Society's ChildS


Stormtrooper

University of Virginia student jailed for possession of bottled water, ice cream

A University of Virginia student spent a night and good part of the next day in jail after seven plain-clothes agents from the state's Alcoholic Beverage Control division ambushed her.

The student, 20-year-old Elizabeth Daly, made the mistake of walking to her car with bottled water, cookie dough and ice cream in a dark supermarket parking lot near the UVA campus, reports The Daily Progress.

The seven agents sprung aggressively into action, suspecting that the student was carrying was a 12-pack of beer. She was actually carrying a sky-blue carton of LaCroix sparkling water.

Police admit that one of the high-strung agents vaulted onto the hood of Daly's car. She contends that one of them also drew a gun.

It's not clear what about Daly's appearance gave the six police officers the belief that they had probable cause to confront her en masse.

Daly, along with two roommates who were in the car, did what reasonable, unarmed people usually do when violently pounced upon by seven people. They tried to get away.

Arrow Down

Australian man gets 40 years jail for abusing bought baby

Justice
© Thinkstock
An Australian man who bought a baby boy for $US8000 ($A8659) with his partner, sexually abused the child and handed him off to other pedophiles to molest, has been sentenced to 40 years' prison in the US.

Judge Sarah Evans Barker, while sentencing the 42-year-old in the US District Court in Indianapolis on Friday, said he deserved a harsher punishment but accepted the plea deal because she did not want to subject jurors to the disturbing evidence.

Prosecutors discovered videos and photos of the man, his domestic partner, also an Australian, and other men in Australia, the US, Germany and France abusing the child from the age of two to six.

"For more than one year and across three continents, these men submitted this young child to some of the most heinous acts of exploitation that this office has ever seen," Indiana US Attorney Joe Hogsett said after the sentencing.

Question

Horror in landmark Berlin fountain as naked man brandishing knife is shot dead by police

The armed man was shot at the Neptune Fountain close to Berlin City Hall

Officers had surrounded him after reports of a man acting strangely

They tried to persuade him to drop the knife but he began cutting himself

He was shot when he moved towards an officer who went to stop him


Shocking video footage has emerged of the moment police shot dead a naked man brandishing a knife in a landmark fountain in Berlin today.

The man was shot once after being surrounded by officers at the German capital's Neptune Fountain, close to the city hall.

Police tried to persuade the man to put the knife away but instead he started cutting himself.

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Too close: The man was shot as he moved towards one of the policemen who went to try and stop him cutting himself. The policeman had shouted at him to back off

As a policeman climbed into the water to try and stop him, he moved towards the officer and was shot.

The footage appears to show the man walking towards an armed police officer who is heard shouting at him.

Arrow Up

Woman sues employer for baby's death; Similar lawsuits on rise In America

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A California woman has filed a chilling lawsuit against her employer, the California grocery store chain Albertsons.

As noted by Think Progress, the lawsuit details work events throughout her pregnancy that culminated in the premature birth and death of her baby.

The woman, Reyna Garcia, was a merchandise manager for the store. Her duties on the job included unloading and stocking heavy merchandise from pallets. When she requested to be moved to a section of the store that required less heavy lifting, her request was denied. Her manager told Garcia that he "thought nothing would change" because of her pregnancy.

Che Guevara

180,000 Irish mortgages in arrears: Next up, mass evictions or revolution?

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Grim figures show tens of billions owed by a generation of Irish people


Homeowners are sitting on a debt time bomb with over 180,000 mortgages in arrears, shocking new figures have revealed.

Almost one in five home loans, worth €25.5 billion, were not being fully repaid at the end of March, the Central Bank confirmed.

And between January and March, bailed out banks took back the keys of more than 160 homes as the problem escalates.


Comment: Same old Land War by other means. Tenant evictions have returned to Ireland, and so has the need for boycotting (ostracising) anyone involved in this malicious practice of collecting usury on behalf of the banks.


The grim data revealed:
  • Those in arrears of more than 90 days has reached over 95,000 or 12.3% - up from 11.9% in the previous three months
  • Over 142,118 private households were behind with their repayments in the first quarter of this year
  • On the landlord and investment side, 39,371 buy-to-let mortgages are in trouble.
David Hall of the Irish Mortgage Holders' Organisation said: "A generation of Irish people are now locked into an endless battle of attrition with the banks.

"In order for those in debt to return to contributing to the economy, we need effective, swift, fair and certain resolution to the household debt crisis."

