Society's ChildS


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Canada: Swarming Bees Close Alberta Highway


CBC News
Thu, 04 Aug 2011 05:29 UTC
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© RCMPA beekeeper walks through the remains of more than 100 beehives after a highway crash southeast of Edmonton Thursday.
Police closed a rural Alberta highway Thursday morning after a truck carrying a shipment of honeybees skidded off the road, spilling its load.

The truck was headed west on Highway 13 between Camrose and Killam, southeast of Edmonton, when the driver rolled the flatbed truck onto its side, strewing 104 beehives across the road.

As bees swarmed the highway, RCMP rerouted traffic around the scene.

However, the swarming bees made the cleanup all but impossible.
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Alarm Clock

Polygamist Warren Jeffs guilty of sexual assaults on girls

Guy Adams
Independent.co.uk
Thu, 04 Aug 2011 19:24 UTC
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© The Associated Press / The Canadian Press / Tony GutierrezTexas Attorney General Greg Abbott, second from left, arrives at Tom Green County Courthouse for the sexual assault trial against Polygamist religious leader Warren Jeffs Thursday Aug. 4, 2011, in San Angelo, Texas. Jeffs, 55, is accused of sexually assaulting two girls he took as brides during so-called "spiritual marriages."
Warren Jeffs, the leader of a polygamist sect whose radical private life put him for a brief time on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, was facing the prospect of life imprisonment last night, after a jury in Texas found him guilty of sexually assaulting two under-age girls.

The self-proclaimed prophet, who has entered into "spiritual marriages" with more than 100 women, was convicted of fathering a child with one "wife" who was 15, and of abusing a different girl, who was 12, on a ranch owned by his Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in rural west Texas.

Jeffs, 55, stood silently when the verdict was read out, leaving him facing up to 119 years behind bars. It capped a bizarre trial at which he conducted his own defence, refused to cross-examine prosecution witnesses, and repeatedly told the judge that God intended to punish him with death for the manner in which he was overseeing the case.

Prosecutors used DNA evidence to show that Jeffs was the father of a girl born to a 15-year-old member of his sect, which has roughly 10,000 members. And they played the court in San Angelo several audio recordings in which he instructed young women how to gratify him sexually.

In one of the tapes, which was made by surveillance officers at the Texas ranch, Jeffs made a reference to "drawing close" or "being close", which authorities testified is how church members refer to sex. After two female voices said "OK", he added: "A good wife is trained for her husband and follows the spirit of peace."
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Eye 2

Best of the Web: French Deviance? Outrage over shocking images of the 10-YEAR-OLD model who has graced the pages of Vogue

Sadie Whitelocks
Mail Online
Thu, 04 Aug 2011 18:07 UTC
She reclines among leopard print pillows, her rouged lips pouting at the camera. But shockingly the model in these highly sexualised pictures is only 10 years old.
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© VogueThylane Loubry Blondeau
The provocative images of Thylane Lena-Rose Blondeau, who is tipped as the next big thing on the fashion scene, are causing a storm of controversy with campaigners furious that a child so young should be displaying the sexual allure of someone twice her age.

Thylane has appeared in numerous campaigns and her image is all over the internet. To date she has an impressive portfolio - the French girl has graced the cover of Vogue Enfants and posed for high-end editorials.

Born in the Ivory Coast, she has already been compared to Sixties siren Brigitte Bardot - who at the age of 15 appeared in ELLE.

But these latest images, complete with heavy make-up and stiletto heels, which appear in French magazine Cadeaux, have brought the issue to a head.

Comment: Notice that she is French and it is the French that are behind this trend. Do we wonder why they have recently gone after SOTT and it's founder via the actions of a sexual pervert and pedophile for our exposure of psychopathology in power? The French Connection Redux - Cult Accusations and The Deviant Mind

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Arrow Down

U.S.: Stock Market Bloodbath: Dow Plunges 513 Points on Fear


MoneyNews.com
Thu, 04 Aug 2011 16:03 UTC
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© Unknown

Fears about the global economy led to the biggest panic in financial markets since the 2008 financial crisis.

The Dow plunged nearly 513 points Thursday, its biggest point decline since Oct. 22, 2008. Only three of the 500 stocks in the Standard & Poor's 500 index had gains. Oil fell by 6 percent. The yield on the two-year Treasury note hit a record low as investors sought out relatively stable investments.

All three major stock indexes are down 10 percent or more from their previous highs, a drop-off that is considered to be a market correction. A drop of 20 percent or more signifies the start of a bear market, an extended period of stock declines.

Investors are increasingly concerned about the possibility of another recession in the U.S. and a debt crisis in Europe.
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Bad Guys

US - Massachusetts Mom accused of punching toddler son on MBTA bus


Whdh.com
Thu, 04 Aug 2011 16:03 UTC

Boston - A mother accused of punching her toddler son in the mouth on a city bus and shouting expletives at him was surrounded by a "hostile" crowd of passengers until police arrived, authorities said Wednesday.

