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Glass walkway in China cracks beneath tourist

Yuntaishan glass path
© People's Daily OnlineFilePic of Yuntaishan glass path in Central China's Henan province.
Yuntaishan glass path was seen cracked in Central China's Henan province on October 5, 2015, causing panic among the holidaymakers.

"I heard a bang from under...Everybody is screaming. I cried, 'It's really cracked! It's really cracked!' And pushed the people in front of me to get away." A netizen posted thus on weibo, a Chinese version of Twitter. He later deleted the post, saying he was too much bothered by media.

Reporter from cnr.cn contacted the staff of the Yuntaishan resort, who confirmed that the path had indeed been broken and that it has been closed for the time being. Tourists have been evacuated on scene.

Heart - Black

Rapist cop cleared of charges after defense attorneys use old photo of victim posed in 'similar' position

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© Screengrab/YouTubeStephen Maiorino
A former Florida police officer walked out of court a free man after a jury cleared him Tuesday of raping a woman on the hood of his patrol car, the Sun Sentinel reports. The defense had presented a photograph of the woman in high school posing with a car and argued it was a "strikingly similar position" to her alleged rape.

Stephen Maiorino, 36, a former Boyton Beach police officer, had been accused of forcing the woman to have oral sex with him then taking her to an abandoned field where he raped her on the hood of his car while on duty. The jury deliberated for 10 hours before clearing him, prompting the victim to leave the court room in tears, saying, "No, no!"

The Sentinel reports the case hinged on the credibility of the 21-year-old woman. Maiorino's defense said he simply had the bad judgment to have consensual sex with the woman while on duty. Maiorino is married with two small children and had been on the police force for eight years before resigning.

Michael Salnick, Maiorino's attorney, used as evidence a picture of the woman in high school, where she posed bent over the hood of a car with her hands behind her back which he said was "strikingly similar" to the one the woman found herself in at the alleged crime scene. The woman said the photo didn't have any sexual overtones and didn't hint at any cop car sex fantasy, the Sentinel reports.

The woman had reportedly been hanging out with a man at a bar before he drove through a DUI checkpoint and was arrested after a brief pursuit. This left the woman stranded. Maiorino offered to take the woman to the police station where she could call her mother and get picked up.

The woman said that while parked at the police station, Maiorino threatened to arrest her for underage drinking unless she performed oral sex. She accused him of unzipping the fly of his uniform and holding her head down. He then drove to a secluded area, forced her to take her clothes off and raped her on the car while he was holding his gun to her head, the Sentinel reports.

Comment: There is a huge systematic problem with how rape is handled in the legal system. That problem starts at the top with our psychopathic 'leaders'. See also:


Sheriff

California mother sues police for retaliatory beating in front of her children during 'bogus traffic stop'

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A California mom is suing local police for "egregious police brutality." She says officers pulled her over for a "bogus" traffic violation and beat her in front of her two young kids in immediate retaliation for complaining about a cop's behavior.

Hahn's interaction with Carlsbad police began when she came across a car with its doors wide open and the alarm blaring. Officer Kenyatte Valentine was standing next to the car, "doing nothing," the lawsuit said.

"What's going on here?" she asked. "Is this your car?" he replied. "No, sir," she said. Valentine then said: "Mind your f****** business."

Hahn, the daughter of a reserve police officer, decided to call the non-emergency police hotline to report the officer's behavior "since she felt harassed and intimidated" and that "Valentine appeared mentally unstable."

She then got back into the car with her 11-year-old and 7-year-old children. Valentine followed her and "immediately pulled her over on the pretextual grounds" that she had a seatbelt violation. The lawsuit notes as an aside that Hahn was "not cited for any purpose."

Valentine asked Hahn to get out of the car, and "began attacking her in front of her children"in the back seat. "While she was being beaten and pummeled, Ms. Hahn was crying out for help."

Shortly after, another Carlsbad patrol car arrived "at a high and reckless rate of speed, traveling in reverse."

