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Denmark accused of anti-Semitism as it bans religious slaughter of animals for kosher and halal meat

William Turvill
Daily Mail
Wed, 19 Feb 2014 10:43 UTC
Halal meat ban
© Alamy
The Danish government has passed a law banning the religious slaughter of animals for halal and kosher meat.
The government in Denmark has been accused of anti-Semitism after passing a law banning the religious slaughter of animals for halal and kosher meat.

After years of campaigning in the Scandinavian country, the ban came in to law yesterday.

The change has been described as 'anti-Semitic and 'a clear interference in religious freedom' by a group petitioning against the change.

Under European regulations, animals are required to be stunned before slaughter unless an exemption can be found on religious grounds.

And animals must be conscious when killed for the resultant meat to be kosher under Jewish law and halal under Islamic law.

But, following criticism, the country's Minister for Food, Dan Jorgensen, told Denmark's TV2 that 'animal rights come before religion'.
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Eye 2

Son, 14, of oil millionaire is 'murdered by man after being groomed through computer games'

Rob Cooper
Daily Mail
Wed, 19 Feb 2014 09:42 UTC
Image

Victim: Breck Bednar, 14, who was allegedly stabbed to death by a man he met off the internet
The 14-year-old son of a U.S. oil millionaire was allegedly stabbed to death after being groomed over the internet while playing computer games. Breck Bednar apparently told his parents that he was going to a friend's house for a sleepover close to his home in Caterham, Surrey.

But instead he got the train and travelled 30 miles to Grays, Essex, where he was found with knife wounds on Monday morning. He later died despite attempts to save him.

Today Lewis Daynes, an 18-year-old computer engineer, appeared before a court charged with murdering the schoolboy. Breck's father Barry, 49, who is an oil futures trader, described his son as a 'happy, gentle and smart boy'.

Mr Bednar, from Houston, has worked as a managing director for BCG shipping brokers in Canary Wharf. According to his LinkedIn profile, he currently works as a partner for Tandem Partners SARL.
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Vinyl

Satire! Clipping Queen Bee's wings: Lorde's real Grammy speech suppressed

Iggy Swind
Snoopman News
Thu, 06 Feb 2014 00:00 UTC
Image
The singer-songwriter Lorde shocked USA America's music industry when accepting her second miniature gold-coloured gramophone for the night at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards on Sunday January 26 2014 in Los Angeles, California. The shock was not because the singer-songwriter won two Grammy awards, Best Solo Pop Performance and Song of the Year, for her hit single 'Royals'.

Rather, it has emerged that Lorde delivered a lecture-like speech that was a scathing indictment of global capitalism. But, the apparent 'live' broadcast had a one-minute delay and was switched to a 'rehearsal take' that had been shot earlier.

All of the nominees had been filmed earlier as a precaution, so that if any winners talked for too long or if their speeches or outfits revealed contents that breached its censorship rating, the Grammy's studio could edit such moments without the wider world being any wiser. The near-seamless insertion of the 'rehearsal take' occurred after a wide-shot of the auditorium as Lorde, and her Grammy co-winner Joel Little, made their way up the steps to the stage.

Evidently, Lorde, whose real name is Ella Maria Lani Yelich-O'Connor, was miffed about the introduction of a 'rehearsal take' and prepared a lengthy speech. Yelich-O'Connor's unexpected oratory nuclear-bomb shell nearly exploded the subterfuge of the ruling class both present and absent, and that of their media-guardians that watch over the White House-Hollywood Military-Media Complex.
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Bizarro Earth

New York McDonald's fires 8-year worker after she donates food to firefighters

David Edwards
Raw Story
Wed, 19 Feb 2014 09:02 UTC
Image
A McDonald's restaurant in New York fired a worker after 8 years because she "opened a whole bee's nest" by buying food for firefighters after they put out a house fire, she said this week.

