Society's Child

UK rejects EU call for city centre ban on petrol cars

BBC News
Mon, 28 Mar 2011 08:42 UTC

The UK has rejected proposals from the EU which call for a ban on petrol and diesel cars from city centres by 2050.

The European Commission said phasing out "conventionally fuelled" cars from urban areas would cut reliance on oil and help cut carbon emissions by 60%.

But UK Transport Minister Norman Baker said it should not be "involved" in individual cities' transport choices.

"We will not be banning cars from city centres anymore than we will be having rectangular bananas," he said.

Outlining plans for a "Single European Transport Area", the Commission said there needed to be a "profound shift" in travel patterns to reduce reliance on oil and to lower emissions from transport by 60% by 2050.

UK: Anarchists 'plan to target royal wedding'

Steven Swinford & Tom Whitehead
The Telegraph, UK
Sun, 27 Mar 2011 04:36 UTC

© Agence France-Presse
Police warned that anarchists would be 'deliberately targeting' the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton

Violent anarchists who rampaged through London during anti-cuts protests are planning to target the royal wedding, police intelligence have suggested.

Scotland Yard officers are working urgently to identify the extremists who clashed with police and attacked landmarks on Saturday before they can strike again.

Commander Bob Broadhurst, the head of public order for the Metropolitan Police, warned that the anarchists would be "deliberately targeting" the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton on April 29.

"The concern for me is that they do what they did yesterday in central London and divert resources away from my security plan and take our eye off the ball security wise," he said.

Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, was under fire last night for speaking at the TUC march, during which the violence occurred. Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, said Mr Miliband would have been "quietly satisfied" by the chaos and claimed it was not surprising there was violence as Labour was failing to offer any alternative to the cuts.

The weekend's rally against the Government's austerity drive was marred by splinter groups who attacked officers and targeted shops and hotels. Mobs of masked anarchists pelted officers with sticks, paint bombs and fireworks loaded with coins.

Comment: Readers are encouraged to read this article, to get a better idea of who is most likely behind the 'anarchist' groups.

US: New York City Family Sues Facebook Over Image Of Daughter's Corpse

CBS News
Mon, 28 Mar 2011 10:00 UTC

The outraged family of a local murder victim is taking on Facebook.

It was a paramedic who took the crime scene photos, and posted them on the site, but is Facebook, itself, to blame?

It's a case of what the family is calling "disrespecting the dead," reports CBS 2's John Slattery.

Martha and Ronald Wimmer think that the photographing and posting of their daughter's brutalized body is just more than they can stand.

"This is on the second anniversary of our daughter's death. I just want to get by, day by day," Martha Wimmer said.

Her daughter, 26-year-old Caroline Wimmer, was strangled with an electric cord. The convicted killer, Calvin Lawson, got 25 to life. One of the first on the scene, former emergency medical technician Mark Musarella, used his cell phone camera to snap a grisly photo of the corpse, which he then uploaded to Facebook. He pleaded guilty to official misconduct and lost his job.

A civil suit now names Musarella and Facebook.

'Death Squad': Full horror emerges of how rogue U.S. brigade murdered and mutilated innocent Afghan civilians - and kept their body parts as trophies

Daniel Bates and Mark Duell
The Daily Mail, UK
Mon, 28 Mar 2011 08:06 UTC

Rolling Stone reveals how U.S. troops murdered Afghan civilians

Soldiers cut off 15-year-old boy's finger and kept it as trophy

Video captures U.S. troops cheering as airstrike kills two Afghan civilians

New pictures show dead Afghan man's head on a stick

Soldier stabbed the body of a dead Afghan civilian

Military tried to pull pictures out of circulation to avoid another Abu Ghraib

Army says photos are 'in striking contrast' to its standards and values

The Pentagon tonight apologised after shocking new details emerged of how American soldiers formed a 'death squad' to randomly murder Afghan civilians and mutilate their corpses.

An investigation by Rolling Stone magazine details how senior officers failed to stop troops killing Afghans and keeping their body parts as trophies.

In one horrific episode, the magazine claims troops threw a grenade at an innocent Afghan boy before chopped off his finger and later using it as 'gambling chip' in a game of cards.

The disturbing detail included in the dossier accuses American troops of a new level of depravity and is likely to be a public relations disaster for the military.

The U.S. Army says the photos of American soldiers posing with dead Afghans are 'in striking contrast' to its standards and values - apologising for any distress caused by the images.

