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Mad world: The revenge porn avengers

James Fletcher
BBC World Service
Thu, 12 Dec 2013 01:37 UTC
Image
© Unknown.
What would you do if you found out that someone had posted naked pictures of you online, without your permission? It's known as "revenge porn", and in the age of mobile phone cameras and sexting, more and more people are becoming victims. Some are fighting back.

Hollie Toups remembers in vivid detail the day that changed her life. The 33-year-old Texan was at work last year when a friend called to tell her there were naked pictures of her on a website.

"I left work and came home and ran upstairs and opened my computer," she tells me at her home in the small town of Nederland in south-east Texas. We're sitting on the same couch where she first typed in the address of the site - Texxxan.com.

A few clicks later Toups was looking at topless photos she'd taken for an ex-boyfriend when she was 24. And not just photos - posted alongside them were her name, links to her Facebook and Twitter accounts, a Google map of her location and a stream of comments.
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Cow Skull

Homelessness and demand for food show increase in survey of 25 U.S. cities


Yahoo News
Wed, 11 Dec 2013 00:12 UTC
homeless hunger
© Agence-France Presse/Spencer PlattA homeless man sleeps under an American Flag blanket on a park bench on September 10, 2013 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City

A survey of 25 American cities, including many of the nation's largest, showed yearly increases in food aid and homelessness.

The cities, located throughout 18 states, saw requests for emergency food aid rise by an average of seven percent compared with the previous period a year earlier, according to the US Conference of Mayors study, published Wednesday.

All but four cities reported an increase in demand for assistance between the period of September 2012 through August 2013.

"There's no question that the nation's economy is on the mend, but there's also no question that the slow pace of recovery is making it difficult -- and, for many, impossible -- to respond to the growing needs of the hungry and the homeless," said the group's president Tom Cochran.

Around 43 percent of people who asked for food aid were employed, 21 percent were elderly and nine percent were homeless.

The increase in demand grew because of unemployment, lower salaries, poverty and higher prices for housing.
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Stormtrooper

General who opened Guantanamo prison urges for shut-down in 2014


RT
Thu, 12 Dec 2013 20:34 UTC
Marine Major General Michael Lehnert.
© AFP Photo / Peter MuhlyMarine Major General Michael Lehnert.
The American general in charge of opening the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba has come out in favor of closing the facility, declaring, "the entire detention and interrogation strategy was wrong."

Writing in the Detroit Free Press, Marine Major General Michael Lehnert stated the time has come to close Guantanamo, and that the prison "should never have been opened."

Lehnert was the leader of the 2002 Joint Task Force charged with constructing a prison in Guantanamo Bay. He said the facility was created out of fear caused by the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, when the U.S. believed those detained would offer a "treasure trove" if intelligence.

Soon after Guantanamo opened, however, Lehnert decided the operation was a mistake. Most of the individuals captured did not have much information, he said, nor was there adequate evidence connecting them to war crimes.

"We squandered the goodwill of the world after we were attacked by our actions in Guantanamo, both in terms of detention and torture," Lehnert wrote in his column. "Our decision to keep Guantanamo open has helped our enemies because it validates every negative perception of the United States."
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Mr. Potato

Man builds deadly weapons with items he bought AFTER going through airport security

Kristin Tate
BenSwann.com
Thu, 12 Dec 2013 22:46 UTC
Blunder
© Ben Swann.comBLUNDERBUSiness
As we reported several weeks ago, a Tennessee man built a firing gun from items he purchased at the airport - after going through security. Since his project received a huge variety of responses from our readers, I decided to reach out to him and find out more. Evan Booth, a computer programmer from Greensboro, created the gun using items like a hairdryer, lithium batteries, and body spray. He calls his creation BLUNDERBUSiness.

Booth said he decided to embark on this project after the TSA introduced body scanners, which he believes violate travelers' privacy.

He told me, "People who understand security understand that the current screening procedures exist primarily to put passengers at ease - 'security theater,' if you will. They also know that, given enough time, a persistent attacker will succeed to some degree."

Booth was able to shoot pocket change out of his gun with enough power to blow a hole through Sheetrock.
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Arrow Down

12 Wuhan petitioners attempt mass suicide in Beijing


Want China Times
Thu, 12 Dec 2013 09:09 UTC
Mass Suicide
© Want China TimesThe 12 petitioners display their petitions in Beijing, Dec. 10.
Twelve people from Wuhan in central China's Hubei province attempted to commit suicide together in Beijing after their petitions against the forced demolition of their houses three years ago received no response.

