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U.S. District Court Judge OKs retaliation suit by ex-police chief demoted after reporting cop's sex abuse photos

Travis Gettys
Raw Story
Mon, 18 Aug 2014 00:00 UTC
Male Judge
© Shutterstock
A former police chief who reported another officer for photographing the sexual abuse an unconscious woman has a case for retaliation, a federal judge ruled.

Chief Jeff Tayoun of Pittstown, Pennsylvania, police found 46 photos taken by Officer Robert Semyon on a department computer in October 2009 that showed a passed-out nude woman, reported Courthouse News.

In four of the images, the unconscious woman's anus and vagina were penetrated.

Tayoun immediately asked then-Mayor Donna Connors to suspend the officer, and the police chief met with City Council members and had the computer analyzed by the State Police Crime Lab.

The Pennsylvania attorney general's office opened a criminal investigation, and Samyon ultimately pleaded guilty to aggravated indecent assault and other charges.

He was sentenced to a year in prison.
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Health

Despite serious heart condition, Julian Assange denies he will be leaving Ecuadorian embassy in London


RT
Mon, 18 Aug 2014 15:41 UTC
Image
© Polly Boiko, RT
Julian Assange's lawyer Kristinn Hrafnsson has denied widespread rumors that the Wikileaks creator is planning to leave the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he has been holed up for the past two years, despite a serious heart condition.

The initial information was circulated by Sky News, which suggested the fugitive leaker was to spell out his next move following a public exit, while being in dire need of hospital treatment for a number of medical reasons.

Hrafnsson has told RT that it's no secret Assange would love a chance to see the outside world again, but strongly denied Sky's reports, saying that despite his wishes, the leaker has not made plans for an official announcement of a departure from the embassy in the immediate future.

RT's Polly Boiko spoke to a Wikileaks spokesperson, who also denied the rumors as entirely false, although much commotion could be seen happening around the embassy earlier.
Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño enters the embassy. Says nothing. #assange @lbc

- Tom Swarbrick (@TomsonSwarb) 18 августа 2014
Police are stationed around the clock at the London compound, ready to arrest the Wikileaks founder if he sets foot outside.
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Dollar

£20,000 cash is withdrawn from accounts of passengers who went down with flight MH370

Mia De Graff
Dailymail.co.uk
Mon, 18 Aug 2014 15:23 UTC
Image
  • Bank detected mysterious transactions 5 months after flight disappeared
  • Money moved from accounts of 3 passengers into 4th passenger's accounts
  • Police have launched investigation into the claims
  • Team is preparing deep-water search at a spot in 60,000 sq km search area
More than £20,000 has been stolen from four passengers aboard the doomed MH370 flight.

Five months after the Malaysia Airlines flight went missing, mysterious withdrawals totaling 111,000 RM (£20,916) have been recorded, reports claim. A bank in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, reported the apparent discrepancies in their accounts on July 18, before lodging a police complaint, Assistant Commissioner to the crime investigation department Izany Abdul Ghany revealed.

£20,916 cash has been reported missing from the accounts of four MH370 passengers. It comes as the search team prepares to conduct a deep-water search across 60,000 square kilometres of the Indian Ocean. According to reports, the transactions were made on July 18 when money from the accounts of three passengers was transferred to the account of a fourth passenger before it was removed. 'We are investigating the case as unauthorised access with intent to commit an offence,' Izany said, according to the Mirror. 'We are getting CCTV footage from the bank to identify the suspects involved.'

A source told the New Straits Times: 'We believe the suspect withdrew the money through the fourth victim's account via several automated teller machines (ATMs) in the Klang Valley.'
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Pistol

US gone mad: Maryland man dies in police shootout after stabbing, shooting 3-year-old daughter

John Clarke
Raw Story
Sun, 17 Aug 2014 00:00 UTC
US police
© Unknown
A Maryland man shot and stabbed his 3-year-old daughter to death before dying himself in a gunfight with police, authorities in Prince George's County near Washington, D.C., said on Sunday.

