Delta Blue Squadron

13 Year Old Steals Dad’s Credit Card to Buy Hookers

A 13 year old from Texas who stole his Dad’s credit card and ordered two hookers from an escort agency, has today been convicted of fraud and given a three year community order.

Ralph Hardy, a 13 year old from Newark, Texas confessed to ordering an extra credit card from his father’s existing credit card company, and took his friends on a $30,000 spending spree, culminating in playing “Halo” on an Xbox with a couple of hookers in a Texas motel.

The credit card company involved said it was regular practice to send extra credit cards out as long as all security questions are answered.

The escort girls who were released without charge, told the arresting officers something was up when the kids said they would rather play Xbox than get down to business.

Police said they were alerted to the motel by a concerned delivery clerk, whom after delivering supplies of Dr Pepper, Fritos and Oreos had been asked by the kids where they could score some chicks and were willing to pay. They explained they had just made a big score at a “World of Warcraft” tournament and wanted to get some relaxation. On noting the boys age the delivery clerk informed the authorities.

When police arrived at the motel they found $3,000 in cash, numerous electronic gadgets, an Xbox video console with numerous games, and the two local escort girls.

Ralph had reportedly told police that his father wouldn’t mind, as it was his birthday last week and he had forgot to get him a present. The father, a lawyer said he had been too busy, but would take him on a surprise trip to Disneyland instead.

PALATKA, FL — Palatka police are looking for a man who robbed a store clerk of his shorts.

Authorities say a man went into the store at 700 North 19th street with a white shirt wrapped around his head and a plastic bag covering a gun in his hand.

Investigators say the man took a cash box, a handgun, and the clerk’s blue jean shorts.

Detectives say the man was last seen getting into a white car, possibly a buick, behind the store. He is described as a black male, 6 feet tall, 200 pounds with short dreads.

Anyone with information should contact the Palatka Police Department at (386) 329-0110.

The devastation wrought in Myanmar by Tropical Cyclone Nargis is revealed in new NASA satellite images.

Nargis made landfall with sustained winds of 130 mph and gusts of 150 to 160 mph, the equivalent of a strong Category 3 or minimal Category 4 hurricane, according to Accuweather.com. The death toll could exceed 100,000, officials said.

Flooding is difficult to capture in pictures, even from satellites, particularly when the water is muddy. NASA used both visible and infrared light to make floodwaters more obvious.

The before and after views of the Myanmar coast and Irrawaddy Delta, where much of the devastation occurred, were generated by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA’s Terra satellite. Water is blue or nearly black, vegetation is bright green, bare ground is tan and clouds are white or light blue.

An image from April 15, 2008, shows dark blue or nearly black water that sharply outlines the shore, the Irrawaddy River (which flows south through the left-hand side of the image). The wetlands near the shore are a deep blue green. Cyclone Nargis came ashore across the Mouths of the Irrawaddy and followed the coastline northeast.

The entire coastal plain is flooded in an image taken on May 5. Here, much of Myanmar is seen as a combination of blue water and turquoise muddy runoff into the Gulf of Martaban. Previously tan areas without vegetation are flooded, such as the 4-million population city of Yangon. The cyclone’s path is clearly visible as it moved northeast along the coast from the Mouths of the Irrawaddy. Light blue or white
clouds float above the flooded landscape.

DAISETTA, Texas (AP) — Geologists said a 260-foot-deep sinkhole that grew to the length of three football fields over just two days seemed to be slowing down Thursday, but it could take months before it’s clear whether surrounding areas are stable.

The Daisetta, Texas, sinkhole quickly grew to 260 feet deep and 900 feet long.

The 900-foot-long sinkhole, with crumbling dirt around its edges resembling sharp teeth, has swallowed oil tanks and barrels, tires, telephone poles and several vehicles in Daisetta, a once-booming oil town of about 1,000 residents about 60 miles northeast of Houston, Texas.

Residents feared the appetite of the sinkhole, which began as a 20-foot hole in the ground on Wednesday, would continue unabated Thursday and threaten nearby homes. But by Thursday afternoon officials and
geologists allayed those concerns.

“We’re not sure it has completely stopped. We’re confident it has slowed down,” said Tom Branch, coordinator of the Liberty County Office of Emergency Management. “We feel a whole lot better today.”

A day earlier, Branch, other officials and residents had watched as large chunks of earth, as well as the oil field equipment, trees and vehicles tumbled into the crater. The mixture of oil and mud at the bottom of the sinkhole made it look like a tar pit.

Carl Norman, a geologist working with officials, said he planned to measure the change of ground elevation around the sinkhole over the next few days to try to determine whether it is still growing or is stabilized. But he added, “It will be at least three months before we can say if it’s stable or not.”

Jayme Downs, whose home is about 300 yards from the sinkhole, said she wasn’t sure if her nerves can hold out that long.

