Society's ChildS


Eye 1

"Oops, I did it again": Serial killer Joanna Dennehy bragged about murders to accomplice before two more stabbings

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Trial: Joanna Dennehy
Stony-faced serial killer Joanna Dennehy bragged about her killing spree to an alleged accomplice by glibly remarking: "Oops, I did it again."

A court heard of the chilling admission along with two terrifying accounts of men who survived separate knife attacks by evil Dennehy.

During one of the bloodthirsty assaults, Dennehy told her petrified victim, "I'm going to f***ing kill you" as she repeatedly stabbed him.

A friend of hers also claimed how Dennehy had boasted about killing a total of eight people.

It came to light during the trial of Gary Stretch, 47, and Leslie Layton, 37, who are accused of helping Dennehy, 31.

The twisted mother-of-two has already admitted murdering John Chapman, 56, Lukasz Slaboszewski, 31, and her landlord Kevin Lee, 49.

She stabbed the three men in the heart and dumped their bodies in ditches in Cambridgeshire in late March last year.

However, a retired firefighter told Cambridge crown court how he almost became another victim when she launched an attack on him days later in April.

Bizarro Earth

Mad world: Two toddlers stabbed to death by their own mother who thought she was performing exorcism

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© Montgomery County Police DepartmentZakieya Latrice Avery, 28, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted first-degree murder.
A Germantown mother and another woman accused of killing two toddlers and trying to kill two other children believed that they were releasing demonic spirits that had possessed the siblings, Montgomery County police said Saturday.

The two dead children - a boy, Norell Harris, 1, and a girl, Zyana Harris, 2 - were found Friday morning on their mother's bed in a Germantown townhouse. Both had been stabbed repeatedly, police said. A sister, Taniya Harris, 5, and a brother, Martello Harris, 8, were seriously injured but are expected to survive.

Police said the women thought that they were performing an exorcism, although it did not appear they had followed any ritual.

"This was all about what was in their minds," said Capt. Marcus Jones, commander of the county's major crimes unit. "They felt like there was something bad going on with the children, and they were trying to release it."

Road Cone

Controversy over pubic hair on NYC store window mannequins

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© AFP
US clothing chain American Apparel has sparked controversy by putting mannequins sprouting pubic hair in the windows of their shop in New York's boho Lower East Side.

Passersby stopped to gawk, take photographs, chuckle or raise a horrified eyebrow at the stick-thin plastic models decked out in see-through bras and panties, with bushy bikini lines.

Many people consider women's body hair a private embarrassment requiring painful grooming at beauty salons, and find the display shocking and provocative.

But American Apparel, which in the past has been accused of sexist and controversial marketing campaigns, said it was celebrating "natural beauty" in the run-up to the Valentine's Day rush.

"We invite passers-by to explore the idea of what is 'sexy,' consider their comfort with the natural female form - and perhaps most importantly - to come in and try on some of our favorite styles of the season," said creative director Iris Alonzo.

Layla Khabiri, who works in a wine bar and lives round the corner, called it a "cheap ploy" designed to drive up sales, but found it interesting for being a "little counter-culture."

Che Guevara

We are all living Pasolini's Theorem

Pasolini
© Unknown
In the early morning of November 2, 1975, in Idroscalo, a terminally dreadful shanty town in Ostia, outside Rome, the body of Pier Paolo Pasolini, then 53, an intellectual powerhouse and one of the greatest filmmakers of the 1960s and 1970s, was found badly beaten and run over by his own Alfa Romeo.

It was hard to conceive a more stunning, heartbreaking, modern mix of Greek tragedy with Renaissance iconography; in a bleak setting straight out of a Pasolini film, the author himself was immolated just like his main character in Mamma Roma (1962) lying in prison in the manner of the Dead Christ, aka the Lamentation of Christ, by Andrea Mantegna.

This might have been a gay tryst gone terribly wrong; a 17-year-old low life was charged with murder, but the young man was also linked with the Italian neo-fascists. The true story has never emerged. What did emerge is that "the new Italy" - or the aftereffects of a new capitalist revolution - killed Pasolini.


Arrow Down

American organ market: Cash for kidneys

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© Getty Images

In 2012, 95,000 American men, women and children were on the waiting list for new kidneys, the most commonly transplanted organ. Yet only about 16,500 kidney transplant operations were performed that year. Taking into account the number of people who die while waiting for a transplant, this implies an average wait of 4.5 years for a kidney transplant in the U.S.

The situation is far worse than it was just a decade ago, when nearly 54,000 people were on the waiting list, with an average wait of 2.9 years. For all the recent attention devoted to the health-care overhaul, the long and growing waiting times for tens of thousands of individuals who badly need organ transplants hasn't been addressed.

