Society's Child

Zorb ball ski slope disaster kills Russian man and badly injures friend

Luke Harding and Maria Botcharova
Guardian
Wed, 09 Jan 2013 08:49 UTC

Onlookers watch in horror as giant inflatable ball veers off course and hurtles down ravine at southern mountain resort.

A Russian man has been killed and his friend is seriously injured after their ride down a ski slope in a giant inflatable zorb ball turned to disaster.

A harrowing video captures the victim, 27-year-old Denis Burakov, and his friend Vladimir Shcherbakov, 33, setting off in the ball at a resort in the Caucasus mountains. The ride starts promisingly. But the zorb quickly veers off course, with one man unsuccessfully trying to stop it. It then hurtles leftwards down a ravine. Onlookers watch in horror, one asking: "What's down there?" A voice replies: "Nothing. Catastrophe."

The zorb continued rolling for about half a mile before finally halting near a frozen lake. The emergencies ministry said both men were ejected from the tumbling zorb, and landed on the snow about 10 metres apart.

Rescuers could reach the two tourists only by skiing down a sheer, rocky gully. They dragged the men back up the hill. Burakov died on the way to hospital, from spinal injuries; Shcherbakov suffered concussion, and remains in hospital.

Noveske Rifleworks owner dies in single-car crash

Henry Miller
StatesmanJournal.com
Mon, 07 Jan 2013 08:50 UTC

John Noveske, the owner of Noveske Rifleworks in Grants Pass, was killed Friday in a single-car crash, according to the Oregon State Police. Sgt. Tyler Lee said that Noveske's 1984 Toyota Land Cruiser crossed the oncoming lane on a curve on Highway 260 and went onto the dirt shoulder, then struck two large boulders. The vehicle rolled, ejecting Noveske.

State police said that he was not wearing a seat belt, and was pronounced dead at the scene.

A post in the Noveske Rifleworks Facebook page says in part: "We would like to thank you for your support as we deal with our loss ... John was more than just the founder of Noveske Rifleworks, he was a loving husband and father, and caring friend."

U.S. cult YouTube gun channel boss found shot dead on rural Georgia road

Daily Mail
Wed, 09 Jan 2013 08:42 UTC

Mystery: Gun enthusiast Keith Ratliffe was found shot dead along a rural road

An operator of a highly popular YouTube channel dedicated to high-powered guns and explosives was found mysteriously shot to death, authorities said. Keith Ratliff, who was a business partner at FPSRussia, YouTube's ninth most popular channel with more than three million active subscribers and a combined half billion views, was discovered on a rural road in Carnesville, Georgia.

Ratliff had a single gunshot wound the head and police are treating his death as a homicide.

When authorities made the grisly discovery on Thursday, they noticed there were several guns near Ratliff, according to a local radio station report.

'For him not to pull out that gun and try to defend himself, he had to feel comfortable around somebody. Either that or he was ambushed,' said Ratliff's heartbroken widow, Amanda.

'You know, it just doesn't really add up,' she told a television station.

'We all want to know and we all want justice to be done,' Amanda says. 'He had way to much to look forward to in his life.'

Killer in waiting: How should society deal with Kayla Bourque?

Steve Mertl
Yahoo! Canada News - The Daily Brew
Tue, 08 Jan 2013 00:00 UTC

© The Canadian Press
Kayla Bourque is shown in a handout photo. The Justice Ministry in B.C. has issued an unusual public warning about Bourque, a female, high-risk, violent offender who's been released from jail.

There's a ticking time-bomb quality to the story of Kayla Bourque, the 23-year-old former university student whose release from jail this week prompted a rare public warning from authorities.

Bourque was freed Monday after almost nine months in custody and pleading guilty last November to weapons possession and torturing and killing animals.

Her crimes, ugly as they were, normally wouldn't have sparked more than some brief public outrage before the world moved on. Except for the fact the pretty young woman from Prince George, B.C., has been characterized as a serial killer in waiting who'll likely need supervision for life.

"Bourque has an escalating criminal history," says the public notice issued by the B.C. Ministry of Justice. "She has offended violently against both people and animals and is considered high risk to reoffend."

When she was sentenced last November, the judge set down 46 conditions for her three-year probation, including a curfew from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., severe restrictions on movements and friendships, a ban on use of the Internet and on attending post-secondary schools.

Judge orders NYPD to halt unlawful 'stop and frisks'

Kevin Gosztola
The Dissenter
Tue, 08 Jan 2013 12:49 UTC

Silent march on Father’s Day to end the NYPD's Stop and Frisk policy in New York City

A judge in New York has ruled the New York Police Department must cease to perform "trespass stops" outside certain buildings in the Bronx without reasonable suspicion of trespass. The judge has determined the practice of "stop and frisks" is inherently unlawful or unconstitutional and should not be employed without "reasonable suspicion of trespass."

Judge Shira Scheindlin outlined in her ruling, "In order for an officer to have 'reasonable suspicion' that an individual is engaged in criminal trespass, the officer must be able to articulate facts providing 'a minimal level of objective justification for making the stop.'" This means, as she cited, they must have "something more than an inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or hunch."

The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by African-American and Latino residents of New York who argue the NYPD has a "widespread practice of making unlawful stops on suspicion of trespass outside buildings in the Bronx that are enrolled in the Trespass Affidavit Program ("TAP"), which was formerly known in the Bronx as Operation Clean Halls." It is a program that permits "police officers to patrol inside and around thousands of private residential apartment buildings throughout New York City."

