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Video: Man tries to set children and himself on fire in Belfast city centre

David Whelan
Belfast Telegraph
Thu, 01 May 2014 19:31 UTC
Image
© Belfast Telegraph
The man lights a fire outside City Hall, douses himself in white spirit and approaches the flames. Main, David Russell bravely forces him to the ground and keeps him away from the fire before being helped by other passers-by.
A teenager has been hailed a hero after he stopped a man turning himself into a human fireball outside Belfast City Hall. Also in this Section Warning over payments unit costs Brothel madam Rong Chen clears first stage in fight against deportation to China Gun used in fatal PSNI shooting of Neil McConville was destroyed Judge settles libel action with Sunday World

Police fired a stun gun at the man in his 30s who had lit a fire on the pavement and then doused himself in white spirit in front of rush-hour commuters.

As the flames rose, he also flung the flammable liquid at people around him, hitting schoolboys and girls who were filming the incident on their mobile phones.

Some of them, not realising the danger, appeared to think they were watching a magic act.
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Bomb

If you're assaulted at the World Cup, 'don't scream' say Brazil police


RT
Tue, 13 May 2014 19:08 UTC
2014 world Cup
© Reuters / Paulo Whitaker

A general view is seen of the Arena de Sao Paulo Stadium, one of the venues for the 2014 World Cup, before a soccer match test in the Sao Paulo district of Itaquera May 10, 2014. The stadium will host the opening match of the 2014 World Cup
Brazilian police have warned World Cup visitors not to scream if they are robbed. This comes among other tidbits of cautionary advice issued to intrepid sports fans visiting the country from June this year, in a pamphlet issued by Sao Paulo police.

"Do not react, scream or argue," the brochure states. The Sao Paulo police, who put the document together, are reportedly attempting to keep criminal and violent incidents to a minimum.

The main warning is to help reduce harm caused by armed robbery - robbery followed by death, known as latrocinios - committed against those who have no idea how to behave in a city as violent as Sao Paulo, according to the local paper, Estadao Sao Paulo.

The crime of 'latrocinios' has become an increasingly widespread concern. "Tourists come mainly from Europe and the United States, where they do not see this crime very often," President of the World Civil Police of Sao Paulo's Cup Management Committee, Mario Leite, told the paper.
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Red Flag

15-year old Leeds boy charged in stabbing murder of teacher, Ann Maguire

Helen Pidd
The Guardian
Wed, 30 Apr 2014 13:53 UTC
Image
© Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Hundreds of floral tributes have been left in honour of teacher Ann Maguire, who died after being stabbed in her classroom.
15-year-old accused of killing Spanish teacher Ann Maguire, who was stabbed to death in front of pupils

A 15-year-old boy has been charged with the murder of a school teacher stabbed to death in front of pupils in Leeds earlier this week.

The teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was charged three days after being restrained by teachers at Corpus Christi Catholic College in the Halton Moor area of east Leeds.

He will appear in front of Leeds youth court on Thursday, the crown prosecution service said. The hearing will be closed to the public though journalists will be allowed to attend.

A statment from the CPS said: "A 15-year-old male was arrested in connection with this incident and has been interviewed under caution by police."
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Dollars

How the 1% stole our money and made us think they were doing us a favor

David Atkins
Salon
Sun, 04 May 2014 05:59 UTC
Pushing people toward stocks, real estate and credit cards have all come at a cost -- and with one goal in mind.
Trump Romney Blankfein
© lev radin via Shutterstock/Reuters/Steve Marcus/Jim Young/Salon)
Donald Trump, Mitt Romney, Lloyd Blankfein
If you've paid attention to the economy over the last few years, you've doubtless seen the charts and figures showing the decline of the American middle class in concert with the explosion of wealth for the super-rich. Wages have stagnated over the last 40 years even as productivity has increased, which is another way of saying that Americans are working harder but getting paid less. Unemployment remains stubbornly high even though corporate profits and the stock market are at or near record highs. Passive assets in the form of stocks and real estate, in other words, are doing very well. Wages for working people are not. Unfortunately for the middle class, however, the top 1 percent of incomes own almost 50 percent of asset wealth, and the top 10 percent own over 85 percent of it. When assets do well but wages don't, the middle class suffers.

This ominous trend is particularly prominent in the United States. That shouldn't surprise us: study after study shows that American policymakers operate almost purely on behalf of wealthy interests. Recent polling also proves that the American rich want policies that encourage the growth of asset values while lowering their own tax rates, and are especially keen on outcomes that favor themselves at the expense of the poor and middle class.
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Gold Coins

Better safe than sorry: Russia's third largest bank moves money from Europe to Moscow for safe keeping


RT
Tue, 13 May 2014 15:26 UTC
Gazprombank
© Reuters / Leonhard Foeger
Gazprombank transferred client funds from Belgium and Luxembourg back to home turf, to protect against any future sanctions.

The securities were moved from Euroclear Bank (Brussels) and Clearstream Banking (Luxembourg) to the Russian Central Depository at the end of April.

The move is intended to protect customers from any forthcoming sanctions and prevent a situation where clients' funds are frozen, the statement on the website said.

"The transfer was done to prevent possible restrictions on transactions of customers' assets that are kept in international deposits and settlement systems," it stated. In preparation for sanctions, in March, the bank moved nearly $7 billion to Russia's Central Bank for safe keeping.

