GANARON $180 MILLONES EN EL JACKPOT!!!

Minn. Couple Claim $180M Jackpot
WASECA, Minn. (UPI) -- A Minnesota couple who won a $180 million Powerball jackpot still sounded stunned days after learning of their good fortune.

"It's bigger than you can grasp," Sue Rosenau of Waseca said at a news conference at Minnesota lottery headquarters in Roseville Tuesday. Her husband Paul called their beating the 146,107,962 to one odds in the Saturday night drawing "divine intervention," the Star Tribune reported Wednesday. "This happened for a reason," he said.

The 54-year-old couple, married for 22 years with three grown children, are taking their winnings in one lump sum of $88 million -- $59.6 million after taxes, the Minneapolis newspaper said. Still, they said, they plan to keep on working their regular jobs -- his operating heavy equipment and hers as a project and communications assistant.

Part of the money will likely go to research for a cure for Krabbe disease, a genetic affliction that claimed the life of their first granddaughter, they said.

Dale Deraad, a close friend and accountant, called them "very wonderful people" who "are going to do great things."

Copyright 2008 by United Press International

WEDDING PLANNER IS ILLEGAL ALIEN

'Wedding planner' gets Prison for Fraud
PAISLEY, Scotland (UPI) -- A Gambian man who appeared so often at Scottish registry offices he was nicknamed "the wedding planner" was ordered to prison Wednesday for immigration fraud.

Lamin Manneh received a two-year prison term, The Scotsman reports. But immigration officials say they will try to have him deported as soon as possible.

Manneh was arrested after investigators probing fake marriages began wondering why so many women from Paisley, a former industrial center outside Glasgow, were becoming involved with men from Nigeria, Gambia and Ghana. He allegedly was involved in 107 phony marriages.

Jonathan Manson, representing Manneh, said he actually played a minor role, transporting the men from England, where he lived, to Scotland for their wedding ceremonies at registry offices. But he became so familiar that he got his nickname.

In at least one case, Manneh also served as a witness, giving his own name.

While Manneh received 500 pounds ($1,000) per trip, he had to pay for transportation and housing out of that money, Manson said.

Copyright 2008 by United Press International

IN MARRIAGE, DOES AGE REALLY COUNT?

Age Gaps with Brides Grow as Grooms Age

STANFORD, Calif. (UPI) -- Stanford University researchers in California say wealth may have a smaller impact on older men marrying younger woman than previously thought.

The researchers said their study suggests the older an over-40 groom is, the more likely it is that his bride is significantly younger, the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News reported Wednesday.

The team said they were shocked to find the pattern unchanged by economic status.

"The poor guys marry down (in age) just as much as the rich guys do," said Paula England, a Stanford sociologist who co-authored the study. "That was kind of surprising to us."

England said brides of men in their 40s tended to be an average 7 years younger than their husbands, while women marrying men in their 50s were an average 11 years younger and brides of men in their 60s averaged 13 years younger than their beaus.

"We do find that money helps men's chances of getting married," England said. "But if we take youth as our crude measure of beauty, it doesn't seem like men are being able to exchange their money for younger women, so we don't know what's differentiating which older guys are able to marry very young women."

Copyright 2008 by United Press International

DID HE REALLY THINK HE WOULD GET AWAY WITH IT?

Man accused of bigamy after wives connect
CARY, N.C. (UPI) -- A North Carolina man who allegedly had two wives in towns about 15 miles apart is facing a bigamy charge after his double life caught up with him.

Dawn Stone-Wilkins, 32, who married Keron Wilkins, 30, of Clayton several months ago, told NBC17 in Raleigh she had begun to wonder why her husband would disappear for days at a time.

Then she got a late-night telephone call: "I said 'How did you get my number?' and she said 'Well I got it out of his phone.' I said, 'Excuse me?' She said, 'Well he's in the other room in our bed asleep, and I'm in our daughter's room.' I said, 'Excuse me?' She said, 'And I'm Keron's wife.' And I said, 'Well how are you Keron's wife when I'm Keron's wife?'"

