Chris Sweeney

Looking for a Fight

admin — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 05:00:41 +0000

But there’s a problem. Even though he has spent countless hours training at American Top Team Weston, Garrett can’t find a fair fight. People who run the Special Olympics have given little indication they will ever allow the sport, and it’s unclear how many parents of special-needs’ people would even allow their children to pursue MMA. And though he has fought two exhibitions against abled competitors, few fighters want to be the one who knocks out a guy with Down syndrome or, worse, gets knocked out by him.

Two Activists Infiltrate a Center Where Undocumented Immigrants Are Held

admin — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 04:00:08 +0000

For years, word had spread among immigration activists about the plight of those inside the center, which is specifically intended to hold low-priority cases. Despite recent orders for immigration officials to be lenient on immigrants who have no criminal record and may be eligible to stay in the U.S. legally, the center is packed with them. Many are picked up during federal sting operations, then hauled off to BTC, a facility run by the private, controversial prison company the GEO group. Of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s 250 detention facilities, only seven, including BTC, are considered “contracted detention facilities.” According to some estimates, BTC gobbles up more than $800,000 a week in taxpayer money when running at maximum occupancy. [Full Article]

TSA at MIA and FLL: 35 Guns, a Chainsaw, and a Cannonball Confiscated

admin — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 04:00:47 +0000

Piled on a table in a quiet conference room at the central terminal of Miami International Airport is a dazzling collection of items that could be used to bludgeon and stab one’s way through a crowded airplane. There’s a pair of metal telescopic nunchucks, a silver Rambo knife sharp enough to plunge straight through an adult torso, plenty of box cutters, and a lead hammer that could crack a human skull like an egg. That’s just a week’s worth of confiscations at MIA. Other recent pick-ups from air passengers there and at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport include a sword disguised as a cane, a fueled-up chainsaw, and the “explosively viable” shell of an 18th-century cannonball, according to reports from the Transportation Security Administration. [Full Article]

Fake-Pot Industry Comes Down From a Three-Year High

admin — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 04:00:55 +0000

Over the past three years, manufacturers and retailers of so-called herbal incenses have popped up in all 50 states. It quickly became a multibillion-dollar industry built on products that had names like Crazy Eyes, Cowboy Kush, and Skull Killa. Although manufacturers were usually careful to stamp warning labels on the products to avoid liability, users understood that smoking these substances would result in a high because the stuff was soaked with synthetic cannabinoids — manmade chemicals meant to mimic the effects of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the psychoactive component of marijuana. Until two months ago, many of these herbal incenses remained legal because state and federal lawmakers couldn’t keep up with the onslaught of new chemicals being churned out by overseas labs and imported by herbal-incense manufacturers. Whenever the government banned one synthetic cannabinoid, chemists simply tweaked their formulations to concoct new, legal replacements that still got people stoned. [Full Article]

Urban Sprawl Kills Endangered Florida Panthers: 2012 Could Be Deadliest Year Yet

admin — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 04:00:09 +0000

Marc Criffield clutches a small receiver in his hand and peers through the window of a single-engine Cessna. Suddenly, the device lets out an electric chirp. A second later, another chirp, and then another. Criffield has pinpointed FP197, a burly 4-and-a-half-year-old panther in the prime of its life. But something is wrong. Instead of showing the endangered panther on the prowl, the signal is stationary. The cat might be sleeping through the sticky July heat, or the locator might be broken. But in his decades of tracking animals — from wolves along the Mexican border to foxes in the Great Plains — the 40-year-old scientist has learned to trust his gut. [Full Article]

FBI Fugitive Leslie Delbecq Explains Why She Kidnapped Her Daughter and Fled South Florida

admin — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 04:00:42 +0000

Today, after a failed marriage, the birth of a daughter, and an escape to Dubai, the 31-year-old Delbecq and both of her parents are wanted on charges of international parental kidnapping. For every week she remains on the run, another $1,000 fine is added to a tab that’s already topped $75,000. This June, on a balmy Sunday night in Dubai, against the advice of her attorneys and parents, the fugitive presses a cell phone to her ear, takes a breath, and explains why she abducted her own daughter. ”I just want to make it clear that I left the U.S. for a very good reason.” [Full Article]

Can Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Keep Dengue Fever Away From Key West?

admin — Thu, 31 May 2012 04:00:36 +0000

Doyle’s solution? To move ahead with a controversial experiment that has been in the works since before he arrived: importing and releasing millions of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that have been genetically modified in the labs of a British biotech firm called Oxitec. These minute marvels of science are tweaked to pass down a gene that causes their progeny to self-destruct soon after hatching. Only males would be released; theoretically, they would breed with normal females and spawn offspring that keel over and die just before adulthood. The dengue-spreading population would collapse generation by generation. [Full Article]

