A ROGUE tattooist who inked 56 stars on a teen girl’s face has caused a write fuss again – after signing his name in giant letters across his girlfriend’s face less than 24 hours after they met. Controversial Rouslan Toumaniantz became notorious when he inscribed a galaxy of stars over the face of Kimberley Vlaeminck, then just 18, in his studio in Coutrai, Belgium. Now Toumaniantz has struck again by tattooing his Christian name in lettering five inches high across another girl’s face. Thanks Jasmine.
According to the RUV, the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service, FBI agents landed in Reykjavík in August 2011 without prior notification in an attempt to investigate WikiLeaks operations within the country. However, their plan was interupted when Home Secretary Ögmundur Jónasson learned about the FBI’s visit and sent them packing. The Icelandic government then formally protested the FBI’s activities with U.S. authorities.
They came up with a title for their novel, The Diamond Club. They also sketched out a rough outline of a plot: When Brianna Young discovers that Roman Dyle, the man she built a relationship and a multimillion dollar company with, has gotten married to another woman behind her back, she embarks on a journey to realize her dreams of professional and sexual revenge for everything she had endured at the hands of Roman.Brianna seeks her romance from The Diamond Club, an exotic gathering of the Bay Area’s most attractive and interesting people, from angel investors and airline pilots to worldfamous chefs and dubstep artists. They singled out three qualities their novel would need to succeed: a cover that looked like 50 shades of grey lots and lots of sex characters with trendy jobs.
The technology uses a sophisticated peer-to-peer encryption technique that allows users to send encrypted files of up to 60 megabytes through a “Silent Text” app. The sender of the file can set it on a timer so that it will automatically “burn”—deleting it from both devices after a set period of, say, seven minutes. Until now, sending encrypted documents has been frustratingly difficult for anyone who isn’t a sophisticated technology user, requiring knowledge of how to use and install various kinds of specialist software. What Silent Circle has done is to remove these hurdles, essentially democratizing encryption. It’s a game-changer that will almost certainly make life easier and safer for journalists, dissidents, diplomats, and companies trying to evade state surveillance or corporate espionage. Governments pushing for more snooping powers, however, will not be pleased.
Tuesday morning, the 168 remaining employees of DMI in Vaux, a small town near Montluçon in the Department of Allier, smack-dab in the middle of France, rigged about ten gas cylinders throughout the factory they’d been occupying and threatened to blow it up—unless their demands were met. Another day in the decline of the private sector à la Française.
A nine-year-old Mexican girl has given birth in what authorities have called a rape or sexual abuse case. The baby girl was born on January 27 in Zoquipan Hospital in Jalisco state, weighing 5lbs 7oz. The youngster, who is identified only as Dafne, was eight when she got pregnant by a teenager who has since run away, her mother told local officials.
Now consider this: Facebook doesn’t just record Web searches. Just because I click on a link offered by Google doesn’t mean I actually read the page that pops up. But with Facebook, the connections go much deeper. Suppose a man in his 50s is accused of being a child predator, and the court requests records from Facebook. They’ll dig up everything: Facebook Pages he Liked, or temporarily Liked; Facebook groups to which he belonged, or used to belong; outside articles visited or shared; his friends and their friends, along with all their activities. While courts can’t convict you for associating with people of questionable character, a jury could certainly be swayed to feel that, if you associate with such people, you may be of that character. And it’s all stored in Facebook’s servers.
A fresh paint job might be all that’s needed to prevent a giant asteroid from raining destruction upon our planet. Though strange-sounding, the strategy would make use of a real-world phenomenon known as the Yarkovsky effect, named for the Russian engineer who discovered it in 1902. The effect results from the fact that asteroids heat up as they bask in the sun’s light. “The coat of paint would be a very thin, almost like a Saran Wrap layer,” said aerospace engineer David Hyland of Texas A&M, who leads a team that has been studying this method for several years. “If we push it in the right direction, we can get the asteroid to cease crossing Earth’s orbit and completely eliminate the threat.”
“Please avoid exposing bare fleshy under curves of the buttocks and buttock crack. Bare sides or under curvature of the breasts is also problematic. Please avoid sheer see-through clothing that could possibly expose female breast nipples. Please be sure the genital region is adequately covered so that there is no visible `puffy’ bare skin exposure.”
In 2013, no one expects to see a man dressed in a Ku Klux Clan robe mid-morning in Center City, Philadelphia. “I think that’s nonsense,” said one woman on the street. “He needs to be committed to the jail system,” said another onlooker. The man, who stood on the corner of 13th and Filbert on Tuesday, is not out to lynch or kill black people. In fact, he is black. Thirty-five-year-old Sixx King says he’s using the offensive symbol to highlight a serious problem: black on black crime. “We’re bringing awareness to the black hypocrisy, complacency and apathy in the African-American community,” said King. According to the FBI, in 2011 more than 7,000 black people were killed. King’s sign reads that the KKK killed 3,446 blacks in 86 years, while black on black murders surpass that number every six months.
The court confirmed CIA agents tortured and sodomized el-Masri in front of Macedonian state police, and found the Macedonian government complicit in his secret torture by CIA officials. In a case of mistaken identity, Masri was kidnapped in 2004 by the CIA and sent to multiple black sites in Baghdad and Afghanistan for abuse. The CIA figured out they had the wrong man after months of torture, and dumped him on a desolate road in Albania. Masri attempted to sue the CIA over the abuse, but the US courts threw out the case on national security grounds, saying information about the case could never be made public. The German government briefly issued Interpol warrants for the agents involved in Masri’s kidnapping, but dropped this after the State Department threatened “repercussions” from pursuing the case.
Last year’s drought took a big bite out of the two most prodigious US crops, corn and soy. But it apparently didn’t slow down the spread of weeds that have developed resistance to Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup (glyphosate), used on crops engineered by Monsanto to resist it. More than 70 percent of all the the corn, soy, and cotton grown in the US is now genetically modified to withstand glyphosate. Back in 2011, such weeds were already spreading fast. “Monsanto’s ‘Superweeds’ Gallop Through Midwest,” declared the headline of a post I wrote then. What’s the word you use when an already-galloping horse speeds up? Because that’s what’s happening. Let’s try this: “Monsanto’s ‘Superweeds’ Stampede Through Midwest.”
Three billion years after inanimate chemistry first became animate life, a newly synthesized laboratory compound is behaving in uncannily lifelike ways. The particles aren’t truly alive — but they’re not far off, either. Exposed to light and fed by chemicals, they form crystals that move, break apart and form again. “There is a blurry frontier between active and alive,” said biophysicist Jérémie Palacci of New York University. “That is exactly the kind of question that such works raise.” Palacci and fellow NYU physicist Paul Chaikin led a group of researchers in developing the particles, which are described Jan. 31 in Science as forming “living crystals” in the right chemical conditions.
