Torching Cars Called Common Crime in Germany

A German man whose mother was threatened with deportation is accused of a crime that has become a popular way in Germany for young people to express anger: burning cars.

A car owner tries to retrieve possessions from his vehicle as it burns in an arson fire early Monday in a parking lot in Los Angeles.

Harry Burkhart, 24, watched as his mother was arrested last week on a warrant from their native Germany on fraud charges that include not paying for breast-augmentation surgery.

Two days later, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck alleges, Burkhart began a nighttime rampage of arson attacks that terrorized the city.

Authorities have yet to disclose why they believe Burkhart, whom Sheriff Lee Baca called the "most dangerous arsonist in Los Angeles County," set the fires over four days.

"He loved his mom, the way every son loves his mom," said Shlomo Elady, a hair stylist who cut Burkhart's hair.

In court Tuesday, Dorothee Burkhart repeatedly asked a magistrate judge where her son was and wondered aloud whether he was dead or had disappeared.

Harry Burkhart was being held without bail.

"What did you do to my son?" she asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Margaret Nagle.

The burning of cars is a common phenomenon in Berlin and also other northern German cities such as Hamburg, which are magnets for young, "left-wing" idealists protesting the establishment, gentrification of their neighborhoods and globalization.

On May 1, Labor Day in Europe, residents with especially flashy cars move them to paid garages or to neighborhoods deemed safer.

For example, in October, a man in Berlin was arrested for torching 100 luxury cars, and 470 cars had been set on fire in the city by that time last year, the BBC reported.

"He wasn't motivated by politics but rather social envy," senior police official Oliver Stepien said. "He said in essence: 'I've got debts, my life stinks, and others with fancy cars are better off and they deserve this.' "

Websites such as http://www.brennende-autos.de/ mark where cars in Berlin have been torched as well as the models — nearly all high-end cars.

Recently, certain bookstores in Berlin were threatened by police with closure for carrying "seditious" literature that contained information on how to burn cars, according to pamphlets in the stores reading "Solidarity with Leftist Bookstores."

Hamburg criminologist Ingeborg Legge, 56, told weekly German magazine Der Spiegel that she believes many arsonists are part of groups with certain things in common: a fundamentally aggressive position toward the state, too much strength for their own good, dissatisfaction with their current situation and a vague feeling of rage that they sometimes direct toward themselves and sometimes against external objects — such as cars.

Adapted from USAToday

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Look Back at Selena & Justin's Year of PDA

JUSTIN AND SELENA CELEBRATE NEW YEAR

It's been a whirlwind of a year for teen lovebirds, Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber. Rumors of a romance between the teen sensations started in the fall of 2010, and in early 2011, the couple finally went public with their romance. Since then, they've adopted a puppy together, engaged in red carpet PDA, and taken steamy beach vacations to the Caribbean, Hawaii and Mexico. Check out the best photos of them meeting each other's families, canoodling on water skis, and demonstrating the all-around cuteness of a young couple in love over the course of the year.

Long before rumors of romance between these two started, Justin and Selena showed just how good their chemistry was when they performed together during "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve With Ryan Seacrest" 2010 on Dec. 31, 2009.

Just months after ringing in the new year together, Selena and Justin looked very affectionate with each other backstage at the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards in March 2010.

By the fall of 2010, rumors that Selena and Justin were an item reached fever pitch. When Ellen DeGeneres asked Selena about the rumors in September, she told the talk show host, "He's little. He's like my little brother. That's weird to me." But when paparazzi caught Justin and Selena looking smitten with each other on a beach walk in Miami in December 2010, they couldn't deny their

romance for much longer.

But then these two lovebirds were spotted together in Caribbean on Jan. 1, 2011, and the jig was up. It would be months before they would willingly come out as a twosome. As soon as these photos surfaced, Justin's fans took to twitter to send his ladylove some hateful messages. One wrote, "Roses are red, violets are blue, @selenagomez if you'll break @justinbieber's heart I'm
gonna kill you :3".





