T. Scott Marr was believed to be facing death by doctors as his family decided to pull him off of his breathing machine. Daughter Preston noted that “He had always said, ‘I never want you guys to see me lying in a hospital bed, lying in a nursing home.’ They told us he was on his way to brain death, so we said our goodbyes before extubating him, all the monitors were shut off and we waited by his side,” according to the Lincoln Journal Star.

This happened after his family found him unresponsive at his home on December 12, a day after his 61st birthday. At the time, doctors diagnosed him with a stroke, and believed that the man would not recover. Medical officials said that Marr was on his way to “brain death.” When Marr was taken to the hospital, he was taken to the ICU and hooked up to a breathing machine. There, doctors noticed brain swelling.

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Donald Trump confirmed on Friday that he was “prepared” to let the partial government shutdown drag on for months — or even years, as CNN reported — if congress does not allocate $5.6 billion for the “border wall” that he promised to build in his 2016 presidential campaign. The response from Twitter users was quick and decisive — with dozens using the word “dictator” to describe Trump.

Following lengthy meetings between Trump and top Democrats on Friday morning, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters that Trump had said in the private meeting that “he’d keep the government closed for a very long period of time — months or even years,” according to the CNN report.

Shortly after that, Trump himself appeared to take questions in the White House Rose Garden, where he confirmed that Schumer’s characterization of his words was accurate. “Absolutely I said that,” Trump said, per CNN. “I don’t think it will, but I’m prepared.”

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If you’ve ever heard a joke about the throbbing urges of teenagers or seen a dog try to hump someone’s leg, then you have a pretty good idea how driven cane toads are when it’s time to mate. Unlike most teenagers, though, cane toads truly will attempt to copulate with anything that comes into their path. Most recently, Twitter user Andrew Mock (@MrMeMock) caught photographic evidence of an entire group of horny toads attempting to get it on with an unsuspecting python.

Mock didn’t realize what he’d actually captured until Australian Museum biologist Jodi Rowley pointed out that the toads weren’t trying to hitch a ride — they were trying to impregnate the snake. Or, as Barney Stinson on How I Met Your Mother once said, they were trying to do “the horizontal, interspecies cha-cha.”

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Most people hope they will someday win the lottery, and have a plan for how they will celebrate their sudden windfall and what they will be spending their money on. But most people’s immediate reaction would to be to enjoy a quiet cup of tea and then head straight to bed.

That was the reaction of Northern Irish grandparents Frances and Patrick Connolly, from County Armagh, when they got to ring in the new year with the news that they had won a whopping £115 million (approximately $146 million) in the EuroMillions jackpot, according to a report by Unilad.

The couple discovered their incredible win on New Year’s Day. They had bought a Lucky Dip online without expecting anything to come of it. After the winning numbers were released, they were shocked to discover that it matched their ticket almost perfectly, even going so far as to double check on several different websites that the numbers were correct.

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Jacqueline Ades doesn’t take rejection too well, police say.

The Phoenix woman is accused of sending a man 159,000 text messages after meeting him on a dating website and going on an unsuccessful first date. As Fox News reported, Ades made threats and said she would turn the man’s kidneys into sushi, police claimed.

Ades allegedly met the Paradise Valley man through a website called Luxy, a dating site for millionaires. The woman became infatuated with the man after their date, but he did not want to pursue a relationship after their first date.

Ades grew angry and sent a barrage of text messages to the man, including one message where she threatened to kill the man if he ended their non-existent relationship, police said.

“Don’t ever try to leave me…I’ll kill you,” she wrote, according to WFLA.

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According to WFTV 9, a 39-year-old man named William Brian Stillwell from Satellite Beach, Florida, allegedly shot three people on New Year’s Day after entering the home of his estranged wife’s parents uninvited. The shooting occurred at around 2 p.m.

Melbourne Police Department investigators have confirmed all three victims were adults and are in stable condition following the altercation.

While there were children in the house at the time of the incident, the shooter’s 5-year-old twins – a boy and a girl – were able to escape from the home without injuries and seek help from a neighbor.

According to police, the children could be heard begging for their father to stop in the background of the 911 call while he accused his wife – their mother – of cheating on him.

“No, daddy. No. I don’t want anyone to die,” one of the 5-year-old twins could be heard saying in the background during the call.

Stillwell was arrested on child abuse charges and attempted murder.

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Japanese “Tuna King” Kiyoshi Kimura lived up to his name at the country’s famous year-opening auction in Tokyo this week, dishing out a record $3.1 million for a giant bluefin tuna.

