A Texas man charged with removing a pacemaker from his mother’s body with a kitchen knife refused to give authorities the device in exchange for his freedom on Tuesday, prosecutors said. James Allan Donalson, 59, said he sliced out the pacemaker after his 85-year-old mother, Ann Donalson, died of natural causes on Sunday so he would have evidence in a 10-year dispute involving doctors and the medical device company that provided it, the sheriff’s department said. Donalson was released on a $5,000 bond on Tuesday. Prosecutors offered to drop a felony charge of evidence tampering if he...

Talking on a cell phone makes you drive like a retiree â€â€? even if you’re only a teen, a new study shows. A report from the University of Utah says when motorists between 18 and 25 talk on cell phones, they drive like elderly people â€â€? moving and reacting more slowly and increasing their risk of accidents. “If you put a 20-year-old driver behind the wheel with a cell phone, his reaction times are the same as a 70-year-old driver,” said David Strayer, a University of Utah psychology professor and principal author of the study. “It’s like...

A police officer used a stun gun on a 75-year-old woman who became distraught when she could not locate a sick friend at a nursing home, according to an internal report. Officer Hattie Jean Macon received a verbal warning and was required to attend a Taser retraining course after the investigation found she acted prematurely when she used the 50,000-volt Taser, according to the report released Thursday. Macon was called to the nursing home after Margaret Kimbrell refused to leave. Kimbrell has said she was distraught after the staff would not disclose the location of her sick friend, and she became...

An audit by a U.S. inspector says the U.S.-led authority that governed Iraq after the 2003 invasion failed to keep track of nearly $9 billion it transferred to Iraqi ministries. The audit released Sunday by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction says the Coalition Provisional Authority failed to establish control systems to verify how the money was spent, which opened it to corruption. In some instances, money was used to pay what the report calls “ghost” employees, explaining that out of 8,206 guards on the payroll at one ministry, only 602 could be accounted for. Former...

A stripper mauled by a tiger in an Ontario safari park has won $650,000 in damages because her scars meant she could no longer work, Canadian media said on Friday. Jennifer-Anne Cowles was driving through the park nearly nine years ago with her then boyfriend when a tiger jumped into their car and tried to drag them away. The two insisted their windows had been shut when the tiger charged, although the park had challenged that. The judge accepted the couple’s testimony that the power windows had been inadvertently lowered when one of the big cats bumped against the car, frightening them. In...

Contrary to the British (and probably the rest of the west’s) propaganda which claims that more then 70% of the population in Iraq voted, we have had clear sources tell us that Polling stations in Iraq were empty. This makes sense seeing as the majority ‘Sunni’ population are in fact boycotting the elections. Weather or not it is true about the turnouts of the elections, we can surely say that they will not be fair and completely biased. Well think about it, since when can you have elections under occupation?! I mean is that even possible. There are curfews and people would have...

Attempted arson charges against a veteran Tukwila fire lieutenant were dismissed last week after another person claimed responsibility for trying to set fire to his house in Mountlake Terrace, the Snohomish County prosecutor’s office said Thursday. The charge had been filed against Philip Scott Lyons, 48, who is back on the job, Tukwila Fire Chief Nick Olivas said. He was on administrative leave and had been assigned other duties since he was charged. “We’re very happy about it,” Olivas said. “We’re definitely glad to get him back on shift.” The charge...

Police say a man involved in the recent robbery of a Domino’s Pizza delivery woman would be a good candidate for “World’s Dumbest Criminal.” New Castle County police say that after two men robbed the woman, one of them called the victim on his cell phone to apologize — and to ask her out on a date. The victim, 18, declined the request. Instead, she gave the cell phone number to police, who arrested Brent Brown, 25, on Thursday. Through a photo lineup, the victim also identified Brown as one of the robbers. Besides Brown, police also arrested an 18-year-old man and...