Society's ChildS


Sheriff

Massachusetts Police State: Fall River man arrested for videotaping police officer


CBS News - Boston
Fri, 07 Mar 2014 20:10 UTC
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© CBSGeorge Thompson: Recorded a police officer who was out of control!
A Fall River man says he was recording a police officer who was out of control, but instead, he was arrested and his cell phone was seized.

Now the video he recorded is gone. Police say he erased it, even though they were the ones holding the phone.

George Thompson says last January he was just sitting on his front porch, watching a Fall River police officer working a paid detail. Thompson says the officer was on his phone and was swearing very loud.

That's when Thompson pulled out his phone. Thompson says Officer Tom Barboza then rushed him and arrested him, charging him with unlawful wiretapping.

But in Massachusetts it's perfectly legal to record video and audio of a public official, including police, as long as they are performing their duties and the recording isn't hidden. Barboza's own police report shows that Thompson acknowledged he was recording the officer.
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Cult

Kentucky churches cripple children's home - $7m in funding withheld over LGBT hiring policies

David Edwards
The Raw Story
Tue, 11 Mar 2014 17:05 UTC
hungry children
© Shutterstock.comA line of homeless children being fed by a charitable group. Photo: , all rights reserved.
Sunrise Children's Services is working to recover from a massive budget shortfall after Kentucky churches withheld $7 million because the children's home had proposed ending its policy of discrimination against LGBT employees.

Bill Smithwick, the then-director of Sunrise Children's Services, proposed last year that the home allow employees who were openly gay and lesbian over fears that government funding would dry up.

After churches in Kentucky began withholding their donations, Smithwick was forced to resign, and the children's home did not change its policy.

But the damage was done, and Sunrise Children's Services was already facing a $7 million budget shortfall, according to WDRB.

The Kentucky Baptist Convention, which approves of the anti-LGBT policy, is now back in the Sunrise's corner. The convention has launched a fundraising drive telling churches that it's once again safe to donate.

"Now that our churches have confidence in the leadership of Sunrise and the direction of Sunrise, we'll give them the opportunity to re-invest in this ministry to children," Kentucky Baptist Convention Executive Director Paul Chitwood told WDRB.

However, the policy of discrimination puts Sunrise at risk of losing government funding, which provides 85 percent of its $27 million budget.
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Health

Steve Irwin could not have been saved, says witness to stingray attack

Peter Walker
The Guardian
Mon, 10 Mar 2014 16:58 UTC
Steve Irwin
© Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesSteve Irwin realised that the stingray's barb had punctured his lung but not his heart, Justin Lyons told Australia's Network Ten television.
Cameraman tells of moment Australian naturalist's chest was repeatedly pierced by barb, and his last words - 'I'm dying'

The only person to witness the moment Steve Irwin was pierced in the chest by a stingray barb said the injuries were so severe that the Australian TV naturalist could not possibly have been saved.

Justin Lyons, a regular underwater cameraman for Irwin and a close friend, said the jagged barb punctured Irwin's chest dozens of times, causing a massive injury to his heart. "He obviously didn't know it had punctured his heart but he knew it had punctured his lung," Lyons told Australia's Network Ten television.

"He was having trouble breathing. Even if we'd been able to get him into an emergency ward at that moment we probably wouldn't have been able to save him, because the damage to his heart was massive. As we're motoring back I'm screaming at one of the other crew in the boat to put their hand over the wound and we're saying to him things like, 'Think of your kids, Steve, hang on, hang on, hang on.' He just sort of calmly looked up at me and said, 'I'm dying.' And that was the last thing he said."
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Pistol

Oscar Pistorius vomits as Reeva Steenkamp wounds described

David Smith
The Guardian
Mon, 10 Mar 2014 16:51 UTC
Oscar Pistorius
© Unknown
Pathologist says bullet to girlfriend's head was probably fatal, with ammunition designed to mushroom on contact

It was cold, clinical, scientific testimony that finally robbed Oscar Pistorius of his composure.

A pathologist's report from the witness stand of the austere courtroom, detailing the devastating impact of three hollow tipped bullets on the body of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, was punctuated by the gutteral sounds of the sporting celebrity gagging and vomiting repeatedly into a bucket.

While Pistorius has mostly retained his self-possession as a succession of neighbours and an ex-girlfriend gave evidence against him, it was the dry, technical language of professor Gert Saayman that hit him hardest. He was bent double in the dock, hands on his ears as if trying to block out the words, his body in visceral pain and violently sick.

The scene unfolded on the sixth day of the "blockbuster trial" in Pretoria where the testimony was deemed so graphic that judge Thokozile Masipa banned live coverage of it on radio, television, Twitter and blogs.
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Book

English lower classes don't read: Deep cultural divide in reading habits

Alison Flood
The Guardian
Tue, 11 Mar 2014 16:24 UTC
mother reading to child
© Alamy Research shows 'significant' link between a family’s reading habits and a child’s future attitude to reading
Researchers identify significant link between deprivation and not reading books

New research shows a stark and "worrying" cultural divide in the UK when it comes to reading, with half the country picking up a book at least once a week for pleasure, and 45% preferring television.

The England-wide survey of the reading habits of 1,500 adults conducted by DJS Research for Booktrust [PDF] says that on average, the higher the socio-economic group that someone is in, the more often they read: 27% of DEs never read books themselves, compared with 13% of ABs, while 62% of ABs read daily or weekly, compared with 42% of DEs. Reading charity Booktrust, which commissioned the research, believes its findings should serve as a warning that "Britain's divided reading culture is a barrier to social mobility".

The study indicates "links between deprivation and not reading books", said Booktrust, with those who never read living in more deprived areas, with a higher proportion of children living in poverty, and those who read less "more likely to be male, under 30, and have lower levels of qualifications, happiness, and satisfaction within their lives".

