By Greg Botelho, CNN updated 12:02 PM EDT, Tue October 9, 2012 Man dies after roach-eating contest STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Edward Archbold was among 20 to 30 contestants participating in Friday night's "Midnight Madness" event at Ben Siegel Reptiles in Deerfield Beach, authorities said.
The participants' goal: consume as many insects and worms as they could to take home a $850 python.
Archbold swallowed roach after roach, worm after worm. While the store didn't say exactly how many Archbold consumed, the ownertold CNN affiliate WPLG that he was "the life of the party."
"He really made our night more fun," Ben Siegel told the station.
Soon after the contest was over, Archbold fell ill and began to vomit, the Broward County Sheriff's Office said Monday.
A friend called for medical help. Then, Archbold himself dialed 911, the store said in a Facebook post.
Eventually, he fell to the ground outside the store, the sheriff's office said. An ambulance took him to North Broward Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
The Broward Medical Examiner's Office conducted an autopsy and are awaiting test results to determine the cause of his death.
No other contestant fell ill, the sheriff's office said.
"Very saddened by this. I mean, it was a shock," Siegel told WPLG. "Eddie was a very nice guy. We just met him that night, but everybody that works here was very fond of him."
Luke Lirot, who says he is legally representing the store, said in a post on the store's Facebook page that all participants "signed thorough waivers accepting responsibility for their participation in this unique and unorthodox contest."
"The consumption of insects is widely accepted throughout the world, and the insects presented as part of the contest were taken from an inventory of insects that are safely and domestically raised in a controlled environment as food for reptiles," Lirot said.
In the wild, cockroaches are scavengers that pick up various bacterial organisms such as salmonella while walking through spoiled food, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene explains on its website.
Cockroaches themselves don't transmit disease, though "many disease-causing organisms can grow and multiply in their guts and can then be deposited ... during defecation."
Pharaoh Gayles was one of those who took part in the contest. He explained his reasoning to CNN affiliate WPTV.
"Some of the snakes were pretty expensive," he said. "I thought if I could eat the bugs to get one, it'd be a good idea."
(CNN) -- Thirty-five years ago, a scene in the first "Star Wars" film captivated movie-goers: Luke Skywalker peering across the landscape of Tatooine -- a desert planet dominated by a pair of setting suns. This week, reality trumped (science) fiction with an image even more enthralling: two amateur astronomers poring through data from deep, distant skies and discovering a planet with four suns.
NASA's website calls the phenomenon a circumbinary planet, or a planet that orbits two suns.
Rare enough on its own -- only six other circumbinary planets are known to exist -- this planet is orbited by two more distant stars, making it the first known quadruple sun system.
Researchers presented the finding Monday night at the annual meeting of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society in Reno, Nevada.
The discovery of the four-sun planet by amateur scientists takes crowd sourcing to new heights. The expression, coined by Wired magazine editor Jeff Howe, describes tasks that are outsourced to a disparate group of people to come up with a solution.
In this case, the Planet Hunters group made data from NASA's $600 million Kepler telescope available to the public through its website and coordinates their findings with Yale astronomers.
In combing through the data, "Citizen scientists" Robert Gagliano and Kian Jek spied anomalies that confirmed the existence of the special planet, now known as PH1 -- short for Planet Hunters 1 -- the first heavenly body found by the online citizen science project.
The planet is a little bigger than Neptune, with a radius about six times greater than Earth.
"I celebrate this discovery for the wow-factor of a planet in a four-star system," said Natalie Batalha, a Kepler scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California.
"Most importantly, I celebrate this discovery as the fruit of exemplary human cooperation -- cooperation between scientists and citizens who give of themselves for the love of stars, knowledge, and exploration."
CNN USA news headlines
U.S. motorist wounds Canadian border officer in shooting, then kills self By Michael Martinez and Catherine Shoichet updated 9:03 PM EDT, Tue October 16, 2012 STORY HIGHLIGHTS
The border officer was breathing before being airlifted to a hospital, but further details about her condition were not immediately available, said Surrey Royal Canadian Mounted Police Cpl. Bert Paquet.
The man who shot her was pronounced dead at the scene, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Paquet said. He was driving a car with Washington state plates into Canada, he said.
