Society's Child

Alps Shootings: How French Press Buried the Story

Kim Willsher
The Guardian
Sun, 09 Sep 2012 00:00 UTC

© Laurent Cipriani/AP
Flowers on the crime scene four people were killed in the French Alps. The French press treated the story as small in comparison to front-page headlines on British pages.

Murder of British family and French cyclist seen by Gallic press as small story despite hitting front pages in UK newspapers

For the French press, the murder of a British family and a French cyclist on the edge of an Alpine forest was what is known as a "fait divers", a term mostly used to describe a trivial miscellaneous news item.

Reports of the multiple killing emerged well in time for newspaper deadlines on both sides of the Channel. However, it made front-page headlines on Thursday only in Britain.

Libération, the leading leftwing daily newspaper, carried a short report on page 14 under the headline: "Unexplained carnage in Haute-Savoie", while its rival, the right-of-centre Le Figaro relegated the story to page 8. Even on Friday, when one of the victims had been identified as a local Frenchman, father-of-three Sylvain Mollier, who happened to be cycling past when he was gunned down, only the local papers and the national tabloid Aujourd'hui put the story on the front page.

Pat Robertson Tells Man To Move To Saudi Arabia So He Can Beat His Wife (Legally, of Course)

Kate R. Bennert
Gawker
Tue, 11 Sep 2012 19:57 UTC

This morning on the 700 Club's regular segment "Bring It On," in which horrible people ask other horrible people how to continue being horrible people, a man asked Pat Robertson how to work things out with his wife who "has no respect for [him] as head of the house." Pat Robertson responded, unblinking:

Well you could become a muslim and you could beat her.

Whole seconds pass before Pat chuckles as if he were kidding (which, as it becomes clear, he is not) and continues to deep-throat his own foot:

Somebody's gotta stand up to her, and he can't let her get away with this stuff... I don't think we condone wife-beating these days, but something's gotta be done to make her -

Toronto slayings, shootings linked to battle for gang leadership

Yahoo! News - Canada
Tue, 11 Sep 2012 00:00 UTC

A spate of killings and shootings in Toronto's east end are tied to a leadership vacuum inside one of the city's most notorious gangs, police say. And the worst mass shooting ever in Toronto's history is linked to that same gang.

On Tuesday morning, at a news conference in a parking lot where one of the killings happened, police said they have evidence that links three homicides and a series of shootings to the gang known as the Galloway Boys.

"We have some information that the shooters in these incidents are vying for the leadership within the Galloway Boys group," said Det.-Sgt. Brett Nicol, who is leading the investigation into one of the slayings.

"These guys are involved in all sorts of criminality from drug dealing, weapons trafficking and prostitution," he said.

Police also revealed that the shooting death of D'Mitre Barnaby was a tragic case of mistaken identity.

Barnaby was found shot to death outside an apartment building on Dec. 30, 2011, just a few blocks from where the street party took place.

No charges have been laid in that slaying.

Idaho Abortion Ruling States Pregnant Women Can't Be Prosecuted For Having Abortions

Huffington Post
Tue, 11 Sep 2012 17:42 UTC

© Kim Murphy/Los Angeles Times/MCT
Jennie Linn McCormack's civil suit challenges an Idaho law that makes it illegal to obtain abortion pills from out-of-state doctors over the Internet. She is shown in Pocatello, Idaho.

An Idaho law that bans the use of medication to induce abortion cannot be used to prosecute a woman who took the pills to abort her pregnancy, a U.S. appeals court decided on Tuesday.

Bannock County prosecutors brought a case against Jennie Linn McCormack in 2011 after she used medication that she obtained online to induce her own abortion. McCormack, a single mother of three, claims that she could not find a licensed abortion provider in Southeastern Idaho, so she had to violate a state law that requires abortions to be performed at a hospital or medical clinic.

An Idaho federal judge dismissed the charges against McCormack in September 2011 on the grounds that the law cannot be enforced. McCormack then challenged the law itself, arguing that it imposes an undue burden on women's access to abortion in Idaho.

Brainwashing Alert!: Louisiana Keeps Getting Busted for Teaching Creationism

AUSCS
Opposing Views
Tue, 11 Sep 2012 15:49 UTC

People have the right to believe what they want about human origins, but they have no right to use the public school system to propagate religion. Insanity, it has been said, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

In light of that, the state of Louisiana might want to get a mental health check-up. Legislators and some education officials there keep promoting creationism in public school science classes - and they keep getting busted on it.

Here's the latest round: In 2008, Louisiana lawmakers passed a law that allows the use of "supplemental" materials in science class so long as the materials "promote critical thinking skills, logical analysis and open and objective discussions of scientific theories being studied." The law lists three scientific theories that would fall under this: the origins of life, global warming and human cloning.

By "origins of life," the legislature clearly meant evolution. Cut through the rhetorical fog about "critical thinking" and "logical analysis," and what legislators really want is to teach religion in biology class.

We Are Now One Year Away From Global Riots, Complex Systems Theorists Say

Brian Merchant
MotherBoard
Mon, 10 Sep 2012 13:52 UTC

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.

