Society's ChildS


Heart - Black

100 million sharks killed every year!

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© SHAWN HEINRICHS FOR THE PEW ENVIRONMENT GROUPShark fins drying in the sun in Kaohsiung before processing. 30 percent of the world’s shark species are threatened or near threatened with extinction.
Aggressive overfishing threatens to push some shark species to extinction, and a new study puts annual shark deaths at 100 million.

"Our analysis shows that about one in 15 sharks gets killed by fisheries every year," study leader Boris Worm, a professor of biology at Canada's Dalhousie University, said in a statement. "With an increasing demand for their fins, sharks are more vulnerable today than ever before."

Based on available data for shark deaths and estimates of unreported illegal catches, the researchers estimated that 100 million sharks were killed in 2000 and 97 million in 2010. But since scientists lack sufficient data on shark catches, they say the real number of annual shark deaths could possibly be between 63 million and 273 million.

Sharks are fished for their meat, liver oil, cartilage and valuable fins, which are hacked off, often from live sharks, to be used in shark fin soup, an ancient and prized delicacy in East Asia. Since sharks have slow growth and reproductive rates, it can be tough for their populations to bounce back from big losses.

Eye 1

Further attacks on women in India raise doubts over crackdown

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© Dar Yasin/APIndian women protest in New Delhi after the gang rape and murder of a student in December.
A recent spate of attacks on women in Delhi has renewed fears over the safety of women in the Indian capital and raised doubts over the efficacy of reforms introduced since the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student in the city last December.

Two women are reported to have been raped by multiple attackers in moving cars in separate incidents in recent days. A third woman was robbed and then raped by two men after taking a motorised rickshaw in the satellite city of Ghaziabad at the weekend.

Four victims under 18 were also assaulted in incidents reported to the police over the past four days, according to local media. Only a fraction of such attacks are ever reported in India.

The gang rape and murder in December shocked the nation. Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets in India calling for widespread legal and policing reforms as well as a wholesale shift in cultural attitudes towards women.

A series of measures - such as fast-track courts for sex crimes, harsher punishments for convicted offenders and gender training for policemen - have been introduced since the attack by authorities. The government was heavily criticised for its early lack of sympathy for protesters.

Attention

Obstetrician threatens to call police on woman for opting out of caesarean

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Lisa Epsteen, 35, and her husband, Rick, 35, are expecting their fifth child. They already have a daughter and three sons, ages 10, 8, 5, 2. Lisa received an email from her USF doctor Wednesday threatening to have police bring her to the hospital for a caesarean. Courtesy of Epsteen family.
Lisa Epsteen thought she had an advocate for her high-risk pregnancy in Dr. Jerry Yankowitz, chairman of the University of South Florida's department of obstetrics and gynecology.

But Wednesday morning, she opened her email to find the well-known expert threatening to send police to her Spring Hill home unless she immediately reported to Tampa General Hospital for a caesarean delivery.

Epsteen, 35, was more than a week past the due date for her baby boy. Despite an ultrasound that alarmed her doctors, she wanted to wait until Friday to schedule the caesarean surgery, which would be her fifth.

"I am deeply concerned that you are contributing to a very high probability that your fetus will die or your child will incur brain damage if born alive. At this time, you must come in for delivery," Yankowitz wrote.

"I would hate to move to the most extreme option, which is having law enforcement pick you up at your home and bring you in, but you are leaving the providers of USF/TGH no choice," he continued.

Epsteen said she panicked.

Ambulance

Lion kills woman interning at California sanctuary

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© Photo: KFSN-TV/APCous Cous in 2012 at Cat Haven, a 100-acre refuge in the Sierra Nevada foothills with about two dozen large cats from four continents.
Male lion attacked when volunteer entered cage. Deputy later shot 4-year-old big cat dead.

An African lion killed a 26-year-old female intern who entered his enclosure Wednesday at a California sanctuary for rare big cats, the Fresno County Sheriff's Office said.

A deputy shot and killed the 4-year-old male lion after he attacked the woman about 12:30 p.m. PT at Project Survival's Cat Haven in Dunlap, 45 miles east of Fresno.

The sanctuary's founder, Dale Anderson, described the victim as an intern-volunteer but did not identify her. An autopsy will be conducted Thursday.

The lion, named Cous Cous, had been at the preserve since he was 8 weeks old, said Project Survival spokeswoman Tanya Osegueda.

A sheriff's sergeant told the Associated Press that only one other worker was around at the time of the mauling. The non-profit preserve is closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays between Oct. 1 and April 30.

Investigators are trying to determine why the woman entered the lion's space.

Light Saber

Best of the Web: 10 years later, Dixie Chicks right all along


Two days past 18

He was waiting for the bus in his Army green ...

Those are the first two lines from one of the most powerful songs I have ever heard, . If you don't know it, I encourage you to look it up -- unless you're one of those folks who still hates the group that made the song popular, in which case, its beauty might be lost on you.