DH: I feel like we’re getting off point. So, what is being planned? RB: The DHS will oversee the domestic crackdown that will happen when the perfect storm bears down on us. And the perfect storm is the economy, meaning the U.S. dollar collapse and hyperinflation, racial or class riots sparked by a high-profile incident, and another mass causality event involving guns. Watch for these three things to happen all at once, or in close succession. The polarization caused by these events will be sufficient to cause a second civil war. DH: When? How soon will all of this happen? RB: I don’t have a crystal ball, but I have seen various reports referencing unprecedented “drills” to take place in later March and April. I’ll mention this because I know a lot of people on the inside at DHS have seen this. A document called “Operation Thunderdome.” It’s maybe 50 or 60 pages, I’m not certain. It describes an economic collapse in the U.S., followed by an attack on the government by “a made-up…
Darien Long aka “Kick Ass Mall Cop” (ATL Security Guard, who tasered “Trashy Mom”) kick out bunch of hoodlums of the mall. This time he got a help by a off duty cop. Darrien became known after the publication of the video “Trashy mom get tasered”, but the following days numerous videos showed Darrian confronting hostile guests, chasing numerous drug dealers from the mall, the local businesses and storefronts in the same area. It’s a job that he has to do on a daily basis, because the area is cluttered with drug dealers, local bullies and other raff’s. Darrien says the area downtown Atlanta needs to be cleaned up so that other business can set up and prosper. This brave guy deserves overwhelming support from the entire nation in his stand against crime and in his stand for order and prosperity.
We all know that Kim Kardashian is only famous for a sex tape and her family’s exploiting themselves on television as reality whores. Well, we can also add to the list that Kim is a hypocrite, in a different way than you probably imagined. Back in December during the awful Newtown tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Kardashian urged her twitter followers to sign a pledge to help combat gun violence. Yes, that is a good message to send to her many followers. Then this week comes and it seems like its back to the old hypocritical Kardashian that we love to hate on. So what did she do you ask? Well, she tweeted out a picture to her fans of a jewel encrusted handgun this past Saturday. It seems as if Kardashian completely forgot in her teeny tiny pea brain about the pledge she had just signed weeks earlier.
A pink Hello Kitty bubble gun is the reason a five-year-old girl was suspended from kindergarten at Mount Carmel Area Elementary School. Her family’s attorney says she was at her school bus stop last week when she told a classmate she was going to shoot her and herself with the bubble gun, a gun she did not have with her. People in the community can’t believe it. “It’s just bubbles. It can’t harm anybody. It’s not hard and won’t puncture anything or harm anybody in any way,” Kayla Nash of Shamokin said. According to the family’s lawyer, district officials at Mount Carmel Area Elementary School questioned her for three hours without her parent’s knowledge. She was suspended for 10 days for making terroristic threats.
I know there’s been a shit ton of articles written on the sorry state of the evil music industry in the last decade. I know, because I have a ton of musician friends and I constantly see the facebook (friend me for magick updates) piss and vinegar. Judging from that, I’d say people’s approval of what the dominant players in the music business have been churning out is probably somewhat lower than that of Congress at the moment i.e. worse than the approval rating for head lice and brussel sprouts. Oh, and it’s always someone else’s fault. But in the midst of all these impassioned debates, there’s always totally obvious “elephant in the room” type shit that no one seems to address, so that’s the entire point to this piece if you couldn’t glean that from the title: stuff I never hear anyone say about the music business in no particular order.
Sunday police arrested 15-year-old Trevon Isaac after his 59-year-old grandmother called 911 and said Isaac had raped her in her sleep. Court documents state the boy’s grandmother said when she woke up Thursday morning “her privates were hurting and she noticed her panties were missing.” She later found them “under her bed and they had been cut.” The woman told police she ”takes medications at night for medical reason and the medications put her to sleep.” The next night she told police she slept on the couch and the woke up to “Isaac thrusting against her” and that he ran into the bathroom yelling “I just touched you.” The woman later called 911 and her son. Her son picked up Isaac and also called police. The victim’s son said Isaac told him, “I cut her panties off while she was in bed” and “I had sex with grandma.” Court records state he also said that he “had sex with grandma on the couch.”
Jonah Falcon was stopped and frisked by the TSA at the San Francisco International Airport on July 9 because of a bulging package hidden in his pants. But the 41-year-old New Yorker wasn’t packing a dirty bomb, drugs or a Costco-sized tube of toothpaste. The New Yorker has the world’s largest recorded penis. In an exclusive interview with The Huffington Post, Falcon described his hard times with security guards after his extra carry-on became suspect. “I had my ‘stuff’ strapped to the left. I wasn’t erect at the time,” said Falcon, whose penis is 9 inches flaccid, 13.5 inches erect. “One of the guards asked if my pockets were empty and I said, ‘Yes.’” Falcon said he knew that his interview was about to get a lot more personal when he was led through one of the X-ray body scanners and passed a metal detector. “Another guard stopped me and asked me if I had some sort of growth,” Falcon said, laughing. Indeed he did have a growth.
The Burger King employee involved in the disturbing picture showing someone standing with shoes on a container of shredded lettuce was fired by the owner of the local franchise, the company said in a statement to Fox8.com. Many details of the picture that was posted on 4chan.org, a social networking website, remain unclear, but the anonymous user reportedly posted the picture along with a comment that said, “This is the lettuce you eat at Burger King.” According to a HyperVocal.com report, an aggravated 4chan user tracked the image’s geo-tagging to locate the employee. The photo was tagged back to Ohio. A Burger King spokeswoman would not confirm the precise location the picture was taken.
A Brooklyn woman pleaded guilty to her role in a fraud ring that embezzled $57 million from a group that helps compensate victims of Nazi persecution. Zlata Blavatnik, a former clerk for the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany, faces up to 40 years in prison after admitting to her role in the conspiracy that approved nearly 5,000 fraudulent applications in exchange for kickbacks. The 64-year-old pleaded guilty Tuesday.
