DAYTON, Ohio (AP) — Experts are trying to figure out what a fossil dubbed "Godzillus" used to be.

The 150-pound fossil recovered last year in northern Kentucky is more than 6 feet long and 3 feet wide. To the untrained eye, it looks like a bunch of rocks or a concrete blob. Experts are trying to determine whether it was an animal, mineral or a form of plant life from a time when the Cincinnati region was underwater.
Scientists at a Geological Society of America meeting viewed it Tuesday at the Dayton Convention Center in Ohio.
"We are looking for people who might have an idea of what it is," said Ben Dattilo, an assistant professor of geology at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.
Scientists say the fossil is 450 million years old. University of Cincinnati geologist Carl Brett said it's the largest fossil ever extracted from that era in the Cincinnati region.
"This is the ultimate cold case," said Ron Fine, the Dayton, Ohio, amateur paleontologist who spotted the fossil on a hillside last year and gave it its name.
"Like Godzilla, it's a primordial beast that found its way to the modern era," Fine said. Now 43, he's been collecting fossils since age 4, and said he saw part of this one on a hillside off Kentucky 17 nearly a year ago.
"Most fossils around here are small, the size of your thumbnail or your thumb," he said. "This thing's huge."
He said it could be an early form of seaweed or kelp.
"This one has us stumped," said David Meyer, another UC geology professor. Fine shared his find last September at a meeting of the Dry Dredgers, a group of amateur geologists.
Meyer, who wrote a book called "A Sea Without Fish" about the era, said the fossil has intricate patterns that remind him of "goose flesh. Some of its surface also looks like scales. But this thing is not boney. It is not a fish."
He guesses it could have been something like a sponge.
"Cincinnati was covered by a sea, 100 to 200 feet deep," Meyer said. "Primitive shellfish lived in it. But no fish."

(Collier County Sheriff Dept.)

A Florida man was arrested and held on $6,500 bond after police in Collier County said he left a McDonald's without paying for a cup of soda valued at $1.

Mark Abaire, 52, had apparently asked staff at the Naples restaurant for a courtesy cup of water, but instead he allegedly filled the cup with soda from the soda fountain and sat outside of the restaurant, according to a story in the Naples Daily News which cited the police report of the Thursday incident.

Abaire allegedly refused to pay for the soda when he was asked to do so, refused to leave the restaurant and cursed at the manager, the Naples Daily News also reported.

Abaire, whose aliases include "Red" and  "Clown," has a long list of prior arrests, according to records from the Collier County Sheriff's Department.

He was charged with petty theft, trespassing and disorderly intoxication after the Thursday arrest, and sent to Collier County jail. Petty theft is usually a misdemeanor, but because Abaire has previous convictions for theft, the charge was upgraded to a felony. The trespassing and disorderly intoxication charges are misdemeanors.

Abaire could face five years in prison if he is convicted of the felony.

Records indicate Abaire will return to court on May 14.

George Zimmerman walked out of a Florida jail shortly after midnight early Monday morning, free after posting a $150,000 bond.

Zimmerman was fitted with an electronic monitoring device before leaving the John E. Polk Correctional Facility, the Seminole County Sheriff's Office said.

Clutching a brown paper bag, Zimmerman got into the back of a white BMW and was driven away to an undisclosed location, where he will await the second-degree murder trial in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

Zimmerman's release comes less than three days after a dramatic two-hour hearing in which he took the stand and apologized for the shooting.

"I wanted to say I am sorry for the loss of your son," Zimmerman told Martin's parents on Friday in his first public statement about the death. "I did not know how old he was. I thought he was a little bit younger than I am. I did not know if he was armed or not."

Prosecutors had argued that the former neighborhood watchman should not be freed or that the bail should be set at $1 million.

Zimmerman attorney Mark O'Mara argued that his client's location needs to remain a secret due to threats against him.

Other conditions of his release include no contact with Martin's family and no possessing a firearm.

The California teen who made national headlines when she and her high school teacher moved in together told a local television station that the two are back together.

Jordan Powers, 18, told a reporter for Sacramento TV station CBS13  that she and James Hooker, 41, are a couple again. The interview was conducted on the steps of Hooker's apartment in Modesto through a screen door.

In an ABC news interview two weeks ago, Powers said she had called off the relationship with Hooker after allegations that the teacher sexually abused another student more than a decade ago. Powers packed her bags and moved  to Ohio with her mom.