Stone-Wilkins said she and Keron lived in Cary, a town about 10 miles outside Raleigh and 15 miles from Clayton. Chaka Wilkins has been married to Keron for eight years and have two children, ages 4 and 8 months, the TV station reported.

According to an arrest warrant filed Tuesday in Wake County Magistrate Court, Keron Wilkins is charged with one felony count of bigamy.

Copyright 2008 by United Press International

SAYING NO TO PLASTIC BAGS

LOS ANGLES (AFP) - The city of Los Angeles announced it will ban all plastic bags from retail stores as of July 1, 2010, following similar anti-pollution regulations already enforced in San Francisco.
The second-largest US city behind New York, Los Angeles, with its four million population, will ban plastic bagging in all supermarkets, grocery and retail stores, the Los Angeles City Council said in its new regulation.
After July 1, 2010, all store customers must provide their own bags or purchase bags made of paper or other biogradable material from the store for 25 cents (0.25 dollar), it added.
The goal is to rid the city of some 2.3 billion non-biodegradable plastic bags that are distributed each year and end up polluting waste dumps for a long time.
San Francisco, 600 kilometers (373 miles) north of here, also in California, in 2007 became the first US city to ban plastic bags from its stores.
Both city regulations are intended to pressure state lawmakers who are considering a bill to eliminate plastic bags across the state by 2012.
Several countries around the world have already adopted laws banning plastic bags, which often end up killing animals that swallow or get caught up in them.

DOCTORES Y EL RACISMO

Doctors may have subconscious racial bias
SEATTLE (UPI) -- A sophisticated cognitive test suggests that U.S. physicians -- like society at large -- have subconscious racial attitudes and stereotypes, researchers say. The study, published in the journal Medical Care, suggests that pediatricians have less "implicit race bias" than physicians in other specialties and the general public and that there was no relationship between subconscious bias and quality of care. "Further research is needed to explore whether physician implicit attitudes and stereotypes about race predict quality of care," Janice A. Sabin and colleagues of University of Washington said in a statement. Ninety-five pediatricians took an Internet survey called the Race Attitude Implicit Association that measures subconscious attitudes and stereotypes based on how quickly the user makes connections between race and certain "good" versus "bad" concepts. Previous research in more than 1 million Internet users suggest that most people have some degree of "implicit preference" for whites relative to blacks -- despite a lack of conscious, or explicit, bias or prejudice. The pediatricians expressed an explicit attitude in favor of African-Americans, however, in addition to their implicit preference for whites, they held a subconscious bias that white patients would be more compliant with medical treatment, the researchers said.

Copyright 2008 by United Press International

LOS ROBOTS HAN LLEGAN A LA VECINIDAD

Robot patrols Atlanta neighborhood
ATLANTA (UPI) -- A downtown Atlanta bar owner has constructed a remote-controlled robot to patrol the neighborhood around his business late at night. Rufus Terrill, proprietor of O'Terrills bar, built the machine out of an old meat smoker, a three-wheeled scooter, an infrared camera, a water cannon and a loudspeaker, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Terrill said he got the idea for the remote-controlled vigilante after he became fed up with the drug dealers, thieves and vandals that he said frequent his neighborhood. He said he sends his robot to patrol the area surrounding a nearby daycare center, and uses the attached loudspeaker to address loiterers. "I tell them they are trespassing, it's private property, and they have to leave," he said. "They throw bottles and cans at it. That's when I shoot the water cannon. They just scatter like roaches." He said the water cannon is set to low pressure so as not to cause injury to those in its path. Police spokeswoman Lisa Keyes said the robot has not yet been the subject of any complaints, but she warned that Terrill could be charged with assault if he intentionally sprays someone with the machine's water cannon.

Copyright 2008 by United Press International