UFO? NYC kids say no, mysterious floating orbs were escaped balloons from teacher's engagement party

All those theories about Wednesday's mystery UFO sightings over Manhattan are about to go "pop."A Westchester elementary school believes the puzzling orbs floating over Chelsea were likely a bundle of balloons that escaped from an engagement party they held for a teacher.

"UFO? They're crazy - those are our balloons!" said Angela Freeman, head of the Milestone School in Mount Vernon. "To me it was the most automatic thing. But it's all over YouTube."
A parent was bringing about 40 iridescent pearl balloons to the school for language arts teacher Andrea Craparo when the wind spent a bunch away around 1 p.m.

"They looked big and they were all together, so it looked like one UFO," said fourth-grader Nia Foster, 9.Awestruck gawkers began calling the NYPD and the FAA starting about an hour later when mysterious flying objects appeared over Manhattan.
Meteorologists with the National Weather Service said the wind was blowing south at 5 to 10 m.p.h. at the time which would make the engagement balloon theory possible.

Police have said they believe the puzzling objects were likely balloons.The sky was very clear at the time, making high-flying objects extremely visible from the ground.Also, helium-filled balloons tend to change shape at high altitudes as the gas expands - making them look abnormal from below, experts say.

As with anything related to the paranormal, other possibilities abound. Following with the balloon theory, some suspected an event in Times Square where a number of yellow balloons were released to celebrate a joint-tourism agreement between New York and Madrid.Then there is author Stanley Fulham, a retired NORAD officer who recently published a book predicting the world's major cities would be visited by UFOs on Oct. 13.He did not return calls - and there was no word on his whereabouts.

Eric Bellucci, brilliant, but troubled man suspected of killing parents, caught in Israeli airport

A fugitive suspected of stabbing his parents to death in their Staten Island home was captured in Israel while trying to buy a plane ticket to China.Eric Bellucci, 30, was nabbed about 2:30 a.m. at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurin International Airport, said Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne, the NYPD's top spokesman.

Bellucci tried to buy a ticket for a Turkish Airways flight to Beijing - with a stopover in Istanbul - but his credit card was rejected, Browne said.The counter clerk told Bellucci he would need to get cash to complete the purchase - but when he walked off to find an ATM, she recognized him from media reports about the slayings and alerted airport security officers.They grabbed Bellucci and turned him over to immigration officials at Ben Gurin, Browne said. He is expected to be returned to New York late Friday or early Sunday.
Police said Bellucci savagely stabbed his parents, Arthur Bellucci, 61, and Marian Bellucci, 56, late Tuesday or early Wednesday.

"We are very relieved," said Joe Ciervo, Marian Bellucci's brother-in-law. "They caught him before he could kill anyone else.""Eric should never get out of jail," said Ciervo. "He should be behind bars for life for what he has done."After the killing, Eric Bellucci sped to Newark Airport, ditched his car and hopped a flight to Israel, where a friend lives.Investigators are not certain if Bellucci ever connected with that pal, Browne said. He rented a car in Tel Aviv and appeared to have been sleeping in it.

His sister, Vanessa, 25, called police Wednesday night when she went to the home because her parents weren't answering the phone. She opened the door and saw blood before running out and dialing 911.
The mentally ill suspect has been described by relatives as brilliant but troubled. His life, they said, spiraled out of control after graduating from Williams College, where he played football and baseball.

A diagnosed schizophrenic, Bellucci was twice committed to a hospital for mental observation and threatened in the past to commit suicide, police and family members said.But the victims' distraught relatives do not believe Bellucci's mental illness excuses the grisly slayings."If Eric was lucid enough to get cleaned up and board an international airplane," said Ciervo, "then he is lucid enough to stand before a judge."
"Eric had it in for my family since they put him in the clinic for help," Ciervo said. "We want justice."
It is still not clear what, if anything, prompted the bloodshed inside the family's Annadale home, police said.

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Los Angeles porn actor tests positive for HIV

LOS ANGELES – California's multibillion-dollar adult entertainment industry has been left reeling after another positive HIV test for a pornography actor.The revelation Tuesday led to two of the industry's biggest companies shutting down production and a scramble to find partners who may have been exposed by the actor, whose identity and gender have not been released.

The actor was a patient of the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation, a San Fernando Valley clinic that caters to pornographic actors.Clinic spokeswoman Jennifer Miller told the Los Angeles Times that efforts are under way to notify individuals who may have had sexual contact with the actor. Miller did not return calls or e-mail from The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Wicked Pictures and Vivid Entertainment told the Times that they stopped production as a precaution when the positive test was revealed.Los Angeles County public health officials and state occupational health officials have said the widespread lack of condom use on porn sets puts performers at risk for contracting HIV and other diseases. Adult film producers say viewers find them to be a turnoff.

Last year, a woman tested positive for HIV immediately after making an adult film, and in 2004, an HIV outbreak affecting several actors spread panic in the industry and briefly shut down productions at several California studios.Porn actors are required by law to test negative for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases within 30 days of going to work on a film.

State workplace safety officials at Cal/OSHA are considering strengthening rules designed to prevent transmission of disease through bodily fluids to specify the use of condoms in the adult entertainment industry.
Currently, the same laws that call on health care professionals to wear gloves and other protective barriers when dealing with patients applies to the adult film business, but the laws don't make specific provisions for porn.

AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein said his organization has been advocating for a tightening of the rules, and the adult entertainment industry and AIM clinic would "do everything in its power to prevent us from knowing who was impacted."Weinstein said the latest case is the ninth HIV-positive adult film star to be treated at the AIM clinic since the 2004 outbreak.

Chief Counsel for Cal/OSHA Amy Martin said the clinic has been uncooperative in providing state regulators with key information by citing a patient's federal right to medical privacy.

