10 Offbeat Stories You Might Have Missed This Week (5/11/19)

It is time, yet again, to look at some of the more unusual or unique stories that made their way through the news cycle over the last several days. Click here to check out last week’s offbeat list.This week’s list is feeling a bit intoxicated, as it has stories on beer, meth, and psychoactive drugs. There are also a few bizarre crimes to talk about, including a man who tried to deport his wife and a woman caught trespassing in search of “Agent Penis.”

10Will Japan Run Out Of Beer?

For the first time, Japan will be hosting the Rugby World Cup. Local businesses are only now finding out something that might become a problem later on: Rugby fans drink a lot of beer.The organizing committee for the 2019 Rugby World Cup had a planning meeting with Japanese business operators in which they raised concerns that Japanese bars and hotels will be unable to cope with the huge demands for beer from the approximately 400,000 international visitors expected to show up between September and November. This would cause bad publicity, upset traveling fans, and cost local venues substantial business.The committee informed them that, during the previous world cup hosted in England, beer consumption at the games was six times more than at football matches in the same venues.One prefecture has already taken measures by asking brewers to increase their supply and local bars to extend their opening hours. However, officials still say that, following the briefing from the rugby committee, a beer shortage is “a realistic problem.”[1]

9G.I. Joe Versus The Volcano

Last Wednesday, a man fell 21 meters (70 ft) into the most dangerous volcano in the United States and survived.The 32-year-old was a soldier deployed on a training mission on Hawaii’s Big Island. In his spare time, he decided to visit Kilauea in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. He was part of a group that stopped at the Steaming Bluff overlook when the man decided to take a closer look down into Halema’uma’u Crater.There was a safety railing in place, but the tourist decided to climb over it.[2] The ground gave way under him, and he fell down a 90-meter (300 ft) cliff to his certain doom. However, it seems that Madame Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire who lives inside the crater, was feeling benevolent that day. Instead of plummeting all the way to the bottom, the man landed on a ledge.He was rescued a few hours later. He was seriously injured and was airlifted to a medical center. Since then, his condition has been upgraded from critical to stable.

8Take My Wife, Please

A man from Portland, Oregon, received four months in federal prison for trying to bribe an immigration agent to deport his wife.Last May, 48-year-old Antonio Burgos met up with an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in a parking lot in Vancouver, Washington. He then offered the agent $3,000 to deport the wife he was divorcing back to El Salvador, where the couple met.[3]The officer reported the incident and set up a sting operation. He recorded two phone calls in which Burgos repeated his proposition. During a face-to-face meeting, the man upped his offer to $4,000 if the agent would also deport his stepdaughter.Burgos was arrested and pleaded guilty to one count of bribery of a public official in November. He was sentenced this Monday.

7How To Party Shaman-Style

Photo credit: Jose Capriles, Penn State
A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences presented the analysis of a 1,000-year-old pouch thought to have belonged to a shaman. Unsurprisingly, it revealed that people back then liked to get really wasted.Anthropologists found the pouch back in 2009 in a rock shelter known as Cueva de Chileno in Bolivia’s Lipez Highlands. It was made out of three fox snouts stitched together and contained traces of multiple psychoactive substances. Scholars believe it could represent the earliest known evidence of ayahuasca, an entheogenic brew used by shamans in spiritual ceremonies.A chemical analysis revealed the presence of dimethyltryptamine (DMT), benzoylecgonine (BZE), bufotenin, cocaine, and possibly psilocin.[4] Also at the site were other items, such as a headband, a snuffing tube, two snuffing tablets, two bone spatulas, and an anthropomorphic figurine. Researchers believe all of them were used in a burial ceremony, as Cueva de Chileno was once a burial site.

6Agent Penis Reporting For Duty

A woman was arrested for trespassing at the CIA headquarters in Virginia and demanding to speak with “Agent Penis.”On May 3, Jennifer Hernandez approached a security officer at the CIA’s visitor center. She wanted two things: to get back her North Carolina ID card and to speak with Agent Penis.A quick check of their records revealed to CIA officials that Hernandez had made multiple appearances over the last few weeks. Each time, she said she was there to talk with her recruiter regarding a job at the CIA. This wasn’t true, so she was told to leave because she was trespassing. The last time this happened, security officers accidentally kept her ID card after officially citing her.Hernandez received her ID back. Agent Penis, however, was unavailable. Other officers escorted her to the bus stop to make sure that she left the premises.[5] When the bus arrived, however, she refused to depart, even when told that she would be arrested otherwise. In the end, she was charged with remaining on an Agency installation after being ordered to leave.

5Across The Atlantic In A Barrel

Photo credit: AFP
People on the tiny Dutch island of St. Eustatius were surprised this week to see an oil tanker with a unique payload. It was carrying a giant, orange barrel with a 72-year-old French ex-paratrooper inside.Back in December, we talked about Jean-Jacques Savin and his plan to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a barrel. He set off....

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Illegal Alien Siblings plead guilty in murder case in Michigan

SANDUSKY, MI – In the midst of their trial, two Sanilac County siblings opted to plead guilty in the case of a woman slain in Michigan’s Thumb.

Leobardo Torres-Castillo, 22, and Francisca Vargas-Castillo, 34, on May 2 appeared in Sanilac County Circuit Court and pleaded guilty to tampering with evidence and concealing the death of an individual. Vargas-Castillo also pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, while her brother pleaded guilty to assault with intent to do great bodily harm less than murder.

The siblings pleaded on the third day of their trial. Both defendants are Mexican nationals in the U.S. illegally.

The charges stem from the death of 42-year-old Bricia Flores-Rivera, who was also from Mexico and in the country illegally.

