PressTV: Netanyahu fumes over Erdogan’s anti-Zionism remarks

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Fri Mar 1, 2013 8:43AM GMT

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is furious at his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for describing Zionism “a crime against humanity.”

Conn. boys slain by grandma had gunshot wounds

This photo [provided by the Connecticut State Police during an Amber Alert Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2013, shows Debra Denison, 47, who was being sought after taking grandsons Alton and Ashton Denison from their daycare Tuesday afternoon. State police said the bodies of all three were found Tuesday night in Preston, Conn. Connecticut state police are calling the shooting deaths a double murder-suicide and say Denison had permission to pick them up from their daycare. (AP Photo/Connecticut State Police)

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — The two boys who were killed by their grandmother before she committed suicide this week each had multiple gunshot wounds, the state medical examiner's office said Friday.

The examiner's office said the grandmother, 47-year-old Debra Denison, died of a gunshot wound to the head. The cause of death was formally ruled a suicide for Denison and homicide for the boys.

Police say Denison left a suicide note and took a revolver from her house before picking up 2-year-old Alton Perry and 6-month-oldAshton Perry on Tuesday afternoon at their day care in North Stonington. Their bodies were found in a van hours later after a frantic search.

Hundreds of people attended a vigil Friday night in North Stonington to remember the boys and support their parents, Jeremy and Brenda Perry.

Jeremy Perry told the crowd: "Your support is probably the only reason we're still on our feet right now," The Day of New London reported.

Family members said Denison, Brenda Perry's mother, had struggled with mental illness, but she had appeared to improve in recent months. She was on the list of people authorized to pick up the boys at the day care, and the boys' mother had told the center the grandmother would be picking them up that day. Tuesday was Alton's birthday, and she was supposed to bring him back to the house for a party.

Staff at the day care said Denison was friendly and showed no signs of distress. A spokesman for the slain boys' parents said the day care staff followed protocol and the parents do not blame them for what happened.

Alton died of gunshot wounds to the head and Ashton died of multiple gunshot wounds, the medical examiner's office said.

State police say they are investigating issues including who purchased the revolver, how Denison obtained it and her history of mental illness.

Crews to raze Fla. home over sinkhole; man missing

Brenda Bush is escorted by a Hillsborough County Sheriff's deputy as she places flowers, Saturday, March 2, 2013, at a makeshift memorial in front of a home where a sinkhole opened up underneath a bedroom late Thursday evening and swallowed her son Jeffrey in Seffner, Fla. Jeffrey Bush, 37, was in his bedroom Thursday night when the earth opened and took him and everything else in his room. Five other people were in the house but managed to escape unharmed. Bush's brother jumped into the hole to try to help, but he had to be rescued himself by a sheriff's deputy. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

SEFFNER, Fla. (AP) — Crews planned to begin demolishing aFloridahome Sunday that is perched over a huge sinkhole, deeming it too dangerous to keep searching for the man swallowed into the earth from his bedroom.

The search for Jeff Bush, 37, was called off Saturday. The 20-foot-wide opening of the sinkhole is almost completely covered by the house and rescuers feared it would collapse on them. Two neighboring homes were evacuated as a precaution.

Hillsborough County Administrator Mike Merrill said heavy equipment would be brought in to begin razing the home Sunday morning.

"At this point it's really not possible to recover the body," Merrill said, later adding "we're dealing with a very unusual sinkhole."

Jessica Damico, spokeswoman for Hillsborough County Fire Rescue, said the demolition equipment would be placed on what they believe is solid ground and reach onto the property to pull apart the house. The crew will try pulling part of the house away from the sinkhole intact so some of the residents' keepsakes can be retrieved.

Bush was in his bedroom Thursday night in Seffner — a suburb of 8,000 people 15 miles east of downtown Tampa — when the ground opened and took him and everything else in his room. Five others in the house escape unharmed as the earth crumbled.

On Saturday, the normally quiet neighborhood of concrete block homes painted in Florida pastels was jammed with cars. Engineers, reporters, and curious onlookers came to the scene.