Russia's Central Bank held $486 billion in international reserves as of April 1 this year, $40 billion less than one year earlier, when holdings stood at about $528 billion.

The last round of US sanctions included 17 companies, but didn't target Gazprombank or Vnesheconombank (VEB), both state-owned lending institutions. In March, the US imposed sanctions on Bank Rossiya and its owner, Yury Kovalchuk - both have stakes in Gazprom subsidiaries.
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Black Magic

Plans for satanic ritual at Harvard University draws outrage by the Boston Catholics


Reuters
Fri, 09 May 2014 11:49 UTC

A Harvard University student group plans to hold a re-enactment of a satanic ritual on the school's historic campus, drawing criticism from local Roman Catholic officials, who expressed "deep sadness and strong opposition" to the plan.

The Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club said in a statement posted online that it plans to host "a historical re-enactment of a black mass ceremony that has a narrator providing historical context and background."

It said the event was intended to be educational and would be preceded by a lecture on the history and origins of the black mass, a ritual that parodies the Catholic mass, in which bread and wine are consecrated and consumed.

Image
The re-enactment will be performed by the Satanic Temple, a Satanist group that attracted attention earlier this year after it proposed the placement of a 7-foot (2.1-meter) tall statue of Satan next to an existing Ten Commandments monument in Oklahoma.

"Our purpose is not to denigrate any religion or faith, which would be repugnant to our educational purposes, but instead to learn and experience the history of different cultural practices," the club said.

Comment: The Catholic Church worships its own demon god as it continues to hide and protect its network of pedophile priests. Their vengeful, jealous god must not like the competition!

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Arrow Down

Turkey: At least 20 killed and another 300 trapped in coal mine


Aljazeera
Tue, 13 May 2014 16:37 UTC
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At least 20 miners have been killed and up to 300 are reported trapped after an explosion caused a fire triggering a collapse at a coal mine in the western Turkish province of Manisa.

Local member of parliament Muzaffer Yurttas said 20 workers had been killed at the mine in Soma, citing health officials.

"Twenty workers were killed and 30 were wounded in the accident. They died of choking and burns," Yurttas told local TV station NTV.

Al Jazeera's Serpil Karacan reporting from Istanbul said the mine employed more than 500 people and at least 200 people had finished their shift, leaving 300 still trapped at the site.

Fire officials are trying to pump clean air into the mine shaft for those who remain trapped some two kilometres below the surface and four kilometres from the entrance.

"Four separate rescue teams are currently working in the mine. The fire is creating a problem but oxygen is being pumped into the mine shafts that weren't affected."
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Bug

Lodi, California police chief defends officers in shooting of Army vet, citizens not satisfied

Cynthia Hubert
The Sacramento Bee
Thu, 01 May 2014 10:00 UTC
Image
© Sacramento Bee/Randall Benton
Lodi's police chief, meeting privately last week with a small group of residents about a case that has roiled the town and its Sikh community, strongly defended the two officers who shot and killed a mentally ill Army veteran as he walked toward his mother's home on a Saturday morning in January.

"You know, I have two very, very good police officers that are having a lot of trouble with this," Chief Mark Helms said in an audio recording of the meeting that The Sacramento Bee obtained from a source. "And nobody's thinking about them, either."

Helms asked for the meeting with Sikh leaders, according to those in attendance. He spoke for nearly two hours at the April 17 gathering, giving his first detailed public comments about the killing of Parminder Singh Shergill, a Sikh whose family has deep roots in Northern California.
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Pistol

$10,000 a head: Radicals put a bounty on UK journalist in Ukraine


RT.com
Tue, 13 May 2014 07:20 UTC
Ukrainian radicals have put a bounty out on RT stringer Graham Phillips, who is currently working in the east of the country. Also a camera-man working for RT in Odessa has been informed about being on the radicals' radar.

"Myself I have received threats putting a bounty on my head to be kidnapped and that has been offered from [the city of] Dnepropetrovsk, as I understand, connected to the Right Sector," Graham Phillips confirmed while reporting live from the city of Slavyansk.

The Right Sector reportedly offered $10,000 for the capture of "a Russian spy."
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Palette

Eradicating beauty: The destruction of art

Pierre Lescaudron
Sott.net
Tue, 13 May 2014 04:59 UTC
Image

Image from WWI. Injured soldiers and the remains of those not so 'fortunate' share the same space.
My Grandma is a ninety-nine-and-half-year-old French lady. She was born in 1914 at the outbreak of WWI. Her father died on the Western Front in August 1918; it was only three months before the armistice.

Grandma was just one out of 6 million French children who lost their fathers. Her mother had a small sewing shop in Southern France, specializing in widows' dresses, by far the most popular garment at the time.

When she was in her 30s, my Grandma also lived through WWII, and in 1945, she went to Germany with her husband, a military man who was part of the French occupation forces that were stationed there until the 1960s.

Grandma didn't like living with Germans; they reminded her of her lost father. She still doesn't like the Germans much. I guess she never thought about the fact that both German and French soldiers were used as cannon fodder, manipulated into fighting wars that profited only the heartless, greedy politicians and bankers.

One could reasonably argue that during her long life, Grandma, like many of her contemporaries, experienced the full horror of the 20th Century and the steady devolution of humanity.
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