In Japan, a painfully slow sweep

Hiroko Tabuchi
The New York Times
Mon, 07 Jan 2013 21:34 UTC

© Ko Sasaki/ The New York Times
Bags of contaminated soil outside the Naraha-Minami school near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Naraha - The decontamination crews at a deserted elementary school here are at the forefront of what Japan says is the most ambitious radiological cleanup the world has seen, one that promised to draw on cutting-edge technology from across the globe.

But much of the work at the Naraha-Minami Elementary School, about 12 miles away from the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, tells another story. For eight hours a day, construction workers blast buildings with water, cut grass and shovel dirt and foliage into big black plastic bags - which, with nowhere to go, dot Naraha's landscape like funeral mounds.

More than a year and a half since the nuclear crisis, much of Japan's post-Fukushima cleanup remains primitive, slapdash and bereft of the cleanup methods lauded by government scientists as effective in removing harmful radioactive cesium from the environment.

Local businesses that responded to a government call to research and develop decontamination methods have found themselves largely left out. American and other foreign companies with proven expertise in environmental remediation, invited to Japan in June to show off their technologies, have similarly found little scope to participate.

Recent reports in the local media of cleanup crews dumping contaminated soil and leaves into rivers have focused attention on the sloppiness of the cleanup.

'Best Funeral Ever': Most frightening reality TV show to date?

Clinton Yates
The Root DC
Mon, 07 Jan 2013 12:35 UTC

I've been to a lot of a funerals. Never once did it occur to me to consider I might rank one "better" than another. After all, someone has died. But some people consider death a time to celebrate gaudily and that's where Dallas' Golden Gate Funeral Home comes in. And TLC's new show, Best Funeral Ever is positively frightening.

To be clear, I'm not passing judgment on anyone that chooses to make their funeral a big, even if ridiculous event, but those events are private. A television show that effectively trivializes death for the purpose of a party is not the direction that we need to be moving in as a society.

Listen, I get it. Absurd reality shows have become the backbone of television programming, in the way that game shows once littered the landscape. And as I said before, even in the face of seemingly obvious dysfunction, not all of these shows (such as All My Babies' Mamas) are without merit.

But for Best Funeral, the problem is that there is absolutely no payoff. The show seems to highlight the fact that people think these forms of "mourning" are weird. The idea of inserting a reality show into the business of death is more ghoulish than I care to ever see again.

Some might say this is another program in a long line that makes black people look bad. Between the Real Housewives series, the Love & Hip Hop shows, the aforementioned All My Babies Mamas and so on, there is no shortage of programming that seems to capitalize on highlighting how some people of color tend to operate. But this show is worse than that. This show makes America look bad.

Wife's 'inappropriate relationship' with adopted son a motive in husband's botched hit

Alyssa Newcomb
ABC News
Tue, 08 Jan 2013 18:45 UTC

© Las Vegas Metro Police Department/KTNV/ABC News
Amy Pearson is seen in this undated booking photo for the attempted murder of her estranged husband.

A Las Vegas woman accused of masterminding a botched plot to kill her estranged husband was motivated by a life insurance payout and a romantic relationship with their adopted son, according to a police report.

Amy Pearson, 42, surrendered to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department on Friday on charges of attempted murder, battery and conspiracy to commit murder against her husband, Robert Bessey.

An extensive police report detailing the crime, taped jailhouse conversations and interviews with witnesses was released Monday by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

Bessey, 49, was shot in the neck while driving south on Interstate 15 on Nov. 14, in what the suspects designed to look like a road rage incident, according to the report.

Florida woman pulls gun, poops in kitchen after finding hubby with another woman

Will Greenlee
TCPalm
Tue, 08 Jan 2013 18:41 UTC

A 33-year-old woman and her older boyfriend were sleeping in their Vero Beach bedroom about 2:30 a.m. when the boyfriend's wife stormed in with a rifle.

The wife, identified as Brenda Schumann, 51, pointed the weapon at her 42-year-old husband and his younger girlfriend, threatening to kill them both, according to accounts given by Schumann's husband and his girlfriend.

The husband got the gun away, but that didn't stop Schumann's apparent rampage.

She urinated on the carpet outside the master bedroom, defecated on the kitchen floor, grabbed a second rifle and started destroying Christmas decorations and other things.

Study: Nearly 14 million American women engage in binge drinking three times a month

Raw Story
Tue, 08 Jan 2013 18:38 UTC

Binge drinking is an under-recognized problem for US women, nearly 14 million of whom engage in it about three times a month, downing about six drinks each time, says a study released Tuesday.

The practice is most common among women aged 18 to 34 as well as high school students, whites, Hispanics and women with household incomes of $75,000 or more, said the report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That US government institution defines binge drinking as having four or more drinks on a given occasion for women and girls.

And half of all high school girls who drink alcohol admit to binge drinking, said the new study.

Excessive drinking, including binge drinking, is responsible for about 23,000 deaths among women and girls in the United States each year.

This article is irrelevant. Hunter Biden was scheduled to be executed through hanging on Friday Oct. 15 at GITMO. Wake Up SOTT.net! [Link]

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Society's Child

Zorb ball ski slope disaster kills Russian man and badly injures friend

Noveske Rifleworks owner dies in single-car crash

U.S. cult YouTube gun channel boss found shot dead on rural Georgia road

Killer in waiting: How should society deal with Kayla Bourque?

Judge orders NYPD to halt unlawful 'stop and frisks'

In Japan, a painfully slow sweep

'Best Funeral Ever': Most frightening reality TV show to date?

Wife's 'inappropriate relationship' with adopted son a motive in husband's botched hit

Florida woman pulls gun, poops in kitchen after finding hubby with another woman

Study: Nearly 14 million American women engage in binge drinking three times a month

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