Shying away from certain questions, Calitz, who claimed she was raped by her captors, said more would be revealed in a book they were planning to write about their ordeal. In their almost two years in Mogadishu, Somalia’s largest city, the couple said they were moved – blindfolded – about 17 times. Calitz said she bore no grudges: “They were young enough to be my children, I can’t hate them. They don’t know any different.” Pelizzari said some pirates appeared to be friendly, but they had a rule not to speak to the hostages for more than a minute at a time. “Some were ruthless, but others would sneak us a banana or something now and again,” he said. “I don’t know if it was part of their plan.” The couple said their only link to the world – and a source of entertainment – was the oil-drenched newspaper wrapping their meals. “We’d read whatever news we could find and do the cryptic crosswords in our heads,” he said.
The fast food chain Chick-fil-A has long been suspected of having an anti-gay agenda, and this week, the company’s COO has decidedly come out on the side of the ‘biblical definition of the family unit.’ Dan Cathy, the president of the multimillion-dollar empire said in an interview with the conservative paper Baptist Press that his company is ‘very much supportive of the family,’ but only when it involves heterosexual couples. ‘Well, guilty as charged,’ Cathy responded when asked about Chick-fil-A’s backing of ‘traditional’ families with a husband and wife.
Eight months ago, Robert Downs, 51, set up a small structure in the woods near the Tujunga Ponds Wildlife Sanctuary in Sunland, Calif. To hide his home from police, Downs, who was previously homeless, sprayed it with camouflage paint and cut down nearby trees, said Johnie Jones, a deputy in the Parks Bureau of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The structure, which Downs built with materials he bought at Home Depot, contained four bunk beds built into the walls, tables, shelves and fire extinguishers. Outside were a rock patio, a barbecue grill and more tables. An American flag was draped over Downs’ bed. Downs stood a chance of evading major legal trouble for his hidden house, but sheriff’s deputies also discovered that he cultivated eight marijuana plants outside the structure, a felony because he did not have a permit to do so, Jones said.
It first became apparent to my parents that something was wrong when I was four or five months old. I began chewing on my tongue while teething. They took me to a paediatrician where I underwent a series of tests. At first they put a cigarette lighter underneath my foot and waited for my skin to blister. Once they saw that I had no response to that then they began running needles up and down my spine. And since I had no response to either of those tests they came to the conclusion that I had what I have – congenital analgesia. By which point, I had chewed off about a quarter of my tongue through teething.
The program, called Viral Peace, seeks to occupy the virtual space that extremists fill, one thread or Twitter exchange at a time. Shahed Amanullah, a senior technology adviser to the State Department and Viral Peace’s creator, tells Danger Room he wants to use “logic, humor, satire, [and] religious arguments, not just to confront [extremists], but to undermine and demoralize them.” Think of it as strategic trolling, in pursuit of geopolitical pwnage.
Shares in Facebook continued to slide on Tuesday, after an analyst claimed the dominant social network had seen a modest drop in its userbase. Capstone Investment’s Rory Maher said Mark Zuckerberg’s company suffered a 1.1 per cent fall in US users over the last six months. The number of European Facebookers had also declined, he added. Meanwhile, Facebook’s stock hit a month-long low yesterday finishing the day at $28.09 on Nasdaq, after falling some 8 per cent at the start of the week.
Modern social scientists, who are little more than unscientific socialists, variously view racism as a cancer, a sin, an aberration, and a mental illness rather than a natural and ubiquitous phenomenon. Ignoring the fact that every culture throughout human history has been ethnocentric, they frame racism as an exclusive product of white supremacy, European colonialism, and predatory palefaced capitalism. They also shellac it with a thick gloppy glaze of moralistic condemnation, depicting it as the worst and most destructive of all possible human instincts. The psychological establishment is well on its way to depicting “sociobiological” as personality disorders rather than natural drives toward self-preservation, which in a bygone era were seen as the epitome of mental health.
However, the error message sounded as if Facebook was analyzing the contents of the message and deciding what was relevant or not, which would go beyond traditional anti-spam measures and veer into censorship territory. “Wow, does Facebook do sentiment analysis on comments and keeps you from posting negative comments?” Scoble asked on his Facebook page. Facebook’s Error Message Scoble’s “This Comment Can’t Be Posted” pop-up message stated the following: “This comment seems irrelevant or inappropriate and can’t be posted. To avoid having your comments blocked, please make sure they contribute to the post in a positive way.” There was an “Okay” button to close the error message.
At the time of this report, Facebook “likes” such as “incest” and PTHC (preteen hardcore pornography) were still available in the website’s search engine. One open group with 145 members, “Incest,” offered the following description of the crowd: “all mom dad sister bro aunt f–kers.” A Facebook user by the name “Bizzy Bones” declared: “I masturbated with my cousin once. She was 15. I was 14.” Several visitors to the page liked the listing and one eagerly asked, “How was ur experience?” Another page under the title “Incest” had 1,527 likes. A fourth had 12,311 likes. A fifth had 2,376 likes. Two more had 403 likes. Meanwhile, WND recently reported 34 more links to the FBI depicting images and videos of child sex abuse in a period of only a few days. As part of a two-month undercover news investigation, WND used alias Facebook profiles and located dozens of child-porn images after “friending” many likely pedophiles and predators who trade thousands of pornographic photos
With that being said, there is a part of me that believes that Lady Gaga isn’t sincere with her antics and is just doing so because she needs a gimmick to separate herself from the rest of the group. With Prince and Madonna, they weren’t acting crazy because they were trying to be different, they were just extravagant figures who have very unique views on many things so they expressed it in their attire and music. I am pretty sure that they probably look back at it now and figure how crazy they were back then, but at least that is who they were. With Lady Gaga I do not get that same type of vibe as I believe she is just putting on a show rather than really expressing herself. She knows that her antics is what sales records and draws in more twitter followers so she does whatever it takes. That does not make her unique, which just makes her a figure seeking attention. In other words, she comes across as fake to me which really takes away from her appeal.
Human skin takes on the colour of smoked salmon when it is professionally removed in rectangular shapes from a cadaver. A good yield is about 5500 square centimetres. After being mashed up to remove moisture, some is destined to protect burn victims from life-threatening bacterial infections or, once further refined, for breast reconstructions after cancer. The use of human tissue “has really revolutionised what we can do in breast reconstruction surgery”, explains Dr Ron Israeli, a New York plastic surgeon. “Since we started using it in about 2005, it’s really become a standard technique.” A significant number of recovered tissues are transformed into products whose shelf names give little clue to their actual origin. They are used in the dental and beauty industries, for everything from plumping up lips to smoothing out wrinkles.
