Society's ChildS


Handcuffs

Florida man guilty of lesser counts in loud-music shooting

Derek Kinner
Washington Times
Mon, 17 Feb 2014 07:36 UTC
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© Bob MackMichael Dunn leaves the courtroom after the verdict is read in Jacksonville, Fla. Saturday, Feb. 15, 2014
A Florida jury's inability to agree on a murder charge will give prosecutors and defense attorneys fodder for their next moves in the case of a teen fatally shot after an argument over loud music.

Michael Dunn, a 47-year-old software developer, was convicted Saturday of attempted murder for shooting into a carful of teenagers after the argument but jurors couldn't agree on the most serious charge of first-degree murder. A mistrial was declared on the murder charge.

State Attorney Angela Corey said her office would consider seeking a retrial of Dunn on a first-degree murder charge.

Meanwhile, defense attorney Cory Strolla said he plans to appeal based on several issues, including how the jury could reach guilty verdicts on four counts and deadlock on another.
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Airplane

Ethiopian Airlines co-pilot hijacks plane to seek Geneva asylum

Emmanuel Igunza
BBC
Mon, 17 Feb 2014 07:30 UTC
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The co-pilot of an Ethiopian Airlines plane flying from Addis Ababa to Rome has hijacked the aircraft and landed in Geneva, Swiss police say.

The hijacker - who has been arrested - waited for the pilot to go to the toilet to lock himself in the cockpit. He was unarmed. He has requested asylum in Switzerland.

The airline said in a statement that all 202 passengers and crew were safe. Geneva airport, which was closed for a time, has now reopened.

An Ethiopian man born in 1983, the co-pilot has sought asylum due to fear of persecution in Ethiopia, police said at a news conference.

After locking himself in the cockpit, he asked to refuel at Geneva, landed the plane, climbed down from the cockpit window using a rope (available in the cockpit), and gave himself up to police.

He was unarmed and there was no risk at any time to crew or passengers, police said.
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People

UK: WH Smith removes 'honesty boxes' as shoppers aren't honest!

Andy Dolan
Mail Online
Sun, 16 Feb 2014 18:35 UTC
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© Mail OnlineWH Smith put the honesty boxes in shops in train stations and airports to allow shoppers to pay quickly

They were heralded as a demonstration of the travelling public's integrity.

But after introducing honesty boxes to help time-pressed customers quickly pay for their newspapers, retailer WH Smith has discovered some shoppers can no longer be trusted to pay the correct amount.

The company installed the boxes at around 60 train station kiosks and airport shops nationwide, after a trial at two branches showed sales had risen and checkout queues had shrunk dramatically - with no increase in shoplifting.

But the store has now removed around a third of the boxes, which were sited near store newspaper racks and near store exits for customers who needed to buy a newspaper or magazine in a hurry.
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Sheriff

Los Angeles, California: Cops burn man's genitals with taser in front of his family

Kristin Tate
Blacklisted News
Tue, 11 Feb 2014 00:00 UTC
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© NBC26 year-old Daniel Johnson
According to a lawsuit filed last month, Los Angeles police tasered 26-year-old Daniel Johnson in the genitals.

An officer knocked on Johnson's front door on December 26. The lawsuit alleges that Johnson was then informed that his 58-year-old father would be issued a $1,000 littering fine for dropping a cigarette on the ground.

Johnson asked the officer if he could pick up the cigarette butt for his father rather than face the fine. Apparently, the father suffers from nerve damage which causes him to drop things by accident on a regular basis.

The exact details regarding what happened next are unclear, but at some point an argument broke out between Johnson and the officers outside on the front lawn. This resulted in two policemen tackling the 26-year-old to the ground, securing him in a "full Nelson" hold, and then tasering him in the genitals.

