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Boy said to have floated off in balloon found safe
By P. SOLOMON BANDA and IVAN MORENO
Thu Oct 15, 7:46 pm ET

FORT COLLINS, Colo. – A 6-year-old boy was found hiding in a cardboard box in his family's garage attic Thursday after being feared aboard a homemade helium balloon that hurtled 50 miles through the sky on live television.

The discovery marked a bizarre end to a saga that started when the giant silvery balloon floated away from the family's yard Thursday morning, sparking a frantic rescue operation that involved military helicopters and briefly shut down Denver International Airport.

But Sheriff Jim Alderden turned to reporters during a news conference and gave a thumbs up and said 6-year-old Falcon Heene is "at the house." "Apparently he's been there the whole time," he said.

The boy's father, Richard Heene, said the family was tinkering with the balloon Thursday and that he scolded Falcon for getting inside a compartment on the craft. He said Falcon's brother had seen him inside the compartment before it took off and that's why they thought he was in there when it launched.

But the boy fled to the attic at some point after the scolding and was never in the balloon during its two-hour, 50-mile journey through two counties. "I yelled at him. I'm really sorry I yelled at him," Heene said as he hugged his son during a news conference.

"I was in the attic and he scared me because he yelled at me," Falcon said. "That's why I went in the attic."

Richard Heene adamantly denied the notion that the whole thing was a big publicity stunt. "That's horrible after the crap we just went through. No."

The flying saucer-like craft tipped precariously at times before gliding to the ground in a field. With the child nowhere in sight, investigators searched the balloon's path. Several people reported seeing something fall from the craft while it was in the air, and yellow crime-scene tape was placed around the home.

But in the end, the boy apparently was in the garage the whole time, even as investigators scoured the house and neighborhood for any sign of him.

Neighbor Bob Licko, 65, said he was leaving home when he heard commotion in the backyard of the family. He said he saw two boys on the roof with a camera, commenting about their brother.

"One of the boys yelled to me that his brother was way up in the air," Licko said.

Licko said the boy's mother seemed distraught and that the boy's father was running around the house. The Poudre School District in Fort Collins, where the boys attend, did not have classes for elementary schools Thursday because of a teacher work day.

The boys parents are storm chasers who appeared twice in the ABC reality show "Wife Swap," most recently in March.

"When the Heene family aren't chasing storms, they devote their time to scientific experiments that include looking for extraterrestrials and building a research-gathering flying saucer to send into the eye of the storm," according to the show.

In a 2007 interview with The Denver Post, Richard Heene described becoming a storm chaser after a tornado ripped off a roof where he was working as a contractor and said he once flew a plane around Hurricane Wilma's perimeter in 2005.

Pursuing bad weather was a family activity with the children coming along as the father sought evidence to prove his theory that rotating storms create their own magnetic fields.

Although Richard said he has no specialized training, they had a computer tracking system in their car and a special motorcycle.

While the balloon was airborne, Colorado Army National Guard sent a UH-58 Kiowa helicopter and was preparing to send a Black Hawk UH-60 to try to rescue the boy, possibly by lowering someone to the balloon. They also were working with pilots of ultralight aircraft on the possibility of putting weights on the homemade craft to weigh it down.

It wasn't immediately clear how much the search operation cost. Capt. Troy Brown said the Black Hawk helicopter was in the air for nearly three hours, and the Kiowa helicopter was airborne for about one hour. The Black Hawk costs about $4,600 an hour to fly, and the Kiowa is $700 an hour, Brown said.

Col. Chris Petty, one of the pilots aboard the Black Hawk, said he was thrilled the boy was OK.

Asked what he would say to the 6-year-old if he saw him, Petty said: "I'm really glad you're alive, I'm very thankful, but I'd sure like to know the rest of the story."

The episode led to a brief shutdown of northbound departures from one of the nation's busiest airports, said a controller at the Federal Aviation Administration's radar center in Longmont, Colo. FAA canceled all northbound takeoffs between 1 p.m. and 1:15 p.m. MDT, said Lyle Burrington, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association representative at the center. The balloon was about 15 miles northwest of the airport at that time.

Before the departure shutdown, controllers had been vectoring planes taking off in that direction away from the balloon, Burrington said.

Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown said the agency tracked the balloon through reports from pilots.

Neighbor Lisa Eklund described seeing the balloon pass.

"We were sitting eating, out looking where they normally shoot off hot air balloons. My husband said he saw something. It went over our rooftop. Then we saw the big round balloonish thing, it was spinning," she said.

