Society's ChildS


Question

FAA investigating report of drone spotted near NYC

Ben Mutzabaugh
USA Today
Tue, 05 Mar 2013 10:29 UTC
UFO?
© Todd Plitt/USA TODAY
Was that a drone flying over metro New York Monday?

That's what a pilot for Italian carrier Alitalia reported seeing from the cockpit of a flight landing at New York's JFK Airport. The pilot informed the air traffic control tower, and now his spotting has drawn the attention of both Federal Aviation Administration and counter-terrorism officials.

"The FAA is investigating a report... he saw a small, unmanned or remote-controlled aircraft while on final approach to Runway 31 Right," FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown says in a statement quoted by CNN. "The sighting was approximately four to five miles (from) the airport at an altitude of approximately 1,500 feet."

New York's Joint Terror Task Force also is investigating, according to both ABC News and the New York Post report. Both cite unnamed sources.

"He was very clear as to what he saw," a source tells the Post about the pilot's account of "a black drone."

Other than the pilot's sighting, the Alitalia flight landed at JFK without incident.
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Info

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has died


Agence France-Presse
Tue, 05 Mar 2013 18:05 UTC
Hugo Chavez
© Getty A man walks past a mural portraying the Venezuelan flag, President Hugo Chavez and South American liberator Simon Bolivar at the 23 de Enero neighbourhood, in Caracas on March 5, 2013.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez lost his battle with cancer Tuesday, silencing the leading voice of the Latin American left and plunging his divided oil-rich nation into an uncertain future.

Vice President Nicolas Maduro, who struggled to hold back tears as he announced Chavez's death, said the government had deployed the armed forces and police "to accompany and protect our people and guarantee the peace."

Chavez had named Maduro as his heir, but the Venezuelan opposition is sure to press for fresh elections and tensions have been mounting over government allegations that its domestic rivals are in league with its foreign foes.
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Grey Alien

E.T. is coming! Science channel series explores possible alien invasion

Miriam Kramer
SPACE.com
Tue, 05 Mar 2013 10:05 UTC
Aliens Coming
© Science ChannelA new series from the Science Channel explores a possible way that aliens could invade the Earth.
A new cable television series premiering tonight (March 5) reveals a fresh take on how aliens could invade Earth.

The Science Channel's Are We Alone? is a two-part miniseries that uses expert testimony and some creative science fiction to explore how a technologically advanced species could travel to Earth and invade the planet.

"It's like nothing you've seen before," Hakeem Oluseyi, a Florida Institute of Technology astrophyscist interviewed in the series, told SPACE.com.

Are We Alone? chronicles an alien invasion from start to finish. Interstellar travelers arrive on Earth, dropping capsules that begin multiplying when they reach the surface of the planet. Are We Alone? attempts to explore every aspect of the invasion, from how the biological components could take over the Earth to how humans would react to the aliens.
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Heart - Black

Two-thirds of forest elephants killed by ivory poachers in past decade

Damian Carrington
Guardian
Tue, 05 Mar 2013 08:31 UTC
Image
© Courtesy of TEAM Network/Conservation InternationalThere are about 100,000 forest elephants remaining in the forests of central Africa, compared with about 400,000 of the slightly larger savannah elephants.
The threat of extinction is growing for African forest elephants, according to a study released at the Cites summit in Bangkok

The forest elephants of Africa have lost almost two-thirds of their number in the past decade due to poaching for ivory, a landmark new study revealed on Tuesday. The research was released at an international wildlife summit in Bangkok where the eight key ivory-trading nations, including the host nation Thailand and biggest market China, have been put on notice of sweeping trade sanctions if they fail to crack down on the trade.

"The analysis confirms what conservationists have feared: the rapid trend towards extinction - potentially within the next decade - of the forest elephant," said Samantha Strindberg of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), one of 60 scientists on the research team.

There are about 100,000 forest elephants remaining in the forests of central Africa, compared with about 400,000 of the slightly larger savannah elephants. The total elephant population was over 1 million 30 years ago, but has been devastated by poaching driven by the rising demand for ivory ornaments in Asia.

Prof Lee White, head of the National Parks Service in Gabon, once home to the largest forest elephant population, said: "A rainforest without elephants is a barren place. They bring it to life, they create the trails and keep open the forest clearings other animals use; they disperse the seeds of many of the rainforest trees - elephants are forest gardeners at a vast scale."
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Bad Guys

Bullied boy dies: Bailey O'Neill, 12, dead weeks after school bullying

Kevin Dolak
ABC News
Mon, 04 Mar 2013 08:25 UTC
Image
A 12-year-old boy has died after being placed in a medically induced coma following a fight at his suburban Philadelphia school.

Bailey O'Neill died Sunday, a family member who did not want to be named, confirmed to ABCNews.com. Bailey turned 12 on Saturday. He was taken off life support Sunday morning.

In January, Bailey was involved in a fight at Darby Township School in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, west of Philadelphia, Jan. 10. The boy was allegedly jumped by two classmates, one of whom hit him in the face several times fracturing his nose, his father Rob O'Neill told ABC affiliate WPVI.

Bailey was knocked down in the incident, his father told the station, which caused a concussion. From then on, something with the 6th grader wasn't right, his father said.

