Society's ChildS


Fire

5 skyscraper infernos in 4 years: Massive fire rips through 2 residential towers in Ajman, Dubai

UAE skyscraper fires
© AFPFire engulfs a tower at a residential cluster in Ajman, in the United Arab Emirates, March 28, 2016.
A massive fire has ripped through at least two residential buildings in the Swan area of the Persian Gulf city of Ajman in the United Arab Emirates. According to local media, citing emergency services, the fire has been brought "under control."

Social media users posted images and footage of the fire late Monday showing bright yellow flames engulfing a building with chunks of burning debris falling to the ground. There have been no reports of casualties so far. Local media reports that residents are being evacuated to safety.


Brigadier Saleh Saeed Al Matroushi, Director of Ajman Civil Defence, told Gulf News that Civil Defence teams are working to put out the flames. After hours of battling the blaze, the fire has been brought "under control." The news outlet also reports that traffic on adjacent roads had virtually ground to a halt, as the area has been cordoned off.

The Ajman One residential cluster consists of 12 towers. Reports suggest the fire mainly damaged Tower 8, but this has not been confirmed by officials.

The operations room received a call about the fire at 9:45pm local time. Civil Defence, rescue and ambulance teams immediately rushed to the scene. The police have also deployed helicopters to monitor the fire.


Comment: Insurance scams, bad luck, or otherwise, we're not the only ones who have noticed that Dubai has a problem with burning skyscrapers...

When Will Dubai Fix Its Burning Skyscraper Problem?


Map

The Badger-Two Medicine area, near Glacier National Park, Montana, too sacred to drill

 Badger-Two Medicine area, Glacier National Park, Montana
© Rich Addicks / New York Times / ReduxAn Anschutz Exploration Corp. drilling site on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation near Browning, Montana, July 20, 2012. Certain parts of the reservation have been opened to drilling.
For more than 10,000 years, the Badger-Two Medicine area near Glacier National Park in Montana has provided strength, subsistence and cultural identity for members of the Blackfeet Nation. The Blackfeet believe that their people were created among the mountains and springs that rise from where Badger Creek and the Two Medicine River trace their headwaters.

But the Blackfeet aren't the only ones who value the region. The oil and gas industry also have their eyes on the area—and for more than 30 years, they've been fighting to drill the hell out of it.

Cell Phone

FBI abandons orders against Apple, says it cracked San Bernardino iPhone

iPhone
© Dado Ruvic / Reuters
The US government is giving up on ordering Apple to create an iPhone hack, saying it was able to access the data on a phone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters, making the company's cooperation no longer necessary.

For the past six weeks, the Department of Justice has been trying to compel the Cupertino, California-based tech company to create a tool that would bypass security on an iPhone issued to Syed Rizwan Farook, citing an 18th century law. Apple has resisted, arguing that the move would compromise the security of all iPhone users.

Comment: See also: 'That's horse hockey!': FBI can already unlock iPhone without Apple's help - Snowden


Book

Dutch duo expose prejudices by reading 'Koran verses' from Bible

Quran and Bible_1
© Dit Is Normaal/YouTube
A Dutch duo came up with an interesting way to judge people's prejudices in the Netherlands. They read passages from the Holy Bible which had been disguised as the Holy Koran to gauge people's reactions, and found some interesting conclusions.

Call them pranksters, call them sociologists, but Alexander Spoor and Sacha Harland certainly knew how to provoke discussion by conducting what they called "The Holy Koran Experiment" on their YouTube channel Dit is Normaal (This is Normal).

"If two men sleep with each other they will both have to be killed," from Leviticus 20:13 was read aloud to some startled passers-by who thought they were hearing verses from the Holy Koran, while in fact it was actually from the Holy Bible.

Pistol

Officer shot at Capital Visitor Center; White House briefly put on lockdown

capitol visitor center
© AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, FileIn this Oct. 7, 2013 file photo, the strairs leading to the Capitol Visitors Center on Capitol Hill in Washington. The U.S. Capitol Police are telling staff in the Capitol complex to shelter in place after a report of gunshots being fired in the Capitol Visitors Center.
A U.S. Capitol Police officer was shot Monday at the Capitol Visitor Center complex, and the shooter was taken into custody, Capitol officials and police said.

The event unfolded with Congress on recess and lawmakers back in their districts. The White House was briefly put on lockdown, but that was soon lifted.

The shooting occurred in the Visitors Center of the sprawling Capitol Complex. Staffers, reporters and others were told to "shelter in place" and not allowed to leave their offices. The police officer who was shot was not believed to be seriously injured.

Chart Pie

Terrorism fear-mongering insures military spending dwarfs that spent on the things more likely to kill you

anti-terrorism spending
The 2016 presidential election, in keeping with the American tradition of a two-party dictatorship, is looking to be a choice between a modern-day fascist and a thoroughly corrupt, lying war monger. As mainstream media cheers on the failure of democracy, the candidates go on telling us how they will spend the money that is taken from us through a convoluted system of taxation rigged to benefit the corporatocracy.

This warped system of revenue collection is complemented by an equally warped system of spending. The practice of lawmakers bringing home pork was highlighted by the infamous "bridge to nowhere," but in terms of how government spends money on saving lives, we find its priorities in a truly backward state.

A statistical analysis found that more than $500 million spent per victim on anti-terrorism efforts, while about $10,000 is spent per victim on cancer research. Indeed, there is a long list of things that kill people at a rate far higher than terrorism—and could benefit from more resources for study and prevention—but get far less funding from lawmakers.