Frederick Roy Miller, 38, allegedly shot and wounded the girl's maternal grandfather and great-grandmother on Saturday while attempting to kidnap his daughter.

Police responded and spotted Miller grabbing his daughter and getting into his Nissan Altima, according to police. Officers chased Miller in his car, and he stopped several times to exchange gunfire with police.

Five Prince George's county police officers and one Maryland state trooper fired shots at Miller, who was killed at the scene.
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Stormtrooper

US Marine prosecuted for urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban soldiers found dead


RT.com
Fri, 15 Aug 2014 17:43 UTC
US Marines urinating
© (Reuters / YouTube)A still image taken January 11, 2012 from an undated YouTube video shows what is believed to be U.S. Marines urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan.
A Marine who was prosecuted for a 2011 video that depicted he and other Marines urinating on corpses of Taliban members was found dead on Wednesday. His death did not appear to be a suicide, his lawyer told Marine Corps Times.

Retired Cpl. Robert Richards, 28, died at his home in Jacksonville, North Carolina, according to Guy Womack, Richards' attorney. Richards was deployed to Afghanistan three times. He was badly wounded in one of those tours, as an improvised explosive device injured his legs and throat.

In July 2011, Richards and members of his scout sniper platoon team filmed themselves urinating on the dead bodies of who they believed to be Taliban members responsible for the gruesome death of a fellow Marine. In 2012, the video was anonymously posted on YouTube, leading to outrage across the globe.

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Magnify

Satire and real news too unclear; Facebook to begin using new tag for Onion-style articles


RT
Mon, 18 Aug 2014 11:20 UTC
Image
© Screenshot from Facebook
Facebook is to introduce a new "satire" tag to mark articles written by parody news sites, such as The Onion, to help unaware users understand that they are not a reflection of reality.

"We are running a small test which shows the text '[Satire]' in front of links to satirical articles in the related articles unit in News Feed," a Facebook spokesperson told ArsTechnica.

"This is because we received feedback that people wanted a clearer way to distinguish satirical articles from others in these units."

The new tag will highlight stories after a user has clicked through to a link in their news feed. The related content which appears after a link is clicked will be marked out with the [satire] tag.

Other satirical sites have been marked out with similar tags. While a full list of satirical sites to be marked out has not yet been provided, The New Yorker's Borowitz Report has frequently been mistaken as a real news source in the past, as has Buzzfeed parody Clickhole and UK site the Daily Mash.

The move comes after repeated cases of people mistaking the articles for real news stories.

Comment: It's quite a sign of the times when satire and reality become so confused!

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Heart - Black

Cowards! Habersham County officials refuse to pay medical expenses for toddler injured by SWAT grenade during failed raid


RT
Mon, 18 Aug 2014 11:00 UTC
Image
© UnknownA flash grenade, which makes a loud noise and bright flash to distract people during raids, landed in Bou Phonesavanh's playpen and went off near his face in May.
Officials in Georgia's Habersham County are refusing to pay for the mounting medical expenses of a toddler seriously injured by a flash grenade after a failed SWAT team raid earlier this year.

Bounkham 'Bou Bou' Phonesavanh was just 19 months old when a Habersham SWAT team initiated a no-knock warrant at his family's home at around 3 a.m. on May 28. Bou Bou was asleep in his crib at the time, surrounded by his family and three sisters. The toddler was severely injured when SWAT team officers broke through the house's door and threw a flashbang grenade that ultimately landed in the Bou Bou's crib.

When the stun grenade went off, it caused severe burns on the child and opened a gash in his chest. As a result, Bou Bou lost the ability to breathe on his own and was left in a medically induced coma for days after the incident. His extensive recovery necessitated stays in two hospitals before he finally went home in July.

Now, Habersham County officials are sticking by their decision to ignore the family's plight, the family's attorney, Muwali Davis, told WSB-TV.

Habersham County's attorney responded with a statement saying that the Board of County Commissioners will not pay given it is supposedly illegal to do so.

"The question before the board was whether it is legally permitted to pay these expenses. After consideration of this question following advice of counsel, the board of commissioners has concluded that it would be in violation of the law for it to do so."

