Society's Child

Walmart labor abuses come back to haunt as Black Friday walkout looms

Schuyler Velasco,
The Christian Science Monitor
Tue, 23 Oct 2012 00:00 UTC

© Jonathan Alcorn/Reuters/File
Walmart workers on strike walk a picket line during a protest over unsafe working conditions and poor wages outside a Walmart store in Pico Rivera, Calif., earlier this month. Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, is facing a class action lawsuit alleging violation of laws regulating payment and scheduling of temporary workers. The allegations come just as the company is facing a potential walkout on Black Friday, the busy shopping day after Thanksgiving.

Walmart has been hit with a class action lawsuit in the midst of a threatened employee walkout on Black Friday, one of the busiest, most profitable shopping days of the year. Will worker troubles have an impact, or is this old hat for Walmart?

Editor's note: This story has been updated to include a response from Wal-Mart Stores.

Walmart workers aren't happy, and they're letting their employer know it.

In the midst of worker strikes in several cities and the looming threat of a mass employee walkout on Black Friday (one of the busiest shopping days of the year), the world's largest retailer has been hit with a class action lawsuit affecting temporary workers in the Chicago area.

The filing accuses Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. and two temporary staffing agencies in the region - Labor Ready Midwest Inc. and QPS Employment Group, Inc. - of breaking minimum wage and overtime laws for temp workers by making them show up early and work through lunch breaks. The lawsuit also alleges that Walmart failed to pay contracted workers the requisite four hours minimum in wages.

Bullying victim kills self in front of classmates

Crazy Days and Nights
Opposing Views
Fri, 26 Oct 2012 00:00 UTC

Felicia Garcia was just 15 years old when she killed herself on Wednesday. Her final tweet? "I can't, im [sic] done, I give up." On Saturday night last week, the high school freshman went to a party. At the party she ended up having sex with four members of the varsity football team.

Since Saturday she had been bullied nonstop about what she had done and also learned that someone had recorded a video of what happened. So, after her final Tweet, Felicia threw herself in front of a train while 200 of her classmates watched in horror.

To their credit, the school did hear about the bullying and on Wednesday set up a meeting with Felicia and one of the boys. He denied ever bullying anyone.

Celebrating pathology! Disgraced cheerleader gets reality TV show

Crazy Days and Nights
Opposing Views
Fri, 26 Oct 2012 00:00 UTC

It turns out that you don't have to follow the Kim Kardashian model to become famous anymore or be a 16 year old and get pregnant. Nope.

You can also be a teacher and break the law and have sex with your students and you will be rewarded with a reality show.

The producers of Jersey Shore have signed her up and are shopping the show which will be about Sarah Jones and her teen boyfriend. Yes, the one she cheated on her husband with and broke the law with and got her mother arrested for.

Mississippi town sued for sending children to prison for wearing wrong color socks

RT
Fri, 26 Oct 2012 17:26 UTC

A Mississippi town is facing a lawsuit for operating schools that handcuff and send children to prison for minor classroom infractions like violating the dress code or talking back to teachers.

Students in the town of Meridian sometimes spent days in a prison 80 miles away from their school without a probable cause hearing. They were not read their Miranda rights and sometimes spent more than 48 hours waiting for a hearing, which violates their constitutional rights.

Meridian police routinely arrested students without determining whether there is probable cause of an infraction or whether the school wants to press charges. Handcuffed, the students were sent to Rankin County youth detention center, which is about an hour and a half away by car.

Students were jailed for "dress code infractions such as wearing the wrong color socks or undershirt, or for having shirts untucked; tardies; flatulence in class; using vulgar language; yelling at teachers; and going to the bathroom or leaving the classroom without permission."

Remembering Russell Means

Stephen Lendman
Veterans Today
Fri, 26 Oct 2012 12:18 UTC

Over a year ago, he knew he had inoperable esophageal cancer. It spread to his tongue, lymph nodes and lungs. It was just a matter of time. On October 22, it took him. His journey to the spirit world began.

In August 2011, he said:

"I'm not going to argue with the Great Mystery. Lakota belief is that death is a change of worlds. And I believe like my dad believed."

"When it's my time to go, it's my time to go. I've told people after I die, I'm coming back as lightning. When it zaps the White House, they'll know it's me."

Earlier he said:

"The Universe which controls all life, has a female and male balance that is prevalent throughout our Sacred Grandmother, the Earth."

"This balance has to be acknowledged and become the determining factor in all of one's decisions, be they spiritual, social, healthful, educational or economical."

"Sweeney Todd" Brazilian cannibal gang killed, stuffed and baked victims into pies

Christine Hsu
Medical Daily
Fri, 26 Oct 2012 12:00 UTC

A gang of Sweeney Todd cannibals murdered their victims and stuffed and baked their remains into pies to sell on the streets, a Brazilian court has heard.

Trio Jorge Negromonte, 50, his wife Isabel Pires, 51, and his mistress Bruna da Silva, 25, are believed to have lured at least three women to their house with the promise of employing them as nannies before beheading, dismembering, quartering and stuffing their parts into pastries.

The cannibal ring is said that have used their victims' flesh to make stuffed pastries, known as empanadas, which they ate themselves or sold to neighbors for 50 cents, according to police.