Heather Levia, 23, told WIVB that she was working as a manager when the group of firefighters came in and ordered 23 breakfast sandwiches after fighting the blaze. It was a cold day so Levia covered the $83 cost of the meals herself.

"Just because I appreciate everything they do," she said.

When more firefighters came in and ordered $70 worth of food, Levia wanted to cover those meals too. But she is a single mother with twins who is working two jobs to put herself through nursing school.

So, she called her boss, thinking he might pay for the meals because he often gives food to police officers.
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Cult

Maryland man accused of sexually abusing teen while he was a church deacon

Lynh Bui
Washington Post
Wed, 19 Feb 2014 08:56 UTC
Image
© Shutterstock
Prince George's County authorities have charged an Accokeek man with sexually abusing a 15-year-old girl when he served as a deacon in the District church they attended about a decade ago.

Police arrested Maurice Blanchard, 45, last week, charging him with child abuse and sex abuse in connection with incidents that spanned almost a year starting in July 2003, according to charging documents.

As part of their investigation, authorities set up a phone call in December between Blanchard and the husband of the now-26-year-old woman, documents show. During the call, which police recorded, Blanchard admitted to having sex in 2004 with the woman when she was 15.

"During the conversation the Defendant admitted to having vaginal intercourse with the Victim in 2004," the charging documents state.

Sandra Seegars, the woman's godmother, said her goddaughter was babysitting for Blanchard's family at the time. She did not go to police partly because she was scared, Seegars said.
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Family

Assisted suicide charge dropped against Pennsylvania woman

Michael Rubinkam
The Associated Press
Tue, 11 Feb 2014 19:36 UTC
Image
© The Inquirer/David M. Warren
Barbara Mancini with husband Joe the day after a judge threw out her case.
A Pennsylvania judge threw out an assisted suicide charge Tuesday against a nurse accused of handing her 93-year-old terminally ill father a bottle of morphine, a decision that brought elation and relief to the defendant and her family one year to the day after his death.

The Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office failed to prove a crime occurred and based its case against Barbara Mancini on speculation and guesswork, Schuylkill County Judge Jacqueline L. Russell said in a 47-page opinion.

"Needless to say, we're all just elated and very happy and very redeemed," her husband, Joe Mancini, told The Associated Press. "Now is the time to heal."

Mancini, 57, of Philadelphia, was charged last summer with giving a nearly full bottle of morphine to her father, Joseph Yourshaw, at his Pottsville home in February 2013 for the purpose of helping him end his life. Yourshaw died at a hospital four days later after a hospice nurse called 911.

The judge said that prosecutors had neither established that Yourshaw intended to take his own life, nor that Mancini helped him do it.
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Heart - Black

Psychopath: NSA agent charged with beating his 3-year-old son to death only months after adopting him from South Korea

Dan Morse and Dana Hedgpeth
Washington Post
Wed, 19 Feb 2014 08:44 UTC
Image
© AP
Brian Patrick O'Callaghan, seen in his mugshot, is a decorated Iraq War veteran and high-level NSA official.
Brian O'Callaghan fought in Iraq, mastered Arabic and became a division chief at the National Security Agency. Last year, wanting a second child for their young family, he and his wife adopted a 3-year-old boy from South Korea.

"He was so loving of him," a family member said.

It is a background that made allegations revealed in Montgomery County District Court on Tuesday seem all the more stunning: Alone with the boy - with his wife out of town, his other son in a different part of the house - O'Callaghan repeatedly struck the child, hitting him so hard that the boy died two days later.

"An absolutely horrific crime on an absolutely innocent young victim," said Assistant State's Attorney Donna Fenton, listing injuries to the boy's head, neck and back. "Basically this child was beaten to death from head to toe."

