Could this image be depicting the Bitterroot Forest Fire?
A Once in a Lifetime Photo of a forest fire in Bitterroot Forest/Montana This awsome picture was taken in the Bitterroot National Forest in Montana on August 6, 2000 by a fire behavior analyst from Fairbanks, Alaska by the name of John McColgan with a Digital camera. Since he was working while he took the picture, he cannot sell or profit from it so he should at least be recognized as the photographer of this once in a lifetime shot.  The year 2000 brought one of the worst fire seasons in half a century to the United States. By the month of August, more than 4 million acres (an area greater in size than the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined) had been burned by wildfires, and dozens of blazes raged out of control in eleven western states, with nearly half of the conflagrations occurring in Idaho and Montana. On 6 August 2000, as several fires converged in the Bitterroot National Forest near the town of Sula in western Montana, John McColgan, a fire behavior analyst in the employ of the USDA Forest Service, snapped the spectacular photograph shown above with a digital camera and described the experience to a writer for the western Montana newspaper The Missoulian: Bitterroot Forest Service "That's a once-in-a-lifetime look there. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I've been doing this for 20 years and it ranks in the top three days of fire behavior I've seen." The day was Aug. 6, the Sunday when several forest fires converged near Sula into a firestorm that overran 100,000 acres and destroyed 10 homes. Temperatures in the flame front were estimated at more than 800 degrees. Nevertheless, McColgan said, the wildlife appeared to be taking the crisis in stride, gathering near the East Fork of the Bitterroot River where it crosses under U.S. Highway 93. "They know where to go, where their safe zones are," McColgan said. "A lot of wildlife did get driven down there to the river. There were some bighorn sheep there. A small deer was standing right underneath me, under the bridge." McColgan snapped the photo with a Kodak DC280 digital camera. Since he was working as a Forest Service firefighter, the shot is public property and cannot be sold or used for commercial purposes. After McColgan downloaded his amazing image to an office computer, a friend found it, e-mailed a copy to another friend, and by mid-September 2000 the picture was blazing its way across the Internet. Because many forwarded copies of the image lacked any attribution or explanation, e-mail recipients began to circulate rumors about its origins and authenticity  some claimed that the photo was snapped by a tourist, that it was taken during the extensive Yellowstone National Park fire of 1988, or that it was yet another digital fake. fire As John McColgan said afterwards, "I couldn't have profited from [the photograph], so I guess I'm glad so many people are enjoying it." We're happy to help him at least receive proper credit for his work. This picture has also been circulated with text identifying it as a photograph of August 2003 forest fires in British Columbia, of October 2007 California wildfires, of the June 2012 Waldo Canyon Fire in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and the November 2016 forest fires in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Chaney, Rob.  "Mystery Solved: Forest Service Firefighter Captured Tragedy with Digital Camera."
  The Missoulian.  15 September 2000. CNN.com.  "Montana Homes Threatened by Wildfires."
  7 August 2000.
In May 2016, a message reporting that actor Mr. T (the stage name of Laurence Tureaud), best known for his portrayal of B.A. Baracus on the 1980s television series The A-Team, had passed away was widely circulated on Facebook: Wow.. I was shocked...R. I. P. Mr. T You were an inspiration to everyone. Show respect and share to let people know. Like if you liked Mr. T ??   However, no news outlets have reported on the action star's alleged passing, and reports of his death are belied by the fact that Mr. T is still active on his social media accounts and recently made an appearance at a Fairfield Hotel event. accounts event Fake Facebook obituaries for non-dead celebrities are an example of "like farming," a popular social media scheme aimed at getting more likes, shares, and comments: like farming Facebook's algorithms in particular emphasize popular content, and therefore gathering "likes" and "shares" receives a high premium. Sometimes, it's just an annoyance  maybe that kid really does want a hundred thousand "likes" so that a Victoria's Secret model will go to a school dance with him, so he's inundating people with appeals (although that's doubtful at best)  but more often, the intent is scammy. Like-farmers will gather clicks, which denote popularity, then scrub the original content and replace it with something else (usually a scammy ad of some sort) to bypass Facebook constraints. Facebook has moved to quash this behavior by adjusting their algorithms, but of course, some scammers' efforts always get by the online gatekeepers. efforts Although Mr. T did not pass away in May 2016, one factor that may have contributed to the spread of this death hoax is that the actor celebrated his64th birthday on 21 May 2016. birthday On May 11, 2020, Bustatroll.org published an article positing that U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's daughters had been arrested after breaking into a liquor store for quarantine supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic: published article Pelosis Daughters Arrested Breaking Into Liquor Store For Quarantine Supplies The apples dont fall far from the tree, they say, and nowhere is it more obvious than in the case of Nancy Pelosis daughters. Often in trouble, they have lately shown that they share the trait most commonly associated with their mother..a hopeless addiction to alcohol. Both Melissa, 21, and Daphne, 19, were arrested this past weekend in San Francisco, California for breaking and entering. Officers were alerted to their crime by a silent alarm at This Is The Way To Liquor, a liquor store close to their home that had recently decided to temporarily close due to slow sales during the states lockdown. This item was not a factual recounting of real-life events. The article originated with a website that describes its output as being humorous or satirical in nature, as follows: Everything on this website is fiction. It is not a lie and it is not fake news because it is not real. If you believe that it is real, you should have your head examined. Any similarities between this sites pure fantasy and actual people, places, and events are purely coincidental and all images should be considered altered and satirical. See above if youre still having an issue with that satire thing. It should be noted that Nancy Pelosi has one son and four daughters, but none of Pelosi's children's names are Melissa or Daphne, as stated by Bustatroll.org. The image included in this article actually shows two entirely different women whose names are Michaella McCollum and Melissa Reid. The duo became known as the "Peru Two" after they were arrested for drug smuggling in 2013: Peru Two   For background, here is why we sometimes write about satire/humor. why Bustatroll.org.  "Pelosis Daughters Arrested Breaking Into Liquor Store For Quarantine Supplies."