Erica Ryan pleaded not guilty Wednesday in Roxbury District Court to a charge of assault and battery on a child causing injury. Prosecutors requested bail be set at $25,000; a judge set bail at $500 and ordered Ryan to stay away from the boy.
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Hourglass

Somalia famine has killed '29,000 children' in the last 90 days


Aljazeera
Thu, 04 Aug 2011 15:54 UTC
US officials say that the famine in Somalia has killed more than 29,000 children in the last 90 days.

Separately, the UN has declared that three new regions in Somalia are famine zones, making a total of five regions affected by famine thus far in the Horn of Africa country. The UN had said last month two regions were suffering from famine.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the UN's food arm, has said that famine is likely to spread across all regions of Somalia's south in the next four to six weeks.

Famine, as defined by the UN, refers to situations when at least 20 per cent of households face food shortages so severe that they are unable to cope with it and more than two people out of 10 000 people die daily.
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Dollar

Shell faces $410M payout over Nigeria oil spills

Sylvia Pfeifer and Jane Croft
CNN
Thu, 04 Aug 2011 15:46 UTC
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Spilled crude oil floats on the waters and covers the mangroves around the Niger Delta in June 2010

London -- Royal Dutch Shell faces having to pay compensation of potentially more than £250m ($410m) after the Anglo-Dutch oil group admitted liability for two spills in Nigeria following a legal claim brought in the UK.

The agreement comes after a class-action lawsuit was brought in the High Court by the Bodo Community in the Niger Delta against Shell and its subsidiary, Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC).

Martyn Day, of law firm Leigh Day acting for the Nigerians, said that he was pleased Shell had admitted liability and agreed to concede to the English jurisdiction and court system.
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People

Child Marriage a Scourge for Millions of Girls

Lisa Anderson
Trust Law
Thu, 04 Aug 2011 09:00 UTC
Child Marriage
© REUTERS / Tanushree PunwaniFourteen-year-old child bride Lalita Saini (R) in Alsisar village, about 200 km (124 miles) north of Jaipur, India, April 25, 2007.

This story is part of a TrustLaw special report on child marriage.
  • A child is married every three seconds
  • Millions condemned to poverty and poor health
  • Children of child brides also at risk
New York - Child marriage, which steals the innocence of millions of girls worldwide and often condemns them to lives of poverty, ignorance and poor health, is one of the biggest obstacles to development, rights groups say.

A girl under the age of 18 is married every three seconds -- that's 10 million each year -- often without her consent and sometimes to a much older man, according to the children's charity Plan UK. Most of those marriages take place in Africa, the Middle East or South Asia.

"This is one of the biggest development issues of our time and we're committed to raising the voices of millions of girls married against their will," Plan UK head Marie Staunton said in her introduction to "Breaking Vows", a recent global report on child marriage.

From horrific childbirth injuries to the secret sale of "drought brides", the consequences of child marriage are explored in a multimedia documentary by TrustLaw, a legal news service run by Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"Young children have babies -- your life is ruined, your education is ruined," said Kanta Devi, who was 16 when she married in Badakakahera village in India's Rajasthan state.

"You become upset with everything in your life," she told TrustLaw.

The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child considers marriage before the age of 18 a human rights violation.

But according to the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), there are more than 50 million child brides worldwide, a number that is expected to grow to 100 million over the next decade.
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People

Minority Rules: Scientists Find the Tipping Point

Emily Sohn
Discovery News
Thu, 04 Aug 2011 07:00 UTC
Egypt
© GettyThe rapid change in the Middle East may be a good example of how opinion can be swayed.

To change the beliefs of an entire community, only 10 percent of the population needs to become convinced of a new or different opinion, suggests a new study. At that tipping point, the idea can spread through social networks and alter behaviors on a large scale.

The research is still in its early stages, and it's uncertain if the results will apply to all kinds of beliefs, particularly in tense political situations.

But the findings do provide insight into how opinions spread through communities. The model may also help experts more effectively quell misconceptions and influence the choices people make about public health behaviors and related issues.

"This is really a starting point to understand how you can cause fast change in a population," said Sameet Sreenivasan, a statistical physicist who specializes in network theory at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

"The real world has a lot more complexity, obviously," he added. "But one of the things you can take away is that if you want to cause a fast change, there is an upper bound to how many people really need to commit."
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Attention

US: Virginia Tech Lockdown Brings Back Ghost of 2007 Shooting


International Business Times
Thu, 04 Aug 2011 13:10 UTC
Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum says they received the call around 9 a.m. from Dietrick Dining Hall

The Virginia Tech campus was under lockdown, Thursday morning, after an alert posted on the official campus website warned that a gunman had been sighted in campus, bringing back memories of the 2007 shooting that left 33 dead.

According to the alert posted at 9:09 a.m., a white male, "6 feet tall, with light brown hair outside of New Residence Hall East" was seen holding what may have been a handgun, which was covered "by a cloth or covering of some sort."

However, when the security officials immediately arrived at the scene, no gunman matching the description was found. Officers, which come from at least five law enforcement agencies such as the Virginia State Police, the Blacksburg Police Department and Montgomery County Sheriff's Office, kept patrolling the campus, "continuing to look for the subject."
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