"By the time I saw it, it traveled pretty fast," she said.

The balloon landed on its own in a dirt field. Sheriff's deputies secured it to keep it in place, even tossing shovelfuls of dirt on one edge.

Jason Humbert saw the balloon land. He said he had gotten a call from his mother in Texas who told him about the balloon. He said he was in a field checking on an oil well when he found himself surrounded by police who had been chasing the balloon, which came to a rest 12 miles northeast of Denver International Airport.

"It looked like an alien spaceship you see in those old, old movies. You know, those black-and-white ones. It came down softly. I asked a police officer if the boy was OK and he said there was no one in it," Humbert said.

Get Out: Orionid Meteor Shower Peaks Overnight
BY: Robert Roy Britt
Tue Oct 20, 12:30 pm ET

The Orionid meteor shower is expected to put on a good show tonight into the predawn hours Wednesday, weather permitting.

This annual meteor shower is created when Earth passes through trails of comet debris left in space long ago by Halley's Comet. The "shooting stars" develop when bits typically no larger than a pea , and mostly sand-grain-sized, vaporize in Earth's upper atmosphere.

"Flakes of comet dust hitting the atmosphere should give us dozens of meteors per hour," said Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office.

People in cities and suburbs will see far fewer meteors, because all but the brightest of them will be overpowered by light pollution. The best view will be from rural areas (the moon will not be a factor, so dark skies will make for ideal viewing).

When and how to watch

The best time to watch will be between 1 a.m. and dawn local time Wednesday morning, regardless of your location. That's when the patch of Earth you are standing on is barreling headlong into space on Earth's orbital track, and meteors get scooped up like bugs on a windshield.

Peak activity, when Earth wades into the densest part of the debris, is expected around 6 a.m. ET (3 a.m. PT).

Some meteors could show up late tonight, too. Late-night viewing typically offers fewer meteors, however, because your patch of Earth is positioned akin to the back window of the speeding car.

The Orionids have been strong in recent years.

"Since 2006, the Orionids have been one of the best showers of the year, with counts of 60 or more meteors per hour," Cooke said.

Some of those counts come in flurries, so skywatchers should find a comfortable spot with as wide a view of the sky as possible. Lie back and allow 15 minutes for your eyes to adjust to the darkness, then give the show at least a half hour to play out through spurts and lulls. Meteors could appear anywhere in the sky, though traced back they will appear to emanate from the constellation Orion.

Telescopes and binoculars are of no use, because meteors move too quickly. Extra warm clothing is a must, and a blanket and pillow or lounge chair allows comfortable positioning so you can look up for long stretches.

Reliable event

Predicting meteor showers is tricky because the debris comes from multiple streams.

Each time comet Halley passes around the sun on its elongated orbit – every 76 years – it lays down a fresh track of debris for Earth to plow through in subsequent years. Those tracks spread out and mingle over time, and we pass the tracks each October during our 365-day, nearly circular trek around the sun.

Japanese researchers Mikiya Sato and Jun-ichi Watanabe say activity in recent years is related to debris put in place from 1266 BC to 911 BC, and this could be another good year, according to NASA.

Even if that prediction does not hold, the Orionids will almost surely put on a decent show. Prior to 2006 and going back many years, the Orionids have produced a reliable 15 to 20 meteors per hour at the peak, for skywatchers with dark skies.

As a bonus, this time of year you can expect an additional five to 10 sporadic meteors per hour – those not related to the shower.

Women Marines want a chance outside the Afghan wire
By Golnar Motevalli Golnar Motevalli
Fri Oct 23, 11:00 am ET

BARCHA, Afghanistan (Reuters) – U.S. Marine Lance Corporal Tiffany Jones chews tobacco, spitting the juice into the Afghan desert as she talks, and wears her M-16 automatic rifle slung across her chest just like her male colleagues.

Jones wanted to be a sniper but, like many women on active service in the U.S. military, she has never been outside "the wire" -- the heavily guarded razor-wire perimeter of her base.

"I don't think the American public on a whole is ready to hear about females in the military getting blown up and their body parts everywhere," Jones said.

Still, Jones said she would like to see more women in combat.

In the U.S. Marines, women cannot fight with units engaged in direct combat with the enemy. While they do get some infantry training, they cannot join infantrymen on the front line.

