Husband killed wife, cooked her on stove, police allege

A strange portrait was emerging of a 68-year-old Oceanside man accused of killing his 73-year-old wife, then cooking her body parts on their kitchen stove.

Frederick Joseph Hengl was seen by neighbors dressed in women's clothes and wearing makeup, according to neighbors.

They said they saw Hengl outside wearing a purple dress, pink makeup and various articles of jewelry, including a pearl necklace. The neighbors told Fox 5 News that his wife was once seen roaming outside with a knife making religious comments like “God will smite you.”

Hengl pleaded not guilty this week in court.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Katherine Flaherty told Vista Superior Court Judge
J. Marshall Hockett that police found pieces of meat cooking on the
stove at the family home and a severed head in the freezer.

Hockett ordered Frederick Joseph Hengl kept in jail on $5-million bail.

Police are unclear when Hengl's wife, Anna Faris, was killed. They
went to the couple's home after neighbors reported a strange smell and
hearing the sound of a power saw.

Several
people who live in the neighborhood said Anna-Maria Hengl had been
behaving bizarrely since last spring, exposing herself, wandering around
carrying a butcher knife and making religious pronouncements, telling
people such things as, “God will smite you.”

Her husband, meanwhile, had been going out dressed in women’s clothing, makeup and jewelry, area residents told news crews.

One neighbor said the one-time Home Depot employee, who had sold her a
ceiling fan, would sometimes wear blouses and makeup, including “hot
pink” lipstick. Another said he saw Frederick Hengl last summer clad in a
floor- length purple dress, pearl necklace and pearl earrings, carrying
an ornate purse.

Read more: http://fox5sandiego.com/2012/11/19/dismembered-womans-husband-to-face-judge/#ixzz2DLS2FbXM

Several people who live in the neighborhood said Anna-Maria Hengl had
been behaving bizarrely since last spring, exposing herself, wandering
around carrying a butcher knife and making religious pronouncements,
telling people such things as, “God will smite you.”

Her husband, meanwhile, had been going out dressed in women’s clothing, makeup and jewelry, area residents told news crews.

One neighbor said the one-time Home Depot employee, who had sold her a
ceiling fan, would sometimes wear blouses and makeup, including “hot
pink” lipstick. Another said he saw Frederick Hengl last summer clad in a
floor- length purple dress, pearl necklace and pearl earrings, carrying
an ornate purse.

Read more: http://fox5sandiego.com/2012/11/19/dismembered-womans-husband-to-face-judge/#ixzz2DLRAPQk6

 Flaherty told reporters that, "“There is no evidence of cannibalism at this time."

ALSO:

LAX union protesters arrested; delays anger travelers

Mitt Romney loses election, but still goes to Disneyland

Black family flees O.C. city after tires slashed, racial taunts

 -- Tony Perry in San Diego

Read More..

Bangladesh Fire Kills More Than 100 and Injures Many

MUMBAI — More than 100 people died Saturday and Sunday in a fire at a garment factory outside Dhaka, Bangladesh, in one of the worst industrial tragedies in that country.

It took firefighters all night to put out the blaze at the factory, Tazreen Fashions, after it started Saturday around 7 p.m., a retired fire official said by telephone from Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital. At least 111 people were killed and scores of workers were taken to hospitals with burns and smoke inhalation injuries.

“The main difficulty was to put out the fire; the sufficient approach road was not there,” said the retired official, Salim Nawaj Bhuiyan, who now runs a fire safety company in Dhaka. “The fire service had to take great trouble to approach the factory.”

Bangladesh’s garment industry, the second largest exporter of clothing after China, has a notoriously poor record of fire safety. Since 2006, more than 500 Bangladeshi workers have died in garment factory fires, according to Clean Clothes Campaign, an anti-sweatshop advocacy group based in Amsterdam. Experts say many of the fires could have been easily avoided if the factories had taken the right precautions. Many factories are in cramped neighborhoods, have too few fire escapes and widely flout safety measures. The industry employs more than three million workers in Bangladesh, mostly women.

Activists say that global clothing brands like Wal-Mart, Tommy Hilfiger and the Gap need to take responsibility for working conditions in Bangladeshi factories that produce the clothes that they sell.

“These brands have known for years that many of the factories they choose to work with are death traps,” Ineke Zeldenrust, the international coordinator for Clean Clothes Campaign, said in a statement. “Their failure to take action amounts to criminal negligence.”

