Society's ChildS


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Despicable ad: 'Diana' poster taken down from Paris tunnel where Princes Diana died

diana poster
© Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
Well, better late than never.

In the wake of the outrage that stemmed from the placement of a poster promoting Naomi Watts' movie Diana near the entrance to the Paris tunnel where Princess Diana died, the 4-foot by 6-foot ad has been taken down.

"It was requested that the poster be removed Monday afternoon, and we received confirmation that it had been removed Monday evening," a spokesperson for French distributor Le Pacte told The Hollywood Reporter.

The sign, featuring Watts dressed as Diana, had been prominently displayed by the Pont de l'Alma tunnel, just feet away from the gold Flame of Liberty statue, which has become known as an unofficial memorial for the Princess of Wales.

Evil Rays

Man who died of horrific burns on National Mall saluted Capitol before setting himself alight

national mall scene
Clean up: Officials responded to the scene in minutes but apparently it was bystanders who were the first to help by taking off their shirts and trying to put the flames out themselves
A tourist captured the moment a man saluted the Capitol before deciding to set himself alight on Washington's National Mall on Friday,

Javier Soto was visiting the tourist hotspots with his camera snapping shots of the Smithsonian, the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. Then he went to see the Thomas Jefferson Memorial and the White House.

Finally, returning to the National Mall and, just before 4:30 p.m., he aimed his camera east, toward the Capitol and saw a man pouring gasoline over his body from a canister.

Mr Soto says the man gave the Capitol building a crisp military salute, before igniting the fuel with a lighter

MIB

Feds seize family grocery store's entire bank account!

terry dehko
Terry Dehko and his family have owned and operated the Schott's Market for 35 years.
Can the government use civil forfeiture to take your money when you have done nothing wrong - and then pocket the proceeds? The IRS thinks so.

For over 30 years, Terry Dehko has successfully run a grocery store in Fraser, Mich., with his daughter Sandy. In January 2013, without warning, the federal government used civil forfeiture to seize all of the money from the Dehkos' store bank account (more than $35,000) even though they've done absolutely nothing wrong. Their American Dream is now a nightmare.

Federal civil forfeiture law features an appalling lack of due process: It empowers the government to seize private property from Americans without ever charging, let alone convicting, them of a crime. Perversely, the government then pockets the proceeds while providing no prompt way to get a court to review the seizure.

On September 25, 2013, Terry and Sandy teamed up with the Institute for Justice to fight back in federal court. A victory will vindicate not just their right to be free from abusive forfeiture tactics, but the right of every American not to have their property wrongfully seized by government.

Cell Phone

A new telemarketer tactic: Impersonating teachers

Operator
© iStock

Caller ID isn't always what it appears, and increasingly, criminal telemarketers are taking advantage of that. Aggressive phone sales operators have pretended to be the IRS, and they've pretended to be charities, but apparently they've developed a new tactic recently - impersonating teachers, calling parents at home during the school day.

A flurry of calls starting last week arrived at consumers' homes with "Teachers Phone" shown in the Caller ID displays. But those who answer don't hear about a sick or misbehaving child, recipients say.

"It was a prerecorded message from 'credit card services,'" wrote one victim on a telemarketing calls complaints page.

"There was a prerecorded female voice claiming to be from my credit card company saying that there was a limited-time offer to get a new credit card with a 6.9% APR," said another.

The calls come from a telephone number that is allegedly in Brooklyn, N.Y., though that number could also be spoofed. Calls placed to it produce only a busy signal.

USA

Texas kid learns lesson the hard way


  • One Killeen boy had to learn a lesson the hard way at Ft. Hood Street and W. Veterans Memorial Boulevard today. A 4th grader spent the afternoon holding a sign that says "I am a bully. Honk if you hate bullies."

    His father, Jose Lagares, says he came up with the punishment after his son got in trouble for bullying several times at school.

    "Bullying is also a form of public humiliation. Maybe he understands that when he humiliates someone publicly that doesn't feel good," said Lagares,

    "Hopefully he'll take that with him so the next time he tries to bully someone he'll think about it twice."

    Lagares says most passerbys gave him positive feedback.

    Stormtrooper

    Capitol Hill murder and America's trigger-happy cops

    Miriam Carey
    This photo shows Miriam Carey with her child, who was present at her mother's shooting, and now has to live a life without her thanks to the Capitol Police
    The family of Miriam Carey, the mentally disturbed woman who was shot by police up on Capitol Hill last week, has been on TV demanding answers about why she was shot.

    Ms Carey, 34, died in a hail of gunfire after she led police on a high speed car chase from the White House up to Congress, failing to stop at least twice when officers pointed their guns at her. Here 18-month-old daughter was in the back of the car when her mother was killed.

    You could argue, that anyone who behaves like that in an area as sensitive as Capitol Hill gets what's coming to them, but if you're mentally disturbed (she to have believed Barack Obama was stalking her) then by definition you are not rational.