Finding a way to increase the supply of organs would reduce wait times and deaths, and it would greatly ease the suffering that many sick individuals now endure while they hope for a transplant. The most effective change, we believe, would be to provide compensation to people who give their organs - that is, we recommend establishing a market for organs.

Airplane

Positioning for what? Rich Chinese continue to flee China

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© Reuters
Do the wealthy Chinese know something we don't?

A new report shows that 64 percent of Chinese millionaires have either emigrated or plan to emigrate - taking their spending and fortunes with them. The United States is their favorite destination.

The report from Hurun, a wealth research firm that focuses on China, said that one-third of China's super rich - or those worth $16 million or more - have already emigrated.

The data offer the latest snapshot of China's worrying wealth flight, with massive numbers of rich Chinese taking their families and fortunes overseas. Previous studies show the main reasons rich Chinese are leaving is to pursue better educations for their kids, and to escape the pollution and overcrowding in urban China.

Pistol

Dollar store customer fatally shoots man who came into store waving gun

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© WSFA
New details are emerging in the investigation into a shooting at a Dallas County dollar store that ended with a gunman dead at the hands of a customer who decided to take action.

Dallas County District Attorney Michael Jackson has identified the gunman as Kevin McLaughlin from Orrville and the customer as Marlo Ellis, 37, also from Orrville.

The fatal shooting happened around 12:45 p.m. Thursday at the Dollar General on Highway 22 in Orrville.

Officials say McLaughlin walked into the store waving a gun in the air and forced a cashier and Ellis at gunpoint towards a break room.At that point, Ellis pulled out a concealed weapon and shot McLaughlin once in the chest.

"He escorted a customer who was trying to leave the store and a cashier toward a break room. The cashier went in first and the customer went in behind her, and the individual had the gun on the customer and the customer had a pistol concealed in a holster," Dallas County Sheriff Harris Huffman said. "And when the customer got to the door, he turned around and shot the individual."

McLaughlin was pronounced dead at the scene. The tense ordeal played out in less than five minutes, police said.

Other customers and delivery men were inside the store at the time of the incident. Several customers making their way into the store saw McLaughlin waving a gun and ran away.

Nuke

Radioactive plume in South Carolina leaking into Savannah River

ATLANTA -- The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) confirmed to the South Carolina Governor's Nuclear Advisory Council recently that a plume of radioactive Tritium is moving off the Barnwell Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Facility, in Barnwell, South Carolina.

The plume is traveling in the groundwater southwest toward the Savannah River Site.

Traces of tritium have also been found in Mary Branch Creek.

WLTX TV in Columbia, South Carolina, first reported on the Department's admission, although environmentalists claim this has been going on for years.

"The plume started moving off the Barnwell site years ago. In fact, they dug up the adjacent church because there was contamination of soil and groundwater and that was ten years ago. Just like every other low-level nuclear waste site in this country, they have all leaked," Susan Corbett, Chair South Carolina Sierra Club, told Atlanta Progressive News.

Sherlock

No traces of explosives on Kaczynski plane - Poland

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© RIA Novosti. Oleg MineevTu-154 jet carrying President Lech Kaczynski and a host of other top officials crashed in 2010
Polish experts found no traces of explosives in the wreckage of a plane that crashed in Russia in 2010, killing Poland's president and nearly 100 others, Polish military prosecutors said Friday.

The analyzed samples were taken by Polish analysts from the crash site in autumn 2012 and summer 2013.

Forensics experts from the Central Forensics Laboratory reported that analysis of the samples, which were obtained from exhumed bodies, soil at the crash site and parts of the aircraft, did not reveal any traces of explosives or their decay substances, prosecutors said in a statement.

Prosecutors said, however, that the forensics report was not conclusive and asked the experts to provide explanatory notes on their findings by this spring.

Handcuffs

Texas cops handcuff man after he gave change to homeless person

man in handcuffs
© Reuters / Benoit Tessier
You may want to think twice next time you consider giving a homeless person some change, if one Texas man's experience is any indication.

Houston resident Greg Snider claims he was arrested and held for more than an hour after local police mistakenly targeted him as a criminal, all for giving a homeless man a few quarters.

Snider said he had pulled into a local parking lot in order to make a phone call when a homeless man came up to him and asked for some spare cash. Snider claims he gave the man 75 cents and left to continue on his way.

"I had no idea at all what was about to happen," he told KPRC Local 2 News.

As soon as Snider merged onto a local freeway, however, police followed him with flashing lights and sirens, ordering him to pull over.

"He's screaming. He's yelling. He's telling me to get out of the car. He's telling me to put my hands on the hood," Snider said to KPRC. "They're like, 'We saw you downtown. We saw what you did.' And I was like, 'Are you kidding me? I gave a homeless man 75 cents.'"