The security of high-end handcuffs depends on a detainee not having access to certain small, precisely-shaped objects. In the age of easy 3D printing and other DIY innovations, that assumption may no longer apply. In a workshop Friday at the Hackers On Planet Earth conference in New York, a German hacker and security consultant who goes by the name “Ray” demonstrated a looming problem for handcuff makers hoping to restrict the distribution of the keys that open their cuffs: With plastic copies he cheaply produced with a laser-cutter and a 3D printer, he was able to open handcuffs built by the German firm Bonowi and the English manufacturer Chubb, both of which attempt to control the distribution of their keys to keep them exclusively in the hands of authorized buyers such as law enforcement.
The mysterious disc-shaped object at the bottom of the Baltic Sea could be a relic from a giant World War II device placed there by the Nazis to disrupt Soviet submarine navigation. The object may be the concrete anchor of the device, which also had to be fitted with stainless steel mesh, Swedish naval officer and warfare history expert Anders Autellus told Swedish newspaper Expressen. It would interfere with submarine radar signals and make them crash. The mesh itself may well have eroded away over the decades, but the images of the object made by the Ocean X team exploring it show what appear to be holes, where it was attached to the foundation, he added.
In the foreclosure-battered inland stretches of California, local government officials desperate for change are weighing a controversial but inventive way to fix troubled mortgages: Condemn them. Officials from San Bernardino County and two of its cities have formed a local agency to consider the plan. But investors who stand to lose money on their mortgage investments have been quick to register their displeasure.
It’s relevant to understand that these children have inherited extra genes—that of TWO women and one man—and will be able to pass this extra set of genetic traits to their own offspring. One of the most shocking considerations here is that this was done—repeatedly—even though no one knows what the ramifications of having the genetic traits of three parents might be for the individual, or for their subsequent offspring. Based on what I’ve learned about the genetic engineering of plants, I’m inclined to say the ramifications could potentially be vast, dire, and completely unexpected. As a general, broad-strokes rule, it seems few scientists fond of gene-tinkering have a well-rounded or holistic view of living organisms, opting instead to view the human body as a machine. And as demonstrated with the multi-varied problems that have arisen from genetically engineered foods—from the development of superweeds and superpests, to the creation of a never-before-seen organism
A quarter of Wall Street executives see wrongdoing as a key to success, according to a survey by whistleblower law firm Labaton Sucharow released on Tuesday. In a survey of 500 senior executives in the United States and the UK, 26 percent of respondents said they had observed or had firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing in the workplace, while 24 percent said they believed financial services professionals may need to engage in unethical or illegal conduct to be successful.
On July 19, 1957, five Air Force officers and one photographer stood together on a patch of ground about 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. They’d marked the spot “Ground Zero. Population 5″ on a hand-lettered sign hammered into the soft ground right next to them. As we watch, directly overhead, two F-89 jets roar into view, and one of them shoots off a nuclear missile carrying an atomic warhead. They wait. There is a countdown; 18,500 feet above them, the missile is detonated and blows up. Which means, these men intentionally stood directly underneath an exploding 2-kiloton nuclear bomb. One of them, at the key moment (he’s wearing sunglasses), looks up. You have to see this to believe it.
NSA whistleblower Thomas A. Drake is backing the EFF’s lawsuit over the government’s massive spying program. Drake also had a lot to say about the establishment of a ‘surveillance society’ in America. In a video interview, he said it was ‘soft tyranny. It raises the specter of you’re automatically suspicious until we prove that you’re not. It raises the specter of a universal wiretap, a persistent universal wiretap on every single person, or if not, they can create one.’
Currently, large doses of chemotherapy are required when treating certain forms of cancer, resulting in toxic side effects. The chemicals enter the body and work to destroy or shrink the tumor, but also harm vital organs and drastically affect bodily functions. Now, University of Missouri scientists have found a more efficient way of targeting prostate tumors by using gold nanoparticles and a compound found in tea leaves. This new treatment would require doses that are thousands of times smaller than chemotherapy and do not travel through the body inflicting damage to healthy areas. The study is being published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Lake County, Florida sheriff’s deputies who failed to identify themselves when knocking on a man’s door at 1:30AM at night immediately shot and killed the homeowner after he allegedly opened his door with a gun in hand. The man who was murdered, 26-year-old Andrew Lee Scott, was described by neighbors as a good person and “very nice guy.” The deputies realized later they got the wrong house, but for good measure they searched the man’s apartment and found drugs, which apparently justifies their murdering him randomly. The police are entirely unapologetic. Lt. John Herrell said of the incident, “The bottom line is, you point a gun at a deputy sheriff or police office, you’re going to get shot.” For police who refuse to identify themselves to point their guns at you is A-OK, yet for you to do the same in self-defense is grounds for summary execution.
What makes this new legislation shocking is that we have seen the US government repeatedly use the “State Secrets” and the “National InSecurity card to suspend the Constitution at will to commit a wide variety of heinous activities from torture and indefinite detention without trial to outright forced drugging of prisoners and even repeated assassination by the government, of people including US citizens, which is now being done on the direction of the United States’ first even assassination czar. Keeping that in mind the fact that lawmakers are now trying to go after reporters that “publish government secrets” unequivocally amounts to an outright ban of any and all reporting on government corruption PERIOD because at the end of the day the corrupt and illegal activities conducted by government officials are done in secret in the first place.
Five years ago a composer created music for use in a one-off anti-piracy video. However, without his permission it was used time and again on dozens of commercial DVDs such as Harry Potter. Even in the wake of a huge controversy over “corrupt” and “mafia-like” practices, the local music rights group that got involved in the case failed to pay him the money he was owed. The case went to court and this week the music rights group lost.
Most girls as young as 6 are already beginning to think of themselves as sex objects, according to a new study of elementary school-age kids in the Midwest. Researchers have shown in the past that women and teens think of themselves in sexually objectified terms, but the new study is the first to identify self-sexualization in young girls. The study, published online July 6 in the journal Sex Roles, also identified factors that protect girls from objectifying themselves.
Two Harvard engineers are planning to spray thousands of tonnes of sun-reflecting chemical particles into the atmosphere to artificially cool the planet, using a balloon flying 80,000 feet over Fort Sumner, New Mexico. The field experiment in solar geoengineering aims to ultimately create a technology to replicate the observed effects of volcanoes that spew sulphates into the stratosphere, using sulphate aerosols to bounce sunlight back to space and decrease the temperature of the Earth. David Keith, one of the investigators, has argued that solar geoengineering could be an inexpensive method to slow down global warming, but other scientists warn that it could have unpredictable, disastrous consequences for the Earth’s weather systems and food supplies. Environmental groups fear that the push to make geoengineering a “plan B” for climate change will undermine efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
Ian: It’s getting fairly high right now. Cameraman: What is it now? Ian: It’s 5! Man: It’s 60… 80… This is impossible! It’s 100!! It’s 300! Hiroshi: It just hit 500! Ian: Turn back! Turn back! Turn back! Man: This is not good. (Camera cuts to black; Unidentified screams) Man: Oh my god. Cameraman: I think we’re in trouble. That was bizarre. I felt it as well.