  11 May 2020. Hanlon, Martina.  "Peru Two Get Six Years and Eight Months for Drug Smuggling."
  Irish Times.  17 December 2013. Claim:  Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards beat a heroin addiction by having his blood replaced at a Swiss medical clinic.   Status:  False. Origins:  As the clich goes, look up 'debauchery' in the dictionary, and you'll find a picture of Keith Richards.  Although many tales about the   depravity of the Rolling Stones were deliberately concocted for publicity purposes (especially in the group's early days), the extent of Keith Richards' drug abuse over the last several decades would be hard to exaggerate: long periods of drug use and addiction, punctuated with occasional efforts at beating the drug habit.  These efforts ranged from going cold turkey to submitting to conventional medical means of ending addiction to undergoing controversial "experimental" cures.  Whatever the method, the results were generally the same: Richards would quit before the end of the program or lapse back into his familiar habits soon afterwards.  Although drugs have long been considered an indispensable part of the "rock 'n' roll lifestyle," too much of a good thing can be detrimental, even to rock musicians.  The Rolling Stones have been a top concert draw for thirty-five years and owe much of their popularity (not to mention their income) to their live shows.  But the Rolling Stones are not the Rolling Stones without a functioning Keith Richards, and at times his overindulgences have put concert tours in jeopardy due to his inability to weather rigorous and demanding tour schedules.  Such was the situation during the Stones' 1973 European tour, when Richards needed to kick a heroin addiction quickly and underwent a treatment in Switzerland that lead to rumors he had undergone the human equivalent of an automotive oil change and beat his drug habit by having all his blood replaced.  As Stones intimate Spanish Tony Sanchez later described the process in his tell-all book about the band: In the midst of this chaos it was time for the Stones to finalize plans for their seven-week tour of Britain and Europe. Keith knew that he was in no condition to go on the road, but there was no time for a cure. Withdrawing would have meant being laid up for weeks  and that was out of the question. Marshall Chess, however, had a solution. "There's a doctor from Florida who can get you off dope in a few days by changing your blood," he told Keith. "He did it for me in Mexico a while back, and it worked perfectly." The Florida doctor would carry out the blood change for Keith in a villa called Le Pec Varp, in Villars-sur-Ollon, Switzerland. Keith would fly directly to Switzerland after the Stones' concert in Birmingham on September 19. He would then be cured in time to play with the Stones again in Berne, Switzerland, on September 26. Marshall was going to Switzerland with Keith to have his blood changed at the same time. Sanchez went on to describe exactly how much Richards paid the Florida doctor, where he stayed during the treatment process, and what his hotel room cost.   Sanchez's accuracy leaves something to be desired, however  although Richards admitted the bare facts of Sanchez's book were true, of the details he said, "I couldn't plow through it all because my eyes were watering from laughter."  And the truth in this case follows that pattern: the basic facts are true, but the details have been embellished just a bit. Richards biographer Victor Bockris described the actual treatment process: The treatment involved a hemodialysis process in which the patient's blood was passed through a pump, where it was separated from sterile dialysis fluid by a semipermeable membrane. This allowed any toxic substances that had built up in the bloodstream, which would normally have been secreted by the kidneys, to diffuse out of the blood into the dialysis fluid. (According to Bockris, this treatment took place between the Rolling Stones' 23 September 1973 concert in Innsbruck, Austria, and their show in Berne, Switzerland three days later.   This coincides with his statement that "Richards was frightened by the process because it required being put to sleep for three days," but according to a Rolling Stones tour chronology, the group also performed in Berne on 25 September, which wouldn't have allowed for alleged "three days" of sleep the cure required.  Another passage in Sanchez's book, probably inaccurate, quotes Richards as saying the process took only forty-eight hours, but also mentions that he "spent the rest of the week just resting and building up" his strength.  Obviously Richards couldn't have taken off "the rest of the week" to recuperate and still have performed in a show that took place two days after the treatment began.) Bockris also claims that when Richards was having trouble obtaining a visa for the Rolling Stones' 1975 tour of the United States, Walter Annenberg, the U.S. ambassador to Britain, "helped arrange for Keith to get a visa so long as the U.S. embassy doctor in London could certify that there were no drugs in his bloodstream." So, once again Richards supposedly made the trip to Switzerland to have his blood purified in order to pass the requisite medical certification. Keith Richards himself later explained how the rumor about his "blood change" treatment began: Someone asked me how I cleaned up, so I told them I went to Switzerland and had my blood completely changed. I was just fooling around. I opened my jacket and said, 'How do you like my blood change?' That's all it was, a joke. I was fucking sick of answering that question. So I gave them a story. Of course, Richards doesn't exactly declare in the above statement that he really went to Switzerland; he merely claims that he told people he went to Switzerland.  So, did Richards have his blood changed, did he have it filtered, or is the whole thing a bit of lurid fiction?  The "blood change" claim is almost certainly untrue, because Richards himself says he made up the story, no real evidence supports it, and such a procedure is medically questionable in terms of both safety and effectiveness.  He probably did undergo some type of treatment involving blood filtering, however. True or not, the story's ubiquity is no mystery.  What's more extravagant and outrageous than a jaded rock star who has achieved international fame and has earned all money he could possibly need, yet chooses to spend his days in a drugged stupor?  A rock star who kicks the habit not by sweating it out cold turkey or by spending several weeks in a substance abuse program to kick both the physical habit and his psychological dependency on drugs, but by jetting off to Europe to swap his "dirty" blood for some fresh, clean stuff and be on his (temporarily drug-free) way in a couple of days.   Although Tony Sanchez may have made up or embellished many of his tales about his days with the Rolling Stones, he hit the nail on the head with an expression of outrage that neatly summarizes the essence of public's fascination with this legend: I couldn't help wondering where all this blood was coming from or resenting the decadence of debauched millionaires regaining their health, vampirelike, from the fresh, clean blood of innocents. Last updated:  16 May 2007    Sources:   Bockris, Victor.  