Society's ChildS


Radar

Rand Paul to file NSA suit within days

Sen. Rand Paul
© APSen. Rand Paul

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) will file his class-action lawsuit against the National Security Agency "hopefully within the next week," he said.

The vocal critic of the NSA told the State of the Net Conference on Tuesday that the complaint has already been written and predicted that the challenge would likely reach to the Supreme Court.

Paul has been working for months on the lawsuit against the NSA over its surveillance of Americans' phone and Internet records, which he plans to file as a private citizen. On Tuesday, he asked for the public to back the effort.

"I would like people on the Internet to go out and really support our lawsuit," he said on Tuesday.

Magnify

Dozens of boys' bodies discovered buried at Florida school of horrors

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© Tampa Bay Times
The men who ran the Florida School for Boys buried George Owen Smith quickly, without the dignity of a permanent headstone, before his family could drive up from Auburndale. Their official story was that the spry 14-year-old had crawled under a house nearby and died. His sister Ovell, 12 at the time, never believed it.

"None of that rang true," said Ovell Krell.

Seventy-three years later, she still wants to know what happened, and where he's buried.

Researchers from the University of South Florida are trying to help. They announced Tuesday they have exhumed the remains of 55 boys who died at the notorious state-run reform school in the Panhandle town of Marianna.

That's 24 more than the 31 the Florida Department of Law Enforcement found during a cursory investigation in 2009 on orders from then-Gov. Charlie Crist. The FDLE relied on incomplete school records and did not use ground-penetrating radar to map the cemetery.

The number even exceeds USF's earlier estimate of roughly 50, which was based on ground-penetrating radar.

Airplane

U.S. Federal judge rules in favor of Muslim woman on no-fly list

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© McManis-Faulkner law firmRahina Ibrahim, a mother of four with a doctorate from Stanford University, was waiting to board a flight from San Francisco to Hawaii en route to Malaysia in 2005 but was told she was on the no-fly list.
A Muslim woman now living in Malaysia struck a blow to the U.S. government's "no-fly list" when a federal judge ruled Tuesday (Jan. 14) that the government violated her due process rights by putting her on the list without telling her why.

Muslims and civil rights advocates say the no-fly list disproportionately targets Muslims, and they hope the ruling will force the government to become more transparent about the highly secretive program.

"Justice has finally been done for an innocent woman who was wrongly ensnared in the government's flawed watch listing system," Elizabeth Pipkin, a lawyer representing Rahinah Ibrahim, said in a statement.

Ibrahim, 48, a mother of four with a doctorate from Stanford University, was waiting to board a flight from San Francisco to Hawaii en route to Malaysia in 2005 but was told she was on the no-fly list. She was eventually cleared to fly to Malaysia, but her visa was revoked soon afterward and she could not return to Stanford. She was never told why she was put on the list, and in 2006 she sued the government to find out.

Government lawyers argued that Ibrahim, as a Malaysian citizen, had no standing in U.S. courts and that no-fly list information must be kept secret for security reasons. The government also asked U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California to seal his ruling.

Cell Phone

Calls for help flood social media as freak snowstorm turns Atlanta into 'frozen hellscape'

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There was no morning commute Wednesday morning in Atlanta because Tuesday afternoon's commute was still stuck on the highways.

Stop

Horrific punishment of India woman after being accused to having an affair

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© AFP/GettySuspects in the gang-rape case are led away by police.
A 20-year-old Indian woman is in critical condition after a village council ordered her to be gang-raped as punishment for allegedly having had an affair, news agencies reported Thursday quoting local police.

The horrific punishment was carried out on Monday evening in a village in West Bengal state, after which Indian police arrested the 12 men believed to have attacked her along with the village elder who handed down the judgment.

Bloomberg News reported that she was held captive for more than 12 hours during which she was raped repeatedly by residents of her community.

Police said on Thursday that the gang-rape which was carried out in a shed was preceded by the woman and the man she was accused of having a relationship with being tied to trees as the ruling was delivered.

The French News Agency Agence France-Presse reported that the woman who is a member of the Santhal tribal group and is not married, was accused of having a relationship with a Muslim man from another village.

At first, the council of elders imposed a fine of 25,000 rupees ($400) on her family, but district police superintendent C. Sudhakar said they were unable to pay.

Comment: When psychopathic perverts are running the show here on planet earth, a process called Ponerogenesis develops:
Ponerogenesis: This is the formation and development of evil. Several factors contribute to ponerogenesis, the first being the atrophy of normal people's ability to recognize pathological individuals. This is one symptom of the
hysterization of society. This and other weaknesses creates an opening whereby pathological individuals infect
a group of predominately normal people through the process of "ponerization".
You can read more Ponerogenesis here.

Rape cases in New Delhi jump 23 percent in 2012
Swiss tourist gang raped in India, say police
India: Six held over new gang rape on a bus
India's rape culture: 20 year old woman gang-raped on Christmas Eve
Three men convicted in gang rape of American tourist in India
Indian woman jumps off moving train to flee rape
Psychopath alert: 'If you can't prevent rape, you enjoy it,' says India's top police official
India gang-rape victim dies in Singapore hospital
India gang rape and murder case lawyer says victims were to blame
India: Blaming the victim, it's (still) your fault
Ending India's rape culture


Evil Rays

Grand jury declines to indict North Carolina cop who shot and killed black car crash victim

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© Raw StoryBrutalized and shot to death: 24-year-old Jonathan Ferrell
Prosecutors will submit involuntary manslaughter charges against a North Carolina police officer who shot a former college football player after he crashed his car.

