Disabled Veteran Kicked Off US Airways Plane, Refused to Put Service Dog on Floor (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox

Photo Credit: Fox

A newly released video has put valley-based US Airways in a tough position. A Vietnam vet with a service dog got into a heated discussion with a flight attendant and then was escorted off the plane for security reasons.

Video: “No! I’d appreciate if you’d get the hell off this ground and get where we’re going!”

Emotions ran high onboard a US Airways flight from Phoenix to El Paso. This video has gone viral.

“I’m sorry folks but I’ve earned the right to have this service animal because of my service to this country in Vietnam. I am 100 percent disabled, I have a service dog because of it and everyone has to obey the ADA laws except this airline! So I’m sorry but I’m not budging!”

This passenger wants his service dog, a golden retriever, to remain seated on the empty seat next to him.

Read more from this story HERE.

Secret to Investing Well Woven in the Bible (+video)

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the_holy_bible-483Most people know Sean Hyman from his regular appearances on Fox Business, CNBC, and Bloomberg Television, but what they don’t know is that Sean is a former pastor, and that his secret to investing is woven within the Bible.

Perhaps that can explain why, despite his uncanny ability to predict precise moves in the stock market, Sean is often laughed at for his unique stance on investing.

For example . . . a few months ago Sean appeared on Bloomberg Television. At that time, Best Buy (BBY) was dropping to all-time lows of $16 a share. Sean predicted the stock could go down to $11 a share, and would then quickly rebound to $25 per share, and after that would rally to $40 per share over the next year.

Another commentator on the show actually mocked Sean for his stance, saying “$40 on Best Buy? If that’s the case Apple (AAPL) is going to $1,500. That’s the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard!” (Editor’s Note: At the time, Apple was trading at $650 per share).

Within a few weeks, Sean would receive the last laugh.

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Arizona Magazine Pulled after Accidentally Advising Readers to Eat Psychedelic Mushrooms

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Photo Credit: Erhard Nerger

Photo Credit: Erhard Nerger

An Arizona travel magazine told readers to eat psychedelic mushrooms.

The October issue of Arizona Highways shows a picture of a hallucinogenic mushroom identified as edible. Realizing their gaffe, the magazine’s publishers pulled all issues from shelves and notified subscribers.

The magazine’s ‘nature factoid’ of the month showed the fly agaric mushroom on page 13 of this month’s issue.

Read more from this story HERE.

Colorado County Considers Giving Flowers a ‘Right to Life’

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The Boulder, Colo. local government will deliberate a new law next week that would legally define and protect plants and animals as living beings.

The ‘Rights of Nature’ movement recently descended on Boulder to push environmentalist laws to the local government, according to Denver Westwood News. Their most recent proposal asks that Boulder County recognize ”the rights of all naturally occurring ecosystems and their native species populations to exist and flourish.”

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Helium Balloons Lift Aviator Jonathan Trappe Up For Transatlantic Trip

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Photo Credit: Paul Cyr / Barcroft USA

Photo Credit: Paul Cyr / Barcroft USA

An American aviator has begun the first attempt to cross the Atlantic suspended by hundreds of coloured balloons. Jonathan Trappe took off from Caribou, Maine, on Thursday morning as his capsule was lifted by 370 helium-filled balloons in heavy fog and he headed east from the US.

The concept may sound like the story from the Disney film Up but Trappe, 39, specializes in cluster ballooning and was the first person to cross the Channel and the Alps using the method.

The transatlantic trip could be as long as 2,500 miles (4,000km) and take between three and five days. Depending on the weather, he could land anywhere between Iceland and Morocco.

Trappe is relying on state of the art weather data from the meteorologist who advised Felix Baumgartner on his record-breaking skydive from the stratosphere last year. The latest weather reports suggested winds would take Trappe to western Europe.

“Weather is absolutely the most dangerous factor,” said Trappe, speaking immediately before launch. ” It’s the only thing that will carry me across, but bad conditions could also ruin the attempt or endanger my life.”

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Interview: Kiss’ Gene Simmons Defends Tim Tebow: He’s Cool to Me

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Photo Credit: AFP/Getty

Photo Credit: AFP/Getty

Has polarizing football player Tim Tebow gotten a raw deal in the press because of his religious beliefs? And would he be treated more respectfully if he were not Christian, and specifically, Muslim? Gene Simmons thinks so.

“He’s got a religious passion, as well he should, we’re in America,” the KISS frontman told Radio.com earlier this week. ”He’s proud to be a Christian, what’s wrong with that? And yet, with sports media and pop culture media, they make fun of his religion. Really? In America? If he was wearing a burqa, they wouldn’t dare say anything [editor’s note: only Muslim women wear burqas]. But if you’re a Christian, you get to be picked on? What the hell? The guy’s got family values. I never saw the media picking on Michael Vick for torturing dogs. Or this other football player, who’s alleged to have killed, committed murder. That’s ‘cool.’ But a guy who’s religious and has got family values isn’t ‘cool?’ He’s cool to me.”