"The next thing I know, I'm on the ground and he's attacking me and then the other officer comes and I'm thinking he's going to help me and he ratcheted it up," Hahn told KFMB.


Comment: A terrifying glimpse into the growing police state in the U.S.

We are the government: Tactics for taking down the police state


Quenelle

'The people are livid': 100,000 march against 'pick-pocket' austerity in Brussels

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© Reuterssters march in Brussels on October 7, 2015.
Anti-austerity demonstrations in Belgium on Wednesday drew tens of thousands of peopleโ€”some of whom clashed with police and were sprayed by water cannons as they marched through Brussels demanding an end to new measures which they say unfairly target workers and favor corporations.

Organized by Belgium's three largest unions, the protests came in response to new rules pushed through by the country's center-right coalition government, led by Prime Minister Charles Michel, in its first month in office, including wage freezes amid rising inflation, an increase in the retirement age, cuts to social services, and punitive taxes on lower-wage earners.

"The signal is clear. People are angry, livid. This government's policies are totally unbalanced," Confederation of Christian Trade Unions (ACV-CSC) chief Marc Leemans told Reuters.

Book 2

The right idea! Lawmakers seek to throw the book at executives who hide deadly defects from the public

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© Rebecca Cook / ReutersGeneral Motors Executive Vice President Global Product Development Mark Reuss (L), GM CEO Mary Barra and GM President Dan Ammann were not prosecuted for the deadly ignition switch scandal.
Two Democratic lawmakers think that corporate executives who conceal deadly defects in their companies' products should be jailed. They have introduced the Hide No Harm Act in the wake of a General Motors scandal that killed over 120 people.

Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) and Bob Casey (D-Pennsylvania) introduced the bill on Tuesday. If passed, it would make failing to inform federal regulators about faulty and dangerous products a crime punishable by five years in prison. It would also safeguard whistleblowers who reveal that information from criminal liability.

The bill is a reaction to a "deferred prosecution agreement" reached between GM and the Department of Justice in September that found no officers criminally liable for knowingly concealing information about a lethal safety defect in the car manufacturer's ignition switches. The auto maker eventually recalled about 2 million cars. The faulty part, which caused cars to shut off abruptly or disable airbags, caused 124 deaths - 10 times more than GM originally believed - and 275 injuries, 17 of them serious.

Comment: Well its about time! For decades, many corporations based their informing the public of defects on pathological reasoning: Using a cost-benefit analysis they quite often determined that they would save more money by allowing injury and death to occur - and being sued for it - than they would by recalling their products and losing out on the bottom line. At a time where when fascist ideals are the norm, the proposed legislation is certainly a positive thing to see.


Phoenix

US religious leaders say the end of the world is coming, again

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© NASA / Reuters
Like a bad sequel, it's once again time for the "end of the world" as we know it (so well). Biblical calculations made by Chris McCann, head of the eBible Fellowship, predict that October 7 is the day of "annihilation."

Maybe.

"There's a strong likelihood that this will happen. Which means there's an unlikely possibility that it will not," McCann says, according to the Guardian.

That qualified statement comes after his Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based group spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on billboards and other mass media alerting the world that May 21, 2011 was Judgment Day. Since then, McCann's following has dwindled.

Comment: Actually, given all the various signs and events all around us, it does appear as though profound macrocosmic change is on its way to occurring. However, since the devil is so often in the details, and though some or many of the world's religious leaders may in fact be picking up on something true and objective, they most often mis-read these signals and even more often use them to serve themselves and their own ends.


Camcorder

ISIS jumps the shark, features a kid terrorist in latest video

ISIS child
Just as with the introduction of Cousin Arthur on The Brady Bunch, does the addition of this child to Team ISIS signal it's demise?
Last year, Lady Gaga performed in Austin, Texas at the SXSW festival. She reportedly paid someone to throw up on her on stage as part of the act. They called the person "a professional vomit painter," as if that's a real thing. Guess she's running out of new and shocking ways to raise the bar.

So, obviously, is ISIS.