They have been hospitalized after drinking pesticide but two have since fled and another three are otherwise unaccounted for, reports Hong Kong's China Review News Agency.

The petitioners, three men and nine women from Wuhan's Jiangan district, drank pesticide in Zhengyangmen in Beijing at around 4pm on Tuesday to protest against the forceful demolition of their houses and unfair compensations.

Their houses were demolished when their village, Xinchun, was remodeled in 2010. They did not reach an agreement on compensation with the village committee but their houses were destroyed without their consent. They had traveled to Beijing to petition multiple times over the past few years.

One of the three men in the group said they had planned to kill themselves in November but they were prevented by officials who discovered their plan.

They stated their suicide plan in Beijing again in the same month and to multiple government departments in Wuhan in the hope of securing their attention.
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Cult

The Real Deliverance: Incest hillbilly family discovered in remote Australian valley

Jack Moore
International Business Times
Wed, 11 Dec 2013 17:44 UTC
Australian children deformed by decades of incest found in scenes akin to Deliverance movie
Deliverance
© International Business TimesThe incest cult found in the Australian valleys was reminiscent of the 1972 film Deliverance.
A disturbing incest cult has been found in New South Wales, Australia, where four generations of family inbreeding has left children deformed and mute.

In a scene reminiscent of the 1970s thriller Deliverance, the depraved relations of brothers, sisters, uncles and aunts created children that were incapable of speech, had odd features and lived in squalor.

The name of the valley has been kept secret and the family has been given the pseudonym of Colt to protect the identities of the children. It was only when residents of a nearby town reported that children were living in the hills that anyone realised what was happening.

Details were made public on the instruction of judges at the New South Wales Children's Court.
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Bell

Kiev riot police retreat after storming protest bastions


BBC News
Wed, 11 Dec 2013 11:59 UTC
Police have abandoned an attempt to dislodge anti-government protesters from their strongholds in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev.
Protestors
Hundreds of police tried to dismantle protest barricades in nearby Independence Square overnight.
Clashes erupted at the occupied city hall hours after riot police tried to clear nearby Independence Square - prompting the US to express "disgust".

The president said force would not be used against peaceful protesters.

The demonstrations were sparked by the government's refusal to sign a deal on closer ties with the European Union.

The U-turn followed pressure from Russia, which has said Ukraine's free trade deal with the EU would flood the Russian market.

Prime Minister Mykola Azarov on Wednesday said Ukraine wanted 20bn euros ($28bn; £17bn) in aid from the EU in return for signing the agreement.
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Sheriff

Police State: Wyoming woman says cops charged into her house, used stun gun in lawsuit


Fox News
Wed, 11 Dec 2013 00:00 UTC
Police state
© Mises Daily
A Gillette woman who says police tackled her and used a stun gun on her after finding her 12-year-old son driving in the middle of the night is suing the city and its police department.

The Gillette News Record reported Monday that April J. Fox claims the officers came into her house with her son in November 2011, woke her up and refused numerous demands to leave. She says they tackled her even though she didn't pose any threat to them and wrongly arrested her.
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Rocket

U.S. drone strike kills 15 on way to wedding in Yemen


Reuters
Thu, 12 Dec 2013 15:06 UTC
yemen drone
U.S. drone strikes in Yemen jumped from 10 in 2011 to 42 in 2012
Fifteen people on their way to a wedding in Yemen were killed in an air strike after their party was mistaken for an al Qaeda convoy, local security officials said on Thursday.

The officials did not identify the plane in the strike in central al-Bayda province, but tribal and local media sources said that it was a drone.

"An air strike missed its target and hit a wedding car convoy, ten people were killed immediately and another five who were injured died after being admitted to the hospital," one security official said.
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Briefcase

Nearly $80 million judgment awarded in New Mexico woman's sand suffocation death


Fox News
Wed, 11 Dec 2013 14:34 UTC
Laura Miera
© Associated Press/Courtesy Vigil Law FirmLaura Miera is seen with her daughter Cassandra. In 2002, a tractor-trailer overturned, burying Laura Miera's car in sand and suffocating her inside, in Albuquerque, N.M.
A judge has awarded nearly $80 million to the family of a woman who died in 2002 when a tractor-trailer struck her car and buried it in sand, suffocating the woman as teachers and students at a nearby school frantically tried to dig her out.

Laura Miera had just dropped off her 14-year-old daughter at Jimmy Carter Middle School and was waiting at a traffic light when the semi exited a freeway and came barreling toward her.
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