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At least 26 killed in Nigeria school massacre


RT
Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:00 UTC
Image
© Agence France-Presse
An undated picture released on the internet site of the Mubi Federal Polytechnic school shows the entrance of the premises in Mubi, northeast Nigeria.
Gunmen opened fire on students in a northeast Nigerian college, shooting some of them dead and stabbing others. Police say an Islamist extremist group could be behind the attack, but are also looking into possible links with student union elections.

­Local sources say the attackers mainly targeted students who live in rented accommodation outside the campus of the Federal Polytechnic in Mubi.

The massacre is being blamed on Islamist extremist group Boko Haram, but officials say they do not rule out the possibility of political rivalry between college groups ahead of student union elections.

The town of Mubi is located in Nigeria's troubled northeast which has seen such violence previously, including January when gunmen killed at least 12 people.
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Stop

Whitley County restaurant shut down after road kill found in kitchen

Brittany Pelletz
WYMT.TV
Fri, 28 Sep 2012 19:42 UTC
Chinese Restaurant
© WYMT.TV
Williamsburg, Kentucky - A Chinese restaurant forced to shut its doors after getting caught with a dead deer in the kitchen.

It happened Thursday afternoon at the Red Flower Chinese Restaurant in Williamsburg.

"We were actually joking about the, you know, the whole Chinese restaurant. You know some rumors that you hear," says Katie Hopkins, a customer of the Red Flower restaurant.

But, Hopkins and her friends never imaged what would happen next, after finishing up a buffet lunch.

"Two of the workers came in wheeling a garbage can and they had a box sitting on top of it. And hanging out of the garbage can, they were trying to be real quick with it. So that nobody could see it. But there was like a tail, and a foot and leg. Sticking out of the garbage can and they wheeled it straight back into the kitchen," adds Hopkins.

Hopkins immediately called the health department to describe what she saw, "Many people eat there. A lot of locals eat there on lunch breaks and stuff. It was very disturbing. There was actually a blood trail that they were mopping up behind the garbage can."

Paul Lawson, the environmental health inspector in Whitley County says this is the craziest thing he's ever seen.
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Attention

Precursor to social unrest? High food prices forecast more global riots ahead, researchers say

Maria Godoy
United Press International
Tue, 02 Oct 2012 10:13 UTC
When French peasants stormed the Bastille on July 14, 1789, they weren't just revolting against the monarchy's policies. They were also hungry. From the French Revolution to the Arab Spring, high food prices have been cited as a factor behind mass protest movements. But can food prices actually help predict when social unrest is likely break out? Yes, say a group of researchers who use mathematical modeling to describe how food prices behave. Earlier this summer, their model had predicted that the U.S. drought would push corn and wheat prices high enough to spark social unrest in other parts of the world.

"Now, of course, we do see this happening," says Yaneer Bar-Yam of the New England Complex Science Institute in Cambridge, Mass. And unless those food prices come down, the researchers warned last week, more waves of riots are coming.

Image
© Martin Bureau/AFP/Getty Images
A Tunisian protester holds a baguette while taking to riot police in January 2011

Comment: Is the food shortage before us? Will we be buying bacon and pork sausages next year?

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Arrow Up

Eurozone unemployment hits record high and reveals two-speed Europe

Matthew Sparkes
The Telegraph, UK
Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00 UTC
Eurozone unemployment has hit a record high, revealing further evidence of a two-speed Europe as increasing numbers of young people in Spain, Greece and Italy desperately seek work while Germany's jobless rate continues to fall.
Image

Troubled eurozone states Greece and Spain are seeing youth unemployment rise, but Germany has seen a fall to 8.1pc in August
The eurozone unemployment rate was 11.4pc in August, up from 10.2pc last year. Data from the EU statistics agency Eurostat estimated that 25.5m men and women were out of work over the period, 18.2m of whom were in the eurozone.

Compared with the previous month the number of unemployed people in the EU rose by 49,000 and in the eurozone by 34,000.

The overall unemployment rate in Spain has reached 25.1pc, while the latest data from Greece for June shows a figure of 24.4pc. The outlook is far more optimistic in Germany, however, where just 5.5pc of people are out of work.
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Pumpkin

Early Halloween costume brings out San Mateo bomb squad


CBS San Francisco
Mon, 01 Oct 2012 07:30 UTC
Image
© CBS News
California - A man who decided to try out his costume and dress up ahead of Halloween prompted an explosives scare in downtown San Mateo Monday that resulted in the dispatch of a police bomb squad, authorities said.

Police received several calls about a man in a car front of a market along the first block of East 4th Street wearing what witnesses described as a full gas mask and army gear with several grenades hanging around his neck.

The San Mateo County sheriff's bomb squad responded and evacuated a half-block area about 9:30 a.m.

Police detained the costumed man and said an "inert grenade" was found in his car, but they also indicated there was "no current danger" to the public.
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Clock

Moscow court postpones Pussy Riot hearing

David M. Herszenhorn
New York Times
Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00 UTC
pussy riot
© Reuters
Pussy Riot
Russia, Moscow - A Moscow appellate court postponed a hearing on Monday in the case of the punk protest band Pussy Riot after one of three defendants said that she wanted to fire her lawyers because of disagreements.

The three women, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, and Maria Alyokhina, 24, were convicted in August of hooliganism and sentenced to two years in a prison colony for staging a "punk prayer" in Moscow's main Russian Orthodox cathedral last February. They said the stunt was intended to protest against Vladimir V. Putin, who was running for president at the time, and to criticize support for Mr. Putin by the church patriarch, Kirill I.

The prosecution of the three women, two of them mothers of young children, became an international sensation, and prompted wide criticism of Russia over the suppression of political speech. The women received support from a number of major music stars, including Sting and Madonna, as well as many governments. On the day of their conviction and sentencing, supporters rallied in dozens of cities around the world, many wearing colorful balaclavas - Pussy Riot's trademark head gear.

But the judge who convicted the women, Marina Syrova, said that political comments were spliced into a video of the stunt later and that her verdict was based on the infiltration of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and the women's behavior in front of the altar, which she said amounted to "the insult and humiliation of the Christian faith and inciting religious hatred."
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Ambulance

At least 20 injured in California train crash

Gosia Wozniacka
Google
Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:00 UTC
Image
© The Associated Press/Gosia Woznicacka
Emergency personnel respond to the scene of a train derailment in Hanford, Calif., Monday, Oct. 1, 2012.
Hanford, California - Two cars and the locomotive of an Amtrak train carrying about 169 passengers derailed Monday after colliding with a big rig truck in California's Central Valley, authorities said.

At least 20 passengers suffered minor to moderate injuries, authorities said.

The 12:25 p.m. crash occurred when the driver of the tractor-trailer carrying cotton trash failed to yield and hit the train, authorities said. The impact pushed the two passenger cars and the locomotive off the tracks south of Hanford, a farming town.

The train traveled about 600 feet after the collision before hitting a switchback and derailing, according to California Highway Patrol Officer Scott Harris.

Officials have not determined how fast the train or the truck were going, but the average speed for Amtrak through the area is 70 to 80 mph, while the speed limit on the roadway where the truck was traveling is 55 mph, Harris said.

After the crash, metal pieces from the truck could be seen inside the train, which was covered by cotton seeds. Several pieces of luggage were also scattered around the area.
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Stop

U.S. to contractors: No layoff notices

Kathleen Pender
San Francisco Chronicle
Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00 UTC
US, California - The White House took another big step Friday to discourage government contractors from warning employees - just before the November elections - that they could be laid off next year if Congress can't reach a compromise to prevent automatic across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration.

In a memo, the Office of Management and Budget said the government - i.e. taxpayers - would foot the bill if contractors lay off workers as a result of sequestration and get sued for failing to provide the layoff notices required by the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.

William Gould, a Stanford Law School professor emeritus specializing in labor law, says the government's offer to pay for violations of the so-called Warn Act "so far as I'm aware is unprecedented."

The offer applies only to government contractors - not to employers who lay off workers because they lose other types of federal funding such as research grants, according to the OMB.

The Warn Act generally requires private-sector employers with 100 or more full-time employees to give workers at least 60 days' notice of plant closings and layoffs that exceed a certain threshold. If they don't, employees can sue to collect up to 60 days of back pay. There are exceptions, such as if the business can prove the layoff was the result of an "unforeseen business circumstance."
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Boat

Boat sinks off Hong Kong after collision; 36 dead

Kelvin Chan
ABC News
Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00 UTC
Image
© The Associated Press/Vincent Yu
Officials check on a half submerged boat after it collided Monday night near Lamma Island, off the southwestern coast of Hong Kong Island Tuesday Oct. 2, 2012.
Hong Kong - A boat packed with revelers on a long holiday weekend collided with a ferry and sank off Hong Kong, killing at least 36 people and injuring dozens in the deadliest accident to strike the Chinese territory in years.

The boat was carrying utility company workers and their families to famed Victoria Harbour to watch a fireworks display in celebration of China's National Day and mid-autumn festival. The two vessels collided Monday night near Lamma Island off the southwestern coast of Hong Kong Island.

The government said 36 bodies had been recovered as of Tuesday morning and the search was made difficult by low visibility and obstacles on the boat. Details about the victims were not given, though local outlet RTHK reported some of the dead were children.

More than 100 people were rescued and sent to hospitals, and nine had serious or critical injuries, the government's statement said. At least one person appeared to be missing, according to government figures.
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Handcuffs

New York college student held without bail in murder of 18-year-old coed

Joshua Rhett Miller
Fox News
Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00 UTC
Image
© Rochester Photagraphy
Clayton Whittemore, 21, was arrested Saturday and confessed to killing Alexandra Kogut, an 18-year-old freshman communications major.
A New York college student has been charged with second-degree murder in the beating death of his 18-year-old girlfriend, who was found brutally assaulted in her dorm room, police said.

Alexandra Kogut, of New Hartford, N.Y., was found dead in her room at The College at Brockport by university police at about 2:45 a.m. Saturday. The cause of death was blunt force trauma, Monroe County Sheriff's Office Cpl. John Helfer told FoxNews.com.

Kogut's boyfriend, Clayton Whittemore, 21, was later arrested at a rest stop roughly 100 miles away and confessed to killing Kogut, a freshman communications major whose relatives remembered her as a "bright, beautiful" young woman excited to begin her college life.

Whittemore, also of New Hartford, had apparently visited Kogut during the weekend. The student at Utica college helped his high school hockey team with consecutive state titles in 2009 and 2010, WKTV reports.

Whittemore, who pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder during his arraignment Saturday, has nevertheless confessed to killing Kogut, Helfer said.
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