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A 5-year-old boy was permitted to leave a Love Field-area elementary school with a stranger Tuesday, in a case of mistaken identity that was initially feared to be a child abduction.

The boy, a kindergarten student, was found safe and is back with his parents. Police said the man who picked him up from school inadvertently picked up the wrong child. Police say Roberto Paniagua, 40, was not charged with any offense related to the child. He was arrested on “minor unrelated warrants.”

The incident sparked panic among parents at Maple Lawn Elementary, who questioned how such a misunderstanding could occur. District officials said they’re reviewing campus dismissal procedures. Dallas police say Paniagua entered the school at 3120 Inwood Road about 12:30 p.m. and took the kindergartner. Paniagua had picked up the boy in what was described as a black or dark purple van.

School leaders realized the student was missing when a parent came to pick him up. City and school district police searched the neighborhood and found the boy and Paniagua shortly before 3 p.m. Lt. C.L. Williams, a police spokesman, said in a prepared statement that Paniagua was supposed to pick up a kindergartner at the school but got the wrong one.

Williams said that there was apparently a “lapse of judgment” by someone at the school but that he didn’t think the incident reflected any systemic weaknesses in the district’s procedures. “We’re still in the process of reviewing everything,” said DISD spokesman Jon Dahlander. “Those are questions we have, too.”

“To our understanding, the person did come into the school, and we had a student unaccounted for,” she said. It wasn’t clear whether Paniagua was mistaken for a parent. Guerrero noted that it was the second day of school and teachers are still getting to know the parents

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SARATOGA SPRINGS – A 37 year old man will serve 30 days in Saratoga County Jail for punching Jupiter, one of the city’s police horses.

According to police, Jamison Johnson punched the horse in the face after Johnson was ejected from a Caroline Street bar. Lt. Sean Briscoe said Tuesday that Johnson started swearing and yelling at the bar’s staff and nearby police at 2:55 a.m. Aug. 15, then walked up to Jupiter and hit him in the face “with a closed fist,” according to city court documents.

The horse was not hurt. Johnson also hit a police officer, said his lawyer, Andrew Blumenberg, and suffered a black eye during a scuffle with police. Blumenberg said his client “doesn’t feel good” about the incident.

Johnson did not make a statement in court, Blumenberg said. Johnson pleaded guilty Aug. 17 to resisting arrest and pleaded guilty Tuesday to attempting to kill or injure a police animal, both misdemeanors.

He was sentenced to 30 days for both charges, and will serve the terms concurrently. He also was ordered to pay $200 in court surcharges. Two police horses, Jupiter and King Tut, patrol downtown and help with crowd control.

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A Cincinnati man who was going to live in a Habitat for Humanity home in Westwood, will instead be a guest of the federal government in prison for the next ten years. Just last week, Maraill Miller pleaded guilty to federal drug conspiracy charges. A judge sentenced him to ten years in prison for his role in a cocaine distribution ring. But while Miller is in prison, the deal to provide his family with a low-cost home will proceed.

In May, Habitat kicked off the project to build this house for Brandi Miller, her husband Maraill, and their five kids. The Habitat for Humanity selection committee looked at everyone in the family and ran criminal background checks. They didn’t find anything that disqualified anyone.

To qualify, families have to go through a screening process and be willing to put in 500 hours of sweat equity, along with meeting criteria for low-interest loans. They also have to pass criminal background checks that look for local felony violations, going back five years.

The charity found Maraill Miller had drug charges and a domestic violence arrest in the past, but nothing to disqualify him. Residents of the family’s new neighborhood appreciate that. Walter Brater, Neighbor: “I would be kind of concerned, if we had the criminal element moving into our little group.”

What neighbors don’t appreciate, however, is one month after the kickoff for this project, Maraill Miller was arrested on federal charges for distributing pounds of cocaine in Kentucky.

“You would think if he’s doing things like this, with drugs and drug money, he’d be able to buy his own house and not have to rely on people building him one at a greatly reduced price.” Habitat officials say their deal with the Millers is actually with Maraill’s wife, not him … and she’s what the program is all about.

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DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — Michelle Fonville said her experience at Natural Nails on Covington Highway in DeKalb County turned from pleasant to painful in a matter of moments.

After the salon manager gave Michelle the bill for her manicure, pedicure and eyebrow arch, Fonville realized that she had been overcharged by $5. “I said, ‘I’ve been overcharged. She may have made an error,’” said Fonville. “She broke it down, then told me she charged me $5 more because I was overweight.”