The fire at the Tazreen factory in Savar, northwest of Dhaka, started in a warehouse on the ground floor used to store yarn and quickly spread up the building, which was nine stories high with the top three floors under construction, according to an garment industry official at the scene who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media. Though most workers had left for the day when the fire started, the industry official said as many as 600 workers were still inside, working overtime.

The factory, which started operations in May 2010, employed about 1,500 workers and had sales of $35 million a year, according to a document on the company’s Web site. It made T-shirts, polo shirts and fleece jackets.

Most of the workers who died were on the first and second floors and were killed, fire officials said, because there were not enough exits for them to get out and none that opened to the outside.

“The factory had three staircases, and all of them were down through the ground floor,” said Maj. Mohammad Mahbub, the operations director for the fire department, according to The Associated Press. “So the workers could not come out when the fire engulfed the building.”

In a telephone interview later on Sunday, Major Mahbub said the fire could have been caused by an electrical fault or by a spark from a cigarette.

In a brief phone call, Delowar Hossain, the managing director of the Tuba Group, the parent company of Tarzeen Fashions, said he was too busy to comment. “Pray for me,” he said and then hung up.

Television news reports showed badly burned bodies lined up on the floor in what appeared to be a government building and showed the injured receiving treatment in hallways of local hospitals.

The industry official said that many of the bodies were burned beyond recognition and that it would take some time to identify them.

One survivor, Mohammad Raju, 22, who worked on the fifth floor, said he escaped by climbing out of a third-floor window onto the bamboo scaffolding that was being used by construction workers. But he said he lost his mother, who also worked on the fifth floor, when they were making their way down.

“It was crowded on the stairs as all the workers were trying to come out from the factory,” Mr. Raju said. “There was no power supply, it was dark and I lost my mother in dark. I tried to search for her for 10 to 15 minutes but did not find her.”

A document posted on Tarzeen Fashions’ Web site appeared to show that an “ethical sourcing” official for Walmart flagged “violations and/or conditions which were deemed to be high risk” at the factory in May 2011, though it did not specify the nature of the infractions. The notice said that the factory had been given an “orange” grade and that any factories given three such assessments in two years from their last audit would not receive any orders from Walmart for one year.

It was unclear whether Walmart had suspended the company or was still buying clothes from it. The Web sites of Tuba Group lists the retailer and others like Carrefour, the French retail chain, as customers. A spokesman for Walmart, Kevin Gardner, said the company was “so far unable to confirm that Tazreen is supplier to Walmart nor if the document referenced in the article is in fact from Walmart.”

Bangladesh exports about $18 billion worth of garments and is a big supplier to American, European and Japanese brands. Employees in the country’s factories are among the lowest-paid in the world with entry-level workers making a government-mandated minimum wage of about $37 a month.

Tensions have been running high between workers, who have been demanding an increase in minimum wages, and factory owners and the government. Earlier this year, a union organizer, Aminul Islam, who campaigned for better working conditions and higher wages, was found tortured and killed outside Dhaka.

Fire safety remains weak across much of the region. In September, nearly 300 workers were killed in a fire at a textile factory in Karachi, Pakistan, just weeks before it passed an inspection that covered several issues including health and safety.

Julfikar Ali Manik contributed reporting from Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Stephanie Clifford from New York.

Read More..

Vanessa Hudgens's Pre-Thanksgiving Spin in New York

Caught in the Act

11/25/2012 at 12:45 PM EST

Just ride!

Vanessa Hudgens burned some calories on Thanksgiving with a SoulCycle spinning class in New York's Union Square neighborhood.

"She was in the middle front row in cropped yoga pants, a pink tank top and a black sports bra," an onlooker tells PEOPLE. 

Although she was "on her iPhone until the class started," once things got underway, she was "really bouncy and dancing to the music."

"She had a big smile on her face," the source adds.

– Shakthi Jothianandan

Read More..

AP PHOTOS: Simple surgery heals blind Indonesians

PADANG SIDEMPUAN, Indonesia (AP) — They came from the remotest parts of Indonesia, taking crowded overnight ferries and riding for hours in cars or buses — all in the hope that a simple, and free, surgical procedure would restore their eyesight.

Many patients were elderly and needed help to reach two hospitals in Sumatra where mass eye camps were held earlier this month by Nepalese surgeon Dr. Sanduk Ruit. During eight days, more than 1,400 cataracts were removed.

The patients camped out, sleeping side-by-side on military cots, eating donated food while fire trucks supplied water for showers and toilets. Many who had given up hope of seeing again left smiling after their bandages were removed.

"I've been blind for three years, and it's really bad," said Arlita Tobing, 65, whose sight was restored after the surgery. "I worked on someone's farm, but I couldn't work anymore."

