Weird News

[Tom Flapwell]

Elvis Presley, eat your heart out.

[VisibilityMissing]

"What is someone going to do with that amount of produce?"

Dec 28, 3:13 PM EST

Trailer Full of Broccoli Disappears

VILLA PARK, Ill. (AP) -- Someone got way more than the recommended daily serving of vegetables when a refrigerated trailer loaded with $50,000 worth of broccoli was stolen.

The 48-foot trailer disappeared from its rented parking space in the Chicago suburb of Villa Park sometime between Sunday and Tuesday morning, police said.

Detective Ed Zorich said the thief was probably after the trailer, not the vegetables.

"What is someone going to do with that amount of produce?" Zorich said. "On the black market, I can't imagine that's something that's worth money to anybody."

Police entered the trailer into a stolen-vehicle database, but had no immediate leads.

"We have homicides happening in town," Zorich said. "We're not really looking for a truck of broccoli right now."

[CodeCat]

Can we all please post links to the articles, too, in future? Thanks.

[VisibilityMissing]

The reason I stopped doing that was that the links usually get broken fairly quickly (just look at the links at the beginning of this thread).

However, if it makes you happy:
Broccoli Thieves

[CodeCat]

Well, it also helps to have the links so I can share them with others on other forums.

[VisibilityMissing]

Dec 28, 4:18 PM EST

Man Accused of Using Log in Assaults

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- A Des Moines man faces charges for a fight that left two men injured, which may have involved an unusual weapon, a log. Dickie Lee Jones, 45, is accused of trying to pick a fight with a woman Wednesday at a Des Moines apartment and then assaulting two men, who tried to intervene, with a fireplace log.

Michael James Butts, 46, said he had a ruptured left eardrum and pain to the back of the head, while Eldon Hunsicker, 45, said he his nose was broken, according to police.

According to a police report, Jones has denied using the log during the scrap. But he has been charged with assault or display of a dangerous weapon and is being held at Polk County Jail.

---

Information from: The Des Moines Register, http://www.desmoinesregister.com

[VisibilityMissing]

"To fly 7 million light years to O'Hare and then have to turn around and go home because your gate was occupied is simply unacceptable."

Where are Mulder and Scully when you need them?

GETTING AROUND

In the sky! A bird? A plane? A ... UFO?

United Airlines denies its workers filed reports about saucerlike object hovering at O'Hare

Jon Hilkevitch
Getting Around



January 1, 2007

It sounds like a tired joke--but a group of airline employees insist they are in earnest, and they are upset that neither their bosses nor the government will take them seriously.

A flying saucerlike object hovered low over O'Hare International Airport for several minutes before bolting through thick clouds with such intense energy that it left an eerie hole in overcast skies, said some United Airlines employees who observed the phenomenon.

Was it an alien spaceship? A weather balloon lost in the airspace over the world's second-busiest airport? A top-secret military craft? Or simply a reflection from lights that played a trick on the eyes?

Officials at United professed no knowledge of the Nov. 7 event--which was reported to the airline by as many as a dozen of its own workers--when the Tribune started asking questions recently. But the Federal Aviation Administration said its air traffic control tower at O'Hare did receive a call from a United supervisor asking if controllers had spotted a mysterious elliptical-shaped craft sitting motionless over Concourse C of the United terminal.

No controllers saw the object, and a preliminary check of radar found nothing out of the ordinary, FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said.

The FAA is not conducting a further investigation, Cory said. The theory is the sighting was caused by a "weather phenomenon," she said.

The UFO report has sparked some chuckles among controllers in O'Hare tower.

"To fly 7 million light years to O'Hare and then have to turn around and go home because your gate was occupied is simply unacceptable," said O'Hare controller and union official Craig Burzych.

Some of the witnesses, interviewed by the Tribune, said they are upset that neither the government nor the airline is probing the incident.

Whatever the object was, it could have interfered with O'Hare's radar and other equipment, and even created a collision risk, they said.

The Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (the term that extraterrestrial-watchers nowadays prefer over Unidentified Flying Object) was first seen by a United ramp worker who was directing back a United plane at Gate C17, according to an account the worker provided to the National UFO Reporting Center.

The sighting occurred during daylight, about 4:30 p.m., just before sunset.

All the witnesses said the object was dark gray and well defined in the overcast skies. They said the craft, estimated by different accounts to be 6 feet to 24 feet in diameter, did not display any lights.

Some said it looked like a rotating Frisbee, while others said it did not appear to be spinning. All agreed the object made no noise and it was at a fixed position in the sky, just below the 1,900-foot cloud deck, until shooting off into the clouds.

