Society's ChildS


Bomb

New South Wales, Australia: Teenage girl at centre of bomb emergency in Mosman

An 18-year-old Sydney schoolgirl is caught in a horrifying bomb scare tonight after a balaclava-clad man entered a Mosman house and reportedly attached a device to her this afternoon.

Police said they were treating the device as live until they knew otherwise.


"It's a very serious incident where the life of a young lady is potentially at risk and we're dealing with it in that light," assistant commisioner Mark Murdoch told media at the scene.

Bad Guys

Guest Authorship On Medical Papers Should Be Deemed As Fraud

Authorship
© redOrbit
According to legal experts, doctors and scientists who put their names on medical articles in which they have not written should be charged with fraud.

The experts want to stop the shady business of "guest authorship," which is when a research paper is written by pharmaceutical companies or industry-sponsored medical writers and are passed off as the work of influential, independent academics.

Doctors received payments or other incentives to endorse articles in some cases, which often were even done without being familiar with the studies or data of the reports.

Legal experts want to draw more light on the darkened subject as the issue becomes increasingly harder to ignore. In recent years, drug companies have used the tactic as a marketing tool.

Simon Stern and Trudo Lemmens, who are law professors at the University of Toronto, warn that measures brought in by publishers and professional bodies to stop guest authorship have failed to tackle the problem so far.

Beaker

Scientists Invent Date-Rape Drug Detector

Party
© redOrbit
You have always been told to never leave your drink unattended at a bar, no matter what, in case you come back to it only to find that it was spiked with drugs. Soon, however, it may be unnecessary as an effective date-rape drug detector has been invented, reports the AFP news agency.

Professor Fernando Patolsky and Doctor Michael Ioffe of Tel Aviv University's School of Chemistry say they've created a sensor that detects the two most common date-rape drugs, GHB (gamma-hydrobuxybutyric acid) and ketamine.

Just dip the device, which might actually look like a stirrer in the final production into your drink to quickly tell if it has been tampered with. "It's tiny, very tiny," Ioffe told the French news agency. "And you don't even have to hold it up to the light and the system will let you know whether there are drugs dissolved in your drink."

The device sucks up a tiny drop of the suspect beverage and puts it in contact with the patented chemical formula devised by the researchers. The sensor has been tested on a range of popular cocktails as well as soft drinks and other beverages and found it was able to correctly tell which had been spiked 100 percent of the time.

"What's amazing is that there is no false positives until now," Ioffe said.

Bomb

India: Five killed, 20 injured in Manipur blast

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© unknownSecurity personnel and forensic experts inspect the site after a bomb exploded at a busy market in Imphal on Monday.

At least five persons including two girls were killed and 10 injured in a bomb explosion in Imphal East district of Manipur on Monday. The bomb, suspected to have been fitted to a two-wheeler parked at the busy Sangakpham Bazar under Heingang police station, exploded around 1.50pm. Police suspect militants' involvement in the blast.

State director general of police Y Joykumar Singh said, "We are trying to find out the details. Let the proper examination be conducted first"

The state police chief, however, hinted that it was an IED (improvised explosive device) blast.

No militant group had claimed responsibility for the blast, which occurred around 3 km north of the state police headquarters, at the time of going to press.

A barber and his son and one unidentified person were among those dead.

"There was a very loud blast. We rushed out and saw mutilated bodies scattered around," said Y Ibomcha, a goldsmith in a nearby jewellery shop.

Camcorder

US, Tennessee: Mother Arrested for Arguing with TSA Agent


During a security pat-down of her 14-year-old daughter, Andrea Abbott was arrested at the Nashville International Airport.

Airport police say she became belligerent.

Abbott's attorney, Brent Horst, says the only thing his client was doing was protecting her daughter, saying, "What it comes down to is this woman objected to what was going on. Basically made her displeasure known. She told TSA and police officers she thought it was ridiculous of what they were doing. And then in the end she was basically arrested for giving her opinion."

