Society's ChildS


Dollars

Vancouver 'homeless' man turns out to be wealthy benefactor who rewards kind strangers

Homeless Man
© Michael Kolbe/Fotolia.comA homeless man panhandling in winter.
A wealthy Vancouver man has been playing secret Santa to strangers on the street, giving away hundreds of dollars for acts of kindness.

The anonymous benefactor, described as a white man in his 50s, has been disguising himself as a homeless person, surprising those who dig into their wallets by rewarding them instead.

Yogi Omar is one Vancouverite who met the do-gooder, but he initially declined to donate any of his change with a reflexive "Sorry, no."

Describing his encounter on Facebook later, Omar said "for some reason I was compelled to follow up" with an offer to help with food or clothing.

"I don't have any change, but have you eaten? I can buy you food. Or I can get you a coat or socks. What do you need?" he said.

Omar's kindness led the "homeless" man to explain that he and his family traditionally practice random acts of kindness around the holidays and that he wanted to reward his good deed. It turns out Omar had just spent a lot of his savings buying a plane ticket to China to visit his ailing father, and upon hearing this, the Good Samaritan decided to pay Omar's rent for January totalling $469.

Bad Guys

Interstate child porn ring: Alabama man raped, videotaped his son with other man

dunnavant
© SARAH COLE/AL.COM/LandovCharles Dunnavant was charged with sodomy, sexual torture, aggravated child abuse and exposing person to an STD for his connection to the Huntsville child sexual abuse and pornography case.

Two Alabama men kept a 9-year-old boy captive for months as they sexually tortured him and filmed it as part of a larger child porn ring, prosecutors in Huntsville say in a disturbing case.

So disturbing were the more than 100 photographs police found that officers could not even positively identify the boy because they could not bear to look, cops said in court on Monday, AL.com reports.

Charles Dunnavant is charged with sexual torture, sodomy, aggravated child abuse and exposing a person to an STD.

Carl Philip Herold, the boy's father, is charged with sodomy, sexual abuse, aggravated child abuse, child pornography production, distributing child pornography and with allowing his child to be depicted in pornography.

"He has the means of travel, family out of state and some of the allegations are there was much travel in the lives of Dunnavant and Herold," Madison County Assistant District Attorney Gabrielle Helix said at a bond hearing Monday. "They held the child captive for eight months and there are no standards, taboos or lines this defendant and his co-defendant hesitated to cross."

Black Cat 2

20 Cats found tortured, burned and murdered in Santa Fe, Texas

Cat
© Care2.com
Warning: this is the most sickening story of cruelty to animals that I have ever written about.

Last Friday, police in Santa Fe, Texas raided a house with the intention of finding drugs. They succeeded: during the search of the home of 39-year-old Brain Cheek and his 38-year-old wife Veronica Springer, investigators found roughly nine grams of crystal methamphetamine, a scale for measuring the drugs, packaging materials for sales and a stolen all-terrain vehicle (ATV) valued at $14,000.

That wasn't all they found.

From WebProNews:
Unfortunately, as the search went on, investigators later found a grueling and morbid discovery: 20 dead cats, ranging from kittens to fully grown mature cats. Police stated that the dead cats had all appeared to undergo various forms of torture before their demise.

Investigators stated that there was evidence of blunt force trauma, disemboweling, strangulation, and burning as well as evidence of cats being burned. One of the murdered felines was found in a box in the bed of Cheek's truck.

Galveston County Sheriff's Office Animal Cruelty investigators picked up the remains of many of the cats which will be later examined by necropsy, thus finding out the actual causes of the cats' death.
So far, Cheek has been charged with the first-degree felony of manufacturing and delivering controlled substances, and is being held on a $300,000 bond, while Springer has been charged with possession of controlled substances and her bond set at $20,000.

As the investigation continues, felony charges related to animal cruelty are expected to be imposed on the couple who committed such heinous acts. Of course, animal cruelty charges must be brought against these disgusting human beings.

Wolf

Torturing animals: USDA fines Harvard $24,000 after research monkey deaths

Image
© Boston Globe/Tom Landers
One died of an overdose. Two from water deprivation. And one was unintentionally strangled while playing with a toy designed to enrich the lives of research animals. The means varied but the results were the same: 4 monkey deaths at Harvard Medical School research centers since 2011. After a lengthy investigation, the Department of Agriculture fined Harvard $24,000 for repeated animal welfare violations, specifically the mistreatment of primates at its animal research labs in Massachusetts.

Arrow Up

Update: Pennsylvania pastor defrocked over gay wedding offered job

frank schaefer
© Matt Rourke/Associated Press
A United Methodist pastor from central Pennsylvania who was defrocked after officiating his son's gay wedding has been invited by a California Methodist bishop to serve in her region.

Frank Schaefer says he is deciding whether to accept the offer from Bishop Minerva G. Carcano (car-CAHN'-yo) to join the California-Pacific Annual Conference. The region includes California, Hawaii, and the Pacific Islands.

Carcano does not have the authority to restore his credentials but he says he would have the same rights. Schaefer on Friday appealed the decision of the church's regional Board of Ordained Ministry to defrock him.

A church jury suspended him for 30 days last month and told him to decide whether he would uphold the church's Book of Discipline or resign. Schaefer refused to surrender his credentials.

Source: Associated Press

Card - VISA

Target security breach affects up to 40 million cards

Image
© AP/Phil CoateIn this Jan. 18, 2008 file photo, a customer signs his credit card receipt at a Target store in Tallahassee, Fla. Target says that about 40 million credit and debit card accounts customers may have been affected by a data breach that occurred at its U.S. stores between Nov. 27, 2013, and Dec. 15, 2013.