The family has made it clear that the police intentionally targeted Johnson's genitals with the taser. Johnson said, "He was right above me as he tased me, so there's no mistake that he was trying to tase me in my genitalia."
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Alarm Clock

Killing of zoo giraffe raises questions of science, ethics and education

Richard Steed and Malin Rising
Yahoo! News
Sun, 09 Feb 2014 12:55 UTC
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© Scanpix/Denmark/Reuters
Danish zoo kills giraffe to prevent inbreeding, rebuffs efforts to save 2-year-old Marius' life

Saying it needed to prevent inbreeding, the Copenhagen Zoo killed a 2-year-old giraffe and fed its remains to lions as visitors watched, ignoring a petition signed by thousands and offers from other zoos and a private individual to save the animal.

Marius, a healthy male, was put down Sunday using a bolt pistol, said zoo spokesman Tobias Stenbaek Bro. Visitors, including children, were invited to watch while the giraffe was then skinned and fed to the lions.

Marius' plight triggered a wave of online protests and renewed debate about the conditions of zoo animals. Before the giraffe was killed, an online petition to save it had received more than 20,000 signatures.

But the public feeding of Marius' remains to the lions was popular at Copenhagen Zoo. Stenbaek Bro said it allowed parents to decide whether their children should watch what the zoo regards as an important display of scientific knowledge about animals.

"I'm actually proud because I think we have given children a huge understanding of the anatomy of a giraffe that they wouldn't have had from watching a giraffe in a photo," Stenbaek Bro said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

He said the zoo, which now has seven giraffes left, followed the recommendation of the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria to put down Marius by because there already were a lot of giraffes with similar genes in the organization's breeding program.

Comment: There is an interesting discussion on our forum here about this very issue.

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Arrow Down

Warning! Fake funeral notice cyber-scam

Jason Sickles
Yahoo! News
Mon, 10 Feb 2014 10:37 UTC
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© Yahoo!Hackers stole the identity of Eubank Funeral Home to send out fake funeral notices.
In his line of work, funeral home director Brian Bass has come to expect the occasional juvenile phone prank.

But the hoax recently perpetrated on the small-town Eubank Funeral Home where Bass works is bigger than any adolescent antics. Cybercriminals hijacked the funeral home's identity as part of a worldwide email phishing scam.

For the past month, inboxes across the United States and beyond have been getting funeral notices that appear to be from Eubank Funeral Home in Canton, Texas, 60 miles east of Dallas.

Without saying who has died, the fake emails invite the recipient to an upcoming "celebration of your friend's life service" and instruct the recipient to click a link for "more detailed information about the farewell ceremony."

"It reaches to people's curiosity and their natural instinct to find out who passed away," Bass told Yahoo News.

But instead of going to Eubank's website, the Better Business Bureau says, the link in the email takes readers to a foreign domain where malicious software is downloaded onto the user's computer allowing criminals access to passwords, financial records, and other personal information stored on the computer.
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Heart - Black

We can be certain of this

Charles Hugh Smith
Of Two Minds
Sat, 15 Feb 2014 16:31 UTC
overfishing
© n/aThe scale of our destruction of this resource is unprecedented and easily visible to all
Just as the addict feels "I can't live any other way," so we continue clinging to a way of living that is equally self-destructive because we too see no other way to live.

Yesterday I discussed the intrinsic uncertainties in complex systems. (Certainty, Complex Systems, and Unintended Consequences). Amidst this sea of uncertainty we can be certain of this: humans will continue down an unsustainable path that inevitably leads to a tragic end until they succeed in destroying themselves or they reach a point of no return and abruptly change course.

That process of clinging to the present arrangement "because I can't live any other way" until that arrangement collapses is the primary narrative of our era. It is truly remarkable how humans will cling to a visibly self-destructive, no-exit arrangement because they see no alternative, and then after the present arrangement crumbles and the wreckage is cleared, we somehow manage to find some other arrangement.