Kimura purchased the 612-pound tuna at an auction held in Tokyo’s newly opened fish market, part of a new year auction that has generated plenty of publicity and has become a tourist attraction in Japan. As the BBC reported, Kimura had already set the record for the highest price spent on a tuna at the auction, spending $1.4 million at the 2013 event, and more than doubled it for the tuna purchased this year.

The auction is famous for attracting fish wholesalers and sushi companies, competing to pay high prices for the best and largest fish at the pre-dawn auction. The tuna purchased by Kiyoshi Kimura is a species considered “critically endangered,” with the World Wildlife Fund noting that the bluefin tuna has suffered from overfishing and noted their popularity in Japan.

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Visitors hoping to see Oregon’s Crater Lake will have a much longer — and likely stinkier — hike ahead of them.

This week, officials at the national park announced that the road leading up to the famous lake had been closed due to a buildup of human waste brought on by the ongoing federal government shutdown. Like national parks across the country, Crater Lake National Park has remained open to visitors during the shutdown, but has no staff to pick up garbage that has piled up and the other waste accumulated due to locked bathrooms. As Oregon Live reported, the buildup prompted officials this week to close the road due to safety concerns.

“Due to conditions caused by the impact of human waste buildup on the park’s water system, the road to Crater Lake is now closed to vehicles at hwy 62 to protect public health and park resources. The road may not reopen until after the shutdown,” officials said on the park’s website.

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Donald Trump reportedly went on an expletive-laden rant in a closed-door meeting called to end the ongoing government shutdown with Democrats, and blamed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for Rashida Tlaib’s “motherf***er” comment, according to the Daily Beast.

According to sources present at the meeting, Trump kicked it off with a rant lasting roughly 15 minutes in which he blamed the Democrats for the shutdown and for not acquiescing to the $5.6 billion demand he has made for the border wall with Mexico. Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, both of whom were present at the meeting, tried to convince Trump to end the government shutdown latest by Tuesday, but not only did the President not concede to the demand, he reportedly threatened the Democrats of keeping the government closed for “years” if that’s what it took to get his wall, reports the Beast.

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Robert Crosland, the Idaho science teacher who famously fed a sick and dying (though still very much alive) puppy to a snapping turtle in front of a group of shocked junior high school students, has been found not guilty of animal cruelty charges, the Herald Journal is reporting.

Way back in March 2018, as the Inquisitr reported at the time, Crosland, a popular science teacher in the Preston School District, gave a science demonstration to his students that he would later go on to regret. That day, outside of regular classroom instruction time and in front of students who specifically wanted to be there, Preston set about to feeding his reptiles that he kept in his classroom, as he did every day. Usually he fed them mice or similar small animals.

But that particular day, he had something else in mind: a weeks-old puppy.

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Three people have died at national parks across America since the government shutdown began, with one death going unreported for a week. Meanwhile, trash and human feces continue to bedevil the parks, in the absence of workers to provide even the most basic of basic services.

The government shutdown is entering its third week, with Congress and the president seemingly no closer to an agreement. The sticking point is that President Trump wants $5 billion for a border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, and Congress does not seem to be prepared to give him that much. Trump has promised to extend the shutdown for months if necessary.

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Donald Trump took to Twitter Saturday morning to air some grievances and share updates on the ongoing government shutdown. During the lengthy series of tweets, Trump once again advocated for the border wall to be built, insisting there is bipartisan support for the project. He also called out those he claims are against him — a list that included Democrats, CNN, the Washington Post, and former President Barack Obama.

Trump has been in a heated stalemate with Democrats over the border wall that has led to the current partial shutdown of the government. Democrats have flatly refused to provide funding for the wall, which is estimated at around $5 billion. Despite massive pushback on the idea of wall, which was one of Trump’s campaign promises, the president insisted that many are supporting his plan.

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On Sunday night, CBS News will air an interview with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi on 60 Minutes— and the Egyptian government is not pleased. According to the Huffington Post, Egyptian officials reached out to the network and demanded that the interview never see the light of day.

In an official statement by CBS, the network confirmed that the Egyptian ambassador had contacted them regarding airing the controversial interview, which touches on numerous hot-button political issues. They did not elaborate on the conversation, but did emphasize that despite these warnings, the episode would air Sunday night as planned.

The exclusive interview, hosted by Scott Pelley, covered quite a few of the current political and military issues plaguing Egypt — and obviously a few of those topics hit a sore spot with the government. At one point, Sissi was asked if the Egyptian military was collaborating with Israel in the Sinai peninsula on armed operations.

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Police in Phoenix, Arizona, has started a sexual assault investigation after a woman gave birth to a baby last month, despite being in a vegetative coma for the last 10 years.