Fonville said she couldn’t believe what was happening and recounted the experience with Channel 2 Action News reporter Eric Philips. “I said, Ma’am, you can’t charge me $5 more. That’s discrimination because of my weight,” said Fonville.

Salon manager Kim Tran told Philips that the surcharge was due to costly repairs of broken chairs by overweight customers. She said the chairs have a weight capacity of 200 pounds and cost $2,500 to fix.

“Do you think that’s fair when we take $24 [for manicure and pedicure] and we have to pay $2,500? Is that fair? No,” Tran told Philips. Tran said she refunded the $5 surcharge, and told Fonville to take her business elsewhere.

“I didn’t want to argue with her about $5. I wanted to make her pleased with her service,” Tran said. “I whispered … I said, ‘I’m sorry, next time I cannot take you.’”

“The word has to get out there that these people are discriminating against us because of our weight. I mean come on, we’re in America. You can’t do that,” said Fonville.

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Facebook Places could spark new privacy fire

Having to opt out instead of opting in makes some unhappy about Facebook’s new location-based app

On Wednesday, Facebook took the wraps off of Places, a smartphone-based service that enables users to tell their friends where they are, and to track friends. The service, which is slowly being rolled out to users, enables people to share their friends’ locations.

Forcing users to opt out of using the service rather than allowing them to opt in has some privacy advocates up in arms. Facebook has set up Places so that it is on by default, and users must make their way through the system’s privacy controls in order to turn it off.

“I’ve watched how they’ve handled users’ privacy over the last year and a half or so, and they continually step on their dance partners’ feet every time they get a new dance partner,” said Brad Shimmin, an analyst at Current Analysis.

“The fact that it’s turned on by default really ticks me off as a user. Those missteps bother me and show that they really are running a little bit faster than they know how,” Shimmin continued. “They keep requiring users to jump over hoops to protect themselves.”

While there hasn’t been widespread outrage over the new feature, Shimmin wasn’t the only one who was angry about it. Soon after Facebook announced Places, the ACLU of Northern California issued a statement saying the social network has failed to build in some important safeguards.

“In the world of Facebook Places, ‘no’ is unfortunately not an option,” the ACLU said in the statement. “Places allows your friends to tag you when they check in somewhere, and Facebook makes it very easy to say ‘yes’ to allowing your friends to check in for you. But when it comes to opting out of that feature, you are only given a ‘not now’ option. ‘No’ isn’t one of the easy options.”

Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt fired back today, saying he’s “disappointed” in the ACLU of Northern California. “Facebook Places sets a new standard for user control and privacy protection for location information,” he wrote in a statement.

“No one can be checked in to a location without their explicit permission. Many third parties have applauded our controls, indicating that people have more protections using Facebook Places than other widely used location services available today,” Schnitt said.

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It sounds like a Hollywood movie: cybercriminals in a van use a laptop to hack wirelessly into the computer-controlled systems of the car on the road ahead. In seconds the target car’s engine, brakes, and door locks are under their nefarious control.

Texas cops say a man hacked into GPS systems and disabled more than 100 cars.It doesn’t take a great script writer to figure out what’s next – except that it’s not the movies anymore. It’s real – well, almost.

Hackers aren’t taking over our cars just yet, but without tighter computer security they be able to before too long, research conducted by scientists at four universities indicates.

For example, scientists hacked into a car’s computer system by commandeering the wireless tire-pressure monitoring signal of a target vehicle – all while driving at more than 60 miles per hour, according to a joint study released Thursday by Rutgers University and the University of South Carolina.

The new study, along with a similar one from May, suggests looming dangers: People within a vehicle could be tracked using the wireless signals, and they could potentially could be harmed if malevolent hackers learn to exploit or invade a vehicle’s control systems from a distance.

“Our research shows that there are multiple risks,” says Marco Gruteser, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rutgers University. “Privacy is a problem since every car has these unique fingerprints from tire pressure, and that makes it possible to track movements. But this vulnerability can lead to something more serious.”

The wireless hacking was done by taking advantage of the sensors inside each tire that broadcast a brief radio signal every 60 to 90 seconds. The signal tells one of the car’s computer systems the pressure of each. But researchers found that even those weak signals could be intercepted up to 120 feet away and hacked from a roadside location – or by a car in traffic.

Traveling in tandem with the target car, the researchers sent false low-air-pressure warnings to the car’s dashboard display and eventually wrecked the internal computer.