But the clinic has even refused to provide redacted copies of employment histories for infected actors, which would allow the state to investigate porn production companies without naming the sick patients, Martin said.

HIV is spread most often through sexual contact, but can also be contracted through sharing contaminated needles for drug use, infected blood products, or babies born to or breast-fed by infected women. It is the cause of AIDS, an immune disease that gradually destroys the body's ability to fight illness.

Drug war bloodshed tarnishes Mexico's richest city

MONTERREY, Mexico (Reuters) – Once an oasis of calm, Mexico's richest city has become a central battleground in the country's increasingly bloody drug war as cartels open fire on city streets and throw grenades onto busy highways.

Escalating violence in Monterrey, one of Latin America's most affluent cities and seen as a symbol of Mexico's economic prowess, is arguably the most dramatic development in Mexico's four-year campaign against powerful drug cartels.Firefights are spilling into leafy suburbs, putting ordinary Mexicans and foreigners at risk and raising the stakes for President Felipe Calderon as he faces pressure to protect a city generating 8 percent of Mexico's gross domestic product.
"The violence is now impacting the economy. Supermarket projects and jewelry stores are just two areas of frozen investment," said Juan Ernesto Sandoval, the head of Monterrey's commerce, retail and tourism chamber.

Sandoval said over 60 percent of the chamber's member businesses had received extortion threats this year.
Companies are spending 5 percent of cash flow on security, a cost that was nonexistent just four years ago, while firms selling alarms, locks and cameras in Monterrey have seen a 20 percent jump in annual profits in three years, he said.

The violence in Monterrey, with its sleek U.S.-style highways, private universities and walled homes belonging to top businessmen, may do more to shape the response to Mexico's drug war than the years of steady bloodshed in places like Ciudad Juarez, the poor, desert factory city to the west.

Monterrey, 140 miles from the border with Texas, was chosen to host a U.N. conference on development in 2002 and was lauded by U.S. President George W. Bush as a model city.Home to global cement maker Cemex, Latin America's top drinks maker FEMSA, and plants run by U.S. manufacturers including General Electric, Monterrey has Mexico's highest per-capita income.The city's murder rate, at 27 deaths per 100,000 people in the first three months of this year, is still lower than San Antonio, Texas, one study found, and it remains far safer than such Mexican cities as Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana.

But business leaders in Mexico worry northern hubs like Monterrey could lose investment to Brazil, China or India.You can't bury your head in the sand and say that the insecurity doesn't affect factories and investment, you would be saying something that isn't real," Gerardo Gutierrez, head of one of Mexico's top business chambers, told reporters.

More than 650 people have died in drug violence in Monterrey and the surrounding state of Nuevo Leon this year as the Gulf cartel has battled its former armed wing, the Zetas.The violence has touched many in a city that had long seen itself as protected from the bloodshed gripping other parts of Mexico. In August, two rival hitmen recognized one another at a supermarket checkout in a wealthy Monterrey suburb and began shooting. Shoppers panicked and one man had a heart attack.

Gunmen have hurled at least nine grenades in the past three weeks, including one thrown into a public square which injured 15 people as they strolled about and ate ice cream.Concern hit a new high last week after hitmen shot into a crowd of people at a popular shopping area, killing a young woman and provoking an outburst by normally staid residents."So many people are talking about leaving, so many are fearful their kids will be the next innocent victims," said a lawyer, who gave her name as Norma, praying at a candle and flower tribute to the slain 21-year-old university student.

Public officials have also been targeted around Monterrey. Two mayors have been assassinated near the city since August. "We're seeing a whole new phase in the violence that is taking a toll on society," said Jorge Aguirre, a political analyst at the University of Monterrey. The government of Nuevo Leon has launched a $30 million publicity campaign across Mexico to polish Monterrey's image and Calderon sent more federal police to Monterrey in September, but has so far resisted calls to send in more troops.
 
"I think it's important that we continue (our fight), combating the criminals with all the power of the state," he said in a visit to Monterrey last month.Foreign companies are not yet pulling out. One European diplomat said he was still receiving calls from companies wanting to set up plants to export to the United States.
But restaurants, shops and hotels say business is being scared off as locals stay home and as students, tourists and even artists who typically visit Monterrey think again.
 
U.S. pop trio Jonas Brothers canceled their October 21 concert in Monterrey on Monday, citing security concerns.The city's cobblestone old quarter, until last year a grid of noisy nightclubs, is deserted at night after party-goers were pulled out of discos by gunmen and never seen again.

The gay nephew of Carl Paladino shows

Unlike his loose-lipped Uncle Carl, Jeff Hannon kept his mouth shut Tuesday.The gay nephew of GOP gubernatorial hopeful Carl Paladino spent the day hiding inside his parents' upstate home, ditching his duties as a campaign aide.

"I have no comment right now," Hannon told the Daily News when reached on his cell phone."I don't want my face to be all over the newspaper over this."Hannon never ventured outside the two-story house in Kenmore, just outside Buffalo, on the day after Paladino mentioned his sexual orientation while parrying charges of homophobia.

Hannon bristled at the attention caused by his uncle's comments before ending his brief conversation with The News.Paladino - under fire after a Sunday speech where he said homosexuality is "not the example that we should be showing our children" - revealed Monday that his nephew is gay.

Asked if being gay is a choice, Paladino admitted, "I have difficulty with that."

"My nephew tells me he didn't have that choice," Paladino added.Tuesday, reporters were chased from Paladino's campaign headquarters inside the historic Ellicott Square Building in Buffalo.

A driver dropping off campaign material at the headquarters said people were concerned because Hannon didn't show up for work."Everybody's worried about him," said the driver, who declined to give his name. "He's upset because of all the attention."