rapids-shooting

Read rest of entry

Heroes get fishing trip on Lake Michigan

MUSKEGON, Mich. (WZZM) - Charterboat captains in Muskegon took their heroes fishing today.
The Hookin' Up for Heroes fishing trip on Lake Michigan was welcomed back to Muskegon with dozens of flags lining the channel into the big lake. 41 war veterans from around West Michigan including several from the Grand Rapids Home for Veterans took the captains up on a free fishing trip. For many, it was the chance to do something they couldn't do on their own.
The charterboat captains want to take 80 vets out next summer. The event concluded with a fishboil.
Jon Mills
http://www.wzzm13.com/news/article/171176/14/Heroes-get-fishing-trip-on-Lake-Michigan

Read rest of entry

Grand Rapids Shooting: Suspect In Michigan Rampage Commits Suicide

 
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- A gunman opened fire in two Michigan homes Thursday, killing seven people before leading police on a high-speed chase through downtown Grand Rapids and taking three hostages. The standoff ended when he killed himself with a gunshot to the head, authorities said.
The hostages were released unharmed.
Authorities did not have a motive for the suspect, 34-year-old Rodrick Shonte Dantzler, or disclose his exact relationship with those he killed.
The manhunt for Dantzler began after four people were found dead in one home and three were discovered in another across town. Two of the dead were children.
"We believe there were prior relationships with at least one person at each location, so we think there were some difficulties there," Police Chief Kevin Belk said.
Following the discovery of the bodies, Dantzler led officers on a chase, crashed his car and then took the hostages, police said.
Dozens of officers with guns drawn cordoned off a neighborhood near a small lake in the northern part of the city and shut down nearby Interstate 96.
Records show Dantzler was released from state prison in 2005 after serving time for assault less than murder. A spokesman for the prison system said he had not been under state supervision since then.
At one point during the chase, the suspect crossed a wide grassy median on the interstate and drove the wrong way down the highway while more than a dozen squad cars pursued him. Belk said he crashed the vehicle while driving down an embankment into a wooded area of the highway, which remained closed hours later.

Advertisement

Two other people were shot when the suspect fired at police during the chase, but their wounds were not considered life-threatening. One man was wounded in what Belk described as a "road rage" attack after the suspect fired through the rear window of the vehicle. A woman was hit in the arm in a separate shooting.
The names of the dead were not immediately released. Autopsies were scheduled for Friday.
Carrie Colacchio lives a little more than a mile away from the hostage situation and said she was driving in the area when the suspect's vehicle blew through.
"I looked in my rearview mirror and see this big white SUV coming up behind me," she said. "The only way to get out of it was to push the gas pedal."
She couldn't turn off the road or slow down or go any other way and reached about 85 mph.
"I almost got smacked," she said. "I had to go up on the curb."
Sandra Powney lives across the street from one of the homes where the shootings happened and said she had seen Dantzler at the ranch house, where a couple has lived for more than 20 years with two adult daughters.
Powney said she had been at home all day and did not realize anyone had been killed until police arrived at the cul-de-sac in the midafternoon.
"For a while we couldn't come outside," she said. "They didn't know if there was someone still inside the house."
Neighbors said police congregated at Dantzler's home a few miles away after the shootings.
Sonia Bergers said Dantzler lived with a woman she assumed was his wife and their daughter, a girl who appeared to be about 10 years old.
Mary Lahuis and her husband had just returned home after having coffee at a nearby fast-food restaurant when police began running down their street with guns, yelling at people to get in their homes.
Of Dantzler she said: "You would see him going up and down the street. And you'd hear him going up and down the street."
Lisa Schenden lives with her husband and their children two blocks from the home where four people were killed. She said the homeowners are a couple whose daughter has a daughter with the suspect.
Schenden said she did not hear the shooting either, but she saw the suspect and his daughter drive up to the house earlier in the day.
"Just last night, my kids went over there swimming, and I went over with them," she said.
Outside the two-story, wood-sided home where the three people were killed, neighbors stood in clumps Thursday evening, quietly talking as investigators scoured the house. As officers left, people disappeared indoors and a single police car remained on the block.
The only indication of anything unusual was three bouquets of flowers on the porch steps.
___
Associated Press writers John Flesher and Kathy Hoffman in Grand Rapids and Corey Williams and David N. Goodman in Detroit contributed to this report.
aol.com

Read rest of entry

Photo: Barbara Ernst Prey

Barbara Ernst Prey did extensive research to get the details right on her commissioned watercolor

One of the nation's most prolific art collectors is the U.S. space agency. For nearly a half-century, NASA has commissioned artists to document its missions and projects. Seventy of the 3,000 works in its collection are in a traveling exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington.  

