Charles Manson, American mass murderer gets marriage license
LOS ANGELES: He may not be everyone’s idea of a good catch, but mass murderer Charles Manson has been granted a marriage license to wed a 26-year-old woman who has been visiting him in prison.
Manson, 80, who is serving a life sentence for slaying seven people, plans to marry Afton Elaine Burton, 54 years his junior and described in US media as a slender brunette.
“He has received a marriage license,” the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation told AFP on Monday. The license was applied on November 7, according to the website for King’s County, California, where Manson is in jail, but no date for the nuptials has been set. Manson has been in prison for more than four decades after the 1969 killings, which included the brutal murder of director Roman Polanski’s wife, Sharon Tate, who was eight-and-a-half months pregnant. But Burton, who also calls herself “Star,” has said she and Manson are madly in love and already consider themselves married. “I’m completely with him, and he’s completely with me. It’s what I was born for, you know. I don’t know what else to say,” she told CNN in August of the now gray-haired killer, who has a swastika tattooed on his forehead.
She said she had been following Manson’s “philosophy” since she was a teenager and moved to Corcoran, where the convicted murderer is detained, to be closer to him. They talk every day and she visits him at California State Prison most weekends, Burton said.
Manson was married twice before he was jailed, first to Rosalie Jean Willis from 1955 to 1958 and later to Candy Stevens between 1959 and 1963.
He was sentenced to death in 1969 along with four of his disciples for having led the killing of seven people, but their sentences were later changed to life in prison.
In 2012, Manson applied for parole but was denied release and is not eligible to apply again until 2027. Manson headed an apocalyptic cult that committed murders in upscale, mostly white neighborhoods of Los Angeles in order to blame the crimes on African Americans, in hopes of sparking a “Helter Skelter” race war. (AP)
Meet the woman who became ‘bikini model’ post losing 70 pounds in 14 weeks
London: An overweight woman lost 70 pounds, dropping from 13st 4lbs down to 8st in 14 weeks after some strangers called her fat. The 22-year-old Kim Bowman from Wirral, Merseysid, who now competes as a size 6 bikini model, said that she was really athletic when she was younger and the excess weight was a result of binge eating which began during college, the Daily Star reported.
Bowman, who now regularly shows off her washboard abs and 64 cm waist on stage, added that though knew she needed to put a stop on her eating, “every time she looked in the mirror she felt sick, and would end up turning to food for comfort.” It was when some total strangers in the street called her fat that she realized it was high time she did something about it, and started following the LDN Muscle Bikini plan referred by a friend, which she downloaded for 39.99 pounds.
The 14 week diet and training plan details precisely what to eat, when and how much with full macro breakdowns that are specific to body weight and body type. Bowman trained 7 times a week and replaced junk food for healthy meals, and finally was able to enlist with the help of bikini model coach Lynsey Beattie and was placed top five in her first competition. (ANI)
Makers warn: Global chocolate shortage is possible
Washington: Chocolate makers have recently revealed that the world is running out of chocolate amid dwindling cacao supplies. According to the Washington Post, Mars, Inc. and Swiss-based chocolate giant Barry Callebaut stated that people are consuming more cocoa than farmers are able to produce, Fox News reported.
Last year, the world ate roughly 70,000 metric tons more cocoa than it produced. By 2020, the two chocolate-makers warn that that number could reach 1 million metric tons and could exceed an additional 1 million tons every decade for the foreseeable future. 70 percent of the world’s cocoa is produced in the Ivory Cost and Ghana.
But disease, drought and farmers opting to grow more productive crops such as corn and rubber have made growing conditions less than ideal.
John Mason of the Ghana-based Nature Conservation Research Council told the Independent that in 20 years, chocolate will be rare and expensive like caviar and the average people won’t be able to afford it. However, farmers in Costa Rica are working on several a new disease-resistant breeds of cacao. (ANI)
Stolen body parts: Warrants issued for 2 Americans
Bangkok: Thai police issued arrest warrants on Tuesday for two Americans who attempted to mail a preserved baby’s head, foot and other human body parts to the United States, saying the objects were stolen from a Thai medical museum.
The bizarre case has quickly gained international attention, with Thai police asking Cambodian authorities to help locate the men, who traveled to the neighboring country Sunday, and the FBI helping with the investigation in the United States. Police questioned Ryan McPherson, 31, and his friend, Daniel Tanner, 33, over the weekend in Bangkok, but released them and allowed them to travel to Cambodia. But new elements emerged after their departure, prompting the arrest warrants to be issued on charges of theft, possessing stolen items and falsely declaring the items on shipping documents, said police Maj. Gen. Sombat Milintachinda, the head of Bangkok’s police investigation bureau.
“Our evidence indicates that they either stole the body parts, or they bought them from other people,” he said. “We have to bring them back for more questioning.” It was apparently not the first brush with notoriety for McPherson and Tanner.
Photos of the two talking with police on Sunday closely resemble men by the same names and ages who were producers over a decade ago of a video series featuring homeless people brawling and performing dangerous stunts after being paid by the filmmakers, who were based in Las Vegas.
The “Bumfights” videos were banned in several communities and generally shunned by retailers after criticism that the films’ subjects were being exploited. (PTI)
Japan encourages eating of healthy and nutritious food in Vietnam schools
Tokyo/ Hanoi: At the Trung Trac Primary School in Vietnam”s capital Ho Chi Minh City, a “School Meal Project” was launched with an aim to standardize school meal in primary schools. The Ho Chi Minh City Education and Training Department and Ajinomoto Vietnam Company have cooperated with the Ho Chi Minh City Nutrition Center to promote the “School Meal Project” since 2012.
The aim was to improve the nutrition and health status of students at primary schools in the city. The Ajinomoto Group is a global foods company offering Ajinomoto, an umami seasoning, and varieties of seasonings and processed food products in 130 countries worldwide. Ajinomoto Vietnam is not only committed to delivering deliciousness to homes across Vietnam, but is working to make a contribution to the health and well being of all Vietnamese. “I noticed that students were changing their eating habits. They can eat more vegetables now.
Parents are also happy that children share about school lunch, even advise their parents by explaining how the food is useful for their health. I”m also happy about the project menu, because it helped to reduce cooking time and the workload of the kitchen staff,” said Pham Thi Hoa, the Principal of the Trung Trac Primary School. Teachers and nursemaids are encouraging students to improve their awareness of nutrition through a program called “three minutes to change awareness”.
In fact, Ajinomoto Vietnam has partnered with Hanoi University and the National Institute for Nutrition, Vietnam, and introduced the country”s first nutrition certification to Hanoi University. The company works with the university and the institute to support the development of nutrition specialists, for promoting better health and the well-being of people in Vietnam. According to the plan, the Ajinomoto Vietnam Company will cooperate with relevant organizations to expand this project to other provinces in order to contribute to improving nutrition standards in Vietnam. To provide healthy food, global representative electronics company Toshiba is now developing vegetables at its Yokusuka factory. (ANI)