Society's ChildS


Snakes in Suits

Photographer who witnessed celebrity chef Nigella Lawson being strangled by husband, advertising mogul and patron of the 'arts' Charles Saatchi, says abuse lasted half an hour

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© APNigella Lawson has been spotted without her wedding ring after an incident involving a scuffle with her husband.

The photographer who took pictures of Nigella Lawson being assaulted by her husband says the attack lasted for "27 minutes of madness" but he didn't intervene because he feared being arrested himself.

Snapper Jean-Paul says the incident outside a London restaurant shouldn't be brushed under the carpet and the celebrity chef Lawson was "properly abused" by art collector husband Charles Saatchi.

"What I witnessed was 27 minutes of madness," Jean-Paul wrote in the British tabloid Sunday People, which first published his shocking pictures last weekend.

"That's how long the abuse lasted from start to finish so it was most definitely not a fleeting moment."

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg came under fire last week for suggesting Saatchi's clutching of his wife's throat could have been "just a fleeting thing".

Comment: Charles and his brother Maurice Saatchi were instrumental in selling Margaret 'The Witch' Thatcher to the people of Britain in 1979.

The toxic influence of such nasty people really does permeate everything:

The Plot Against Art

Spitting Mad Jews and Angry Artists


Heart - Black

Greedy Africans are starving our cars

US politicians and bureaucrats have less compassion and common sense than an average Londoner

"You've heard of Live Aid? Well, this is Drive Aid," an ardent young man says, as he approaches London pedestrians. "Greedy people in developing nations are eating huge amounts of food that could easily be turned into biofuel to power our cars. African acreage the size of Belgium is being used for food, and we're saying it should go to cars here in the UK. Can we have your support?"

Londoners reacted with disbelief and outrage, the ActionAid UK video shows, and refused to sign his mock petition. The amusing stunt drove home a vital point: Biofuel programs are turning food into fuel, converting cropland into fuel production sites, and disrupting food supplies for hungry people worldwide. The misguided programs are having serious environmental consequences, as well.

Why, then, can't politicians, bureaucrats and environmentalists display the common sense exhibited by London's citizenry? Why did President Obama tell Africans (many of whom are malnourished) in July 2009 that they should refrain from using "dirty" fossil fuels and use their "bountiful" biofuel and other renewable energy resources, instead? When will Congress pull the plug on Renewable Fuel Standards?

Ethanol and other biofuels might have made some sense when Congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and established mandates (or "standards") requiring that refiners and consumer purchase large quantities of ethanol and other biofuels. Back then, despite growing evidence to the contrary, many people thought we were running out of oil and gas, and believed manmade global warming threatened the planet. But this is not 2005. Those rationales are no longer persuasive.

Laptop

Anger mounts after Facebook's 'shadow profiles' leak in bug

Facebook
© Annette Shaff/Shutterstock.com
Facebook said Friday it fixed a bug that exposed contact info for over six million accounts. The admission revealed its 'shadow profile' data collection activities, and users are furious.

Friday Facebook announced the fix of a bug it said inadvertently exposed the private information of over six million users when Facebook's previously unknown shadow profiles accidentally merged with user accounts in data history record requests.

According to Reuters, the data leak spanned a year beginning in 2012.

Sunday, June 23, 8:15 PM PST: Updated at page bottom to reflect response statements from Facebook.

The personal information leaked by the bug is information that had not been given to Facebook by the users - it is data Facebook has been compiling on its users behind closed doors, without their consent.

A growing number of Facebook users are furious and demand to know who saw private information they had expressly not given to Facebook.

Stormtrooper

What cop T-shirts tell us about police culture

Earlier this week, an anonymous public defender sent Gothamist this photo of an NYPD warrant squad officer wearing a t-shirt with a pretty disturbing quote from Ernest Hemingway:
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The Village Voice reports that the quote was also printed on t-shirts worn by NYPD's infamous Street Crimes Unit, which was disbanded after shooting unarmed immigrant Amadou Diallo 41 times in 1999 as Diallo reached for his wallet. The Voice also reports that at least two NYPD police commissioners have used the phrase "hunter of men" to describe police work -- Bernard Kerik and Howard Safir.

Arrow Down

WHO reports violence against women a global epidemic

Violence Against Women
© Thinkstock

More than one-third of all women around the world are victims of physical or sexual violence. The World Health Organization (WHO) released a new report this week, in partnership with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC), calling this problem a public health epidemic. Two companion papers were also published in The Lancet and Science.

The report, which is the first systemic study of global data on the prevalence of violence against women by both partners and non-partners, claims that 38 percent of all women murdered were killed by their partners.

As BBC News reports, the study also reveals that such violence is a major contributor to depression and other health problems in women, such as broken bones, bruises, pregnancy complications, and other forms of mental illness.

"This is an everyday reality for many, many women," Charlotte Watts, a health policy expert at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine told Reuters.

Recent high-profile rape cases in India and South African have highlighted the treatment of women worldwide, said Claudia Garcia-Moreno of the WHO. A 23-year-old woman was brutally gang raped on a bus in New Delhi last December. She later died of her injuries. The event sparked a global outcry and unprecedented protests in India demanding better policing of sex crimes.

"These kinds of cases raise awareness, which is important, and at the same time we must remember there are hundreds of women every day who are being raped on the streets and in their homes, but that doesn't make the headlines," Garcia-Moreno said.

