Society's ChildS


Camcorder

Public has right to film police officers

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Rules come as Baltimore pays $250,000 to settle lawsuit

The Baltimore Police Department has instituted a new policy that prohibits officers from stopping people from taping or photographing police actions, the agency said Wednesday.

The new rules were unveiled as the city agreed to pay $250,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a man who says police seized his cellphone and deleted the video of an arrest at the Preakness Stakes in 2010.

"Four years ago, if we had taken the complaint seriously and addressed it in a very rapid manner, we may not be sitting here today," Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts said Wednesday. "What I've been brought here to do is do reform of this organization. It's not an easy job. It's a tough job, because we're changing the culture in the Police Department as a whole."

The agency instituted rules on the public's right to film officers in 2012, but lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland said they didn't go far enough. The new Baltimore Police Department policy states that "members of the general public have a First Amendment right to video record, photograph, and/or audio record BPD members while BPD members are conducting official business ... unless such recordings interfere with police activity."

The new policy also states that officers "shall allow all persons the same access for photography and recording as is given to the news media."

Red Flag

Another deadly knife attack puts China on edge

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© ReutersA woman cries after her parent was killed in a knifing incident in Changsha, Hunan province, China, March 14, 2014.
Just two weeks after a mass stabbing in southwest China claimed 29 lives, and days after 153 Chinese disappeared on Flight MH370, another tragedy appears to have struck the Middle Kingdom

Not again? On the morning of March 14, knife-wielding individuals unleashed a stabbing attack in Changsha, the capital of central China's Hunan province. Three people were killed and two seriously injured, according to Chinese media. In addition, one suspect was shot dead by police and another was captured, reported the People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party. Three suspects are still at large.

Friday morning's bloodshed echoed a far deadlier rampage on March 1 in the southwestern city of Kunming, which resulted in 29 deaths and more than 140 injuries. That mass murder binge was blamed by the Chinese government on separatists from the troubled northwestern region of Xinjiang, which is home to the Turkic-speaking, largely Muslim Uighur ethnic minority. All eight of the assailants were either killed or captured. Only one of the attackers' names has been made public. A couple of days after the carnage, Chinese authorities deemed the case "solved."

Pistol

"We must shoot'em in the head" - a Ukrainian Nazi sponsor about counter-coup protestors in the East


Gennady Balashov, Ukrainian businessman and political activist, one of the sponsors of the ultranationalist organization "Right Sector", speaking at "Euromaidan" on March 10, 2014:

"We must block the pipeline [Russian gas supply to Europe through the Ukrainian territory]. We must not allow natural gas trade. Only this can stop the invaders. We must block the pipeline and let them send Alpha [Russian counter-terrorist spetsnaz unit] to shoot everyone there.
These people [anti-coup protesters in the east and south of Ukraine] are on the foreign territory. Crimea, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Donetsk are the Ukrainian cities. If they wear the St.George ribbon [distinguishing mark of the counter-coup protesters, Russian symbol of victory over Nazism], if they tear down our flag, we must shoot them in the head because they are enemy. We should not talk to them or educate them..."

Blackbox

Two former Navy SEALs involved in 'Captain Phillips' Somali pirate mission found dead on Maersk Alabama

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© APCrew members work aboard the U.S.-flagged Maersk Alabama after the ship docked in the harbor of Mombasa, Kenya,22, 2009.
Police on the island nation of Seychelles say that two former U.S. Navy SEALs found dead aboard the ship Maersk Alabama died of respiratory failure and were suspected to have had heart attacks, possibly from drug use. The police said Monday that a syringe and traces of heroin were found in their cabin. Police said samples are being sent to Mauritius for analysis to establish if the men had consumed "a substance" that could have caused the health failures.

The ship the men worked on, the Maersk Alabama, was the focus of a 2009 hijacking dramatized in the movie "Captain Phillips."

Officials named the two men as Mark Daniel Kennedy, 43, and Jeffrey Keith Reynolds, 44. They worked for the Virginia Beach, Virginia-based maritime security firm The Trident Group.

The U.S. Coast Guard is also investigating the deaths.

Chart Pie

U.S. to relinquish remaining control over the Internet

U.S. officials announced plans Friday to relinquish federal government control over the administration of the Internet, a move likely to please international critics but alarm many business leaders and others who rely on smooth functioning of the Web.

Pressure to let go of the final vestiges of U.S. authority over the system of Web addresses and domain names that organize the Internet has been building for more than a decade and was supercharged by the backlash to revelations about National Security Agency surveillance last year.

Pills

Mother jailed for refusing to drug daughter with a highly controversial antipsychotic - Child ends up in a mental institution

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Maryanne Godboldo
Maryanne Godboldo endured a mother's worst nightmare when in May 2011 police and social workers burst into her home without a warrant, seized her then 13-year-old daughter, locked the child in a psychiatric hospital and purportedly doped her with dangerous antipsychotic drugs - but the devoted mom refused to allow authorities rip the little girl from her arms without a fight.

Instead, Godboldo, a former dance teacher who had never before had a run-in with the law, fought to defend her daughter, Ariana, in a 10-hour standoff with a Detroit SWAT team. The standoff resulted in eight felony charges, as authorities say Godboldo fired a gun into the ceiling when police broke down her door. A hearing is set for Godboldo Friday, and protesters plan to rally outside the courthouse in support of the mother.

