Society's ChildS

Heart - Black

Teen Gang Members Murder Grandfather Delfino Mora, Post Killing Video on Facebook

Chicago police say that gang members robbed and murdered 62-year-old Delfino Mora, a disabled man. They allegedly recorded the attack on a cell phone and posted it to Facebook, last Tuesday.

Mora's family told NBC Chicago that the grandfather of 12 was collecting cans that he sells for cash when the teens confronted him.

The gang members involved in the fatal assault allegedly include Nicholas Ayala, 17, and Anthony Malcolm, 18, who were both charged with first-degree murder and robbery. Malik Jones, 16, was charged with first-degree murder and was held without bail on Sunday.

Police said Jones handed his friends his cell phone to start filming, then demanded money from Mora and punched him in the jaw.

Newspaper

Why the Mainstream Media Remains Ignorant to the Working Class

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© Photo: David Scull / The New York TimesThe writer Barbara Ehrenreich in Washington on September 8, 2006.
Best-selling author Barbara Ehrenreich - probably best known for her 2001 book Nickel and Dimed - has long been on the forefront of promoting stories about working people in an often hostile media environment. Recently, she has been heading the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. An endeavor inspired in part by the Federal Writers Project of the 1930s, the initiative aims "to force this country's crisis of poverty and economic insecurity to the center of the national conversation."

I spoke with Ehrenreich about this crisis of economic insecurity, about the invisibility of working people in the mainstream media, and about the current state of journalism.

That working people are chronically underrepresented in the media - even in times of economic downturn - is a sad reality readily apparent to anyone who has surveyed the American news landscape. Given this, I asked Ehrenreich if she thought this problem has been a constant, or if has it gotten worse in recent years.

Bizarro Earth

Wisconsin Oil Spill: Enbridge Energy Reports Incident

oil spill
© ReutersFILE - In this July 30, 2010 file photo, crews clean up oil, from a ruptured pipeline, owned by Enbridge Inc, near booms and absorbent materials where Talmadge Creek meets the Kalamazoo River as in Marshall Township, Mich.
* Some 1,200 barrels spill from pipeline in Wisconsin

* Spill is two years after another major Enbridge spill

* Canadian company already battling safety concerns on its line

Washington - The U.S. pipeline safety agency launched an investigation on Saturday into an oil spill in Wisconsin on Enbridge Inc's network that forced the partial shutdown of a main artery carrying light sweet Canadian crude to Chicago-area refineries.

Enbridge's 318,000 barrel per day Line 14 pipeline, part of the Lakehead system, was shut after an estimated 1,200 barrels of oil were leaked. This happened almost two years to the day after another major spill in a different section of the line, in Michigan.

Enbridge Energy Partners said on Friday there was not yet a time frame for when flows would resume, and the cause of the spill had not yet been determined.

Bizarro Earth

Major blackout hits northern Indian cities- 370 million powerless in sweltering heat

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© Altaf Qadri/The Associated PressStranded commuters wait for their trains to arrive at a train station in New Delhi, India, Monday, July 30, 2012. Northern India was plunged into darkness Monday after a supply grid tripped because of overloading, officials said.
Northern India's power grid crashed Monday, halting hundreds of trains, forcing hospitals and airports to use backup generators and leaving 370 million people - more than the population of the United States and Canada combined - sweltering in the summer heat.

The blackout, one of the worst to hit India in a decade, highlighted the nation's inability to feed a growing hunger for energy as it strives to become a regional economic power.

The country's northern grid crashed about 2:30 a.m. because it could no longer keep up with the huge demand for power in the hot summer, officials in the state of Uttar Pradesh said. However, Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said he was not sure exactly what caused the collapse and had formed a committee to investigate it.

The grid feeds the nation's breadbasket in Punjab, the war-wracked region of Kashmir, the burgeoning capital of New Delhi, the Dalai Lama's Himalayan headquarters in Dharmsala and the world's most populous state, the poverty stricken Uttar Pradesh.

By late morning, 60 percent of the power had been restored in the eight northern states affected by the outage and the rest was expected to be back on line by the afternoon, Shinde said. The grid was drawing power from the neighboring Eastern and Western grids as well as getting hydroelectric power from the neighboring mountain kingdom of Bhutan.

Handcuffs

Iran sentences four to death over banking scandal

An Iranian court has sentenced four people to death for their roles in a billion-dollar banking fraud scandal that forced bank executives out of their jobs and tainted the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, state media reported on Monday.

The embezzlement case, discovered in September 2011, revolved around forged documents allegedly used by the directors of an Iranian investment company to secure loans totaling $2.6 billion to buy state-owned enterprises.

Thirty-nine people were tried for their involvement in the fraud.

"We are typing their sentences now and according to the sentence that was issued, four of the accused in this case were sentenced to death," judiciary spokesman Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei told the IRNA state news agency.

He did not name the individuals sentenced to death.

