Society's ChildS


Handcuffs

Fraudsters strike 600 times a day in the UK... Here's how to avoid falling victim

Laura Shannon
Mail Online
Sun, 06 Apr 2014 21:25 UTC
Image
© Christopher CoxQuick thinking: An attempted scam was foiled by Steve and Christine Baker
The UK's fraud prevention service is warning that crimes involving fraud continue to be a major problem despite tougher action.

Police crackdowns have led to an 11 per cent fall in fraud in 2013 compared with the year before, according to the fraud prevention service Credit Industry Fraud Avoidance System. But there are still 600 frauds committed every day, half involving stolen identity.

As one scam is tackled, heartless criminals quickly come up with nasty new ways to part you from your cash.

Here are the top tricks to watch out for and what you can do to avoid being a victim:
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Target

Abducted Ukrainian journalist found killed, believed to be tortured first


RT
Sun, 06 Apr 2014 14:37 UTC
Ukraine journalist dead
© Reuters / Gleb Garanich
A kidnapped Ukrainian journalist and Maidan activist has been found dead in a forest some 150 kilometers (90 miles) from the capital Kiev. The reporter is believed to have been brutally tortured before being killed and buried, local media report.

According to the local prosecutor's office, Vasily Sergiyenko was beaten and abducted in his home city of Korsun-Shevchenkivsky, central Ukraine, on Friday evening.

"It has been established that at around 20:30 on April 4 perpetrators kidnapped Vasily Sergiyenko. Later he was killed and his body was buried in a forest in an attempt to hide the evidence," Cherkassk province's prosecutors announced in a statement on Sunday.

The nationalist Svoboda (Freedom) party, of which Sergiyenko was a member, said that according to witnesses a group of three unknown men attacked the local newspaper reporter outside his home on Friday evening. There was a fight, and Sergiyenko was forced into a white car.

This version was corroborated by the journalist's mother who called the police right after her son was attacked and abducted.

Sergiyenko's body with stab wounds and signs of beatings to his head and knees was discovered on Saturday afternoon, when a group of self-defense unit members found a freshly heaped up mound disguised as a dump.

"In the afternoon guys from local self-defense forces found a spot of freshly dug pit. They waited until police came and started digging out the rubbish-covered spot. They found a man's body lying with his face down with hand-cuffs on his wrists," the local Gazeta.ua online newspaper cited Oleg Sobchenko as saying. "After they lifted the man's body we saw the signs of terrible torture: Vasiliy's head was completely smashed, his knees fractured, [he had] several knife wounds in the area of his kidneys, a knife wound in the heart area and several knife wounds to his heart from his back, his neck was also cut."
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Card - VISA

U.S. states investigating breach at Experian


KrebsOnSecurity
Sun, 06 Apr 2014 19:09 UTC
Ngo’s Identity theft service, superget.info
Ngo’s Identity theft service, superget.info
An exclusive KrebsOnSecurity investigation detailing how a unit of credit bureau Experian ended up selling consumer records to an identity theft service in the cybercrime underground has prompted a multi-state investigation by several attorneys general, according to wire reports.

Reuters moved a story this afternoon quoting Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan saying that "it's part of a multistate investigation," and that Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen said that Connecticut is looking into the matter as well.

News of the breach first came to light on this blog in October 2013, when KrebsOnSecurity published an exclusive story detailing how a Vietnamese man running an online identity theft service bought personal and financial records on Americans directly from a company owned by Experian, one of the three major U.S. credit bureaus.
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Attention

Earthquakes rock Oklahoma in record seismic activity - Fracking strikes again

Carey Gillam
Yahoo! News
Sat, 05 Apr 2014 14:01 UTC
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© Joeofamerica.com
Earthquakes rattled residents in Oklahoma on Saturday, the latest in a series that have put the state on track for record quake activity this year, which some seismologists say may be tied to oil and gas exploration.