It would have been an inconceivable act to most Americans just a few years ago: Armed police can now show up at family home, forcibly remove a child without a warrant and jail anyone who stands in their way. As WND reported, even the Supreme Court has recently allowed a lower court judgment supporting the use of a violent SWAT attack in a man's home based merely on suspicion of wrongdoing.

In the Detroit case, Gosboldo said police and Child Protective Services lied to her, promising that Ariana would be placed in the custody of Maryanne's sister. She said they also assured her they would not drug Ariana.

"All I wanted to do was protect my daughter," Gosboldo said. "When they forced her to take Risperdal, Haldol, Lithium and several vaccines, without my knowledge or consent, they almost killed her," she said. "It was attempted murder."

Mail

Banking services for the working poor - Senator Elizabeth Warren's Post Office proposal

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Investigative reporter Greg Palast is usually pretty good at peering behind the rhetoric and seeing what is really going on. But in tearing into Senator Elizabeth Warren's support of postal financial services, he has done a serious disservice to the underdogs - both the underbanked and the US Postal Service itself.

In his February 27 article "Liz Warren Goes Postal," Palast attacked her support of the USPS Inspector General's proposal to add "non-bank" financial services to the US Postal Service, calling it "cruel, stupid and frightening" and equating it with the unethical payday lending practices it seeks to eliminate.

After "several thousand tweets by enraged liberals," he wrote a follow-up article called "Brains Lost in Mail - Postal Bank Bunkum," in which he contends, "the Postal Governors are running a slick, slick campaign" to "use federal property to run illegal loan-sharking shops." He says they would "team up with commercial banks to cash in on payday predation," exempting themselves from Warren's own consumer protection regulations.

His first article concludes:
While the USPS wants to "partner" with big banks, why not, instead, allow community credit unions to use post offices as annexes to provide full, complete, non-usurious neighborhood banking services? This is the type of full-service "postal banking" successful in Switzerland and Japan that is envisioned by Ellen Brown, not the payday predation proposed by the USPS.
I obviously agree with him on the full-service postal banking alternative, but that is not something Congress appears ready to approve. Palast has not looked closely at the white paper from the Inspector General's office relied on by Senator Warren, or at the research on payday lending and the inability of credit unions to service that market. The IG's proposal, rather than fleecing the poor, would save them from being fleeced by offering basic financial services at much reduced rates. And that makes it a very good start.

Airplane

Satellite data reveal route of missing Malaysia Airlines plane


Malaysia Airlines' missing jet transmitted its location repeatedly to satellites over the course of five hours after it disappeared from radar, people briefed on the matter said, as searchers zeroed in on new target areas hundreds of miles west of the plane's original course.

The satellites also received speed and altitude information about the plane from its intermittent "pings," the people said. The final ping was sent from over water, at what one of these people called a normal cruising altitude. They added that it was unclear why the pings stopped. One of the people, an industry official, said it was possible that the system sending them had been disabled by someone on board.

The people, who included a military official, the industry official and others, declined to say what specific path the transmissions revealed. But the U.S. planned to move surveillance planes into an area of the Indian Ocean 1,000 miles or more west of the Malay peninsula where the plane took off, said Cmdr. William Marks, the spokesman for the U.S. Seventh Fleet.

Family

Actor Josh Brolin interview: 'I tried heroin. Most of the guys I grew up with are dead now'

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© Larry Busacca/Getty ImagesJosh Brolin: 'I learned from doing a lot of really, really bad acting.'
Labor Day spins the story of Frank, an escaped convict who gatecrashes suburbia and proceeds to cook a peach cobbler to die for. "Let's put a roof on this house," says Frank, up to his muscled forearms in flour, as he prepares to add the pastry to the filling. Labor Day, it should be noted, is not a film to skimp on its metaphors. The peach cobbler represents the tumbledown family home, sad and broken and in need of repair. No doubt it also represents Frank, whose crusty exterior contains a warm, gooey centre. Perhaps it even says something about the actor who plays him too.

If you're looking for the classic outsider on the inside, a study in friction, then Josh Brolin's your man. He is the child of privilege who trails a rough and tumble history; the self-critical nerd in the body of a jock; a 21st-century movie star who is out of joint with his time. When I walk in the room, he is slouched on the couch, leafing through a magazine spread of pictures from the sets of the original Star Wars films. Brolin marvels at antique black-and-white shots of members of the cast and crew; he can barely tear himself free. "Ah, there they are," he says. "All drunk and coked up."

Stock Down

Royal Bank of Scotland nears junk bond status‏

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© Lefteris Pitarakis/APNew RBS chief executive Ross McEwan has outlined a plan to restore profitability which Moody’s said carries ‘significant execution risk’.
Royal Bank of Scotland has edged closer to junk bond status after a leading credit ratings agency downgraded the state-controlled bank's debt following record losses and fears of regulatory punishment.

Moody's also warned of further downgrades as it expressed concern about the bank's plan to revive its fortunes in the wake of a £8.24bn loss in 2013 - its sixth successive year of losses.

Andrea Usai, a senior credit officer at Moody's, said: "Over a longer-term horizon, RBS's restructuring plan should be beneficial for creditors if executed according to plan.