The art is mounted in a quiet corner gallery on the second floor of this cavernous museum, perched above an atrium filled with hanging spacecraft and missiles and crowds of visiting tourists. The show retraces milestones in space history through the unique visions and sensibilities of a diverse group of artists.  

“The whole collection leaves me with this wonderful artistic notion of what we’ve been through over the 50 years of NASA history," says curator Tom Crouch, "from the very first launches, down to the latest planetary probe, and you see it through the eyes and the experience of these artists, all different, all interested in some different aspect of this, and yet when you see it here in the gallery it all comes together.”

As you enter the gallery, you come face-to-face with a life-size portrait of astronaut Gordon Cooper by Mitchell Jamieson. It is 1963 and Cooper, in his silver-colored spacesuit, steps out of his Mercury space capsule after 22 orbits of Earth onto the bright sunlit deck of the recovery ship. 

Nearby is a large painting by famed American illustrator Norman Rockwell of two astronauts suiting up for the first flight of the Gemini program in 1965. 

“It’s like two knights putting on their armor going out to do battle," Crouch says. "We have another Rockwell called ‘Behind Apollo 11’ that is nothing but faces in profile, from the three Apollo 11 astronauts, to the backup crew, to their wives, to scientists, engineers and managers who stood behind them and helped them get to the moon.” 

A range of works in the show are inspired by the Apollo program which, asPresident John F. Kennedy envisioned, successfully landed the first men on the Moon in July 1969. The program carried five more crews to the lunar surface before  ending in 1972.  

Pop artist Andy Warhol captures the iconic image of Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the lunar surface in vivid neon pink, yellow and blue. And, oil painter Robert McCall imagines the sight of the rocket engine firing to propel the lunar lander back to earth. 

Crouch says artist Crystal Jackson shows spectators watching the historic events unfold. “The Crystal Jackson in the show is called ‘The Moon Hut’ and it was a hamburger place outside the NASA main gate with a big moon and these wonderful characters who were down there drawn by the excitement of this program.”

The show also includes photographs by William Wegman, known for his Weimaraner dog portraits, here suited-up as astronauts peering out from the portholes of the International Space Station.

And high overhead there’s a twisted rubber sculpture made from tire fragments called “Remembering Columbia,” that evokes the loss of the Columbia Space Shuttle and its crew in a disastrous reentry accident in 2003.

Another commissioned piece by watercolorist Barbara Ernst Prey is the X-43, the fastest airplane in the world, clocked at more than 11,000 kilometers per hour.  Prey studied the craft for months and did sketches at Edwards Air Force Base in the California’s Mojave Desert an hour before its launch from the wing of a high-flying carrier jet.

Courtesy Barbara Ernst Prey

Watercolorist Barbara Ernst Prey sketches an hour before liftoff of the X-43, the world’s fastest aircraft.

“What was going through my mind is: Do I make this abstract? Do I make it concrete?" says Prey. "It kept on coming to me.  It’s really about the blue sky and this object going as fast as it can across and just the energy.  And that’s what I tried to get with the yellow and the different colors in the cloud going behind it.”

Prey stationed herself in front of a large TV screen to watch the flight. She says the experience filled her with a sense of awe. “It’s the amazing gifts that these people have to do amazing things, and I think that’s what I’ve really learned. And it helps you look differently because you are looking and you are thinking of the cosmos and universe and that helps you look at things differently.”

Visitor Barbara Baldwin from San Antonio, Texas shares that enthusiasm. “You know, growing up with space exploration was a neat thing,"she says. "I’ll never forget where I was when the men landed on the moon and what we did that day. Our family gathered around the TV that night. So I have great memories as a child.”

Hunter Thorton from Vidalia, Louisiana, came to the museum with some high school friends. He says it was a chance to put on his "Star Wars" movie gear. He is a fan of science fiction, but likes how the artists in this show interpret real events. “It really goes to show how America is propelling in technology and being in space.  And hopefully one day we’ll be walking in costumes likes this for real.” 

“NASA Art: Fifty Years of Exploration” was originally slated to make its last stop at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington. But popular demand for the show has extended its journey into 2012.    