© Rolling Stone
Dead: Afghans are tied to a post in one of the many images published by Rolling Stone from the 'Kill Team'

Doctors Warn About 'Facebook Depression' In Teens

Lindsey Tanner
CBS News
Mon, 28 Mar 2011 06:15 UTC

Add "Facebook depression" to potential harms linked with social media, an influential doctors' group warns, referring to a condition it says may affect troubled teens who obsess over the online site.

A New Condition?

Researchers disagree on whether it's simply an extension of depression some kids feel in other circumstances, or a distinct condition linked with using the online site.

But there are unique aspects of Facebook that can make it a particularly tough social landscape to navigate for kids already dealing with poor self-esteem, said Dr. Gwenn O'Keeffe, a Boston-area pediatrician and lead author of new American Academy of Pediatrics social media guidelines.

With in-your-face friends' tallies, status updates and photos of happy-looking people having great times, Facebook pages can make some kids feel even worse if they think they don't measure up.

EU to ban cars from cities by 2050

Bruno Waterfield
The Telegraph, UK
Mon, 28 Mar 2011 00:00 UTC

© Alamy
Top of the EU's list to cut climate change emissions is a target of 'zero' for the number of petrol and diesel-driven cars and lorries in the EU's future cities

Cars will be banned from London and all other cities across Europe under a draconian EU masterplan to cut CO2 emissions by 60 per cent over the next 40 years.

The European Commission on Monday unveiled a "single European transport area" aimed at enforcing "a profound shift in transport patterns for passengers" by 2050.

The plan also envisages an end to cheap holiday flights from Britain to southern Europe with a target that over 50 per cent of all journeys above 186 miles should be by rail.

Top of the EU's list to cut climate change emissions is a target of "zero" for the number of petrol and diesel-driven cars and lorries in the EU's future cities.

Siim Kallas, the EU transport commission, insisted that Brussels directives and new taxation of fuel would be used to force people out of their cars and onto "alternative" means of transport.

"That means no more conventionally fuelled cars in our city centres," he said. "Action will follow, legislation, real action to change behaviour."

US: Border agent shot man in back 3 times

Amanda Lee Myers
Associated Press
Mon, 28 Mar 2011 19:28 UTC

Phoenix, Arizona - A Mexican man was climbing a ladder at an Arizona-Mexico border wall when a Border Patrol agent fatally shot him three times in the back, a sheriff's spokeswoman told The Associated Press on Monday.

Cochise County sheriff's investigators have no indication that Carlos La Madrid, 19, assaulted or tried to assault the agent when he was shot March 21, said agency spokeswoman Carol Capas.

La Madrid had fled police in the Arizona border city of Douglas in a truck and drove to the border with Mexico. He was climbing a ladder and trying to cross the border, and another man atop the wall began throwing rocks at the pursuing agent, Capas said.

US: Sheriff: Fla. teen with gun charged after pistol-whipping mother, forcing her to buy her a car

The Associated Press
Mon, 28 Mar 2011 22:18 UTC

Authorities in southwest Florida say a 17-year-old girl pointed a gun at her mother, pistol-whipped her and forced her to drive to a dealership to buy her a used car.

The sheriff's office in Lee County said Monday that the teen has been charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill, among other counts, and was being held at a juvenile detention centre. The Associated Press doesn't identify minors charged with juvenile crimes.

According to officials, the mother said she didn't want to press charges because her daughter had been accepted to several Ivy League schools.

Authorities said they decided to arrest the teenager after learning that the gun had been stolen last year. The teen was not charged in that crime.

Vanishing act by Japanese executive during nuclear crisis raises questions

Andrew Higgins
The Washington Post
Mon, 28 Mar 2011 16:46 UTC

Tokyo - In normal times, Masataka Shimizu lives in The Tower, a luxury high rise in the same upscale Tokyo district as the U.S. Embassy. But he hasn't been there for more than two weeks, according to a uniformed doorman.

The Japanese public hasn't seen much of him recently either. Shimizu, the president of Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco, the company that owns a haywire nuclear power plant just 150 miles from the capital, is the most invisible - and also most reviled - chief executive in Japan.

Amid rumors that Shimizu had fled the country, checked into hospital or even committed suicide, company officials said Monday that their boss suffered an unspecified "small illness" due to overwork after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake sent a tsunami crashing onto his company's Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power station.

Latest helicopter footage of Fukushima

YouTube
Mon, 28 Mar 2011 16:31 UTC

Workers are still battling to contain radiation leaks at a nuclear plant severely damaged by the disaster. Japan's nuclear agency says levels of radioactive iodine in the sea near the plant have risen to almost two thousand times the usual level.