Society's ChildS


Ambulance

The Suffering of Syrians - A Photo Essay of Aleppo Hospitals

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© Nicole TungAug. 24, 2012. A boy is treated by doctors and nurses after sustaining injuries from an airstrike in the Sha'ar neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria.
It was a typical day at one of the hospitals here in Aleppo, a typical three hours, to be even more specific. Children seemed to be everywhere, on hospital beds, in the hospital lobby and waiting with listless faces outside the clinic. Blood seemed to seep through every piece of clothing they had. Some, as young as three, composed themselves as needles pierced their skin to stitch up deep wounds.

Mohamed, 13, tried hard not to cry as he lay on a hospital bed, wincing in pain from the injury he'd sustained after a shell landed near the breadline where he had waited for hours. No one knew he'd been hurt yet and his cousin arrived only thirty minutes later to transfer him to another hospital.

More civilians flooded in, and those who were conscious had a resigned look of acceptance - this was just what happened now these days.

Info

Woman Arrested For Stabbing 7 People On New York City Subway Platform

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© CBS 2The Sutphin Blvd-Archer Ave. station is closed with police tape after several people were stabbed there on Sept. 12, 2012.
New York - Three people were injured in a stabbing on the escalator of a subway station in Queens Wednesday morning.

Earlier reports indicated as many as 7 people stabbed.

An MTA spokesman said that Dina Saint-Fleur, 25, slashed at least two people after getting into a dispute on a J Train around 8:45 a.m.

The argument continued while they were riding the escalator on the way up to the street.

Princess Llsop, 24, Antione Roddy, 34, and Andres Nova, 42, were injured in the attack. Llsop and Roddy are a couple, an MTA spokesman said, and were arguing with Saint-Fleur on the train. Nova fell during the incident on the escalator, and his injuries may have come as a result of the fall.

Heart - Black

Woman admits taking part in gruesome Ohio killing

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Katrina Marie Culberson
Zanesville, Ohio - A woman charged in the gruesome killing of another woman found covered in burns and wailing in agony by the side of a rural road has admitted she had a part in the death and says she wants "to be a human being again."

Katrina Marie Culberson, who pleaded not guilty Wednesday in the killing, spoke to The Zanesville Times Recorder in a jailhouse interview over the weekend, admitting to having a role in the death of her friend Celeste Fronsman.

A driver found Fronsman, 29, on a road near Zanesville in eastern Ohio on Aug. 26. She had been raped and burned and had a strap around her neck. She died two days later at a Columbus hospital.

A coroner ruled Fronsman's death a homicide, but the exact cause of death could take more than a month to determine because of severe burns to 80 percent of her body.

Culberson, 20, and two others have been charged with aggravated murder, kidnapping and aggravated arson. Monica Jean Washington, 24, also pleaded not guilty to the charges in Muskingum County Common Pleas Court.

Another suspect, 33-year-old LaFonse Darney Dixon, was indicted Wednesday on those same charges and two additional conspiracy charges alleging that he planned or helped plan the crime. His first court hearing is set for next week.

Phoenix

More Than 300 People Die in 2 Pakistan Factory Fires

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© Rehan Khan/European Pressphoto AgencyA man searched for the body of a relative at a mortuary after 166 people died in a fire on Wednesday in Karachi, Pakistan.
Karachi, Pakistan - Fire ravaged a textile factory complex in the commercial hub of Karachi early Wednesday, killing almost 300 workers trapped behind locked doors and raising questions about the woeful lack of regulation in a vital sector of Pakistan's faltering economy.

It was Pakistan's worst industrial accident on record, officials said, and it came just hours after another fire, at a shoe factory in the eastern city of Lahore, had killed at least 25.

Flames and acrid smoke swept quickly through the cramped textile factory in Baldia Town, a northwestern industrial suburb, creating panic among the hundreds of poorly paid workers who had been making undergarments and plastic tools.

They had few options of escape - every exit but one had been locked, officials said, and the windows were mostly barred. In desperation, some flung themselves from the top floors of the four-story building, sustaining serious injuries or worse, witnesses said. But many others failed to make it that far, trapped by an inferno that advanced mercilessly through a building that officials later described as a death trap.

Rescue workers said most of the victims died of smoke inhalation, and many of the survivors sustained third-degree burns. As firefighters advanced into the wreckage during the day, battling back flames, they found dozens of bodies clumped together in the lower floors.

One survivor, Muhammad Aslam, said he heard two loud blasts before the factory filled first with smoke, then with the desperate screams of his fellow workers. "Only one entrance was open. All the others were closed," he said at a hospital, describing scenes of panic and chaos.

Mr. Aslam, who was being treated for a broken leg, said he saved himself by leaping from a third-floor window.

Hundreds of anguished relatives gathered at the site, many of them sobbing and shouting as they desperately sought news. Some impeded the rescue operation, and baton-wielding police officers tried to disperse the crowd but failed.

Binoculars

Council Members Consider Police Surveillance Video On Television


There are hundreds of television channels out there, but in one Bucks County community, there could soon be another. People may soon be able to watch a video feed of a police security camera - from their couch.

"I personally don't like being viewed as I'm coming out my door," said Bashean Baxter of Bristol Borough.

Police surveillance cameras are constantly watching you.

"Doesn't bother me one way or the other," said Mary Ann Smoyer.

But what if you had access to what police are viewing?

