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By Zelie Pollon Zelie Pollon
A New Mexico man who said he was upset that his girlfriend had an abortion bought a highway billboard and accused her of killing their child.
The billboard, in south-central New Mexico, shows 35-year old Greg Fultz holding the outline of a baby in his arms. It reads "This Would Have Been A Picture of My 2-month-Old Baby If the Mother Had Decided to NOT Kill Our Child!"
Fultz's ex-girlfriend calls the billboard harassment and invasion of privacy, and has taken him to court under the New Mexico Family Violence Protection Act. But Fultz says he's exercising his First Amendment rights, said his attorney, Todd Holmes.
"Citizens have the right to express their speech through any media and he chose a billboard," Holmes told Reuters on Tuesday. "We feel a billboard fits within the First Amendment even if it's offensive to some."
A petition filed by Fultz' ex-girlfriend said that Fultz had a pattern of stalking and harassment, including posting "intimate cyber shots of me from one of our cyber dates," she wrote. The domestic abuse petition also requested that the billboard be removed and online harassment stopped.
An attorney for the ex-girlfriend could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.
Fultz, who runs a computer services business, had the billboard put up in mid-May.
In a hearing last week, a judge ordered the billboard to come down by mid-June. Holmes said he plans to file a motion to keep the billboard up, but he said his client is ready to face prison if necessary.
"That's how passionately he feels about protecting his free speech," Holmes said.
According to Holmes, when Fultz and his girlfriend, who was then 18, found out they were going to have a baby, she wanted to get married. Fultz refused, Holmes said, and during a church camping trip there was a "discussion about an ultimatum. Either you marry me or I'm not going to have this baby type of thing."
The girlfriend later flew to Wisconsin for work and when she returned she was no longer pregnant, Holmes said. She did not explain what happened, but Fultz suspected she had an abortion, Holmes said.
"I know it's her body," Holmes said. "But his statement is more along the lines of 'Hey, you know what? Dads have a decision in the process too."
New Mexico's Right to Life Committee initially endorsed the billboard, but has withdrawn its support because it received a number of emails from people who said Fultz' ex-girlfriend had a miscarriage, not an abortion, said executive director Dauneen Dolce.
(Editing by Corrie MacLaggan and Greg McCune)
Baboon adopts bush baby
By Sahra Abdi Sahra Abdi
NAIROBI (Reuters) – Clinging to the under-belly of a baboon, Gakii, a 3-month-old orphaned bush baby has plumped for an unlikely surrogate-mother.
In the grounds of the Nairobi Animal Orphanage, the duo cavort around in each others' arms, drink milk out of the same bowl and poke mischievously at a Reuters television camera.
"This is not normal. It has not happened here and I guess it has not happened anywhere else," said Edward Kariuki, a warden at the animal home in the Kenyan capital.
Kenya, however, has a history of unlikely cases of fostering among orphaned animals.
In 2004, a giant tortoise adopted and became an inseparable friend to a baby hippo washed out to sea off the coast of Kenya in the aftermath of the southeast Asia Tsunami. The pair became an Internet sensation.
Two years earlier, a full-grown lioness baffled experts in the east African country when she adopted a baby oryx -- a kind of antelope normally deemed a tasty morsel by the predators.
(Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Richard Lough)
Man accused of planting spyware to photograph women
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A 20-year-old California man was arrested on Wednesday, accused of planting spyware on dozens of computers to secretly photograph women in a state of undress, police said.
Trevor Harwell was taken into custody at his home in Fullerton, where detectives found hundreds of thousands of the pictures on his computer, Fullerton Police Spokesman Sgt. Andrew Goodrich said.
Harwell is accused of installing the program, which gave him remote access to the user's computer and webcam, while working as a technician for a local computer repair company, Goodrich said.
"Once he had access, he would take photographs of the users, usually women. Often, the female victims were undressed or changing clothes," Goodrich said.
Harwell then allegedly stored the photos on a remote server and eventually downloaded them to his own computer.
Police say they began investigating Harwell after a Fullerton resident contacted authorities over a suspicious message on his daughter's computer.
The message mimicked a system error advising her of a problem with an "internal sensor" and advised: "If unsure what to do, try putting your laptop near hot steam for several minutes to clean the sensor."
Goodrich said many users who got a similar message took their laptops into the bathroom while they showered, where Harwell allegedly photographed them undressing or naked.
(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb. Edited by Peter Bohan)
Humble cabbage becomes art
BEIJING (Reuters) – Ju Duoqi stocks up on cabbages in the Beijing vegetable market and then transforms the humble vegetables into works of art depicting beautiful women -- that sometimes leave very little to the imagination.
The 38-year-old said she started using cabbages in her work five years ago when she was looking for a way to bring her art together with everyday life.
"Cabbages come in different sizes and colors. Under different light and in different contexts, I can make cabbages into various forms and take photos of them that produce different moods," Ju said.
She often spends hours in the market picking out cabbages that reflect the curves of a woman's body, or that can be cut to make limbs or other accessories, using a combination of round cabbage and longer, slim "celery" cabbage.
Back in her studio on Beijing's outskirts, Ju uses toothpicks and knives to reshape the cabbage leaves to represent different parts of the body -- carving tiny hands, say, or using individual leaves for effect.
She then uses a combination of whole cabbages and leaves to form sculptures. Different stages of decomposition -- fresh, rotten or dry -- create different effects.
Once done, Ju photographs the cabbage woman as she reclines on her worktable, then reconstructs her, piece by piece, using editing software.
Sometimes a piece takes weeks, other times only days.
Ju's cabbage beauties series has been shown in Beijing, London, Paris, Los Angeles and Miami. The limited edition prints sell for 2,000 to 3,000 euros($2,900-$4,300).
In a high-end Beijing gallery where Ju's work was displayed, tourist Zhang Yong said he had become an instant fan.
"The cabbage lady looks very graceful," he said.
"The artist makes full used of the cabbages to shape the different parts of (a) woman. It is both very vivid and delicate." ($1 = 0.700 Euros)
(Reporting by Elaine Lies)
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