Indonesia has one of the highest rates of blindness in the world, making it a target country for Ruit who travels throughout the developing world holding free mass eye camps while training doctors to perform the simple, stitch-free procedure he pioneered. He often visits hard-to-reach remote areas where health care is scarce and patients are poor. He believes that by teaching doctors how to perform his method of cataract removal, the rate of blindness can be reduced worldwide.

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness globally, affecting about 20 million people who mostly live in poor countries, according to the World Health Organization.

"We get only one life, and that life is very short. I am blessed by God to have this opportunity," said Ruit, who runs the Tilganga Eye Center in Katmandu, Nepal. "The most important of that is training, taking the idea to other people."

During the recent camps, Ruit trained six doctors from Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore.

Here, in images, are scenes from the mobile eye camps:

Read More..

Big fight over Victoria's Secret underwear caught on tape

Shopper Lawrence Corpus used his cellphone camera to catch a Black Friday brawl over women's underwear at the Roseville Galleria outside Sacramento.

Corpus pulled out his cellphone as two women started throwing punches at each other. And as the camera
continued to record, the fight spread to three men. The video shows
Black Friday shoppers  scrambling out of the way as the
men crash into a barrier set up around an amusement area at the
Galleria.

PHOTOS: Black Friday shopping in Southern California

Fox 40 reported that the fight apparently started over a sale at a nearby Victoria's Secret shop.

“I’ve been in the retail business six years now, and I’ve never see a Black Friday this bad,” said Jessica Wilbourn of Victoria's Secret.

Wilbourn said
soon after the doors opened, customers went crazy, climbing up
on the “panty bar,” throwing clothes and boxes, pushing and shoving and
trampling one another. She said one girl got hit in the head with a box
and another got punched in the stomach.

— Fox 40.

Read More..

Swallowing Rain Forest, Brazilian Cities Surge in Amazon

Lalo de Almeida for The New York Times

The torrid growth is visible in places like Parauapebas. On the outskirts, slums stretch to the horizon and houses continue to go up. More Photos »

PARAUAPEBAS, Brazil — The Amazon has been viewed for ages as a vast quilt of rain forest interspersed by remote river outposts. But the surging population growth of cities in the jungle is turning that rural vision on its head and alarming scientists, as an array of new industrial projects transforms the Amazon into Brazil’s fastest-growing region.

The torrid expansion of rain forest cities is visible in places like Parauapebas, which has changed in a generation from an obscure frontier settlement with gold miners and gunfights to a sprawling urban area with an air-conditioned shopping mall, gated communities and a dealership selling Chevy pickup trucks.

Scientists are studying such developments and focusing on the demands on the resources of the Amazon, the world’s largest remaining area of tropical forest. Though Brazilian officials have historically viewed the colonization of the Amazon as a matter of national security — military rulers built roads to the forest under the slogan “Occupy it to avoid surrendering it” — deforestation in the region already ranks among the largest contributors to global greenhouse-gas emissions.

Brazil has shifted away from colonization, but policies that regularize land claims by squatters still lure migrants to the Amazon. And while the country has recently made progress in curbing deforestation, largely by enforcing logging laws and carving out protected forest areas, biologists and other climate researchers fear that the sharp increase in migration to cities in the Amazon, which now has a population approaching 25 million, could erode those gains.

“More population leads to more deforestation,” said Philip M. Fearnside, a researcher at the National Institute for Amazon Research in Manaus, an Amazonian city that registered by far the fastest growth of Brazil’s 10 largest cities from 2000 to 2010. The number of residents grew 22 percent to 1.7 million, according to government statistics.

Of the 19 Brazilian cities that the latest census indicates have doubled in population over the past decade, 10 are in the Amazon. Altogether, the region’s population climbed 23 percent from 2000 to 2010, while Brazil as a whole grew just 12 percent.

Various factors are fueling this growth, among them larger family sizes and the Amazon’s high levels of poverty in comparison with other regions that draw people to the cities for work. While Brazil’s birthrate has fallen to 1.86 children per woman, one of the lowest in Latin America, the Amazon has Brazil’s highest rate, at 2.42.

Then there is the region’s economic allure.

Sinop, a city of 111,000 people in Mato Grosso State, grew about 50 percent in the past decade as soybean farmers expanded operations there. Fiscal incentives for manufacturing promote growth in Manaus and satellite towns like Manacapuru and Rio Preto da Eva. Logging still provides the lifeblood for growing towns along BR-163, an important Amazon highway now being paved.

