Society's ChildS


Bizarro Earth

Man gets ear lobe bitten off and swallowed by cousin during fight about loud music

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© pixabay
Police in Connecticut say a city man bit off his cousin's ear lobe and swallowed it during a fight over loud music.

Officers in Stamford charged 27-year-old Emilio Mendoza with first-degree assault and other crimes early Monday morning in connection with the attack on his cousin, 29-year-old Ruiz Clemente-Perez.

Clemente-Perez told police that he asked Mendoza to turn down his loud music because he had to work in the morning, but Mendoza started punching him in the head. During the brawl, Mendoza allegedly bit off part of Clemente-Perez's left ear and swallowed it.

Officers say Clemente-Perez was bleeding and missing part of his ear when they arrived. He also suffered a broken nose and fractured eye socket.

Mendoza is detained on $100,000 bail. It's unclear if he has a lawyer.

Health

Ex-Penn basketball star stabbed to death allegedly by wife

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Matthew White and his wife Maria Rey Garcia-Pellon
The wife of a former University of Pennsylvania basketball star is charged with stabbing her husband to death in bed, according to court records.

Matthew White, 53, of Nether Providence, Delaware County, was asleep in their rancher when his wife, Maria Rey Garcia-Pellon stabbed him in the neck in the early hours on Monday, the records say.

According to the records, Garcia-Pellon went in the kitchen in the couple's home on the 800 block of Parkridge Drive, sometime around midnight. There, she retrieved a glass of water and two knives.

She returned to the bedroom and slipped the knives under her side of the bed. She took one of the knives out as her husband was asleep.

She stabbed him in the neck, the records allege.

White awoke and the two struggled briefly before he collapsed of his wounds.

"I'm dying, I'm dying," he said, according to the court filing.

Bad Guys

Angry fans torch Jerusalem soccer offices over signing of two Muslim players

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© AFP Photo
The torching of Beitar Jerusalem's offices by fans angry at the signing of two Muslim players has sparked a major outcry which both supporters and ex-players hope could end decades of open racism at the club.

Friday morning's arson attack, which caused heavy damage to a room used as the club's museum, came just hours after prosecutors filed charges against four fans accused of racist chants aimed at the two new players from Chechnya.

Along with trophies, pictures and other memorabilia, a pair of boots and a jersey worn by former Beitar and Israel star Eli Ohana went up in smoke.

But for Ohana it will be a small price to pay if it ends up spelling an end to years of xenophobia.

Ambulance

9-year-old boy killed, 2 wounded by man randomly shooting at cars

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A 9-year-old boy was killed and at least two others were wounded on Monday night in Minnesota by a man who police say was randomly shooting at cars.

The Pioneer Press reported that 34-year-old Nhan Lap Tran had been arrested and was being held on suspicion of murder after the shooting rampage in Oakdale.

A woman who asked not to be named said that she was driving home when a man walking in road the began riddling her car with bullets.

"He was just walking diagonally down the middle of the street. Then he turned toward me and just started firing," the woman said. "He was just walking, not even running... It was crazy."

Attention

Stranded cruise goer's husband: She said 'there's feces all over the floor'

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The husband of a passenger onboard a stranded cruise ship told CNN host Soledad O'Brien on Tuesday that his wife and the other cruise goers had to abandon their cabins to avoid getting sick.

"She said the water pipes are breaking and toilets are overflowing, and there's feces all over the floor," Brent Nutt said.

CNN reported that the "Carnival Triumph" is just beginning to be towed back to Texas after an engine fire stranded it about 150 miles off the Mexican coastline on Sunday. It is expected to return to port on Thursday.

Nutt, whose wife and sister-in-law are onboard, said his wife told him she was fearful for her life at one point.

Nuke

Coroner says Coca-Cola addiction responsible for woman's death

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ADDICTED: Natasha Harris didn't like being without the fizzy drink.
Drinking too much Coke helped kill mother of eight Natasha Harris, the coroner has found.