Keith Richards.   New York: Poseidon Press, 1992.  ISBN 0-8160-3547-4  (pp. 211-212, 234).  Keith Richards    Karnbach, James and Carol Bernson.  It's Only Rock 'n' Roll.   New York: Facts on File, 1997.  ISBN 0-8160-3547-4  (pp. 144-147).  It's Only Rock 'n' Roll    Sanchez, Tony.  Up and Down with the Rolling Stones.   New York: William Morrow, 1979.  ISBN 0-306-80711-4  (pp. 281-284). Up and Down with the Rolling Stones Tax cuts passed under the Bush administration have been in place for close to ten years, but they will expire at the end of 2010 if Congress doesn't take action. Add in a weak economy, big government deficits, and an upcoming election, and you've got one of the most pressing policy issues of the year.President Barack Obama's administration wants to see the tax cuts made permanent for individuals who make less than $200,000 a year and couples who make less than $250,000 a year. Tax rates would go up for people who make more than that.Austan Goolsbee defended that position onThis Week with Christiane Amanpour. Goolsbee is one of Obama's top economic officials, and was recently selected to chair the Council of Economic Advisers, which counsels the president on economic policy.Obama has been quite clear, Goolsbee said, that borrowing $700 billion to extend tax cuts that average more than $100,000 a year to millionaires and even billionaires is the least effective bang for the buck we have.We were interested in that $100,000 number -- that extending the expiring tax cuts would average more than $100,000 a year to millionaires and even billionaires.The White House pointed us to data from the Ways and Means Committee, the committee in the U.S. House of Representatives charged with writing tax legislation. Democrats on the committee asked the Joint Committee on Taxation for an analysis of extending the expiring tax cuts. The Joint Committee on Taxation, or JCT, is a nonpartisan committee with a professional staff of economists, attorneys and accountants who conduct research.The JCT crunched the numbers to generate several tables estimating tax revenues if the tax cuts expire, and how many taxpayers would be affected. The JCT found that, for those who have income of $1 million or more, extending the Bush tax cuts would mean $32.7 billion that the government would not collect in 2011. That amount would apply to 315,000 tax filers. Divide the foregone tax revenues by the number of filers, and you get $103,809, or just over $100,000, as Goolsbee said.We also checked with the Tax Policy Center, an independent, nonpartisan think tank that generates economic projections similar to those of the JCT. The Tax Policy Center found that theaverage tax increaseto millionaires and up would be $128,832. That's a bit higher than the JCT estimate, but for a complex economic analysis, it's fairly close. The center's numbers also supports Goolsbee's statement that extending the tax cuts would average more than $100,000 a year to millionaires and even billionaires.To get the point of view of someone who opposes letting the current tax rates expire, we turned to the conservative Heritage Foundation. J.D. Foster said he didn't argue with the numbers, but with Goolsbee's focus on millionaires. Many of those who make more than $200,000 or $250,000 are not millionaires, and those people will see a tax increase as well.If they only intend to raise taxes on millionaires, then they need to change their proposal, Foster said. I understand it's a convenient rhetorical ploy, but its factually incorrect.This is a fair point: Goolsbee talked about a $700 billion cost, which is a general estimate for what extending the tax cuts for 10 years would cost for all higher earners, not just millionaires.We went back to the analysis and found calculations for what the Bush tax cuts are worth for other high incomes. The JCT found that for those who make between $500,000 and $1 million, the lower rates were worth an average $17,467 per tax filer, and for those who make between $200,000 and $500,000, the lower rates were worth $7,152 per tax filer. The Tax Policy Center's numberswere similar.So Goolsbee is correct that the expiring tax cuts are worth, on average, more than $100,000 for millionaires and billionaires. But the proposal the president supports would let tax cuts expire for some people who make high salaries but aren't millionaires, which Goolsbee didn't mention. So we deduct a tick from the Truth-O-Meter and rate his statement Mostly True. In January 2020, we received multiple inquiries from readers about the accuracy of a social media meme that made striking claims about the past record of U.S. Sen. and 2020 Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders. The meme featured black-and-white photographs of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the Islamic revolution of 1979 and became Iran's supreme leader; former U.S. President Jimmy Carter; and Sanders, along with the following text: meme text In 1979 Iran took 70 Americans hostage for 444 days. Most [of] America united, but one politician stood aloneSocialist Workers Party leader Bernie Sanders supported Ayatollah Khomeini against the US, condemned President Carter for imperialism, and accused the hostages of being CIA spies.  Is this what Democrat voters stand for? Bernie Sanders for President?Maybe in Iran. Not in the US.    The claims contained in the meme appeared to borrow from two articles published in January 2020, just two weeks before the Democratic presidential primaries began in earnest with the Iowa caucuses.  On Jan. 16, The Daily Beast published an opinion column written by historian Ronald Radosh, which carried the headline, "When Iran Took Americans Hostage, Bernie Backed Iran's Defenders." There, Radosh wrote that Sanders "aligned himself with the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the self-proclaimed Trotskyist revolutionary party, became its presidential elector in Vermont, and campaigned for its candidates and platform that defended the Iranian hostage seizure." column On Jan. 18, The Jerusalem Post published an article that bore the headline, "Bernie Sanders Backed a Party That Supported Iran During Hostage Crisis." The piece largely restated portions of Radosh's earlier column. article Important differences exist between the claims made in the above-displayed meme, which contained several key falsehoods, and Radosh's article, but the latter also omitted important context and made misleading assertions. Sanders and the SWP The January 2020 meme described Sanders as the "Socialist Workers Party leader." This is false. Sanders was never even a member of that party, contrary to Radosh's claim that the future U.S. senator "stood apart by joining a Marxist-Leninist party that not only pledged support for the Iranian theocracy, but also justified the hostage taking" [Emphasis is added].  