Society's ChildS


Green Light

Emergency room visitors risk tickets from Florida red light cameras

red light camera speeding
DO NOT RUSH: Tamarac officials considered it was a good idea installing red light camera at the entrance of an Emergency Room.
Pay two tickets and call me in the morning.

Authorities installed red-light cameras near the emergency room entrance at University Hospital in Tamarac to nail traffic violators, but those rushing to the facility for medical attention are getting ensnared.

When Jacob Alcahe began to sweat and feel chest pains this past October, he thought he might be having a heart attack.

"That day I felt very bad," Alcahe said. "I couldn't breathe and I was sweating and my chest hurt," he told Florida Watchdog.

So Alcahe decided to drive himself to the Tamarac hospital. With the emergency room in sight, he stopped at the traffic light at the intersection of University Drive and 72th Street and waited anxiously for the light to turn green. After several minutes, he decided he'd waited long enough.

"I was desperate to get to the hospital because I felt very nervous," Alcahe said.

Fortunately for him, the episode wasn't life threatening. Alcahe was prescribed some medicine and was told to go home and rest.

The real heart stopper came a few days later when he received a fine of $158 for running the light.

Snakes in Suits

Amazon accused of cheating customers through shipping costs

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© Kevork Djansezian/Getty ImagesAn employee prepares an order at Amazon's fulfillment center in San Bernardino, Calif., Oct. 29, 2013.
Amazon claims that a $79 annual membership for Amazon Prime provides free two-day shipping on "millions" of items, but for some products, the company is accused of encouraging sellers to inflate shipping prices, according to two recent lawsuits.

"The bottom line is the free shipping that Amazon offered to its Prime members wasn't free," said Kim Stephens, attorney for one of the plaintiffs, adding that he was "shocked" by Amazon's alleged pricing practices.

Marcia Burke of Alabama says she became an Amazon Prime member and used its "free shipping" service at least 18 times in 2010, according to her lawsuit filed Friday in federal court in Seattle. Prime-eligible products are designated on Amazon's website.

In what she hopes will be certified as a class-action lawsuit, Burke accuses Amazon of encouraging third-party vendors to increase their prices to Prime members by the amount they charged others for shipping, without revealing that a portion of those alleged "inflated" prices was for shipping fees, the lawsuit claims.

Cell Phone

First Amendment: Landmark Victory in 'recording police' case - yes, you CAN

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Christopher Sharp
A Baltimore City lawsuit settlement sparks major police policy and training reforms that affect everyone with a cell phone camera.

The police department is putting it into writing so their officers fully understand. You can record them and they can't do anything about it. First Amendment advocates call it a major victory.

When police made an arrest at Pimlico four years ago, Christopher Sharp was one of several recording. Officers didn't like it. "Do me a favor and turn that off. It's illegal to record anybody's voice or anything else," an officer told Sharp.

But that's not true. Sharp says the officers took his phone and deleted videos, including family videos. "I still am disturbed about what happened," Sharp said.

Camcorder

Public has right to film police officers

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Rules come as Baltimore pays $250,000 to settle lawsuit

The Baltimore Police Department has instituted a new policy that prohibits officers from stopping people from taping or photographing police actions, the agency said Wednesday.

The new rules were unveiled as the city agreed to pay $250,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a man who says police seized his cellphone and deleted the video of an arrest at the Preakness Stakes in 2010.

"Four years ago, if we had taken the complaint seriously and addressed it in a very rapid manner, we may not be sitting here today," Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts said Wednesday. "What I've been brought here to do is do reform of this organization. It's not an easy job. It's a tough job, because we're changing the culture in the Police Department as a whole."

The agency instituted rules on the public's right to film officers in 2012, but lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland said they didn't go far enough. The new Baltimore Police Department policy states that "members of the general public have a First Amendment right to video record, photograph, and/or audio record BPD members while BPD members are conducting official business ... unless such recordings interfere with police activity."

The new policy also states that officers "shall allow all persons the same access for photography and recording as is given to the news media."

Red Flag

Another deadly knife attack puts China on edge

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© ReutersA woman cries after her parent was killed in a knifing incident in Changsha, Hunan province, China, March 14, 2014.
Just two weeks after a mass stabbing in southwest China claimed 29 lives, and days after 153 Chinese disappeared on Flight MH370, another tragedy appears to have struck the Middle Kingdom

Not again? On the morning of March 14, knife-wielding individuals unleashed a stabbing attack in Changsha, the capital of central China's Hunan province. Three people were killed and two seriously injured, according to Chinese media. In addition, one suspect was shot dead by police and another was captured, reported the People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party. Three suspects are still at large.

Friday morning's bloodshed echoed a far deadlier rampage on March 1 in the southwestern city of Kunming, which resulted in 29 deaths and more than 140 injuries. That mass murder binge was blamed by the Chinese government on separatists from the troubled northwestern region of Xinjiang, which is home to the Turkic-speaking, largely Muslim Uighur ethnic minority. All eight of the assailants were either killed or captured. Only one of the attackers' names has been made public. A couple of days after the carnage, Chinese authorities deemed the case "solved."

