Society's ChildS

Stormtrooper

Thirty Students Pepper Sprayed in Santa Monica Protest Over Higher Fees


The Daily Mail, UK
Wed, 04 Apr 2012 02:47 UTC
US, California - Campus police pepper-sprayed as many as 30 demonstrators after Santa Monica College students angry over a plan to offer high-priced courses tried to push their way into a trustees meeting.

Raw video posted on the Internet showed students chanting 'Let us in, let us in' and 'No cuts, no fees, education should be free.'

Marioly Gomez, 21, said she was standing in a hallway outside the meeting with several hundred other students who wanted to get into the meeting.
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© unknownNnaemeka Alozie reacts with milk on his face after being pepper sprayed during the protest
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Smoking

Anti-Smoking Fascism: Harsher Smoking Ban Hits Ottawa; Limits Outdoor Smoking


CBC News
Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:00 UTC
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© Tony Caldwell/Ottawa SunA man smoking shown smoking on an Ottawa patio.
Canada - Bylaw enforcement officers are warning Ottawans starting Monday not to smoke on patios and all outdoor municipal properties such as parks and beaches.

The new rules apply 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This is the beginning of the warning phase.

As of July 2, bylaw officers will have the authority to issue provincial offence notices that carry fines up to $300.

Greg Smith laughed about the changes.

"I'll take my car and go out in a field about 10 km out of town and have a smoke," he said, "because that's where we're heading."

Jim Livingstone has been smoking for 30 years.
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Dollar

US Sues Royal Bank of Canada for Massive Fraud


Agence France-Presse
Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:00 UTC
Royal Bank
© Agence France-Presse/Alain Jocard
US regulators have announced charges against Royal Bank of Canada, accusing the major Canadian bank of "washing" hundreds of millions of dollars through fraudulent trading.

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Monday said it had filed a complaint in federal district court in New York accusing RBC of "conducting a multi-hundred million-dollar wash sale scheme in connection with exchange-traded stock futures contracts."

The Canadian bank and financial services company does business in New York.

"The trading scheme was allegedly designed as part of RBC's strategy to realize lucrative Canadian tax benefits from holding certain public companies' securities in its Canadian and offshore trading accounts," the CFTC said.

CFTC also charged that the bank concealed material information from, and made material false statements to, a futures exchange.

"From at least June 2007 to May 2010, RBC allegedly non-competitively traded hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of narrow based stock index futures (NBI) and single stock futures (SSF) contracts with two of its subsidiaries that RBC reported as 'block' trades on OneChicago," it said.
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Airplane

Russian plane crash kills 31, exposes safety record

Timothy Heritage
Reuters
Mon, 02 Apr 2012 02:00 UTC
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© Reuters/Sergei DrachevEmergency service workers investigate the wreckage of the UTair airlines ATR 72 passenger plane that crashed near the Siberian city of Tyumen April 2, 2012.
Moscow, Russia - A passenger plane crashed and burst into flames after takeoff in Siberia on Monday, killing 31 people and putting the spotlight on Russia's poor air-safety record before Vladimir Putin's return as president.

Thirteen survivors were pulled from the wreckage but one later died after being rushed by helicopter to hospital in the city of Tyumen, some 1,720 km (1,070 miles) east of Moscow, emergency officials said.

Television footage showed the UTair airlines ATR 72, which had snapped in two, lying in a snowy field with only the tail and rear visible. Emergency workers sifted through the wreckage and cleared away the snow.

An investigative committee said the most likely cause of the crash was a technical malfunction as the 21-year-old twin-engine, turbo-prop plane carried its four crew and 39 passengers on a flight to the oil town of Surgut.

"I went out on to my porch and heard a bang, saw a small flash and smoke came out. It turned, with smoke coming out, started to lose height and came down in the field. If it had turned a bit further, it would have hit us," a local resident, identified only as Alexei, told RIA news agency.

He said he often saw aircraft fly past, and the plane appeared not to be on the usual flight path: "It should have been behind my house but it was in front of it."
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Newspaper

French academic Richard Descoings found dead in NY hotel room

Jonathan Dienst
msnbc.com
Tue, 03 Apr 2012 19:20 UTC
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© FlickrRichard Descoings Dec. 8 2010
A prominent French academic, Richard Descoings, was found dead in the nude in a New York hotel room on Tuesday afternoon. New York police have opened an investigation because they believe the circumstances of his death are suspicious.

A law enforcement source told Reuters that the body of Descoings, director of the prestigious Institute of Political Studies in Paris and a member of France's Council of State, a government advisory body, was found Tuesday afternoon in his room at the Michelangelo Hotel in midtown Manhattan.

Descoings was in New York to attend a conference at Columbia University but did not show up on Tuesday morning when the conference was due to begin, the source said.

Colleagues subsequently phoned the hotel. When staff members first went to his room, they believed they heard snoring and let the matter drop.
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Attention

America's Smallest Town Up for Sale


Agence France-Presse
Tue, 03 Apr 2012 15:46 UTC
Town For Sale
© Associated PressBuford, Wyoming. Starting price? $100,000 US.

An outpost billed as America's smallest town is up for sale this week, complete with its own schoolhouse and gas station, with bidding starting at an enticing $100,000 ($121,000 NZ).