Elsewhere in the Amazon, the biggest linchpins for the fast-growing cities are major energy and industrial projects. The construction of dozens of hydroelectric projects, including sprawling dams that have drawn protests, are luring manual laborers from around Brazil to cities like Pôrto Velho, in Rondônia State, and Altamira, in Pará.

Here in Parauapebas, also in Pará, an open-pit iron ore mine provides thousands of jobs. Plans for additional mines here, supported largely by forecasts of robust demand in China, have lured many to this corner of the Amazon in search of work. Just since the 2010 census, the city’s population has swelled to an estimated 220,000 from 154,000.

“This entire area was thick, almost impenetrable, jungle,” said Oriovaldo Mateus, an engineer who arrived here in 1981 to work for Vale, the Brazilian mining giant. That was about the time that the authorities cut a road through the forest, making the settlement of Parauapebas feasible. By the early 1990s, he said, it had muddy roads, brothels and more than 25,000 people.

“Now, Brazil’s future is in Parauapebas and other cities of the Amazon,” said Mr. Mateus, 62, who heads the city’s business association and owns a company that leases mining equipment. He boasted that on some frenetic days, as many as two homes are built each hour to meet surging demand in the city’s settlements.

Indeed, the streets of Parauapebas pulse with vitality. People shout to be heard along Rua 24 de Março, a traffic-clogged thoroughfare reverberating with the buzzing of motorcycle taxis, Pentecostal preachers bellowing warnings of sin and car stereos blaring eletromelody, the thumping electronic music style popular in this part of the Amazon.

Venture to the outskirts of Parauapebas, and slums of wooden shacks stretch to the horizon. One area where squatters have put down stakes is called Nova Vitória. With about 1,200 such homes, it is a magnet for strivers.

Taylor Barnes contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro.

Read More..

Which Star Was Best Dressed This Week?

Stylewatch
Style News Now

11/24/2012 at 12:00 PM ET

JB Lacroix/WireImage

Her outfits aren’t always spot-on, but this week, Katy Perry really hit the mark: The star earned the title of best dressed on People.com, thanks to your more than 16,000 votes.

Perry stepped out at the Dream Foundation’s 11th annual “Celebration of Dreams” event in her hometown of Santa Barbara, Calif., last Friday wearing a dreamy floral-print Dolce & Gabbana dress. The star finished her look with coordinating shoes, minimal jewels (including Sorelina earrings and a Le Vian ring) and romantic waves.

PHOTOS: SEE THE TOP 10 BEST DRESSED STARS ON PEOPLE THIS WEEK!

In second place was Ashlee Simpson, who selected a low-key ensemble for an event in Tampa, Fla., celebrating her new clothing line collaboration with big sis Jessica. The starlet dressed up her black tunic sweater and basic tights and booties with some statement necklaces and a cute gray beanie.

See the other stars on our top 10 list here, and tell us: Does Perry deserve the title of best dressed this week? If not, who does?

Read More..

AP PHOTOS: Simple surgery heals blind Indonesians

PADANG SIDEMPUAN, Indonesia (AP) — They came from the remotest parts of Indonesia, taking crowded overnight ferries and riding for hours in cars or buses — all in the hope that a simple, and free, surgical procedure would restore their eyesight.

Many patients were elderly and needed help to reach two hospitals in Sumatra where mass eye camps were held earlier this month by Nepalese surgeon Dr. Sanduk Ruit. During eight days, more than 1,400 cataracts were removed.

The patients camped out, sleeping side-by-side on military cots, eating donated food while fire trucks supplied water for showers and toilets. Many who had given up hope of seeing again left smiling after their bandages were removed.

"I've been blind for three years, and it's really bad," said Arlita Tobing, 65, whose sight was restored after the surgery. "I worked on someone's farm, but I couldn't work anymore."

Indonesia has one of the highest rates of blindness in the world, making it a target country for Ruit who travels throughout the developing world holding free mass eye camps while training doctors to perform the simple, stitch-free procedure he pioneered. He often visits hard-to-reach remote areas where health care is scarce and patients are poor. He believes that by teaching doctors how to perform his method of cataract removal, the rate of blindness can be reduced worldwide.

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness globally, affecting about 20 million people who mostly live in poor countries, according to the World Health Organization.

"We get only one life, and that life is very short. I am blessed by God to have this opportunity," said Ruit, who runs the Tilganga Eye Center in Katmandu, Nepal. "The most important of that is training, taking the idea to other people."

During the recent camps, Ruit trained six doctors from Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore.

Here, in images, are scenes from the mobile eye camps:

Read More..

Husband cooked wife on kitchen stove, police say

A 68-year-old Oceanside man is accused of killing and dismembering his 73-year-old wife.

