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Cooking oil cans found 'reinforcing' concrete walls of high-rise building which collapsed in Taiwan quake

Collapsed Building in Taiwan
© Tyrone Siu/Reuters Rescue personnel work at the site where a 17-storey apartment building collapsed, after an earthquake in Tainan, southern Taiwan February 7, 2016.
The only high-rise building to have collapsed in the Taiwanese city of Tainan following a major earthquake on Saturday seems to have had serious constructions flaws. The collapse has exposed cooking-oil cans embedded inside the building's concrete walls.

Witnesses at the scene have told Reuters that they saw large rectangular, commercial cans of cooking-oil packed inside the wall cavities of the 17-story Wei Guan Golden Dragon Building, apparently having been used as building material.


A BBC correspondent reported from the scene that the collapse has exposed blue-and-white cooking oil cans that "appear to have been used as filler inside some of the concrete beams."

Better Earth

The keystone of liberty is peace

Peace

Why Libertarians Should be Thoroughly Anti-War


The anti-war movement desperately needs libertarian leadership. And the libertarian movement urgently needs to be strongly anti-war. So in this essay I will offer some chief reasons for every libertarian to be 100% non-interventionist and actively engaged in the cause of peace.

Libertarianism embraces the individual's right to life, liberty, and property. The meaning of these rights have been intentionally distorted by some, but they originally meant the right not to be murdered (life), not to be enslaved (liberty), and not to be robbed (property). What distinguishes libertarians is that we apply these principles comprehensively, making no exception for the government. It is not okay for the government to steal and call it taxation, to enslave and call it incarceration, or to murder and call it war.

As private murder is a worse crime than private kidnapping and theft, so should war (mass murder by the government) be a paramount concern for libertarians, surpassing even many issues involving the police state and economic planning/redistribution.

Heart - Black

Abby who? US medical school loses track of cadaver identities

cadaver
© PJL Laurens
George Washington University is unable to identify up to 50 cadavers donated to its medical school due to a lack of oversight of the program.

While reminiscent of a Mel Brooks comedy, university officials were dead serious about this error and launched an internal investigation, which found the remains of numerous donated bodies had been "mislabeled or not labeled at all" and they were unable to return ashes to some families who had requested them.

Comment: See also: Little shop of horrors: Michigan couple arrested for black market body-selling ring


Alarm Clock

Rape allegations linked to online dating in Britain increase 450% in 5 years

Online dating
© Issac Lawrence/AFP/Getty ImagesMore than nine million Britons have signed up to dating websites.
National Crime Agency (NCA) figures show 184 people made allegations they were raped by someone they met online in 2014

The number of rape allegations linked to online dating websites has increased sixfold in five years, according to Britain's leading crime-fighting body.

National Crime Agency (NCA) figures show 184 people made allegations they were raped by someone they met online in 2014 - up from 33 in 2009.

Rape tends to be under-reported and those attacked by people they meet online may be less likely to come forward, meaning the actual number of attacks could be 10 times higher, the NCA warned. Sean Sutton, head of the NCA's Serious Crimes Analysis Section, said: "Part of our campaign is to encourage people to come forward. Our message is the police will take them seriously and deal with them sympathetically."

"You can't see a stranger rapist coming; they are going to be charming potentially they are going to be persuasive," he said. "If you think you can see one from a distance or even up front, you can't - that's the issue."

More than nine million Britons have signed up to dating websites and the NCA is advising users to be more careful.

Some 85% of stranger rape victims are women of which 42% were aged between 20 and 29 and 24% between 40 and 49.

Comment: The best protection against sexual predators is knowing who they are and how they operate.Listen to the SOTT editors interview with Dr. Anna Salter, author of the best-selling book, Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders, Who They Are, How They Operate, and How We Can Protect Ourselves and Our Children.

See also: Rape Culture in America - How the system protects the rapists and fails the victims


Pocket Knife

10-year-old missing Ukraine boy returns home with incredible tale of survival

Bogdan Furman
Bogdan Furman, 10 , was feared kidnapped.
Little Bogdan Furman arrived at his doorstep to the shock of his parents - and police - who believed he was dead.

Despite a massive police search after his disappearance the little boy went under the radar for half a year after leaving the family home of his own accord. The youngster survived ice-cold temperatures by building a shack form cardboard boxes near the river Dnieper in Ukraine.

He explained how a mystery 24-year-old man took him under his wing and kept him alive while on the streets. Together they ate scraps from bins and collected junk to recycle for money, he told officials. "He was like a father to me, I was calling him my dad", said Bogdan.

Cardboard house
Bogdan survived the snow in a tiny shack made of cardboard.
Inside the cardboard house
The 10-year-old survived extreme situations.
"He always asked me if I was hungry, was always worrying if I was cold. When I was living with my parents, every time I would be a little late from school my real father would beat me up."

