[Yuki Maru Hoshi]

Dog leads authorities to missing Florida woman, authorities say
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/animal-...say-rcna236106

Florida authorities released body cam footage on Monday that appears to show a dog leading a deputy sheriff to a woman reported missing by her husband that night.

The Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office posted footage of the September 25 incident on Facebook on Oct. 6. The video begins by showing a man at the door of a home in Destin, Florida, a town about 50 miles east of Pensacola.

The man tells Deputy Devon Miller that his wife has been missing for an hour that evening. A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office said in an email that the woman is 86 years old, but declined to provide the couple's names.

"She just takes that dog, but she never takes more than 10 or 15 minutes," he said. "It's almost an hour now. It's over an hour now."

The video then shows Miller returning to their car and driving off before spotting the loose canine, which the sheriff's office identified as "Eeyore." Miller then gets outside to greet the dog before following it.

Eeyore then leads the deputy to the missing woman, who is near grass. The video does not show the woman, but Miller describes her to the sheriff's office as lying on the sidewalk, "alert and conscious."

Miller then tells the woman that the dog helped find her. The woman repeats back the deputy's comments in disbelief before revealing that Eeyore is her adult child's dog.

[Yuki Maru Hoshi]

Buddhist monks continue peace walk despite accident injuries
https://kfdm.com/news/local/buddhist...ident-injuries

SETX — A group of Buddhist monks is persevering on their peace walk from Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington, D.C., despite facing challenges, including a recent accident in Dayton that injured two monks.

The monks began their journey on Oct. 26 at the Hong Dao Buddhist Temple and have covered nearly 300 miles. They aim to complete the 2,300-mile trek in 120 days.

The monks say their mission is to support a suffering society and promote healing worldwide. "We try to spread that love, loving kindness, compassion, and hopefully that everyone will be living in harmony and unity, and that is our purpose of walking," they said.

Supporters have been inspired by the monks' dedication. One supporter shared, "I woke up my daughter and I was like, hey, we got to go and we flew here... I think it's awesome what they're doing."

Despite the accident involving a pickup truck, which left one monk hospitalized, the group remains committed to their journey. "The surgery went well, and he's well, and he's happy. He supported this walk, and he wanted all the monks to continue walk in to finish this journey," they said.

[Yuki Maru Hoshi]

[Yuki Maru Hoshi]

Crazy judge

Glamorous female judge's career ends in disgrace after she was caught out in outrageous lie
https://mol.im/a/15379631

Central to the fabrications that the judge pushed was claims that she was a veteran of Operation Desert Storm - the name for the US-led Gulf War in the early 1990s - despite being aged just 16 at the time.

In the investigation into Foxworth-Roberts' insurance claim, it was found that she had claimed around $40,000 in jewelry and expensive goods were stolen from her car during a break-in.

As she was removed from the bench, the Supreme Court said in its majority ruling that her conduct 'calls into question her honesty and integrity — minimum qualifications the public expects from every judge.'

Writing in the decision to remove Foxworth-Roberts from the bench, Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Jay McCallum said officials were bemused by her continued attempts to defend herself.

'Rather than take responsibility for her conduct, (Foxworth-Roberts) has persisted with tortured explanations and excuses,' he wrote.

[arista]

Originally Posted by Yuki Maru Hoshi

Dog leads authorities to missing Florida woman, authorities say
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/animal-...say-rcna236106

Well done, that dog

[Yuki Maru Hoshi]

Upstream homeowners flooded by Addicks, Barker reservoirs during Harvey win major court ruling
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/new...ource=facebook

Catastrophic flooding during (Hurricane) Harvey

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers controls gated dams at the Addicks and Barker reservoirs, which were built in the 1940s and can hold about 410,000 acre-feet of floodwaters in an emergency.

The reservoirs were constructed to prevent catastrophic flooding along Buffalo Bayou, in the city of Houston and along the industry-heavy Ship Channel. According to court rulings in the flood victims' case, urban sprawl encroached on the reservoirs over the years, measurably reducing the capacity to mitigate upstream flood damage when the water rises in the reservoirs.

Facing Hurricane Harvey's extreme rainfall in August 2017 that drenched Houston for days, Army Corps operators had to decide when to open the flood gates and allow water to flow downstream. Harvey caused major flooding for over 10,000 upstream homes and businesses, according to lawyers' estimates. Properties downstream were also flooded when the Army Corps opened the gates.

Flood victims with properties downstream of the reservoirs are still waiting for a separate lower-court decision after arguments in their trial concluded in early 2025.

Ruling in favor of homeowners

The panel affirmed the conclusion by the Court of Federal Claims that the Army Corps should have foreseen flooding on these adjacent properties, and that it was not a one-time occurrence.

"Every property owner whose land is subject to the government's flowage easement deserves compensation," said Charest, the property owners' lawyer, in a news release after the ruling was handed down. His firm worked with several others to represent flooded landowners in the case.

In the appeals court ruling issued on Dec. 22, the judges found that "the flooding was permanently recurring and, in the alternative, that, even if the flooding were characterized as temporary, it would still constitute a taking."

MORE COVERAGE: These 5 Houston-area neighborhoods saw the most floodplain development since Hurricane Harvey

The three judges did deviate from the lower court on how to calculate flood victims' damages, though, telling the Court of Federal Claims to leave out line items including lost rental income before recalculating the dollar figure owed to six bellwether property owners presented at trial.

The federal judge had initially ruled in 2022 that those six victims should get over $450,000 compensation in total, plus interest. The final decision on their compensation is designed to set the standard for payouts to other upstream litigants.

If all property owners flooded above Addicks and Barker join litigation efforts, the federal government could owe a combined 1.67 billion before interest, according to a 2022 estimate by Charest's firm.

I wonder how this will impact the flood control district.. because most of our watershed is dotted with retention/detention areas and those do overflow in extreme rainfall events causing damage. Granted, those homes would've likely flooded anyway without drainage...

The same could be said about the reservoir, but they made a very public decision to hold back the water. So it's a bit different than a passive system that collects water so that it has somewhere else to go/drain more slowly so that the bayou/watershed has more room to take water downstream without cresting.

Could effect other states also.

These are rainfall totals across several days (the worst of Harvey was a 3-day event iirc)