One earthquake recorded at 3.8 magnitude by the U.S. Geological Survey rocked houses in several communities around central Oklahoma at 7:42 a.m. local time. Another about two hours earlier in the same part of the state, north of Oklahoma City, was recorded at 2.9 magnitude, USGS said.

Those two were preceded by two more, at 2.6 magnitude, and 2.5 magnitude, that also rolled the landscape in central Oklahoma early Saturday morning. A 3.0 magnitude tremor struck late Friday night in that area as well, following a 3.4 magnitude hit Friday afternoon.

Austin Holland, a seismologist with the Oklahoma Geological Survey who tracks earthquake activity for the USGS, said the earthquake activity in the state is soaring.
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Heart - Black

Heartless principal: Cops caught on video arresting a kid for telling his principal that he is disappointed in him


The Free Thought Project
Fri, 04 Apr 2014 18:11 UTC
Lake Central High School students in Indiana were upset that their school refused to allow them to grieve for a fellow student who had committed suicide over the weekend. So they staged a sit in to request one. Of course there were police involved.

The students gathered and sat on the floor of the Wedge and Main Street. After principals and other administrators got to the two scenes, multiple St. John police officers arrived to help supervise.

According to Lake Central News, The administration encouraged students to return to class, or go to the LGI. Around 1:30 p.m. students gathered into what became an open forum for their grief, the school's reaction and what can be done from here.
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Attention

Spring break party turns into a 15,000 person melee


The Australian
Mon, 07 Apr 2014 07:03 UTC
crowd
© APA crowd confronts police during the weekend college party in southern California that devolved into a street brawl
Californian police have arrested 100 people after a college street party attracting about 15,000 students got out of control.

At least 44 people were taken to the hospital after violence broke out in the densely populated beachside community of Isla Vista around 9.30pm on Saturday during the annual spring break party known as Deltopia, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office said.

Sheriff's spokeswoman Kelly Hoover said things escalated after a University of California, Santa Barbara police officer was hit in the face with a backpack filled with large bottles of alcohol.

Authorities said some members of the crowd of 15,000 then began throwing rocks, bricks and bottles at officers, lighting fires and damaging law enforcement vehicles.
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Books

10 ways the standard core curriculum in schools is wrong

Marion Brady
Washington Post
Wed, 02 Apr 2014 05:00 UTC
chalkboard
© freepik.com
The debate over the Common Core State Standards overlooks the broad problems inherent in the core curriculum that has been taught in schools for decades. Below Marion Brady explains. Brady has worked as a teacher, administrator, college professor, contributor to academic journals, textbook and professional book author, consultant to publishers and foundations, newspaper columnist.

Mainstream media, cued by corporate press releases, routinely claim that America's schools are markedly inferior to schools in other developed nations. The claim is part of an organized, long-running, generously funded campaign to undermine confidence in public schools to "prove" the need to privatize them.

Syndicated columnists, education reporters, editorial boards, and other opinion leaders interested in thoroughly understanding the campaign to privatize public schools should do two things. First, they should stop dismissing all the critics of the Common Core State Standards as Tea Party types opposed to change. As my books, articles, newspaper columns and blogs make clear, I argue that change is not only essential but decades overdue. What I oppose is superficial, dishonest change - change sold by misrepresenting the quality of what preceded the Common Core Standards, half-truths about the process that created the Standards, and hype that's radically over-selling their value.
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Smoking

Inside New York City's cigarette smuggling industry

Christopher Mathias
Huffington Post
Thu, 03 Apr 2014 08:09 UTC
cigarettes
More than 900 cartons of contraband cigarettes were seized at a warehouse in the Bronx. Photo: New York Department of Taxation and Finance
Ask for cigarettes at one bodega in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and the owner will open a small drawer behind the counter and pull out your pack of Marlboros, Parliaments or American Spirits.

Why not keep the cigarettes on display? Because the bodega owner -- who asked not to be identified -- didn't buy these cigarettes for the legal price in New York, where high taxes on tobacco have fueled a multimillion-dollar tobacco smuggling industry.