“What really frightens me is not just the disastrous nature of Citizens United, but the whole trend that we are seeing lately, economically, of moving this country toward an oligarchic form of government,” he said. “What you have right now is incredibly unequal distribution of wealth and income… the Walton family of Walmart itself owns more wealth — one family — than the bottom 40 percent of the American people.” “You’ve got that reality out there, and then what’s happening now — what Citizens United is about — is these guys are not content to own the economy, to own the wealth of America, they now want to own lock, stock and barrel the political process as well.” The DISCLOSE Act would have required outside campaign groups to disclose those who contribute $10,000 or more. But it failed to move forward on Tuesday after Senate Republicans unanimously voted against it.
More than 40 poles have been bent, buckled or broken in the past 18 months in one area of south Auckland, New Zealand, it is claimed. The signs, bearing legally required notices such as parking restrictions, are thought to have cost ratepayers thousands of dollars to replace. “Prostitutes use these street sign poles as dancing poles,” said Donna Lee, an elected member of the city council’s Otara-Papatoetoe Local Board. “The poles are part of their soliciting equipment and they often snap them. “Some of the prostitutes are big, strong people.”
People left the “massive house party” and went about two miles to the Walmart, where more shots were fired about 11:20 p.m., according to a second police report. Men and women, most appearing to be teens on the YouTube video, threw produce around as they crowded into the store. The three-minute video shows people riding shopping carts and mugging for the camera in what apparently lasted several minutes. Gee said snacks and sodas were stolen, but no one was hurt and damage was minimal. A store security scanner also was damaged as everybody fled, the police report said. No identifiable Walmart employees are seen during the video. The gunshots were fired into the air outside the store, but no cars or people were hit, the report said. Flash mobs are usually a group of people who dance or sing together in a public place, captured on social media. But so-called “flash robs” like this one are a recent phenomena.
A horrifying video of a woman being pounced upon by roughly twenty men after she left a bar in India has caused international outrage. In it, the woman is seemingly stripped, molested, and even burned with cigarettes as she screams for help for roughly thirty minutes, to no avail. Thanks Jasmine
Police in remote Papua New Guinea have arrested members of an alleged cannibal cult accused of killing at least seven people, eating their brains raw and making soup from their penises, a report said Friday. The 29 people were part of a 1,000-strong group formed to combat errant sorcerers who The National newspaper said had begun charging exorbitant fees. The cost of a witch doctor revealing a cause of death or casting out an evil spirit was usually 1000 kina ($472) cash, plus a pig and a bag of rice, but some were also demanding sex as payment. “It’s against our traditional ethics and morals for a sorcerer to have intercourse with a man’s wife or teenage daughter,” said one local cult leader in the Tangi area, inland from Madang province on PNG’s northeast coast.
“I make a point of staying right at the edge of poverty. I don’t have a pair of pants without a hole in them, and the only pair of boots I have are on my feet. I don’t mess around with unnecessary stuff, so I don’t need much money. I believe it’s meant to be that way. There’s a ‘struggle’ you have to go through, and if you make a lot of money it doesn’t make the ‘struggle’ go away. It just makes it more complicated. If you keep poor, the struggle is simple. “ ~Von Dutch
They are surely the most horrifying offshoot of modern technology – nuclear warheads which can smite hundreds of thousands of people dead within seconds, and leave lasting scars on a landscape for generations. And while most of us will have seen archive footage of nuclear explosions before, one thing we are unlikely to have heard is their sound. For, according to one expert, most films we see of a nuclear blast use stock ‘explosion’ sound effects for the bang – and audio footage is few and far between. But Alex Wellerstein, an historian of science at the American Institute of Physics, has shared a unigue video of a blast during America’s testing of nukes in the Yucca Mountain area of Nevada during the 1950s.
No longer is it enough for Washington to simply use, cooperate with, or listen to private communications. Now the president claims the authority to order all of it seized– as in nationalized under federal control. In a sense, however, this sweeping new order is only somewhat unprecedented, at least in the Bush-Obama era of executive power. Potential seizure of communications infrastructure simply folds into a laundry list of resources that Obama declared authority to seize and manage in another recent Executive Order:
Police in Papua New Guinea have unearthed a ‘cannibal cult’ in the jungle thought to be responsible for the murders of seven suspected witch doctors. The 29 cult members allegedly ate their victims’ brains raw and made soup from their penises, according to police officials. Madang Police Commander Anthony Wagambie said: “They don’t think they’ve done anything wrong; they admit what they’ve done openly.” Wagambie said the suspected killers believed their victims practiced “sanguma”, or sorcery, and had allegedly been extorting money and demanding sex from poverty-stricken villagers for supernatural services. The cult members are thought to have eaten the witch doctors’ organs in the belief that they would attain supernatural powers and become ‘bulletproof’.
Dr. Twana Sparks, an ENT (Ears, Nose and Throat) surgeon, had just finished doing a tympanoplasty with mastoidectomy, a surgical procedure to correct a middle ear problem. The patient was a middle-thirties Hispanic man who lay stretched out before her on the operating table, still under anesthesia. After applying a dressing to the surgical site, Dr. Sparks, who was also the hospital chief of staff, reached inside the patient’s boxer shorts without wearing gloves, fished out his penis and pointed it at the ceiling. She observed fluid filled vesicles on the side of the shaft, indicating a sexually transmitted disease, and shouted “Oh Gross!” She then slapped the head of his penis three times, saying “Bad boy, bad boy, bad boy!” with each strike, as her all female operating team erupted in laughter.
In 2009, the Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated widespread incidents of power thefts in Puerto Rico believed to be related to smart meter deployment. The FBI believed that former employees of the meter manufacturer and employees of the utility company were tampering with the meters charging between $300 to $1,000 to reprogram residential meters and $3,000 to reprogram commercial meters. The perpetrators were said to have hacked into the smart meters using an optical converter device connected to a laptop, allowing smart meters to connect with the computer. The hackers were able to change the settings for recording power consumptions using software available on the internet after making a connection. This method does not require the removal, alteration or disassembly of the meter.