In the early morning of Sept. 1, Sanilac County Sheriff’s deputies responded to the 3900 block of Aitken Road in Flynn Township after a man reported Flores-Rivera, his girlfriend, was missing and that he found blood in their residence.

Suspects, victim in Sanilac County homicide are undocumented immigrants

The victim and her alleged killers worked on a Sanilac County dairy farm.

The Michigan State Police Crime Lab was called in to assist at the scene as well as at a vehicle located later that morning in Marlette from leads developed by investigators.

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Morning Mistress

The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #618

You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside? 

It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific, 

from the beautiful to the repugnant, 

from the mysterious to the familiar.

If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed, 

you could be inspired, you could be appalled. 

This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended. 

You have been warned.

Hot Pick of The Late Night

Mark Meadows: FBI ‘Well Aware the Dossier Was a Lie’ Before Moving to Spy on Trump Campaign

A newly-uncovered document suggests that the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ), including the FBI, was “well aware” that foreign agent Christopher Steele was trying to interfere in the 2016 presidential election with disinformation — and yet still used his materials to spy on American citizens and the Trump campaign, according to Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC).

“[O]fficials at the FBI and (Department of Justice) DOJ were well aware the dossier was a lie — from very early on in the process all the way to when they made the conscious decision to include it in a FISA application,” Meadows said Tuesday in a statement to The Hill’s John Solomon. “The fact that Christopher Steele and his partisan research document were treated in any way seriously by our Intelligence Community leaders amounts to malpractice.”

Meadows’ statement came in response to a federal document recently unveiled by a Citizens United lawsuit — an email from Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec, who met with Steele in October 2016 and recounted his desire to spread the lurid allegations of his since-debunked dossier on then-candidate Donald Trump. Solomon wrote on Tuesday:

Kavalec’s written account of her Oct. 11, 2016, meeting with FBI informant Christopher Steele shows the Hillary Clinton campaign-funded British intelligence operative admitted that his research was political and facing an Election Day deadline.

And that confession occurred 10 days before the FBI used Steele’s now-discredited dossier to justify securing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and the campaign’s ties to Russia.

Steele’s client “is keen to see this information come to light prior to November 8,” the date of the 2016 election, Kavalec wrote in a typed summary of her meeting with Steele and Tatyana Duran, a colleague from Steele’s Orbis Security firm. The memos were unearthed a few days ago through open-records litigation by the conservative group Citizens United. [emphasis added]

Solomon followed up on that report Thursday with another detail from the document — which FBI Director Christopher Wray has redacted all but three sentences of until the end of 2041. He writes that her memo makes it clear Steele “was political, inaccurate, spinning wild theories, and talking to the media,” even getting basic facts wrong about Russia’s diplomatic presence in the U.S.:

[T]he FBI swore on Oct. 21, 2016, to the FISA judges that Steele’s “reporting has been corroborated and used in criminal proceedings” and the FBI has determined him to be “reliable”… [Yet Kavalec] quoted Steele as saying, “Payments to those recruited are made out of the Russian Consulate in Miami,” according to a copy of her summary memo obtained under open records litigation by the conservative group Citizens United. Kavalec bluntly debunked that assertion in a bracketed comment: “It is important to note that there is no Russian consulate in Miami.”

Kavalec alerted federal officials to these plans by Steele, a foreign national, to interfere with the presidential election, ten days before the FBI applied in a FISA court for a warrant to surveil the Trump campaign.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) told Solomon that the DOJ hid Kavalec’s email from the House Intelligence Committee during its investigation of 2016 foreign election interference.

This memo is the latest piece of evidence suggesting the FBI spied on American citizens for partisan political purposes.

Bruce Ohr — a career DOJ official whose wife worked for Fusion GPS, the firm that hired Steele — has testified that he told the FBI Steele was politically biased against Trump and...

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Two stunning revelations on Russia hoax investigation yesterday from DC superlawyers Victoria Toensing and Joe DiGenova

Washington, DC superlawyers Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing have consistently been ahead of the news on the course of the unfolding scandal of spying on the Trump campaign and administration. Appearing last night on Lou Dobbs’s Fox Business Network show, the 2 law and marriage partners revealed that DoJ Inspector General has already concluded that the last 3 of four FISA warrants were illegally obtained.

Moreover, with the revelation from John Solomon that that “Newly unearthed memos show a high-ranking government official who met with Steele in October 2016 determined some of the Donald Trump dirt that Steele was simultaneously digging up for the FBI and for Hillary Clinton’s campaign was inaccurate, and likely leaked to the media,” Horowizt is re-opening the investigation into the legitimacy of the first of four FISA applications.

Watch:

Joe Digenova shared the conclusion of the OIG report on FISA abuse today on @LouDobbs - because of the recently uncovered information from the FOIA release and John Solomon today, he is now having to add and investigate that. Thanks for the clip @detachedaz pic.twitter.com/e8ihB4h2Wr

— Tracybeanz (@tracybeanz) May 10, 2019

Make no mistake: this means that crimes were committed and criminal referrals from the IG are coming. Those who signed the applications – a group that includes James Comey and Rod Rosenstein – face potential criminal prosecution.

The second revelation from the duo is, if anything, even more shocking: he FBI attempted to set-up a sting on George Papadopoulos by offering him $10,000 in cash – which he left on the hotel room bed where it was offered to him. The trap this represented was fully revealed when Papadopoulos returned to the USA and customs agents unsuccessfully searched for the $10,000. One of them told Papadopoulos “This is what happens when you work for Donald Trump.” They make the point that the rot at the FBI is not confined to a few appointees at the top. A large number of lower-ranked officials were involved in these stings and...