Society's ChildS


Question

Yet another home is completely obliterated in the U.S., this time a ranch in Johnson County, Texas - One person dead, debris strewn across wide area

Ryan Wood, Monika Diaz, Marie Saavedra & Bryan Titsworth
KVUE.com
Mon, 02 Dec 2013 10:09 UTC
Image
© Bryan Titsworth / WFAAThere is a wide debris field surrounding a rural home in Johnson County that exploded on November 30, 2013.
Johnson County emergency managers said a home that exploded late Saturday night is a total loss, and the search for its owners has yielded one body.

According to Sheriff Bob Alford, authorities in Johnson County first received calls about the explosion at about 10:58 p.m.

"The main thing is to locate the owners of the property," he told News 8, identifying them as Gary Wagner and Wanda Buckley Davis.

At a briefing Sunday afternoon, Alford confirmed that a body believed to be Davis, 62, was located in the rubble around noon.

"Sweet... caring... loving," is how niece Melanie Broyles described Davis. "She'd give you the shirt off her back."


Comment: How common is it for houses to completely explode in the U.S.? Let's look back at a few this past year...

"I thought a plane hit": Another massive explosion obliterates house, this time in Connecticut - 17 September 2013

Massive explosion obliterates house in Ohio and kills 2- Debris scattered up to quarter-mile away, 17 September 2013

Corpus Christi, Texas house explosion injures 3 - 'damaging homes as far as three blocks away', 12 July 2013

More exploding houses? Westminster, Colorado house explosion linked to natural gas, 14 Jun 2013

Explosion levels house in Texas, 13 Jan 2013

Two killed, homes destroyed in huge Indianapolis explosion, 11 Nov 2012

Connecticut house explosion kills one, injures two, 30 Aug 2012

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Eye 2

Arizona couple held three teen daughters captive, tortured and filmed them for two years in yet another 'house of horrors'


Raw Story
Sun, 01 Dec 2013 19:01 UTC
Image
Sophia Richter, 32, and Fernando Richter, 34
Police in Arizona are investigating a "house of horrors" where three teenage girls were imprisoned for two years and abused by their mother and stepfather.

The three girls, aged 17, 13 and 12, were locked in their bedrooms, subjected to torture and fed only once a day. Described as malnourished and "extremely filthy" by police, they had not taken a bath for around four to six months, they told officers. They were forced to listen to intolerably loud music or white noise and were only allowed to go to the toilet if they had permission, which was not always granted. In order not to raise suspicion, their bedrooms and the whole house had been sound-proofed.

The girls escaped the house when the 12- and 13-year-old broke out of their bedroom window early on Tuesday morning and ran to a neighbour's home.

"We heard our doorbell ringing wildly and frantically and heard somebody knocking on our windows," one of the neighbours, who gave her name as Alice, told NBC news.

The girls, who Alice described as "distraught and hysterical", said they had run away from home because their stepfather had kicked in their bedroom door and was trying to assault them with a knife.
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Evil Rays

German policeman allegedly murdered man he met through cannibalism website

Scott Kaufman
The Raw Story
Fri, 29 Nov 2013 09:56 UTC
Crime scene
© Reuters/Pawel SosnowskiPolice experts inspect the crime scene in Gimmlitztal near the town of Hartsmanndorf-Reichenau, south of Dresden.
This morning, police in the German city of Dresden announced they had arrested one of their own, identified as "Detlev G.," for the murder of a 59-year-old man from Hannover.

According to police, Detlev G. met his alleged victim in the same online cannibalism forum once frequented by Armin Meiwes, the so-called "Cannibal from Rotenburg." Detlev G. and his victim exchanged emails and text messages in which the victim expressed a desire to be killed and eaten.

After extensive communication, the two agreed to meet and "that the killing should take place immediately," according to the head of criminal investigations, Maik Mainda.

