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Armed pirates off West African coast kidnap 23 sailors

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© Getty ImagesSomalis sail off the harbour of Berbera in Somalia's breakaway Republic of Somaliland on April 30, 2011.
Armed pirates raided a tanker off the West African coast and kidnapped 23 sailors Wednesday, taking off with the vessel in waters that are increasingly at risk of piracy, an international monitoring group said.

The International Maritime Bureau, which tracks piracy worldwide, said pirates boarded the tanker as it idled about 62 nautical miles from Benin's capital of Cotonou. Pirates struck as the Cyprus-flagged vessel tried to transfer its cargo of crude oil to a Norwegian-registered ship, said Cyrus Mody, a manager at the bureau.

The pirates sailed off with the crew to an unknown location, Mody said.

The ship, called the Mattheos I, had a Filipino crew with Spanish, Peruvian and Ukrainian officers, said Serghios Serghiou, the director of Cyprus' Department of Merchant Shipping.

Eagle

Washington, US: Judge Could Order Striking Tacoma Teachers Back to Work

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© Unknown
Tacoma - Leaders of the Washington state's third-largest school district are asking a judge to order hundreds of striking teachers back to work as thousands of students spend a second day out of class. A Superior Court hearing began Wednesday morning on the Tacoma School District's request for an injunction to order nearly 1,900 teachers back to work. The district contends that public employees cannot legally strike under state law. Tacoma Education Association spokesman Rich Wood says union lawyers will be ready with a response. Classes have been canceled for Tacoma's 28,000 students since the strike began Tuesday. Strike issues include teacher pay, class size and the way the district's teachers are transferred and reassigned. Tacoma teachers had been working without a contract since school started Sept. 1.

About 350 teachers were on the picket lines outside of Jason Lee Middle School Wednesday morning.

"As a teacher though I want my students to challenge the status quo, I want them be advocates for themselves and strong members of the community," said Andy Coon, president of the Tacoma teachers union. "There is a time when we want them to stand up to a bully, and that's what we're doing."

"I think the district is totally not negotiating in good faith," said Elizabeth Cruz, teacher. "They put us in this position."

Eye 2

Best of the Web: That was my brother's death you were cheering, you a$$holes

tea party health care debate
© Unknown
To all of those tea-jadist assholes at last night's GOP debate: I don't generally like to use profanity, but I fear that English is above your comprehension level, so in terms you might better understand, may God damn your worthless souls to hell for all eternity.

I had not planned on watching the debate because it conflicted with more important activities, like a new episode of The Closer. But even more importantly, it was being held at a time when I had committed to posting a diary for The Grieving Room. That diary was about the death of my brother from a very painful, uninsured struggle against metastatic cancer.

I had planned to write another separate diary about his journey through what passes for health care in a nation fixated on the profits that that care brings. In a nation where his death was cheered in front of a panel of politicians, none of whom had the decency to object. It is not yet a capital crime in this nation to be uninsured.

Steve worked 14 hours a day building beautiful guitars. Songs will not be sung because he died and will make no more. Thanks to the Republican Party's theft of our national wealth, he barely eked out an existence with financial help from my husband and me. Money for health insurance? Don't be ridiculous.

He was 63. He had to start Social Security early so he could afford to eat. He was too young for Medicare and too male for Medicaid. This nation does not recognize the years he spent working for others and making this economy grow, it only focused on the years he worked for himself, creating instruments of rare beauty.

Handcuffs

US Passenger: Was cuffed, searched over 'appearance'

Shoshana Hebshi
© AP Photo/Supplied by Shoshana HebshiThis photo supplied by its subject, Shoshana Hebshi, was taken Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2011. Hebshi said she was strip-searched after being led in handcuffs from a Frontier Airlines flight from Denver to Detroit on Sept. 11. She said she is of mixed Arab-Jewish heritage and was searched solely because of her appearance. She was sitting next to two men who had come under suspicion because of their use of an airplane bathroom. She said she did not know the men. All three were freed after being questioned.

Detroit, Michigan - A U.S. woman said Tuesday that she endured nearly four hours in police custody that included being forced off an airplane in handcuffs, strip-searched and interrogated at Detroit's airport on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks - all, she believes, because of her Middle Eastern appearance.

Shoshana Hebshi, 35, told The Associated Press she was one of three people removed from a Denver-to-Detroit Frontier Airlines flight after landing Sunday afternoon. Authorities say fighter jets escorted the plane after its crew reported that two people were spending a long time in a bathroom - the two men sitting next to Hebshi in the 12th row.

Hebshi said she didn't notice how many times the men went to the bathroom. "I wasn't keeping track," she said.

Handcuffs

US: Unable to Pay Child Support, Poor Parents Land Behind Bars

Judges can jail alleged defaulters - who are not covered by the presumption of innocence - without a trial



It may not be a crime to be poor, but it can land you behind bars if you also are behind on your child-support payments.

Thousands of so-called "deadbeat" parents are jailed each year in the U.S. after failing to pay court-ordered child support - the vast majority of them for withholding or hiding money out of spite or a feeling that they've been unfairly gouged by the courts.

