Society's Child

Islamist joy as Mohamed Morsy elected Egypt president

Shaimaa Fayed and Marwa Awad
Reuters
Sun, 24 Jun 2012 12:51 UTC

© REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
Fireworks explode as supporters of Muslim Brotherhood's presidential candidate Mohamed Morsy celebrate his victory in the election at Tahrir Square in Cairo June 24, 2012.

Islamist Mohamed Morsy was declared Egypt's first freely elected president on Sunday, sparking joy among his Muslim Brotherhood supporters on the streets who vowed to continue a struggle to take power from the generals who retain ultimate control.

Morsy defeated former general Ahmed Shafik in a run-off last weekend by a convincing 3.5 percentage points, or nearly 900,000 votes, taking 51.7 percent of the total, officials said, ending a week of disputes over the count which left nerves frayed.

He succeeds Hosni Mubarak, who was overthrown 16 months ago after a popular uprising. The military council which has ruled the biggest Arab nation since then has this month curbed the powers of the presidency, meaning the head of state will have to work closely with the army on a planned democratic constitution.

Brotherhood officials, speaking as supporters turned Cairo's Tahrir Square into a roaring sea of flags and chants of "Allahu akbar!" (God is greatest), said they would press on with protest vigils to demand that the ruling military council cancel this month's dissolution of the Islamist-led parliament and a decree which gave the generals powers that will restrict the president.

'Zombie' attacks continue? Man under the influence gets naked, bites off chunk of man's arm

Kristal Roberts
WPTV
Thu, 21 Jun 2012 12:23 UTC

© Manatee County Sheriff's Office
Much like the Miami face-eating 'zombie' attack, 26-year-old Charles Baker got naked, ate human flesh and wouldn’t go down without a fight, according to a Manatee County Sheriff’s Office report.

The latest in a string of "zombie" like attacks happened in a Manatee County home Wednesday night after a man under the influence went into a fit of rage and bit a piece of someone's arm off during a visit with his children.

Much like the Miami face-eating attack, 26-year-old Charles Baker got naked, ate human flesh and wouldn't go down without a fight, according to a Manatee County Sheriff's Office report.

Authorities say Baker went to his girlfriend's home on 25th St in Palmetto to visit his kids at 10:15 p.m. They say he was high on an unknown substance when he knocked on the door, then barged in, began yelling and taking off his clothes.

He was screaming and wouldn't calm down, then began throwing furniture around the home. Jeffery Blake, who lives in the home, attempted to restrain Baker, but the suspect bit him, taking a chunk of his flesh from his bicep. Blake, 48, was able to get Baker to the ground and kept him there until two deputies arrived.

When law enforcement came inside, Blake released Baker. Baker got up, but would not respond to deputies orders. The suspect instead faced the deputies, tensing his body, clenching his fists and screaming.

Several reported injured in mall roof collapse in Canada

MSNBC
Sat, 23 Jun 2012 21:34 UTC

© Cora Richer/The Canadian Press/AP
A woman checks out the damage after a roof collapsed at the Algo Centre Mall in Elliot Lake, Ontario, on Saturday

At least four people were injured when the roof of a shopping mall in Ontario, Canada, collapsed Saturday afternoon, officials said.

The roof was used for parking at the two-story Algo Centre Mall in Elliot Lake, about 335 miles northwest of Toronto. CBC News quoted a witness as saying cars had plunged through the roof.

"You can see the roof with the cars hanging inside," Joe Drazil, identified as a Zellers employee at the mall, told the CBC.

Mayor Rick Hamilton told CBC that four people were taken to the hospital. A fire official reached by Reuters said emergency workers were still searching for possible victims.

Mall manager Rhonda Bear told CBC News that repairs had been done to the roof over the last year, but not "any huge structural repairs" to the part that collapsed. She also told CBC that the mall owners, Toronto-based Eastwood Mall Inc., ordered a structural study a month ago that she said turned up nothing.

But the CBC said the Elliot Lake Standard newspaper has reported that the mall had had roof leaks for years.

This article includes reporting by Reuters.

California Fast-Food Worker Suspected of Stabbing Customer

Fox News
Sat, 23 Jun 2012 00:00 UTC

Hemet, California - Authorities say an employee at a fast-food drive-thru window in Southern California stabbed a customer after a dispute over his order.

A Riverside County sheriff's statement Friday said the man complained about his order to 28-year-old Gabriel Villalba, who worked at Del Taco in Hemet, shortly before 2 a.m. Thursday.

The statement says the confrontation escalated until Villalba stabbed the customer in the abdomen with a knife.

The customer, whose name was not released, was driven to the hospital by friends. His injury is serious but not considered fatal.

Villalba was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and is being held on $25,000 bail.

Deputies did not know if he had hired an attorney and there were no local phone listings in Villalba's name.

Four-year-old witnessed father kill mother, shooting may have been planned

Andrew Donovan
WKTV
Fri, 22 Jun 2012 10:25 UTC

Deerfield, New York - The murder-suicide that took place Friday in Deerfield may have been a premeditated, planned shooting by 27-year-old Thomas M. Anderson as a result of the break-up with his girlfriend and mother of his daughter, 23-year-old Kylie Turczyn, according to New York State Police.

