A German factory worker stole over a million screws from his employer and skewed the market with his cheap stolen goods, police said Friday.

“In the end, it became obvious that screws were being sold for much less than they usually cost,” said a spokesman for police in the southern city of Wuerzburg.

Over two years, the 33-year-old assembly plant worker smuggled between 2,000 and 7,000 screws out of work each night, and auctioned them on an Internet site, police said. The scheme cost his firm around 110,000 euros ($156,000).

The man confessed after officers raided his home.

A bargain shopper made a gruesome discovery after going to an auction in Maiden.

Shannon Whisnant found a human foot inside a cooker he bought at an auction. Police say Mini Warehouse Rentals held the auction because the man renting the storage unit didn’t pay.

Police discovered that man had his foot amputated in 2004 after a plane crash, and he kept it in the cooker that was sold on Tuesday.

Whisnant said he hasn’t decided what to do with the cooker.

Police say you can legally keep amputated body parts as long as it’s for religious purposes.

Korg’s original Electribes appeared in 1999, and caused uproar. Musicians everywhere tried to get their hands on these ultra portable, pattern-based step programming and tweak-friendly knobbed devices. In 2001, Korg released the first of the Electribe family, designed as an all-in-one dance music production device. This device however, was split into an ES-1 synth device, and an ER-1 drum machine. Now, with the EMX-1, synths, drums and more are combined into one sleek blue machine.

Functionally, the EMX-1 has several similarities with its predecessors. The first thing you will notice when you take it out of the box however, is the more modern backlit display, and the most distinctive feature – the Valve Force vacuum-tube circuit, which consists of 2x 12AX7 tubes, placed like trophies behind a small panel of glass. The Valve Force vacuum tubes are tied directly to the analogue circuit, which is in turn connected to the Tube Gain control to the right of the Master Volume knob. With this knob, you can add as much warmth to your overall sound as you wish. When you power on the device, you will notice that the tubes begin to glow. However, looking further, I noticed that these tubes weren’t actually glowing themselves, but instead by two orange LED’s connected to the circuitry behind the Valve Force vacuum tubes. This was obviously placed for cosmetic purposes. Also, Korg’s use of the words Valve and tubes in the set up is rather ambiguous – are they tubes or are they valves? Both are quite distinct devices.

The rear of the machine is fitted with the standard three MIDI connections (In, Out, Thru), a mic/line gain switch, two individual ¼-inch outputs for independent bus routing, a pair of ¼-inch outputs for your monitors or mixer, and a ¼-inch mono (why not stereo?) audio in. Inside the device, there are 207 PCM drum sounds and 76 PCM synth sounds. The previous EM-1 held only 16MB of song memory; the EMX-1 has been boosted to 64MB. The EMX-1 runs on an engine Korg calls Multi Modelling Technology (MMT). This engine allows the user to choose from 16 different synthesis types, allowing both analogue simulations and digital synthesis types. There are plenty of synth filters too, including the notable lowpass, highpass, bandpass, and an additional bandpass type that adds the dry signal back into the sound. Indeed, the EMX-1 is covered in plenty of sounds for the average user, however, it lacks the inability to load samples onto it, and so you’re going to be stuck with the Korg provided sounds. Nevertheless, plenty to tweak and work with.

The top panel is well divided into different sections – the main section, which contains all the mode and control (play, pause, record) buttons. This area also holds the very useful BPM Tap Key, which allows you to manually select your sound tempo. Alternatively, the Auto BPM Scan button can be switched on, which syncs your music with the tempo coming from the audio in jack. The ‘restart’ button is great fun to play with, sections can be repeated and mixed as though you are on turntables, by simply hitting the button. The machine seems as though it lacks a rewind / fast-forward button, but in fact, Korg cleverly placed these with the bar select buttons. Holding shift and a direction button will do as required – less buttons, less clutter.

The Part Common area contains all the things you need to tweak both drum and synth sounds. Effects allow you to make and adjust all your sounds, giving you the power to create truly unique patterns. There are three effects processors that handle individual effects – a unique feature of the EMX-1 is that you can chain up such processors, so that multiple effects work together, in any order. When changing any settings on the EMX-1, the display shows ‘Original Value’ when you return to it – another handy little feature. One problem I found when constantly editing different parts was that values would jump. For example, if I set my piano synth pitch to 50, and I switch to edit my formant pitch, it would instantly jump to 50, and begin changing accordingly. Pressing shift whilst turning the knobs prevented this – at times annoying, but probably the product of physical limitations. Effects are currently turned on or off. An effects fader would have been much cooler. An easily overlooked feature, the 16 step keys are set up in way to represent a keyboard – with black and white keys. With this, pianists rejoice!

At the bottom left is the Arpeggiator, which features a smooth feeling ribbon controller and slider. On synth parts, the ribbon controls note duration and the slider controls the pitch. With drum parts, the ribbon controls the drum duration, and the slider nothing. This is a truly unique feature that definitely adds touch to your music. However, it’s a part that with much more potential. Although users can select the note range the slider works with, and alternate functions between the two, its about as much as it can do. Korg could have thrown in a little more to this, for example assigning the ribbon the control tempo.