The MIT Technology Review explains how CSI's model works: "The evidence comes from two sources. The first is data gathered by the United Nations that plots the price of food against time, the so-called food price index of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN. The second is the date of riots around the world, whatever their cause." Plot the data, and it looks like this:

HP Increases Job Cut Forecasts to 29,000

Tiffany Kaiser
DailyTech
Tue, 11 Sep 2012 02:40 UTC

The previous forecast was 27,000

Hewlett-Packard (HP) upped its number of job cuts to 29,000 globally -- 2,000 more than the computer maker previously forecasted.

Back in May, HP predicted that it would cut 27,000 jobs around the world in its new restructuring plan dubbed the "2012 Plan." Now, HP has adjusted that figure and plans to cut 29,000 jobs.

The latest figure was reported in HP's 10-Q quarterly filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). HP plans on saving $3 to $3.5 billion by eliminating these jobs, which it will put toward Research and Development (R&D). As of July 2012, HP had already cut 3,800 jobs.

The filing noted that HP predicts charges of about $3.7 billion through the end of fiscal year 2014. About $3.3 billion of this will be the job cuts while another $400 million will be related to other areas like data center consolidation.

HP has had a pretty terrible time as of late. It had a terrible experience with former CEO Leo Apotheker, who was appointed in October 2010. Apotheker led the company to several missed financial goals and even tried to sell HP's core personal computer business.

HP then killed off its webOS mobile operating system and its TouchPad tablets last year due to overproduction, sloppy execution and slow hardware releases.

Just last month, HP suffered an $8.9 billion USD loss. However, analysts were impressed by the new restructuring plan by new CEO Meg Whitman.

Children Who Sell Themselves

Sonia Faleiro
New York Times
Thu, 06 Sep 2012 21:54 UTC

While investigating child labor in India last month for a book, I found myself in the northern state of Bihar, an established source of children for trafficking networks.

Here, alongside the expected stories of abduction, I heard of another unexpected and heartbreaking path to servitude. Children as young as 10 had begun to directly offer themselves to traffickers because they could no longer go hungry.

I met 14-year-old Arun Kumar, who told me of his experience.

Kumar lives with his uncle and two younger siblings in Amni village, a day's journey by bus from Patna, the Bihar state capital.

Two days before we met, Kumar had been returned home by a local nonprofit organization, supported by Save the Children, from a rice mill in the state of Haryana, where he had been working 18-hour days, seven days a week. He had been paid 800 rupees (a bit less than $20) a month.

On a rare day, he said, a machine would break down and the workers would be shooed out for a "holiday." "I'd walk to the next village about an hour away," he said, "to buy biscuits."

The nonprofit organization first entreated, then threatened the factory owner with a noisy protest outside his mill. "I paid for him," the owner argued, before finally releasing Kumar.

High school valedictorian denied diploma over graduation speech

Dylan Stableford
Yahoo! News
Mon, 20 Aug 2012 18:49 UTC

An Oklahoma high school valedictorian who used the word "hell" in her graduation speech in May has yet to receive her diploma.

Kaitlin Nootbaar graduated from Prague High School with a 4.0 grade point average, her father, David Nootbaar, told KFOR-TV. But school administrators told him that Kaitlin would have to submit a written apology in order to get her diploma.

"We went to the office and asked for the diploma and the principal said, 'Your diploma is right here but you ain't getting it. Close the door, we have a problem,'" David Nootbaar told the network.

"She worked so hard to stay at the top of her class," he said. "This is not right."

In her speech - inspired by a similar address in "Eclipse: The Twilight Saga" - Kaitlin recounted how annoying it is to be constantly asked what she wants to do as graduation approached. "How the hell do I know?" she said, according to her father. "I've changed my mind so many times."

Palestinian Teenager Dies after Setting Self Alight over Hopeless Living Conditions

Harriet Sherwood
The Guardian
Mon, 03 Sep 2012 15:21 UTC

Mohamed Abu Nada wanted to draw attention to his family's poverty in Gaza, said his father

A Gaza man has died after setting himself alight, apparently in protest over his family's dire living conditions.

Mohamed Abu Nada, 20, died on Sunday from injuries sustained a few days earlier when he poured petrol over his body at the morgue of Gaza City's Shifa hospital and set himself alight.

His father told reporters in Gaza that his son wanted to draw attention to the family's poverty. "I asked my son to go and look for a job, because I don't have a job and we don't have any source for living," said Abu Mohamed Abu Nada.

Father and son reportedly argued before the incident.

The family live in al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza City. Two-thirds of Gazan families became refugees in 1948 and they are generally among the poorest in Gaza.

"This case illustrates so tragically the wider sense of desperation which the blockade has engendered," said Chris Gunness, spokesman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa. "The humanitarian situation in Gaza is becoming increasingly dire, with the prospects of a prosperous and dignified life dwindling with every day."

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Society's Child

Alps Shootings: How French Press Buried the Story

Pat Robertson Tells Man To Move To Saudi Arabia So He Can Beat His Wife (Legally, of Course)

Toronto slayings, shootings linked to battle for gang leadership

Idaho Abortion Ruling States Pregnant Women Can't Be Prosecuted For Having Abortions

Brainwashing Alert!: Louisiana Keeps Getting Busted for Teaching Creationism

We Are Now One Year Away From Global Riots, Complex Systems Theorists Say

HP Increases Job Cut Forecasts to 29,000

Children Who Sell Themselves

High school valedictorian denied diploma over graduation speech

Palestinian Teenager Dies after Setting Self Alight over Hopeless Living Conditions

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