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Massachusetts Father Shoots Children Before Killing Himself


The Guardian
Sun, 29 Jul 2012 13:23 UTC
Image
© The Associated Press/John Ferrarone
The Benway house on Main Street in Oxford, Massachusetts.
Prosecutors say Daryl Benway killed his daughter and injured his son at the home he had shared with recently separated wife

A man who had recently separated from his wife shot his two children, killing his seven-year-old daughter, before turning the gun on himself, prosecutors said.

A family member called police Saturday night after finding the bodies of 41-year-old Daryl Benway and his daughter, Abigail, in the master bedroom of their two-story Oxford home, Worcester County district attorney Joseph Early said.

Benway's nine-year-old son, Owen, was found shot in the head in the kitchen and was taken to UMass Memorial Children's Medical Center in serious condition. Owen has been in pediatric intensive care, a spokesman for Early said Sunday. He said he had no additional information about Owen Benway's condition, and a hospital spokeswoman would not comment.
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Stop

Nepal to Crack Down on Witchcraft Accusations

Kiran Chapagain
Khabar South Asia
Wed, 25 Jul 2012 15:04 UTC
Witchcraft
© Kiran Chapagain/Khabar
Sunita Pudasaini, the alleged victim of a brutal beating by relatives who accused her of witchcraft, discusses her ordeal as her daughter listens. The case has prompted the government to consider a new law stipulating tough penalties for false accusations.
Sunita Pudasaini never imagined she would ever again be accepted after being accused of practicing witchcraft in Jorpati, outside Kathmandu.

Now, four months after being physically tortured in March because of the allegation, she has been welcomed back by her community. She is lucky. Often, women branded as witches have immense difficulty overcoming the stigma.

"I am leading a normal life after the incident," the 37-year-old widow and mother of two daughters told Khabar South Asia. "It became possible due to care and love I received from the government, my neighbours, relatives and human rights activists."

The government has paid her Rs 200,000 ($2,259.62) in compensation for her suffering, while public prosecutors have filed a local court case against two of her relatives, said to have been behind the allegations. According to Pudasaini, they beat her almost to death after accusing her of magical interference to prevent another couple - also her relatives - from conceiving a child.

"I had been to the house of my relatives on that day (March 23rd)," she told Khabarr. "The couple was also invited there. They all of a sudden started attacking me physically and caused serious injuries on my eyes.

"They then left me, believing that I was dead."

Having temporarily lost her eyesight due to the beating, Pudasaini said her sight is now returning.
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Red Flag

World Social Inequality More Pronounced Than Ever

Ernst Wolff
World Socialist Web Site
Thu, 26 Jul 2012 11:15 UTC
social inequality graphic
© dreamstime.com
The super-rich are currently hiding away wealth estimated between $21 trillion and $32 trillion in tax havens such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. This is the conclusion published last weekend by the Tax Justice Network, an NGO based in London. The author of the study is James Henry, a former chief economist at the McKinsey consulting firm and an expert on tax havens.

Henry bases his projections on data from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the United Nations and various national central banks. His study was limited to financial assets, and excluded tangible assets such as real estate, gold, jewellery or other possessions.

The figures reveal that "high net worth individuals" (defined as those with assets of over $50 million) have stashed away much larger sums in tax havens than previously thought. The report also shows that the concentration of global wealth in ever fewer hands has rapidly accelerated.

In 2005, the estimated offshore assets of the super-rich amounted to $11.5 trillion. Since then this total has doubled or tripled. Today the top 10 percent of the world's population control 84 percent of assets, while the bottom 50 percent have access to just 1 percent. According to the study, the top of the pile - 92,000 people who constitute an infinitesimal fraction of the world's population - have hidden financial assets amounting to more than 9 trillion dollars, an average of nearly $100 million apiece.
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V

Mexican election result radicalises student protest movement

Jo Tuckman
Guardian
Fri, 27 Jul 2012 10:58 UTC
protesters Televisa
© Tomas Bravo/Reuters
Police and protesters outside the Televisa building in Mexico City.
Some brought tents and blankets and a few hugged guitars, but by far the most common accessory seen at the 24-hour siege of the broadcasting giant Televisa that began on Thursday were banners accusing the network of trying to "impose" Enrique Peña Nieto as president.

"Televisa: factory of lies," read one held up amid the rows of protesters that faced a wall of police officers around the building. "Weapon of mass manipulation" said another bearing a picture of a television. "Don't let Televisa put you to sleep," a third warned.

Mexico's student movement sprang up 10 weeks ago to thrust the issue of alleged media bias in favour of Peña Nieto to the centre of the presidential campaign.

The candidate won anyway, putting the revamped Party of Institutionalised Revolution (PRI) en route to regaining the power it had held from 1929 to 2000, and the students refocused their energies on rejecting the result of a poll they say was unfair.

But the sense that they are riding a new tide capable of shaking up the political and media establishment has begun to ebb away, and the palpable excitement that infused the early rallies is being replaced by expressions of frustration, anger and impatience.
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Penis Pump

Let the orgies begin! Athletes come clean on Olympics debauchery

Sam Alipour
Illawarra Mercury
Sun, 29 Jul 2012 04:46 UTC
Image
Halfway through the 2000 summer Olympics in Sydney, American target shooter Josh Lakatos and teammates had finished their events, and the US Olympic Committee and team officials had ordered them to hand in the keys to their three-story house and head back to the States.

