Weird News Thread ....

[Jolie Rouge]

Guess Who Beat Up Simon Cowell?

Homer Simpson has gotten to do what plenty of "American Idol" contestants have no doubt fantasized about doing: He beat up tart-tongued judge Simon Cowell. OK, so Homer beat up the animated version of Simon. We're not advocating real violence here--just the cartoon kind.

Titled "Smart and Smarter," the episode airs on Sunday. Cowell plays himself, but instead of being a judge on "American Idol," he's an admissions officer who makes fun of baby Maggie after she auditions for nursery school. So Homer beats him up, reports The Associated Press.

Check out the newest addition to Madame Tussauds wax museum in New York: an animated Simon Cowell figure that has a funny reaction to a bad performance. Click to find out what it is!
Little known facts about Mr. Cowell, courtesy of his girlfriend, Terry Seymour, who dished the dirt to TV Guide:

--Simon has a softer side. When Terry has a bad day, Simon will actually inquire: "What's happened? What have I done?"

--When the couple watches television in the evening, she puts her feet on his lap. "He'll tickle them for hours," Terry said. "He's quite good at it."

--Simon is "ridiculous generous" and never lets her pay for dinner.

--How is this for romantic? When Simon went to the dentist, he came home with two toothbrushes instead of just one for himself. (Wow. We're speechless.)

--He doesn't like to hold hands.

[Advertisement]

[Jolie Rouge]

M&M's obsession leads to physics discovery
Monday, February 16, 2004 Posted: 2:39 PM EST (1939 GMT)

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science...eut/index.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Princeton physicist Paul Chaikin's passion for M&M's candies was so well known that his students played a sweet practical joke on him by leaving a 55-gallon drum of the candies in his office.

Little did they know that their prank would lead to a physics breakthrough.

The barrel full of the oblate little candies made Chaikin think about how well they packed in. A series of studies have shown they pack more tightly than perfect spheres -- something that surprises many physicists and Chaikin himself.

"It is a startling and wonderful result," said Sidney Nagel, a physicist at the University of Chicago. "One doesn't normally stop to think about this. If you did, you might have guessed what would happen, but you'd have guessed wrongly."

The issue of how particles pack together has intrigued scientists for centuries and has implications for fields such as the design of high-density ceramic materials for use in aerospace or other industries.

Chaikin and his colleague, chemist Salvatore Torquato, used the candies to investigate the physical and mathematical principles involved when particles are poured randomly into a vessel.

Writing in Friday's issue of the journal Science, they said they found that oblate spheroids -- such as plain M&M's -- pack surprisingly more densely than regular spheres when poured randomly and shaken.

When poured in, they said, spheres occupy about 64 percent of the space in a container. M&M's manage to pack in at a density of about 68 percent.

"We just stretched a sphere and suddenly things changed dramatically," said Torquato. "To me, it's remarkable that you can take this simple system with common candies and probe one of the deepest problems in condensed matter physics."




Mars Inc., which makes M&M's, did not help sponsor the research although it donated 125 pounds of almond M&M's to Chaikin, Princeton said in a statement.

[Jolie Rouge]

New film challenges full-frontal taboo
Monday, February 16, 2004 Posted: 10:57 AM EST (1557 GMT)

http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Movi....ap/index.html


NEW YORK (AP) -- A smitten young man in Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Dreamers" steals a photo of his inamorata and puts it next to his private parts, then is understandably embarrassed when she forcibly peels off his tighty-whiteys and discovers it.

Rather than being appalled, she appears quite complimented by this different kind of Kodak moment -- a close-up that leaves nothing to the imagination as the picture gently catapults toward her.

Such scenes got an NC-17 rating slapped on the new film by the director whose oeuvre includes the 1972 X-rated "Last Tango in Paris."

But in the three decades since then, scenes with full-frontal male nudity usually can be timed with a stopwatch while those with nude women can be measured with a sundial.

Even in "The Full Monty," filmgoers didn't get the full monty -- not even for a split second.

Pop-culture observers maintain that's because a de facto sexism still exists in Hollywood, where women can parade around in the altogether but men can't.

The instances of actors in mainstream American movies swinging in the breeze are so rare that movie buffs can catalog them off the top of their heads.