Read rest of entry

Wormlike Parasite Detected in Ancient Mummies

Nubian mummies (including this one) are often naturally preserved.

A tiny, wormlike parasite that plagues people worldwide also infected ancient Africans, new analyses of mummies reveal for the first time.
The waterborne creature, Schistosoma mansoni, hitches a ride in aquatic snail tissue before emerging into water, where it can bore into swimming or wading people, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Inside the human body the worms can lay eggs, which escape the body via urine or feces. If the eggs land in water, the hatched worms may find their ways to a snail host, beginning the cycle anew.
The resulting disease, called schistosomiasis, is not generally lethal. But it can cause anemia, damage internal organs, impair growth and cognitive development in children, and lead to a general chronic weakening of its human hosts. (See a human-body interactive.)
"It keeps you from working as much or forces you to work twice as hard as someone who doesn't have the disease," said study co-author George Armelagos, an anthropologist at Emory University in Atlanta.
Today schistosomiasis affects an estimated 200 million people worldwide and thrives in regions that use irrigation channels for farming.
"Before this study, it was always assumed that S. mansoni was a product of modern urbanization," Armelagos said.
(See "Mummies With Lice Offer New Clues to Human Migration.")
First Proof of Ancient Schistosomiasis
Since the discovery of parasite eggs on mummies in the 1920s, scientists have suspected that the Nubians might have been infected by schistosomiasis. Nubia was a former African kingdom that existed from about A.D. 250 to 1400 in what is now northern Sudan. (Read about the black pharaohs in National Geographic magazine.)
But researchers generally assumed that the disease in Nubians had been caused by S. haematobium, a close cousin of S. mansoni that causes similar symptoms but that doesn't require irrigation channels to thrive.
"The snail that transmits S. haematobium thrives better in water that's moving and well oxygenated and that is not very polluted, whereas the S. mansoni snail does very well in water that’s been standing around and has more yuck in it," said study first author Amber Campbell Hibbs, who conducted the study while at Emory.
Campbell Hibbs and colleagues examined hundreds of naturally mummified Nubian mummies.
"What happened is they were buried, and it's so dry that you usually get mummification of the external skin, and sometimes some of the organs."
An analysis of the mummified skin revealed traces of proteins belonging to S. mansoni—the first proof that the ancient Nubians, or any ancient civilization, were afflicted by schistosomiasis.
(Also see "Are Humans Furless to Thwart Parasites?")
Parasite Afflicted Farmers the Most
S. mansoni infection appeared to be most prevalent in a group of Nubians known as the Wadi Halfa, who farmed along the Nile about 1,500 years ago using irrigation-channel techniques. (See pictures of black pharaohs of Nubia.)
The study found that up to a quarter of Wadi Halfa people had schistosomiasis.
The findings also run counter to previous theories that ancient Nubian farmers weren't sophisticated enough to make irrigation channels that could spread the disease, Campbell Hibbs added.
"That's something we don't really give them credit for," she said.
The traditional view "is that they were these primitive people who were at the mercy of the world around them."
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/05/110531-africa-mummies-parasites-schistosomiasis-science/
 

Read rest of entry

10 World's most unique Border

Ceuta area of ​​18.5 square kilometers of autonomous city in Spain and the exclave is located on the north coast of North Africa, surrounded by Morocco. Separated from the Iberian peninsula by the Strait of Gibraltar, Ceuta is situated on the border of the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean.
Morocco claims Ceuta, together with the Spanish autonomous city of Melilla, and some Mediterranean islands at the border, which has forced Spain to set up a border fence 3 meters high around the city topped with barbed wire.

9. Border Baarle-Nassau/Baarle-Hertog

Baarle-Nassau is a city in the Netherlands. This unusual division of the border with the district in Belgium Baarle-Hertog.
Baarle-Hertog consists of 26 separate parts of the region surrounded by Baarle-Nassau, but some parts of Baarle-Hertog region also belong to Baarle-Nassau. Part smallest region of Belgium is only two-thirds (quarter acres).
The border is so complicated that even some of the divided house by him. In the picture above you can see on the left side of Holland and Belgium on the right.

