Society's ChildS


Phoenix

2 firefighters dead, 2 hurt in Texas lodge fire

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© The Associated Press/Bryan College Station Eagle/Stuart VillanuevaA Bryan firefighter walks across the smoking rubble of a Knights of Columbus Hall in Bryan, Texas, Saturday, Feb. 16, 2013.
Bryan, Texas - Two Texas fire lieutenants have died of burns after battling a lodge hall fire, a city official said Saturday.

Gregory Pickard and Eric Wallace, both with the department in the Central Texas city of Bryan, were in a group of firefighters responding to the blaze about midnight Friday at a Knights of Columbus hall, city spokeswoman Mary Lynne Stratta said.

The team entered the burning building but didn't emerge when ordered to evacuate, Stratta said.

Wallace, 36, died at the scene and Pickard, 54, on Saturday at a hospital in Galveston, she said.

"He called for help, said he was low on air," Stratta said of Wallace, a 13-year Bryan Fire Department veteran.

V

Protesters show support for Christopher Dorner outside LAPD headquarters

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Dozens of protesters gathered outside the Los Angeles Police Department headquarters downtown Saturday afternoon, holding signs of support for Christopher Dorner, the fired police officer suspected of killing four people.

Those gathered said they were protesting police corruption and the way the massive manhunt for Dorner was conducted. Authorities said Dorner appears to have died from a self-inflected gunshot wound after a shootout with police in Big Bear on Tuesday, ending a deadly rampage that stretched across Southern California.

Protesters said they believed Dorner's claims that he was unfairly fired from the department in 2009 - grievances described in a lengthy online manifesto that has been attributed to him. Dorner also claimed that he was the victim of racism.

Protesters also said they were appalled by police mistakenly shooting at passengers in two separate trucks in Torrance, wrongly believing Dorner might be in the vehicles. One woman was shot in the back and is still recovering.

The protesters emphasized that they did not condone the killings of which Dorner is accused.

Michael Nam, 30, stood at the corner of 1st and Main Streets with a sign, painted by his girlfriend, showing a tombstone and the words "RIP Habeas Corpus." The tombstone was engulfed in flames.

Laptop

Facebook, home of 'The Hacker's Way,' gets hacked; none of users' personal data compromised

Facebook
© Corbis
Facebook is getting an unwelcome look at the shady side of the hacking culture that CEO Mark Zuckerberg celebrates.

Intruders recently infiltrated the systems running the world's largest online social network but did not steal any sensitive information about Facebook's more than 1 billion users, according to a blog posting Friday by the company's security team.

The unsettling revelation is the latest breach to expose the digital cracks in a society and an economy that is storing an ever-growing volume of personal and business data online.

The news didn't seem to faze investors. Facebook Inc.'s stock dipped 10 cents to $28.22 in Friday's extended trading.

The main building at Facebook's Menlo Park, California, headquarters lists its address as 1 Hacker Way. From there, Facebook serves as the gatekeeper for billions of potentially embarrassing photos and messages that get posted each month.

This time, at least, that material didn't get swept up in the digital break-in that Facebook said it discovered last month. The company didn't say why it waited until the afternoon before a holiday weekend to inform its users about the hack.

It was a sophisticated attack that also hit other companies, according to Facebook, which didn't identify the targets.

"As part of our ongoing investigation, we are working continuously and closely with our own internal engineering teams, with security teams at other companies, and with law enforcement authorities to learn everything we can about the attack, and how to prevent similar incidents in the future," Facebook wrote on the blog.

Heart - Black

Hundreds mourn slain Edmonton boy - mother faces first-degree murder charge in death

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© CBC NewsAround 200 people packed into Our Lady of Guadalupe church in Edmonton Saturday for the funeral of 7-year-old Omar Jajoy.
Canada, Edmonton - Hundreds of people watched as a small white casket, adorned with roses, was carried into a central Edmonton parish Saturday morning - a final farewell to 7-year-old Omar Jajoy.

"Omar was ...a very happy kid and a joy for his family," said Max Caravantas, a family friend.

"The service was very touching. We all felt, you know, what the family felt today. It's a tragedy for our community and a tragedy for the Jajoy family as well."

Omar's body was found in a south Edmonton apartment Tuesday morning. The cause of death has not been released, but it is believed he drowned.

Friends at the funeral described him as a friendly boy who enjoyed playing soccer and video games.

His mother, Nerlin Sarmiento, who is charged with first-degree murder in his death, was not at his service.

Sheriff

RCMP questions claim of 600 missing aboriginal women

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© Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian PressParticipants of the Women's Worlds 2011 congress take part in a rally on Parliament Hill in solidarity with missing and murdered aboriginal women in Ottawa in 2011.
The RCMP is questioning the oft-cited claim by an aboriginal group and some federal politicians that about 600 aboriginal women have gone missing or been murdered in Canada.

On today's edition of CBC Radio's The House, host Evan Solomon says that when he contacted the RCMP to confirm that there are 580 cases of aboriginal women who were either missing or killed in the country, the force said it wasn't aware of about 500 of them.

The question of exactly how many aboriginal women are missing or killed in Canada comes during a week that included the Annual Day of Justice for Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women on Friday, and a debate in the House of Commons that included a Liberal proposal to strike a special committee to investigate the issue. This week also saw a report from New York-based Human Rights Watch that accused the RCMP in British Columbia of abusive acts, including rape, against aboriginal women.