ISIS is like the Lady Gaga of terrorists. Because they started out as the social media terrorists, with these staged, ridiculous Wag The Dog-like "terror" videos, they have to continue upping the game, getting more and more ridiculous each time a new one comes out.

Last time it was drowning people in James Bond-villainesque cages with sophisticated, Hollywood studio-level underwater camera rigs and blowing people's heads up with explosive necklaces.

Comment: From Wikipedia:
Jumping the shark is an idiom popularized by Jon Hein that was used to describe the moment in the evolution of a television show when it begins a decline in quality, signaled by a particular scene, episode, or aspect of a show in which the writers use some type of gimmick in an attempt to keep viewers' interest, which is taken as a sign of desperation, and is seen by viewers to be the point at which the show strayed irretrievably from its original premise. The phrase is based on a scene from a fifth-season episode of the sitcom Happy Days when the character Fonzie jumps over a shark while on water-skis.

The usage of "jump the shark" has subsequently broadened beyond television, indicating the moment when a brand, design, franchise or creative effort's evolution declines.
Thanks to Russia, ISIS is now on the decline: BREAKING: Russia launches 26 missiles against ISIS from 4 warships ... in the Caspian Sea


2 + 2 = 4

Killers win academic contest of wit?

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© www.mapio.czEastern New York correctional Napanoch
Last year's world champions, the prestigious Harvard debate team, got a surprise stinger. They fell to a group of New York maximum-security prison inmates educated at a college located near the prison in Napanoch.

The Harvard team holds a number of titles, as well as being reigning US champions. But they were no match for the inmates, who also took down the prestigious US Military Academy at West Point and the University of Vermont. In fact, the feud with West Point is now for real. But the team at the Eastern New York Correctional Facility has only been competing for slightly more than a year.

Heart - Black

Rabid cop suspended, not fired, after violent assaults

maggie bruises
Arrested and charged with felony assault, a Niagara Falls police officer has recently been suspended without pay after witnesses reported seeing him kicking and beating a man unconscious with his motorcycle helmet. On Monday, reporters interviewed a previous victim who settled out of court after the same cop arrested and beat her unconscious when she reported her wallet stolen.

On the afternoon of September 5, off-duty officer James Conte was riding his motorcycle when he reportedly pulled up alongside a couple of cars and gave the drivers the middle finger. After following one of the vehicles, Conte waited until the 46-year-old driver pulled into a parking lot before attacking him.

"There was a verbal dispute following the incident on the road," stated Niagara County undersheriff Michael Filicetti. "Following the verbal dispute, our suspect took his helmet and struck the victim in the head and knocked him to the ground."

Roses

'Russian giant' beaten to death in Ireland - due to height and nationality?

russian giant_ireland
© Suzanne Plunkett / Reuters
The third tallest person in Ireland, a young man of Russian origin, was found lying in a garden in an Irish town with severe head injuries, which he later died from. He had been attacked at a party, allegedly due to his 2.32 meter height and nationality.

Dmitry Hrynkevich, 24, died in the hospital on Friday two days after he was found unconscious on the front lawn of a house in the Irish town of Tralee. Local police launched a murder investigation into the "very serious" case. The preliminary explanation is that Hrynkevich was beaten up by two drunken men because of his outstanding height and nationality.


A life-support machine couldn't help Hrynkevich regain consciousness, and he died surrounded by his family, who had emigrated from Russia to the southwest Irish county Kerry. Some reports say he was born in the Belarussian capital of Minsk. Still, it is not uncommon for Russian speakers to be referred to as "Russians," though Belarus proclaimed its independence from the USSR in 1991.

The young man grew up in Kerry, where he suffered from being bullied at school. However, he is remembered for being really gentle and even shy with other people.

"The awful thing is that you could guess something like this was going to happen. It was terrible the way he was treated by some people and most of the problems he had in life were because of how he tried to cope with that," a family's neighbor told the Irish Independent newspaper.

Comment: R.I.P. Dmitry Hrynkevich