Justin and Selena made sure their first official appearance as a couple was done in style. At the Vanity Fair Oscar Party on Feb. 27, 2011, the couple coordinated their outfits and lovingly posed together on the red carpet.

After the Academy Awards, these two continued their romance with cute dates like to the Santa Monica Pier.

Never ones to stay still for too long, Justin and Selena hit the road for a PDA-filled vacation in Hawaii on May 26, 2011.

Their vacation included a lot of time hitting the beach together and, of course, lots of handholding.

Adapted from MSN

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NASA Probe Circling Moon on 2012 Eve

(PASADENA, Calif.) — As planet Earth rang in the new year, a different kind of countdown was happening at the moon.

After a 3 ½-month journey, a NASA spacecraft flew over the moon's south pole, fired its engine and dropped into orbit Saturday in the first of two back-to-back arrivals over the New Year's weekend.

NASA probe circling the moon on New Year's Eve

Mission control at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory erupted in cheers and applause after receiving confirmation that the probe was healthy and circling the moon. An engineer was seen on closed-circuit television blowing a noisemaker to herald the New Year's Eve arrival.

"Everything went just as we hoped. The burn was spot-on," chief scientist Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said in a post-mission interview with The Associated Press.

The team toasted sparkling cider, but the celebration was brief. Despite the successful maneuver, the work was not over. Its twin still had to enter lunar orbit on New Year's Day.

The Grail probes — short for Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory — have been cruising independently toward their destination since launching in September aboard the same rocket on a mission to measure lunar gravity.

Hours before revelers in Times Square watched the ball drop, Grail-A approached the moon and fired its engine for about 40 minutes to get captured into orbit. Deep space antennas in the California desert and Madrid tracked every move and fed real-time updates to ground controllers. About 270 family members and friends of the mission team descended on the NASA campus to watch the drama unfold on a live feed.

"This is great, a big relief," deputy project scientist Sami Asmar told the jubilant crowd.

Grail is the 110th mission to target the moon since the dawn of the Space Age including the six Apollo moon landings that put 12 astronauts on the surface. Despite the attention the moon has received, scientists don't know everything about Earth's nearest neighbor.

Why the moon is ever so slightly lopsided with the far side more mountainous than the side that always faces Earth remains a mystery. A theory put forth earlier this year suggested that Earth once had two moons that collided early in the solar system's history, producing the hummocky region.

Grail is expected to help researchers better understand why the moon is asymmetrical and how it formed by mapping the uneven lunar gravity field that will indicate what's below the surface.

Previous lunar missions have attempted to study the moon's gravity — which is about one-sixth Earth's pull — with mixed results. Grail is the first mission devoted to this goal.

Once in orbit, the near-identical spacecraft will spend the next two months refining their positions until they are just 34 miles above the surface and flying in formation. Data collection will begin in March.

The $496 million mission will be closely watched by schoolchildren. An effort by Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, will allow middle school students to use cameras aboard the probes to zoom in and pick out their favorite lunar spots to photograph.

Despite the latest focus on the moon, NASA won't be sending astronauts back anytime soon. The Obama administration last year nixed a lunar return in favor of landing humans on an asteroid and eventually Mars.

A jaunt to the moon is usually speedy. It took the Apollo astronauts three days to zip there aboard the powerful Saturn V rocket. Since NASA wanted to economize by launching on a small rocket, it took Grail a leisurely 3 1/2 months to make a roundabout trip.

NASA's last moonshot occurred in 2009 with the launch of a pair of spacecraft — one that circled the moon and another that deliberately crashed into the surface and uncovered frozen water in one of the permanently shadowed lunar craters.

Adapted from TIME

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Facebook Could Be Route to New Kidney

SEATTLE — Here's another reason for holdouts to join the social media site Facebook: It's a great place to find a kidney.

Between the kid photos and reminiscences about high school, more and more pleas for help from people with failing kidneys are popping up. Facebook and other social media sites are quickly becoming a go-to place to find a generous person with a kidney to spare, according to the people asking for help and some national organizations that facilitate matches.