Based in part on her assertions, Judge William Simmons denied bond for O'Callaghan, who has been charged with first-degree murder and child abuse resulting in death. The hearing was the first in the case, one that O'Callaghan's attorney said was not what police and prosecutors were making it out to be.
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Shopping Bag

Disgusted mother buys up all the indecent shirts at PacSun store in Utah mall


NY Daily News
Wed, 19 Feb 2014 08:33 UTC
Image
© MARK JOHNSTON/Daily Herald
Judy Cox, of Orem, sits for a portrait next to a stack of T-shirts with what she believes are pornographic designs Monday, Feb. 17, 2014.
A mother upset about "indecent" T-shirts on display at a Utah mall found a quick if not especially convenient way to remove them: She bought every last one.

Judy Cox and her 18-year-old son were shopping Saturday at the University Mall in Orem, about 40 miles south of Salt Lake City, when she saw the shirts in the window of a PacSun store.

The shirts featured pictures of scantily dressed models in provocative poses.

Cox said she complained about the window display to a store manager and was told the T-shirts couldn't be taken down without approval from the corporate office. She then bought all 19 T-shirts in stock, for a total of $567. She says she plans to return them later, toward the end of the chain store's 60-day return period.
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Smoking

Smoking toddler seen puffing on a cigarette in video causes public outrage

Tara Brady
Daily Mail, UK
Tue, 04 Feb 2014 07:14 UTC
Footage has emerged which shows a toddler appearing to smoke a real cigarette. The young girl, aged about two or three, puts the cigarette into her mouth and inhales several times before breathing out dark smoke. The clip, which has been uploaded to LiveLeak, is believed to have been taken in Finland and has caused public outrage.
toddler smoking
© Unknown
One person wrote: 'Must originate from her sick parents or siblings. Persons under 18 are not allowed to either sell or purchase tobacco in Finland.

'The country has among the toughest smoking laws in the world.'

Some others have also suggested she could be smoking an e-cigarette.

A two-year-old from Sumatra in Indonesia shocked the world after he was photographed chain-smoking cigarettes.

Comment: The 'outrage' is understandable given that people today have been led to believe that smoking is the root of all evil, but according to one A.J. Bell, writing in about 1700:
"For personal disinfections nothing enjoyed such favour as tobacco; the belief in it was widespread, and even children were made to light up a reaf in pipes. Thomas Hearnes remembers one Tom Rogers telling him that when he was a scholar at Eton in the year that the great plague raged, all the boys smoked in school by order, and that he was never whipped so much in his life as he was one morning for not smoking. It was long afterwards a tradition that none who kept a tobacconist shop in London had the plague."
And from another source:
When plague was abroad even children were compelled to smoke. At the time of the dreadful visitation of 1665 all the boys at Eton were obliged to smoke in school every morning. One of these juvenile smokers, a certain Tom Rogers, years afterwards declared to Hearne, the Oxford antiquary, that he never was whipped so much in his life as he was one morning for not smoking. Times have changed at Eton since this anti-tobacconist martyr received his whipping. It is sometimes stated that at this time smoking was generally practised in schools, and that at a stated hour each morning lessons were laid aside, and masters and scholars alike produced their pipes and proceeded to smoke tobacco. But I know of no authority for this wider statement; it seems to have grown out of Hearne's record of the practice at Eton.


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Eye 2

Social Decay: UK child sex trafficking, sex abuse, and modern slavery soars, says National Crime Agency


RT
Wed, 19 Feb 2014 08:11 UTC
Image
© Reuters / Darren Staples DS / RD / CCK
Child sex abuse, human trafficking among minors and adults and cases of domestic slavery all saw sharp increases last year, says the National Crime Agency amidst calls for end to modern slavery.

British police identified 450 potential child victims who were either smuggled into the country or moved around it, the NCA show.

Of these, 56 were children of British origin who were suspected of being trafficked for sex - double the 2012 figure - while 88 foreign children were seen as at risk from sexual exploitation, an increase of 11 percent.

Another 123 children were believed to have been brought to the UK for forced labor often growing cannabis or working on drugs farms. Only children from Vietnam and Albania were more likely than the UK to be the victim of human trafficking.
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