Police claim that Detlev G. murdered his victim within an hour of their first meeting, and had dismembered him and buried the body no more than four hours later.
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Gift

Vatican charity arm turns pope's words into action


The Raw Story
Sun, 01 Dec 2013 18:16 UTC
Pope Francis
© AFPPope Francis salutes the crowd as he arraives for his general audience in St. Peter's square at the Vatican
Tucked away in a corner of the Vatican City, a team of priests is hard at work turning Pope Francis's social words into action with discreet daily rounds of charity-giving based on letters sent to the pontiff.

"We do first aid," Monsignor Konrad Krajewski, a 50-year-old Polish prelate who was appointed by Francis in August to the traditional post of "Almoner", or alms-giver, said in a rare meeting with journalists.

Krajewski's job has existed for centuries at the Vatican but he said Francis was taking a special interest in it and personally identified the people with most needs.

The pope picks out some of the many letters he receives and sends them on to Krajewski and his team with memos like "Call this person" or "You know what to do".

Comment: "If this is the best God can do, I'm not impressed." ~ George Carlin

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Handcuffs

Humor banned in the New World Order: Minnesota family fighting to get son out of Abu Dhabi prison for posting parody video to his YouTube account

Angela Davis
CBS Minnesota
Wed, 27 Nov 2013 18:24 UTC
Image
Shezanne Cassim
He was put behind bars in April because the gov't didn't like a parody video

A Woodbury family is fighting to get their son out of a prison in Abu Dhabi. He's been living in Dubai for the last seven years working as a business consultant.

But 29-year-old Shezanne Cassim was put in prison because the government didn't like a parody video he posted on YouTube.

His family says he made it with some friends as a spoof about young people in Dubai.

United Arab Emirates officials say it violates cybercrimes law and poses a threat to national security.

The video was uploaded in October of last year. And then in April of this year, Cassim and four others who appear in it were thrown in jail.

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Passport

On illegal immigration, more U.S. cities are rolling out a welcome mat

Lourdes Medrano
The Christian Science Monitor
Thu, 28 Nov 2013 00:00 UTC
Tucson, a longtime foe of Arizona's 'papers, please' law, is modifying how it enforces SB 1070 to join a national trend that suggests the pendulum is swinging on illegal immigration.

Illegal Immigrants
© Ross R. Franklin/AP/FileIllegal immigrants prepare to enter a bus after being processed at Tucson Sector US Border Patrol Headquarters, August 9, 2012, in Tucson, Arizon.
The passage by conservative state lawmakers of Arizona's controversial immigration law SB 1070 in 2010 inspired copy-cat measures in several other states that made them similarly hostile to illegal immigrants.

But city leaders in this desert town, in an example of a growing national trend more hospitable to immigrants, are pushing back against Arizona's "papers, please" law in renewed repudiation of the measure and in a nod to immigrant integration.

Tucson, in liberal-leaning Pima County, is a longtime foe of the tough immigration law designed to push out of state those in the country illegally.

But now the city council is going a step further, voting this month to change how police implement the immigrations status inquiries during law enforcement stops, a provision upheld by the US Supreme Court when it struck down most of the rest of SB 1070 in June 2012. For instance, minors may not be questioned away from an attorney or guardian, and people who report a crime can do so without fear of having their immigration status checked.
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Heart - Black

Moroccan teen, forced to marry her rapist, commits suicide

Massoud Hayoun
Al Jazeera
Sat, 23 Nov 2013 02:50 UTC
Amina Filali
© Abdelhak Senna/AFP/Getty ImagesLast year Amina Filali, 16, killed herself after being forced to marry the man who had raped her. Here, her sister, Hamida, protests outside the local courthouse that approved the marriage deal.
Justice minister says legislation to stop the practice is still underway

A Moroccan teen committed suicide last month after her family forced her to marry her rapist, rights activists told Al Jazeera after reports of her death surfaced in the North African kingdom's media on Friday.

The suicide happened amid protracted efforts to repeal a law, Article 475 of the Moroccan Penal Code, exonerating rapists who marry their victims, after the high-profile suicide last year of another teen, Amina Filali.

In March 2012, 16-year-old Filali killed herself in the northern town of Larache by taking rat poison after she was forced to marry her rapist. Her death provoked several demonstrations and the Twitter hashtag #RIPAmina to demand the repeal of Article 475.