Witnesses shaken by sighting

"I tend to be scientific by nature, and I don't understand why aliens would hover over a busy airport," said a United mechanic who was in the cockpit of a Boeing 777 that he was taxiing to a maintenance hangar when he observed the metallic-looking object above Gate C17.

"But I know that what I saw and what a lot of other people saw stood out very clearly, and it definitely was not an [Earth] aircraft," the mechanic said.

One United employee appeared emotionally shaken by the sighting and "experienced some religious issues" over it, one co-worker said.

A United manager said he ran outside his office in Concourse B after hearing the report about the sighting on an internal airline radio frequency.

"I stood outside in the gate area not knowing what to think, just trying to figure out what it was," he said. "I knew no one would make a false call like that. But if somebody was bouncing a weather balloon or something else over O'Hare, we had to stop it because it was in very close proximity to our flight operations."

Some joke, others research

The databases of various UFO-watching groups are full of accounts filed by pilots about sightings of unknown aircraft and anomalies that affected navigational equipment onboard planes.

Whether any of the UFO incidents are real or merely the result of individual perceptions, some experts say the events pose a potential safety risk to pilots and their passengers.

"There have been documented cases where safety appears to have been implicated, and more and more we are coming to the point of view that we are dealing with an intelligent phenomenon," said Richard Haines, science director at the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena, a private agency.

"We must be proactive before an aircraft goes down," said Haines, a former chief of the Space Human Factors Office at NASA's Ames Research Center.

Haines is investigating the O'Hare incident. He said he has determined that no weather balloons were launched in the vicinity of O'Hare on Nov. 7.

"It's absurd that the military would be conducting aerial test flights" near the airport, Haines said.

All the witnesses to the O'Hare event, who included at least several pilots, said they are certain based on the disc's appearance and flight characteristics that it was not an airplane, helicopter, weather balloon or any other craft known to man.

United denies UFO report

They're not sure what was hanging out for several minutes in the restricted airspace, but they are upset that no one in power has taken the matter seriously.

A United spokeswoman said there is no record of the UFO report. She said United officials do not recall discussion of any such incident.

"There's nothing in the duty manager log, which is used to report unusual incidents," said United spokeswoman Megan McCarthy. "I checked around. There's no record of anything."

The pilots of the United plane being directed back from Gate C17 also were notified by United personnel of the sighting, and one of the pilots reportedly opened a windscreen in the cockpit to get a better view of the object estimated to be hovering 1,500 feet above the ground.

The object was seen to suddenly accelerate straight up through the solid overcast skies, which the FAA reported had 1,900-foot cloud ceilings at the time.

"It was like somebody punched a hole in the sky," said one United employee.

Witnesses said they had a hard time visually tracking the object as it streaked through the dense clouds.

It left behind an open hole of clear air in the cloud layer, the witnesses said, adding that the hole disappeared within a few minutes.

The United employees interviewed by the Tribune spoke on condition of anonymity.

Some said they were interviewed by United officials and instructed to write reports and draw pictures of what they observed, and that they were advised by United officials to refrain from speaking about what they saw.

Federal agency backtracks

Like United, the FAA originally told the Tribune that it had no information on the alleged UFO sighting. But the federal agency quickly reversed its position after the newspaper filed a Freedom of Information Act request.

An internal FAA review of air-traffic communications tapes, a step toward complying with the Tribune request, turned up the call by the United supervisor to an FAA manager in the airport tower, Cory said.

Cory said the weather might have factored into what the witnesses thought they saw.

"Our theory on this is that it was a weather phenomenon," she said. "That night was a perfect atmospheric condition in terms of low [cloud] ceiling and a lot of airport lights. When the lights shine up into the clouds, sometimes you can see funny things. That's our take on it."

----------

Contact Getting Around at jhilkevitch@tribune.com or c/o the Chicago Tribune, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611. Read recent columns at chicagotribune.com/gettingaround

[Mr. Neign]

"we couldnt see it on the radar.."

It either has superior stealth technology, or it really wasn't there.. shut up about the radar!

As well as the no noise thing.. My dad told me about watching a stealth bomber at an air show.. they didn't even know it was there untill the people running the show pointed it out that it was passing right over them at a fairly low altitude

OOH! OOH! I know! I know! I'll create a conspiracy right on the spot!

The Military is attempting to create special light bending indentations into metals in order to become invisible on the electromagnetic spectrum! but they keep screwing up and the public keeps seeing them!