Target's data-security nightmare threatens to drive off holiday shoppers during the company's busiest time of year.

The nation's second-largest discounter acknowledged Thursday that data connected to about 40 million credit and debit card accounts was stolen as part of a breach that began over the Thanksgiving weekend.

The theft marks the second-largest credit card breach in U.S. history, exceeded only by a scam that began in 2005 involving retailer TJX Cos. and affected at least 45.7 million card users.

Target's disclosure came a day after reports that the company was investigating a breach.

Customers who made purchases by swiping their cards at its U.S. stores between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15 may have had their accounts exposed. The stolen data included customer names, credit and debit card numbers, card expiration dates and the embedded code on the magnetic strip on back of the card, Target said.

There was no indication that the three- or four-digit security numbers visible on the back of the card were affected.

The data breach did not affect online purchases, the company said.

Books

The looting of Naples' Girolamini 16th Century library

Book-lovers around the world have been helping investigators trace thousands of rare volumes looted from one of Italy's oldest libraries by a gang of thieves including the librarian himself. While most have been recovered, a number of invaluable 15th and 16th Century books are still missing
Image
© BBCNaples' Giroamini Library
Inside a 16th Century church complex in the heart of Naples, the Biblioteca Girolamini's wooden shelves rise up and up towards richly decorated walls and vaulted ceilings.

They once held works of extraordinary value. There was a 1518 edition of Thomas More's brilliant and mysterious Utopia. Galileo's 1610 treatise Sidereus Nuncius, containing more than 70 drawings of the moon and the stars. And Johannes Kepler's study of the motions of Mars, Astronomia Nova, described as one of greatest books in the history of astronomy.

But this magnificent piece of Italy's cultural heritage was methodically plundered. Thousands of antique texts disappeared.

"Our investigations found that there was a true criminal system in action," says Major Antonio Coppola, a police chief who is leading the operation to recover the stolen texts. "A group of people... carried out a devastating, systematic looting of the library."

Take 2

'Duck Dynasty' star warned by A&E about speaking out too much

duck dynasty
© AP Photo/A&E/Zach Dilgard"Duck Dynasty."
Anyone looking at the "Duck Dynasty" uproar may wonder why A&E didn't warn Phil Robertson about the dangers of talking too much to reporters.

But it now looks like they did.

Robertson, the long-bearded patriarch of the clan of Louisiana duck-call merchants, is on "hiatus" from filming episodes of the No. 1-rated cable reality show after giving a GQ magazine interview where he made anti-gay remarks and questioned the need for the civil-rights movement. GLAAD and the NAACP, among others, condemned the comments. But thousands of fans - and even Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal - have rushed to his defense, touching off the latest skirmish in the national culture war. Late Thursday, the family said it might not want to continue the show without Phil.

The scandal has turned into the kind of tempest network executives feared all along. A&E knew of Robertson's controversial views - expounded in videotaped sermons and elsewhere - before the show premiered in spring 2012, and warned him not to overshare on hot-button topics such as gay rights and race relations, according to a producer familiar with the situation. Phil and other family members also probably signed contracts containing "morals clauses" in which they promised to, among other things, avoid anything that would embarrass or bring shame to A&E or the brand. Such clauses are standard in the entertainment and sports industries.

Bizarro Earth

Many dolphins in the vicinity of BP spill 'not expected to survive'

dolphins
© Reuters / Kim Kyung-Hoon
Dolphins swimming in the Gulf of Mexico near where a massive BP oil spill occurred in 2010 are showing signs of sickness so serious that many are not expected to survive, a new study has determined.

A team of government and academic researchers, veterinarian, biologists, and wildlife epidemiologists examined 32 dolphins in August 2011, one year after the largest oil spill in US history wiped out a swathe of the natural life in the Gulf.

The results, published Wednesday in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, found that nearly half of that 32 were found to be in "guarded or worse" condition according to the conditions spelled out by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). A quarter of the dolphins were underweight and 17 percent were in grave enough condition that they were "not expected to survive."

The most common problems were lung damage and low levels of adrenal stress-response hormones, a symptom that could hurt their fight-or-flight instincts.

"I've never seen such a high prevalence of very sick animals - and with unusual conditions such as the adrenal hormone abnormalities," lead author Dr. Lori Schwacke wrote in a NOAA press release.

Nuke

TEPCO detects record radiation at Fukushima's reactor 2, new leak suspected

Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear power plant
© AFP Photo / PoolNo. 2 reactor buildings of the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear power plant

TEPCO has found a record 1.9 million becquerels per liter of beta ray-emitting radioactive substances at its No.2 reactor. Also radioactive cesium was detected in deeper groundwater at No.4 unit's well, as fears grow of a new leak into the ocean.

The level of beta ray-emitting radioactivity in groundwater around the crippled Fukushima reactor No. 2 reactor has been rising since November, NHK reported.

Previous the highest level - 1.8 million becquerels (bq/liter), of beta-ray sources per liter - was registered at reactor No.1 on December 13.

Meanwhile, TEPCO's latest examination of deeper groundwater beneath the #4 reactor's well has raised new concerns that there might be another source of radioactive substances leakage into the ocean.

For the first time, the analysis of water samples taken from a layer 25 meters beneath the No. 4 reactor's well that is facing the ocean has revealed radioactivity in groundwater.

TEPCO investigators detected 6.7 bq/liter of Cesium 137 and 89 bq/liter of strontium as well as other beta ray-emitting radioactive substances.


Comment: It is clear that TEPCO is in control of nothing AND that the world allows it to be so. All they do is damage control and trying to hide their complete incompetence, to the detriment of the Japanese population and very likely the world as a whole.