It was 10 years ago this week -- as the country was barreling toward war with Iraq -- that Natalie Maines, lead singer of the Dixie Chicks, stood in front of a packed house in London and said:
"Just so you know, we're on the good side with y'all. We do not want this war, this violence. And we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."
It didn't matter that the evidence to invade Iraq was questionable or that Maines later apologized. The damage was done, and one of the most popular acts in the country became its most hated. Its music was banned from radio, CDs were trashed by bulldozers, and one band member's home was vandalized. Maines introduced "Soldier" with a call for peace, but she would soon find that the group needed metal detectors installed at entrances to shows on its stateside tour because of death threats.

It was a classic case of freedom of speech meeting the irrational repercussions of that speech. "Soldier" is not only their last No. 1, it's still their last single to chart in the top 30. Officially, they've been on hiatus since 2006, but Maines, who is planning on releasing a solo CD in May, recently said, "I just don't feel like it's the Dixie Chicks' time."

Fish

Dolphins saved my life: woman


A woman says she owes her life to a pod of dolphins after slipping off a cliff and into the sea while trying to rescue her dog.

She says she thought she was going to die before the dolphins nudged her and her dog to safety.

Karyn Gitsham walks her dogs Buddy and Ramsay along the beach at Carrickalinga, on South Australia's Fleurieu Peninsula, every morning.

Four-year-old Cocker Spaniel Ramsay often runs into the water chasing seagulls, but this morning he got into trouble when he couldn't swim back.

Ms Gitsham says she climbed up the cliff face to follow the distressed pooch from the shore when the unthinkable happened.

"I just remember falling and I'm in the water and the waves were just pounding me up against the rocks and I could see him out there trying to get back in," Ms Gitsham told 7News.

It was then that her unlikely saviours came to the rescue.

Bizarro Earth

Tennessee mom: 4-year-old daughter was 'shamed' at pool for not wearing a top

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© Shutterstock
A Tennessee mother says that her 4-year-old daughter was shamed and sexually harassed by employees at a public pool who insisted that the girl wear a top while at the facility.

Sarah Parada told The Tennessean that she was forced to leave Longview Recreation Center's indoor pool on Friday after a Williamson County Parks and Recreation lifeguards and a supervisor said that the 4-year-old girl could not swim while wearing only bathing suit bottoms.

"She left feeling really ashamed of herself," Parada explained.

Pool policies listed on the Williamson County Parks and Recreation website do not include a requirement that little girls wear tops, but Parks and Rec Director Doug Hood said that it was just "common sense."

"The rule requires tops and bottom for girls. It's never, ever been questioned in my 34 years," he told the paper. "Protection is part of that common sense. I wish I could tell people that everyone coming in there is someone you'd want to have over for Sunday dinner, but they're not."

Pistol

Georgia city ordinance would require a gun in every home

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A small town in Georgia has proposed an ordinance that would require "the head of household" in every home to own a gun and ammunition.

Town leaders in Nelson on Tuesday told WSB-TV that they had drafted the ordinance because they only have one police officer on duty for eight hours a day. And they worry that sheriff deputies cannot provide enough protection during the 16 hours each night that no officer is patrolling.

"When he's not here we rely on county sheriffs - however it takes a while for them to get here," Nelson City Councilman Duane Cronic, who drafted the proposal, explained.

Cronic's ordinance reads: "In order to provide for the emergency management of the city, and further in order to provide for and protect the safety, security and general welfare of the city and its inhabitants, every head of household residing in city limits is required to maintain a firearm, together with ammunition."

Bizarro Earth

Man faces 30 days in jail for laughing too loud in his own home: report

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© Getty Images
A 42-year-old Long Island man is facing a $500 fine or 30 days in jail for laughing too loud in his own home, according to a published report.

Lawyer Andrew Campanelli calls the two summonses issued to his client Robert Schiavelli, who lives with his mother in Rockville Centre, "absurd," reports the New York Post.

Schiavelli received the tickets for "disturbing the peace" on consecutive days in February after police responded to a neighbor's complaints that his laughter could be heard across the street.

Handcuffs

'House of horrors': Abortion doctor set to go on trial in 8 deaths

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Dr. Kermit Gosnell in an undated photo released by the Philadelphia District Attorney's office.
Three years after drug agents searching a suspected "pill mill" at a West Philadelphia clinic instead found a medical "house of horrors," an abortion doctor is going on trial on eight counts of murder.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 72, the clinic owner, is charged with killing a pregnant refugee and seven viable newborns. He also faces a separate federal trial on prescription drug charges.

Gosnell, who has pleaded not guilty, saw himself as a medical missionary in the blighted neighborhood where he worked and lived for 40 years. His Women's Medical Center treated the poor, immigrants, teens and women with late-stage pregnancies who could not get abortions elsewhere.

"I feel in the long term I will be vindicated," Gosnell told the Philadelphia Daily News in a March 2010 interview, a month after the federal drug raid. "I aspire to perfection, certainly for my patients."