Society's ChildS


Bulb

Ahmed Mohamed withdraws from high school that arrested him for bringing homemade clock to school

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Ahmed Mohamed — the Texas 14-year-old who was arrested for bringing a homemade digital clock to class — has withdrawn from MacArthur High School.

According to the Guardian, Mohamed's father, Mohamed El-Hassan Mohamed, has withdrawn all of his children from their schools in the Irving Independent School District in the wake of the scandal, saying that the family has yet to decide where the children will be educated.

Ahmed Mohamed was suspended last week and taken away from school in handcuffs after teachers say they became concerned and upset that the clock the boy built could be a bomb.

School officials called police, who arrested Ahmed even after he repeatedly explained to them that the device was a simple clock and not a bomb.

Eye 2

Psychopath: Man disembowels girlfriend after she calls out ex-husband's name during sex

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© Broward Sheriff's OfficeFidel Lopez
In a tequila-fueled rage, a Sunrise man is accused of killing and disemboweling his girlfriend because she uttered her ex-husband's name twice during sex.

Fidel Lopez called 911 about 3:39 a.m. Sunday and told the operator his girlfriend Maria Nemeth was having trouble breathing and was going to die, according to the arrest report filed in the case.

Sunrise police found Lopez crying for help next to Nemeth's naked body on the floor of the bathroom with blood and body tissue around the apartment that Nemeth, 31, and Lopez, 24, had shared for about one week in the 1600 block of Northwest 128th Drive, the report stated.

The bathroom door was ripped off its hinges and there was blood and tissue in the bathroom, a bedroom closet, and smeared on walls and doors. There were several holes in the walls and a shattered sliding glass door, police said.

Attention

Deadly explosion kills chemical plant employee in Linz, Austria

A view of the Chemiepark Linz.
© linz.atA view of the Chemiepark Linz.

A 54-year-old worker has been killed in an explosion at a chemical plant in Linz.
The man, who worked for Nufarm, was working on a nitrogen tank which exploded.


The man, from Peilstein in Mühlviertel, was standing on a stairway next to the elevated tank at 5:30am, when the container exploded. Officials at Nufarm said that pressure had built up inside the tank, and they are trying to find out why.

Police said the blast knocked the man off the steps and threw him ten metres in the air. Colleagues rushed to the severely injured man's aid and administered first aid but were unable to resuscitate him. A team of paramedics declared him dead at the scene.

Experts from the company are working with police to determine the cause of the explosion. The man's relatives and colleagues are being cared for by a crisis intervention team.

In a statement, Nufarm said that all safety regulations had been complied with, and that at no time had there been a known risk to any employees. No damage was caused to the plant's technical facilities, which was running as normal on Tuesday.

Comment: There seems to have been an increase in the number of explosions and fires at chemical plants around the world in recent months, some of which are included here:


Red Flag

Ridiculous: Teen prosecuted as adult over nude pictures of himself on phone

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Cormega Copening, left
A teenage boy in North Carolina has been prosecuted for having nude pictures of himself on his own mobile phone. The young man, who is now 17 but was 16 at the time the photos were discovered, had to strike a plea deal to avoid potentially going to jail and being registered as a sex offender.

Experts condemned the case as ludicrous. The boy was, however, punished by the courts, and had to agree to be subject to warrantless searches by law enforcement for a year, in addition to other penalties.

The young man was also named in the media and suffered a suspension as quarterback of his high school football team while the case was being resolved.

Cormega Copening, of Fayetteville, North Carolina, was prosecuted as an adult under federal child pornography felony laws, for sexually exploiting a minor. The minor was himself.


Comment: How is it possible to sexually exploit yourself? We are truly living in an idiocracy.


"It's dysfunctional to be charged with possession of your own image," said Justin Patchin, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Wisconsin and co-founder of the research website cyberbullying.org.

2 + 2 = 4

Poverty is neither a lack of self-control nor a character defect

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When considering poverty, our national conversation tends to overlook systemic causes. Instead, we often blame the poor for their poverty. Commentators echo the claim that people are poor because they have bad self-control and therefore make nearsighted choices. But psychology research says the opposite might be the case: poverty makes it hard for people to care about the future and forces them to live in the present.

As a researcher who studies goals and motivation, I wanted to know how self-control works and if science can help us get better at it. Poverty seemed like a good place to start, because greater self-control could be especially helpful there. In fact, the federal Administration for Children and Families is adding character-skills training to its programs in efforts to improve self-control among children.

No Entry

EU refugee relocation plan: Softer stance emerges on eve of emergency meeting

refugee trains
© www.politicoscope.comHeaded your way, or not...a Hungarian dilemma.
Watered down plan to relocate 120,000 refugees drops binding quotas and leaves Hungary out of scheme.

EU ministers are considering a watered down plan to relocate 120,000 refugees throughout the bloc, which drops binding quotas and leaves Hungary out of the scheme, sources said Monday.

The softer stance emerged on the eve of a new emergency meeting in Brussels of the 28 EU interior ministers, who last week failed to agree on a European Commission plan for compulsory quotas for refugees fleeing war in Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

"Whether voluntary or mandatory, that is an artificial debate," a source from Luxembourg, which holds the rotating EU presidency, told reporters, despite Commission officials insisting that they still want compulsory quotas.

Another Luxembourg source said the word "mandatory" will not appear in the draft document that will go before the ministers when they meet Tuesday afternoon to discuss how many refugees each country will take.

Hopes of a unanimous deal last week collapsed in the face of opposition from Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania, officials said.