State Police also say the couple's four-year-old daughter was in the home at the time of the murder and witnessed the events. Authorities say they interviewed the girl and were impressed at her composure after witnessing the shooting, describing her as "brave."

New York State Police Captain Mark Lincoln said the four-year-old's interview was key into establishing a timeline of events. Police said that the girl spent some time Friday at the Child Advocacy Center but were not sure where she was staying Friday night.

Authorities say that Anderson and Turczyn were formerly involved romantically and broke up around November of 2011, to the best of their knowledge.

China's Cyberposse - Human-Flesh Search Engines

Ton Downey
The New York Times
Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:00 UTC

The short video made its way around China's Web in early 2006, passed on through file sharing and recommended in chat rooms. It opens with a middle-aged Asian woman dressed in a leopard-print blouse, knee-length black skirt, stockings and silver stilettos standing next to a riverbank. She smiles, holding a small brown and white kitten in her hands. She gently places the cat on the tiled pavement and proceeds to stomp it to death with the sharp point of her high heel.

"This is not a human," wrote BrokenGlasses, a user on Mop, a Chinese online forum. "I have no interest in spreading this video nor can I remain silent. I just hope justice can be done." That first post elicited thousands of responses. "Find her and kick her to death like she did to the kitten," one user wrote. Then the inquiries started to become more practical: "Is there a front-facing photo so we can see her more clearly?" The human-flesh search had begun.

Human-flesh search engines - renrou sousuo yinqing - have become a Chinese phenomenon: they are a form of online vigilante justice in which Internet users hunt down and punish people who have attracted their wrath. The goal is to get the targets of a search fired from their jobs, shamed in front of their neighbors, run out of town. It's crowd-sourced detective work, pursued online - with offline results.

Fourteen Mutilated Bodies Found Outside Mexican Supermarket

Cyntia Barrera Diaz
Reuters
Sat, 23 Jun 2012 21:22 UTC

Mexico City - Fourteen mutilated corpses and a threatening message aimed at a drug cartel were found inside a truck in the parking lot of a supermarket in a northern Mexico city, local media reported on Saturday.

Mexico's attorney general's office could not immediately confirm the reports of the grisly discovery in Mante and police officials in the crime-ridden city were not immediately available for comment.

Mexican media said the body parts belonged to 10 men and four women and the message was directed at the Gulf cartel.

In a separate incident on June 7, 14 dismembered bodies were discovered inside a truck in Mante, located in the south of Tamaulipas state, which borders Texas and is one of the bloodiest battlegrounds in Mexico's drug war.

Why Do People Bully?

Jessica Marshall
Discovery News
Fri, 11 May 2012 10:05 UTC

Allegations that Mitt Romney harassed classmates during his prep school years brings to light the longstanding issue of bullying.

The Gist

Contrary to popular belief, bullies often have high self-esteem.
Bullies can lose their moral compass when driven by their peers.

Gov. Mitt Romney has found himself on the defensive responding to allegations that as a teenager he harassed two prep school classmates who later came out as gay.

Some have questioned the timing of a report in the online version of the Washington Post, since it was published one day after President Obama personally endorsed gay marriage.

Others say the story, which referenced four named sources (former classmates of Romney), paints a disturbing portrait of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, at least during his teenage years.

Either way, the story brings up the ever-present question -- why do people bully?

Bus Monitor Bullying and Crowd-Shaming

Talal Al-Khatib
Discovery News
Thu, 07 Jun 2012 07:54 UTC

When 68-year-old bus monitor Karen Klein rode to school Monday afternoon, she probably wasn't expecting the torrent of verbal abuse that a group of middle school children hurled at her, as seen in a widely-viewed online video (below). The children made fun of her age and weight, and even suggested she doesn't have a family because "they all killed themselves because they didn't want to be near you." Klein's son had in fact taken his own life some 10 years earlier.

Klein also could not have anticipated the reactions of the Internet masses who rallied to support her. Around $400,000 had been raised at the time of this writing on Klein's behalf on Indiegogo by a Toronto nutritionist, who sympathized with Klein's plight. The money is intended to give Klein a long vacation or perhaps an early retirement.

Mount Rainier Ranger Killed in Climbers' Rescue

USA TODAY
Fri, 22 Jun 2012 12:23 UTC

© Ted S. Warren, AP
Ranger Nick Hall was helping to prepare the climbers to be taken off the 14,411-foot Cascade Range peak when he fell.

Mount Rainier National Park says a climber who spent the night on the mountain after an accident has started walking down with rangers.

Spokeswoman Patti Wold says the park still hopes a helicopter will be able to pick her up and recover the body of a ranger who was killed Thursday during the rescue of three other members of her climbing team.

Wold says the weather may prevent the Chinook from Joint Base Lewis-McChord from flying. It's raining at the ranger station at Longmire. The National Weather Service says it's snowing above 10,000 feet.

A Mount Rainier ranger slid more than 3,000 feet to his death as he helped in efforts to rescue four injured climbers who fell on a glacier, a National Park Service spokesman said.

Ranger Nick Hall was helping prepare the climbers to be taken from the 14,411-foot Washington state peak when he fell shortly before 5 p.m. Thursday, spokesman Kevin Bacher said.

The 34-year-old Hall didn't respond to attempts to contact him and wasn't moving, and he was dead when other rangers reached him at the 10,000-foot level several hours later, Bacher said.