Authorities had yet to confirm the man's identity late Tuesday afternoon, Paquet said.
Canadian authorities closed the border crossing immediately after the shooting.
The closed British Columbia port is known as the Douglas or Peace Arch crossing, and Canadian authorities are asking motorists to use another area crossing, said Faith St. John with the Canada Border Services Agency.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were investigating.
Dave Noble told CNN affiliate CTV that he saw a chaotic scene when he arrived at the crossing Tuesday.
About a dozen border guards with guns drawn encircled a white van.
"They had it surrounded. ... You knew something had gone down," he said. "It's very shocking. I feel terrible for the border guard. I come here quite a bit, and don't know any of them personally ... but there are some really nice people that work here."
Authorities told Lisa Kennedy that she and her family would be waiting for a while. She saw all the ambulances and police cars pull up to the scene, where the van's doors were opened.
"They said, 'Hold on, you guys are going to be here for a long time. We've had an injury, a fairly serious one," Kennedy told CTV.
Jagdar Randhawa said he heard the gunfire. "All of sudden, I hear two shots," he said Tuesday afternoon. "Then we wait for a while. We're still waiting for a long time."
Canadian Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews said he was "deeply concerned by the news of the shooting today at the Peace Arch border crossing of a CBSA officer."
"This event is a sobering reminder of the dangerous conditions faced daily by the men and women of our law enforcement agencies as they work to protect the safety and security of Canadians," Toews said.
About 60 vehicles were stranded on the Canadian side of the border.
Hurricane Sandy: Winds topple top of construction crane in New York Published 19 minutes ago Share on twitterShare on facebook crane ANDREW KELLY/REUTERS A collapsed crane dangles beside a building under construction, as Sandy made its approach, in New York on Monday. Alex Consiglio
Staff Reporter
New Yorkers were left worrying Monday night whether a broken crane snapped by the winds of Superstorm Sandy would collapse at any moment.
The crane, at a construction site near Central Park, had its boom crack and collapsed against its tower, where it remained dangling as the storm pounded the city.
MORE: We liveblog the superstorm
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the crane had been inspected Friday, as other construction cranes had ahead of the storm, and that the cause of the accident remained unknown.
Engineers went to the top of the structure on Monday, which will be 90 storeys once it is built, to examine the crane but stopped short of attempting any repairs, officials said.
"It's conceivable that nobody did anything wrong whatsoever and it wasn't even a malfunction, it was just a strange gust of wind," Bloomberg told a news conference.
"Just because it was inspected, that doesn't mean that God doesn't do things or that metal doesn't fail. There's no reason to think at this point in time that the inspection wasn't adequate," he said.
Ron Brodek, 66, has been building and inspecting cranes since 1968 and currently operates Brodek Crane Inspectors, Inc., in Arizona.
Brodek told the Toronto Star the crane may have cracked because it wasn’t “put to bed” properly, meaning its operator didn’t shut it down correctly.
Brodek said a crane of that height has a release swing brake that allows it to “weather vane.” When the brake is released, the crane is able to sway with the wind.
Ultimately, this allows the boom to face the opposite direction of the wind, said Brodek.
If that brake wasn’t released, and the boom was left at a high angle, chances of it cracking would have been increased, said Brodek.
As for it now crashing to the ground, Brodek said the chances are minimal.
“It’s being held up by the boom cables,” said Brodek, adding as long as the main structure, the tower, doesn’t fail, the crane should not collapse.
Brodek added it’s going to be a “long, drawn-out process” to get the boom safely to the ground.
“You’re going to have to get something up there to get it down by cutting it loose.”
New York firefighters closed streets for several blocks surrounding the site, evacuating 300 apartments in three buildings.
Passersby stared in amazement and apprehension. Some stopped to take photos of the building.
"It's fascinating, I saw it on TV and came out to see it. But it's also scary," said Sam O' Keeffe, 25, a bartender who lives in the neighbourhood told Reuters.
The building, known as One57 and designed by Christian de Portzamparc, has been climbing ever higher and, at 306 meters, it will tower over other buildings near Columbus Circle at the southwest corner of Central Park.
Ninety-two luxury condominiums will sit atop a five-star Park Hyatt hotel.
Two of those units were under contract for more than $90 million each, The New York Times reported last month, citing the president of building developer, Extell Development Company.
