Society's ChildS


Hourglass

Best of the Web: Climate change and revolution: Complex systems theorists warn we are one year away from global riots

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What's the number one reason we riot? The plausible, justifiable motivations of trampled-upon humanfolk to fight back are many - poverty, oppression, disenfranchisement, etc - but the big one is more primal than any of the above. It's hunger, plain and simple. If there's a single factor that reliably sparks social unrest, it's food becoming too scarce or too expensive. So argues a group of complex systems theorists in Cambridge, and it makes sense.

In a 2011 paper, researchers at the Complex Systems Institute unveiled a model that accurately explained why the waves of unrest that swept the world in 2008 and 2011 crashed when they did. The number one determinant was soaring food prices. Their model identified a precise threshold for global food prices that, if breached, would lead to worldwide unrest.

Pistol

Hysterization anyone? Guns and grade-school panic

The specter of school shootings has brought a too-typical staple to local newspaper sections: the boys disciplined at (or suspended from) grade school for bringing a toy gun or anything resembling a gun.

The Washington Post just found the latest wild overreaction, from Calvert County, Md., a blue state that's cracked down on gun rights. "A kindergartner who brought a cowboy-style cap gun onto his Calvert County school bus was suspended for 10 days after showing a friend the orange-tipped toy, which he had tucked inside his backpack on his way to school," according to the family.

USA

Multiple victims as gunman opens fire near Santa Monica College, school on lockdown

SMO Shooting
© The_Corsair
At least three people have been wounded in a shooting in the Santa Monica College area, California. The school is on lockdown and students are advised to stay away from the campus.

A "fully armed" suspect has opened fire at cars and a bus in the area, local police said. Witnesses reported hearing at least one shotgun blast and several handgun shots.

UCLA Medical Center officials confirm that two people have been hospitalized and are in critical condition, while one is in a serious but not life-threatening condition, CNN reports.

One suspect has reportedly been detained in the school's library and taken into custody. The police are now checking reports of a possible second shooter.

Eye 1

Hospital implements palm scan

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© Unknown
Imagine going to the hospital and having your doctor or nurse retrieve your vital medical records simply by scanning the palm of your hand. It is happening now at a local medical center.

Black Magic

Witchcraft accusations lead to torture, murders

Witchcraft Slayings
© Byelikova Oksana | ShutterstockIn villages throughout Papua New Guinea, accusations of witchcraft can lead to torture and murder, a growing trend that has authorities alarmed.
The witch hunts and subsequent killings that took place in colonial New England are considered a dark chapter in U.S. history.

But across Papua New Guinea and in other places around the world, accusations of witchcraft and sorcery are on the rise, with tragic results.

In April, an elderly school teacher was beheaded in Papua New Guinea after her neighbors accused her of witchcraft, TIME reports. A few days earlier, seven people were kidnapped and tortured with hot irons over suspicions of sorcery in Papua New Guinea's Southern Highlands province.

Last year, 29 people in the poor island nation located north of Australia were arrested for killing and cannibalizing the brains and genitals of seven people accused of sorcery.

And in February, Kepari Leniata, a 20-year-old mother in Papua New Guinea's Western Highlands region, was accused of witchcraft by the family of a 6-year-old boy who had recently died.

Leniata was stripped, bound, tortured with a hot iron, doused with gasoline and burned to death on a pile of trash in broad daylight in front of hundreds of onlookers, The Associated Press reports.

The brutal killing was condemned by officials, including Prime Minister Peter O'Neill, but no arrests of Leniata's killers were made.

Info

Dog saves abandoned baby

Pui
© Sunthorn PongpaoPui, a 2-year-old dog, who saves the life of a newborn baby girl.
Ayutthaya - A pedigree Thai dog carried a plastic bag containing a newborn baby girl believed to have been left in a roadside dump back to its home on Monday morning, saving her from inevitable death.

Sudarat Thongmak said the two-year-old male, a Bangkaew named Pui, took the white plastic bag from a site in tambon Sala Loi in Tha Rua district to the house and barked loudly to get attention.

