Society's ChildS


Heart - Black

IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn stuns European media


BBC News
Mon, 16 May 2011 23:21 UTC
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© ReutersThe "DSK" affair is having a big impact in France and elsewhere in Europe
The sexual assault charges against IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn in New York have sent shockwaves across Europe.

Nicknamed "DSK", he was widely expected to challenge Nicolas Sarkozy for the French presidency next year, as a powerful Socialist candidate. He has also been a key player in the eurozone bail-outs of debt-laden Greece, the Irish Republic and Portugal.

What do Europe's media make of the Strauss-Kahn case?
In a few instants DSK risks having lost everything: the IMF, his reputation, the presidential election, his family honour. A charge of "sexual aggression" does not mean a conviction... and it cannot be ruled out immediately that he was the target of manipulation. But the feeling of an enormous mess has already spread everywhere.

It has all come crashing down. The left has lost its favourite just a few weeks from the Socialist primary and Strauss-Kahn dropping out of the race has exploded the whole campaign.

For 2012 DSK seemed the best equipped to respond to the distress of the French people, exhausted by the crisis and upset by the crazy reign of [President Nicolas] Sarkozy. -Liberation, France
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Eye 1

SOTT Focus: The Unexamined Victim: Women Who Love Psychopaths

Sandra L. Brown
Sott.net
Tue, 17 May 2011 06:13 UTC
[This article first appeared in Issue 13 of The Dot Connector Magazine]

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"We can't prevent what we don't identify, we can't treat what we don't diagnose. And we can't teach how to spot them unless we understand pathology ourselves."
Millions of dollars have been spent researching and writing about psychopaths while almost nothing has been spent, either in terms of time or money, on the profoundly disturbing byproduct of psychopathy - its victims. Since male psychopaths outnumber the female variety by about 3 or 4 to 1, I'll be talking mainly about female victims of male psychopaths in this article.

Despite the fact that psychopaths devastate everyone in their path including the women and children who love them, why have clinicians not seen fit to study and write about the single most obvious source of insight into this issue: the survivors of intimate relationships with psychopaths? The study of any disease involves carefully collecting and examining its symptoms, and psychopathy is definitely a societal disease. Even our legal system gathers information about criminals by taking testimony from on-site, first hand witnesses. So again, I ask: why is there no clinical material about - much less interest in - the psychopath's partner?
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Eye 1

US: School Punishes Child for Witnessing Sex


The Associated Press
Mon, 16 May 2011 11:24 UTC
An Ohio woman says a charter school is punishing her daughter for not immediately reporting that she saw two classmates having sex on a school bus and for changing her seat during the bus trip.

Saundra Roundtree told The Associated Press on Monday that her 14-year-old daughter had changed seats with a boy who wanted to sit beside a girl on a Dayton View Academy school trip.

Roundtree says her daughter told her at home afterward that she later saw the two having sex but was afraid to say anything.

Roundtree notified school officials. She says they told her Friday that her daughter cannot attend the eighth-grade prom or picnic. The mother thinks that's unfair.

The school did not immediately return calls Monday.
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Bomb

Irish Army Discovers Bomb 'Hoax' in Dublin


Press TV
Tue, 17 May 2011 03:08 UTC
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© unknown
The Irish army has discovered a suspicious device in Ireland, shortly after it carried out a controlled explosion to ward off the threat of a booby-trapped bus.

Irish soldiers performed a controlled explosion of a makeshift bomb found on a bus outside Dublin, ahead of the first state visit to the country by Britain's Queen Elizabeth II.

The bomb was found in the town of Maynooth, 25 km (15 miles) from Dublin and blown up by an army bomb disposal unit in a controlled explosion, the military said.

Police later said the army's bomb squad was investigating a second suspicious device found at a Dublin tram station, but an army spokesman said the second device was a hoax.
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Nuke

Was Fukushima a China Syndrome?

Eben Harrell
Time
Mon, 16 May 2011 14:00 UTC
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© Associated PressWorkers from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex are shielded with tarps before receiving decontamination treatment at a hospital on Friday March 25th.
The China Syndrome refers to a scenario in which a molten nuclear reactor core could could fission its way through its containment vessel, melt through the basement of the power plant and down into the earth. While a molten reactor core wouldn't burn "all the way through to China" it could enter the soil and water table and cause huge contamination in the crops and drinking water around the power plant. It's a nightmare scenario,the stuff of movies. And it might just have happened at Fukushima.

Last week, plant operator Tepco sent engineers in to recalibrate water level gauges in reactor number 1. They made an alarming discovery: virtually all the fuel in the core had melted down. That means that the zirconium alloy tubes that hold the uranium fuel and the fuel itself lies in a clump---either at the bottom of the pressure vessel, or in the basement below or possibly even outside the containment building. Engineers don't know for sure, though current temperature readings suggest that fission inside the reactor core has definitely ceased for good (i.e. there will be no further melting).

Anecdotal evidence doesn't bode well for how far the fuel melted: Tepco has been pumping thousands of tons of water onto reactor 1 to try to cool it - yet the water level in the containment vessel is too low to run an emergency cooling system. That means the water is escaping somewhere on a course cut by molten fuel--probably into the basement of the reactor building, though it's also possible it melted through everything into the earth.
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Arrow Down

Singapore: Cathay Pacific Airbus A330 makes emergency landing in Singapore after engine catches fire


The Associated Press
Mon, 16 May 2011 00:00 UTC
The engine on a Cathay Pacific Airbus A330-300 caught fire in midair Monday, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing in Singapore. No one was injured in the incident.

Flight CX715 took off from Singapore heading to the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, at 1:12 a.m., but soon turned around after engine trouble and landed at 1:57 a.m., Singapore's Changi Airport said in a statement.

Firefighters extinguished the fire and normal flight operations resumed on the runway about an hour later, the airport said.

It was the second time in six months an Airbus had to make an emergency landing in Singapore because of engine problems. A Qantas A380 turned around shortly after takeoff Nov. 4 when one of its Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines disintegrated.

The airport would not say how many passengers were on board Monday's flight or what kind of engines the plane used. A spokesman for Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific was not immediately available for comment.

Source: The Canadian Press
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Brick Wall

The Japanese Mayor Who was Laughed at for Building a Huge Sea Wall - Until His Village was Left Almost Untouched by Tsunami


The Daily Mail, UK
Sat, 14 May 2011 08:32 UTC
The huge sea wall and floodgates took 12 years to build and had been widely regarded as a £20million folly. But today one former Japanese mayor is being hailed as a saviour after the grandiose construction allowed his small town escaped the devastation wrought by the March 11 tsunami.

In the rubble of Japan's northeast coast, Fudai stands as tall as ever after. No homes were swept away. In fact, they barely got wet.

The 3,000 residents owe their lives to the late Kotaku Wamura, who lived through an earlier tsunami and made it a priority of his four-decade tenure as mayor to defend his people from the next one.

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© The Associated PressThe 51-foot-high gate, which was criticised as being a wasteful public works project in the 1970s, protected the town from the tsunami
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No Entry

US: End of an Era as Vegas Casino Closes

Romain Raynaldy
Agence France-Presse
Sun, 15 May 2011 00:00 UTC
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© Agence France-PresseView of a pool at the Sahara Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, on May 11. Las Vegas marks the end of an era this week as one of the US gambling mecca's last original "Rat Pack" casino-hotels, the Sahara, finally closes its doors
Las Vegas marks the end of an era this week as one of the US gambling mecca's last original "Rat Pack" casino-hotels, the Sahara, finally closes its doors.

Opened in 1952, the Sahara hosted everyone from Elvis Presley and Jerry Lewis to Frank Sinatra and the Beatles in the 1950s and 60s, and their photos still decorate the walls above the reception.

But in recent decades Vegas saw an explosion of mega-sized casino resorts which left the "small" Sahara struggling to fill its 1,700 rooms at the end of the famous Strip.

The death knell was sounded in March, when its owners since 2007, SBE Entertainment, announced that the casino-hotel complex with its more than 1,050 staff was no longer a viable business.

"In a way it was a surprise, but in a way it wasn't," Michael McLendon, a supervisor in the casino's poker room -- already deserted ahead of Monday's final day -- told AFP.

"The way things were going, with the economy and all, we felt something was happening. We just didn't know what it was," he said. "I'm retiring. I'm done. There are not too many people out there looking for a 66 year-old anyway."
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Cheeseburger

EU: McDonald's to Replace Cashiers with Touch Screen Computers


Live Science
Mon, 16 May 2011 16:03 UTC
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McDonald's restaurants in Europe will soon be swapping the chain's legendary "service with a smile" with "service with a beep." European McDonald's restaurants are preparing to replace cashiers with touch screen computers at terminals where customers will be able to order up their hamburgers and fries and pay with credit cards.

About 7,000 of the fast food franchise's locations in the United Kingdom will be fitted with the touch screen technology, which aims to make the McDonald's experience more convenient and accommodating.

The touch screen method of ordering will improve efficiency and make the average transaction three to four seconds faster for each customer, Steve Easterbrook, president of the European branch of McDonald's, told the Financial Times. Easterbrook didn't provide a date for when the touch screens, which were inspired by a trip to Japan, will be introduced to UK McDonald's restaurants.

The new terminals will also phase out cash as an accepted payment method, as the machines will only take credit and debit cards. No word yet on whether McDonald's in the United States will be next in line to replace cashiers with computers, but the addition doesn't seem to be part of the ongoing $1-billion makeover of the company's U.S. restaurants.
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Bizarro Earth

Massacre Leaves 27 Dead in Northern Guatemala

Ken Ellingwood & Alex Renderos
Los Angeles Times
Sun, 15 May 2011 11:16 UTC
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© Hector Tobar / Los Angeles TimesIn this 2008 photo, a Guatemalan soldier patrols a nature preserve in Peten, a region said to be crisscrossed with drug traffickers' illegal landing strips.
Witnesses say an attack by 200 gunmen killed at least 27 farmworkers in Guatemala's Peten province, an area used by Mexican-based drug cartels. The victims were decapitated.

At least 27 people were slain early Sunday in a remote area of northern Guatemala that has become a key base for Mexican drug-trafficking groups, authorities said.

Police said a small army of gunmen attacked workers on a coconut farm in the northern province of Peten, a zone that has become increasingly dangerous as Mexican drug smugglers extend operations in Central America to escape a crackdown at home.

The victims included 25 men and two women, all of whom were decapitated, according to Jaime Leonel Otzin, director of Guatemala's National Civil Police. He said witnesses reported that the attack was carried out by 200 gunmen, who arrived in buses.

Authorities had not determined a motive.
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