Extell, which did not respond to requests for comment on Monday, announced in May it had reached $1 billion in sales and that half of its units had sold in six months. Occupancy was set for 2013.
The contractor was Australia's Lend Lease Construction and Canada's Pinnacle Industries own the crane, said Mary Costello, a spokeswoman for Lend Lease.
“We are working with structural engineers and the DOB (Department of Buildings) on evaluating any additional measures that can be taken to secure the boom and crane structure,” Costello said.
With files from Reuters
Hurricane Sandy death toll rises to 39, eight million still without power: ‘This is not over yet,’ Obama says
The death toll in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy rose to 39 Tuesday, but U.S. President Barack Obama warns it could rise higher yet as the remnants of the superstorm are still a threat and some people remain unaccounted for.
“This is still not over,” Obama said at a news conference at Red Cross headquarters in Washington Tuesday afternoon.
Obama said he would be joining New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie Wednesday to inspect the damage in the ravaged state. The president had already announced he was cancelling all of his campaign events for Wednesday.
• Death toll rises to 39
• Damage may be as high as $20 billion
• New York’s subway may be closed for the week
• NYC neighbourhood burns to ground, more than 50 homes lost
• Three N.J. towns flooded
• About 8 million without power
• Power may take a week to return
The storm interrupted the presidential campaign a week before Election Day, giving Obama an opportunity to look presidential as he oversees the government response. He drew praise from Christie, who has been a strong supporter of Obama’s opponent.
Sandy, which crashed ashore with hurricane-force winds in New Jersey overnight as the biggest storm to hit the country in generations, swamped parts of New York’s subway system and Manhattan’s Wall Street district, closing financial markets for a second day.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/10/30/hurricane-sandy-death-toll-rises-to-39-millions-still-without-power-this-is-not-over-yet-obama-says/
- Edward Archbold was among those in a contest at a Deerfield Beach reptile store
- He won a python after eating dozens of cockroaches and worms, a sheriff's office says
- Archbold later fell ill, collapsed and was pronounced dead at a southeast Florida hospital
- The store says participants signed waivers, insects were "safely and domestically raised"
Edward Archbold was among 20 to 30 contestants participating in Friday night's "Midnight Madness" event at Ben Siegel Reptiles in Deerfield Beach, authorities said.
The participants' goal: consume as many insects and worms as they could to take home a $850 python.
Archbold swallowed roach after roach, worm after worm. While the store didn't say exactly how many Archbold consumed, the ownertold CNN affiliate WPLG that he was "the life of the party."
"He really made our night more fun," Ben Siegel told the station.
Soon after the contest was over, Archbold fell ill and began to vomit, the Broward County Sheriff's Office said Monday.
A friend called for medical help. Then, Archbold himself dialed 911, the store said in a Facebook post.
Eventually, he fell to the ground outside the store, the sheriff's office said. An ambulance took him to North Broward Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
The Broward Medical Examiner's Office conducted an autopsy and are awaiting test results to determine the cause of his death.
No other contestant fell ill, the sheriff's office said.
"Very saddened by this. I mean, it was a shock," Siegel told WPLG. "Eddie was a very nice guy. We just met him that night, but everybody that works here was very fond of him."
Luke Lirot, who says he is legally representing the store, said in a post on the store's Facebook page that all participants "signed thorough waivers accepting responsibility for their participation in this unique and unorthodox contest."
"The consumption of insects is widely accepted throughout the world, and the insects presented as part of the contest were taken from an inventory of insects that are safely and domestically raised in a controlled environment as food for reptiles," Lirot said.
In the wild, cockroaches are scavengers that pick up various bacterial organisms such as salmonella while walking through spoiled food, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene explains on its website.
Cockroaches themselves don't transmit disease, though "many disease-causing organisms can grow and multiply in their guts and can then be deposited ... during defecation."
Pharaoh Gayles was one of those who took part in the contest. He explained his reasoning to CNN affiliate WPTV.
"Some of the snakes were pretty expensive," he said. "I thought if I could eat the bugs to get one, it'd be a good idea."