Harvey Keitel has let it all hang out at least twice ("The Piano" and "Bad Lieutenant") and Ewan McGregor at least four times, including the upcoming "Young Adam." Bruce Willis in 1994's "Color of Night," Kevin Bacon in 1998's "Wild Things" and Geoffrey Rush in 2000's "Quills" as well as the prosthetically enhanced Mark Wahlberg in 1997's "Boogie Nights" are among the few others.

Sarah Riddick, an English professor who heads the film program at William Woods University in Fulton, Missouri, attributes it simply to the industry's gender makeup: "It is still a male-dominated business, and men are more likely to show female nudity."

Only actresses with great clout such as Julia Roberts can insist on a no-nudity clause.

Elayne Rapping, a professor of women's studies and media studies at the State University of New York, Buffalo, said it's such as it ever was: You can look back to classic paintings of the 17th and 18th centuries and see fully clothed men with nude women.

"That's been a constant of Western culture for centuries in representational art -- that women have been presented as objects for what in film theory is called 'the male gaze.' The assumed viewer is male, and the woman is to be looked at for male pleasure," she said.

She said another reason there are few full-frontal male nude scenes is that it raises an issue of vulnerability for men.

"For a man to reveal his private parts is to be reduced to the position that women have always been reduced to -- which is to be examined, to be judged. And I think that's a scary thing," she said, adding: "When a man is flaccid, it's not a very virile thing."

Sexuality in movies

One theory holds that while women have several areas to satisfy scopophilia -- the term sometimes used in feminist film criticism that literally means the "love of looking" -- men really have just one, where size matters. So a woman might have a beautiful face or legs that offset, say, her breast size, but if a man has a certain shortcoming, a handsome mug or six-pack abs fail to make up for it.

Yoko Ono once joked: "I wonder why men get serious at all. They have this delicate, long thing hanging outside their bodies which goes up and down by its own will. If I were a man I would always be laughing at myself."

For a male view, there's Jim McBride, aka Mr. Skin, who runs a Web site that's a compendium of movie nudity. He was quoted recently as saying he prefers his silver-screen sex "without a guy in the scene."

Rapping suggested that men also may be afraid of the "male gaze" for homophobic reasons.

"The fear of male homosexuality is the fear of the loss of male dominance in our society -- if everybody gets equally sexualized and equally open to having sex with everybody else then the whole system of male dominance gets called into question."

Fox Searchlight's release of "The Dreamers" -- uncut and with an NC-17 rating -- has refocused attention on the issue of sexuality in movies.

When the distributor decided to go ahead with the unbowdlerized version, Bertolucci alluded to the expression "Make love, not war" from the late '60s (when his film is set) by saying: "After all, an orgasm is better than a bomb."

"Americans are much more comfortable with extreme violence in their movies than any sexuality," observed Stephen Gilula, Fox Searchlight's president of distribution.

Gilula, who attributes Bertolucci's comfort depicting sex to his European upbringing, said his company decided to release the film with an adult rating because while NC-17 has become "sort of a scarlet letter ... We felt it wouldn't be the liability everybody perceived it was."

Unrated films with comparable -- and even more explicit -- content are playing in U.S. theaters anyway, he said, and Fox Searchlight research has dispelled the long-held notion that newspapers won't carry ads for NC-17 movies and movie chains won't show them.

In the past 15 years or so, many porn theaters across the nation have closed because home video -- not to mention the Internet -- took their market away, he noted.

"There is no longer any real issue about pornographic material in movie theaters," Gilula said. "It's really an issue (of): Can filmmakers make adult subject matter and utilize the NC-17 rating without having to go unrated?"

Power of television, cinema

Bertolucci's movie may help destigmatize the rating, he averred. "I think it opens the door for the possibility for distributors to consider using the rating without assuming it's a liability."

Time was, even an X rating wasn't a drawback: John Schlesinger's "Midnight Cowboy" won the 1969 best-picture Oscar despite it.

"How is it in 2004 we are more puritanical than 30 years ago?" Bertolucci said.

And even before the exposure of Janet Jackson's right breast at the Super Bowl halftime show, Bertolucci talked about how kids at home in their rooms see what he deems an incredible amount of sex and violence. So he wonders why movies are so persecuted?

"The power of television is much, much greater than the power of cinema," he said.