A Mecklenburg County grand jury declined to indict Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Officer Randall Kerrick on Tuesday on voluntary manslaughter charges in the Sept. 14 shooting death of 24-year-old Jonathan Ferrell.

Kerrick fired his service weapon 12 times and struck Ferrell 10 times, investigators said, killing him.

WBTV-TV reported that grand jurors asked prosecutors for a lesser charge than voluntary manslaughter, and the state attorney general's office said it would submit the new charge to a full grand jury.

"In the interest of justice, we will resubmit this case to the grand jury scheduled to meet Monday, Jan. 27, to seek an indictment for voluntary manslaughter, the most appropriate charge given the facts in the case," said Attorney General Roy Cooper.

Ferrell's family said in a statement they were pleased the case would be resubmitted, but with reservations.

"While we are pleased that the Attorney General is going to resubmit the charges against Randall Kerrick to a new Grand Jury on Monday, we are skeptical given their inability to secure an indictment yesterday," the statement said. "Jonathan Ferrell was a quality human being who worked hard and cared for those around him. He deserved better."

Snakes in Suits

Two top American bankers commit suicide in London as one jumps 500ft to his death from JP Morgan skyscraper and another hangs himself

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© Ben ProctorIT executive Gabriel Magee has been found dead today after jumping from the top of JP Morgan's headquarters in Canary Wharf, London, and landing on a surrounding roof
Two top ranking American bankers working in senior positions in London have committed suicide in the space of two days.

Gabriel Magee, a 39-year-old JP Morgan bank executive, died early this morning after he jumped 500ft from the top of the bank's European headquarters. His body was discovered on the ninth floor roof, which surrounds the 33-story Canary Wharf skyscraper.

Just two days earlier, on Sunday, fellow American banker, William 'Bill' Broeksmit, 58, was found hanging in his South Kensington home.

Broeksmit - who retired last February - was a former senior manager at Deutsche Bank and had lived in London many years. He started working for the bank in 1996 but left for a period of 7 years before returning in 2008.

Magee was a vice president in the corporate and investment bank technology department having joined JP Morgan in 2004 and moved with the bank from the U.S. to Britain in 2007.

Magee was named in an email sent to all JP Morgan staff Tuesday afternoon.

A company spokesman said: 'We are deeply saddened to have lost a member of the J.P. Morgan family at 25 Bank Street today. Our thoughts and sympathy are with his family and his friends'.

Sheriff

Arkansas policeman arrested for alleged rape of underage family member

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© Raw StoryLittle Rock, AR Police Officer: Lt. Monte Hodge
Arkansas state police arrested a police officer from the Little Rock suburbs Wednesday on a charge of rape, with the court appointing a special prosecutor and special judge to examine the case.

Lt. Monte Hodge, an 18-year veteran of the Benton Police Department, turned himself in to state police after an arrest warrant was issued, prosecutor Chuck Graham told Raw Story. Hodge has been released on $25,000 bond, he said.

"We're just now starting to get involved with it," he said, noting that it is standard procedure to appoint a judge and prosecutor from outside of an officer's jurisdiction when accused of a crime.

Hodge's attorney, Bobby Digby, told Raw Story that the officer stands accused of sexually assaulting an underage male family member. "Right now it's just a set of allegations," Digby said. "They haven't presented any physical evidence."

Snowflake Cold

Commuters sleep in grocery stores after abandoning cars on highway

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© Big Tigger/https://twitter.com/BigTiggerShow
Students camped out with teachers in school gyms or on buses and commuters abandoned cars along the highway to seek shelter in churches, fire stations - even grocery stores - after a rare snowstorm left thousands of unaccustomed Southerners frozen in their tracks.

Tuesday's storm deposited mere inches of snow, barely enough to qualify as a storm up North. And yet it was more than enough to paralyze Deep South cities such as Atlanta and Birmingham, and strand thousands of workers who tried to rush home early only to never make it home at all.

Eiffel Tower

French president Hollande and first lady debating relationship

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Francois Hollande (center) Paramour Julie Gayet (left) and First Lady Valerie Trierweiler
French President Francois Hollande and his first lady, Valerie Trierweiler, are together studying a "clarification" of their relationship, Trierweiler's lawyer told the newspaper Le Figaro.

Trierweiler remains holed up in a presidential residence in Versailles outside Paris after Saturday leaving hospital where she was treated for a bout of "tiredness" brought on by press revelations of Hollande's affair with a French actress, Julie Gayet, 41.

Speculation is rife in Paris and elsewhere that Hollande, 59, might be poised to dump Trierweiler, 48, his longterm partner who was with him when he became president in 2012.

The president promised in a mid-January news conference that he would publicly define what relationship, if any, he and Trierweiler had before going on a February 11 state visit to Washington.

Trierweiler's lawyer, Frederique Giffard, said "the president of the republic and my client are thinking it over," according to a report on Le Figaro's news website.

Trierweiler, a former political reporter who maintains a contract with the magazine Paris Match, wants to come out of the scandal "in the most dignified way possible," she added.