The 16-year-old girl who died last month was from the northern port city of Tetouan and was raped by another minor, according to Abdel Ali El-Allawi, director of the local chapter of the international NGO the Moroccan Association of Human Rights (AMDH).

The girl's family has refused to grant interviews to the press.

"He was put in prison," said Allawi. "The family of the rapist entered negotiations with the family of the victim. They proposed the two get married."

"These are things that are common here in Morocco. When a man rapes a woman or girl, the justice authorities say, you have a choice - you can marry the girl or go to prison."
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Arrow Up

UK food prices jumped 33% in 5 years

Dave Beasley
Exmouth Journal
Mon, 02 Dec 2013 07:47 UTC
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And once gain this year the Salvation Army is urging people to donate gifts to give children a Merry Christmas.

This week the larder celebrated their first birthday, and shocking figures reveal that as food prices have increased by a third (33 per cent) in just five years, it is ordinary families as well as the vulnerable who a returning to the food bank for help.

Anthony Bernard of the Community Larder said: "We see people from all situations, all ages...

"There are many reasons why people come to us.

"Out of work from a good job with no severance pay; failing to make ends meet from a low paid job with a long commute with fuel and other costs rising; unable to understand benefits changes through learning disabilities; partner went off with all the money leaving kids and debts; huge debts after spending on credit in a good job that was lost; went away briefly and squatters moved into house and stole identity."

And as Christmas looms, with cold weather starting to bite and rocketing heating bills, the people who perhaps could cope a year or so ago are now struggling.
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Brick Wall

Billionaire bunkers: Elites prepare for the apocalypse in style

Morgan Brennan
Forbes
Wed, 27 Nov 2013 00:00 UTC
Al Corbi's residence in the Hollywood Hills has the requisite white walls covered in artwork and picture windows offering breathtaking views of downtown Los Angeles, but it has more in common with NSA headquarters than with the other contemporary homes on the block. The Corbi family doesn't need keys (thanks to biometric recognition software), doesn't fear earthquakes (thanks to steel-reinforced concrete caissons that burrow 30 feet into the private hilltop) and sleeps easily inside a 2,500-square-foot home within a home: a ballistics-proof panic suite that Corbi refers to as a "safe core."

Paranoid? Perhaps. But also increasingly commonplace. Futuristic security technologies - many developed for the military but sounding as though they came straight from James Bond's Q - have made their way into the home, available to deep-pocketed owners whose peace of mind comes from knowing that their sensors can detect and adjust for, say, a person lurking in the bushes a half-mile away.
House with bunker
© Edit InternationalA computer generated drawing showing an underground bunker that is secretly built under a family house. If the structure is destroyed by any threat event the family will survive in the bunker buried deep underground.

Comment: Why is it that when ordinary folks do it, they're "paranoid, doomsday, anarchist, conspiracy cult survivalist preppers"... but when the rich do it they're "enhancing home security" and "carving out safe rooms"?

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House

Woman shoots and kills daughter who she thinks is boyfriend

Allison Geller
Opposing Views
Fri, 29 Nov 2013 00:00 UTC
Winter Haven, Florida, woman Adele Bing shot and killed her daughter in a deadly mistake. Bing thought the person at the door was her boyfriend, with whom she had just had a serious fight.

"How could I look my grandkids in their face and say I killed their mother?" Bing told police when they arrived at the scene. "Y'all can lock me away for good."
Adele Bing
© Unknown
Bing's 25-year-old daughter, Ruby Bing, was coming to visit with her 4-month-old baby the night of Nov. 26, CNN reported. Adele Bing, 52, had just had a "heated argument" with her boyfriend, James Lane.

Police said she came to the door with "a baseball bat in her left hand and a .22-caliber pistol in her right hand," intending to kill Lane, 39, who reportedly told her he planned to kill her. Police were actually interviewing Lane at the time, who was in the emergency room with a head injury caused by Bing, who had hit him with a gun.

Bing shot her daughter in the chest. She died at the scene. The baby was unharmed.
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