Pattern making is easy – you can hit the record key, and jam along in real time, or place notes / drum beats manually on the 16 step bar – there are 8 bars that can be used per pattern. The EMX-1 is great for live performances too; each of the 16 step keys can be assigned to a pattern, so patterns play at the press of a button. After hitting off some patterns, they can be strung together to create full compositions or songs. A total of 64 songs, each with up to 256 patterns can be stored on the EMX-1. Song creating is fun, but can be tiresome, as it requires a lot of knob turning. Real time effects and changes can also be recorded in songs – so all knob movements and adjustments are recorded and played back in the final song.

The EMX-1 is undoubtedly one of the most user-friendly music production devices I’ve laid hands on. Included in the box is the user manual and quick-start guide; I only had to refer to these once or twice. Making music is an absolute breeze – sounds can be a bit ‘digital’ at times, but, but accents can be used. Velocity pads would also have been a much-welcomed feature; but for beginners and intermediates, the buttons are enough. Although an ace at producing techno, hip-hop, DnB and house music, it is equally gifted in producing jazz music a like.

The endurance of the Electribe line seems to be holding fast, and with the addition of the EMX-1, Korg has taken another step toward winning the continued devotion of users who don’t necessarily feel that software provides all of the answers to their tone-generation needs.

By Timothy Wong, January 2006

Two men who police said broke into a building to steal copper wiring got more than they bargained for: a room full of police officers. Police said 26-year-old James Ayers and Frederick Guilliee, 38, broke into the 40,000-square-foot building at about 6 p.m. Tuesday.

What they hadn’t planned for is the Antioch police K-9 unit who was holding a training session there.

At the time of the break-in, an officer was hiding inside the building in a training exercise. Shortly thereafter, a K-9 officer announced that a dog was about to be released and that anyone inside should give themselves up or risk being bitten.

Ayers surrendered immediately, police said, and the K-9 officers found Guilliee hiding inside.

Police arrested the men on suspicion of commercial burglary.

A man tired of burglars nearly blew off his hand when bomb-like devices he set around his house exploded in his presence instead, authorities said.

Victor Iacobescu, 50, ran to a neighbor’s house Thursday with a bloody towel wrapped around his right hand.

“Apparently, he was trying to set booby traps to get the next guy who tried to break in,” fire Lt. Maggie Murphy said.

Iacobescu had been the victim of several break-ins, she said.

The neighbor, Patrick Struble, said the explosives were “like a pipe bomb. He accidentally triggered it, and it almost blew his hand off.”

Police were investigating with the intent to pursue charges.

“Anything that goes `bang’ is illegal,” police Lt. Bruce Ferguson said. “I can’t think of any (legal) reason why someone would be making a bomb.”

A man robbing a bank demanded the money by writing a note on one of his own checks, authorities say. Not surprisingly, he was caught soon afterward. Forest Kelly Bissonnette, 27, apparently tried to cover his name on the check, then handed the note to a teller Sept. 5 at the Bank of the West in Englewood, according to authorities. ”We could still make it out even though he blacked it out,” FBI agent Rene VonderHaar said. Nearly $5,000 was taken.

Surveillance video showed a suspect similar to Bissonnette’s description, and a tipster said a man named Forest Kelly claimed he got $5,000 in a bank robbery, according to a federal complaint. Bissonnette remained in federal custody Tuesday after turning himself in Friday. A public defender was to be appointed for Bissonnette, who doesn’t have a listed phone number.

Check out these giant frozen “waves” found in Antartica.
Please click here.

Starbucks opened its first coffee shop in Russia on Thursday, two years after it won a legal battle to protect the right to its brand in the fast-growing Russian market.

“This is an important step for the company, and we are looking forward to being a part of every day life for Russians,” said Cliff Burrows, president of Starbucks Europe, Middle East and Africa, as he opened the cafe.

The newest Starbucks in the worldwide chain of around 10,000 outlets is in the Mega shopping mall in Khimki, just north of Moscow.

In 2005 the company won a trademark fight over the Starbucks name. A “squatter” had registered to himself the right to use the name in Russia, and was asking $600,000 from Starbucks to relinquish it.

The company successfully proved in Russia courts that it was the rightful owner of the name.

Alyona Mikhailova, 34, placed Russia’s first official Starbucks order, for a venti, or medium, cappuccino.

“In all of the countries I’ve been to I always definitely go to Starbucks, so I was really waiting for this opening,” she said.

Burrows told Reuters this week the company plans to open a second store on Moscow’s historic Stary Arbat street before the end of the year, but on Thursday would not answer questions on further expansion plans in Russia.

Livingston County police are looking for the person who dumped an estimated “couple hundred pounds” of human waste on Highlander Way near Highland Road (M-59) Tuesday morning. The smelly discovery was found at about 9:45 a.m. and closed the road for some time. It took Howell Area Fire Authority firefighters about 15 minutes to clean the mess. Anyone
with information on who dumped the sewage or septage is asked to call the Livingston County Sheriff’s Department at (517) 546-2440.

Saw this video a while back, and a discussion in the pub today brought it up. So i’m posting it here to share with a friend.