Blog Heap of Links for the day 27 May 2009

A 35-year-old Dewey man appeared before Special Judge John Gerkin on Tuesday to answer to charges stemming from the alleged molestation of a then 13-year-old girl. ... victim, now 14, gave her mother a note saying that Kelley had "sex with her multiple times" and for her (mother) not to get mad.....

A Bartlesville man is being held on $15,000 bond after his arrest for the alleged abuse of a 14-year-old girl. As a result of the arrest, Robert Lee Halcom, 45, faces a single charge of child abuse by injury.

We are not talking about stepping up military efforts but rather about measures in case a military conflict [???]

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said North Korea must face consequences for its "belligerent and provocative behavior" after Kim Jong Il's regime threatened military action against South Korea.

The Dutch justice ministry has announced it will close eight prisons and cut 1,200 jobs in the prison system. A decline in crime has left many cells empty.

France has confirmed that it has not "personally" invited the Queen to the 65th anniversary of D-Day on June 6 but said that she was "naturally welcome", following reports that Buckingham palace had been snubbed.

The Monorail Society is an all-volunteer organization founded to foster more awareness and promote this unique method of transportation. Monorails are NOT just for theme parks and zoos! Our aim is to inform people of the many possible uses for them....

Demolition crews are busy tearing down an old bridge leading to downtown Tulsa. It's the Boulder Bridge, going across the railroad tracks on the north edge of downtown. The bridge was built eight decades ago and has just become too unsafe to keep open. Construction on the Boulder Bridge near Tulsa Union Station began in 1929. Now, the bridge is coming down.

A 62-year-old Singapore man was temporarily denied entry into the U.S. because a cancer drug he was taking had made his fingerprints disappear.... people being treated with Xeloda, described as an oral chemotherapy drug, should carry a letter from their doctor that they are taking the medication if they want to travel to countries that require fingerprints for identification. ...

at this morning's Google I/O 2009 opening keynote, Google gave away a new, unlocked HTC Magic to all 4,000 attendees. This phone was previously unavailable in the US. As you might expect, this move drew the biggest applause by far from the audience, but actually very little of the keynote was devoted to Android.

Problem: When you project a round surface (such as the surface of the Earth) onto a flat map, there is a great deal of distortion. Fuller partially solved this by converting the globe to an icosahedron

a "Future MILF" teddybear? Is that for deployment in the baby's crib?

In making Sonia Sotomayor his first nominee for the Supreme Court yesterday, President Obama appears to have found the ideal match for his view that personal experience and cultural identity are the better part of judicial wisdom.

Newt Gingrich, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh -- have taken to calling the Supreme Court justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor a 'racist,' with Gingrich even going so far as to ask her to withdraw. [And rightly so, despite the indignent Daily News tone]

A 5-year-old Russian girl has been has placed in state custody after being found alone in an apartment filled with cats and dogs and imitating the animals' behavior. Police in the Transbaikal region of Siberia said Wednesday that the girl was kept shut up with the animals in a filthy apartment in the regional capital of Chita, where she lived with relatives, including her father and grandparents.

The global climate challenge may have been on the daytime agenda during the recent World Business Summit climate conference in Copenhagen, but in the evenings many businessmen, politicians and civil servants are reported to have availed themselves of the capital's prostitutes. "We've been extremely busy. Politicians also need to relax after a long day," says 'Miss Dina', herself a prostitute.

A graffiti vandal who was convicted last year, after his work was posted on YouTube, was charged Tuesday with five new felony vandalism charges. Authorities allege that Cyrus Yazdani, 25, caused more than $14,000 in damage between last Dec. 22 and March 31 on the 7th Street and Cesar Chavez bridges and in the 4200 block of South Broadway.

report on broadband strategy for rural America on Wednesday. ... Copps called this report on rural broadband strategy a starting point for developing a national broadband policy. And even with the $7.2 billion of money from the stimulus package, Copps said that more money will be needed to ensure that every American has access to broadband. ... [FREE MONEY! WHEEE!]

James Stacy has done his share of pothole patching during his decades in the asphalt business. ... He insists his intentions were pure Tuesday morning, when he took a broom and pickax to a menacing chuckhole outside his home on East Crosier Street. An Akron police officer sees it differently and has charged Stacy with criminal damaging, a second-degree misdemeanor.