No music fan in his or her right mind would pull the plug on the legendary Bruce Springsteen and Sir Paul McCartney, but that’s exactly what London police did late Saturday night. Springsteen was at the tail end of a three-hour long performance in London’s Hyde Park when he brought the ex-Beatle onto the stage to do a couple of songs together. The pair went beyond the park’s 10:30 p.m. curfew by about half an hour, prompting police to cut off the juice.
Jacqueline established The Snuggery because she believes in the healing power of touch. The Snuggery is a place to take a break from the hustle and bustle of life and focus on the simple restorative pleasure of touch. Though science has unquestionably supported the psychological and physical benefits of non-sexual touch, Americans distinctly lack it. It’s time for change. At The Snuggery, Jacqueline provides individuals with private snuggling sessions. She aims to make the world a gentler place, one snuggle at a time.
16 escape stories with only one that makes sense The blind Chinese dissident, Chen Guangcheng has finally “escaped” the “brutal” treatment of the Chinese “regime” and landed in the “free” world. The world – in particular the American media – called this a human rights win for America.
Now, however, the proof is starting to pile up. The first good, peer-reviewed research is emerging, and the picture is much gloomier than the trumpet blasts of Web utopians have allowed. The current incarnation of the Internet—portable, social, accelerated, and all-pervasive—may be making us not just dumber or lonelier but more depressed and anxious, prone to obsessive-compulsive and attention-deficit disorders, even outright psychotic. Our digitized minds can scan like those of drug addicts, and normal people are breaking down in sad and seemingly new ways.
Let’s face it, you need a new way to stash your goods. Allow me to introduce you to your favorite new toy… your brand new, never-before-seen, concert-going, downtown-clubbing, music-festival-loving, wallet-replacing iStash.
Beaver and two other friends buy shirts with monsters on the front, each more gruesome than the next. Beaver is the only one who tricks his parents and wears his new sweatshirt to school. However, the principal doesn’t like it and an angry Ward comes to pick up Beaver.
Shuffling along the road, holding tightly onto her grandmother’s hand, every step three-year-old Yu Yu takes is painful. The toddler suffers from an undiagnosed condition which causes her feet to grow at an alarmingly rapid rate. The youngster is forced to walk barefoot as her poverty-stricken family are unable to afford shoes big enough for her. Yu Yu’s feet are constantly swollen and heavy, making moving around extremely difficult.
Commonly used baby soaps and shampoos, including products from Johnson & Johnson, Aveeno and CVS, can trigger a positive result on newborns’ marijuana screening tests, according to a recent study. A minute amount of the cleansing products in a urine sample — just 0.1 milliliters or less — was found to cause a positive result.
The military entertainment complex is an old phenomenon that binds Hollywood with the US military. Known as militainment, it serves both parties well. Filmmakers get access to high tech weaponry – helicopters, jet planes and air craft carriers while the Pentagon gets free and positive publicity. The latest offering to come from this relationship is Act of Valor and it takes the collaboration one step further. The producers get more than just equipment — they have cast active-duty military personnel in the lead roles, prompting critics to say the lines have become so blurred that it is hard to see where Hollywood ends and Pentagon propaganda begins. In this week’s feature, the Listening Post’s Nic Muirhead looks at the ties between the US military and Hollywood.
Evansville, Indiana police intent on “sending a message” that online threats against police will not be tolerated organized a massive raid against a forum troll on an online forum. The police decided to bring a TV crew to film their raid against their critic, they also brought a SWAT team. Rather than knock on the accused’s front door, which was wide open, the police instead threw two flash-bang stun grenades through their front window and storm door. Unfortunately, rather than finding the home occupied by a gun-toting cop killer, they found an entirely innocent grandmother and 18-year-old girl, who were both shocked and confused.
Small police departments across America are collecting battlefield-grade arsenals thanks to a program that allows them to get their hands on military surplus equipment – amphibious tanks, night-vision goggles, and even barber chairs or underwear – at virtually no cost, except for shipment and maintenance. Over the last five years, the top 10 beneficiaries of this “Department of Defense Excess Property Program” included small agencies such as the Fairmount Police Department. It serves 7,000 people in northern Georgia and received 17,145 items from the military. The cops in Issaquah, Washington, a town of 30,000 people, acquired more than 37,000 items
That new capability will drive the demand for even more raw data. The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) agency, overseen by the U.S. director of national intelligence, has launched two projects that may help analysts use civilian video from YouTube, Vimeo and other sources. Investigators at the Finder program are studying ways to locate where and when a video was taken based solely on the image itself. That’s hard enough. But researchers at IARPA’s Aladdin are working on an even more challenging task: how to search for “specific events of interest.” If they succeed, analysts could feed in a name, a simple text description or a few sample videos of what they seek—say, “five people wearing backpacks next to a pickup truck”—and get back any number of clips that match the query.
To stop the ‘hate speech’ anarchy, Twitter is considering starting off by blocking the very possibility of replies from so-called ‘non-authoritative’ users, marked out by the absence of a profile picture, followers or bio information, as FT.com reports. This is the first step, but there might be more to come. However, the company’s management is concerned that by installing any kinds of ‘selective’ measures, they may put an end to the unique Twitter-style ‘freedom of tweets’ that has helped Arab revolutions. Anonymity was the key factor that allowed so many users there to join and have their say. “The reason we want to allow pseudonyms is there are lots of places in the world where it’s the only way you’d be able to speak freely,” FT quotes Dick Costolo as saying. Twitter is basically the ‘last harbor’ of anonymity, as it does not have to be linked with such powerful database platforms as Facebook and Google. Silencing trolls may hit those ‘revolutionary’ users as well.
“Well, were you having sex? What are you doing here?” The girl quickly responded “no, no, no, officer no,” the affidavit said. The girl told police she and her friend were just talking. But the man told the girl he “needed to check.” The girl asked “Check what?” “I need to see inside,” he responded. That’s when he ordered her to take off her pants and underwear so he could look for bruising or other evidence of sexual activity. In fear, the affidavit said, she complied. The girl told police she thought it “was the right thing to do” because he was an officer. Her 19-year-friend turned away, unable to watch, according to the affidavit. He told police he heard the man tell the girl “I need you to spread your legs wider so I can see.” The officer then used a flashlight to “inspect” her and told her to pull down her blouse so he could check for bruising, according to the police report. Then he returned the driver’s license to the boy and told them “Go home.”
Two north Florida “animals” are facing child porn charges after photos showing them raping a 4-year-old girl were found on a cell phone they left at a Walmart. Pictures on the phone showed convicted sex offender Alan Johnson, 33, and his girlfriend, Jennifer Sparks, 37, abusing the girl “in every way imaginable,” Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott told WSOC-TV. “My most seasoned detectives here said that its the worst they’ve ever seen,” he said. A shopper found the phone in a shopping cart at a Cape Coral Walmart on June 2 and turned it in, police said.