Arrow Down

Surprise! IRS workers spent $493K on personal items using corporate cards and none were disciplined

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© Fox Nation/AP

Almost one hundred Internal Revenue Service workers spent nearly $500,000 on useless items, including pornography, diet pills, romance novels, popcorn machines, wine and Nerf footballs using their corporate credit card. None of the employees were disciplined.

The report found 94 employees used their cards to buy personal items between 2010 and 2011.
Twenty-two of those had done it more than once in six months.

It has sparked criticism over the agency's internal monitoring.

Two cards were used to buy online pornography, but the employees said the cards were stolen. They also found that one IRS employee spent $2,655 on diet pills, romance novels, steaks, a smartphone and baby-related items.

Other questionable purchases included $3,152 to rent a popcorn machine and buy prizes for an employee event, $418 on novelty decorations for a manager's meeting, and $119 on Nerf footballs.

Arrow Up

Women violated during roadside search in Dallas win lawsuit with Texas Department of Public Safety

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The Texas Department of Public Safety has closed a lawsuit involving two Texas women who claimed to be violated during a roadside search last July.

The two women are Angela and Ashley Dobbs. They were pulled over for throwing cigarette butts out of their car window during a trip to Oklahoma last year. State Trooper David Farrell claimed he smelled marijuana in the car and decided to do a search. He found nothing.

Despite finding nothing, Farrell decided the women needed to be searched as well, and he called female Trooper Kelly Helleson to do the search. Here is where the problems began.

Rather than sticking to a standard pat down search, Helleson searched, quite literally, every cavity of the women's bodies. She put on a pair of latex gloves and used her fingers to search the anuses and vaginas of both women. Helleson even used the same pair of gloves for both women.

Card - MC

Unprecedented gag order placed on sidewalk chalk protester, witnesses and jury

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© Todd MecklemThe Bank of America Loves Dollars More Than Justice
As reported in a Thursday evening, June 27, BuzzFlash at Truthout update to the chilling San Diego (SD) city attorney prosecution of Jeff Olson, an SD Judge placed an unprecedented gag order on a misdemeanor trial -- in particular muzzling Olson. But it also apparently included witnesses, the jury and others.

Judge Howard Shore also chastised the Mayor of San Diego, Bob Filner. Filner apparently in the judge's eyes had the temerity to call the trial of Olson a waste of time and taxpayer money. According to the San Diego Reader, Filner sent out a memorandum on June 20 that read in part:
This young man is being persecuted for thirteen counts of vandalism stemming from an expression of political protest that involved washable children's chalk on a City sidewalk. It is alleged that he has no previous criminal record. If these assertions are correct, I believe this is a misuse and waste of taxpayer money. It could also be characterized as an abuse of power that infringes on First Amendment particularly when it is arbitrarily applied to some, but not all, similar speech.
Judge Shore, in essence, warned the mayor of San Diego, who happens to be a Democrat in a traditionally conservative city, to keep his comments to himself, and would likely have issued a gag order on the mayor if Judge Shore were able.

Handcuffs

Teenager in jail since March for sarcastic Internet comment faces 8 years in prison

Justin Carter
© facebook.com user Justin Carter
A teenager from Texas could spend the next eight years in prison if a court decides that the sarcastic comment he made during an online argument is enough to convict him of issuing a terroristic threat.

Justin Carter was only 18 years old when he and a friend got into an online spat over Facebook back in February with another person. They were arguing about the computer game "League of Legends," his dad told a local ABC affiliate, but one snarky remark made by the teen was apparently enough to raise suspicion in one woman who was watching the conversation unfold all the way up in Canada.

"Someone had said something to the effect of 'Oh you're insane, you're crazy, you're messed up in the head,'" father Jack Carter told KKVUE News, "to which he replied 'Oh yeah, I'm real messed up in the head, I'm going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts.'"

Bad Guys

Brazil to deploy National Security troops against protesters

The Brazilian government will deploy National Public Security Force in five cities hosting the FIFA football tournament in an effort to contain the ongoing protests across the country.

The announcement by the Brazilian Justice Ministry comes after a day of violent clashes between protesters and riot police.

The ministry decided to deploy the joint federal police force on Wednesday in response to violent rioting across the country. The troops will reportedly be tasked with mediating the conflict, rather than punishing protesters.

The National Public Security Force is usually deployed in Brazil to address serious security crises, such as prison riots or major gang violence.