This is terrible...

(CNN) -- A 14-year-old suspect in the murder of a 4-year-old boy found drowned and then stuffed into a clothes dryer in Mendota, California, has been charged as an adult, authorities said Tuesday.

Fresno County, California, District Attorney Elizabeth A. Egan said Raul Renato Castro was charged with special circumstances, including murder during a child molestation, sodomy, kidnapping and murder of a witness to prevent testimony.

Castro faces separate felony charges of kidnapping, sodomy and child molestation, Egan said.

Under California law, a 14-year-old is not eligible for the death penalty or a sentence of life without the possibility of parole, according to a statement from Egan's office. If found guilty, the boy could receive no more than 32 years to life plus 15 years.

The incident began Friday afternoon, when Alex Christopher Mercato's parents discovered that the child, who had been playing outside their house, was missing, Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims told reporters Monday.

The parents called police, who began to search the neighborhood and nearby parks in Mendota, 33 miles west of Fresno, she said. Soon, the FBI was called in.

On Saturday, authorities resumed the search door-to-door. They did not have to go far. In the house next door to the Mercatos, authorities discovered the boy's body stuffed inside a dryer in a closet, Mims said. An autopsy determined he had drowned.

The teenager, who had been the only member of his family who was at home on Friday afternoon, was arrested and booked into the juvenile justice center, Mims said.

Castro is the sole suspect in the case, she said. He is to be arraigned Wednesday in Fresno County Superior Court.

I hope that kid gets the help he needs...Its obvious he shouldn't ever be paroled even AFTER 32 years, he will just do something even worse without remorse.

Courtesy of the Walt Disney
After four years of negotiation, Disney has been given the green light to build a theme park in China.

The $3.6 billion project was approved on Wednesday by China’s National Development and Reform Commission, and will allow Disney to work on the final details for the new park, which will be located in Shanghai.

"China is one of the most dynamic, exciting and important countries in the world, and this approval marks a very significant milestone for The Walt Disney Company in mainland China," Robert A. Iger, president and CEO of The Walt Disney Company, said in an official press release.

While amenities, such as hotels and retail stores, will be consistent with other international Disney resorts, the location will include a Magic Kingdom-style theme park with characteristics of the Shanghai region.

The park, which will be located in the Shanghai’s eastern Pudong district, will expand the company’s presence in mainland China (the country already has a theme park in Hong Kong, which debuted in 2005, not to mention corporate offices throughout the region).

Despite disappointing numbers at Hong Kong Disneyland, the city’s government—which owns a majority stake in the current park—tried to assuage fears that the impending park would draw visitors away.

"Our country has 1.3 billion people. We can see that our country's economic development has created a very big market. It can easily accomodate two Disneylands," Hong Kong's Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Rita Lau told the Associated Press Wednesday, November 4th. Lau then added that the two parks can complement each other.

The Shanghai park could be open as early as 2012, but an exact date has not yet been set.

Iraqi woman, 20, dies; police in Arizona say father ran her over

November 2, 2009 7:59 p.m. EST

Noor Faleh Almaleki moved with her family to the U.S. from Iraq in the mid-1990s, a police spokesman said.

(CNN) -- A 20-year-old woman from Iraq has died in an Arizona hospital, nearly two weeks after her father, police say, ran her over with a car because she had become "too Westernized."

Noor Faleh Almaleki died Monday of injuries suffered when she was run over October 20 in a parking lot in the Phoenix suburb of Peoria, Arizona, police there said. Authorities said they expect to change the aggravated assault charge against her father, Faleh Hassan Almaleki, 48, to more severe counts after meetings with prosecutors, Peoria police announced.

Peoria police said Faleh Hassan Almaleki believed his daughter had become "too Westernized" and had abandoned "traditional" Iraqi values. Peoria police spokesman Mike Tellef told CNN the family moved to the Phoenix area in the mid-1990s, and Almaleki was unhappy with his daughter's style of dress and her resistance to his rules.

After the incident, Almaleki's father drove to Mexico, abandoning his vehicle in Nogales, Peoria police said. He then made his way to Mexico City and boarded a plane to Britain, where authorities denied him entry into the country and put him on a plane back to the United States, police said. A friend of the daughter, Amal Edan Khalaf, 43, also suffered serious injuries in the attack, police said. Almaleki faces a separate aggravated assault charge in connection with her injuries.

He is currently held in Phoenix, with bail has been set at $5 million, Tellef said.