On Saturday, at midnight Greenwich Mean Time, as June turned into July, the Earth’s official time keepers held their clocks back by a single second in order to keep them in sync with the planet’s daily rotation, and according to reports from across the web, some of the net’s fundamental software platforms — including the Linux operating system and the Java application platform — were unable to cope with the extra second.
A local couple who claim to be Satanists believe they’re a victim of a hate crime and were targeted because of their religious beliefs. Someone cut down a political poster stating, “VOTE SATAN” from their front porch where they live in Mountain View, a suburb of Denver. “We are Satanists… Satanists,” said Luigi Bellaviste. Luigi and Angie Bellaviste belong to the Church of Satan. They even have a Satanic Bible in their home. Thanks Jasmine
Increasingly, smartphones are creating problems in the backcountry, particularly in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, where, officials say, more hikers are skipping basic gear — particularly a map, compass, and flashlight – and relying too heavily on phones with GPS and a slew of gear-like apps, including compasses and trail maps, to bail them out of a jam. “Being prepared for a hike does not mean having your cellphone charged,” said Major Kevin Jordan from the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, which oversees 150 to 180 rescues each year. “To find people with a map and compass is just incredibly rare. It boggles my mind. But when we rescue someone, I hear a lot of regret, a lot of people saying, ‘I should have brought more than my phone, but everywhere I go at home I have cellphone coverage.’ ”
Drug agents removed more than 41,000 marijuana plants from a 40-acre area near Warner Springs in northeastern San Diego County, Drug Enforcement Administration officials announced Monday. The haul, conducted Sunday and Monday, was the largest marijuana seizure on private property in the county’s history, DEA officials said. No arrests were made, but the investigation is continuing, officials said. The removal, from a remote, secluded area called Sunshine Summit, required 35 DEA agents and officers from the multi-agency Narcotics Task Force. Also found on the property were two large water tanks, chemicals for fertilizer, and a 30-round magazine for a semiautomatic weapon. The marijuana removed from the site was estimated to have a wholesale value of $41 million.
A former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy accused of trying to smuggle a burrito stuffed with heroin into a courthouse lockup was sentenced Monday to two years in jail. Henry Marin, who was once portrayed as a dim-witted bumbler on a reality television show that focused on sheriff’s recruits, said nothing as a courtroom deputy handcuffed him and led him away to the type of cell he was once responsible for guarding.
The ‘GM babies’ were born into women who had trouble conceiving their own children. In order to ‘birth’ the babies, extra genes from a female donor were inserted into the women’s eggs before they were fertilized. After conception, scientists fingerprinted 2 of the one-year-old children and confirmed that they inherited DNA from 3 adults — one man and 2 women. What this means is that due to inheriting these extra genes through the genetic modification process, they will now be able to pass them along to their offspring. In other words, these genetically modified babies — if allowed to mate with non-GM humans — could potentially alter the very genetic coding of generations to come. Genetecists state that this genetic modification method may one day be used to create babies “with extra, desired characteristics such as strength or high intelligence.”
Inmates in a Brazilian prison can shave time off their sentences by becoming living sources of green energy. All they need to do is turn the wheel of a bike connected to a power generator. For every 16 hours of pedaling the inmates of the Santa Rita do Sapucaí prison have their sentences reduced by one day, according to a Jornal Nacional report. The generators the prisoners put in motion charge batteries, which are taken to the city center to power some of the street lights. The two bikes installed in the prison are enough to light six bulbs. The reason behind the offer is not to profit from free labor however. Rather it is meant to give inmates an incentive to keep themselves in good shape, says city judge José Henrique Mallmann, who introduced the idea. Thanks Bjarni
Colombia has decriminalized cocaine and marijuana, saying that people cannot be jailed for possessing the drugs for personal use. Anyone caught with less 20 grams (0.705 ounces) of marijuana or one gram (0.035 ounces) of cocaine for personal use will not be prosecuted or detained, but could be required to receive physical or psychological treatment, depending on their level of intoxication, according to Colombia Reports. Colombian Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon said law enforcement would continue its fight against drug trafficking, but would not make further comment.
Do you know how your tax dollars are spent? US radio host Dennis Bernstein and investigative reporter Dave Lindorff illustrate just how much US tax money goes towards the country’s war chest. “People have to realise that 53 cents of every dollar that they are paying into taxes is going to the military to an astonishing figure there is an enormous, enormous amount of money being blown on war an killing and destruction.”
Sixty million euro has been stolen from bank accounts in a massive cyber bank raid after fraudsters raided dozens of financial institutions around the world. According to a joint report by software security firm McAfee and Guardian Analytics, more than 60 firms have suffered from what it has called an “insider level of understanding”. “The fraudsters’ objective in these attacks is to siphon large amounts from high balance accounts, hence the name chosen for this research – Operation High Roller,” the report said. “If all of the attempted fraud campaigns were as successful as the Netherlands example we describe in this report, the total attempted fraud could be as high as 2bn euro (£1.6bn).” The automated malicious software programme was discovered to use servers to process thousands of attempted thefts from both commercial firms and private individuals. The stolen money was then sent to so-called mule accounts in caches of a few hundreds and 100,000 euro (£80,000) at a time.
Nearly every day, and often several times a day, there is fresh news of privacy invasions as companies hone their ability to imperceptibly assemble a vast amount of data about anyone with a smartphone, laptop or credit card. Retailers, search engines, social media sites, news organizations — all want to know as much as they can about their visitors and users so that ads can be targeted as precisely as possible. But data mining, which has become central to the corporate bottom line, can be downright creepy, with companies knowing what you search for, what you buy, which websites you visit, how long you browse — and more. Earlier this year, it was revealed that Target realized a teenage customer was pregnant before her father knew; the firm identifies first-term pregnancies through, among other things, purchases of scent-free products. It’s akin to someone rifling through your wallet, closet or medicine cabinet, but in the digital sphere no one picks your pocket or breaks into your house
As location tracking by cell phone companies becomes increasingly accurate and widespread, the question of who your location data actually belongs to remains unresolved. Privacy activists in the U.S. say the law has not kept pace with developing technology and argue for more stringent privacy standards for cell phone companies. As Matt Blaze, a University of Pennsylvania professor put it, “all of the rules are in a state of enormous uncertainty and flux.” The Obama administration has maintained that mobile phone users have “no reasonable expectation of privacy.” The administration has argued against more stringent standards for police and the FBI to obtain location data.