But in what might seem like an un-American plot twist from a Charles Dickens' novel, advocates for the poor say, some parents are wrongly being locked away without any regard for their ability to pay - sometimes without the benefit of legal representation.

Mr. Potato

Insane Psychologists: Are You Shy? Then You Have a Mental Disorder

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© Worldwide Magazine
The mad claim that 165million Europeans suffer from 'mental illness' confirms that normal emotional states are now seen as diseases.

'Mental health disorders are Europe's largest healthcare challenge in the twenty-first century', announced Hans-Ulrich Wittchen this week.


A professor of psychology and psychotherapy at the University of Dresden, Wittchen wasn't saying anything we haven't heard before. The World Health Organisation has also gleefully predicted that by 2020, 'depression will be the second leading contributor to the burden of disease'. Still, the magnitude of Wittchen's Europe-wide diagnosis is more than a little shocking: 38 per cent of Europeans, he said, are suffering from a mental disorder. That's about 165million people.

Wittchen arrived at these shocking results, published in Neuropsychopharmacology, after a three-year-long review of data from previous studies involving over 500million people in 30 European countries. Therein he discovered that nearly 40 per cent of those 500million were suffering from one of nearly a hundred mental or neurological problems, the most common of which were anxiety disorders, insomnia, depression, alcohol and drug dependence, and dementia.

Gear

US: Unruly Passengers Create Tense Moments Aboard AA Flight From LAX To JFK

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American Airlines Jet
3 Travelers Lock Themselves In Lavatory; Fighter Jets Shadow Plane To NYC

It's just not a day to be messing around.

That's what three passengers on board an American Airlines flight from Los Angeles to John F. Kennedy Airport found out on Sunday afternoon.

Sources told CBS News, the three passengers on Flight 34 were disruptive, moving in and out of lavatories, even at one point locking themselves inside. Considering the heightened state of security and general uneasiness air travelers are feeling due to the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks on New York City and Washington D.C., security officials are leaving nothing to chance.

The unruly passengers eventually returned to their seats. They were later questioned by federal authorities and cleared, 1010 WINS' Sonia Rincon reported. At least one federal air marshal was on board and at no point was the cockpit in danger.

There was "no nexus to terrorism," FBI spokesman J. Peter Donald said.

Gear

US: 3 Detained in Detroit After Airline Flight

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© Detroit News/Elizabeth ConleySecurity checks out a Frontier Airlines plane on Sunday, Sept. 11, 2011 at Detroit's Metropolitan Airport.
Police detained three passengers at Detroit's Metropolitan Airport on Sunday after the crew of the Frontier Airlines flight from Denver reported suspicious activity on board and NORAD sent two F-16 jets to shadow the flight until it landed safely, the airline and federal officials said.

Frontier Flight 623, with 116 passengers on board, landed without incident in Detroit at 3:30 p.m. EDT after the crew reported that two people were spending "an extraordinarily long time" in a bathroom, Frontier spokesman Peter Kowalchuck said.

The Airbus 318 taxied to a pad away from the terminal and police took three passengers into custody, Kowalchuck said. The three escorted off the plane in handcuffs included two men and a woman, passenger Ilona Hajdar, of Charlotte, Mich., told The Associated Press.

She said she realized there was a problem when the plane's bridge didn't extend at the gate. The plane then rolled to a remote spot on the airfield. After about a half hour, police SWAT boarded.

Vader

Texas, US: Mom Says Prickly School Cop Killed Her Son

school bus
© Courthouse News Service
San Antonio - A 14-year-old boy got into a fight at a school bus stop and the school district's police officer responded by shooting him to death, the boy's mother says. She says the cop had been reprimanded 16 times in the previous 4 years, suspended without pay 5 times, and "recommended for termination for insubordination," but the school kept him on the force "without remedial training."

Denys Lopez Moreno sued the Northside Independent School District, of San Antonio, the district's Chief of Police John Page and the alleged shooter, Daniel Alvarado, in Federal Court.

Lopez says her son, Derek, got into a fight with another boy at a school bus stop and punched the other boy once, in November 2010.

"Defendant, Alvarado, having responded to a call regarding a bus with a flat tire, witnessed Derek strike the other boy. He ordered Derek to 'freeze.' Derek hesitated and then ran from defendant Alvarado," according to the complaint.

Smoking

If You Don't Buy Me Toys, I'll Start Smoking Again: Threat to Mother from Four-Year-Old Boy Who First Started Lighting Up Aged TWO

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© ABC/Splash NewsAldi Rizal who gained infamy as a two year old smoker is now a chubby 4-year-old living in Sumatra, Indonesia
An Indonesian child who gained worldwide infamy for smoking aged just two years old has quit. But has told his mother he will smoke again unless she buys him toys.

Ardi Rizal was found by a US news show and became famous when a shocking video of him puffing on a cigarette went viral.

The show found that Rizal wasn't an isolated case in the country however when they discovered another smoker aged just two called Chairul, who lives in a fishing village in Eastern Java.

He was shown lighting up a cigarette straight after waking up from a nap, with help from his granddad.