He pleaded not guilty this week.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Katherine Flaherty told Vista Superior Court Judge J. Marshall Hockett that police found hunks of meat cooking on the stove at the family home and a severed head in the freezer.

Hockett ordered Frederick Joseph Hengl kept in jail on $5-million bail.

Police are unclear when Hengl's wife, Anna Faris, was killed. They went to the couple's home after neighbors reported a strange smell and hearing the sound of a power saw.

Neighbors also reported that Hengl sometimes wore a dress and his wife sometimes took her clothes off in the frontyard.

 Flaherty told reporters that, "“There is no evidence of cannibalism at this time."

ALSO:

LAX union protesters arrested; delays anger travelers

Mitt Romney loses election, but still goes to Disneyland

Black family flees O.C. city after tires slashed, racial taunts

 -- Tony Perry in San Diego

Photo: Frederick Joseph Hengl in court. Credit: Fox-5 San Diego

Read More..

European Union Budget Talks Collapse

BRUSSELS — A summit meeting of European leaders collapsed Friday amid bitter discord over a new budget for the European Union, delivering a further blow to a 27-nation grouping already struggling to contain a debt crisis, social discontent fueled by rising unemployment, and doubts about the long-term viability of the euro currency.

Leaders abandoned efforts to set the shape of a trillion-euro long-term budget and called for a new round of talks early next year to try to reach a deal.

Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, who along with the leaders of the Netherlands, Sweden and several other countries had pushed hard for deep cuts, blasted proposals that left spending on the union’s administrative machinery intact.

This, he said at a news conference, showed that “Brussels continues to exist as if in a parallel universe,” referring to the headquarters for the European Union, which employs about 33,000 people in the European Commission, the union’s main administrative arm.

Mr. Cameron complained that “more than 200 commission staff earn more than I do.”

The refusal to trim bureaucratic costs, which amount to about 6 percent of total spending, is “insulting to European taxpayers” when many governments are slashing spending, Mr. Cameron said.

The European Commission had no immediate comment on Mr. Cameron’s remarks, but officials noted that the commission last year announced a number of civil service reforms. These include plans to reduce the staff by 5 percent between 2013 and 2017 through “normal turnover,” to raise the minimum working week to 40 hours from 37.5, and to increase the retirement age to 65 from 63.

The impasse after two days of negotiations was the second failure this week in Brussels. European finance ministers met all night on Monday without reaching agreement on whether to release the next round of emergency aid to Greece, where unemployment is around 25 percent.

Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, which represents the leaders of European Union member states, convened the summit meeting and called off the negotiations rather than prolonging them through the weekend. He said that the European Union’s budget “has to be balanced and well prepared, not in the mood of improvisation, because we are touching upon jobs, we are touching upon sensitive issues.”

“We should be able to bridge existing divergences” in the new year, Mr. Van Rompuy said.

Much of the attention at the meeting focused on Mr. Cameron, who rallied a group of other countries in favor of deep cuts to the Multiannual Financial Framework, a seven-year spending plan.

Disagreements over where the ax should fall left France and Germany on different sides, disrupting a Franco-German tandem without which significant deals in Europe rarely happen. Germany also pushed for cuts, though not as insistently as Britain.

France defended payments to farmers, which make up around 40 percent of the current budget, but insisted there was no rupture with Germany. “I don’t only defend the position of France, but the position of Europe as a whole,” President François Hollande said at a news conference.

The negotiating marathon over the budget is held every seven years. The focus on hard cash tends to push national interests to the fore and swamp talk of European harmony, a cause for which the Norwegian Nobel Committee last month named the European Union as the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

The budget, which amounts to about $168 billion per year, goes mostly to subsidize farmers and support regional projects in poorer member states, policies that were originally intended to help bind Europe together and mute the economic discord that in the past fueled antagonisms that led to bloody wars.

But differences in economic performance and in priorities between member states are huge, pushing them to embrace starkly divergent agendas in budget talks.

In large measure, this is because what began as an economic bloc comprising six similarly developed market economies in Western Europe is now a 27-member body that includes 10 much poorer Eastern and Central European nations that were part of the socialist bloc.

As well as divisions between east and west, there is also a big gulf between northern countries, especially Germany, and so-called Club Med states in the south like Greece, which, burdened with huge debts, is struggling to keep its economy afloat and avoid social unrest.

“There are still important differences on a number of key issues, especially the overall size of the budget and the fairness of distributions between member states,” José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, told reporters as the summit meeting broke up on Friday afternoon.

Read More..