Damon Brown found a kidney on Facebook after telling his story on a special page the Seattle dad created under the name, "Damon Kidney." His friends and family forwarded the link to everyone they knew and on Jan. 3 a woman his wife has known for years, but not someone they consider a close family friend, will be giving him a kidney. "She said it wasn't really for me. It was for my kids, because they deserve to have a dad around," said Brown, 38.

Brown's story is not unique, said April Paschke, a spokeswoman for the United Network for Organ Sharing, a private nonprofit organization that manages the nation's organ transplant system for the federal government.

"We see more and more people matched up by social media," she said. "It's an extension of the way we communicate. Before we found the Internet, people found other ways: through a church bulletin, word of mouth or an advertisement even."

This past year, a man in Michigan also found a kidney donor through Facebook, and a Florida woman found one through Craigslist.

Damon Brown admits he was a little embarrassed to ask for help so publicly. Except for telling close friends and family, the Seattle father of two young boys had been keeping his illness pretty quiet.

He was on the official transplant list and had started mobile dialysis through Northwest Kidney Centers but Brown was seeing his health deteriorate — he was constantly tired and achy. He couldn't sit on the bed to tell bedtime stories to 5-year-old Julian and 3-year-old Theo because he had to stay close to his dialysis machine.

"I'm a strong guy, but I would have to say, it's been rough this year," he said. Brown had put himself on the long wait list for a kidney from a deceased donor, knowing he would have to wait at least three years before he was called.

After one particularly difficult visit with his doctor, Damon and his wife, Bethany, decided to create the Facebook page, which has attracted more than 1,400 friends.

A few weeks ago, after the transplant was approved and scheduled, Brown posted the good news to his Facebook friends. More than 300 people responded: "Whoo hoo....what a great Christmas present," wrote Kelly L. Hallissey. "This is awesome!! Praying for you and your family for positive news and a great way to begin 2012!" wrote Brenda Tomtan.

Many people are not aware that kidney and liver donations can now come from living donors.

In 2010, 16,800 kidney transplants were performed in the United States, of which 6,277 came from living donors, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. An average of 46 kidney transplants take place each day in this country, while another 13 people who have been waiting for a kidney die each day. About 90,000 are on the transplant list right now.

Jacqueline Ryall, 45, said she felt a need to donate a kidney to Brown to give back her own good health and all she has been given. She's not a mom and gushed about how beautiful Damon and Bethany's kids are.

"The real reason I'm doing this is he's got kids and he's a good guy," she said. "My life is in a good place. I've been given lots and I have a responsibility to give back."

Ryall said her elderly mother does not understand why she would give a kidney to someone other than her own brother and sister, and her family is worried about her health going forward.

After her own research, however, Ryall decided it's relatively safe for a woman in good health to donate a kidney. If something is going to go wrong with her own kidneys, she has heard they usually fail in twos.

"Right now it feels like absolutely the right thing to do," she said, adding that she hopes her decision will help make other people less afraid to do the same thing.

News media coverage of his quest flooded his hospital with so many requests for information — from total strangers — that Brown said he was asked to pull back on his publicity efforts. Four people passed the initial screening and came in for tests. Now that he sees a happy ending coming for himself, Brown would like to do whatever he can to help others.

April Capone, the previous mayor of East Haven, Conn., knows what Brown means about the attraction of happy endings.

Two years ago, she was sitting in her office checking her Facebook feed, when a post from one of her constituents popped up saying he needed a kidney.

"At that moment, Carlos was at Mayo, testing to get on the transplant list," said Capone, 36. "He really didn't tell anyone he was sick. The doctor said, 'if you don't do it, no one is going to know'." So Carlos Sanchez pulled out his cell phone and posted the request and Capone responded immediately.

"I knew from the second I saw his post that I was going to be a donor," said Capone, who barely knew Sanchez at the time. Now they're as close as siblings, talk on the phone almost daily and meet for lunch regularly.

Capone said she had no personal reason for donating a kidney; she just want to save a life.

"It was the best thing I ever did with my life," she said. "I wish I had more; I would do it again."

Adapted from TIME

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