Deep Trouble: The World’s Coral Reefs Are Being Decimated, All For A Few Gaudy Trinkets

admin — Thu, 03 May 2012 04:00:05 +0000

Over the next two years, four more suspicious shipments — of similar magnitude and similarly mislabeled — would arrive in U.S. ports, with the most recent having come to Tampa earlier this year. The former reef material was bound for the curio trade, an off-the-radar market that spans from low-end, roadside shell shops to posh interior-design companies. The shipping containers and the repeated pattern of mislabeled coral are now at the center of a federal investigation being led by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that could result in criminal charges and stiff financial penalties against the people who were importing it. Sources familiar with the ongoing investigation would not reveal the names of those involved but say the same Solomon Islands-based company exported all of the containers to several American importers. [Full Article]

Additional Reporting:

Seven Florida Coral Species “Extremely Likely to Go Extinct,” Warns National Marine Fisheries

Precious Red and Pink Corals Need Protection Under CITES

Seasick and Sunburnt: Throwing Up on Ken Nedimyer’s Coral Nursery

Sponges in Palm Beach Waters Hit by Mystery Disease (VIDEO)

Mystery Sponge-Killing Disease Now Seen From Palm Beach to Lower Keys

Buju Behind Bars: A Dirty Snitch Helped The Feds Unjustly Bust A Reggae Legend

admin — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 05:00:03 +0000

It’s a case built upon the handiwork of a mendacious snitch — Alex Johnson, AKA Junior — with an extensive criminal history and clear financial motives to see Buju arrested. An aggressive federal prosecutor spent big in two weeklong trials in Tampa to secure a celebrity conviction. The saga sheds light on how far the government will go and how dirty it will play to win the few big battles left in the long-ago failed War on Drugs. Now, while one of the most successful and controversial Jamaican artists — a man who won a Grammy for best reggae album a year ago — sits in a Miami penitentiary, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals is considering whether unconstitutional tactics were used to nail a man who had no known criminal record. [Full Article]

Additional Reporting:

Buju Banton Juror May Have Violated Court Orders: Grounds for a Mistrial?

Another Juror Says Buju Banton Is Not Guilty of Gun Charge

Gunning For Buju: Jurors Wanted to Clear Reggae Legend Buju Banton of a Gun Charge

Buju Banton Heads to Relatively Safer Miami Prison After Stay in Rough Texas Jailhouse

Alex Johnson, Colombian Snitch in Case Against Buju Banton, Earned Millions From U.S. Government

Buju Banton’s Attorney: “We Had Ten Really Good Issues for the Appeal”

Buju Banton’s Appeal Pisses Off DOJ, Causes Government to File Its Own Appeal

Buju Banton’s Legal Team Blasts Feds in Latest Arguments

DOJ Continues to Press for Gun Charge Against Buju Banton

Buju Banton’s Appeal Struck Down

Buju Banton’s Legal Team Asks for a New Trial

The Dynamics of Sexual Acceleration – Big Pharma Wants To Take You For A Ride

admin — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 05:00:15 +0000

A few years back, Plethora Solutions, a U.K.-based drug firm, also recognized the need for greater precision in the definition, so it decided to give the International Society of Sexual Medicine an unrestricted grant to explore the evidence. A crew of 21 specialists spanning in discipline from psychiatry to neuro-urology hunkered down in Amsterdam during the fall of 2007, intent on hammering out a diagnostic blueprint for men who ejaculate too quickly. After wading through the data and discussing the myriad factors thought to play a role in the disorder, the crew emerged with what is now widely considered the gold-standard definition. [Full Article]

How Text Messages Could Change Global Healthcare

admin — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 04:00:38 +0000

There are more than 5 billion mobile phone subscribers across the globe, while 90 percent of the world’s population is covered by a cell signal. In Sub-Saharan Africa, an area plagued by public health woes and a lack of infrastructure, 50 percent of people now have access to a cellphone. Within two years, if not sooner, that figure will jump to 100 percent. “Ubiquity is the killer app,” Nesbit says. [Full Article]

When Dinosaurs Disappear: Behind the Scenes Of Paleontology’s Black Market

admin — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 04:00:22 +0000

On the second floor of Sereno’s fossil lab, he pulls out a reddish chunk of rock that surrounded Raptorex for millions of years. “In the matrix we found lots of evidence, like forensic evidence, that could tie it to China, and roughly where it came from,” he says. “When you get it under the microscope, you see a lot of sand and swirling going on, indicating that this is not a quiet lakebed … this is an earlier formation.” This is crucial evidence in Sereno’s decision to place Raptorex in northern China, close to inner Mongolia, but to prove it was a new dinosaur required astute anatomical investigation. [Full Article]