After Philip Kaufman directed "Quills," his wife made a joke while they waited for the Motion Picture Association of America rating (which turned out to be R). "She said they should just put on, 'Not for children of all ages.' ... The movie was made for adults," Kaufman recalled.

Still, the director of the first film to get an NC-17 rating -- 1990's "Henry & June" -- questions whether, if you take away topless shots, women are exposed more often than men.

Even at that, he pointed out that his upcoming movie, "Twisted," shows more male nudity in the sex scenes involving Ashley Judd (none of it full-frontal).

He also raised the question that many ask: Do women really want to see more male nudity?

"Maybe, in fact, just because of the nature of our society and so forth, more male nudity is about to come," Kaufman said.

When NC-17 supplanted X -- mostly because it had been proudly commandeered by the porn industry -- it retained a smutty stigma.

But maybe that will change, Kaufman said; NC-17 will yet be matter-of-factly applied to films of "higher motive."

Gilula of Fox Searchlight certainly hopes so. And he thinks "The Dreamers" might be the watershed.

"It's a film of very serious intent. It has sex in it. But it's also about music, it's about politics, it's about relationships. It's about a lot of things. And it's about movies," he said. "Anyone who's going for any salacious intent I think will probably be disappointed."

[Jolie Rouge]

3 Charged After Man Fed to Lion
Man says former co-worker thrown to lions
From Charlayne Hunter-Gault -- CNN
Tuesday, February 17, 2004 Posted: 1:57 PM EST

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/africa...ten/index.html

HOEDSPRUIT, South Africa (CNN) -- A South African farm laborer said Tuesday that his white employer strangled a former black employee, then held a gun to his head and forced him to throw his dismissed co-worker's lifeless body to lions.

Workers at the Mokwalo White Lion Project on Sunday found a skull, a leg bone and some blood-soaked clothes, all that police said they think remains of Nelson Chisale, 38, a father of three.

Police are holding three men on suspicion of dumping Chisale's body into an enclosure with lions at a lion-breeding operation in the northeastern part of the country. On Tuesday, authorities released a fourth man, Robert Mnisi, 34, after he agreed to cooperate with the prosecution.

Authorities have not filed formal charges against farm owner Mark Scott-Crossley, 34, and two farm workers, whom The Associated Press identified as Simon Mathebula and Richard Mathebula. Police await the results of DNA tests on the remains, which could take several weeks.

A judge Tuesday postponed a bail hearing for the men. The next scheduled hearing is March 30.

Mnisi said Tuesday that Scott-Crossley strangled Chisale and then ordered him to throw the body to the lions at a breeding facility several miles from the farm where they were working. The farm laborer spoke to CNN from a holding cell before he was released.

"Then he say to me, 'Doctor pick it up [Chisale's body] and throw it in the lions,' " said Mnisi, who said Scott-Crossley put a gun to his head when he objected. "He say, 'Hey, if you don't want to listen to me, I'll shoot you. Get inside there.' "


The half-eaten body was found in the Project's lion pit.
Scott-Crossley recently fired Chisale, and police said they think Chisale was assaulted when he returned to the farm to collect his personal belongings. Earlier, Chisale filed charges, accusing Scott-Crossley of burning clothes the worker had left at the farm.

Also in a holding cell, Scott-Crossley said Tuesday he welcomes the media attention the case is receiving.

"So, you must follow it to the end so that once the truth is out, there's no sweeping anything under the carpet," he said.

[Jolie Rouge]

Goodbye Slaughterville,
Hello Veggieville?

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/ns/news/...3.htm&sc=reodd

DALLAS (Reuters) - A vegetarian group wants an Oklahoma town named after a family that helped settle the state to change its name to Veggieville because they think its sounds a lot better than Slaughterville.

The city council of Slaughterville, Oklahoma, a town of about 3,000 in the center of the state, was due to discuss next week the proposal by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

PETA is even offering $20,000 worth of veggie burgers to an area school if the name change goes through.

But town manager Marsha Blair said on Friday the chances of passage were slim to none. "We do not intend to change the name," she told Reuters.


Bruce Friedrich, PETA's campaign manager, said the organization is focusing its resources on the abuse and cruelty of animals that are killed for the food and clothing industries in slaughterhouses.


"Even if the people of Slaughterville are not looking at the cruelty to farmed animals as an issue, it is a fact that anyone, including the residents of Slaughterville, who is eating meat, is supporting the felony level of abuse of animals," he said.