Arrow Down

Agent Orange Victims Get Scientology 'Detox' Treatment

Agent Orange
© Veteran's Today
The Vietnamese government is turning to a "detoxification" method developed by the founder of the Church of Scientology to treat victims of Agent Orange, a toxic defoliant the U.S. military used during the Vietnam War.

According to local media reports, 24 patients from the central city of Da Nang were admitted to the Hanoi 103 Military Hospital last week to begin a free, month-long treatment to rid the body of dioxins that have been linked to birth defects, cancers and other diseases.

The "Hubbard Method," named after L. Ron Hubbard, requires taking vitamins and minerals, exercising and sweating in saunas. Scientologists have used it to treat alcoholism and drug addiction in the past, and offered similar services to New York City's first responders who were exposed to toxins in the 9/11 terror attacks.

Vietnam is the first country to apply the method on Agent Orange victims, according to Hoang Manh An, the director of the hospital carrying out the detoxification.

Arrow Down

Exorcism Boom in Poland Sees Magazine Launch

Father Andrzej Grefkowski
© PAP/Tomasz GzellExorcist Father Andrzej Grefkowski.
Warsaw: With exorcism booming in Poland, Roman Catholic priests here have joined forces with a publisher to launch what they claim is the world's first monthly magazine focused exclusively on chasing out the devil.

"The rise in the number or exorcists from four to more than 120 over the course of 15 years in Poland is telling," Father Aleksander Posacki, a professor of philosophy, theology and leading demonologist and exorcist told reporters in Warsaw at the Monday launch of the Egzorcysta monthly.

Ironically, he attributed the rise in demonic possessions in what remains one of Europe's most devoutly Catholic nations partly to the switch from atheist communism to free market capitalism in 1989.

"It's indirectly due to changes in the system: capitalism creates more opportunities to do business in the area of occultism. Fortune telling has even been categorised as employment for taxation," Posacki told AFP.

"If people can make money out of it, naturally it grows and its spiritual harm grows too," he said, hastening to add authentic exorcism is absolutely free of charge.

Posacki, who also serves on an international panel of expert Roman Catholic exorcists, highlighted what he termed the "helplessness of various schools of psychology and psychiatry" when confronted with extreme behaviours that conventional therapies fail to cure.

Info

US Teachers' Strike To Enter Day 3; Union Boss Calls Progress 'Glacial'

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© Scott Olson/Getty ImagesChicago public school teachers and their supporters picket in front of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) headquarters on the second day of a teachers’ strike on September 11, 2012 in Chicago, Illinois.
UPDATED 09/11/12 - 10:20 p.m.

CTU President Karen Lewis Doubtful A Deal To End Strike Will Be Done On Wednesday
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The Chicago teachers' strike will head into its third day on Wednesday, after the latest round of talks ended Tuesday night without a deal to bring teachers back to work, and the head of the Chicago Teachers Union describing their progress as "glacial."

Talks between Chicago Public Schools officials and the union ended around 8 p.m. Tuesday, after negotiators spent all day trying to hammer out an agreement on a new teacher evaluation system.

After negotiations ended Tuesday night, Chicago Teachers Union Karen Lewis said progress toward a deal was "glacial."

CBS 2′s Dana Kozlov reports it was clear even before talks officially ended for the day that no deal was likely on Tuesday, and perhaps not even on Wednesday.

"We have been working hard on evaluations all day. There has not been as much movement as we would hope," Lewis said shortly before 6 p.m. Tuesday. "There's been - let's put it this way, centimeters, and we're still kilometers apart."


Footprints

Pakistan factory fires kill 105 workers

A fire raced through a garment factory in the Pakistani city of Karachi overnight killing up to 80 people, while another fire in a shoe factory in Lahore killed at least 25 people, police and government officials said on Wednesday.

"People started screaming for their lives," said Mohammad Asif, 20, a worker at the Karachi factory. "Everyone came to the window. I jumped from the third floor."

The fires could raise fresh questions about Pakistan's industrial safety. Critics say the government is too corrupt and ineffective to tackle an array of problems, from struggling industries to suicide bombings in the South Asian nation.

Senior Superintendent of Police Amir Farooqi told Reuters that police were raiding parts of Karachi to search for the factory owners.

Farooqi said 35 people were injured in the garment factory fire and bodies were still being recovered from the facility which employed about 450 people.

The latest death toll was up to 80, according to Provincial Information Minister Sharjeel Inam Memon.

The cause of the garment factory fire was not clear.

"Within two minutes there was fire in the entire factory," said factory worker Liaqat Hussain, 29, from his hospital bed where he was being treated for full-body burns.

"The gate was closed. There was no access to get out we were trapped inside."

Comment: Update: As of 11:00 am EST, the death toll is 314.


Phoenix

Mob sets fire to US consulate in Libya, staffer dies

An armed mob protesting over a film they said offended Islam, attacked the US consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi.
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© Mohamed Abd El Ghany / ReutersProtesters outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo demonstrate their outrage over a movie produced in the U.S. they say insults the Prophet Muhammad.
An American staff member of the U.S. consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi has died following fierce clashes at the compound, Libyan security sources said on Wednesday.

"One American staff member has died and a number have been injured in the clashes," Abdel-Monem Al-Hurr, spokesman for Libya's Supreme Security Committee, said, adding that he did not know the exact number of injured and could not say what the cause of death was.

An armed mob protesting over a film they said offended Islam, attacked the US consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi on Tuesday and set fire to the building, witnesses reported.

The attack happened on the same day as a similar group of hardliners waving black banners attacked the US embassy in Cairo and tore down the US flag, but it was not immediately clear if the two incidents were coordinated.