Welcome to Sott.net
Fri, 05 Nov 2021
The World for People who Think

Society's Child
Map

Heart - Black

Ohio School Shooting Suspect Had Troubled Childhood

Kim Palmer
Reuters
Wed, 29 Feb 2012 10:43 UTC
TJ Lane
© unknown
TJ Lane
US: Cleveland - The teenage gunman suspected in a Monday shooting spree in the cafeteria of an Ohio high school that killed three students had a troubled childhood and at least one offense on his legal record, according to court documents viewed by two sources.

Court records also show that the family of T.J. Lane, 17, was involved in several disputes and incidents off and on over the boy's life.

Lane, who is being held pending charges in the deaths at Chardon High School, was sentenced to 24 hours of community service in 2009 after he was charged with disorderly conduct. He had come to the aid of his brother when he thought his uncle was assaulting the sibling. In the process, Lane hit his uncle and the uncle wanted to press assault charges, the documents viewed by the sources show.

A juvenile court judge in Chardon, Ohio ruled on Wednesday that the records of the charge against Lane could be released.

Records at the Clerk of Courts for Geauga County, where Chardon is located and where Lane and his family lived, also show that T.J. Lane's father Thomas was involved in several altercations over the years.
      Read More...
Cult

Catholic School Fires Gay Teacher Planning Wedding

Elizabethe Holland
St. Louis Dispatch
Wed, 29 Feb 2012 01:45 UTC
Image

Al Fischer, a music teacher at St. Ann Catholic School in Normandy was fired in February, 2012, after word got out that he planned to marry his male partner of 20 years in New York, one of a handful of states where gay marriage is legal.
US: Missouri - A popular music teacher at St. Ann Catholic School in north St. Louis County recently was fired after church officials learned that he planned to marry his male partner of 20 years in New York, one of a handful of states where same-sex marriage is legal.

The teacher, Al Fischer, confirmed to the Post-Dispatch that he was fired Feb. 17 from his job of four years at the school. When asked to comment on his firing, Fischer declined and referred to a letter emailed to his students' parents shortly after his termination.

In the letter, Fischer tells parents of "my joyful news, and my sad news" - the former being his plans to marry his longtime partner in New York City, and the latter, "that I can't be your music teacher anymore."

Fischer's partner, Charlie Robin, executive director of Washington University's Edison Theatre, told the Post-Dispatch that the couple's relationship was in no way a secret at St. Ann and that Fischer was fired after a representative of the St. Louis Archdiocese overheard him talking to co-workers about his wedding plans.
      Read More...
Heart - Black

Arizona Executes Man for Killing, Dismembering Mom

Amanda Lee Myers
The Associated Press
Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:00 UTC
Image
© The Associated Press/Arizona Department of Corrections
This undated photo shows death-row inmate Robert Henry Moormann.
US: Florence - Arizona executed an inmate Wednesday for killing and dismembering his adoptive mother while he was out of prison on furlough for another crime, despite a spate of last-minute appeals over his mental disabilities and how the state has changed and violated its own execution protocol.

Just before he was put to death, Robert Henry Moormann used his last words to apologize to his family and to the family of an 8-year-old girl he kidnapped and molested in 1972.

"I hope this brings closure and they can start healing now," he said. "I just hope that they will forgive me in time."

Moormann is the first Arizona inmate to be executed with one lethal drug, as opposed to the state's long-standing three-drug protocol.

The switch was made after corrections officials realized Monday that one of the three drugs had expired. In doing so, they violated their own new written execution protocol by giving Moormann only two days' notice of how he would be put to death instead of seven days' notice, as stipulated in the protocol.

Moormann appeared to move more than other inmates executed with the three-drug protocol. Unlike the other inmates, who appeared to fall asleep immediately, Moormann kept his eyes open during the entire execution.
      Read More...
Attention

Nearly 450 Elephants Killed in Cameroon


Agence France-Presse
Wed, 29 Feb 2012 08:21 UTC
Elephant
© Corbis
A mass killing of nearly 450 elephants in Cameroon reflects a trend of well-armed poachers using sophisticated equipment.

The UN watchdog into the illegal wildlife trade on Tuesday voiced "grave concern" at a spike in African elephant poaching after nearly 450 of the animals were killed in Cameroon.

The head of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), John Scanlon, pointed at recent reports of mass poaching for ivory in Cameroon's Bouba Ndjida National Park.

"This most recent incident of poaching elephants is on a massive scale," said Scanlon. "It reflects a new trend we are detecting across many range states, where well-armed poachers with sophisticated weapons decimate elephant populations, often with impunity."

CITES is offering African governments support to hunt down the criminals and to locate and seize the poached ivory. Potential transit and destination countries had been urged to remain extremely vigilant and to cooperate.

The CITES program on elephants revealed increasing levels of poaching in 2011.