The woman, who was not named, is a patient at a clinic run by Hacienda HealthCare and had been in a coma, the BBC reported. Reports noted that the baby was born healthy, but said that staff members were not even aware that the comatose woman was pregnant until she was nearly ready to give birth.

Phoenix police said they are investigating the matter, but did not give many details about the case. A source told the BBC that the woman required round-the-clock care and that many medical personnel and staff had access to her room during that time. The hospital has since introduced a change in policy that men must be accompanied by a woman when entering the room of a female patient.

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President Donald Trump told Congress he is ready to cut a deal on wall funding in order to end the partial government shutdown as soon as possible, but claimed he did not care for the fact that most of the workers being affected by the current situation are Democrats in a series of tweets this Saturday.

“I don’t care that most of the workers not getting paid are Democrats, I want to stop the Shutdown as soon as we are in agreement on Strong Border Security!” the U.S. president tweeted on Saturday morning.

“I am in the White House ready to go, where are the Dems?” he added, about an hour before a scheduled meeting between Democrats and his administration officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and advisers Stephen Miller and Jared Kushner, who is also Trump’s son-in-law.

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When Christian Maire was convicted last year of leading a global child pornography ring, one of his victims predicted that he was “gonna get the hell beat out of him” in prison.

That eerie prediction came true this week after Maire was attacked and beaten to death while behind bars, the New York Post reported. The Upstate New York man had been sentenced to 40 years in federal prison after the FBI found he was the leader of an internet group called “The Bored Group” that posed as adolescent boys to convince young girls to share naked pictures and videos of themselves. Members of the group also shared other child pornography of children as young as infants, investigators said.

As the Detroit News reported, Maire’s trial drew considerable interest and had many angry victims show up at his sentencing. One 20-year-old victim expressed happiness with Maire’s 40-year prison sentence and predicted that he would face danger behind bars.

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Infidelity and cheating are perhaps the most common hazards plaguing modern marriages, so much so that they are often the subject of daytime chat-fests and serious counseling sessions alike. Now, according to the Mirror, one man has taken a somewhat serious step towards winning his wife back after having been a serial cheater.

One Jose L. Torres has apparently confessed to a long litany of sins of the flesh, from being a lover of prostitutes to being a “liar” and a “cheater.” In an image which was shared to Instagram— though evidently not by the guilty party himself — an extensive reading of his transgressions is etched onto the canvas of his skin for all time.

“I, Jose L. Torres am getting a tattoo voluntarily on January 2, 2019 so that I can earn my wife’s trust back for the pain and suffering I have caused in our marriage. I am a: liar, cheater, manipulator, deciever [sic], whore/prostitute lover, dishonest and disrespectul [sic].”

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A Vietnamese restaurant in New Hampshire is now realizing that not everyone can take a joke and that there are plenty of ways to offend someone. City officials in Keene, New Hampshire, have had to force a restaurant to take down a sign promoting their soon-to-open location as they deemed it to be profane. While the manager of the restaurant doesn’t agree with officials, she had no choice but to abide by their orders.

WSVN reported that the Pho Keene Great restaurant in Keene, New Hampshire had to remove the sign that was simply advertising the name of their new place. Apparently, it appeared too much like profanity and city officials simply didn’t want it to remain in place for all residents and visitors to see.

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A record-breaking number of Americans would like to get out of the United States forever. The uptick began after President Donald Trump took office nearly two years ago. Instead of making American great again, for many Trump is making it unbearable. The poll calls this the “Trump effect.”

According to a report from the Huffington Post, a full 16 percent of U.S. citizens reported they’d like to leave the country forever. That number represents six and five percent higher than those who wanted to go during the administrations of Barack Obama and George W. Bush. Under Obama, 10 percent wanted out while 11 percent wanted to leave under Bush.

Among those who want to leave the most are women, younger people, and people who have lower incomes. Those over 50 feel far less inclined to go at this point.

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A Trump supporter was reportedly taken out of an Elizabeth Warren rally in handcuffs after allegedly striking one of Warren’s supporters with a selfie stick.

The alleged attack happened in Iowa this weekend at one of the first official stops of Warren’s 2020 campaign, which started in earnest this week after Warren announced that she had formed an exploratory committee to look at a run. As IRJ reported, the Trump supporter reportedly struck an attendee with a selfie stick and was handcuffed by police officers.

The man was later identified as Joe Thorn, a Minnesota native. It was not clear if he had traveled to Iowa specifically for the Warren rally.

The aftermath of the alleged attack was captured by NBC News reporter Alex Seitz-Wald, showing the alleged attacker claiming that he acted in self-defense after the Warren supporter attacked first.

“You hit him with a stick,” a rallygoer said, to which the Trump supporter replied, “Yeah, I did because he hit me first.”

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