Tammie Powers, mother, told the Modesto Bee that she thought the two were seeing each other again.  After they moved away, Hooker called Jordan "relentlessly," she said.

"She left on her own. She hired a cab and booked her own flight," Tammie Powers said.

"It is awful," she said. "This is what pedophiles, predators do. They isolate them from family."

Neighbors say Powers moved back in recently.

Hooker was arrested on April 6 for allegedly having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old student he allegedly met at a high school conference in 1998.  He entered a not guilty plea and remains out on bail.

After the break-up, Powers  said Hooker had lied about the affair and the student had "lost everything for this guy" in the ABC interview.

"I lost my senior year. I gave up all my friends at high school because they didn't agree with me," she said.

In February, Hooker quit his job at James Enochs High School and left his wife and three children to be with Powers. She dropped out of high school.  The two told national talk shows that they didn't have a sexual relationship until she turned 18.  That point is under investigation.

kindergartner caught!!

a 6 year old kindergartner was handcufffed for aparently throwing a tantrum at school where she was throwing furniture(lite) and ripping papers of the walls. so there for authorities aprehended the girl, i personaly think its funny but also wrong cause she is only six. she was charged with simple assualt and property damage.

http://news.yahoo.com/police-handcuff-ga-kindergartner-tantrum-112459850.html

George Zimmerman, the 28-year-old neighborhood watchman who shot and killed Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26 in Sanford, Fla., has been charged with second-degree murder in the 17-year-old's death. Zimmerman has been transferred to Seminole County jail, according to news reports, and is being held without bail.

"Just moments ago we spoke by phone with Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton," Angela Corey, the special prosecutor investigating the case, said at a news conference in Jacksonville. "Three weeks ago our prosecution team promised those sweet parents we would get answers to all of their questions, no matter where our quest for the truth led us. And it is that search for justice for Trayvon that has brought us to this night."

"We did not come to this decision lightly," she said, declining to discuss specifics of the investigation. "We do not prosecute by pressure or petition ... We're law enforcement. We enforce the law."

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/zimmerman-charged-2nd-degree-murder-trayvon-martin-shooting-220301336.html

 this article caught my eye cause it was really funny cause facebook i guess can be addictive.









(Department of Corrections/Port Angeles Police Department/AP Photo)

Travis A. Nicolaysen is on the run from police, but he's still posting periodic updates on his Facebook page, and has even changed his status  from "in a relationship" to "single."

The 26-year-old  from Port Angeles, Wash., is wanted by the state's Department of Corrections for failing to check in with his community corrections officer since January.

Court records indicate Nicolaysen has been convicted of multiple misdemeanors and felonies, among them theft, assault, burglary and violating an order of protection.
On his first day on the run, a friend posted to Nicolaysen's account: "Cops all over you." The following day, Nicolaysen replied on his page:  "Ya got away thanks bro."

Nicolaysen, who is also accused of assaulting his girlfriend, changed his status to "single" from "in a relationship," the Peninsula Daily News has reported.

The paper said Nicolaysen went on the lam after slipping through a police dragnet Wednesday, the paper also reported.

On Facebook, some of Nicolaysen's friends have encouraged him to turn himself in.

Facebook's privacy police says the company may share information in response to a legal request "if we have a good faith belief that the law requires us to do so." The site also has limited ability to track users using GPS and IP addresses.

9 yr old sorry

a nine year old shot a girl and later on he wrote an apolagie letter.

Letter of apology to Amina Bowman, 8. Image: Kitsap County Court

A 9-year-old boy in Bremerton, Wash. wrote a letter apologizing to a classmate who was seriously wounded after a gun discharged from his backpack, lodging a bullet in her spine.

The handwritten letter was addressed to Amina Bowman, 8, who was released from the hospital on Tuesday.  The boy's name has not been made public.

"I'm sorry I hurt you because I brought a gun to school. I did not mean for any one to get hurt," the boy wrote. "I wish everyone was okay. I made a bad choice."

Six weeks after being airlifted to Harborview Medical Center, small milestones mark Amina's recovery.

A taste of soup, those first steps, and a brownie milk shake after being discharged from the hospital are all progress that her mother posts on her Facebook page.

"What a great day!!!" Teri Bowman wrote under a picture of her smiling daughter before she came home from the hospital.

On Feb. 22. Amina was shot during class at Armin Jahr Elementary School in Bremerton.

"I made a bad choice. I was sad, scared and afraid and I did not solve my problem well," the boy told her in his letter. "I will stay