Man's crack pipe sets prosthetic leg on fire

A New Mexico man who investigators say set his prosthetic leg on fire with a pocketed crack pipe has been arrested.

Deputies say they found 47-year-old Randy Malone naked along Rt. 70 with his prosthetic right leg in flames on July 5. He was treated for burns to his leg, back and buttocks.

A witness later told authorities that he agreed to give Malone a ride into Las Cruces but dropped him off after the passenger lighted a crack pipe in the vehicle.

Dona Ana County deputy sheriffs arrested Malone on Sunday at his home after the man's brothers tipped investigators. Malone was being sought on a warrant for making a false report.

Brains or Beauty?

I find Kelly interesting. I always wondered what it would be like to be model beautiful, yet stupid. Watching it unfold on The New York Housewives, well....that's entertainment!

10 Inane Kelly Bensimon Quotes:

Kelly Bensimon recently sat down for an interview with Out to talk about bullying (obvs), sex education, Real Housewives, gay stuff, live streaming, lollipops, and other non sequiturs that make absolutely no sense.


1.) "I was at Mohegan Sun for the opening of their Mohegan Sun Days event, it's their [monthly] GL — GLBT night. I always think that sounds like BLT."


2.) "Mostly I'm just like 'Huh? What?' And then I look like I'm an airhead because I'm not engaging in stuff that I don't understand."

3.) "So then speaking with GMHC about safe sex and also just about bullying, I learned so much about how alternative lifestyles get bullied so much and I was really disturbed by that to be honest with you because I have been a model for a long time and I have had so much respect for people that have alternative lifestyles."

4.) "Why do we have to be all flowers and lollipops. Why can't it be like fighting but we are actually learning. That's called back-door education."

5.) "I mean don't you think America, don't you think all the women in America that are in their forties would want to hear how New York women are dealing with their kids thinking about sex."


6.) "The one reason I would like to do my own show is because I am exposed to so many unbelievable people and so I would use my show as a vehicle to explore all these different people that I know, whether it would be Richard Meier to the man that helps me with my computers."

7.) "It's never really about me. It's always about the other people because that's what I find interesting. I don't really find what I do really interesting."

8.) "[T]hey asked me to be on the show because they wanted me to legitimize the brand and they wanted a real socialite. They wanted a real New Yorker, if you will, on the show. And it was a great opportunity for me because it's obviously got everything that I love, whether it's my safe sex initiative or anti-bullying or working on my jewelry line or just having my books…"

9.) "[E]verybody knows my name so that's a huge honor and I am really grateful to Bravo for exposing me and exploiting my name like that."

10.) "You know, everybody knows the problems — why can't we come up with different solutions? And that's like what I like. I like teaching in a different way and if it doesn't work we can always do something. What's the big deal."

BP CEO to walk away with $18 million

ARGH! Are you kidding me? Walk away with $18 million?

LONDON (Reuters) - BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward will collect a pay and pension package worth at least 11.8 million pounds ($18.03 million) when he steps down from his role at the company, the Times newspaper reported on Sunday.

The Times said Hayward will be giving up 546,000 share options and a maximum of 2 million shares in the company under a long-term incentive plan, now worth an estimated 8 million pounds.

A BP spokesman dismissed the report as "rumors," adding that Hayward remained chief executive and had full support of the board.

BP has decided Hayward should step down over his handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and his departure could be announced in the next 36 hours, sources close to the company said.

BP's board is due to meet in London tomorrow to discuss a plan for Hayward to step down and be replaced by Bob Dudley, a senior U.S. executive who is currently managing the oil spill response operation, the sources said.

(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris; editing by Diane Craft)

Testing of BP well will go another 24 hours

OMG! Finally after 89 days, just maybe they have stopped the gushing.

New Orleans, Louisiana (CNN) -- Encouraged by results so far, BP and the government agreed Saturday to another 24 hours of testing of the recently recapped Gulf well.


BP's 48-hour window for pressure testing expired Saturday afternoon with no reports of flowing oil or evidence that the giant sealing cap caused further damage. The testing will now go into Sunday afternoon.

Retired Adm. Thad Allen, the government's response manager, said once testing is eventually stopped "we will immediately return to containment, using the new, tighter sealing cap with both the [vessels] Helix Producer and the Q4000."

Pressure was still rising Saturday though it had slowed considerably as expected, BP Senior Vice President Kent Wells said earlier in the day. Officials are looking at the testing in six-hour windows.