Slaughterville was named after a family that helped settle the area in the 19th century. The family ran a dry goods store and blacksmith shop.



02/17/04 11:07

[the fugative]

Poi for the pooch? Hawaii lawmaker wants dogs allowed into outdoor cafes
Associated Press
Published February 17,


HONOLULU -- Cpl. Rita Levergood and her husband disagree whether four-legged members of their family should be able to join them out to dinner. The state, however, is clear: It's against the law.

A state senator's proposal going before a Department of Health committee this week would make it easier for animal lovers like Levergood to dine out with the pets they say are like family.

``I hate to leave them at the house by themselves,'' said Levergood, 21, who owns two dogs. ``I most definitely would like to bring them.''

Sen. Fred Hemmings, a Republican, wants to see state health rules eased to give restaurants the option of allowing dogs into outdoor seating areas.

His request faces a vote Thursday by the state's Advisory Council on Food Protection Practices. If it is adopted, Hawaii would join 21 other states with similar pet-friendly dining rules, according to Tara Kain of DogFriendly.com.

Current Hawaii health regulations ban pets from food establishments. Violators face fines and, for repeated offenses, closure.

It was at a small cafe in the French resort Biarritz that Hemmings came up with the idea of relaxing the regulations. He says he still can't erase the memory of an elderly woman whose tiny dog was seated beside her.

``I would have to surmise that this dog was a very important part of this woman's life,'' he said.

[Jolie Rouge]

Scientists Find New Species of Whale
By ALEX DOMINGUEZ

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/sto...&idq=/ff/story /0001%2F20031119%2F132435449.htm&sc=1501

Japanese scientists say they have identified a new species of whale - a remarkable discovery if confirmed.

The animal is a type of baleen, the family of whales that strain tiny plankton and other food from seawater, the researchers say.

``Can you imagine? An animal of more than 10 meters was unknown to us even in the 21st century,'' said Tadasu Yamada of Tokyo's National Science Museum, the senior author of the study that appears in this week's issue of the journal Nature.

Most baleens grow to enormous proportions, like the blue whale, which at 75 feet long and more than 100 tons is believed to be the largest animal that has ever lived.


By comparison, the new species is on the small side at about 30 feet long - about the size of a motor home - and slender.


While new species of smaller creatures such as insects, birds and amphibians are discovered every year, it is very unusual for scientists to identify a new mammal, particularly one so large. Most whale species were described during the 18th and 19th centuries when commercial whaling drove many to the brink of extinction.


Scientists currently recognize 70 whale species, including as many as 12 types of baleen whales. But little is known about the subtle differences among many types of whales that are seldom seen by humans.


The Japanese researchers made their discovery through DNA analysis of nine adult whale carcasses. Eight - five females and three males - were killed in 1970 for research in the eastern Indian Ocean and the Solomon Sea. At the time, scientists assumed they were undersized fin whales.


A ninth whale - a female - was killed accidentally in the Sea of Japan in 1998. Fisherman towed it to Tsunoshima Island, where Yamada examined it. Later, he began comparing it to preserved samples of the eight whales in his nation's fisheries research collection. The anatomical and molecular comparison took several years to complete.


Nearly every whale carcass raises new possibilities. It could take additional studies over several years before other biologists accept the new whale species.


According to the Nature study, the new species shows several differences from fin whales, including external features, bone structure and DNA. The researchers named the new species Balaenoptera omurai in honor of the late Japanese whale researcher, Dr. Hideo Omura.


Besides being smaller than fin whales, the new species has fewer baleen plates in its mouth, Yamada says. Baleen is a hornlike substance that forms filaments that hang down from the roof of the mouth to strain food from seawater.


DNA analysis performed on samples from three of the whales showed they differ from fin whales by five nucleotides, or base pairs of amino acids, in sections of the whale genome used for comparison.


Some U.S. researchers are skeptical of the Nature report.


James Mead, curator of marine mammals at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, said there are at least seven other whale species that share the same traits, and a more careful comparison is needed before a new species is accepted.


``I am disappointed in the lack of thorough comparison with other species of allied whales,'' Mead said.


Harvard whale researcher Joe Roman said the evidence for classifying them as a new species was ``compelling and certainly warrants further study.''