Jones, 20, works in a motor pool at Camp Leatherneck, a sprawling base of thousands of U.S. Marines in southern Helmand province, the heartland of the Taliban-led insurgency.

Her hair is cut about an inch above her collar, according to Marine regulations for women with short hair, and she works with a unit fixing armored vehicles.

She longs to go outside "the wire", but the rate at which armored vehicles are being ambushed and blown up in a growing insurgency means Jones's skills are needed more at Leatherneck's motor pool.

Violence in Afghanistan has reached its worst level this year since the Taliban were overthrown by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in 2001. Casualties have soared since U.S. and British forces launched major offensives in the south mid-year.

At least 882 American service members have been killed in Afghanistan since 2001, and U.S. President Barack Obama is seriously considering sending thousands more to join a war many at home are becoming increasingly weary with.

Despite the dangers, women like Jones and Sergeant Shannon Boertmann are frustrated that camps like Leatherneck are as close to the frontline as they are likely to get.

Boertmann helps build bases from scratch, often in remote areas where Marine units have just taken new ground. But she is not trained for the infantry -- a high-risk specialty reserved for men, known as "grunts", who are trained to kill.

"It's a little bit (frustrating), I can understand why females are not out there, but at the same time I want to get out there," Boertmann said.

"They have a really tight bond and I think 'wow I wish I could be out there and try it'," she says of the grunts.

GUNS, BUNS AND GRUNTS

Women in the Marines' trademark sand-colored fatigues are a fairly common sight at Leatherneck and Barcha, a village and patrol base about 80 km (50 miles) south of Leatherneck.

Boertmann and 21-year-old Alabaman Lance Corporal Mary Birker have worked in "female engagement teams" who meet Afghan women in villages where "grunts" have pushed.

In deeply conservative Muslim Afghanistan, NATO rules state house searches must be conducted by the Afghan army wherever possible. Female engagement teams are there to talk to the women.

When they meet women face-to-face in their homes, Birker and Boertmann are temporarily allowed to flout the Marine Corps' strict hair regulations by wearing headscarves, or hejabs, underneath their helmets, as a courtesy.

In Barcha, Boertmann wears her long blonde hair in a tight French braid, which allows her to put on her helmet when she goes on patrol. Birker's hair is slicked back and coiled into a tight bun, by regulation no larger than her military ID card.

"Hairspray is a big one. We ran out of hairspray a lot down in Camp Dwyer, we were like 'what are we going to keep our hair up with today?'," Jones said.

But those are trivial considerations when it comes to their sincere desire to join the grunts on the frontline if the Pentagon suddenly changed its rules.

"If somebody came and said, 'do you want to be a grunt today?', hell yes, I'd jump at the chance to go," Birker said.

Jones quickly agreed.

"I'll get my M-203, let's go," she said, referring to a grenade launcher which can be attached to a rifle.

55-and-over community wants to evict family with 6-year-old
By Drew Harwell
In Print: Thursday, October 22, 2009

CLEARWATER — Before the court motions, before the eviction threats, before the limo rides to TV studios, Kimberly Broffman was 6 months old, just a baby, moving into a new home.

It was February 2004, and her mother had been beaten during a home invasion. To help with healing, mother and daughter moved in with Judie and Jimmy Stottler, the mom's parents.

The Stottlers grew close to the little girl, an only child. But as mom Melanie Broffman recuperated, they said, her history of drug use returned. The Stottlers called the authorities and demanded she leave. They took custody of Kimberly.

With her mother gone, her father a mystery and no other relatives to speak of, Kimberly's living arrangement seemed simple. Except for this: She was breaking the law. And now her case has drawn national attention.

The Stottlers' home, under the management of the Lakes Homeowners Association, was designated 55-and-over. Children could live there for no more than 60 days a year.

The association, which said its bylaws worked to preserve the age-restricted community, wanted Kimberly gone. But the Stottlers' attempts to sell their house stalled. Kimberly had no place else to go.

In January 2007, Judie Stottler, 62, begged. "I support three people on an income of approximately $18,000.00 a year and we cannot afford to move anywhere without the (sale) of this home. We do not have any family to take us in therefore; we would be forced to be homeless," she wrote in a letter to the association. "Please understand that we are doing everything possible and we appreciate your understanding."

A month later, the association responded with a summons to court.

• • •

Spread across two years of court documents, the association's attorney, Monique Parker, has outlined the case against the Stottlers. The Lakes' restrictions are clear, she wrote, and legally acceptable under the Fair Housing Act. When the Stottlers moved in years before Kimberly's birth, after Judie inherited the home from her mother, the family signed in acknowledgement.