If sending a spurious “low pressure” messages doesn’t sound exactly like Mission Impossible, the work of other researchers yielded potentially more-serious vulnerabilities. In May, a team of researchers reported that they succeeded in hacking into the onboard computer networks that controlled the engine, brakes, and door locks, among other systems.

For full article goto “Scientists hack into Cars’ computers”

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GRAND FORKS, N>D. – Parts of Grand Forks and East Grand Forks were abuzz with speculation Thursday after some residents woke up to a strange sight — dozens or even hundreds of dead dragonflies and monarch butterflies on lawns and sidewalks around the community.

Stuart Kovar, foreman at East Grand Forks Public Works Department, said this was probably caused by the mosquito spraying done by both cities Wednesday evening.

“It’s not that we want to hurt them or anything,” he said. “It’s just the way the chemicals worked.”

The chemical works by attacking the nervous system of a mosquito after being absorbed into its body. It breaks down quickly and is completely gone within 24 hours, Kovar said.

Still, the war on mosquitoes does have unintended consequences. He heard from several people Thursday wondering why there were so many dead bugs around the city.

Kovar thinks it’s getting noticed because there seems to be more butterflies and dragonflies than normal this year. He’s been spraying mosquitoes for about 17 years but said he can’t remember a year with so many bugs.

“Since we have so many of the species around, it’s just that our chemical is showing it’s killing them anyways,” he said. “There isn’t much we can do about it. We can change all of the chemicals, and it’s still going to kill them.”

Arnason, a fourth-grade teacher in East Grand Forks who helps manage a butterfly garden at Central Middle School, has seen more monarchs than usual in the past couple of weeks.

While she’s glad to notice that upward trend, she said the attempt to eradicate mosquitoes could lead to butterflies taking a big hit.

“I think I’ve seen more monarchs than ever, and I think that’s a good thing,” she said. “But now when they get to the stage of being butterflies, our city’s doing damage.”

Monarch butterflies are migratory insects that fly as far north as Canada during the spring. Arnason said once they get here, they lay eggs that will eventually become caterpillars that transform into new butterflies that fly south to Mexico for the winter.

She said there could be more butterflies in the skies because of more abundant milkweed, a vital plant that grows in ditches all over the region and serves as the monarch larva’s source of food.

“It’s good and bad,” she said. “The taxpayers are getting what they’re paying for and you can enjoy your yard.”

“I would say if they’re killing off the butterflies, they’re doing damage,” she added.

Kovar said his department has to be on alert because it’s the peak season of West Nile virus, a sometimes-fatal flu-like disease spread by mosquito bites. August and September are often the two “toughest” months for the Culex tarsalis mosquito, the type most likely to transmit the virus in the region.

“We don’t want to destroy the butterflies, and we don’t want to destroy any other bugs if we don’t have to,” he said. “Our goal is to keep the mosquitoes away so people don’t get sick.”

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We are so glad that everyone gets a chance to see the Fox Cities in action. I live 2 blocks from this “Extreme Makeover” house. We don’t know the Filipino family YET. But are looking forward to being a part of their lives. It is all about community and working together. This picture shows the excitement of this filipino family as they see their new house for the first time.

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ST. PETERSBURG — Police say it was shortly after midnight Thursday when the two men climbed over a security fence at the Renaissance Vinoy Hotel.

Police say shortly after midnight Thursday two men, Michael Cline, 19, and Andrew Harris, 18, climbed over a security fence at the swanky Renaissance Vinoy Hotel, a historic Mediterranean Revival styled hotel in St. Petersburg, reports the St. Petersburg Times. The two were watched by Vinoy security guards as they befouled the swimming pool with human feces. Guards called police, who found the men in the hot tub. Harris told police he wasn’t a guest at the Vinoy and wasn’t visiting anyone, but he regularly went to the hotel to swim.

Both Harris and Cline denied the allegations. Security guards told police similar incidents have happened recently, forcing the hotel to close the pool and drain it, and to compensate some guests. General manager Russ Bond said the hotel isn’t packed now, so few guests have been affected by the pool closure.

The resort has another pool at the golf course, he said, and the North Shore pool has accommodated some of the hotel’s guests. I think people with a public or private pool have had similar issues,” the General Manager told the St. Petersburg Times, “We just happened to catch the people who did it.”

The men face charges of commercial burglary, a felony. They remained in jail Thursday in lieu of $10,000 bail. Police say the men were charged with felonies because of the cost of cleaning the facility.

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