One respondent, a male who fell into the survey's 30-44 years age bracket, told researchers: "The fact is, it's 2013 not 1813. We have electricity now so we can buy DVDs and watch television rather than read books. Books are for an older generation, younger people on the whole do not read books."


Comment: Perhaps the more symptom of having been subjected to an ineffective, underfunded education system that has failed to pass on the true value of reading. That beside the pleasure of reading, there is also the greater knowledge and awareness that may be gained.

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Cell Phone

New York mother assaults 3-year old daughter for microwaving cellphone


CBS News - New York
Fri, 07 Mar 2014 16:44 UTC
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© Jefferson Siegel/New York Daily NewsKrystle Reyes appears at her arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court on Friday. Reyes is charged with assaulting her child at a Hell's Kitchen shelter for battered women after she claims the 3-year-old microwaved the mom's cell phone.
A mother was arrested this week, on charges that she assaulted her 3-year-old daughter after the child destroyed her cellphone by cooking it in the microwave oven.

Police sources told CBS 2 that Krystle Reyes, 28, was arrested at her apartment on West 49th Street in Hell's Kitchen at 5 p.m. Thursday, after neighbors called 911 to report a commotion.

When officers arrived, they found the girl in the bathtub with a cut below her right eye, as well as bruises on her back, right arm, left ear and neck, sources said.

Reyes told police she grabbed the girl by the arm, placed her in the tub and smacked her, sources said.
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Palette

Pussy Riot members publicly shamed by citizens with green paint and rubbish


The Guardian
Thu, 06 Mar 2014 10:34 UTC
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© Dzhavakhadze Zurab/Itar-Tass/CorbisPussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (R) and Maria Alyokhina, who were attacked in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod.
Video shows men attacking Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina in McDonald's restaurant in Nizhny Novgorod

Two members of the Russian protest group Pussy Riot were attacked by a group of men who poured rubbish and bright green paint over them and shouted obscenities at them at a McDonald's restaurant.

A video, uploaded by the group on Thursday, shows at least three men attacking Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, shouting "[Go] to America!" and shooting paint into their faces from syringes in the city of Nizhny Novgorod.

"It hurts! Why are you doing this?" Tolokonnikova says, with green stains on her face and hands. "You don't have the right to hurt me. Please don't do that to anyone anymore."

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Phoenix

Blaze at Hartlepool Snooker Centre treated as 'unexplained'


The Northern Echo
Sun, 09 Mar 2014 15:05 UTC
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Picture by Paula Hudson Teesside Alert
A blaze which has destroyed the roof of Hartlepool Snooker Centre is being treated as unexplained.

Police and fire investigators are set to probe how the fire started once the two-storey building on Green Street has been made safe.

Six fire crews from across Teesside were drafted in to help tackle the fire which took hold from about 3.30am this morning (Sunday, March 9).

Part of the main road in the town, the A689 westbound, remains closed and gas and electricity supplies nearby were shut off as a result.
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Black Cat 2

Vicious pet cat traps Oregon couple, who call 911


Big Story
Tue, 11 Mar 2014 12:37 UTC
Himalayan Cat
© AP Photo/Lee PalmerThis photo provided by Lee Palmer shows Lux, a 22-pound Himalayan cat that attacked a seven-month old baby. Portland police had to be called in to subdue the 22-pound house cat that trapped its owners inside their bedroom after attacking their baby. The baby was not injured in the Sunday, March 9, 2014, incident.
Portland - Portland police had to be called in to subdue a 22-pound house cat that trapped its owners inside their bedroom after attacking their baby. The baby was not injured in the Sunday incident.

Sgt. Pete Simpson, a Portland Police Bureau spokesman, said officers responded to a 911 call that evening from a couple who had locked themselves in their bedroom with the baby and their dog after the cat attacked the child.

Simpson said the 911 operator could hear the cat screeching in the background as the couple awaited help. Officers used a dog snare to capture the cat and placed it in a crate.

Simpson said the owners told the dispatcher the cat has a history of violence. He said the cat remained with its owners.

Source: Associated Press
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Stormtrooper

Rural Nevada deputy accused of illegal stops, confiscating money from travellers

Scott Sonner
RGJ.com
Fri, 07 Mar 2014 10:35 UTC
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© Humboldt County Sheriff's OfficeIn this image released by the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office in September 2013 and posted on their Facebook page, Sgt. Lee Dove poses with K-9 Zyla and $50,000 cash that was seized after a traffic stop for speeding.
A rural Nevada sheriff's deputy is accused of stopping travelers on a lonely stretch of U.S. Interstate 80 and confiscating tens of thousands of dollars for the county without bringing charges, according to two federal lawsuits.

Two men who were traveling alone through northern Nevada's high desert last year offer strikingly similar accounts of their stops by the same Humboldt County deputy near the town of Winnemucca, about 165 miles east of Reno.

Neither search produced drugs or an arrest, but in one case Deputy Lee Dove took a briefcase filled with $50,000 and in the other he seized $13,800 and a handgun, according to the lawsuits filed in U.S. District Court in Reno.

Both men said they were told they'd be released with their vehicles only if they forfeited their cash.

"It's like Jesse James or Black Bart," said longtime Reno defense lawyer John Ohlson, who filed suit on behalf of Tan Nguyen, 37, of Newport, Calif.

The lawsuits say the cash seizures are part of a pattern of stopping drivers for speeding as a pretext for drug busts, which violates the Constitution. They say Dove, Sheriff Ed Kilgore, Humboldt County and its prosecutors condone the practice of seizing assets regardless of criminal prosecution.
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