For a sum which would barely buy a one-room apartment in most places - and a lot less in big cities - the purchaser of Buford, Wyoming would get over 10 acres of land including a three-bedroom home, a garage, and a cellphone tower.

The Buford Trading Post - store - benefits from regular traffic along the I-80 interstate, with Wyoming capital Cheyenne just 50 kilometres to the east, and San Francisco 1,800 kilometres) to the west.

It once had 2,000 inhabitants, but then the railroad dropped it as a stopping point, and locals gradually moved out, until now it boasts the rare road sign: "Buford. Pop. 1. Elev 8,000."
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Info

Forget Modesty, Narcissists Best Suited for Job Interview Success

David Mielach
BusinessNewsDaily
Tue, 03 Apr 2012 11:45 UTC
Interview Panel
© ShutterstockInterview Panel

Modesty may be the best policy in many situations, but a job interview is not one of them. That's the finding of a new survey that looked at the way people performed on job interviews. In that survey, narcissists, who promoted themselves in the interview, were rated more highly than those who were modest.

This is because narcissists come across as being confident, and engaging when speaking. Narcissists are also able to promote themselves in the interview setting as well.

"This is one setting where it's OK to say nice things about yourself and there are no ramifications. In fact, it's expected," Peter Harms, assistant professor of management at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and co-author of the study, said. "Simply put, those who are comfortable doing this tend to do much better than those who aren't."

Narcissists were also highly rated because of their use of gestures and smiles. These gestures and actions were determined to further establish the likability and credibility of the interviewee in the eyes of the interviewer.
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Laptop

ACLU Finds U.S. Police Using Cell Phone Tracking, Sometimes Warrantless

Tiffany Kaiser
DailyTech
Tue, 03 Apr 2012 09:08 UTC
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© hurriyetdailynews.com
The ACLU got its hands on 5,500 pages of internal records from 205 police departments all over the country

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has obtained documents that show that federal agencies aren't the only ones using cell phone tracking -- it has become a regular practice for both small and large police departments throughout the U.S. as well.

The ACLU got its hands on 5,500 pages of internal records from 205 police departments all over the country. The documents show that many police departments are putting cell phone tracking to major use with little safeguards, but they're not talking about it. Wireless carriers are in on it too, making a pretty penny by offering surveillance fees to police departments that want to collect information like a cell phone's location, or trace phone calls or texts.

Some specific examples from the internal documents include Gilbert, Arizona, which spent $244,000 on its own tracking equipment; Ogden, Utah, where the Sheriff's Department leaves it up to the cell carrier to collect information on a cell phone; California, where state prosecutors suggested that local police get carriers to duplicate a phone and download the test messages when it is turned off, and certain cities in states like Nevada and North Carolina have managed to get carriers to track cell phone signals back to cell towers in non-emergency situations in an effort to determine which callers are using a specific tower.
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Beer

Teen Alcohol and Illicit Drug Use and Abuse Starts Earlier Than You Might Think


Science Daily
Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:00 UTC
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© wellsphere.comAlcohol affects the teen brain differently because of the critical brain development occurring from ages 12 through 20, often until age 25.
A survey of a nationally representative sample of U.S. teenagers suggests that most cases of alcohol and drug abuse have their initial onset at this important period of development, according to a report published in the April issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, a JAMA Network publication.

Alcohol and drugs use patterns in adolescence are increasingly seen as indicators of later substance abuse, the authors write in their study background.

Joel Swendsen, Ph.D., of the University of Bordeaux, France, and colleagues examined the prevalence, age at onset and sociodemographic factors related to alcohol and illicit drug use and abuse by U.S. adolescents. Their cross-sectional survey included a nationally representative sample of 10,123 adolescents ages 13 to 18 years.

Their study results indicate that by late adolescence, 78.2 percent of teenagers reported having consumed alcohol; 47.1 percent having reached regular drinking levels of at least 12 drinks within a year; and 15.1 percent having met the criteria for lifetime abuse. The opportunity to use illicit drugs was reported by 81.4 percent of the oldest adolescents, drug use by 42.5 percent and drug abuse by 16.4 percent.
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House

Foreclosures Slow Detroit's Rebirth, Razes Historic Homes and All

Mike Wilkinson and Christine MacDonald
Detroit News
Mon, 02 Apr 2012 18:16 UTC
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© Krishnan Anantharaman/Wall Street JournalMitt Romney's boyhood home is among 3,000 derelict structures Detroit plans to demolish by the end of September as it attacks blight and crime.
Detroit riddled with repossessions from height of housing meltdown

More than a quarter of homes whose loans failed at the height of the foreclosure crisis in 2006 and 2007 have already been razed or are on the demolition list, becoming a huge obstacle to the city's rebirth, a Detroit News analysis shows.

In neighborhoods on the far west side and the northeast corner of the city, as many as two-thirds of the properties that went into foreclosure just five years ago are in the city's crosshairs or already on the ground. The worst-hit areas almost mirror perfectly parts of the city where the most subprime mortgages were issued before they helped trigger the collapse of the banking industry.

And more vacancies could be on the way: Although the rate has slowed, lenders have foreclosed on 28,000 more homes since 2007, according to records from RealtyTrac.
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