Two others were sentenced to life imprisonment and others received sentences ranging from 25 years and down, Mohseni-Ejei was quoted as saying.

Che Guevara

Occupy the Dam: Brazil's Indigenous Uprising

In the Amazonian backcountry, tribes are challenging construction of the world's third-largest dam - by dismantling it. Here's what they can teach us about standing up to power.
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© Photos courtesy of International RiversIndigenous tribesmen stand firm near the Belo Monte Dam.

Last month, hundreds of indigenous demonstrators began dismantling a dam in the heart of Brazil's rainforest to protest the destruction it will bring to lands they have loved and honored for centuries. The Brazilian government is determined to promote construction of the massive, $14 billion Belo Monte Dam, which will be the world's third largest when it is completed in 2019. It is being developed by Norte Energia, a consortium of ten of the world's largest construction, engineering, and mining firms set up specifically for the project.

The Belo Monte Dam is the most controversial of dozens of dams planned in the Amazon region and threatens the lives and livelihoods of thousands of Amazonian people, plants, and animals. Situated on the Xingu River, the dam is set to flood roughly 150 square miles of already-stressed rainforest and deprive an estimated 20,000 people of their homes, their incomes, and - for those who succumb to malaria, bilharzia, and other diseases carried by insects and snails that are predicted to breed in the new reservoir - their lives. Moreover, the influx of immigrants will bring massive disruption to the socioeconomic balance of the region. People whose livelihoods have primarily depended on hunting and gathering or farming may suddenly find themselves forced to take jobs as manual laborers, servants, and prostitutes

Telephone

Bomb threats lead to evacuation of 8 Walmarts, 2 in Kansas City area

US, Missouri - At least eight Walmarts across Missouri have been evacuated Friday evening after bomb threats.

Two of the stores are in the Kansas City area.

Two and a half hours after the threats were called in, police declared the scenes as safe.


Bizarro Earth

Mississippi church refuses couple's wedding because they are black

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© ABC NewsTe'Andrea and Charles Wilson were denied a wedding at Crystal Springs church in Mississippi
A Jackson, Miss., couple's dream of exchanging vows in the church they had been attending was dashed last week when the church pastor told them that some members had complained about the black couple getting married in the predominantly white First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs

Charles and Te'Andrea Wilson said it was devastating to move their wedding to another church only days before the July 21 wedding. Invitations and the printed program had the date and the church's name on them.

Church insiders say five or six members went to the Rev. Stan Weatherford after seeing the couple's wedding rehearsal two days before their Saturday wedding.

The church pastor said he was surprised by the reaction of some church members.

Handcuffs

Drunken Gang of Girls Stab 63-Year-Old Man on New York City Subway

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© G.N. Miller/New York PostCuffed: Police detain some of the women allegedly involved in an attack on a straphanger.
Apparently, courtesy isn't contagious on the No. 6 train.

A drunken, rowdy group of young women stabbed a 63-year-old male straphanger this morning after he had the audacity to suggest they pipe down, authorities said.

"The eight females were acting stupid. He just told them, 'Relax, calm down,' '' one police source said.

Cops said the victim, whose name they have not released, was first assaulted and then stabbed in the left shoulder about 6:15 a.m.

Witnesses pointed out his attackers to cops and all eight women, ages 15 to 20, were arrested leaving the 23rd Street station, officials said.

An MTA bus driver who witnssed the bust said the women were carrying bottles of Corona and mouthed off to cops as they cuffed them, screaming "We didn't do anything!" as they were led away.

The man was in stable condition at Bellevue Hospital, cops said.

Info

Spain Angers Feminists with Plan to Tighten Abortion Law

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© Agence France-Presse/Dani PozoWomen with slogans written on their bodies reading "Yes to life, but I choose" and "Priests and judges out of my body" take part in a protest against a reform of the country's abortion law recently proposed by the Spanish conservative government, at Tirso de Molina Square in Madrid.
Spain's conservative government has provoked a storm among women's groups with plans to tighten abortion laws to make the procedure illegal in cases where the foetus is deformed.

About 100 people took part in a rally in Madrid's central Tirso de Molina square on Sunday to protest against the proposed reform which they argue will take Spain back to the era of the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco.

The crowd, mostly women, chanted "We give birth, we decide" and "Not one step backwards".

"It seems to us to be a throwback to the Franco dictatorship and we are not willing to accept under any circumstances measures that will take away our rights," said Justa Montero, member of the Feminist Assembly, one of the women's groups that organised the protest.

The government announced Friday it would alter an abortion law introduced by its Socialist predecessors in 2010 which gave women the legal right to abortion on demand for up to 14 weeks of pregnancy.

The 2010 law also allowed women the legal right to abort up to the 22nd week of pregnancy in cases where the mother's health is at risk or the foetus shows serious deformities.

In cases of extreme malformation of a foetus, an abortion could be carried out at any time if approved by an ethics committee.