Heart disease, cancer and stroke top the list of killers, taking about 1,356,000 lives every year. In the 21st century, about 3,000 Americans lost their lives to terrorism, averaging out to 200 fatalities per year.

Heart - Black

Police mentor sentenced to 9 years for raping his high school intern

Michael Garcia
© KVIAMichael Garcia: Former LCPD detective sentenced for rape
In 2011, Diana Guerrero, 17 at the time, was an aspiring young woman with hopes of becoming a police officer. Guerrero became a member of the Las Cruces police department's high school intern program to pursue her dreams of law enforcement — when that dream turned into a nightmare.

Guerrero, who bravely came public after the incident, just settled a federal lawsuit for $3 million this week after her mentor officer in the high school intern program raped her.

"It had never occurred to me that a person who had earned a badge would do this," she said.

During a ride along with Las Cruces police detective Michael Garcia, who was ironically "assigned to a unit that focused on child abuse and sex crimes investigations" at the time, the pair headed out to a crime scene. However, instead of going to the crime scene, Garcia took the young girl to a secluded location and forced himself on her.

Comment: One can only hope that karma is real.

Karma? Cop who filmed himself raping women and children found dead in his cell


Clipboard

Danger to humanity and pigs: Petition to ban Cameron from re-entering UK receives over 23k signatures

David Cameron and wife
© Neil Hall / ReutersBritain's Prime Minister David Cameron (L) and his wife Samantha
More than 23,000 people have signed a petition to stop British Prime Minister David Cameron from re-entering the UK after his Easter holiday in Lanzarote, claiming he presents a "clear and present danger" to the country.

"David Cameron presents a clear and present danger to the short, medium and long term interests of the country. As such, the UK should institute a temporary ban on his return to Britain at the conclusion of his holiday in Lanzarote," says the petition, which is addressed to Home Secretary Theresa May.

At the time of publishing, the petition had received 23,067 signatures.

Many of the petition's signatories commented beneath the document, with supporter Michael Thorpe writing that "David Cameron is a bigger threat to the people of the United Kingdom than any terrorist organisation."

Another supporter, Lydia Paris, wrote that Cameron is a "danger to humanity, and pigs," referring to #PigGate allegations that Cameron stuck his private parts in a dead pig's mouth when he was a student at Oxford University.

Airplane

Flydubai recorder data: Argument and panic in the cockpit prior to fatal nosedive

pilot seat cockpit
© Guillermo Granja / Reuters
The Flydubai FZ981 crash in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, could have followed the pilots' failure to manage the landing after taking control of the system, media reveal citing flight data. The final minutes are said to have been full of arguments and screams of terror.

Now that decoding of the flight data recorders of the crashed Boeing is complete, an unnamed source told Russian daily Kommersant that pilot error is now dominating the investigation as the probable cause. It appears that while trying to gain altitude after an unsuccessful landing attempt in bad weather, one of the pilots pulled the control stick up too much, causing a stall break and an uncontrollable nosedive.

The Interstate Aviation Committee believes that the official results of the decoding will be made public within a week or two. Meanwhile, according to Kommersant's sources, the recorder revealed that flight FZ981 had made two attempts to land in automatic mode, and since a veering squall wind hampered the second attempt, the pilot decided to make a third approach for landing in manual mode. One of the pilots pressed the TOGA (Take off. Go around) button and turned off the autopilot, writes the daily.

Anonymous experts Kommersant talked to believe the pilot did not manage the diving rudder and horizontal stabilizer, which steer the plane in opposite directions - down and up, respectively. When the pilot pulled up, he put both the rudder and stabilizer in a sharp climb mode, somewhat fighter-jet style, plus enacted the TOGA regime's retracted flaps, decreasing ascending force. As a result, the aircraft lost speed and got into the beyond-stall angle of approach. All this led to an uncontrollable dive, the experts believe.

Comment: See also:


Arrow Down

'Like Locusts' - Connecticut parents trample children, Black Friday-style, for Easter eggs

Egg Hunt Chaos
© CBS
Agoraphobia in modern day America could be considered more of a natural reaction than it is a disorder as a recent egg hunt in Connecticut illustrates.

For the third year in a row, the Pez candy visitor's center in Orange hosted its Easter Egg Hunt. The event was structured in a way to allow children, grouped into three different age groups, to pick up 9,000 eggs scattered about the area. There were more than enough eggs for everyone.

Instead of allowing the 4-year-olds to go first, however, parents, apparently so infatuated with the idea of crappy free candy, bum-rushed the fields, greedily taking the eggs for themselves — children and Easter be damned.

"Unfortunately, people chose to enter the first field prior to anyone from Pez staff starting the activity. The crowd moved to the second field, waited for only a couple of minutes and proceeded to rush the field without being directed to do so and before the posted start time," Pez officials said in a statement on Saturday.

Pez officials described the chaos, saying, parents "immediately moved to the third field, took over and removed everything well before the activity was to even start."

"So we started talking to people and say 'hey this is supposed to start at certain time'," Pez General Manager Shawn Peterson said. "Well that lasted about a minute, and everyone just rushed the field and took everything."

West Haven resident Nicole Welch told Eyewitness News that children were trampled, parents knocked over children and eggs were stolen out of peoples' baskets. Peterson said the crowd was "kind of like locusts."