    This woman did not have a gun. She did not wave anything that looked like a gun at police, so far as we know - and if she had, you can bet the police would have made a big deal of it. She certainly did not fire at the police. And yet they still gunned her down.

    Was this really necessary? Was there really no other way to stop that car? Clearly it needed to be stopped, as this woman was a danger to pedestrians, if nothing else.


    Comment: More than Carey's driving, the police shots were obviously more dangerous to the pedestrians present, injuring one of their colleagues.


    Given the concrete barriers that protect access to the Capitol buildings themselves, she was never going to get in there so what about deploying a "stinger" - one of those spiky thing that shreds a car's tires? Or using other cars to ram her off the road?

    Comment: Since empires hoping to turn into police states depend on a very fearful populace, these trigger-happy cops are not only undisciplined but encouraged to act this way by the state itself. The very state that protects them every time they murder an innocent citizen and gives them the incentive to do it again, knowing they will get away with it.

    For a good analysis, read: Why TSA, wars, state defined diets, seat-belt laws, the war on drugs, police brutality, and efforts to control the internet, are essential to the state


    Question

    Former NYPD sergeant questions sister's killing by Capitol Police

    Carey sisters
    Valarie (L) and Amy Carey, sisters of Miriam Carey, the woman involved in the Capitol Hill shooting, attend a news conference outside their home in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Oct. 4, 2013.
    The Connecticut woman who led police on a high-speed chase near the U.S. Capitol before being shot dead was a loving mother who had dreams of being a teacher and a dentist - not a criminal, her sisters told ABC News.

    Miriam Carey, 34, of Stamford, was killed by police Thursday after trying to ram her black Infiniti into a White House gate and leading cops on a chase down Pennsylvania Avenue with her 1-year-old daughter in the car. The toddler was uninjured and placed in police custody.

    But Carey's sisters said the woman they knew was not violent. Instead, Miriam Carey was suffering from post-partum depression with psychosis.

    "She had no political agenda. She didn't hate her country. She wasn't a terrorist," Amy Carey Jones, a registered nurse, told ABC News. "She was on medication."

    While police did not find weapons in Carey's car, her sister, Valarie Carey, said Miriam's illness may have influenced her erratic behavior. But the incident raised questions as to whether police handled the situation appropriately.

    Handcuffs

    Lockheed Martin meddling in Canadian census data: WW II veteran Audrey Tobias, census objector, in court

    89-year-old peace advocate Audrey Tobias objects to Lockheed Martin work on census


    An 89-year-old Toronto woman who is a Second World War veteran will return to court next week to hear the verdict in a case where she has been charged with refusing to fill out the 2011 census form.

    Audrey Tobias faces a criminal charge under the Statistics Act, which makes refusing or neglecting to fill in the census form an offence punishable by a $500 fine and up to three months in prison.

    Her case began Thursday morning inside a packed Toronto courtroom. Supporters greeted Tobias with applause when she took the stand.

    The CBC's Charlsie Agro reported that Tobias arrived wearing her best suit and was adamant that she would not pay a

    Phoenix

    More madness in D.C. as man sets himself aflame in Mall, near Capitol

    Image
    A man reportedly set himself on fire on the National Mall this afternoon and was airlifted to a hospital.

    Police were called to respond to the emergency at 4.24pm and the fire was put out. The latest reports say that the man is in critical condition but his identity has still not been released.

    The man has not been named, but DC Police reportedly said that he was conscious and breathing.

    Witnesses said that they saw him sitting on the Mall, dousing himself with gasoline which he had in a gas canister.

    Some reports say that two male bystanders initially tried to put the fire out using their own shirts while others put the number of Good Samaritans at closer to five or six people.

    'I didn't hear a word from him,' witness Adam Stifel told CNN.

    'He had already doused himself with gasoline, I saw his gas can.'

    Health

    14 killed, 24 injured in Mexico bus crash

    Bus crash in Mexico City
    © Unknown
    At least 14 people have died and 24 others have been injured in a bus crash on the outskirts of Mexico City.

    The accident took place on a highway that links the Mexico state capital of Toluca to Mexico City's northwestern suburb of Naucalpan at around 6:38 am local time (1130 GMT) on Friday.

    The bus, which was packed with morning commuters, hurtled down a hillside and left 14, including a child, dead.
    "There wasn't a collision with another vehicle, but instead the bus veered off the asphalt and plunged down the mountainside about 100 or 120 meters," Miguel Angel Contreras, the attorney general of the State of Mexico said at a press conference following the accident.
    Two helicopters and a number of ambulances arrived at the scene as the bus was lying upside down.

    Twelve people died on the spot while one victim died of injuries in an ambulance and another in a hospital in Mexico City, officials said.

    The cause of the accident is yet unknown.

    Road accidents are one of the main causes of death in Mexico. Approximately, 4 million traffic accidents occur in Mexico that claim around 24,000 lives, which amounts to almost double the people who die from drug violence, according to AFP.