A spokesperson for the Sanders campaign told Snopes, "Senator Sanders was never a member of the Socialist Workers Party." This is corroborated by several news reports from that era. In October 1980, the SWP's newsletter The Militant described Vermont as "a state where there is no branch of the Socialist Workers Party," further undermining any claim that Sanders, who has lived in Vermont since the late 1960s, was a member of the party (let alone its leader) at that time. several news reports described However, Sanders was undoubtedly affiliated with the SWP. In 1980, he served as one of three Vermont Electoral College electors on behalf of the SWP's presidential candidate and leader Andrew Pulley, a former steelworker and Vietnam War veteran from Chicago. Sanders' role and Pulley's candidacy itself were both purely symbolic. Pulley was then only 29 years old and therefore ineligible to serve as president under the U.S. Constitution, and his place on several state ballots, including Vermont, was taken by Clifton DeBerry. Between them, Pulley and DeBerry got just 46,000 votes nationwide.  electors ballots After Sanders became mayor of Burlington in 1981, running as an independent, his affiliation with Pulley and the SWP continued, and he spoke at SWP campaign events in 1982 and 1984. However, his connection with the party appears to have diminished after that, as Sanders' own political vision moved from revolutionary socialism to social democracy. spoke The SWP's 1984 presidential candidate, Mel Mason, told Washington Times in 2019 that, "We had a long-distance relationship, but that kind of changed after he ran for Congress [in 1990]. I didn't have as much contact anymore. I have a lot of respect for him, but I just don't think the programs he put forward are what workers need in this country." told It's also important to note that although Sanders supported SWP candidates for president in 1980 and 1984 and spoke at several SWP events, he did not necessarily support or endorse each of their policies or utterances. In fact, Sanders made a point of saying this in the summer of 1980, when it was first announced he would be an SWP elector in that year's presidential election. At the time, he said, "Although I am not in agreement with the SWP on all issues, I strongly support that party's attempt to become a nucleus for a national labor party, which will fight for the interests of low income and working people." said Similarly, Sanders publicly clashed with the SWP on certain issues. At a forum in Worcester, Vermont, in July 1980, he put "demanding questions" to Matilde Zimmermann, the SWP's vice presidential candidate that year, on the subject of nuclear power. According to Burlington Free Press, "the tone of the questions became almost hostile at moments." That interaction came just days after Sanders was announced as a Vermont elector for the SWP. Burlington Free Press In combination with the fact that Sanders never joined the SWP, held office in it, nor ran on an SWP ticket, this demonstrates that he was broadly supportive of the party's aims and campaigns for a period, but did not march in lockstep with each and every SWP policy or pronouncement. The SWP and the Iran Hostage Crisis During the Iran hostage crisis between 1979 and 1981, the SWP and its leader Pulley did criticize the approach of the U.S. government under then-President Jimmy Carter and at times even expressed support for positions taken by the recently installed, anti-Western, Islamic regime led by Khomeini. Broadly speaking, the SWP claimed that the Carter administration was cynically using the crisis in order to boost domestic public support for a military conflict with Iran; called on Carter to accede to the Khomeini regime's demands, including the extradition of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the U.S.-friendly former Shah of Iran who had been overthrown in the 1979 Islamic revolution and fled to the U.S.; and claimed that the U.S. Embassy, which was stormed in the hostage-taking, had been a hub of American intelligence activities, and some of the hostages were spies.  claimed In November 1980, Pulley and his former running mate Zimmermann published a statement calling on Carter to accede to the Iranian regime's demands, calling them "simple and just," and said the U.S. should "end its attacks on the Iranian revolution": statement Washington's refusal to accept the offer of the Iranian parliament for releasing the hostages shows once again the U.S. government's total lack of concern for their safety and wellbeing. The proposals from Iran are simple and just: no U.S. military or political involvement in Iran; unfreeze the Iranian assets; cancel all claims against Iran; and return the shah's stolen wealth. If granted, the hostages would immediately be freed. [...] We should demand that the U.S. government immediately agree to the proposals from Iran-with no strings attached-and end its attacks on the Iranian revolution. A year earlier, Pulley issued the following statement: "American people oppose U.S. support to shah. We will fight any U.S. attempt to intervene in Iran. Long live Iranian revolution!"  statement We did not find any public statements by Sanders on the subject of the Iran hostage crisis, so the claim that he expressed support for Khomeini was false, and a clear case of "guilt by association" with the utterances of Pulley and the SWP being transferred on to Sanders because of his links to both. A spokesperson for Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign indicated he was opposed to SWP policy on Iran at that time, telling Snopes: "Senator Sanders did not think the hostages were spies nor did he support their captivity. Any suggestion otherwise is nonsense."  However, Sanders' disagreement with Pulley and the SWP on the Iran hostage crisis was demonstrably not strong enough to prompt him to sever ties with either, given that the future U.S. representative and senator continued to speak at SWP campaign events after the hostage crisis and supported the party's presidential candidate four years later.  Image caption: Bernie Sanders, then Mayor of Burlington, Vermont, in his office at City Hall on March 1, 1985. Radosh, Ronald. "When Iran Took Americans Hostage, Bernie Backed Iran's Defenders."
  The Daily Beast. 16 January 2020. The Jerusalem Post. "Bernie Sanders Backed a Party That Supported Iran During Hostage Crisis."
  18 January 2020. Berney, Louis.  "FBI Probes Mayor to Discredit Witness."
  The Burlington Free Press. 8 April 1981. The Burlington Free Press. "Pulley to Explain Socialist Suit Against FBI, CIA."
  20 May 1981. Abbey, Alan. "Burlington Immigration Office May Get Role in Socialist Probe."
  The Burlington Free Press. 21 May 1981. Rose, Andy. "Vermont Workers, Students Welcome Pulley."
  The Militant. 24 October 1980. Kingsley, Robert. "Socialists Launch Campaign to Get Candidates on Ballot."
  The Rutland Daily Herald. 11 July 1980. Simonson, Joseph. "Bernie Sanders Campaigned for Marxist Party in Reagan Era."
  The Washington Times. 30 May 2019. Davis, Neil. "Candidacy No Shield for Zimmermann."
 The Burlington Free Press. 20 July 1980. The Militant. "Protests Say: 'No War Against Iran!'"
