A former manager of the Harvard Medical School morgue in Boston was sentenced to eight years in prison for stealing and selling body parts "as if they were baubles." Authorities said Cedric Lodge was at the center of a ghoulish scheme in which he shipped brains, skin, hands and faces to buyers in Pennsylvania and elsewhere after cadavers donated to Harvard were no longer needed for research. His wife, Denise Lodge, was sentenced to just over a year in prison for assisting him. They appeared Tuesday in federal court in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. In one example, Cedric Lodge provided skin to a buyer so it could be tanned into leather and bound into a book, a "deeply horrifying reality," Assistant U.S. Attorney Alisan Martin said in a court filing. "In another, Cedric and Denise Lodge sold a man's face -- perhaps to be kept on a shelf, perhaps to be used for something even more disturbing," Martin said.
LOS GATOS, Calif. (AP) -- Like many retirement communities, The Terraces serves as a tranquil refuge for a nucleus of older people who no longer can travel to faraway places or engage in bold adventures. But they can still be thrust back to their days of wanderlust and thrill-seeking whenever caretakers at the community in Los Gatos, California, schedule a date for residents -- many of whom are in their 80s and 90s -- to take turns donning virtual reality headsets. Within a matter of minutes, the headsets can transport them to Europe, immerse them in the ocean depths or send them soaring on breathtaking hang-gliding expeditions while they sit by each other. The selection of VR programming was curated by Rendever, a company that has turned a sometimes isolating form of technology into a catalyst for better cognition and social connections in 800 retirement communities in the United States and Canada. read more
GOUVERNEUR, N.Y. (AP) -- Graphite mines in the United States largely closed down seven decades ago. Mining the ubiquitous mineral found in everything from nuclear reactors to pencils seemed to make little sense when it could be imported inexpensively from other nations, especially China. That view is changing now. Demand for graphite, a key material in the lithium-ion batteries that power everything from phones to electric cars, is surging as trade tensions with China persist. With federal officials concerned about the steady supply of a number of critical minerals, several companies have plans to mine graphite. read more
LAS VEGAS (AP) -- The attorneys for the man accused of killing rap icon Tupac Shakur in 1996 are pushing to suppress evidence obtained in what they claim was an "unlawful nighttime search." Las Vegas criminal defense attorneys Robert Draskovich and William Brown filed a motion this week on behalf of their client, Duane "Keffe D" Davis, who was charged in the drive-by shooting of the iconic rapper off the Las Vegas Strip. Davis' attorneys argue a judge relied on a "misleading portrait" of Davis as a dangerous drug dealer to grant the execution of a search warrant at night, which should only be done in exceptional circumstances, such as if there's a risk that evidence will disappear if officers wait until morning. read more
Before little Ryu was born, he developed outside his mom's womb, hidden by a basketball-sized ovarian cyst -- a dangerous situation so rare that his doctors plan to write about the case for a medical journal. read more
#11 | Posted by boaz at 2025-12-26 09:12 AM
Boaz, all those words were posted over your name. Whose are they?