"The longer the test goes the more confidence we have in it," Wells told reporters in a conference call Saturday. "There's no evidence we don't have integrity."

Higher pressure means oil is not leaking out from another source in the well. Lower pressure would indicate otherwise.

A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminstration sonar ship has been brought in to monitor the sea floor around the well, Allen said in a statement. "The pressure in the capping stack continues to increase very slowly and we want to continue to monitor this progress."

The latest pressure reading inside the well was 6,745 psi (pounds per square inch), Wells said. That falls short of the optimal 8,000 to 9,000 psi needed in order to conclude without doubt the well is not leaking.

"Based on the data and pressure readings compiled to date, the test has provided us with valuable information which will inform the procedure to kill the well and a better understanding of options for temporary shut-in during a hurricane," Allen said.

Allen said Friday that the rising pressure readings were generally good news.

But he added, "I think we're at a point where there's enough uncertainty about the meaning of the pressure that we're seeing that we have to use due diligence moving forward. We don't want to do harm or create a situation that cannot be reversed."

Reopening the valves would allow oil to once again flow into the Gulf and recovery operations from the surface to resume.

No oil has gushed out since Thursday when BP closed all the valves in a new custom-made cap that was lowered into place earlier in the week. The undersea video images of a quiet ocean sprouted new hope in the hearts of Gulf Coast residents devastated by three months of disaster.

Still, they remained cautiously optimistic, as did officials including Allen and President Barack Obama, until BP is able to announce conclusive test results.

Engineers and scientists intensified monitoring of the well, pouring over images and data collected by robots, sonar scans and seismic and acoustic examinations. A government ship is in the area, fitted with equipment for detecting methane gas, which would be an indication of a leak.

The well integrity test began Thursday after two days of delays, first as government scientists scrutinized testing procedures and then as BP replaced a leaking piece of equipment known as a choke line.

The oil stopped gushing out Thursday afternoon, the first time the energy giant has been able to gain control since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded April 20 and triggered the catastrophe.

All that was made possible by a new, tightly fitting containment cap.

Meanwhile, BP restarted work on drilling two relief wells. Wells said Saturday that the first relief well is now about five feet away from the ruptured Macondo well and an intersection will occur by the end of July.

BP then plans to pump mud and cement down to kill the ruptured well.

"We are feeling very good at this point on how the well is lining up," Wells said.

When they are ready, mud and cement will be pumped into one of the relief wells to permanently seal BP's crippled well.

In the coming weeks, BP also plans to bring in two more oil collection ships in addition to the two already in the Gulf, bringing containment capacity to 80,000 barrels (about 3.4 million gallons) of oil a day, more than high-end estimates of how much oil had been leaking. But it's possible some oil may be released into the Gulf again, before all the ships are ready.

The skimming vessel "A Whale," which underwent extensive testing, was found unsuited for the task and will not be deployed, Adm. Paul Zukunft said.

President Obama spoke about the developments with a note of caution.

"I think it's important that we don't get ahead of ourselves here," he said. "You know, one of the problems with having this camera down there is that when the oil stops gushing, everybody feels like we're done, and we're not. We won't be done until we actually know that we killed the well and have a permanent solution in place."

The president expects to return to the Gulf Coast in the next few weeks. He took some heat from some corners on Saturday for taking a vacation in Maine instead of heading to revisit oil-affected areas.

First Lady Michelle Obama is slated to return to the region Friday to meet with Coast Guard personnel who've been responding to the oil spill and to christen a Coast Guard cutter named in honor of Dorothy Stratton, the service branch's first female commissioned officer.

Melissa Etheridge Files to End Relationship

Guess Julie was enough support to pay? Some of the reader comments were brutal, some were spot on.

7/2/2010 4:05 PM PDT by TMZ Staff
TMZ has learned ... Melissa Etheridge has just filed legal documents with the court to formally end her relationship with Tammy Lynn Michaels.

Etheridge filed a document called a Petition for Dissolution of Domestic Partnership in L.A. County Superior Court.

Etheridge and Michaels were registered as domestic partners in California. They had a commitment ceremony back in 2003. There were reports they tried to legally marry in 2008 -- during the time when same-sex marriages were permitted in CA -- but they missed the window.

In the docs, Etheridge cites "irreconcilable differences."

Etheridge is asking for joint custody of the couple's two children. Their twins were born in 2006, after Tammy was artificially inseminated by an anonymous donor.

Ethridge's lawyer, Judy Bogen, is also asking the judge to reject any possible bid by Tammy to get financial support.

There are reports the couple split back in April.