  30 November 1979. Pulley, Andrew; Zimmermann, Matilde. "Socialists: 'Meet Just Proposal of Iranian People.'"
  The Militant. 14 November 1980. Claim:  Petition addresses environmental issues associated with the Pascua-Lama mining operation in Chile. Status:  True. Example:  [Collected via e-mail, 2006] Dear friends who care about our earth, Judge for yourself if you want to take action. In the Valle de San Felix, the purest water in Chile runsfrom 2 rivers, fed by 2 glaciers. Water is a most precious resource, and wars will be fought for it. Indigenous farmers use the water, there is no unemployment, and they provide the second largest source of income for the area. Under the glaciers has been found a huge deposit of gold, silver and other minerals. To get at these, it would be necessary to break, to destroy the glaciers - something never conceived of in the history of the world - and to make 2 huge holes, each as big as a whole mountain, one for extraction and one for the mine's rubbish tip. The project is called PASCUA LAMA. The company is called Barrick Gold. The operation is planned by amulti-national company, one of whose members is George Bush Senior (what a surprise eh?). The ChileanGovernment has approved the project to start this year, 2006. The only reason it hasn't started yet is because the farmers have got a temporary stay of execution. If they destroy the glaciers, they will not just destroy the source of specially pure water, but they will permanently contaminate the 2 rivers so they will never again be fit for human or animal consumption because of the use of cyanide and sulfuric acid in the extraction process. Every last gram of gold will go abroad to the multinational company and not one will be left with the people whose land it is. They will only be left with the poisoned water and the resulting illnesses. The farmers have been fighting a long time for their land, but have been forbidden to make a TV appeal by a ban from the Ministry of the Interior. Their only hope now of putting brakes on this project is to get helpfrom international justice. The world must know what is happening in Chile. The only place to start changing the world is from here. We ask you to circulate this message amongst your friends in the following way. Please copy this text,paste it into a new email adding your signature and send it to everyone in your address book. Please willthe 100th person to receive and sign the petition send it to noapascualama@yahoo.ca to be forwarded to the Chilean government. No to Pascua Lama Open-cast mine in the Andean Cordillera on the Chilean-Argentine frontier. We ask the Chilean Government not to authorize the Pascua Lama project to protect the whole of 3glaciers, the purity of the water of the San Felix Valley and El Transito, the quality of theagricultural land of the region of Atacama, the quality of life of the Diaguita people and of the whole population of the region. Origins:   The Pascua-Lama project is an effort being undertaken by the Barrick Gold Corporation to mine rich gold and silver fields in the mountainous region along the border between Chile and Argentina.  Environmental concerns associated with the project, particularly the potential destruction or relocation of glaciers that sit atop a portion of the gold fields, have led to a number of protests and petitions entreating the Chilean government to intervene and stop or modify the Pascua-Lama mining plan.   So, the above-quoted petition is "True" in the broad sense that it addresses a real issue, but, not surprisingly, the two sides (environmentalists and Barrick) make substantially different claims about what the environmental and social effects of the Pascua-Lama project will be. Pascua-Lama Barrick Gold Corporation The controversial plan was described thusly by The Santiago Times in March 2005:  Canadian international mining company Barrick Gold has plans to relocate three glaciers in the mountain range between Argentina and Chile to gain access to 17.6 million oz. of rich gold and silver deposits. Chilean farmers and residents of the surrounding Huasco Valley are strongly opposed to the proposal of transferring the ice masses. The glaciers' tributaries are used for irrigation by the farmers, and their removal would threaten the ecological balance and agricultural production of the fertile river valley. Barrick hopes to transfer 300,000 cubic meters of ice with a 20-hectare surface area from the glaciers that surround the deposits. To mitigate ecological impact and prevent ice from melting, Barrick hopes to transfer the three glaciers, Toro I, Toro II and Esperanza, to an area with similar surface characteristics and elevation by merging the three into a larger glacier, Guanaco, located several kilometers south with a surface area of over 200 hectares. The proposal is part of the "Pascua Lama" mining treaty, signed by Chile and Argentina in August 2004 after four years of discussion. Citizens of the Huasco Valley and Region III are taking a stand against the multibillion-dollar foreign company. Last week an environmental group, Valley Defense, organized a demonstration against the project, where close to 200 farmers, community leaders and neighbors marched in protest. "We don't want to live in an area contaminated by the fault of foreign economic interests," they said. Ral Montenegro, Argentine biologist and Alternative Nobel Prize (formally Right Livelihood Award) winner agrees with the farmers. "The issue is serious in that the project would put pressure on two important river basins which serve as the principle water supply for communities within a semi-arid environment," Montenegro said. In a letter earlier this year to President Ricardo Lagos, agricultural and community associations of the Huasco Valley voiced their concerns about the mining initiative, insisting that it threatens the ecosystem, agriculture and water quality of the valley, which not only sacrifices agricultural exports and trade agreements, but human health as well. "If almost 24 hectares of glacier have been exploited solely for the project 's experiments, imagine how much could be destroyed in the end," said Fransisco Bou, leader for the Huasco Valley agriculturists. Other environmental concerns involve potential contamination from the chemicals to be used in the mining operation: "Pascua Lama will use sodium cyanide, arsenic, and produce toxic byproducts. The rivers El Estrecho, San Flix and El Trnsito together with Santa Juana dam are liable to be polluted by Pascua Lama. These dangerous poisons will be handled at the sources of the rivers and could damage water supplies to farms," said Csar Padilla of the Latin American Observatory for Environmental Conflicts. A December 2005 statement from Barrick downplayed the expressed concerns: statement Vincent Borg, vice president of corporate communications at Barrick in Canada, said 'glacier experts' had defined the icefields in question as 'ice reservoirs or icefields'.  "Regardless of what the experts call them, Barrick is committed to their preservation and conservation. We will move only 5 acres of ice and it is a straightforward procedure that has been proven in the past to conserve the ice. The ice in question only affects about 3-4% of the ice in the Valley so it is not an amount that some sensationalists would like to make it appear," he said.  On the issue of use of toxic chemicals such as cyanide he said, "Cyanide is used worldwide and can be safely used in many industrial applications. Mining comprises only 13% of cyanide use." Opponents contend that Barrick's planned procedures to move ice from the glaciers is not nearly as straightforward and safe as the company asserts they are: The lack of relevant technical expertise in removing glaciers implies an irreversible environmental impact. What is certain is that the three affected glaciers would suffer an environmental impact. Nevertheless, there is no certainty whatsoever of what the impact would be on glaciers or permafrost (frozen rock or soil) from the road network and the associated stabilization measures that generally involves the use of salts.  