Sadly, we only rouse ourselves to change when there is no other choice, that is, after we've destroyed the previous arrangement. Take the seas, for example: we're losing the oceans. The scale of our destruction of this resource is unprecedented and easily visible to all. The Consequences of Oceanic Destruction (Foreign Affairs) Over the last several decades, human activities have so altered the basic chemistry of the seas that they are now experiencing evolution in reverse: a return to the barren primeval waters of hundreds of millions of years ago.
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Light Saber

Portland, Oregon: Angry residents wave pitchforks, torches in protest of Mayor's crackdown on homelessness

Eleanor Goldberg
The Huffington Post
Sat, 15 Feb 2014 21:59 UTC
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© Huffington Post
A group of fired-up activists in Portland, Ore., who were tired of seeing homeless people being mistreated staged the kind of protest that will be difficult for the mayor to ignore.

An estimated 4,000 people sleep on the streets of Portland, Ore., on any given night and, since last summer, life has become increasingly difficult for them.

So, a group of protesters descended upon Portland City Hall on Tuesday night carrying pitchforks and torches to "shame the mayor into action," organizer Jessie Sponberg told The Oregonian.
peep this shit. stop criminalizing homelessness! #angrymob#portlandpic.twitter.com/pdvWv4SjIj

- jessie sponberg (@ozone2016) February 12, 2014
Portland appears to be gearing up to revive a bill that would allow police to rouse homeless people sitting on sidewalks, The Oregonian reported at the end of last year. In July, Mayor Charlie Hales launched an effort to clear out homeless campsites, according to the Portland Mercury.

Sweeping campsites often exacerbates the situation for people living on the streets because the police discard homeless people's few possessions, which may include their only warm clothing and blankets, advocates noted in a Change.org petition.

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Nuke

New Mexico nuclear waste site has 'radiological event'


RT.com
Sun, 16 Feb 2014 15:25 UTC
Radiation
© Reuters/Alex Domanski
Officials are monitoring the levels of airborne radiation at the deep underground facility in southeastern New Mexico where the US government disposes of its low-grade nuclear waste.

Air samples were taken around the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) after a monitoring system detected traces of radiation on the underground levels of the facility around 11:30 pm Friday night, the US Department of Energy said in a news release.

The 139 workers above ground at the time of the incident were ordered Saturday to remain where they were as a precaution. None of the employees tested positive for radioactive contamination, and all non-essential personnel were released, Department of Energy spokesman Roger Nelson said.

Nelson said the cause of the leak remains a mystery, since inspection crews have not yet gone underground. He added that he was not sure when that would happen.

Surface samples show no sign of radiation, thus suggesting the leak was "not significant," he said.
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Magic Hat

Reality show snake-handling preacher dies -- of snakebite

Ashley Fantz
CNN
Sun, 16 Feb 2014 15:11 UTC
Jamie Coots
© CNNJamie Coots had said that he believed a poisonous snakebite would not harm believers as long as they are anointed by God.
A Kentucky pastor who starred in a reality show about snake-handling in church has died -- of a snakebite.

Jamie Coots died Saturday evening after refusing to be treated, Middleborough police said.

On "Snake Salvation," the ardent Pentecostal believer said that he believed that a passage in the Bible suggests poisonous snakebites will not harm believers as long as they are anointed by God. The practice is illegal in most states, but still goes on, primarily in the rural South.

Coots was a third-generation "serpent handler" and aspired to one day pass the practice and his church, Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name, on to his adult son, Little Cody.

The National Geographic show featured Coots and cast handling all kinds of poisonous snakes -- copperheads, rattlers, cottonmouths. The channel's website shows a picture of Coots, goateed, wearing a fedora. "Even after losing half of his finger to a snake bite and seeing others die from bites during services," Coots "still believes he must take up serpents and follow the Holiness faith," the website says.

On Sunday, National Geographic Channels spokeswoman Stephanie Montgomery sent CNN this statement: "In following Pastor Coots for our series Snake Salvation, we were constantly struck by his devout religious convictions despite the health and legal peril he often faced.
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