Society's ChildS


Arrow Down

Chrysler, Ford sales point to slowing demand


NBC News
Fri, 01 Jun 2012 09:45 UTC
Image
© Vehicle makersLogo's of various Automobile manufacturers.
Chrysler posted a smaller-than-expected U.S. sales gain in May, and Ford posted mixed results, suggesting industrywide demand slowed from the strong pace of the first four months.

Ford's sales rose almost 13 percent, which was below what Barclays and Edmunds.com expected but better than estimates by some other firms. Sales at Chrysler, controlled by Italy's Fiat , rose 30 percent to a five-year high for the month, but fell short of expectations.

General Motors sales rose 11 percent on strong sales of trucks and the new, pint-size Chevrolet Sonic.

GM sold 245,256 cars and trucks in May, its highest monthly total since the Cash for Clunkers deal in August 2009.

Sales of small cars rose 16 percent compared with last May thanks to the Sonic subcompact. Buick sales rose 19 percent due to demand for the new Verano small car.

Comment: The article seems like a mixed batch of data. The title says slowing demand, which is likely in the future, but the data shows increased sales by several of the automakers through May. Strange as it is, I guess when we're speaking of the economy the numbers can never be considered solids (?).

Read More...
Crusader

'I could do anything with him that I wanted': In his own chilling words, pedophile priest gives harrowing account of how he abused 17 young boys


DailyMail.co.uk
Fri, 01 Jun 2012 10:34 UTC
Image
© UnknownDisgraced: Former priest and convicted sex offender, Robert Van Handel
The priest always started his favorite 'game' by having the young boy remove his underwear and put on loose-fitting shorts so he could fondle him more easily.

Then, the Rev. Robert Van Handel would run his hands up and down the child's body as he stretched across his lap, Walkman headphones on his ears, pretending to be asleep.

The recollection appears in a 27-page 'sexual history' written by Van Handel, a defrocked Franciscan cleric who is accused of molesting at least 17 boys, including his own 5-year-old nephew, local children in his boys' choir and students at the seminary boarding school where he taught.

The essay, penned for a therapy assignment and kept secret for years, provides a shockingly candid and detailed window into the troubled mind of a notorious pedophile priest.
Read More...
Arrow Down

Global markets go into meltdown: unemployment surges to record highs across Eurozone

Robin Emmott
Reuters
Fri, 01 Jun 2012 09:18 UTC
Image
© Reuters/Vincent WestPeople look at job offers at the Clara Campoamor centre in Barakaldo during an annual open day in which local council organization Inguralde arrange interviews between job seekers and businesses, May 17, 2012.
Euro zone unemployment has hit a record high, and job losses are likely to keep climbing as the bloc's devastating debt crisis eats away at businesses' ability to hire workers while indebted governments continue to cut staff.

Around 17.4 million people were out of work in the 17-nation euro zone in April, or 11 percent of the working population, the highest level since records began in 1995, the EU's statistics office Eurostat said on Friday.

"This 11 percent level is going to continue edging up in the coming months and probably until the end of the year," said Francois Cabau, an economist at Barclays Capital who sees the euro zone's economy contracting 0.1 percent this year.

"The economic activity situation tells you the story of the labor market. There's been basically no economic growth since the fourth quarter of last year and indicators are pointing to very weak growth momentum for the second quarter," he said.
Read More...
People

Wasting Time Is New Divide in Digital Era

Matt Richtel
The New York Times
Fri, 01 Jun 2012 00:50 UTC
In the 1990s, the term "digital divide" emerged to describe technology's haves and have-nots. It inspired many efforts to get the latest computing tools into the hands of all Americans, particularly low-income families.

Those efforts have indeed shrunk the divide. But they have created an unintended side effect, one that is surprising and troubling to researchers and policy makers and that the government now wants to fix.

As access to devices has spread, children in poorer families are spending considerably more time than children from more well-off families using their television and gadgets to watch shows and videos, play games and connect on social networking sites, studies show.

This growing time-wasting gap, policy makers and researchers say, is more a reflection of the ability of parents to monitor and limit how children use technology than of access to it.
Read More...
Pistol

Shooter's guns traced to shop where 2002 D.C. sniper got rifle

Chris Ingalls & Liza Javier
KING5 News
Thu, 31 May 2012 20:15 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Many people are asking how a man with mental issues like Seattle shooter Ian Stawicki gets his hands on a gun.

Investigators have traced the guns through a federal database and discovered Stawicki purchased handguns earlier this year at Bullseye Shooter Supply in Tacoma. Preliminary information shows the sale was legal because Stawicki had no felonies or restrictions to buy firearms.

Bullseye made national headlines in 2002 following the D.C. sniper killings that left 10 people dead. A trace of the bushmaster rifle that John Muhammed and Lee Malvo trained on innocent civilians revealed that it came from Bullseye.

Subsequent ATF audits showed that Bullseye had lost track of hundreds of guns in its inventory and couldn't verify that background checks had been run on buyers.