(CNN) -- Thirty-five years ago, a scene in the first "Star Wars" film captivated movie-goers: Luke Skywalker peering across the landscape of Tatooine -- a desert planet dominated by a pair of setting suns. This week, reality trumped (science) fiction with an image even more enthralling: two amateur astronomers poring through data from deep, distant skies and discovering a planet with four suns.
NASA's website calls the phenomenon a circumbinary planet, or a planet that orbits two suns.
Rare enough on its own -- only six other circumbinary planets are known to exist -- this planet is orbited by two more distant stars, making it the first known quadruple sun system.
Researchers presented the finding Monday night at the annual meeting of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society in Reno, Nevada.
The discovery of the four-sun planet by amateur scientists takes crowd sourcing to new heights. The expression, coined by Wired magazine editor Jeff Howe, describes tasks that are outsourced to a disparate group of people to come up with a solution.
In this case, the Planet Hunters group made data from NASA's $600 million Kepler telescope available to the public through its website and coordinates their findings with Yale astronomers.
In combing through the data, "Citizen scientists" Robert Gagliano and Kian Jek spied anomalies that confirmed the existence of the special planet, now known as PH1 -- short for Planet Hunters 1 -- the first heavenly body found by the online citizen science project.
The planet is a little bigger than Neptune, with a radius about six times greater than Earth.
"I celebrate this discovery for the wow-factor of a planet in a four-star system," said Natalie Batalha, a Kepler scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California.
"Most importantly, I celebrate this discovery as the fruit of exemplary human cooperation -- cooperation between scientists and citizens who give of themselves for the love of stars, knowledge, and exploration."
CNN USA news headlines
U.S. motorist wounds Canadian border officer in shooting, then kills self By Michael Martinez and Catherine Shoichet updated 9:03 PM EDT, Tue October 16, 2012 STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- NEW: A male motorist shoots female Canadian border officer in her booth, police say
- NEW: Motorist then apparently kills himself, police say
- NEW: Border officer is breathing when she's airlifted to hospital
- NEW: Authorities shut down the Peace Arch across from Blaine, Wash(CNN) -- A Canadian border officer was shot in her booth Tuesday afternoon by a motorist, who then apparently killed himself, Canadian police said.
The border officer was breathing before being airlifted to a hospital, but further details about her condition were not immediately available, said Surrey Royal Canadian Mounted Police Cpl. Bert Paquet.
The man who shot her was pronounced dead at the scene, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Paquet said. He was driving a car with Washington state plates into Canada, he said.
Authorities had yet to confirm the man's identity late Tuesday afternoon, Paquet said.
Canadian authorities closed the border crossing immediately after the shooting.
The closed British Columbia port is known as the Douglas or Peace Arch crossing, and Canadian authorities are asking motorists to use another area crossing, said Faith St. John with the Canada Border Services Agency.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were investigating.
Dave Noble told CNN affiliate CTV that he saw a chaotic scene when he arrived at the crossing Tuesday.
About a dozen border guards with guns drawn encircled a white van.
"They had it surrounded. ... You knew something had gone down," he said. "It's very shocking. I feel terrible for the border guard. I come here quite a bit, and don't know any of them personally ... but there are some really nice people that work here."
Authorities told Lisa Kennedy that she and her family would be waiting for a while. She saw all the ambulances and police cars pull up to the scene, where the van's doors were opened.
"They said, 'Hold on, you guys are going to be here for a long time. We've had an injury, a fairly serious one," Kennedy told CTV.
Jagdar Randhawa said he heard the gunfire. "All of sudden, I hear two shots," he said Tuesday afternoon. "Then we wait for a while. We're still waiting for a long time."
Canadian Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews said he was "deeply concerned by the news of the shooting today at the Peace Arch border crossing of a CBSA officer."
"This event is a sobering reminder of the dangerous conditions faced daily by the men and women of our law enforcement agencies as they work to protect the safety and security of Canadians," Toews said.
About 60 vehicles were stranded on the Canadian side of the border.
Hurricane Sandy: Winds topple top of construction crane in New York Published 19 minutes ago Share on twitterShare on facebook crane ANDREW KELLY/REUTERS A collapsed crane dangles beside a building under construction, as Sandy made its approach, in New York on Monday. Alex Consiglio
Staff Reporter
New Yorkers were left worrying Monday night whether a broken crane snapped by the winds of Superstorm Sandy would collapse at any moment.