'Twin Towers' warship enters NY

The USS New York sailed up the Hudson River A warship built with steel salvaged from the World Trade Center has arrived in New York City. The USS New York sailed up the Hudson River to near Ground Zero, where it fired a 21-gun salute in tribute to those killed in the 2001 attacks. It was watched by relatives of 9/11 victims, along with members of the emergency services and the public. The US Navy is to hold an official commissioning ceremony for the new warship on Saturday. The New York set off on its maiden voyage from Louisiana, where it was built, nearly three weeks ago. The bow of the boat contains 7.5 tonnes of melted steel from the fallen buildings of the World Trade Center. The ship's crest includes images of the Twin Towers and features the colours of the city departments that first responded to the terrorist attacks in which nearly 3,000 people died. 'A transformation' People gathered by the waterfront to watch the ship's 21-gun salute honouring those who died in the 11 September attacks. The crew stood to attention along the deck as the guns were fired. Military personnel joined fire and police representatives for the tribute Among those watching was JoAnn Atlas, who lost her firefighter husband in the attacks. "We have to remember. It's a way to honour them," she told the Associated Press news agency. Rosaleen Tallon, whose firefighter brother was among those killed, said she was pleased that the steel from the towers had been reused in the ship. "It's a transformation of it from something really twisted and ugly," she told AP. "I'm proud that our military is using that steel." About one in seven of the 361 sailors serving on the ship are from New York state, a higher percentage than would normally be the case, a Navy spokeswoman told AP. She said there had been many requests from Navy personnel to serve on the ship.

Two things I try to stay away from: beef jerky and caffeine

The unlikely marriage of caffeine and meat snack got its start in Utah, in the winter of 2005. Tech entrepreneurs and college friends Brian Levin and Matt Keiser were on a skiing trip at Snowbird, and after a day on the slopes, they partied hard and fueled up on energy-drink cocktails late into the evening. The next morning, as they loaded up their gear to hit the snow, the duo noticed that a bottle of caffeinated energy drink had spilled on some peppered beef jerky snacks.

After a few tasteless jokes, Keiser and Levin decided to pack the jerkies anyway for edibles on the slopes. "I took a bite and thought the taste was good -- actually better than the regular jerky taste. It was also more tender than jerky usually is. So some bells went off, and we thought: 'We have the world's first performance-enhancing meat snack,'" recalls Levin.

That accidental meeting of meat and drugs spurred Levin and Keiser to launchPerky Jerky, most likely the world's first purveyor of jerky that jacks you up -- and adds a new and entirely necessary twist to the American obsession with caffeinated drinks and food. "I love meat, and I love a good buzz. It was an easy decision to launch this puppy," says Levin, who handles marketing for the fledgling product.

Niche Products with Big Markets

Levin's background certainly gave him the tools to suss it out. Although he had been in tech for the past decade, he previously worked for Sidney Frank, the liquor magnate who sold Americans on foul-tasting green-colored Jagermeisterbefore founding vodka giant Grey Goose. As an octogenarian, Frank sold Grey Goose to Bacardi for a cool $2 billion in 2005. "I had witnessed first-hand that a great niche brand could scale and go huge if you played it right," says Levin, a Wharton business school grad. His partner Keiser had taken e-mail marketing startup Datran from infancy to a Nasdaq listing.

As consumers of both jerky and energy drinks, Keiser and Levin both found the product mix completely logical. "A lot of people eat jerky as a snack when they're active. They also drink energy drinks. For us, the big aha moment was seeing the number of people a day on Twitter who have to broadcast that they are eating jerky and drinking an energy drink," says Levin.

Then there was the beef jerky market -- very tasty but lacking a dominant player. "It seems silly at first, but the deeper you dig, the more perfect it seems," says Levin. "No one has taken jerky upscale, even though it's a $3 billion retail industry. There is no real standout brand or brand loyalty. The largest player,SlimJim -- a Conagra Foods (CAG) subsidiary -- only has $200 million in sales. It's the ultimate impulse buy. We thought there was great opportunity to compete on packaging and brand appeal, not to mention that it's a functional energy food."

On a Mission of Hope

While the whole project might sound like an adventure straight out of a lad mag, Levin and Keiser wanted to put their product to a much higher purpose. Levin has seven-year old triplets. One has Down syndrome, and another, Jake, has Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). This is a progressive form of the disease that afflicts boys and slowly robs them of the ability to use their muscles. Research now in progress is promising, however, and Levin is hopeful that treatments can be developed before the disease kills his son.

"In AIDS/HIV, doctors were able to develop life-extending treatments within a short span of time. We are hopeful they can do the same here, and we want to help fund that effort. I am doing this primarily to save my son," says Levin. To that end, Levin and Keiser plan on donating a "significant" percentage of their profits to underwrite research efforts for both DMD and Down syndrome. Levin is also running the New York City Marathon on Nov. 1 to raise money for muscular dystrophy and has set up a foundation specifically to fund DMD research.

Levin and Keiser got busy busting out a business plan and finding the right people to make their quirky jerky. They quickly realized that they needed a scalable production method. "You can't pour Red Bull on jerky, and you can't feed the cows caffeine," says Levin. To flesh out their fledgling snack, they hired a meat-product specialist to help them design a formula that could be relatively easily produced in a factory and would pass U.S. Food & Drug Administration standards.

All this took roughly three years and cost Levin and Keiser hundreds of thousands of dollars. The product they settled on was made with all-natural meat (no synthetic hormones) only from higher-quality cuts. The caffeine comes from the Brazilian guarana berry, allowing Perky Jerky to say with a straight face that it's an all-natural caffeinated processed meat product.