Just as clear, documents show, are the association's attempts to settle. In April 2005, the Stottlers promised that Kimberly would be gone in 18 months — enough time, they thought, to sell the house or await Broffman's return.

Kimberly's mother had been ordered into the PAR Village , a rehabilitation center. "She was only there a month and she fled," Judie Stottler said in a deposition.

Selling their home in a recession proved impossible, too, even as their starting price of $229,000 dipped by $20,000. Kimberly's move-out deadline passed.

The association filed its lawsuit against the Stottlers and other families in violation, asking for an injunction to enforce their neighborhood bylaws. Robert Eckard, a Palm Harbor lawyer angered by what he said was the association's bulldozing of a healthy family, represented the Stottlers for free.

• • •

A first-grader at Pinellas Central Elementary, Kimberly doesn't know much about the dispute. Nor does she ask. Her questions tend toward her missing mother, who the Stottlers say is sick and getting better. Broffman faces prosecution next month on a charge she battered her father.

With a Wednesday morning appearance on the Today show, a night drive to Tampa for an appearance on CNN Headline News and constant phone calls from reporters nationwide, the conflict is getting harder to hide. A viewer, for instance, saw the Today report and raised the possibility of offering rent-free accommodations.

Neighbors are divided over what to do.

"We all have rules we have to live by in society. When I moved in here, I knew the rules and I accepted them," neighbor Mike Hoffman said Wednesday. "It's tough, but I think they should find a new place to live. ... The doggone association has got a job to do, too. They can't turn their back on it."

Others aren't so dismissive of the Stottlers' dilemma.

"I know they're in a strange situation. If I was in a situation like that, I don't know what I would do. Dig in my heels, too, I guess," said Sonny Ebert, who lives down the block. "I know we have rules and regulations, but let's have some compassion."

As the lawsuit stretches through its second year, with no clear end in sight, it appears neither side plans to back down.

A motion filed on behalf of the association recently sought to order Kimberly out of the house, but was denied. The judge is awaiting the family law file from the year Kimberly moved in to determine if the custody order specified an address, a finding that could possibly lead to a waiver for the association. Case management conferences between attorneys are ongoing.

The Stottlers say their options are still slim. Their home, now listed at $129,000, has had one prospect in the last nine months, and foster care is still out of the question.

State officials say the process of taking a child from an established home would be hazardous for everyone involved.

"If you're that child's parents, giving the child away is an unfathomable position," said Department of Children and Families spokeswoman Erin Gillespie. "Foster care is a last resort, all the time. It's just not the best place to be for kids."

In her own 6-year-old way, Kimberly agrees. From the top of her pink bunk bed, in a room strewn with stuffed bears and plastic toys, she speaks her mind after a shy stretch of silence.

"This," she said, "is my home."

Missing Amazon plane made landing; 9 survive
Military helicopters pick up survivors in jungle near Indian villages
Fri. Oct. 30, 2009

SAO PAULO - A plane that went missing over the Amazon made an emergency river landing in a remote part of the rain forest, and nine of the 11 people aboard survived, Brazil's air force said Friday.

Members of the Matis Indian tribe found the plane and the survivors in a sprawling jungle reservation, the air force said in a statement.

Two people — one civilian and an air force warrant officer — have been missing since the single-prop Cessna Caravan plane went down Thursday, the statement said. A team of divers is looking for them.

In an earlier statement, the air force had said there were signs that at least one passenger died, but a spokeswoman said no bodies had been found by nightfall. She spoke on condition of anonymity as she was not authorized to discuss the matter.

The air force didn't say why the plane was forced to set down on the Itui River, but noted the weather was fine in the area at the time the aircraft disappeared.

Military helicopters picked up the survivors Friday afternoon at a roadless site near several Indian villages close to the Peruvian border. They were being flown to a hospital for evaluation. None had life-threatening injuries and all were expected to be treated and released.

At the time of the crash, the plane was carrying a four-person military crew and seven members of a government medical team who travel by plane and boat across the Amazon vaccinating rain forest dwellers who can't be reached any other way.

The plane took off Thursday morning from the small city of Cruzeiro do Sul in Acre state. It was scheduled to land about two hours later in the city of Tabatinga in Amazonas state, about 300 miles to the northeast.

The aircraft went down in the Vale do Javari reservation, one of Brazil's largest. The area is nearly the size of Portugal and is home to at least 12 tribes, some believed to have never had contact with the outside world.