Black Cat 2

From psychics to tarot cards, owners try untraditional ways of connecting with pets

Talking to Pets
© Jeri Clausing / AP Heidi Schulman poses for a photo with her rescue dog, Bosco, in Santa Fe, N.M., who inspired her to develop The Original Dog Tarot.
It's the age old and seemingly unanswerable question: What in the world is my dog thinking? It's also one that has spawned a growing market not only of scientific research but of everything from decks of pet tarot cards to books by pet psychics.

Whether any one of them can provide real answers is a matter of opinion, but pet owners can spend a lot of time and money trying.

Andrea Gladstone and David Radis wanted to know more about what was going on in their rescue dog's head, so they bought The Original Dog Tarot, a set of 30 cards and a guidebook developed by Heidi Schulman, a freelance writer and former television news producer from Santa Fe, N.M.

They spread the deck on the floor, and asked LoLa why she chewed up her puppy training book and the Dog Tarot guide.

The answer they divined from the three cards she picked - The Cat, the Pack and Justice - was that she was insecure in her new home and wrecked the books to establish her security and see if they held grudges.

"For me it is more the fun of it than the life lessons to be learned. But I respect the tarot," said David Radis, of Encino, Calif. "I have done one reading for each of my dogs and they were both spot on. I spread the cards out and ask the dog to touch the cards with their nose or paw."

Not everyone consults the latest books for fun. Cathy, an entertainment paralegal in California who asked that her last name not be used, called on pet psychic Jocelyn Kessler, author of The Secret Language of Dogs, to help her communicate with her 11-year-old lab Champ when he fell ill.

Alarm Clock

New Jersey supreme court rules state can seek custody of child without evidence of abuse

child
© Thinkstock
The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled this week that authorities can seek custody of a child, even where there's no evidence of abuse or neglect.

The case involved a divorced Camden County mother of 9-year-old twin girls. In 2007, she asked New Jersey's Division of Child Protection and Permanency for help, claiming she was unable to care for the girls who had psychological and developmental disabilities and needed to be placed in residential care.

"You can turn to the Division for help, but it may come with a cost," says Diana Autin, executive director of Statewide Parent Advocacy Network of New Jersey. The group filed an amicus brief in the case.

Autin says under the court's ruling, the state can get custody of a child with behavior problems if it proves that the parent can't provide the type of services the child needs and the services are in the child's best interest. She says the division can get custody without using the state's abuse and neglect law.

"It could end with an award of custody to the division for at least six months, maybe even longer," says Autin. "We're going to encourage parents to get voluntary services from the division, because if the parent is then uncomfortable about what the parent wants to do, they can withdraw consent."

The twins' mother, identified as "I.S." in the court ruling, went to child welfare seeking help. According to court papers, the department had received more than a dozen reports, including allegations of sexual abuse, but none were substantiated. Eventually the mother told authorities the girls needed residential care, which she was unable to provide.

The court acknowledged no neglect or abuse by the mother, but gave custody to the state under New Jersey's abuse and neglect statute. After the girls got help, one daughter was returned to the mother. Custody of the second daughter was awarded to the father.

"By seeking help," says Autin, "she lost custody of one of her children."

Alarm Clock

Violence against women at epidemic proportions

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© Susanne Borges/A.B./CorbisThe first global survey of domestic violence reveals the staggering extent of the problem.
Three in ten women worldwide have been punched, shoved, dragged, threatened with weapons, raped, or subjected to other violence from a current or former partner. Close to one in ten have been sexually assaulted by someone other than a partner. Of women who are murdered, more than one in three were killed by an intimate partner.

These grim statistics come from the first global, systematic estimates of violence against women. Linked papers published today in The Lancet and Science assess, respectively, how often people are killed by their partners1 and how many women experience violence from them2. And an associated report and guidelines from the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Swizerland, along with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the South African Medical Research Council in Pretoria, estimates how often women suffer sexual violence from someone other than a partner, gauge the impact of partner and non-partner violence on women's health and advise health-care providers on how to support the victims.

"These numbers should be a wake-up call. We want to highlight that this is a problem that occurs in all regions and it's unacceptably high," says Claudia García-Moreno, a physician at WHO who coordinates research on gender violence and worked on all the publications.

Stormtrooper

The shocking moment a woman is thrown to the ground by Florida police officers as she celebrated Miami Heat victory

Euphoric basketball fans spilled onto the streets of Miami for an impromptu party after the Heat claimed their second consecutive NBA title last night. But this picture suggests that celebrations turned sour in at least one corner of the city.

It reveals a woman apparently being pushed to the ground by police officers as they attempted to clear the streets of jubilant Miami Heat fans. One picture shows the woman tumbling onto the concrete, while another shows a police officer apparently trying to haul her to her feet by grasping her t-shirt.
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Scuffle: A City of Miami Police officer appears to push a woman to the ground as the force attempts to clear a street of revellers following Miami Heat's victory over the San Antonio Spurs
Additional images

Che Guevara

Revolution? Brazilian protests swells to millions: government calls emergency meeting

Brazil's president, Dilma Rousseff, and key ministers are to hold an emergency meeting on Friday following a night of protests that saw Rio de Janeiro and dozens of other cities echo with percussion grenades and swirl with teargas as riot police scattered the biggest demonstrations in more than two decades. The protests were sparked last week by opposition to rising bus fares, but they have spread rapidly to encompass a range of grievances, as was evident from the placards. "Stop corruption. Change Brazil;" "Halt evictions;" "Come to the street. It's the only place we don't pay taxes; "Government failure to understand education will lead to revolution." A vast crowd - estimated by the authorities at 300,000 and more than a million by participants - filled Rio's streets, one of a wave of huge nationwide marches against corruption, police brutality, poor public services and excess spending on the World Cup.