Comment: So basically in order for any medical payment to be 'legal' the family must sue for damages. Haven't they been put through enough!?

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Penis Pump

Iowa Representative arrested for having sex with incapacitated wife after court ordered him not to

Scott Kaufman
Rawstory.com
Mon, 18 Aug 2014 09:47 UTC
Image
© Rawstory
A Republican state representative in Iowa was arrested last week on a third-degree sexual abuse charge for having sex with his wife after a court told him that she lacked the mental capacity to consent, the Iowa City Press-Citizen reports.

According to the criminal complaint, on May 15, 2014, Representative Henry Rayhons (R) was told by officials at the Concord Care Center that his wife, Donna Rayhons, no longer possessed the mental capacity to consent to sexual relations.

A little more than a month later, Donna Rayhons' daughter, Suzan Brunes, was made her mother's temporary guardian after video surveillance captured Rayhons leaving his wife's room and discarding her underclothes in a nearby laundry hamper.

Donna Rayhons' roommate corroborated the video evidence, saying that on the same day he discarded her undergarments, she "heard noises indicating to her that Henry Rayhons was having sex" with his mentally incapacitated wife.

Donna Rayhons died on August 8, 2014 at the age of 78.

The executive director of the Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assault, Elizabeth Barnhill, told the Press-Citizen that until 25 years ago, it was legal in Iowa for a man to have sex with his wife against her will - but that even with a spousal rape law in place, "convictions are rare," especially when the victim is incapable of testifying.
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Pistol

Iraq Vet: Ferguson cops have better weaponry, armor than we carried in combat

Rafael Noboa y Rivera
Billmoyers.com
Fri, 15 Aug 2014 10:05 UTC
Image
© AP/Maya Alleruzzo
In my year in Iraq, I lost track of how many times my guys asked me why so many Iraqis viewed us with distrust when we were trying to help them. The question would arise while we were walking the beat with Iraqi police officers, manning checkpoints, or in our forward operating base after we went off-duty.

Invariably, my response went something like this: "Imagine that you're back home, OK? Suddenly, you got a whole mess of Iraqi soldiers in your town. They're all over the place, doing the same things we're doing right now. How do you think you'd react? You'd probably get pretty hot, right?"

The notion that my illustration would become anything other than that scarcely crossed my mind. Yet, here we are in August of 2014, 10 years after I got back from Iraq, and the police agencies that have patrolled the streets of Ferguson, Missouri - until they were relieved of duty on Thursday amid public outrage over their heavy-handed tactics - have the kind of armor and weaponry that my men and I would have envied in the performance of our duties in an actual combat zone.

Let me repeat that: the police in Ferguson have better armor and weaponry than my men and I did in the middle of a war. And Ferguson isn't alone - police departments across the US are armed for war.
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Light Saber

John Oliver: Deny militarized cops their 'f*cking toys' as long as they're killing unarmed black men

Tom Boggioni
Rawstory.com
Mon, 18 Aug 2014 07:49 UTC
Image
© Rawstory
On HBO's Last Week Tonight, host John Oliver used the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, to address the increased militarization of America's police departments, mocking the wearing of camouflaged uniforms in urban environments and purchases of armored vehicles better suited to war zones.

Starting with the tone-deaf response from the Ferguson police chief and mayor following the shooting, Oliver pointed out the disparity between reality in the racially divided town and city official's assertion that there is no racial issues in their community.

"Here's the thing the mayor doesn't understand, "Oliver explained, "As a general rule, no one should ever be allowed to say 'There is no history of racial tension here.' Because that sentence has never been true anywhere on Earth."

Relaying several stories about past police abuses against black citizens in St. Louis County, Oliver got into the increased militarization of the police, pointing out that police departments have been outfitted with over $4.3 billion in military hardware since 1996.

"This has allowed small towns like Keene, New Hampshire to apply for a Bearcat, a military-grade armored personnel truck, which they needed because, as their application argued: 'The terrorism threat is far-reaching and often unforeseen,'" Oliver explained. "And cited as a possible target, their annual pumpkin festival."
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