At the home next door to the Bushes, a family cried and organized boxes. Testing determined that their house and another had been compromised by the sinkhole. The families were allowed to go inside for about a half-hour to gather belongings.

Sisters Soliris and Elbairis Gonzalez, who live on the same street as the Bushes, said neighbors were worried for their safety.

"I've had nightmares," Soliris Gonzalez, 31, said. "In my dreams, I keep checking for cracks in the house."

They said the family has discussed where to go if forced to evacuate, and they've taken their important documents to a storage unit.

"The rest of it, this is material stuff, as long as our family is fine," Soliris Gonzalez said.

"You never know underneath the ground what's happening," added Elbairis Gonzalez, 30.

Experts say thousands of sinkholes form yearly in Florida because of the state's unique geography, though most are small and deaths rarely occur.

"There's hardly a place in Florida that's immune to sinkholes," said Sandy Nettles, who owns a geology consulting company in the Tampa area. "There's no way of ever predicting where a sinkhole is going to occur."

Most sinkholes are small, like one found Saturday morning in Largo, 35 miles away from Seffner. The Largo sinkhole, about 10 feet long and several feet wide, is in a mall parking lot.

The state sits on limestone, a porous rock that easily dissolves in water, with a layer of clay on top. The clay is thicker in some locations — including the area where Bush became a victim — making them even more prone to sinkholes.

Jonathan Arthur, the state geologist and director of the Florida Geological Survey, said other states sit atop limestone in a similar way, but Florida has added factors such as extreme weather, development, aquifer pumping and construction.

"The conditions under which a sinkhole will form can be very rapid, or they can form slowly over time," he said.

But it remained unclear Saturday what, if anything, had caused the Seffner sinkhole.

"The condition that caused that sinkhole could have started a million years ago," Nettles said.

Jeremy Bush, who tried to rescue his brother, lay flowers near the house Saturday morning and wept.

He said someone came to his home a couple of months ago to check for sinkholes and other issues, apparently for insurance purposes, but found nothing wrong. State law requires home insurers to provide coverage against sinkholes.

"And a couple of months later, my brother dies. In a sinkhole," Bush said Friday.

___

Follow Lush at www.twitter.com/tamaralush

Suicide note found in Calif shooting rampage

TUSTIN, Calif. (AP) — A Southern California college student who fatally shot three people last month before turning the gun on himself wrote a suicide note on his computer indicating the violence was premeditated, authorities said Friday.

The note, found during a forensic examination of Ali Syed's computer, was written within an hour of when police say Syed shot and killed his first victim, a 20-year-old aspiring actress, said Orange County sheriff's Investigator Dan Salcedo.

It showed no evidence, however, of a relationship between Syed, 20, and his three victims, and detectives still believe they were random targets, Salcedo said.

The note showed that Syed had suicidal thoughts and "ideations and premeditations of these random acts of violence" but didn't mention any specific victims, locations or weapons, the investigator said.

Authorities declined to provide more details on the contents of the note.

Deputies found Courtney Aoki dead of multiple gunshot wounds before dawn on Feb. 19 at the home Syed shared with his parents in Ladera Ranch, a prosperous bedroom community in southern Orange County.

As Syed's parents placed a panicked 911 call, Syed sped away in their black SUV and went on to kill two drivers during carjackings, shoot up cars on a busy freeway interchange and injure at least three others before shooting himself in the head, police said.

Investigators still don't know how Aoki got to Syed's house or what she was doing there. They also don't know what time she arrived and aren't sure if she was at the house when Syed wrote his note, Salcedo said.

Syed used a shotgun in his rampage that was given to him by his father as a gift a year earlier, police have said.

Syed, an unemployed part-time community college student, spent hours in his room playing video games, police have said.

The note did not make any mention of video games, Salcedo said.

Earlier this week, police detectives in Tustin — where one of the three victims was killed — issued a search warrant for cellphone records of Syed and victim Jeremy Lewis.