With populist parties exploiting anti-immigrant sentiment, many eastern countries argued that a Europe-wide relocation plan made little sense for refugees who preferred to settle in wealthier northern European nations.

Comment: The EU has a lot to sort out, the privilege of participation. Whether active or passive - humanitarianism must speak louder.

See also: Germany's solution to cut funds to put 'pressure' on EU states that reject refugee quotas


Eye 2

Boyfriend of murdered 'Baby Doe's' mother held without bail; mom's bail set at $1M

baby doe Boston Bella bond
Bella Bond, age 3
  • Attorney for mom's boyfriend says, "He did not have anything to do with her death"
  • Girl's dad blames state for death, says track mark leads him to believe mom was drugged
  • Mom's boyfriend held without bail; mother's bail set at $1 million, judge rules
Little Bella Bond was allegedly killed by her mother's boyfriend because he thought she was possessed and "it was her time to die," a prosecutor told a judge at a Monday bail hearing.


Bella's mother, Rachelle Bond, wearing a zippered hoodie, and the boyfriend, Michael McCarthy, wearing a buttoned dress shirt, appeared in a Boston court for the proceeding. They watched from behind a glass partition as a judge granted a prosecutor's request that McCarthy be held without bail. The judge also set bail for Bond at $1 million "to ensure her appearance."

They both pleaded not guilty, and McCarthy's attorney maintains his client didn't know Bella was dead until police told him Friday.

Bella's biological father, Joe Amoroso, who never met his daughter in person, sat on the front row, appearing to compose himself, tensing his jaw and pursing his lips at times. His face became flush as details of the case were relayed to the judge.

Amoroso told reporters he knew Bond didn't kill their daughter and said a track mark on Bond's neck leads him to believe she was sedated against her will because he doesn't see how she could have injected herself.

"I was with her for quite some time and I know more about Rachelle than a lot of people do," he said.

Arrow Down

Report reveals rampant abuse by US border patrol agents towards migrants being deported to Mexico

mexican immigrant, deportation
© Alexandre Meneghini / Reuters
A new report reveals rampant abuse by US Customs and Border Patrol agents towards migrants being deported to Mexico. One in three men and women said they were subjected to some type of abuse, whether verbal or physical, and often robbed.

The report, which was based on first-hand accounts, found that 38.4 percent of Mexican migrants reported abuse, most often verbal, and that two-thirds of migrants had been separated from their immediate family on being deported.

The report argues that the percentage could be even higher, because abuse "can deter [people] from making complaints."

Comment: The behavior of these agents is representative of the country's lack of concern for the plight of those who are risking everything to find a decent life, fleeing from the ruinous conditions in their countries which have been largely a fault U.S. policies. Cozy and warm in their own homes, and largely clueless about the real causes of mass migration, many would prefer to turn their backs on the problem by sending these people back to these horrific situations than open their eyes to the truth.


Megaphone

9-11 dispatcher involved in shooting of 12-yr-old Tamir Rice resigns

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© Aaron Josefczyk/Reuters
A police dispatcher who sent cops to a playground where a 12-year-old boy was later fatally shot by police has resigned. The dispatcher failed to tell the officers that the 911 caller who reported the boy thought, correctly, that he was holding a toy gun.

On November 22, 2014, police responded to a 911 call concerning Tamir Rice, who was sitting on a swing at the Cudell Recreation Center while holding a BB gun that officers said appeared to look like a real handgun. Two police officers, 26-year-old Timothy Loehmann and 46-year-old Frank Garmback, had responded to a distress call about a "male sitting on a swing and pointing a gun at people" in a city park.

The 911 caller had told dispatcher Beth Mandl that the gun was "probably fake, but you know what, it's scaring" me. Yet that message was not relayed to the responding officers.

Upon arrival at the scene, Officer Loehmann almost immediately fired two shots, one fatally wounding the 12-year-old boy, who was black. The child died in a hospital a day later. Police allege that Loehmann shot the kid after his orders were ignored and as Rice reached for his weapon - a BB gun.

Mandl offered a letter of resignation in July after being off the job without official leave since early April, according to police records reported by WKYC.

"I have enjoyed working here and I will miss you all," the letter said, according to Cleveland.com.

Comment: Video shows Cleveland cop shot Tamir Rice seconds after encountering him


MIB

TSA dogged by thefts, groping and sexual assault by screeners

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© Kevork Djansezian/Reuters
A TSA screener has been fired after security camera footage showed him stealing $61 in cash from a traveler's wallet at New York's JFK International Airport. Recent complaints against the agency have included theft, sexual assault and fraudulent fondling.

Passing through the airport on Saturday evening, a 26-year-old Bronx man went through the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint at JFK, and placed his wallet in a plastic bin along with his other possessions. After passing through security, he noticed some of his cash was missing and complained to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the regional agency administering the airport.

Security footage showed a Transportation Security Administration screener opening the wallet and pocketing the cash, Port Authority spokesman Joe Pentangelo told reporters. The sticky-fingered agent was arrested Saturday night and charged with petit larceny and criminal possession of stolen property. Local media have identified the suspect as a 37-year-old Queens resident named Joe Bangay (also spelled Bengay).

TSA spokesman Mike England told reporters over the weekend that the agent would be fired on Monday.

This is the second TSA screener at JFK to be caught on camera absconding with passenger property. On August 26, security footage captured a female agent taking a $7,000 diamond watch from one of the screening bins and walking away. Margo Grant-Louree of Brooklyn was fired from the agency and charged with grand larceny and official misconduct.

Comment: The TSA is just another growing arm of the police state.