Sudarat, 12, heard the noise and was the first to see the baby.

After hearing the dog barking she went down the stairs and discovered the bag on the patio.

She opened it and was shocked to find a newborn baby with its umbilical cord still attached. It was clearly very weak and she ran to get her mum, Pummarat, and her father, Kummerd. The parents rushed the baby to Tha Rua hospital.

Mrs Pummarat said Pui always wanders around the community especially a wood grove near the house. She and her husband believe the dog found the bag there.

Arrow Down

Snake expert says "Turtleman" show staged cottonmouth scene


Danvillr, Kentucky - It's a frightening discovery, venomous snakes found in and around a community pool. That's what Ernie Brown Jr., famously known as "Turtleman", found during an episode of his popular show Call of the Wildman, which runs on Animal Planet

The show aired Sunday night but now some experts are questioning if it was staged. The director of The Kentucky Reptile Zoo says what viewers witnessed may have been entertaining, but he says it wasn't entirely accurate.

During the season two premier Turtleman came face to face with two cottonmouths at the Danville community pool. But snake expert Jim Harrison says there's no way those snakes should have been there in the first place.

Eye 1

Alleged Anonymous hacker raided by FBI after exposing Ohio rape scandal

anonymous hacker raided
© Image from gawker.com
A 26-year-old Kentucky man says the FBI raided his home earlier this year in an attempt to investigate two hacker groups and the role they played in exposing the players linked to a high-profile rape case in Steubenville, Ohio.

An aspiring rapper from Winchester, KY named Deric Lostutter revealed Thursday that agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted a search of his home two months ago and seized computers, electronics and other items pursuant to a warrant signed April 15 by a federal judge for the Eastern District of Kentucky.

Lostutter has not been charged with any crime yet, but the FBI combed through his house in search of items pertaining to the hacktivist group Anonymous and an offshoot, KnightSec.

According to the warrant, Lostutter is likely the target of an investigation into KnightSec's online campaign earlier this year to collect, analyze and distribute information about the gang rape of a teenage girl the previous summer in the town of Steubenville, around 400 miles away from Winchester near Ohio's border with Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

The 16-year-old victim, whose name has not been published due to her age and the brutal nature of the crime, testified in court that she didn't even know she had been assaulted until she learned about the incident on social media the following day last August. Images began circulating the next morning of a seemingly lifeless body being dragged by teenagers across the room of a party, and several witnesses tweeted accounts of a high school rager that went terribly awry.

Ambulance

Elderly New York man fed up with government oppression tries to commit suicide outside studio of popular live TV show

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© @ShawnaMunger via TwitterA man with a knife cut his wrists outside the filming of the 'Today' show on Thursday.
A Queens man slashed his wrists in front of the crowd outside the "Today" show studio in Rockefeller Center Thursday, saying the Internal Revenue Service was out to get him.

Pak Chong Mar, 76, sliced himself with a knife around 7:50 a.m., shouting "the IRS is watching me," as the show was about to begin its 8 o'clock hour outside, according to the NYPD and The Associated Press. Security guards and police tackled him, and he was taken to Bellevue Hospital Center. The NYPD said he was in stable condition.

The show moved inside to start the hour, with host Matt Lauer explaining why they went inside.

Pistol

Texas says it's OK to shoot an escort if she won't have sex with you

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© image via Pio3, Shutterstock
A jury in Bexar County, Texas just acquitted Ezekiel Gilbert of charges that he murdered a 23-year-old Craigslist escort - agreeing that because he was attempting to retrieve the $150 he'd paid to Lenora Ivie Frago, who wouldn't have sex with him, his actions were justified.

Gilbert had admitted to shooting Frago in the neck on Christmas Eve 2009, when she accepted $150 from Gilbert and left his home without having sex with him. Frago, who was paralyzed by the shooting, died several months later.

Gilbert's defense argued that the shooting wasn't meant to kill, and that Gilbert's actions were justified, because he believed that sex was included as part of the fee. Texas law allows people "to use deadly force to recover property during a nighttime theft."