After being challenged by his lab, the DHS dared Humphreys’ crew to hack into a drone and take command. Much to their chagrin, they did exactly that. Humphrey tells Fox News that for a few hundreds dollar his team was able to “spoof” the GPS system on board the drone, a technique that involves mimicking the actual signals sent to the global positioning device and then eventually tricking the target into following a new set of commands. And, for just $1,000, Humphreys says the spoofer his team assembled was the most advanced one ever built. “Spoofing a GPS receiver on a UAV is just another way of hijacking a plane,” Humphreys tells Fox. The real danger here, however, is that the government is currently considering plans that will allow local law enforcement agencies and other organizations from coast-to-coast to control drones of their own in America’s airspace.
At a hearing yesterday, the Senate Commerce Committee took up the issue of online tracking, the browser-based Do Not Track flag, and, in an unlikely turn of events, cybersecurity. The hearing included testimony from Ohio State University Law School’s Prof. Peter Swire, Mozilla’s Alex Fowler, the Association of National Advertisers’ Bob Liodice, and TechFreedom’s Berin Szoka. While there were a number of heated moments in the hearing, the most surprising was the advertising industry’s claim that respecting consumer choice will harm “cybersecurity.” This new argument from the advertising industry only raises more concerns for the civil liberties implications of online tracking and was, as Rockefeller aptly noted, little more than a “red herring.”
EFF has pressed for legislation to prevent digital book retailers from handing over information about individuals’ reading habits as evidence to law enforcement agencies without a court’s approval. Earlier this year, California instituted the “reader privacy act,” which makes it more difficult for law-enforcement groups to gain access to consumers’ digital reading records. Under the new law, agencies must get a court order before they can require digital booksellers to turn over information revealing which books their customers have browsed, purchased, read and underlined. The American Civil Liberties Union and EFF, which partnered with Google and other organizations to push for the legislation, are now seeking to enact similar laws in other states. Bruce Schneier, a cyber-security expert and author, worries that readers may steer clear of digital books on sensitive subjects such as health, sexuality and security—including his own works—out of fear that their reading is being tracked
However, some people have surmised that the use of antibiotics in our food supply is the main culprit while the overuse of antibiotics by doctors further exasperates the problem. In the 1940′s farmers began treating their livestock with antibiotics. It was soon discovered that if you fed antibiotics to your chickens, pigs and cows on a regular basis that the animals would get fatter quicker and with less feed. In order to compete with the other factory farms farmers started feeding their animals antibiotics everyday! And as we all know by now, the more antibiotics one takes whether through a prescription or through eating antibiotic laden meat, the more resistant one gets. As a side note I also wonder if eating all this antibiotic laden meat has contributed to the obesity epidemic in America..I mean if large doses of antibiotics cause animals to get fat while eating less, wouldn’t that do the same in humans?
Asian eyes are traditionally thinner and narrower than Caucasian or African-American eyes, which tend to be rounder and wider. Asian eyes tend to resemble the oval shape of almonds, although some can look even narrower than that. Most Asians have only a single eyelid (meaning their eyelids don’t have a prominent crease). You can make your eyes look Asian by using makeup or undergoing plastic surgery.
There are many reasons why you might want to look Asian: maybe you’re playing an Asian person in a school play, maybe you’re going to an anime convention and want to look like a certain character, maybe you’re dressing up for a costume party or for Halloween, or maybe you just want to change your appearance for fun, or to disguise your appearance to evade the law. In any case, this article will allow you to (sort of) go from looking White to looking Asian, without much fuss or money needed.
As the sprawling surveillance site being constructed by the National Security Agency (NSA) in Utah grows larger and nearer completion every day, the domestic spy service remains tightlipped about just how much and what kind of personal electronic data they have already collected and collated. Not only does the NSA refuse to provide such information, it insists that it cannot be forced to.
John and Jessie Bates and their 7-year-old son, Tyler, began experiencing mysterious health problems months after after moving into a new home in Suquamish, Washington in March 2007. Tyler was having trouble breathing, Jessie developed a bizarre rash, and John was “perpetually sick,” according to My Fox Phoenix. Though a standard inspection found no problems, the family suspected the house itself was the culprit. A year and a half later, a neighbor revealed the home’s sordid secret: the previous occupant had used it as a meth lab. Even more certain that the building was behind their ailments, the Bates began ripping up the floors and walls. They found “iodine-like staining on the walls and human feces under the floor,” Jessie told Fox News.
Madrid’s own Spok, Neko and Rosh bombed Gran Via, the main street of “Mad City” using an innovative technique which consists of cutting vinyl from a massive block-long advertisement and then peeling off their letters. This new subtractive method makes a permanent mark on the street with minimum effort. Quick, smooth and real nice work from these three amigos.
After inviting students to submit personal stories of the abuse of prescription drugs for academic advantage, The Times received almost 200 submissions. While a majority focused on the prevalence of these drugs on college campuses, many wrote about their increasing appearance in high schools, the focus of our article on Sunday. We have highlighted about 30 of the submissions below, almost all written by current high school students or recent graduates. In often vivid detail — snorting their own pills, stealing pills from friends — the students described an issue that they found upsetting, valuable, dangerous and, above all else, real. Most of them claimed that it was a problem rooted not in drugs per se, but with the pressure that compelled some youngsters to use them.
Theft is followed closely by sex crimes and child pornography charges, with 14 such incidents listed in Blackburn’s report. Six TSA employees were charged with possession of child pornography; one of them got caught because he “uploaded explicit pictures of young girls to an Internet site on which he also posted a photograph of himself in his TSA uniform,” the report notes. Eight others were charged variously with child molestation, rape (including child rape), and even running a prostitution ring. It’s not hard to figure out why persons possessing such proclivities would seek jobs where they would be able to ogle and grope other people’s private parts with impunity.
About those “extended overdraft” fees: consumer advocates have noted that they are not unlike shady payday loans that charge consumers a tremendous amount of interest to get some needed cash in the short term. The Consumer Federation of America recently compared the two practices, and came up with some disturbing findings: As it has before, the Consumer Federation reported the cost at each bank of a $100 overdraft repaid two weeks later as if it were a short-term loan. It said the best deal, at Citibank, was equivalent to a loan with an annual percentage rate of 884 percent. Some banks, including PNC and RBS Citizens, charge more than 2,000 percent. Another thing: the banks examined in the Pew report have continued to reserve the right to process withdrawals by dollar amount, rather than chronologically. This practice “maximizes the number of times an account goes negative, thus increasing overdraft fees” – and the banks can choose to reorder transactions whenever they want