Dollar

Russia meteor damage estimated at $33M

40 people still in hospital after exploding meteor injures 1,200.


A small army of workers set to work Saturday to replace the estimated 200,000 square metres of windows shattered by the shock wave from a meteor that exploded over Russia's Chelyabinsk region.

The astonishing Friday morning event blew out windows in more than 4,000 buildings in the region, mostly in the capital city of the same name and injured some 1,200 people, largely with cuts from the flying glass.

Forty of the injured remained hospitalized on Saturday, two of them in serious condition, the state news agency RIA Novosti reported, citing the regional health ministry.

Regional governor Mikhail Yurevich on Saturday said damage from the high-altitude explosion - estimated to have been as powerful as 20 Hiroshima bombs - is estimated at $33.2 million Cdn. He promised to have all the broken windows replaced within a week.

But that is a long wait in a frigid region. The midday temperature in Chelyabinsk was minus - 12 C, and for many the immediate task was to put up plastic sheeting and boards on shattered residential windows.

More than 24,000 people, including volunteers, have mobilized in the region to cover windows, gather warm clothes and food and make other relief efforts, the regional governor's office said. Crews from glass companies in adjacent regions were being flown in.

Info

Forest Whitaker reportedly frisked in Manhattan deli, accused of shoplifting

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© Lenny Abbot, PacificCoastNews.coForest Whitaker on the set of his upcoming movie Black Nativity
Oscar-winning actor Forest Whitaker was accused of shoplifting and then publicly frisked inside a Manhattan deli yesterday morning.

The movie star, in town filming Black Nativity with Jennifer Hudson, was about to leave the Milano Market on Broadway when one of the workers there claimed to have seen him snag an item from a store shelf, his spokesperson said.

The worker stopped Whitaker and allegedly gave him a humiliating pat down in full view of everyone in the Morningside Heights store.

No stolen items were found and Whitaker left. His driver, Reggie Crupe, said he was parked outside waiting when the actor came out of the store.

"An employee from the store came outside to speak with him and to apologize," Crupe said in a statement. "He told Mr. Whitaker that the cameras in the store were at a bad angle and that he could not see if Forest had stolen anything."

Camera

Photos of ailing Chavez stir emotions in Venezuela

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© Carlos Garcia Rawlins / Reuters/ReutersA supporter of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez holds a copy of a photograph of Chavez released by the Ministry of Information, during a gathering at Plaza Bolivar in Caracas February 15, 2013.
Caracas - President Hugo Chavez's supporters joyfully brandished first photographs of him since cancer surgery two months ago while opposition activists said the images were worrying evidence of Venezuela's political vacuum.

In a first proof of life since his six-hour operation in Cuba on December 11, authorities published four photos on Friday showing Chavez lying in a hospital bed smiling next to his daughters.

Underlining the gravity of his situation, however, an accompanying statement said the 58-year-old socialist leader was breathing through a tracheal tube and struggling to speak.

Within hours, the photos were on sale in Caracas streets, where some of Chavez's passionate supporters clutched them to their hearts as if they were a religious icon.

"It doesn't matter that he can't talk. We understood his message," said Aniluz Serrano, 57, selling prints in colonial Bolivar Square, named for Venezuela's independence hero and Chavez's idol, Simon Bolivar.

"When I saw this photo, I thought how beautiful, here he is calling on the people to keep fighting. When I see this smile, I can see Christ, I can see Simon Bolivar."

Pistol

Florida fugitive who stabbed detective with eyeglasses during escape shot dead in Texas

Alberto Morales
© CBSAlberto Morales
A Florida prisoner who escaped after stabbing a detective with his eyeglasses was shot and killed by Texas law enforcement officers early Saturday after police responded to a report of a home burglary, authorities said.

Alberto Morales was shot shortly after midnight when officers, with assistance from a police helicopter, spotted him in a wooded area near a lake in North Texas, Grapevine police Sgt. Robert Eberling said. Two hours earlier, officers responded to a report that jewelry and men's clothing had been stolen during a break-in at a home near where Morales was found.

Eberling said at a Saturday news conference that officers instructed Morales to lay on the ground and show his hands, but he rushed toward them, at which point they opened fire. He said the fugitive was still wearing part of his prison-issued jumpsuit as well as jogging pants, but Eberling said he couldn't comment on whether the stolen clothing and jewelry was found with Morales.

The residents arrived home around 10:30 p.m. Friday to discover the burglary at their home and called law enforcement officials, Eberling said.

Che Guevara

100,000 march against austerity in Ireland

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© eirigi
On Saturday, February 9, up to 100,000 people took to the streets of the Twenty Six Counties [the Republic of Ireland - SOTT ed. note] in a display of mass opposition to austerity, with demonstrations taking place in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Sligo and Waterford. The 'day of action', which was organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions [ICTU], attracted support from a wide range of anti-austerity groups and political parties.

In Dublin, Limerick and Sligo dozens of éirígí activists joined their local protests. The Dublin march also included a contingent from the Campaign Against the Household and Water Tax, made up of local branches from across the city and surrounding counties. CAHWT groups displayed a variety of banners calling on ICTU to formally come on board with the CAHWT and join the fight against the home tax.