Researchers on both sides of the Pacific said the questions surrounding the nine whales demonstrates how little is known about them. They condemned whale-hunting, even for scientific purposes.


In 1986, the International Whaling Commission imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling. Japan, however, takes hundreds of whales a year under a scientific exemption, usually selling them for food and other products after they are studied.


Norway has ignored the ban since 1993 and resumed commercial hunting, while Iceland resumed scientific whaling this year.


Yamada said the new species is a small population, which should be studied more carefully before countries decide to harvest the whales for research.


Roman agreed, saying, ``research whaling could actually endanger this exciting discovery.''

[Jolie Rouge]

Doctors Find 350 Coins in Patient's Belly
By JEFF DONN

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/sto...1900518264.htm

BOSTON (AP) - French doctors were taken aback when they discovered the reason for a patient's sore, swollen belly: He had swallowed around 350 coins - $650 worth - along with assorted necklaces and needles.

The 62-year-old man came to the emergency room of Cholet General Hospital in western France in 2002. He had a history of major psychiatric illness, was suffering from stomach pain, and could not eat or move his bowels.

His family warned doctors that he sometimes swallowed coins, and a few had been removed from his stomach in past hospital visits.

Still, doctors were awed when they took an X-ray. They discovered an enormous opaque mass in his stomach that turned out to weigh 12 pounds - as much as some bowling balls. It was so heavy it had forced his stomach down between his hips.


Five days after his arrival, doctors cut him open and removed his badly damaged stomach with its contents. He died 12 days later from complications.


One of his doctors, intensive care specialist Dr. Bruno Francois, said the patient had swallowed the coins - both French currency and later euros - over about a decade. His family tried to keep coins and jewelry away from him.


``When he was invited and came in some homes, he liked to steal coins and eat them,'' Francois said.


The case history of the French patient, whose name was withheld, was reported in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.


The patient's rare condition is called pica, a compulsion to eat things not normally consumed as food. Its name comes from the Latin word for magpie, a bird thought to eat just about anything.


Pica can take the form of eating dirt, ashes, chalk, hair, soap, toothbrushes, burned matches and many other things. Francois once treated a patient who ate forks. Most such objects are small enough to pass on their own, but some must be removed by doctors.


The condition is perhaps best known in children and pregnant women but is also sometimes linked to psychiatric illness.


A few details of the Frenchman's case were presented Jan. 1 along with the X-ray - but no explanation of the stomach mass - as a challenge to New England Journal of Medicine readers in a fixture called ``A Medical Mystery.''


Dr. Lindsey Baden, an editor at the journal, reported that 666 readers in 73 countries - mostly doctors or doctors-in-training - contacted the journal to try to solve the mystery. Almost 90 percent settled on diagnoses consistent with pica, but only 8 percent correctly identified coins.


``This case serves as a reminder of important factors that should be considered in the care of patients who are mentally impaired,'' Baden wrote.



02/18/04 19:00

[Jolie Rouge]

Black Hole Seen Ripping Star Apart
By ANDREW BRIDGES

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/sto...37.htm&sc=1501

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) - Two space observatories have provided the first strong evidence of a supermassive black hole stretching, tearing apart and partially gobbling up a star flung into reach of its enormous gravity, astronomers said Wednesday.

The event had long been predicted by theory but never confirmed.

A powerful X-ray blast drew the attention of astronomers to the event, located near the center of a galaxy about 700 million light-years from Earth. The international team of astronomers believe gases from the star, heated to multimillion-degree temperatures as they fell toward the black hole near the heart of galaxy RX J1242-11, produced the blast.

Astronomers said a star about the size of our sun neared the black hole after veering off course following a close encounter with another star. The tremendous gravity of the black hole, estimated to have a mass 100 million times that of our sun, then stretched the star to the point of breaking.


``This is the ultimate David versus Goliath battle, but here David loses,'' said Gunther Hasinger, of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany.


The effect is the same that the tug of the moon has on the Earth's oceans, but with much more violent results. The black hole consumed an estimated 1 percent of the doomed star, flinging the rest out into space.


``This unlucky star just wandered into the wrong neighborhood,'' said Stefanie Komossa, also of the Max Planck Institute.


Astronomers used NASA's Chandra and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton X-ray observatories to capture the event. Similar events are estimated to occur just once every 10,000 years in a typical galaxy.