With respect to the measures and actions that will be implemented for handling glaciers there are the following concerns:  The "clearing" of ice or "pieces of glacier" will be done by bulldozer and front-end loader until the entire rock bed is uncovered. In this case, any mechanical action on the glacier will cause heat transfer, which will raise the temperature of the ice, and which in turn would be exacerbated by the high local insolation. Despite the fact that diurnal temperatures are low, the radiative balance includes more than caloric energy. There are no measurements of radiative energy but the albedo differences between ice and rock mean that the absorption of energy is greater in rock, which would expose the glacier even more.  This also the case for controlled blasting and pushing the glaciers by the afore-mentioned means until their final disposition. In the case of blasting, this could elevate the temperature to thresholds of melting and evaporation which would further encourage destruction of the glacier. Barrick has published a Pascua-Lama Fact Sheet that counters many of the statements made in the circulated e-mail message: Pascua-Lama Fact Sheet Misleading Assertions and Facts The chain letter makes some very misleading characterizations and inaccurate statements. Here are a few examples: Statement: "water in Chile runs from 2 rivers, fed by 2 glaciers."Fact:   The Huasco Valley has more than 50 different glaciers and ice fields. The three smaller glaciers or ice fields that are adjacent to the orebody comprise only 0.3% of the potential water resources in the Valley if they were to be destroyed, which was never to be the case.  Statement: "there is no unemployment ..."Fact: Contrary to this statement, unemployment levels in Region III are among the highest in Chile  the most recent statistics according to the Chilean Statistics Agency reveal rates in the valley in question to be approximately 18%. The mayors representing the four municipalities and most of the community leaders in the Huasco Valley have vocally expressed their support of Pascua-Lama indicating that they believe Barrick will conduct an environmentally responsible project and the generation of economic benefits are needed for the long term sustainable development of the region. As an illustration of the lack of employment opportunities, Barrick has received over 50,000 applications for jobs. Chileans in the Region III and Argentineans from San Juan are looking for meaningful employment opportunities and the ability to support their families. Human beings deserve the opportunity to make a decent livelihood.   Statement:  "Under the glaciers has been found a huge deposit of gold ... it would be necessary to break, to destroy the glaciers"Fact:  Contrary to the fundamental premise of the email chain letter, the orebody is NOT under glaciers. This is simply not the case: 95% of the orebody is NOT under glaciers/ice fields. Protection of the remaining 5% is a key condition of the Chilean authorities approval of the project.  Statement:  "The operation is planned by a multi-national company, one of whose members is George Bush, Sr."Fact: Mr. Bush served in an honorary capacity as an advisor to Barrick's International Advisory Board for two years in the mid 1990's. Mr. Bush was neither a director nor officer of the Company.  Statement: "If they destroy the glaciers, they will not just destroy the source of especially pure water, but they will permanently contaminate the 2 rivers"Fact:  To underline its confidence in its operations and commitment to responsible mining practices, Barrick has committed that should the water quality change, it would immediately stop the project. In addition to the multiple barriers of protection built into the design, the Company has a comprehensive water quality monitoring and management program, which will include 30 automated points from which data will be readily available in real time for authorities and the public. This program will be subject to regular independent verification. The expanded number of monitoring points is a direct result of community consultation and dialogue with stakeholders.  Statement:   "Every last gram of gold will go abroad ... and not one will be left with the people"Fact:  There will be substantial economic benefits that include 5,500 direct jobs during construction, 1,660 jobs during the two decades of operation, and the indirect job creation and tax revenues generated that will flow back to the communities. In addition, there will be substantial investment in infrastructure, the development of hundreds of local suppliers of goods and services and the implementation of sustainable development programs.   Statement:  "The farmers ... have been forbidden to make a TV appeal by a ban from the Ministry of the Interior"Fact:  The Water Users Cooperative, representing 2,000 farmers of the Huasco Valley, is fully supportive of the project. Chile is a democratic country and the media play an important role in the public discussion of the community concerns and interests. There has already been an extensive and open discussion of issues including the participation of farmers. <!--Although the text of the petition states that former U.S. president George Bush is a (board) member of the Barrick Gold Corporation, this does not appear to be the case.  George H. W. Bush (who served as President of the United States of America from 1989-1993 and is the father of the current U.S. president, George W. Bush) was Honorary Chairman of Barrick's International Advisory Board from 1995 to 1999.  He is not now listed as a member of the corporation's Board of Directors. Board of Directors -->From a practical standpoint, the petition reproduced at the head of this page is not now valid in that the e-mail address supplied is no longer collecting or forwarding copies.  The Pascua Lama project remains an issue of ongoing concern, however, and interested parties can find updated information on the subject (and a list of government and business officials to contact) at the Mining Watch Canada web site. Mining Watch Canada Additional information:     Pascua-Lama Fact Sheet  (Barrick Gold Corporation)        Campaign Against Barrick Gold's Pascua Lama Project  (MiningWatch Canada)    Last updated:  3 June 2006    Sources:   Frank, Jade.   "Farmers Protest Mining Project in Chile's Region III."   The Santiago Times.  31 March 2005.    Jimena, Jaquelina.   "Vast Chilean Gold Mine Meets Opposition."   Decanter.com.  2 December 2005. In December 2020, roughly nine months after Louisville police fatally shot Breonna Taylor in her apartment during a botched drug raid, a ceramic artist erected a statue memorializing the 26-year-old Black woman in downtown Oakland, California. But shortly after the bust's installation near City Hall, reports surfaced online alleging a person or group had smashed the sculpture into several pieces. Breonna Taylor botched drug raid   The reports were true. About two weeks after sculptor Leo Carson of the Bay Area placed the sculpture in the downtown plaza to support the Black Lives Matter movement, the ceramic memorial was found significantly damaged on Dec. 26, and the Oakland Police Department was investigating the vandalism, according to news reports and Carson's posts online. was investigating news reports In an Instagram post and GoFundMe page to fundraise for a new statue, Carson called the damage "an act of racist aggression." Instagram post GoFundMe page   The artist's GoFundMe page titled, "Rebuild the Breonna Taylor Sculpture in DT Oakland," read: After spending months creating this artwork it was incredible to see the community and neighbors taking photos and enjoying it. Now I am devastated and enraged to see it in pieces. This was an act of racist aggression and we need to show them we will not stand for it. The police department had not identified any suspects nor a possible motive for the destruction as of this writing.  Sharing a news story and Carson's online fundraiser, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf denounced the vandalism in a Dec. 28 tweet, writing: "It's a vicious attack against the light + justice sought in Breonna Taylor's name. We will keep moving forward; Oakland will not tolerate acts of hatred." news story tweet At the time of this report, Carson's online fundraiser had surpassed its goal of $5,000 for a new bronze statue "to prevent further damage" and claimed to donate the excess funds to Taylor's family. For a full explanation of the circumstances surrounding Taylor's death, which was at the center of protests against racism and police brutality in summer 2020, see our investigation here. circumstances see our investigation here Claim: A Facebook coupon offering 50% off at Target stores is real.  