Pistol

"We must shoot'em in the head" - a Ukrainian Nazi sponsor about counter-coup protestors in the East


Gennady Balashov, Ukrainian businessman and political activist, one of the sponsors of the ultranationalist organization "Right Sector", speaking at "Euromaidan" on March 10, 2014:

"We must block the pipeline [Russian gas supply to Europe through the Ukrainian territory]. We must not allow natural gas trade. Only this can stop the invaders. We must block the pipeline and let them send Alpha [Russian counter-terrorist spetsnaz unit] to shoot everyone there.
These people [anti-coup protesters in the east and south of Ukraine] are on the foreign territory. Crimea, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Donetsk are the Ukrainian cities. If they wear the St.George ribbon [distinguishing mark of the counter-coup protesters, Russian symbol of victory over Nazism], if they tear down our flag, we must shoot them in the head because they are enemy. We should not talk to them or educate them..."

Blackbox

Two former Navy SEALs involved in 'Captain Phillips' Somali pirate mission found dead on Maersk Alabama

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© APCrew members work aboard the U.S.-flagged Maersk Alabama after the ship docked in the harbor of Mombasa, Kenya,22, 2009.
Police on the island nation of Seychelles say that two former U.S. Navy SEALs found dead aboard the ship Maersk Alabama died of respiratory failure and were suspected to have had heart attacks, possibly from drug use. The police said Monday that a syringe and traces of heroin were found in their cabin. Police said samples are being sent to Mauritius for analysis to establish if the men had consumed "a substance" that could have caused the health failures.

The ship the men worked on, the Maersk Alabama, was the focus of a 2009 hijacking dramatized in the movie "Captain Phillips."

Officials named the two men as Mark Daniel Kennedy, 43, and Jeffrey Keith Reynolds, 44. They worked for the Virginia Beach, Virginia-based maritime security firm The Trident Group.

The U.S. Coast Guard is also investigating the deaths.

Chart Pie

U.S. to relinquish remaining control over the Internet

U.S. officials announced plans Friday to relinquish federal government control over the administration of the Internet, a move likely to please international critics but alarm many business leaders and others who rely on smooth functioning of the Web.

Pressure to let go of the final vestiges of U.S. authority over the system of Web addresses and domain names that organize the Internet has been building for more than a decade and was supercharged by the backlash to revelations about National Security Agency surveillance last year.

Pills

Mother jailed for refusing to drug daughter with a highly controversial antipsychotic - Child ends up in a mental institution

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Maryanne Godboldo
Maryanne Godboldo endured a mother's worst nightmare when in May 2011 police and social workers burst into her home without a warrant, seized her then 13-year-old daughter, locked the child in a psychiatric hospital and purportedly doped her with dangerous antipsychotic drugs - but the devoted mom refused to allow authorities rip the little girl from her arms without a fight.

Instead, Godboldo, a former dance teacher who had never before had a run-in with the law, fought to defend her daughter, Ariana, in a 10-hour standoff with a Detroit SWAT team. The standoff resulted in eight felony charges, as authorities say Godboldo fired a gun into the ceiling when police broke down her door. A hearing is set for Godboldo Friday, and protesters plan to rally outside the courthouse in support of the mother.

It would have been an inconceivable act to most Americans just a few years ago: Armed police can now show up at family home, forcibly remove a child without a warrant and jail anyone who stands in their way. As WND reported, even the Supreme Court has recently allowed a lower court judgment supporting the use of a violent SWAT attack in a man's home based merely on suspicion of wrongdoing.

In the Detroit case, Gosboldo said police and Child Protective Services lied to her, promising that Ariana would be placed in the custody of Maryanne's sister. She said they also assured her they would not drug Ariana.

"All I wanted to do was protect my daughter," Gosboldo said. "When they forced her to take Risperdal, Haldol, Lithium and several vaccines, without my knowledge or consent, they almost killed her," she said. "It was attempted murder."

Mail

Banking services for the working poor - Senator Elizabeth Warren's Post Office proposal

post office
Investigative reporter Greg Palast is usually pretty good at peering behind the rhetoric and seeing what is really going on. But in tearing into Senator Elizabeth Warren's support of postal financial services, he has done a serious disservice to the underdogs - both the underbanked and the US Postal Service itself.

In his February 27 article "Liz Warren Goes Postal," Palast attacked her support of the USPS Inspector General's proposal to add "non-bank" financial services to the US Postal Service, calling it "cruel, stupid and frightening" and equating it with the unethical payday lending practices it seeks to eliminate.

After "several thousand tweets by enraged liberals," he wrote a follow-up article called "Brains Lost in Mail - Postal Bank Bunkum," in which he contends, "the Postal Governors are running a slick, slick campaign" to "use federal property to run illegal loan-sharking shops." He says they would "team up with commercial banks to cash in on payday predation," exempting themselves from Warren's own consumer protection regulations.

His first article concludes:
While the USPS wants to "partner" with big banks, why not, instead, allow community credit unions to use post offices as annexes to provide full, complete, non-usurious neighborhood banking services? This is the type of full-service "postal banking" successful in Switzerland and Japan that is envisioned by Ellen Brown, not the payday predation proposed by the USPS.
I obviously agree with him on the full-service postal banking alternative, but that is not something Congress appears ready to approve. Palast has not looked closely at the white paper from the Inspector General's office relied on by Senator Warren, or at the research on payday lending and the inability of credit unions to service that market. The IG's proposal, rather than fleecing the poor, would save them from being fleeced by offering basic financial services at much reduced rates. And that makes it a very good start.