8. Bir Tawil

Bir Tawil is a parcel of land with an area of ​​approximately 795 square miles. Located between Egypt and Sudan. This area is intentionally created in 1902, when Britain pulled the border that is different from that created in 1899. Two different boundary made of two different areas, Bir Tawil and Halaib.
Halaib have a variety of resources, so desirable, but not Bir Tawil. Therefore, the Egyptian border claims in 1899, which provides Halaib to Egypt and the Bir Tawil to Sudan. In contrast, Sudan claimed the border in 1902, which provides Halaib to Sudan and the Bir Tawil to Egypt.
Both Egypt and Sudan confirmed that the Bir Tawil not hers, make Bir Tawil is the only land in the world (excluding Antarctica) are not claimed by any country.

7. Mount Everest

Why Moun Everest are on this list you may ask? Everyone knows, of course, that it is the highest mountain in the world, but what many people do not know is that the border of Nepal and China walked right in the middle of the mountain, including the summit itself, so that not only the highest mountain, but also areas Highest border.

6. District of Columbia

District of Columbia is a large diamond which was originally carved from Maryland and Virginia. Then, of Virginia returned to Virginia, because of the size and location of the border has some unusual features.
When it was originally described, large stones (100 stones in total) located approximately one mile apart along the district to determine the border, ten miles long on each side. Some of the stone is missing today, but most are still there. There is one in Silver Spring, Maryland, which marks the northernmost point of the district.
East Avenue and Avenue west to form the border of the Northeast and Northwest, respectively. If you are walking on the sidewalk on the north side of the road in Maryland, the road itself is in the district, and the street is the border line.
Stores on one side of the road that shows the phone number in the window they will have one area code (for Maryland) on the north side of the road, and a different area code (for District) on the south side.

5. Derby Line, Vermont

Derby City Line across the U.S. and Canadian border. Border pass through the city, even through several buildings and homes.
In some cases, a family cook breakfast in Canada and ate it in the U.S.. Derby Line is also home to the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, which is deliberately built on the border.
Opera stage is in Canada, but the entrance to the opera, and most of the stage seats, located in the United States. Therefore, buildings located on the border, has two addresses post, one for the U.S. and one for Canada.

4. District-Cooch Behar

District-Cooch Behar has somewhat similar to the frontier border Baarle-Nassau / Baarle-Hertog. There are a number of areas under the jurisdiction of Bangladesh, located in India, and vice versa. An additional uniqueness is an area of ​​India Balapara Khagrabari.
As an exclave (enclave is a territory which the geographical boundary lies entirely within the boundaries of other areas.), Surrounded by the territory of Bangladesh.
However, also around other parts of Bangladesh, and the region itself around other parts of India, Dahala Khagrabari, so this area became the only place in the world where an exclave contains the exclave, and also contains another exclave.

3. Korean Demilitarized Zone

Korean DMZ is a plot of land about 160 miles (258 kilomters) in length and 2.5 miles (4 km) wide, dividing North and South Korea. This is the most widely border military personnel in the world.
Since it is very heavily guarded and almost no one ever came in, it has created a sustainable nature. A number of endangered species have been taken and put in there, and there are indications that some of them even increased in the population.
A border between the two Koreas can not be formally agreed upon, because these two countries technically still at war. A ceasefire was agreed in 1953, but there has never been a formal peace treaty.

2. Tumen River

Tumen is a river in northeast Asia. In areas near the coast, on the border between Russia and North Korea, just to the south of Lake Khasan, Tumen out between Russia and North Korea and actually in the Greater China region.
Thus, in this area, you can start in North Korea, and just walking distance to the north is less than half a mile, you will pass through China and ends up in Russia.
Although probably not a good idea. This is a common place for North Korea to try to cross and for that reason, the border is heavily guarded by the army of North Korea.

1. Diomede Island

Diomedes is a pair of islands in the Strait Bering.di Diomede Little Diomede is no city, with a population of 146 American-owned Big Diomede and Russian owned and uninhabited.
Two separate island is only about 2.5 miles. International Date Line passes between Diomedes and serves also as a border between the United States and Russia.
So when residents of Little Diomede looked across the strait on Big Diomede, they not only look at other countries, but they also will see tomorrow. For example, when the 9:00 was on Saturday in Little Diomede, Big Diomede, while in Sunday at 6:00 am
Little Diomede has provided cameras to observe the other side of the island. Visitors can control the camera, looking from side to side and zoom on the island of Big Diomede and Little diomede it made as the only action by the U.S. spy on the Russian legal.
Source:danish56.blogspot.comOnline Shopping

Read rest of entry