Example: [Collected via Facebook, November2015]I saw this on Facebook this afternoon. Similar to the Kohl's hoax coupon going around in the last week or so.   Origins: InNovember 2015, a survey scam began circulating on Facebook which promised users 50% off at Target stores in exchange for liking, commenting, and sharing the scam with their friends:    The scam circulated via a variety of images and directed people toseveral different URLs (such as holidayschristmas.com and Coupon-Christmas.com), none of which were associated with Target stores:   Once users commented, shared and liked the coupon  ensuring that the scam reached a wider audience  they were directed to a survey site where they were required to provide personal information, fill out surveys, and make a purchase before they could retrieve their coupons. Even then, however, a 50% off Target coupon was unlikely to materialize, as this promotion wasnotconnected with the store: not   These survey scams are quite popular on Facebook. The customers of Target (previously)Costco,Home Depot, Lowe's, Kroger, Best Buy, Macy's, Olive Garden, Publix, and Walmarthave all been targeted by similar scams. Costco Home Depot Lowe's Kroger Best Buy Macy's Olive Garden Publix Walmart These ruses are so prevalent that theBetter Business Bureauissued a warning about them in 2014:Don't believe what you see. It's easy to steal the colors, logos and header of an established organization. Scammers can also make links look like they lead to legitimate websites and emails appear to come from a different sender. Better Business Bureau Legitimate businesses do not ask for credit card numbers or banking information on customer surveys. If they do ask for personal information, like an address or email, be sure there's a link to their privacy policy. When in doubt, do a quick web search. If the survey is a scam, you may find alerts or complaints from other consumers. The organization's real website may have further information. Watch out for a reward that's too good to be true. If the survey is real, you may be entered in a drawing to win a gift card or receive a small discount off your next purchase. Few businesses can afford to give away $50 gift cards for completing a few questions.    Last updated: 25 November 2015 Originally published: 25 November 2015 Claim:  A package containing a dead cat is stolen by a thief who thinks she's making off with something of value. LEGEND Example:  [Collected on the Internet, 1997] Two elderly women went shopping. As they came out of the mall they spied a dead cat in the parking lot. Being cat lovers, they couldn't bear the thought of leaving the poor dead kitty there. They decided to take it home and give it a decent burial. They went back into the store and got some Dillard's shopping bags. They wrapped the dead kitty in one sack and then put it in another Dillard's sack, hoping to contain the odor. It was lunch time so their next stop was a local restaurant. As it was a warm day, they were reluctant to leave the dead kitty closed up in the car. So they placed the Dillard's sack beside the car and went in to eat. As it happened, their car was visible through the window where they were sitting in the restaurant. They watched a lady walk by their car, stop, go back and pick up their Dillard's sack, and walk into the restaurant. This lady is then seated next to our two elderly cat lovers. The lady orders her lunch and curiosity getting the better of her, she opens the Dillard's sack. She peeks inside, screams, and in trying to get out of her chair, falls and hits her head. An ambulance is called to take the poor woman away. As they are taking her away one of our elderly cat lovers places the Dillard's sack on the gurney saying, "I think this belongs to her..."   Origins:  Recent  versions of this story often place it at the West Edmonton Mall in Canada or the Mall of America in the United States. In those incarnations the action supposedly takes place in the parking lot, where a Good Samaritan places the deceased beastie in a shopping bag, then retreats to her own car to watch so she'll be on hand to give an explanation when the cat's owner returns. Another woman comes along, filches the bag, and gets it back to her own car, where she opens it and is seen fainting dead away once she catches sight of her ill-gotten gains. (In some tellings, an ambulance is called and the still-unconscious woman is placed on a stretcher with what the emergency workers believe to be the poor dear's bag thoughtfully placed on her chest.) Now I'm going to ruin your day by telling you it never happened. Not only that, dead-cats-in-package stories are as old as the hills (one even turned up in a 1904 New York Times article.) Another standard version has an old woman taking her dear, departed Fluffy across town on a bus so she can bury her in a lovely park. Either thieves brazenly steal her package or her parcel somehow gets innocently switched with someone else's, and she arrives at her destination not with Fluffy but instead with a nice ham all wrapped up. (It's told both ways.)   In a closely-related version, the woman takes the subway with her soon-to-be-buried cat, but this time the beastie is in a suitcase. While the woman is struggling up the steep stairs, a nice young boy offers to carry the suitcase up for her. She gratefully hands over the bag, and he hares off with dead Fluffy. (In this version you're left to imagine the lad's reaction when he pries it open.) The following tale of one man's efforts to track down this story comes out of David Jacobson's 1948 book, The Affairs of Dame Rumor: Through the association of ideas, a given concept turns into a dramatic event, such as the perennial wonder of the Dead-Cat-Come-to-Justice. A New York City newspaperman once decided to track down this tale. He had first heard it from a friend. Claiming to believe the story himself, the friend told the newspaperman about a woman who had placed her pet cat in a veterinary hospital where it later died. As she wished to give the animal a decent burial, the woman called for her pet's remains; and neatly wrapped in a box she received the dead cat. Along the way home, the woman stopped to do some shopping at Stern's department store on 42nd Street. While selecting her purchases, the  woman placed the box on a near-by counter. But suddenly she looked around for it, and the box was gone. Stern's detectives began searching the store for the packaged body of the cat. Within a short time they found it. The opened box, the deceased animal leering out of it, was on the floor of a telephone booth. Alongside there lay the body of a woman, immediately identified as a well-known shoplifter who had been under the scrutiny of this and other stores for several months. The shoplifter had apparently taken her loot to the telephone booth, opened it, caught a glimpse of the dead cat, and dropped to the floor dead of a heart attack resulting from fright. His friend, the newspaperman learned, got the rumor about this macabre justice from two actors who lived in the neighboring apartment. The two knew the full truth of the story, according to the friend. Yet, interviewing the actors, the journalist found they had received the tale from a Christian Science practitioner, a man whose word they did not doubt as he had told them the rumor as gospel. The Christian Science practitioner willingly repeated this gospel before the newspaperman, adding that he had heard it from a woman. She was the friend of the dead cat's owner. She would give him the names of all the people involved. And, to be sure, this woman was full of the dead-cat wonder, according to thejournalist . . . Not that she actually knew the name of the animal's owner. But she had heard the rumor from her son-in-law, who knew all about it. "He turned out to know everything about it," the newspaperman reported. "He had heard the story firsthand from a passenger on a commuters' train whose aunt knew the lady who owned the dead cat." Still curious about the rumor, the newspaperman went to Stern's department store. There a somewhat firm, if not angered, chief detective swiftly assured him that nothing of the sort had happened. Neither had the local police station any record of either a dead shoplifter or a dead cat having been reported. While the newspaperman was playing ring-around-a-rosy with the Dead-Cat-Come-to-Justice rumor, it was having a gay time of its own. It was flying from table to table, from office to office on its cross-country journey. Readjusted to fit the local situation in Chicago, the rumor was an eye-opener, months later, when it became current talk. In California, the following year, people gasped in amazement as they heard about the fate of the shoplifter in the local department store. And at least one national magazine published the rumor as one of its truth-is-stranger-than-fiction features for the edification of the wonder-lovers among its loyal subscribers. Barbara "this cattail has nine lies" Mikkelson Sightings:  The 1981 Yevgeny Yevtushenko novel Wild Berries relates a "switched packages on a commuter train" version. Last updated:  19 July 2011 The Baby Train   Brunvand, Jan Harold.  