Bullseye store manager said Thursday she has been told not to comment on the case. Owner Chris Kindshuh, who did not own Bullseye in 2002, did not return calls.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms would only confirm that it performed the gun trace. It said, by law, it can't comment on the results of that trace. That information will have to come from the Seattle Police Department, who declined to comment on Thursday.
Read More...
Briefcase

Rapist who held student hostage for 13 hours has jail term reduced

Author
STV
Wed, 23 May 2012 19:02 UTC
A man who held armed police at bay while repeatedly raping a student has succeeded in his attempt to have his minimum sentence cut.

Sean McKay, 43, was jailed for life in 2008 after being convicted of carrying out the 13-hour ordeal.

Judge Lord Kinclaven gave him a Lifelong Restriction Order which means he can only be released if a parole board decides he is no longer a threat to the public.

At the time of sentencing, Lord Kinclaven set a minimum sentence of nine years before he could be considered for release.

During his trial, the court heard McKay held his 27-year-old victim prisoner at his flat in Edinburgh's Abbeyhill on January 23, 2008.
Read More...
Stop

Tibetan Mother Sets Herself Ablaze, Dies; Hundreds Of Tibetans Detained In Lhasa

Amrutha Gayathri
international Business Times
Thu, 31 May 2012 18:15 UTC
Chinese security officials have detained hundreds of Tibetans in Lhasa following multiple self-immolation protests against the Chinese control over Tibet, a US-based broadcaster reported Thursday.

About 600 Tibetans had been detained since the Sunday's protests in Lhasa in which two Tibetan men set themselves on fire, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported citing sources who wished to remain anonymous.

The detention came amid news that a Tibetan mother of three set herself on fire outside a monastery in Aba country in the Sichuan province.

Two young men had earlier set themselves ablaze in front of Lhasa's famed Jokhang Temple, Chinese news agency Xinhua reported.

Over 35 Tibetans had set themselves on fire since March 2011 in the deadly protest against the six-decades of Chinese rule over Tibet, killing at least 27, Reuters reported citing Tibetan rights groups.
Read More...
Blackbox

Engineering student, 21, 'stabbed and dismembered his roommate with knife then ate his brain and heart'

Beth Stebner
DailyMail.co.uk
Thu, 31 May 2012 17:00 UTC
Image
© UnknownGrisly crime: Alexander Kinyua, an electrical engineering student at Morgan State University, told police that he murdered roommate Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie, and ate his heart and parts of his brain
A 21-year-old electrical engineering student has been charged with first-degree murder after parts of a man's dismembered body were found in his home a week after the man first went missing.

Alexander Kinyua confessed to police that he also ate his roommate's heart and portions of the brain after killing him in their Joppa, Maryland town home.

This is the second deeply disturbing report of cannibalism to sweep the nation within a week. In the first, 'Miami Cannibal' Rudy Eugene tore off and ate most of the face of down-and-out homeless man Ronald Poppo.

The Hartford County Sheriff's office said they found the body parts while searching the town home on Terrapin Terrace in Joppa, Maryland, northeast of Baltimore, after receiving a tip from Kinyua's father.

Police also found a human head and hands in metal tins on the house's main floor, the Baltimore Sun reported.

According to charging documents, Kinyua admitted to eating Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie's heart and part of his brain after stabbing him to death.

Kinyua then directed police to Towne Baptist Church on Trimble Road, where they said they found the rest of Agyei-Kodie's remains.
Read More...
Alarm Clock

Flashback Mother Eats Own Child's Brain


Msnbc.msn.com
Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:21 UTC
Texas woman accused of killing infant son, then eating child's brain

Image
© Eva Ruth Moravec/Associated PressSan Antonio police investigate a home where a 3 1/2-week-old baby boy was stabbed in and decapitated in San Antonio.
The scene was so gruesome investigators could barely speak: A 3 1/2-week-old boy lay dismembered in the bedroom of a single-story house, three of his tiny toes chewed off, his face torn away, his head severed and his brains ripped out.

"At this particular scene you could have heard a pin drop," San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said Monday. "No one was speaking. It was about as somber as it could have been."

Officers called to the home early Sunday found the boy's mother, Otty Sanchez, sitting on the couch with a self-inflicted wound to her chest and her throat partially slashed, screaming "I killed my baby! I killed my baby!" police said. She told officers the devil made her do it, police said.
Read More...
Stormtrooper

Police violently arrest 14 protesters at Minnesota foreclosed home


Press TV
Thu, 31 May 2012 15:48 UTC
Image
Members of Occupy Minnesota are accusing police of abusing their power by using physical violence to arrest demonstrators peacefully protesting at a foreclosed home in Minneapolis.

"In the latest incident in an ongoing showdown, officers violently arrested occupiers peacefully defending the Cruz family home from foreclosure Wednesday night," according to a statement from Occupy Homes Minnesota.

Protesters said police officers, including Minneapolis Chief Tim Dolan, were carrying large batons and using physical violence to arrest 14 protesters.

"The banks are stealing our homes through illegal and fraudulent practices while refusing to work with families, and they are aided and abetted by the mayor and police," Nick Espinosa, who was arrested on Wednesday, explained. "If anyone should be arrested it's the bankers that crashed our economy while paying themselves record bonuses with our tax dollars."

Source: Rawstory
Read More...