The crane, at a construction site near Central Park, had its boom crack and collapsed against its tower, where it remained dangling as the storm pounded the city.
MORE: We liveblog the superstorm
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the crane had been inspected Friday, as other construction cranes had ahead of the storm, and that the cause of the accident remained unknown.
Engineers went to the top of the structure on Monday, which will be 90 storeys once it is built, to examine the crane but stopped short of attempting any repairs, officials said.
"It's conceivable that nobody did anything wrong whatsoever and it wasn't even a malfunction, it was just a strange gust of wind," Bloomberg told a news conference.
"Just because it was inspected, that doesn't mean that God doesn't do things or that metal doesn't fail. There's no reason to think at this point in time that the inspection wasn't adequate," he said.
Ron Brodek, 66, has been building and inspecting cranes since 1968 and currently operates Brodek Crane Inspectors, Inc., in Arizona.
Brodek told the Toronto Star the crane may have cracked because it wasn’t “put to bed” properly, meaning its operator didn’t shut it down correctly.
Brodek said a crane of that height has a release swing brake that allows it to “weather vane.” When the brake is released, the crane is able to sway with the wind.
Ultimately, this allows the boom to face the opposite direction of the wind, said Brodek.
If that brake wasn’t released, and the boom was left at a high angle, chances of it cracking would have been increased, said Brodek.
As for it now crashing to the ground, Brodek said the chances are minimal.
“It’s being held up by the boom cables,” said Brodek, adding as long as the main structure, the tower, doesn’t fail, the crane should not collapse.
Brodek added it’s going to be a “long, drawn-out process” to get the boom safely to the ground.
“You’re going to have to get something up there to get it down by cutting it loose.”
New York firefighters closed streets for several blocks surrounding the site, evacuating 300 apartments in three buildings.
Passersby stared in amazement and apprehension. Some stopped to take photos of the building.
"It's fascinating, I saw it on TV and came out to see it. But it's also scary," said Sam O' Keeffe, 25, a bartender who lives in the neighbourhood told Reuters.
The building, known as One57 and designed by Christian de Portzamparc, has been climbing ever higher and, at 306 meters, it will tower over other buildings near Columbus Circle at the southwest corner of Central Park.
Ninety-two luxury condominiums will sit atop a five-star Park Hyatt hotel.
Two of those units were under contract for more than $90 million each, The New York Times reported last month, citing the president of building developer, Extell Development Company.
Extell, which did not respond to requests for comment on Monday, announced in May it had reached $1 billion in sales and that half of its units had sold in six months. Occupancy was set for 2013.
The contractor was Australia's Lend Lease Construction and Canada's Pinnacle Industries own the crane, said Mary Costello, a spokeswoman for Lend Lease.
“We are working with structural engineers and the DOB (Department of Buildings) on evaluating any additional measures that can be taken to secure the boom and crane structure,” Costello said.
With files from Reuters
Hurricane Sandy death toll rises to 39, eight million still without power: ‘This is not over yet,’ Obama says
The death toll in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy rose to 39 Tuesday, but U.S. President Barack Obama warns it could rise higher yet as the remnants of the superstorm are still a threat and some people remain unaccounted for.
“This is still not over,” Obama said at a news conference at Red Cross headquarters in Washington Tuesday afternoon.
Obama said he would be joining New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie Wednesday to inspect the damage in the ravaged state. The president had already announced he was cancelling all of his campaign events for Wednesday.
• Death toll rises to 39
• Damage may be as high as $20 billion
• New York’s subway may be closed for the week
• NYC neighbourhood burns to ground, more than 50 homes lost
• Three N.J. towns flooded
• About 8 million without power
• Power may take a week to return
The storm interrupted the presidential campaign a week before Election Day, giving Obama an opportunity to look presidential as he oversees the government response. He drew praise from Christie, who has been a strong supporter of Obama’s opponent.
Sandy, which crashed ashore with hurricane-force winds in New Jersey overnight as the biggest storm to hit the country in generations, swamped parts of New York’s subway system and Manhattan’s Wall Street district, closing financial markets for a second day.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/10/30/hurricane-sandy-death-toll-rises-to-39-millions-still-without-power-this-is-not-over-yet-obama-says/
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