"Every store in Brooklyn," the bodega owner said, buys cigarettes from someone who travels down South to states with lower cigarette taxes. In places like Virginia, North Carolina and Delaware, they'll buy cartons containing 10 packs of cigarettes for around $48 a pop, then come back to New York, where local stores will buy them around $55.

"My guy has 100 different businesses he sells to," the bodega owner said, gesturing across the street at a Chinese restaurant, a laundromat and a barbershop. "All three of those stores buy and sell smuggled cigarettes too," he said.
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Alarm Clock

Bullied schoolboy writes: 'I can't cope any more' - kills self

Martin Robinson
Daily Mail
Fri, 04 Apr 2014 09:28 UTC
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Heartbroken: Simon's mother Julie has paid tribute to her son and says he was mercilessly bullied at school
  • Simon Brooks, 15, collapsed after suspected overdose and died in hospital
  • His mother Julie said her beloved son's life was made a misery at school
  • 'It was the worst 4 days of my life watching my darling child suffer and die'
  • Police are investigating the family's claims that Simon was picked on
A bullied schoolboy left a heartbreaking goodbye letter to his mother telling her: 'I can't cope any more' just before he died of a suspected overdose.

Simon Brooks, 15, died in hospital four days after writing the note, which also blamed bullies for making his life a misery. His bereft mother Julie Brooks, 48, today said Simon had been picked on for 18 months and dreaded going to school in Pontyclun, South Wales.

She said: 'He wrote a goodbye letter in the notes of his mobile phone and it said: "I can't cope any more".

'He was being pushed about, having his bag grabbed and subjected to verbal abuse. 'He loved the lessons and had a lovely group of friends, but he wasn't being left alone at break times and lunchtimes.'
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Question

Justina Pelletier: Mitochondrial disease or medical child abuse?

Brian Palmer
Slate
Tue, 01 Apr 2014 09:07 UTC
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© A Miracle for Justina/FacebookIt's difficult to know what's really going on with Justina Pelletier.
Justina Pelletier's case is a study in diagnostic challenges.

Linda and Lou Pelletier brought their daughter to Boston Children's Hospital last year. They were looking for a gastroenterologist to help with 14-year-old Justina's mitochondrial disease, a rare disorder that causes widespread and nonspecific symptoms. Justina Pelletier never saw a GI specialist, though. Instead, she officially became a ward of the state last week.

The physicians at Boston Children's concluded that Justina did not have mitochondrial disease. They believed that her symptoms were the result of psychological stress, caused in part by her parents. They accused the Pelletiers of subjecting Justina to dangerous and unnecessary medical treatments. When the hospital petitioned the state to take custody, the Boston Globe picked up the story and painted an unflattering picture of both the state government and the doctors at Boston Children's Hospital.

It's easy to get angry about this scenario - and there are some troubling things about the way the conflict has been managed - but the doctors at Boston Children's deserve a defense. First, we're essentially hearing only one side of the Justina Pelletier story. Neil Swidey and Patricia Wen, the reporters covering the story for the Boston Globe, have done an admirable reporting job, but hospitals can't say much about their patients. Linda and Lou Pelletier appear to have provided much of Wen and Swidey's information. Second, the science is complicated. Mitochondrial disease (Justina Pelletier's original diagnosis) and medical child abuse (the Boston Children's diagnosis) can look extremely similar. Both can be deadly if not treated properly.

Comment: For more information, see SOTT's previous articles on this troubling case:
Hospital holds girl for 9 months after parents argue diagnosis
Parents lose custody of teen after seeking 2nd medical opinion; girl indefinitely detained in psych ward
Massachusetts father charged for speaking about his daughter's kidnapping
Boston Psychiatric Unit's imprisonment of teenager Justina Pelletier needs State investigation into reckless endangerment of psychiatric diagnosing

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