The gang appeared at court for the first time yesterday in their home town of Pernambuco, north-east Brazil. They were accused of murdering Jessica da Silva, 17, Alexandra Falcao, 20, and Gisele da Silva, 31, but did not enter pleas, according to the Daily Mail.

However, authorities said that the alleged cannibals have previously confessed to killing another six unidentified people.

90-year-old robbery victim sued by the burglar who shot him

RT
Thu, 25 Oct 2012 00:00 UTC

A World War II vet says he was tied up and shot twice during an attempted burglary earlier this year inside his California home. The accused criminal sees things differently, though, and now wants to file charges of his own.

Samuel Joseph Cutrufelli, 31, is on trial for attempted murder after allegedly shooting 90-year-old Jay Leone in the jaw and the back during a home robbery-gone-wrong back in January. When Cutrufelli attempted to flee Mr. Leone's home after things went awry, though, the nonagenarian managed to make off firing a few rounds of his own.

According to Mr. Leone's take, he was tied up by Cutrufelli at gunpoint and left to watch while the suspect snuck around the Greenbrae, CA residence attempting to empty it of anything of value. Leone soon managed to wiggle himself free though, then pleaded with the suspect to let him use the bathroom. On the way, he found one of five handguns stored throughout the house and approached the criminal during mid-burglary.

Cutrufelli, Leone says, fired first.

"The .45 hit me right in the face here and went through the back of my head," the vet told jurors during court proceedings earlier this month. "I didn't feel a thing."

So nonplussed was Leone, in fact, that he managed to fire off a few rounds himself moments after being shot in the face.

"I said, 'F - - you, you son of a bitch, now it's my turn," Leone admitted to the court.

Every Parent's Nightmare: New York nanny suspected in stabbing children to death

USA Today
Fri, 26 Oct 2012 02:28 UTC

© NBC 4 New York
Emergency crews take one stabbing victim from an apartment building on West 75th Street on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Police say a nanny stabbed to death two young boys and wounded two adults before stabbing her self.

A nanny suspected of killing two young children she was looking after and then stabbing herself is in critical condition in a city hospital, as authorities continue to investigate a situation that is every parent's nightmare.

The horror started for the children's mother, Marina Krim, when she and a third child returned to their apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side Thursday evening. Puzzled by the darkened home, she returned to the lobby to ask the doorman if the nanny had gone out with 1-year-old Leo, just learning to walk, and 6-year-old Lucia, known as LuLu.

She was told they hadn't left, so she returned upstairs. A search led to the bathroom, where the children's bodies were in the bathtub and the nanny lay wounded nearby. It's unclear how many times the children were stabbed.

"There was some kind of screaming about, 'You slit her throat!'" said music therapist Rima Starr, who lives on the same floor as the family, and said she heard screams coming from their apartment at around 5:30 p.m.

The nanny, Yoselyn Ortega, who was found near a knife, was hospitalized in critical condition and was in police custody. The children were pronounced dead at a hospital.

Alberta students hurt as minivan crashes into classroom

Yahoo! Canada News
Thu, 25 Oct 2012 00:00 UTC

Canada, Alberta - Three Grade 6 students were left in critical condition and five others injured after a minivan crashed into a classroom at a school in St. Paul, Alta., Thursday morning.

The three most seriously injured students were taken by air ambulance to Edmonton, said Kerry Williamson, spokesman for Alberta Health Services, which runs St. Therese Healthcare Centre in St. Paul, where the remaining five were taken.

Three of those five injured students have since been released from hospital, he said.

Two of the seriously injured students are undergoing surgery and remain in critical condition. The third student taken to Edmonton is in stable condition. The driver of the minivan - a 46-year-old man from St. Paul - was taken into custody.

RCMP said the man received minor injuries in the crash and is in hospital.

"There's various aspects of this investigation that we are looking at and ruling in or out," said Chief Supt. Randy McGinnis.

"One would be impairment, impairment by alcohol or a drug, and the other reason for this accident could be a mental condition."

Brazilian woman auctions off virginity for $780,000

Jordana Divon
Shine from Yahoo! Canada - Shine on
Thu, 25 Oct 2012 00:00 UTC

Sold! A young woman's virginity. The price? A staggering $780,000.

That's the sum a Japanese bidder was willing to pay in order to initiate 20-year-old Brazilian student Catarina Migliorini into the world of coital relations.

Migliorini had submitted herself - along with sexy photos - to an online auction site called Virgins Wanted. As you can probably imagine, all items on the block involve one very specific thing.

As the New York Daily News reports, the auction is actually more of a publicity stunt to promote a documentary by the same name. Virgins Wanted is the brainchild of Australian filmmaker Justin Sisley, who will film Migliorini before and after the deed.

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Society's Child

Walmart labor abuses come back to haunt as Black Friday walkout looms

Bullying victim kills self in front of classmates

Celebrating pathology! Disgraced cheerleader gets reality TV show

Mississippi town sued for sending children to prison for wearing wrong color socks

Remembering Russell Means

"Sweeney Todd" Brazilian cannibal gang killed, stuffed and baked victims into pies

90-year-old robbery victim sued by the burglar who shot him

Every Parent's Nightmare: New York nanny suspected in stabbing children to death

Alberta students hurt as minivan crashes into classroom

Brazilian woman auctions off virginity for $780,000

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