"He was sleeping. He was moody. He wasn't himself. He was angry a little bit. He wasn't really eating," Rob O'Neill told WPVI last month.
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Stock Down

Worst income drop in 20 years: Austerity arrived long ago

Mark Gongloff
Huff Post
Fri, 01 Mar 2013 11:53 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/Julie JacobsonPersonal income posted its biggest monthly drop in 20 years in January, mainly a result of Washington's austerity fever.
As you have probably heard, today is Sequester Day, when the Austerity Badger sneaks into America and sets our money on fire. In truth, austerity is here already.

Personal income plunged 3.6 percent in January, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported, the biggest drop in 20 years. The decline was driven by a couple of unusual one-time effects, according to the BEA. Both are direct results of Washington's suicidal obsession with budget deficits at a time of persistent economic weakness.

The biggest of these was a reversal of a surge in dividend income in December, as companies rushed to pay stock holders dividends before the "fiscal cliff" hiked dividend tax rates in the New Year. That amounted to about 2.6 percentage points of the total income drop, according to Capital Economics.

The second hit to income was the reinstatement of the federal payroll tax after a long holiday. The 2 percent increase in Social Security withholding cut nearly $127 billion from income in January, according to the BEA, Goldman Sachs economists pointed out (h/t Quartz's Matt Phillips). The bump and decline in dividend income is a wash. The payroll-tax cut is going to be harder to shake off, leaving Americans with smaller paychecks for the rest of the year.

The higher payroll tax, along with the sequester budget cuts that will start to kick in on Friday, and other lingering effects of the "fiscal cliff" that loomed at the start of the year, will cut economic growth this year by 1.5 percent. But economic growth has already been hampered for the past two years by the government's biggest spending cutback since the end of the Vietnam war, as the New York Times pointed out earlier this week. We entered the age of austerity long before the sequester.
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Black Magic

China grave-robbers sold dead brides for 'ghost marriages'


The National, UAE
Mon, 04 Mar 2013 18:46 UTC
Beijing - Four people have been jailed in China for digging up corpses to sell as brides for traditional "ghost marriages" - where dead single men are buried with a wife for the afterlife - local reports said.

Marriage is an important part of Chinese society and, while the practice is increasingly rare, it is still kept up by some families whose young adult sons pass away before having a chance to wed.

Normally it is agreed between the families of the dead, but the Xian Evening News said the group "stole female corpses and after cleaning them, fabricated medical files for the deceased and sold them for a high price".

A court in the northern province of Shaanxi sentenced the four to terms between 28 and 32 months, it said, adding they "took advantage" of the "bad tradition" of ghost marriages in parts of Shaanxi and neighbouring Shanxi province.

Citing the court, the report said the gang made a total of ¥240,000 (Dh143,000) from the sales of 10 corpses.

Source: Agence France-Presse
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Heart - Black

Nurse ignores 911 dispatcher's heartbreaking pleas to perform CPR on dying woman

Gosia Wozniacka
Associated Press
Mon, 04 Mar 2013 18:19 UTC
Image
© screengrab via KGET
A dispatcher followed protocols when she pleaded with a nurse at an independent living facility to perform CPR on a woman who later died in California, county officials said Monday.

Earlier, Glenwood Gardens defended its nurse, saying she also had followed policy in dealing with the 87-year-old woman.

At the beginning of the Feb. 26 call, the nurse asked for paramedics to come and help the woman who had collapsed and was barely breathing, according to a transcript of the call.

Dispatcher Tracey Halvorson urged the nurse to start CPR.

"I understand if your boss is telling you you can't do it," the dispatcher said. "But ... as a human being ... you know . is there anybody that's willing to help this lady and not let her die?"

"Not at this time," the nurse answered.
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Eye 2

$250 million island-collecting widow dumped two children she adopted from China

Stephen Rex Brown and Dareh Gregorian
NY Daily News
Mon, 04 Mar 2013 18:14 UTC
Image
© AP/NY Daily News
Christine Svenningsen, 55, adopted a baby boy from China after her husband died in May 1997, then changed her mind after she brought the child she named Eric home to Westchester County, court papers reveal.

She's Cruella de Mom.

A wealthy widow who gave up her Chinese daughter for readoption after eight years - then tried to cut the girl out of her husband's $250 million estate - had years earlier dumped another baby she adopted from China, the Daily News has learned.

Christine Svenningsen, 55, adopted a baby boy from China after her husband died in May 1997, then changed her mind after she brought the child she named Eric home to Westchester County, court papers reveal.

Svenningsen already had five biological children, plus the first child she'd adopted from China, Emily.

"Now after your adoption of Emily, did you go to China to adopt a boy named Eric?" Stephen Hochhauser, the lawyer for Emily's new parents, asked Svenningsen in a 2009 deposition.

"Yes," Svenningsen answered.
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Bizarro Earth

Man fakes his own kidnapping to avoid angry girlfriend, gets arrested


CBS New York
Mon, 04 Mar 2013 18:11 UTC
Image
The NYPD said a career criminal pulled another fast one late last week, but this time the staged kidnapping was reportedly a hoax to explain a long absence to his girlfriend.

Rahmell Pettway, 36, was discovered tied with duct tape early this past Thursday in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, according to a New York Post report. He claimed he had been grabbed by two men in a light blue minivan two weeks earlier, the newspaper reported.
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