Harris drank up to 10 litres of Coke every day - equal to more than twice the recommended safe daily limit of caffeine and almost one kilogram of sugar.

She died aged 30, on February 25, 2010, from a cardiac arrest. Her partner, Christopher Hodgkinson, found her seated on the toilet, slumped against the wall and gasping for air.

Coca-Cola has argued that the huge quantities of Coke drunk daily by Harris day could not be proven to have contributed to her death.

Attention

Hong Kong food prices rise more than 100 percent since 2007

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© Felix WongThe prices of some common foods have surged by over 100 per cent across Hong Kong since 2007, according to a Labour Party survey.
The prices of some common foods such as rice and beef have surged by over 100 per cent across Hong Kong since 2007 - far outpacing the 18-per-cent growth in income of public housing residents in that period - a Labour Party survey has found.

The party said on Monday that its survey compared prices and income from 2007 to last month.

It found that one of the city's poorest areas - Tin Shui Wai - has the most expensive food, with pork and beef prices more than 50 per cent dearer than in other districts.

Tam Chun-yin, the party's community officer, called for the government to introduce a negative income tax to subsidise people earning below a certain amount, to help them survive amid high inflation.

Arrow Down

Bogus emergency alert message transmitted, warns of zombie apocalypse


Someone apparently hacked into the Emergency Alert System and announced on KRTV and the CW that there was an emergency in several Montana counties.

This message did not originate from KRTV, and there is no emergency.

Our engineers are investigating to determine what happened and if it affected other media outlets.

Alarm Clock

Worse than Obama's kill list? American support for it

Obama
© Reuters
Survey shows Obama has done little to rescue civil liberties from predecessor's damage and much to deepen concern

The headline introducing a new poll conducted on behalf of The Hill newspaper reads: Voters: Obama no better than Bush on security vs civil liberties.

But is that the real takeaway from the survey?

For long-time critics of Obama's handling of numerous policies left over from his predecessor George W. Bush, that assessment won't be especially shocking. From his failure to close the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, to his signing of the controversial National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and the recent alarm caused by a leaked "white paper" summarizing aspects of key Office of Legal Council memos that describe the legal basis for targeting individuals for assassination by drone (both foreign nationals and U.S. citizens), the Obama administration has little to boast about regarding its record on civil liberties.

Perhaps more troubling than the disappointment of once hopeful Obama supporters, however, is the degree to which the poll reveals how comfortable many US citizens are with some of the most aggressive techniques that the government now justifies as being necessary to fight the so-called and ongoing 'global war on terror.'

Dollar

File under ridiculous: Perfume for babies

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© thelostogle.com
The market for luxury baby products is on the rise, with sales of premium products for kids age 0 to 2 up 8.6 percent from 2000 to 2012, and projected to increase another 7.6 percent by 2016. While items like the $1500 Bugaboo stroller, the $300+ Tiffany rattle, and the price-available-on-request Hermes rocking horse may just be cause for an eye roll and a snort, the latest premium baby trend - baby perfumes - is slightly more concerning.

In the last year or so several baby perfumes have made their way to market, ranging from the $6-a-bottle Johnson& Johnson offering to the $58-a-bottle Bulgari eau de toilette. There's a Burberry option as well, and Dolce & Gabbana recently became the latest brand to launch a fragrance aimed at babies, claiming that its honey, citrus and musk scent will "accentuate" the naturally lovely smell of babies.

Plenty of media outlets have already commented on the ridiculousness of the trend and voiced concern over the marketing of luxury baby goods, but there's more to it than that. Fragrance typically contains a cocktail of various chemicals that can be problematic for children, particularly babies. And because of a nifty U.S. regulatory loophole, the manufacturers of fragrances - even those made for babies - do not have to disclose the ingredients of their products; they can invoke trade secret legislation that dates back to the days when old-school alchemists mixed flower extracts and essential oils to develop unique fragrances and there weren't high-tech labs around to reverse engineer any fragrance a company decided it wanted to duplicate.