“I’m very worried,” Downs said as she and her 5-year-old daughter stood in front of the local high school, about a quarter of a mile from the sinkhole. Classes were in session Thursday.

“You don’t know what is going to happen. There’s no way to tell. The whole town could cave in. You never know,” she said.

Officials said any further growth of the sinkhole probably would be very slow and if nearby homes were in danger, there would be warning. There are about 100 homes in the immediate area.

Cpl. Hugh Bishop with the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office said no homes had been evacuated and there had been no reports of injuries.

Officials are still trying to figure out what caused the sinkhole.

Daisetta sits on a salt dome, a natural formation created below the ground over millions of years where oil brine and natural gas accumulate. Oil drilling in the area, still dotted with working oil derricks, might have weakened the dome and caused it to collapse, Norman said.

But the sinkhole might also be a natural occurrence caused by groundwater leaking into the salt dome and dissolving parts of it.

Don Van Nieuwenhuise, a geosciences professor at the University of Houston, said oil production usually doesn’t affect the integrity of a salt dome. He said he thinks the sinkhole is probably related to saltwater waste that is being stored underground in the area. The saltwater is a byproduct of oil production and has to be stored underground so it won’t contaminate water supplies and the environment.

“It probably fractured part of the salt dome and it’s leaking out,” he said.

Investigators with the Texas Railroad Commission were checking pipelines and trying to determine if any regulations have been violated. Officials with Texas Natural Resources and Conservation were monitoring air and water quality. So far, no pollutants have been detected.

Petroleum refiner Sunoco Inc. secured two 6-inch crude oil pipelines near the sinkhole that had started to leak Wednesday.

Follows 2007 Phenomenon One Year Later

This time last year, Jeff Wilson of the Independent Crop Circle Researchers Association had not yet begun to collect hundreds of wheat stems in an attempt to prove the validity of a nine-circled Celtic Cross-type crop circle that suddenly appeared just off Rocky Springs Road in a wheat field on the Kefauver farm. Wilson was not even aware of the symmetrically- shaped - and beautiful, as some residents said - formation that lay hidden some 200 yards from the nearest neighbor. In fact, no one even knew of its existence until a local pilot spotted it and offered the BUZZ a chance to photograph it from 500 feet in the air. But by the first week in June 2007, Wilson and several of his ICCRA associates had determined that “The Monroe County Crop Circle” was “not man-made,” as tests on over 1,500 wheat stems showed, conclusive proof that the stems had been collapsed internally by explosions at their growth nodes.

From within, as if the sap inside the stems had suddenly overheated and burst through at the stems’ “joints,” or nodes. It was a phenomenon that Wilson said completely debunked any human involvement. Stems outside the circle were “healthy” and showed no expulsion damage. “Though we have figured out how the wheat collapsed upon itself to form this amazing pattern, we just don’t know what exactly caused the nodes to swell and burst,” Wilson said. “That’s the mystery of a crop circle.” Now a second formation has been found. Its discovery on Monday baffled its finder and the owner of the property where it now lies. On Tuesday, Knoxville television station WVLT visited the site and talked with the property owner and the neighbor. The two ladies were not identified but their faces displayed in newscasts were familiar to most residents in Madisonville.

“It was not here Sunday night,” the finder said. “But when I got up Monday morning I looked out my bathroom window and there it was.” The owner told Channel 8 that she didn’t know if aliens made the pattern but she was not afraid of such beings and would speak to them if approached. “But they better speak English,” she said. The field is leased to a fabled farmer of Monroe County, one who grew up with a reputation for looking at things squarely, without speculation. Especially when it might come to speculating what happened to his wheat crop. This farmer, however, hasn’t been seen since the formation occurred. Not as complex as last year’s crop circle, this year’s formation is more simplistic and lacks the pinanche of the 2007 event. It is basically a triangle with circles at its apexes and from the ground appears to be only flattened young wheat without the intricate woven stem configurations of the first crop circle. In fact, from the ground, the triangle and its circles are difficult to discern as anything other than haphazard random trails in the crop. Hoax? Possibly. Wilson said on Tuesday, after viewing pictures emailed by the BUZZ, that a hoax was always possible. But he also said the formation could be another unexplainable happening. “So we’ll conduct tests to make sure,” Wilson said. He said he is planning to visit Monroe County once again in a few days. Until then, the crop circle’s exact location will not be revealed. However, it can be said it is in the vicinity of the first formation, which lies along a vast underground stream of water and is believed to be near a former ancient native burial ground. The neighbor and the owner believe the crop circle was not created by humans. Their reasoning? The speed at which it appeared, its hidden location, no noticeable recent activity in the wheat field, and the fact that pranksters nowadays are a lazy lot and making a crop circle is hard work. “And what else could have made it?” the owner said, looking at the neighbor, members of her family, and the BUZZ. The question is a good one. And the answer, if determined, may even be a better one.