The Choking Doberman.  New York: W. W. Norton, 1984.  ISBN 0-393-30321-7  (pp. 216-219). The Choking Doberman   Brunvand, Jan Harold.  The Mexican Pet.  New York: W. W. Norton, 1986.   ISBN 0-393-30542-2   (pp. 31-34). The Mexican Pet   Brunvand, Jan Harold.  Too Good To Be .  New York: W. W. Norton, 1999.   ISBN 0-393-04734-2  (pp. 63-65, 74-76). Too Good To Be    Brunvand, Jan Harold.  The Vanishing Hitchhiker.  New York: W. W. Norton, 1981.  ISBN 0-393-95169-3  (pp. 103-112). The Vanishing Hitchhiker    de Vos, Gail.  Tales, Rumors and Gossip.  Englewood: Libraries Unlimited, 1996.  ISBN 1-56308-190-3  (pp. 158, 164-169). Tales, Rumors and Gossip   Dorson, Richard.  American Folklore.  Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1959  (pp. 253-254). American Folklore    Harrison, Paul.  "In New York."   The Fitchburg [Massachusetts] Sentinel.  23 October 1933  (p. 6).    Jacobson, David J.  The Affairs of Dame Rumor.   New York: Rinehart & Company, 1948  (pp. 44-46).  The Affairs of Dame Rumor   Scott, Bill.  Pelicans & Chihuahuas and Other Urban Legends.  St. Lucia, Queensland: Univ. of Queensland, 1996.  ISBN 0-7022-2774-9  (p. 64). Pelicans & Chihuahuas and Other Urban Legends   Smith, Paul.  The Book of Nastier Legends.  London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986.  ISBN 0-7102-0573-2  (p. 88).   The Book of Nastier Legends Now! That's What I Call Urban Myths    Holt, David and Bill Mooney.  Spiders in the Hairdo.  Little Rock: August House, 1999.  ISBN 0-87483-525-9  (pp. 92-93). Spiders in the Hairdo   Schwartz, Alvin.  More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.  New York: HarperCollins, 1984.  ISBN 0-397-32081-7  (pp. 52-53).   More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark   The Big Book of Urban Legends.  New York: Paradox Press, 1994.  ISBN 1-56389-165-4  (pp. 42-43). The Big Book of Urban Legends Claim:  Robbers are flinging eggs at cars to impair drivers' vision and force them to stop.  Examples:   [Collected via Facebook, June 2015] Posted by Michelle Shel-lee Seibel on Monday, June 15, 2015 Michelle Shel-lee Seibel Monday, June 15, 2015   [Collected via e-mail, November 2009] Please take this seriously! If you are driving at night and are attacked with eggs, do not operate the wiper and  spray and water. Because eggs mixed with water become milky and block your vision up to 92.5% Then you are forced to stop at the road side and become a victim of robbers. This is a new technique used by robbers in Johor Bahru. Please inform your friends and relatives!!  If you are driving at night and eggs are thrown at your windshield. Do not operate the wiper and spray any water because eggs mixed with water become milky and block your vision up to 92.5% so you are forced to stop at the roadside and become a victim of robbers.  This is a new technique used by robbers.  Please inform your friends and relatives. This also happens on interstates near exits. Origins:  Breathless e-mailed warnings about the (usually false) latest ways in which thieves are purported to be getting motorists to pull over so they can be preyed upon are nothing new: a few we've previously documented include claims that gangs of robbers were placing tire-puncturing spikes in shopping mall parking lots, or affixing plastic baskets  spikes baskets  to the undersides of targeted vehicles (thereby prompting drivers to stop to investigate the noise), pouring sugar into gas tanks, festooning cars' windshields with flyers, and even acting drunk or as if they'd been struck by other cars.  sugar flyers drunk Our first sighting of this November 2009 warning about eggs being thrown at windshields was a 29 October 2009 YahooGroups mail list post. That earlier version, while it also asserted the claim of water mixed with raw egg's obscuring a windshield and bruited the (absurdly precise) 92.5% figure, differed from what has become the canonical form of the warning in that it stated motorists so attacked would become prey to "robbers/carnappers" and recommended those so assaulted instead drive to "a well lit place w/ many people or nearest police station" rather than stop. Later forms of the e-mail added further flourishes, such as "used by robbers" morphing into "used by robbers in Johor Bahru" (the capital city of Johor in southern Malaysia), the addition of the claim that these attacks "happens on interstates near exits," and most commonly the inclusion of this new paragraph which blames matters on the flagging economy: "Folks are becoming more and more cruel daily. But this is just the beginning of pangs of distress. With the decline in economy and job losses, we can expect anything. Just can't be too careful these days." Though we've queried our police contacts and scoured news reports looking for accounts of robberies and carjackings effected by disabling target  vehicles by pelting them with raw eggs, we weren't able to find any such occurrences in the U.S. Rather, we did locate news stories about police cars so pelted, with the officers retaliating by giving chase to the miscreants who'd thrown eggs at them. In various news accounts we found, officers not only were able to see well enough through their poultrified windows to go after the bad guys, they succeeded in running them to ground and bringing them to justice. Most tellingly, such accounts made no mention of the gendarmes so assaulted experiencing difficulty in seeing well enough through their egged windshields to give chase. While a mixture of raw egg and water vigorously stirred together in a glass will produce a somewhat milky-looking liquid (which might be the source of this tale), there's nothing about the interaction of egg and water that renders the resulting combination into a substance guaranteed to completely block a driver's vision. Egg alone or egg-and-water solutions are thin liquids and so are relatively easy to see through, with the vehicle's wipers generally sweeping away the worst of the mess fairly easily. Moreover, it would take a number of extremely well-placed eggs (a hen's typical offerings aren't that big) to splat a windshield so thoroughly as to completely impair the driver's view and force him to stop immediately  unless the visibility conditions were already poor, a motorist with a splattered windshield would generally still be able to see well enough to continue driving out of range of the egg-throwing hooligans to a safe stopping place. Certainly miscreants have long engaged in the practice of launching objects (rocks, eggs, firecrackers, paintballs) at moving cars in order to startle motorists into stopping and getting out of their automobiles (typically as a prank, but sometimes as a means of setting up the theft of a vehicle and/or the driver's possessions), but that information is neither new nor shocking. Variations:   A March 2010 version combined the "eggs baby  A November 2012 version included this photograph of a car's windshield that had some sort of white spatter upon it that looked to us to be white paint:  Barbara "pitched battle" Mikkelson Last updated:  17 June 2015    Hoober, John.  "Egg Tossed at Cruiser Leads to Chase, Crash."   Lancaster New Era.  3 December 2008  (p. A1).