But Lakatos didn't want to leave. He knew from his experience four years earlier in Atlanta, where he had won silver, that the Olympic Village was about to erupt into a raucous party.

So he asked the cleaner at the emptied-out dwelling if she would kindly look the other way as he tampered with the lock. "I don't care what you do," she replied.

Within hours, word of the nearly vacant property had spread. Home to more than 10,000 athletes at the summer Games and 2,700 at the winter, the Olympic Village is one of the world's most exclusive clubs. Popping up once every two years, it's a boisterous city within a city: packed with flats, mid-rises and houses as well as cafes, arcades, discos and TV lounges.

The only thing missing is privacy - nearly everyone is stuck with a roommate. So while Lakatos claimed a first-floor suite for himself, the remaining rooms were there for the taking. The first to claim space that night were some Team USA track and field athletes.
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Heart - Black

Kidnapping victim found tied up in detective's garage

Shimon Prokupecz & Gus Rosendale
NBC News
Sat, 28 Jul 2012 19:55 UTC
An NYPD detective has been suspended without pay after a kidnapping victim was found tied up in his Queens garage, sources tell NBC 4 New York.

Sources say Ondre Johnson, a 17-year veteran of the Brooklyn North gang unit, was being questioned by internal affairs about his involvement in the kidnapping of a 25-year-old victim off the street early Friday morning.

Sources say a demand for a $75,000 ransom was made.

Police tracked the victim to the house in St. Albans off the victim's cell phone pings.

When police arrived Friday night, they found the victim tied up in the garage.

Johnson denied any involvement with the kidnapping, but his cousin, Hakeem Clark -- who lives in the other half of the detective's two-family home -- has been charged with kidnapping, along with three other men.

Sources say police found a safe and equipment used to make fake credit cards inside the home.

Law enforcement sources told NBC 4 New York that Johnson is not expected to be charged with kidnapping at this point, but he has been suspended and stripped of his badge and his gun as the investigation continues.
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Cloud Lightning

Polish hikers killed by lightning in Pieniny mountains


BBC
Sat, 28 Jul 2012 17:32 UTC
Image
© Reuters
A storm punctuated by repeated lightning strikes hit the area where the four hikers were last seen.
Four people hiking in mountains in southern Poland were killed by lightning, Polish media report.

The four, a couple in their 50s, their daughter and her boyfriend were last seen on Wednesday when they went off the trail in search of shelter from a violent storm.

Their bodies were found on Friday at the bottom of a ravine in the Pieniny mountains, near the Slovak border.
      Read More...
Smoking

Hospital Receptionist Sacked 'for SMELLING of Smoke'

Laura Cox
Dailymail.co.uk
Sat, 28 Jul 2012 15:27 UTC
A disgruntled hospital employee claims she got the sack because she smelt of cigarette smoke at work.

Stephanie Cannon said she was made to feel 'like a leper' at the Minnesota hospital where she worked as a receptionist.

She insists she never smoked at the Frauenshuh Cancer Center, cutting back on her pack-a-day habit to avoid smoking on her breaks or in her car.
      Read More...
Light Sabers

Crazed attacker holds ice pick at child's throat, woman calmly holds up crucifix to stop him

Michael Walsh
Nydaily News
Tue, 24 Jul 2012 05:45 UTC
Attacker and woman crucifix
© Rouelle Umali/Xinhua/ZUMAPRESS.com
Woman holds crucifix up to teeth-baring kidnapper in Quezon City, Philippines early Saturday morning
Reimer Parparan, 24, held the ice pick to Mark Jason Pineda's throat. A woman, believed to be the boy's mother, bought time until the Quezon City, Philippines, police could talk the man into surrendering.

Wielding an ice pick, a crazed young man held a nine-year-old hostage in an event that easily could have turned tragic in Quezon City, Philippines early Saturday morning.

Reimer Parparan, 24, held the ice pick to Mark Jason Pineda's throat as a woman calmly approached the scene holding a crucifix to the aggressor. The woman is believed to be Mark's mother, reports the Daily Mail.

The Quezon City Police Department exercised diplomacy to recover the child. The hostage negotiator chose to wait and wear down the assailant rather than enact a tactical maneuver.
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Heart - Black

Horror as woman drops dead at counter of McDonald's... and staff 'keep on serving burgers'

Kerry Mcqueeny
Dailymail
Sat, 28 Jul 2012 05:38 UTC
Image
© Alamy
Criticism: Staff (not pictured) have come under fire for allegedly continuing to serve customers (file photo)
Staff at a McDonald's in Croatia allegedly carried on selling burgers despite the fact a customer had dropped dead in front of the counter.

After efforts to revive her failed, the woman was instead propped up in the corner of the restaurant and had a napkin placed over her head as workers continued to serve other customers, it has been claimed.

Image
© Unknown
Restaurant staff claimed it was only the drive-thru section that remained in operation.
The woman, thought to have died of a suspected heart attack, had complained of feeling unwell just moments after going inside the fast food restaurant in the southern town of Sibenik.

She collapsed at the counter and, despite emergency services being called, doctors were unable to revive the Bosnian woman, who lived in Denmark but had been visiting the area.

Staff have been criticised after they carried on serving drive-through customers after she was declared dead.

Croatian media reported that the body was in the restaurant for an hour-and-a-half before a mortuary car arrived to remove it.
      Read More...
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