Comment: That is one courageous kid. We hope his home life changes for the better.

See also: Third Man Factor: The hallucinatory effects of survival


Black Cat

Blowhard Trump gets booed, attacks debate crowd as 'filled with donors and special interests'

presidential debate trump
© David Goldman/Associated PressFormer Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and businessman Donald Trump spar as Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., listens.
Donald Trump got booed three times in rapid succession during an exchange with Jeb Bush over eminent domain — a wildly unpopular process in New Hampshire.

When asked to explain his support for the government's ability to take land from private citizens for projects like the Northern Pass in New Hampshire, the businessman and Republican frontrunner doubled down on his previous position.

"So many people have hit me with commercials and other things about eminent domain," Trump said at Saturday night's ABC News debate. "Eminent domain is an absolute necessity for a country, for our country. Without it you wouldn't have roads, you wouldn't have hospitals, you wouldn't have anything."

Trump said conservatives including many of his opponents say they're against eminent domain, but they support the projects that need eminent domain to exist.

"The Keystone Pipeline — without eminent domain, it wouldn't go 10 feet," Trump said. "You need eminent domain. And eminent domain is a good thing, not a bad thing."

Trump added that "when eminent domain is used on a person's property, they get a fortune. And if they're smart they'll get two or three times the value of their property."

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush jumped in, arguing that there's a difference between using eminent domain for public purposes and for private purposes, and accused Trump of using eminent domain to his advantage to build a "limousine parking lot for his casinos" — not public use.

Comment: Trump's megalomania on display again.


Pumpkin

'They can sense evil': NYT reporter tweets Hillary campaign photo and starts caption contest...

Killary
© via twitter@amychozik
New York Times political reporter Amy Chozick on Saturday tweeted a photo of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who's on the New Hampshire campaign trail, and naturally started a caption contest.

Why?


Comment: Even children are sick of her!


Pistol

Off-duty cop suspects teen of having pot, fires seven rounds and kills him

Jonathen Santellana and officer Rey Garza
Does the man on the right look like a cop to you?
A grieving family is fighting to bring justice to the man who ruthlessly gunned down their son. Jonathen Santellana was 17 years old when he lost his life to Navasota police officer Rey Garza.

On November 13, 2013, Santellana was sitting in his car in a parking space at an apartment complex in Houston, Texas with his friend, Kalee Marsteller, also 17. Garza was off-duty, wearing basketball shorts and a sweatshirt when he decided to rush up to Santellana's driver's side window, brandishing a gun.

Naturally, Santellana and Marsteller thought this deranged man was trying to rob them, so Santellana put the car in reverse to escape. Garza tried to open the door as Santellana began driving away. Garza, claiming that he feared for his life, then shot Santellana in the back of the head and back, killing him.

Why did Garza commit this unprovoked attack on an innocent kid sitting in his vehicle? Santellana's parents, Joey Santellana and Roxana Harrison, commissioned an expert in crime scene reconstruction to produce a new analysis, since the investigation undertaken by law enforcement was grossly insufficient.

Pistol

How low can you go? Citing emotional trauma, cop sues family of teen he killed

Quintonio LeGrier and Officer Robert Rialmo
Quintonio LeGrier and Officer Robert Rialmo
A Chicago Police Officer who responded to a call for assistance by killing an unarmed 19-year-old college student and a neighbor, who was uninvolved in the situation, has now filed a lawsuit against the estate of the student HE killed — saying the shooting left him traumatized.

Officer Robert Rialmo is inexplicably seeking $10 million in damages from the estate of Quintonio LeGrier — apparently because killing someone is so traumatic, he must also sue for what he did.

According to the Associated Press, Rialmo's attorney, Joel Brodsky, "said it was important in the charged atmosphere [in Chicago] to send a message that police are not 'targets for assaults' and [they] 'suffer damage like anyone else.'"

Attorney Basileios Foutris is representing Antonio LeGrier in the wrongful death suit he filed days after Quintonio's death and said he was astonished at the "temerity" Rialmo has displayed in suing the still-grieving family of the man he shot.

"That's a new low, even for the Chicago Police Department," he said. "First you shoot them then you sue them."

USA

Leaving while they can: US Treasury reports record number of people give up US citizenship and green cards

US passport
© Reuters
For the third year in a row the number of people renouncing their citizenship or abandoning green cards has beaten the record set the previous year, US Treasury Department data reveal. The surge is likely the result of stringent US tax policy.

A record-breaking 4,279 individuals decided to call it quits with the US in 2015 in comparison to 3,415 people the previous year, according to a US Treasury report released on Friday.

The list of individuals deciding to expatriate is published on a quarterly basis by the Internal Revenue Service. The latest one contains the names of 1,058 US citizens and permanent residents that gave up their passports in the period from September to December.