[Zaaphod]

So, aliens come to visit us but try to land at O'Hare? They're advanced, but they're not THAT advanced.

[VisibilityMissing]

2006: The year that was . . .

[quote]Yearly Review

Posted on Sunday, December 31, 2006.


Thousands of people died in the Iraqi civil war, which was costing the United States $100,000 a minute. U.S. forces began to negotiate with Sunni insurgents, and the Pentagon, short of buglers who can play taps at military funerals, ordered 700 automated digital bugles. Oil companies announced record profits; President George W. Bush said that America is “addicted to oilâ€

[The Donmeister]

The Pentagon, short of buglers who can play taps at military funerals, ordered 700 automated digital bugles.

I laughed at that. What is our world coming to?

[Muninn]

These automated doohickeys are stealing the livelihood of hard working musicians. The robots aim to kill all artists. It is their first step on world domination!

[nickspoon]

French court rules pork soup kitchen not racist (Reuters)

A French court ruled Tuesday that an organization with far-right links can continue offering pork soup to the homeless, rejecting police complaints that the food distribution was racist.

Police banned the soup kitchen last month, arguing that the handouts discriminated against Jews and Muslims who do not eat pork on religious grounds.

The administrative court said the distribution was "clearly discriminatory," but could not be stopped because the organizers offered to feed anyone who asked for help.

The mayor of Paris condemned the ruling and urged the police to appeal the ruling.

"Faced by this initiative which stinks of xenophobia, I want once again to express city hall's desire to fight all forms of discrimination, racism and anti-Semitism," mayor Bertrand Delanoe said in a statement.

The food handouts are organized by a nationalist group called Solidarity of the French (SDF). It says its "pig soup," which uses pork fat for stock, is country fare much loved by French traditionalists.

"No-one has ever been able to prove that anyone has been refused soup or clothes on the grounds of their religion or race," SDF lawyer Frederic Pichon told France Info radio after Tuesday's court decision.

Next on our list of controversial topics: is the Pope a Catholic?

[Tom Flapwell]

France seems to be one of the worst places in Europe to be Muslim nowadays.

[VisibilityMissing]

It must be some giant, fiendish vegetable related plot!

Another veggie heist
Trailers filled with cookies, fungicide also disappear

By James Janega
Tribune staff reporter

January 3, 2007, 8:45 PM CST

Chicago police said Wednesday the phrase "crime doesn't pay" pretty much applied to thieves who hit a Bridgeport truck yard over New Year's weekend, only to score frozen veggies, a lot of cookies and two truckfuls of fungicide.

"We're speculating they went in there and took the first thing they found," said Wentworth Area Cmdr. Patricia Walsh. "They probably wanted TVs and gym shoes. But they got asparagus and cookies."

The frozen asparagus was especially disappointing. It was found abandoned Wednesday, melting under an Interstate Highway 57 viaduct in Dixmoor. Within hours, it was being processed as a crime scene.

What the thieves' weekend hit got them was 1,580 cartons of frozen vegetables in one truck (now recovered, but ruined), the two truckloads of fungicide and, 1,734 packets of mini chocolate chip cookies, 1,733 packets of mini chocolate cream sandwiches, and 1,733 packages of mini vanilla cream sandwiches in another truck.

"I don't know too many people who would want to pay too much for all those cookies," Walsh said. "Somebody would. But that's a lot of cookies."

Nationwide, cargo experts and the FBI estimate between $10 billion and $15 billion in cargo is stolen from U.S. truck lots, cargo docks and warehouses each year. Private investigators who hunt the stolen bounties say the average wholesale value of each truck is $130,000—though they are sold for far less. One truckload with a desirable inventory might sell to a middleman for $20,000. The stolen merchandise is then sold to shady or unsuspecting retailers.

Sometime over the weekend—exactly when isn't known yet—the thief or thieves cut a hole in a fence at the truck yard in the 1500 block of West 33rd Street and drove in with a truck cab. They hitched up to each trailer and made off with them, taking the vegetables, at least, to Dixmoor.

When truck lot employees noticed the hole in the fence, they did an inventory of the yard. On Monday, they reported the missing asparagus to Chicago police. On Tuesday, they reported three other trucks were missing.

Police found the asparagus Wednesday.

Last week, a refrigerated trailer with $50,000 worth of broccoli was reported stolen from the Odeum Sports and Expo Center in Villa Park. Chicago police do not believe the heists are related, but had not ruled it out late Wednesday.

jjanega@tribune.com

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune