Society's ChildS


Heart - Black

China, Beijing: 17 Preschoolers Killed in Bus Crash


USA Today
Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:00 UTC
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© Agence France-Presse / Getty ImagesChinese police stand beside a damaged school bus after it collided with a red truck on a road in the Yulinzi township in northwest China's Gansu province on November 16.
At least 17 kindergarten kids and two adults were killed Wednesday when a nine-seater school minibus crammed with 64 people crashed on its way to class in western China, officials and state media said.

The children were aged 5 and 6, an emergency official said. News of the crash ignited public anger across China, highlighting an underfunded education system that especially shortchanges students in remote areas.

The bus collided head-on with a truck loaded with coal in China's Gansu province, leaving the orange school vehicle crumpled and twisted. Authorities blamed overloading for the accident, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Five people died at the scene, four children and the bus driver, said the official, surnamed Fan, the director of the emergency office of Gansu provincial work safety bureau. He said the other 14 had died either in hospital or on their way to hospital. The other adult victim was a kindergarten teacher, he said.
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Che Guevara

Latest Developments in the Occupy Protests


Boston Globe
Wed, 16 Nov 2011 05:06 UTC
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© The Associated Press/Seth WenigOccupy Wall Street protesters move signs and structures over a wall into an enclosed site near Canal Street in New York, Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011.
Some of the latest developments in the Occupy protests:

California

Anti-Wall Street activists began rebuilding their tent encampment on the steps of the University of California, Berkeley student plaza Tuesday night, hours after demonstrations were disrupted by a campus shooting.

The shooting occurred inside the Haas School of Business as thousands of demonstrators gathered on campus for a general strike and protests against big banks and education cuts. Officials did not know if the suspect was part of the Occupy Cal movement.

The shooting didn't prevent some 2,000 students and demonstrators from gathering and rebuilding their encampment despite earlier violence.

On Nov. 9, baton-wielding police clashed with protesters who tried to set up tents and arrested 40 people as the university sought to uphold a campus ban on camping.

The Occupy Cal students were joined by hundreds of Occupy Oakland demonstrators who marched the five miles from Oakland to Berkeley along Telegraph Avenue, chanting, "Here comes Oakland!" Police cleared their tent city outside Oakland City Hall on Monday amid complaints about safety and sanitation, and arrested more than 50 people.
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Che Guevara

Canada:Occupy Toronto Protesters Get Eviction Reprieve


CBC News
Tue, 15 Nov 2011 04:10 UTC
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© John RietiOccupy Toronto protester Bertrand Duhamel takes down his tent at St. James Park in Toronto on Nov. 15.
Authorities in several cities growing impatient with encampments

A lawyer representing Occupy protesters in Toronto has won an injunction against a city eviction notice that was issued earlier Tuesday.

Late Tuesday afternoon, Judge David Brown granted a temporary stay of the city's eviction notice to protesters occupying St. James Park.

Brown said he needs more information before he can rule on the city's plan to remove protesters from the park. The judge will hold a hearing on Friday to further discuss the matter and deliver his verdict by 6 p.m. ET on Saturday.

City officials issued eviction notices to Occupy protesters in both Toronto and Calgary on Tuesday, as authorities in multiple Canadian cities grew impatient with the tent encampments that first sprang up nationwide in mid-October.

The decision means they can't be removed from a downtown park at least until the judge hears legal arguments over the city's eviction order.
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Whistle

No Speedy Trial for Bradley Manning; Now in Pre-Trial Confinement for 560 Days

Ann Wright
Indypendent
Mon, 14 Nov 2011 00:00 UTC
Bradley Manning
© EPAArmy Pfc. Bradley Manning, in an undated file photo.
Five months ago, on April 22, 2011, over 400 citizens converged on Quantico Marine Base to protest the pre-trial conditions of alleged Wikileaks whistleblower US Army Private First Class Bradley Manning. Manning was arrested on May 26, 2010, on a U.S. military base in Iraq on suspicion of giving classified material to the website WikiLeaks.

No Speedy Trial-Manning still in pre-trial confinement after 560 days

Manning still is in pre-trial confinement, 560 days after he was arrested.

Manning was charged on July 5, 2010, with transferring classified materials on his personal computer, and communicating national defense information to an unauthorized source. An additional 22 charges were added on March 1, 2011, including wrongfully obtaining classified material for the purpose of posting it on the Internet knowing that the information would be accessed by the enemy; the illegal transmission of defense information; fraud; and aiding the enemy. In April, 2011, he was found fit to face a court martial and currently awaits the first hearing.
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Cut

US: TSA Tells Air Travelers: No Wrapped Gifts

Joseph Straw
New York Daily News
Mon, 14 Nov 2011 11:32 UTC
TSA
© The Associated Press/Pablo Martinez MonsivaisA Transportation Security Administration screener removes a wrapped holiday present at Reagan National Airport.
Presents will be unwrapped and opened by screeners

The Transportation Security Administration has a tip for Santas traveling by air this holiday season: wrap those gifts after you fly, not before.

If you pack wrapped presents, the TSA's little helpers - airport screeners - will tear them open, surely putting the kibosh on fliers' holiday cheer.

The Grinchy message may not help the agency's lackluster public image, but the policy is a security no-brainer - wrapped presents would be a gift to terrorists hoping to slip threats onto airplanes.

The wrapping paper isn't only a tool of terrorists.

Last week screeners opened one traveler's gift-wrapped packages at Los Angeles International Airptort and found 35 pounds of marijuana, according to Los Angeles' Daily Breeze.
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Heart - Black

US: Ohio Executes Man for Killing 3 Sons in 1982

Kantele Franko
The Associated Press
Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:00 UTC
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© The Associated Press/Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and CorrectionThis file photo shows Reginald Brooks, who is scheduled to be put to death Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011, for fatally shooting his three sons while they slept in 1982, shortly after his wife filed for divorce.
Ohio has executed a man who fatally shot his three sons while they slept in 1982, shortly after his wife filed for divorce.

Sixty-six-year-old Reginald Brooks of East Cleveland died Tuesday afternoon. It was Ohio's first lethal injection in nearly six months.

The execution was delayed by more than three hours as attorneys exhausted Brooks' appeals, arguing he was schizophrenic and that his mental illness made him incompetent for execution. They also said information that could have favorably affected his trial was withheld.

Prosecutors acknowledged Brooks was mentally ill but disputed that he was incompetent and that information was hidden. They say he planned to kill the boys in vengeance against his wife.

Gov. John Kasich denied clemency, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block execution.
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Handcuffs

US, Alabama: Police Arrest 13 People Protesting US State's New Immigration Law

Bob Johnson
The Associated Press
Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:00 UTC
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© The Associated Press/Dave MartinProtestors march outside the Alabama Capitol during a demonstration against Alabama's immigration law in Montgomery, Ala., Tuesday Nov. 15, 2011.
Police arrested 13 protesters in Alabama's capital Tuesday as they demonstrated against the state's strict new law clamping down on illegal immigrants.

About 100 people, most of them Hispanic and college-aged, chanted slogans as they marched in light rain around the state capitol and to the adjacent Statehouse where the legislature works.

"Undocumented, unafraid," ''No papers, no fear, immigrants are marching here," and "Ain't no power like the power of the people," were among the slogans the protesters chanted as they marched. Later, some were hauled off to jail in a yellow bus normally used by the city parks and recreation department.

Some sat down on Union Street between the Statehouse and the Capitol when police approached and warned them in English and Spanish that they would be arrested if they didn't move.

None did and police arrested 11 demonstrators, tying their hand with yellow straps and loading them into the bus.
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Pistol

US, California: Gunman Wounded by Police in UC Berkeley Shooting After Hundreds Descend on Campus for Protests

Lisa Leff and Terence Chea
The Associated Press
Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:00 UTC
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© The Associated Press/Jeff ChiuThe shooting occurred at the Haas School of Business.
A man with a gun was shot by police Tuesday inside the business school at the University of California, Berkeley, after hundreds of students and anti-Wall Street activists descended on the campus for a day of protests.

The shooting occurred at the Haas School of Business on the east side of campus about a half-mile (half-kilometre) away from the protest site.

Ute Frey, a spokeswoman for the university, said officials did not yet know whether the suspect was part of the Occupy Cal movement.

University officials said a man carrying a gun was seen by a female staff member in an elevator at the business school after 2 p.m. The staff member called police at 2:17 p.m., saying she saw the man remove the gun from a backpack.

Police said they arrived at 2:19 p.m., and had to locate the suspect in the building. Officers found the suspect in a third-floor computer room where there were at least four students, university officials said.

The suspect raised the gun and was shot by an officer, according to the school. At the time, the four students were between the officer and the suspect, said UC Chancellor Robert Birgeneau at an afternoon news conference.
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Eagle

US, New York: Judge Upholds Eviction of Wall St. Protesters

Basil Katz and Chris Francescani
Reuters
Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:00 UTC
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© Reuters/Eduardo Munoz Bill Talen, known as Reverend Billy (C), delivers a speech to members of the Occupy Wall Street movement as they return to Zuccotti Park in New York November 15, 2011.
A judge upheld New York City's right to evict Occupy Wall Street protesters from a park on Tuesday after baton-wielding police in riot gear broke up a two-month-old demonstration against economic inequality.

Protesters who had been kicked out in a surprise predawn raid were allowed back 16 hours later but were banned from bringing the tents and sleeping bags that had turned a square-block park near Wall Street into an urban campground the past two months.

New York Supreme Court Justice Michael Stallman found the city was justified in enforcing a ban on sleeping in Zuccotti Park, saying the new rules still protected protesters' free-speech rights under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The judge ruled merely that the case lacked the urgency to approve or strike down the new park rules immediately. The underlying case will be heard at a later date.

After the judge's ruling, police lifted barricades at two points, letting people back in one by one. Several hundred protesters were in the park under a light drizzle, and the crowd thinned as the night wore on. The mood was largely free of tension.
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Stormtrooper

US: NYPD Assaults Man & Punches Woman in Face at OWS / Liberty Plaza

davisfleetwood
YouTube
Tue, 15 Nov 2011 21:34 UTC

Dane from OWS is bounced by the NYPD and @ 1:45 of this video a woman brandishing a court order that affirmed the rights of protesters to occupy Liberty ark is punched in the face by NYPD.
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