Astronomers have seen other similar X-ray blasts before, but never were able to pinpoint them at the center of a galaxy, where black holes lurk. The new observations also revealed the characteristic X-ray signature expected of the surroundings of a black hole.


The blast first was seen in 1992 and remains visible as it fades, said Chandra press scientist Peter Edmonds, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.


On the Net:


European Space Agency science program: http://sci.esa.int/xmm-newton/


Chandra observatory: http://chandra.harvard.edu



02/18/04 22:46

[Jolie Rouge]

Missing Woman Found in Concrete
Remains Found in N.Y. Tentatively ID'd]
By TOM HAYS

NEW YORK (AP) - Police believe the same day a Manhattan financial analyst vanished last year, a phony physician treated her for a growth on her tongue - with deadly results.

Authorities were awaiting the outcome of an autopsy Thursday to confirm that a decomposed body discovered entombed in cement at the medical impostor's Newark, N.J., mansion was that of the analyst, Maria Cruz. The fake doctor, Dean Faiello, remains a fugitive.

Detectives were ``working on the hypothesis that she may have received treatment for a condition called black tongue, from which she may not have survived,'' said police spokesman Paul Browne. He offered no information on the type of treatment.

Medical Web sites describe black tongue as a painless black growth that can be a side effect of antibiotics.


The decomposing body, found Wednesday inside a suitcase buried in a floor slab in the Newark house, matched a description of the 35-year-old Cruz, including the fact she had breast implants, police said.


Faiello, 44, was arrested in 2002 for practicing without a license and illegally possessing medical drugs but apparently continued to see patients at a Manhattan apartment, authorities said. He pleaded guilty in June 2003 but allegedly fled to Costa Rica before his scheduled December sentencing.


Cruz was last seen April 13, 2003. Using automatic teller and credit card records, investigators determined that Cruz left her own apartment that day and went shopping at a department store near Faiello's apartment, where she may have died.


The woman's family reported her missing April 18 after she failed to pick up visiting relatives at the airport.


Around the time of the disappearance, Faiello had several bags of cement delivered to his Newark mansion, authorities said. The cement was used to build a raised platform in the house before Faiello sold the building in May and fled the country in September, they said.


Armed with a search warrant on Wednesday, detectives found the remains inside a large suitcase that had been encased in the cement, prosecutors said.


Cruz, who was born in the Philippines and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in March 2002, was an analyst for the banking division of Barclays Bank.



02/19/04 19:18

[Jolie Rouge]

Family of 3 Vanishes; Blood Found
Answers Sought in Miss. Family Vanishing
By RALPH D. RUSSO

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/sto...63.htm&sc=1110

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - Nearly a week has passed since relatives of Michael and Rebecca Hargon last saw the young couple and their 4-year-old son, all of whom appear to have vanished amid unexplained violence.

Investigators spent three days searching the Hargons' house in the small town of Vaughan, about 40 miles north of Jackson, for clues to what might have happened the family.

What authorities found were dried blood droplets throughout the house, bullet holes in the walls and shell casings on the floor. There was no sign of robbery or forced entry. Dirty dishes were left in the sink. Rebecca's wedding and engagement rings were also left behind.

All three of the family's vehicles were accounted for.


Ten years ago, Michael Hargon's father was murdered on the same property, when it was a convenience store. Three men are serving prison sentences for that crime.


Authorities have said little about the current investigation, which is being treated as a missing persons case.


``We are getting a lot of phone calls from different places, but so far they haven't consisted of anything,'' Yazoo County Sheriff James T. Williams said.


Family members say Michael Hargon, 27, was last seen Saturday morning, when he had breakfast with a friend in nearby Canton.


Another friend, who was driving by the Hargons' home later that morning, noticed the front door of the house was open and one of the doors on Michael Hargon's pickup truck was open, but the family didn't appear to be around.


She told the Hargons' relatives what she saw, and when family members went to the home the three, including 4-year-old James Patrick, were gone.


``I just couldn't believe that somebody would do something to them,'' said Rebecca Hargon's father, Bill Hirtz, of Poplar Bluff, Mo.


Michael Hargon is a construction worker and his wife is a physical therapist's assistant.


``He's a good guy,'' Hirtz said. ``I've talked to a lot of his friends that have known him for years ... As far as they know, Mike doesn't have an enemy.''



02/19/04 21:44