Indians also helped Brazilian authorities in 2006 when a passenger jet and an executive jet collided above the Amazon, sending the jetliner crashing into the jungle and killing all 154 aboard in the nation's second-biggest aviation disaster.

After authorities spotted the wreckage, Indians from two tribes helped officials reach the plane and helped clear remote stretches of forest.

Real MVP: Girardi helps crash victim on way home
Updated: November 5, 2009, 2:58 PM EST

You win the Super Bowl, you go to Disneyland. You win the Indy 500, you drink the milk. You win the World Series, you ... help a car crash victim?

If you're Joe Girardi you do.

Just hours after guiding the Yankees to their 27th World Series title, Girardi stopped to help a woman who had lost control of her car on the Cross County Parkway and crashed into a wall, according to a report in the Westchester Journal.

"The guy wins the World Series, what does he do? He stops to help," said Westchester County police officer Kathleen Cristiano, who was among the first to arrive at the accident scene. "It was totally surreal."

According to the paper, Girardi had recently passed through a DUI checkpoint on the parkway, where he was congratulated by Cristiano, who was one of the officers working the checkpoint. A short time later, a 911 call came in about an accident just up the road, so the policemen at the checkpoint left to help. By the time they arrived on the scene, Girardi had already helped the woman out of her crashed vehicle.

"He was jumping up and down, trying to flag me down," Cristiano said. "You don't expect him standing by a car accident trying to help."

Girardi had to cross on foot the traffic-filled parkway from where he stopped his car and where the crash had occurred.

Once help arrived, Girardi told them he "had to get going," according to the paper.

Cristiano and the crash victim, Marie Henry, both thanked Girardi and watched as he ran across traffic again to reach his car.

"He could have gotten killed," county Sgt. Thomas McGurn said, adding that responding police units take extra precaution in that area because of the blind curve and speeding cars. "Traffic goes by at 80 mph."

Swine Flu in Cats, Bigfoot Sightings, T. Rex Ancestor: Buzz Week in Review
by Claudine Zap
Nov 6, 2009

Interspecies swine flu, the buzz on Bigfoot, and a really, really old fossil. All these stories and more for your Buzz Week in Review.

Please don't sneeze on your pet
It's enough that you have to worry about you and your kids catching swine flu this season. But now you also have to be concerned for … your cat. That's right. Your furry friend can catch it, from you. At least that's the case for a 13-year-old feline in Iowa diagnosed with H1N1 after its two owners both came down with the flu. The cat was treated at a veterinary hospital after appearing lethargic, losing its appetite and having trouble breathing. All three have recovered. Although this is the first documented case, consider it a cautionary tale. While searches on "swine flu symptoms" were up this week almost 400%, lookups on "swine flu in cats" also increased. (Read up on how to protect pets from the swine flu.)

Bigfoot gets big buzz
Bigfoot: It's a riddle wrapped in a mystery, or something like that. But is it an enigma because it doesn't exist (say it isn't so!) or because we haven't had the technology to properly document the evidence? Members of Sasquatch Watch are definitely in the latter camp. And a group of intrepid Bigfoot hunters were on the move in the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia, armed with all the gee-whiz gadgets needed to prove, for sure, without ambiguity, definitely, that Bigfoot exists. Maybe. Although some suspicious footprints were preserved with plaster of Paris in areas where there have been previous so-called sightings of the beast, un-fun skeptics are unsure if this is the real deal. But enthusiasts of the furry biped have already helped launch big buzz on the Web. Searches on "latest bigfoot sightings" shot up over 100%. Amateur sleuths also sought out "real bigfoot pictures," "bigfoot evidence," and "bigfoot research organization."

Tyrannosaurus Rex has ancestors
We knew T. rex was old and big, but that he had family? This comes as a surprise. Here's the story: Thanks to CT scans, a newly identified dinosaur Proceratosaurus has been named as the oldest known T. rex. That dates the tyrannosauroid group back to 170 million years, older than any other known fossil, according to Scientific American. But here's the thing: While the bigger, badder T. rex lived 65 to 99 million years ago, the Jursassic-Era cousin was still a meat eater, but way smaller, measuring just 10 feet. But it was just as ferocious, with four knife-like teeth and a pointy horn jutting from its nose. Of course, all these gigunda-saurs were the earliest ancestors of birds, like the ones we eat. Take that, dinos.