Society's ChildS


Beer

US: Florida Police Officers Paid to Drink Alcohol, Eat Doritos On the Job

Eric Pfeiffer
The Sideshow
Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:00 UTC
Image
© unknownThe "Intoxilyzer 8000"
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) has fallen under scrutiny for paying several employees to drink alcohol on the job in order to test a breathalyzer.

Last October, the department allocated $300 for Jim Beam whiskey, Doritos and drink mixers. The Herald Tribune reports that it was part of an effort to preserve the embattled "Intoxilyzer 8000" from being phased out. 15 law enforcement employees were then invited to department headquarters in Tallahassee to drink and eat on the job.

The department set up a video camera to record the events, while FDLE crime analysts, staff assistants and Capitol Police officers drank. Blood tests were then taken and sent to a local lab with a total price tag of $8,000 for the effort.
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Phoenix

US: Fire at Professor's New Jersey Home Yields Cache of Child Porn

Wayne Parry
The Associated Press
Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:00 UTC
Image
© The Associated Press/Wayne ParryThe Eagleswood N.J. home of Gamal El-Zoghby is seen on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012.
A single magazine from the 1970s with pornographic images of pre-pubescent girls was enough to get a New York architecture professor arrested after firefighters found it while battling a blaze in his home at the Jersey shore.

Shortly before noon on Tuesday, firefighters received a report that the waterfront home of 76-year-old Gamal El-Zoghby was ablaze. They doused the flames, and were checking for hidden pockets of flame behind the walls by pulling down panels of sheet rock, when the magazine fell from behind one of the panels, State Police spokesman Trooper Christopher Kay said.

The home was unoccupied at the time the fire broke out. Some time afterward, El-Zoghby arrived at the house, then went to a nearby State Police barracks, where he was questioned and charged with child endangerment before being released on his own recognizance.

Reached Thursday by The Associated Press at his home in Manhattan, El-Zoghby refused to discuss the case, referring questions to a lawyer who later declined comment.
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Info

US: Man Convicted of Killing Georgia Girl Found Dead


The Associated Press
Fri, 20 Jan 2012 04:36 UTC
Image
© Police HandoutRyan Brunn
A 20-year-old maintenance worker who this week pleaded guilty to molesting and killing a 7-year-old girl was found dead of an apparent suicide in his prison cell Thursday, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections.

Ryan Brunn was found unresponsive at 4:15 p.m. at the state prison in Jackson, said spokeswoman Kristen Stancil. Brunn was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 5:37 p.m., Stancil said in an email to The Associated Press.

Brunn pleaded guilty on Tuesday to killing Jorelys Rivera on Dec. 2. Her body was found in a trash compactor at the Canton apartment complex where she lived and he worked. At the hearing, Brunn explained his actions in chilling detail before apologizing to Rivera's family. A judge then sentenced him to life in prison without parole.
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Heart - Black

US, Ohio: Woman Accused of Putting Daughter's Body in Trash

Kim Palmer
Reuters
Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:00 UTC
Image
© Reuters/Celeveland Police DepartmentKaliyah Parker
A Cleveland woman pleaded not guilty on Thursday to charges that she had tampered with evidence by putting her five-year-old daughter's body out with the trash, officials said.

India Parker, 35, was arrested in December after police issued a missing person's report for her daughter Kaliyah Parker, who was last seen by relatives in 2006. India Parker also denied charges of desecrating a corpse.

Prosecutors said that between November 1 and December 31, 2006, Parker kept her dead daughter in the child's bed for about one week, according to Cuyahoga County prosecutors' spokeswoman Maria Russo.

Russo said that Parker placed her daughter's body in a trash bag, put the trash bag into a garbage can and set it out on the curb for pick-up by the City of Cleveland Sanitation workers.
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People

Ethiopia Sends Elders to Help Release Abducted Tourists

Aaron Maasho
Reuters
Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:00 UTC

Authorities in Ethiopia's northern Afar region have sent elders to try to secure the release of two German tourists and two Ethiopians kidnapped by gunmen and who the government believes are now inside Eritrea, officials said on Thursday.

The four were part of a group of 27 tourists attacked by gunmen at dawn Tuesday. Two other Germans, two Hungarians and an Austrian were killed in the raid.

Ethiopia has accused neighbour and arch-foe Eritrea of being behind the attack, saying it had trained and armed the gunmen. Ethiopia also blamed an Afar rebel movement it said was backed by Eritrea for kidnapping five Westerners in the region in 2007.

"We believe they are inside Eritrea now," a spokeswoman for Ethiopia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

A Hungarian, a Belgian and another person of unknown nationality who lives in Brussels were wounded in the attack and have been taken to a hospital in Mekele, northern Ethiopia's largest city.
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Display

Anonymous Forces DOJ and Several Others to Protest SOPA / PIPA

Steve Ragan
The Tech Herald
Thu, 19 Jan 2012 01:48 UTC
anonymous graphic
© n/a
Anonymous, in response to the indictment of Megaupload and its removal from the Internet, has forced the U.S. Department of Justice, the MPAA, the RIAA, Universal Music, the U.S. Copyright office, and BMI to protest SOPA and PIPA. How? By launching a massive DDoS strike, which at the time this story was posted, had been active for nearly an hour.

Within minutes, less than an hour after Megaupload fell from the Internet, and the DOJ released a press statement on the Megaupload indictment, Anonymous reacted. With a statement warning the government that they should've "expected" them, OpMegaupload was launched.

On a massive scale, including a reported 5,635 people (or more than 20,000 depending on the source) who armed themselves with LOIC in order to participate in the DDoS, Anonymous went on a rampage.

(Note: Sources close to the operation have said that there are about 1,200 people on IRC, and that the reported numbers for LOIC are suspect. In any case, lower numbers have not seemed to have impacted the DDoS at all, as each of the domains remain off-line.)
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Laptop

Anonymous Downs Government, Music Industry Sites in Largest Attack Ever


RT.com
Fri, 20 Jan 2012 01:38 UTC
DOJ website page
© DOJ
Hacktivists with the collective Anonymous are waging an attack on the website for the White House after successfully breaking the sites for the FBI, Department of Justice, Universal Music Group, RIAA and Motion Picture Association of America.

In response to today's federal raid on the file sharing service Megaupload, hackers with the online collective Anonymous have broken the websites for the FBI, Department of Justice, Universal Music Group, RIAA, Motion Picture Association of America and Warner Music Group.

"It was in retaliation for Megaupload, as was the concurrent attack on Justice.org," Anonymous operative Barrett Brown tells RT on Thursday afternoon.

Only hours before the DoJ and Universal sites went down, news broke that Megaupload, a massive file sharing site with a reported 50 million daily users, was taken down by federal agents. Four people linked to Megaupload were arrested in New Zealand and an international crackdown led agents to serving at least 20 search warrants across the globe.

The latest of sites to fall is FBI.gov, which finally broke at around 7:40 pm EST Thursday evening.
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Nuke

UK: Nuke support in UK hits record high

Andrew Orlowski
The Register
Thu, 19 Jan 2012 01:12 UTC
Keeping calm and carrying on

Public support for nuclear energy has reached an all-time high in the UK, less than a year after the Fukushima incident. There is an interesting gender gap, though.

Pollsters Ipsos MORI, who buttonholed about 1,000 Brits last month for its survey, found that 40 per cent of the sample [PDF] now hold favourable views of nuclear power, compared to 19 per cent who don't. Men (55 per cent) are much more likely than women (26 per cent) to view it positively. Nuclear energy has been viewed more positively than negatively since 2004.

The recovery comes about 10 months after the most publicised civilian nuclear emergency in 25 years: the incident at the Fukushima-Daiichi power plant, caused by a tsunami wiping out Japan's shores. Support for nuclear energy dipped but rapidly recovered.

uknukes
© The Register
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Laptop

Best of the Web: Anonymous Shuts Down Corporate and Government Websites Worldwide ... The Timing Couldn't Be Worse


Washington's Blog
Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:43 UTC
anonymous graphic
© n/a
Anonymous Shuts Down MPAA, RIAA, FBI, DOJ and Copyright Office

Anonymous launched one of the largest hacking attacks in history today.

Gizmodo reports that - in response to the Feds' shutting down of the extremely popular file-sharing site MegaUpload - Anonymous has shut down the sites of the main corporate copyright enforcers, including:
  • Motion Picture Association of America
  • Recording Industry Association of America
  • Universal Music
  • EMI
Anonymous has also shut down the main U.S. governmental copyright enforcers, including:
  • U.S. Copyright Office
  • Department of Justice
  • FBI
Plus foreign agencies, including:
  • French copyright authority HADOPI

Comment: Comment by Michael Rivero of WhatReallyHappened:

I have had my doubts about "Anonymous" ever since they showed up supporting Julian Assange and his extortion racket pretending to be a whistle blower site. In aligning with the pirates and attacking the DOJ, anonymous has handed the US government more justification for draconian controls on the internet.

I see your true colors shining through.

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Life Preserver

Costa Concordia Passenger: Titanic Theme Played As Ship Hit Rocks


Huffington Post
Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:08 UTC
Costa Concordia with titanic theme song

It was the height of irony as the Costa Concordia started going down.

A passenger has revealed that the Celine Dion song "My Heart Will Go On," made famous by the 1997 film Titanic, was playing in one of the ill-fated cruise ship's restaurants at the very moment the ship's hull was ripped open.

Swissman Yannick Sgaga tells the Tribune de Geneve newspaper that he and his brother were dining when the Concordia struck rocks near the Italian island of Giglio, starting an evacuation that Sgaga called "a demonstration of incompetence, recklessness and irresponsibility."
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