Stormtrooper

US: TSA Has a Question for You

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© Aram Boghosian / The Boston GlobeAndrew Timko of Andover was questioned by a TSA officer yesterday. “It’s going to get old if I have to answer the same questions every week,’’ he said.
How did Logan travelers handle the new TSA queries? Plenty welcomed the safety measure; others were nervous, self-conscious

Andrew Timko doesn't have anything to hide.

But the 29-year-old Northwestern University graduate student isn't thrilled about the enhanced-behavior detection trial program that began yesterday at Boston's Logan International Airport.

In an effort to identify potential terrorists, Transportation Security Administration officers being trained in Terminal A, home to Delta Air Lines, are now asking every passenger several questions about their travels, such as "How long have you been here?'' If the reaction - for example, profuse sweating or lack of eye contact - is deemed suspicious, the person will be tapped to undergo additional screening, such as a pat-down or bag search, after going through a metal detector or full-body scanner.

Timko, who flies from Boston to Newark every week as part of his internship at the management consulting firm Bain & Co., said he didn't mind the TSA officer's questions about his job and his Illinois driver's license. But he said his tolerance may wear thin if he has to undergo a brief interrogation every time he goes through security.

Phoenix

Canada, Alberta: Blast at Seniors Home Now Homicide Investigation

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© CBCA suspicious fire at the Bethany Senior Citizens Home killed two people and sent seven others to hospital.
Edmonton police are investigating the explosion and fire Tuesday at the Bethany Senior Citizen Home in Old Strathcona as a homicide.

Two people died in the fire.

While police are investigating one death as a homicide, they are not looking for suspects.

One victim has been identified as Bethany resident Anna Fedorio. Sources tell CBC News the other victim was a man who also lived in the southside seniors complex.

Police believe the fire and a separate car fire in the parking lot of the complex were deliberately set.

USA

Celente: Dollar not worth its paper, Greatest depression up ahead

RT spoke to Gerald Celente from the Trends Research Institute and publisher of the Trends Journal. He believes, despite the last-minute debt deal, the U.S. is heading towards the next Great Depression.


Bad Guys

US: Israeli-Style Airline Passenger Screening Starting in Boston

airport security point
© Angela Rowlings / Boston HeraldREMOVE YOUR SHOES: Passengers at Logan International Airport form a line as they pass through a Terminal A checkpoint, where an Israeli-style screening program will begin Aug. 15.
Some skeptical of new security program

Boston's TSA screeners - part of a security force whose competency has come under fire nationwide - soon will be carrying out sophisticated behavioral inspections under a first-in-the-nation program that's already raising concerns of racial profiling, harassment of innocent travelers and longer lines.

The training for the Israeli-style screening - a projected $1 billion national program dubbed Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques - kicks off today at Logan International Airport and will be put to use in Terminal A on Aug. 15. It requires screeners to make quick reads of whether passengers pose a danger or a terror threat based on their reactions to a set of routine questions.

But security experts wonder whether Transportation Safety Administration agents are up to the challenge after an embarrassing string of blunders - including patting down a 95-year-old grandmother in Florida and making her remove her adult diaper and frisking a 3-year-old girl who screamed "stop touching me" at a checkpoint in Tennessee.

People

Somali Women Face Rape, Sexual Assault as They Flee Famine

somali women, famine
© Reuters
Internally displaced Somali women wait for food at a camp in the capital Mogadishu, July 20, 2011.

Most vulnerable women are on the outskirts of the camps

Women fleeing conflict and famine in Somalia are facing another threat to their lives, sexual assault. As they make the long journey from what was once their home to the world's largest refugee complex at Dadaab, Kenya, women have to contend with being attacked and raped by armed militants and bandits, often times repeatedly.

The violence does not stop once the women reach the camps. With the large influx of refugees, many women build shelters farther away from the center of the camps, making them more vulnerable to attacks.

However, the UN high commissioner for refugees, UNHCR says they have been working to increase security at the camps.