As has been widely reported, Simmons and his KISS bandmate Paul Stanley are now co-owners of a new Arena Football League team, to be called LA KISS. And Simmons wasted no time drawing attention to the expansion team (which will begin playing in 2014), extending a very public offer to quarterback Tim Tebow, who after a brief up-and-down career in the NFL, was released by the New England Patriots a few weeks ago.

In an interview focusing on the new oral history of KISS, Nothing To Lose (more on that to come), Simmons addressed the situation with the man who he hopes will be the KISS QB.

“We haven’t heard back from Tim,” Simmons said. “He’s considering this seriously; he’s in Los Angeles. Right after this, I’m gonna fly back with our guys and try to sit down with him and tell him that we’re serious about this. He’ll get the respect here that he didn’t get at the NFL.”

Read more from this story HERE.

‘Artificial Egg’ Made from Plants Backed by Bill Gates Set to Revolutionize Cooking Goes on Sale at Whole Foods

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Photo Credit: Cody Pickens

Photo Credit: Cody Pickens

A radical ‘artificial egg’ backed by Paypal billionaire Peter Thiel and Bill Gates goes on sale in US supermarkets for the first time today.

Made from plants, it can replace eggs in everything from cakes to mayonnaise – without a chicken ever coming close to the production process.

The team today started selling their ‘plant egg’, called Beyond Eggs, in Whole Foods in California – and say it could soon be available in supermarkets worldwide.

‘We want to take animals out of the equation,’ said Josh Tetrick, the firm’s founder. ‘The food industry is begging for innovation, especially where animals are involved – it is a broken industry.’

Tetrick’s idea was to find a mix of easy-to-grow plants that, when mixed together in the right way, replicate the taste, nutritional values and cooking properties of an egg.

Read more from this story HERE.

Can Public Shaming Be Good Criminal Punishment?

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Photo Credit: BBC Screen Grab

Photo Credit: BBC Screen Grab

For a few hours every day last week, a 58-year-old man in Cleveland with a gray goatee, a ratty AC/DC T-shirt, and a backwards hat wore a sign around his neck that clearly labeled him as an idiot. “I apologize to officer Simone & all police officers for being an idiot calling 911 threatening to kill you,” it read. “I’m sorry and it will never happen again.”

The man, Richard Dameron, didn’t wear the sign by choice: It was part of his punishment—along with 180 days in jail—ordered by municipal Judge Pinkey Carr.

The practice is called public shaming, and it’s the kind of creative punishment that is being ordered by judges around the country, from court-mandated dinners at Red Lobster to wearing a chicken suit on the side of a road. And it could actually work to not only cut down on low-level crime, but to help slash ballooning state and local budgets as well.

Jessica Eaglin, the counsel for the justice program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, sees public shaming as forward-looking compared with more retributive punishments. Forward-looking public shaming is more deterrence-based, says Eaglin, and can have an impact on an entire community instead of just one person. For low-level crimes in small towns, “that’s where the public shaming comes in,” Eaglin says. “It’s reflecting on your life, people are watching you, and that’s going to affect your behavior more than just paying a fine.”

Not everyone agrees. “This kind of public shaming has no record of efficacy in turning someone away from crime,” Peggy McGarry, director of the Center on Sentencing and Corrections at the Vera Institute of Justice, said in an e-mail. McGarry thinks this is especially true for small-town, low-level offenders…

Read more from this story HERE.

Japanese Professor Pushes for Hide-and-Seek at the Olympics

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Photo Credit: Alamy

Photo Credit: Alamy

The International Olympic Committee is to announce the host city for the XXXII Olympiad at its meeting in Buenos Aires on Saturday, with Tokyo competing with Istanbul and Madrid for the right to host the largest sporting event in the world.

And Hazaki, a graduate of Nippon Sport Science University, believes Tokyo 2020 would be the perfect occasion for the Olympic community to embrace his chosen sport.

“I would like hide-and-seek to be one of the exhibition sports in 2020 and then it could become an official event at subsequent Olympics,” Hazaki, a professor of media studies at Josai International University, told The Daily Telegraph.

Prof. Hazaki set up the Japan Hide-and-Seek Promotion Committee in 2010 and the organisation has around 1,000 members across the country. Many are university students, but the sport can be enjoyed by anyone, he emphasises.

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Utah Shepherd Survives After Being Gored by Elk

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A wild bull elk gored a shepherd in the mountains in eastern Utah, puncturing one of the man’s lungs, knocking him unconscious and forcing him to walk several miles for help.

Sheepherder Hugo Macha, 31, was in good condition in a Grand Junction, Colo., hospital Friday, three days after the rare attack in the La Sal Mountains.

“He was already worrying about his sheep,” said Polly Hill, co-owner of the 1,000 sheep Macha tends, in an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune. “The doctor said he was lucky because the way the lung was punctured it kept it from collapsing. He might be able to come home Sunday. We will take care of him until he is back on his feet.”

Macha, who is from Peru, told rescuers that he’d been sitting on the ground and leaning against a tree Tuesday evening when the elk appeared and started heading toward him. He tried to get away, according to Utah Division of Wildlife Resources officer Dennis Shumway, but the animal ran him down, knocked him to the ground and gored him with its antlers.

When he came to, the elk was nowhere to be found.

Read more from this story HERE.