"This spike in elephant poaching is of grave concern not only to Cameroon, a member state to CITES, but to all 38 range states of the African elephant," said Scanlon.
      Read More...
Dollar

"The Fed's Going to Self Destruct" Ron Paul vs. Bernanke at Financial Services Hearing

Conservative1001BG
YouTube
Wed, 29 Feb 2012 18:32 UTC
      Read More...
Wall Street

Bonus Withdrawal Puts Bankers in "Malaise"

Max Abelson
Bloomberg
Wed, 29 Feb 2012 17:51 UTC
wall street

Andrew Schiff was sitting in a traffic jam in California this month after giving a speech at an investment conference about gold. He turned off the satellite radio, got out of the car and screamed a profanity.

"I'm not Zen at all, and when I'm freaking out about the situation, where I'm stuck like a rat in a trap on a highway with no way to get out, it's very hard," Schiff, director of marketing for broker-dealer Euro Pacific Capital Inc., said in an interview.

Schiff, 46, is facing another kind of jam this year: Paid a lower bonus, he said the $350,000 he earns, enough to put him in the country's top 1 percent by income, doesn't cover his family's private-school tuition, a Kent, Connecticut, summer rental and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square- foot Brooklyn duplex.
      Read More...
People

89% vote in favor of new Syrian Constitution


Russia Today
Wed, 29 Feb 2012 17:55 UTC
Syria's Interior Minister has announced that 89 per cent of those who took part in the referendum have voted in favor of a new constitution. The new law puts an end to five decades of one-party rule among other reforms put forward by President Assad.

Interior Minister Ibrahim al-Shaar announced the results of the referendum at a press conference on Monday.­

According to the minister, out of 14,580,000 Syrians eligible to vote some 8,376,000, or about 57 per cent, actually came to the polling stations and voted, RT's Maria Finoshina reports from Damascus.

      Read More...
Vader

EU grants candidate status to Serbia

Toby Vogel
European Voice
Tue, 28 Feb 2012 17:34 UTC
Image

"Welcome to The Club, Mr Tadić."

"Thank you Mr. President."
Last-minute objections by Romania no obstacle to final decision by EU leaders later this week.

National ministers for foreign or European affairs today (28 February) recommended granting Serbia the status of a candidate for EU membership.

The decision will have to be approved by EU leaders at their summit in Brussels on 1-2 March, a step that is seen as a formality despite reservations from Romania.

Nicolai Wammen, the EU affairs minister of Denmark, which holds the rotating presidency of the Council of Ministers, said: "I'm pleased we've been able to recommend candidate status for Serbia."

"We look forward to confirmation at the European Council," he said. "Serbia is now on its way back into our European family."

José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, said after a meeting with Boris Tadić, Serbia's president: "Serbia deserves the candidate status. That has been for some time the opinion of the European Commission."

Barroso and Tadić met this afternoon before the ministers had concluded their meeting.
      Read More...
Bug

Edible Bugs Could Help Fight World Hunger


Life's Little Mysteries
Wed, 29 Feb 2012 10:17 UTC
Image
© Takoradee/Creative Commons
Deep-fried insects for sale at a food stall in Bangkok, Thailand.
How to solve world hunger? The United Nations thinks bugs might help.

Meat-eating is an inefficient way to get calories, because livestock such as cows and sheep must ingest around 10 times more vegetable matter, in terms of calorie count, than they convert into meat. En route to a steak, a huge number of food calories are wasted.

And yet, humans need protein. Fortunately, insects are full of it.

There are at least 1,700 edible insect species around the world, from beetles to locusts to grubs. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), in conjunction with Wageningen University in the Netherlands, has begun a research project to determine the potential of these insects to supplement the food supply in Europe and other places. At a conference in late January in Rome, scientists began work on a plan to exploit insects as alternative sources of protein, and incorporate them into livestock feed and food products.
      Read More...
Sherlock

Mystery deepens over Swedish loner who survived the winter in 'igloo car'


The Telegraph
Mon, 20 Feb 2012 09:52 UTC
Image
© Erik Astrom / Scanpix via PA
The interior of of the snowed in car
Peter Skyllberg, the Swedish man who apparently survived more than two months of freezing winter in a snow-covered car had been living in the vehicle since last summer, when he was a regular customer at a local petrol station.

Mr Skyllberg was said by doctors to have endured temperatures of -30C (-22F) as he stayed inside the car through most of December, January and February after it was covered by heavy snow in a forest near the town of Umea in northern Sweden. He was eventually found, apparently emaciated and barely able to move or speak, by passers-by.

Mr Skyllberg was said to have survived on nothing but snow, but investigators believe that he also ate a "salve or ointment" that was found in the car in order to survive. Police initially thought he may have been a nature lover who may have become trapped while on an expedition. But a local petrol station owner, Andreas Östensson, said that Mr Skyllberg had been living in the forest and sleeping in his car since last summer and that he had regularly come into his store to buy "hot dogs and coffee".

He said the 44-year-old "loner" was apparently in good health when he had disappeared towards the end of last year.
      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts