What a great dude! 19 year old Austin Dennison’s great-grandmother never got to go to a prom when she was a teen…so he invited her, 89 years old, to be his date to the school’s prom.
The DJ even played a Frank Sinatra song she loved for her. Awesome story!
Read more: kc100
An estimated 200 million people still using Microsoft’s mothballed operating system Windows XP are at risk of cyberattack, experts warned.
The U.S. technology giant stopped support for XP in April, meaning users will not get critical security updates, leaving the OS open to hacking and attack.
Research firm IDC outlined the large number of consumers and businesses under threat, showing that 200 million users are still on XP, while the OS has 26.2 percent market share, according to Netmarketshare numbers.
Read MoreEnd of Windows XP leaves many companies vulnerable
“You’re talking about 200 million computers running XP, simply put, they are open,” Ernest Hilbert, former FBI agent and head of cyber investigations for EMEA at risk consultancy Kroll, told CNBC in a phone interview.
Heartbleed, IE threat
This comes amid a series of cybersecurity concerns over the past few weeks. The so-called “Heartbleed bug” was discovered by researchers last month in OpenSSL software—an encryption service used by around two-thirds of websites to protect information sent to and from web pages.
Microsoft also rushed to fix a bug in its popular Internet Explorer web browser after a computer security firm revealed the flaw, and it said in a blog post on Thursday that XP users would receive the update on a one-off basis.
“Just because this update is out now doesn’t mean you should stop thinking about getting off Windows XP and moving to a newer version of Windows and the latest version of Internet Explorer,” Adrienne Hall, general manager of Trustworthy Computing at Microsoft, said in an official blog post on Thursday.
Read MoreHeartbleed bug: Is changing your password enough?
“If you are on Windows 7, upgrade to Internet Explorer 11. Our modern operating systems provide more safety and security than ever before.”
Despite this, Hilbert warned that other aspects of Windows XP are still are risk despite the Internet Explorer fix.
“There are still people out there looking at XP to find a way to manipulate it and now they know that nobody is going to try to fix it.”
XP not ‘mission critical’
Earlier this year, concern over the end of support for XP spread to the banks as the majority of their ATM machines ran the OS. Several of the major banks told CNBC they had signed extended deals with Microsoft.
Read MoreNo more Windows XP means security fees for banks
But not all security experts agree the end of XP support could be fatal due to the outdated nature of the software.
“A lot of them will be old PCs and not being used for critical stuff. They are grannies and granddads keeping in touch with distant grandchildren,” Bob Tarzey, analyst and director at Quocirca, an IT analysis firm.
“The bottom line is XP doesn’t have the horse power to do a lot of the things people want to do on PCs nowadays. I doubt that computers running Windows XP are mission-critical.”
h/t – cnbc
Fearless: An 8-year-old Virginia boy identified as Martin Cobb was beaten to death trying to defend his older sister from a rapist
A community in Richmond, Virginia, is reeling after an eight-year-old boy was beaten to death while trying to protect his 12-year-old sister from a rapist.
The boy, identified as Martin Cobb, was pronounced dead at the scene in the 200 block of Brandon Road Thursday night.
His sibling, whose name is not being released because of her age and the nature of the crime, was taken to a hospital.
Police have since apprehended the suspect, who turned out to be a black teenager. Initially, the victim described her assailant to as a white man with scraggly facial hair, the local station WWBT reported.
Investigators later determined that the suspect had threatened to kill the 12-year-old girl if she provided police with accurate information about him.
The teenager is currently being evaluated at Tuckers Psychiatric Clinic in Richmond as police are preparing to charge him with murder and assault.
At around 6.30pm Thursday, the brother and sister were playing by the train tracks near their home when a stranger approached the 12-year-old girl, sexually assaulted her and slashed her face, the kids’ aunt and stepfather told WRIC.
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Community shocked: The siblings were playing by the train tracks along Brandon Road in Richmond Thursday when a stranger came out of nowhere and attacked the 12-year-old girl
Too young: Martin’s family say the little boy tried to intervene in an effort to protect his big sister, at which point her assailant threw a rock at his head, killing him on the spot
When her 8-year-old brother tried to intervene, the teenage attacker allegedly turned on him, throwing a rock at his head. The child died instantly.
‘To have the courage to defend his sister as if he was a grown man,’ neighbor Sudan Aunu told Richmond Times Dispatch. ‘His sister is alive today because of him.’
Police responded to the scene a short time later after someone saw the 12-year-old girl running naked and covered in blood out of the nearby woods.
The child was taken to a hospital to be treated for bruises and laceration. Her family said she was very distraught by what happened. .
As officers gathered evidence at the scene in the gathering darkness, shaken neighbors gathered in a circle for an impromptu prayer.
False information: The rape victim initially told police her attacker was a grown white man with a scraggly beard, but it was later revealed that he was a black teen
DailyMail
NAACP interim President and CEO Lorraine Miller has accepted the resignation of the Los Angeles chapter president after questions surfaced as to why his branch honored beleaguered L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver banned Sterling for life Tuesday after revelations surfaced regarding Sterling making numerous statements denigrating black Americans.
In a letter of resignation, L.A. chapter President Leon Jenkins wrote, “Please be advised that the legacy, history and reputation of the NAACP is more important to me than the presidency. In order to separate the Los Angeles NAACP and the NAACP from the negative exposure I have caused the NAACP, I respectfully resign my position as president of the Los Angeles NAACP.”
LOS ANGELES NAACP: Sterling donation led to award
STERLING SCANDAL: Clippers owner could use divorce to avoid sale
Jenkins has come under fire from the public in recent days after it was made public that the chapter honored Sterling with a lifetime achievement award in 2009 and planned to do so again this month. Published reports indicated that Sterling had donated $45,000 to the chapter since 2007.
Earlier in the week, Jenkins told a press conference that the donations came to “an insignificant amount” and the chapter planned to return the money.
The NAACP said in its statement Thursday that its national office in Baltimore is developing guidelines to assist branches in their award selection process.
h/t – usatoday
Cellphone video taken by student on board sinking South Korean ferry records last words and pictures of teenage passengers. Father requested faces be blurred to protect grieving families. (May 1) Video provided by AP AP
A 17-minute recording made by a student who died when a ferry sank off the coast of South Korea provides the most heartbreaking glimpse yet of how a fun trip turned into horror for young passengers on the doomed Sewol.
The video, translated by USA TODAY and the Associated Press, was found on the phone of 17-year-old student Park Su Hyeon when rescuers recovered his body. His father, Park Jong Dae, said he released it to give his mourning nation a glimpse of the April 16 tragedy from inside the vessel.
The video was released to select South Korea media Monday, the same day authorities released a video taken by a coast guard member showing the Sewol’s captain fleeing the sinking ship while hundreds of passengers, most of them Danwon High School students on a class trip, remained below deck. The videos outraged the nation already devastated by the catastrophe. More than 300 of the 476 people who were on board are dead or missing.
The student video begins at 8:52 a.m. Korea time on April 16. The ship had just begun to list, and the chatter among students is a mix of humor and fear.
Early on, an announcement can be heard: “Don’t move away from your places and brace for any possible accidents.”
A student lightly asks, “Am I going to die?” But another quickly chastises with “It is not time to laugh. We are in a real situation.”
Moments later, one student says “Dad, I don’t want to die.” Another says, “It will be fun if waters flow in.”
Students are heard discussing problems with life jackets, which increases in importance after an announcement is made to don life jackets. By the time the clip ends at 9:09, everyone in view is wearing one.
Some of the students in the video struggle as they try to buckle their life jackets. As the ferry lists, they joke about “final commemorative pictures” and “defying gravity” by trying to walk on the walls.
“It’s like we’re becoming the Titanic,” one student says.
Passengers were repeatedly told to say in place. The announcement, at 9:08: “We’re again announcing: For passengers who can wear life vests, please wear them now. Never move away from your places.”
Capt. Lee Joon Seok said he delayed having passengers evacuate the ship because of worries about sending them into cold waters and fast currents before rescuers arrived. He said he ultimately ordered an evacuation, but it was not clear if that order was ever announced to passengers.
The captain and 14 crewmembers have been detained on suspicion of negligence and abandoning people in need. Prosecutors are investigating whether stability issues related to too much cargo or a redesign that added more cabins to the ship contributed to the sinking.
Some of the teens in the video use it to offer their last words. Some warn their siblings not to take school trips unless they want to end up like them.
“I’m really scared,” a student says.
“Is it really sinking?” another asks. “Wow, they’re giving us life vests.”
“I’m getting out of here,” one says. “Me too, me too,” says another.
A student says: “We have to survive now.”
“We’re all finished. I have to leave some farewell words before I die,” says another.
One says, “Mom, I love you.”
Contributing: Jae Yang; the Associated Press
The admitted crack smoker and heavy drinker has long dodged calls for him to resign or go to drug rehab. He relented Wednesday after a video, shot early Saturday morning, shows him reportedly smoking crack cocaine. An audio clip, recorded secretly Monday night, reportedly catches Ford during a drunken evening out at a bar.
Rob Ford is going to rehab.
A lawyer for the crack-smoking, booze-loving Toronto mayor say he’ll take a leave of absence from the job to seek help for substance abuse.
The announcement came Wednesday as new video of Ford smoking crack as recently as Saturday has emerged via The Globe and Mail newspaper. And an audio clip, reportedly secretly recorded Monday at a suburban Toronto bar, caught the mayor cursing and ranting during a late-night drinking bout,according to the Toronto Sun.
The oft-maligned mayor of Canada’s largest city will suspend his reelection campaign as he gets help to “deal with his issues,” Ford told The Sun on Wednesday evening.
He said he is “ready to take a break.”
Ford has been urged to get help after videos of him smoking crack came out last year. He said he had smoked the drug once in a “drunken stupor” and publicly said he had cut back on his drinking.
But The Sun claims they have an audiotape from Monday of an “unruly” Ford ranting and cursing while ordering booze at a bar in Etobicoke, a Toronto suburb.
He even takes a nasty shot at one of his opponents in the mayoral race, Karen Stintz.
“I’d like to f—— jam her, but she doesn’t want … I can’t talk like this … I’m so sorry,” Ford reportedly says on the recording. “I forgot there’s a woman in the house.”
Pharrell surprised us all when he broke down in tears while speaking to Oprah Winfrey about the global success of ‘Happy’ earlier this month. However, that very well could have been CeeLo Green getting all teary-eyed since the movie soundtrack cut-turned-pop culture phenomenon was originally given to him to record.
The Neptunes producer revealed this gem of news during an interview with Howard Stern on Tuesday (April 29). CeeLo passed on ‘Happy’ before Pharrell made it his. The rest is history.
“The powers that be at the time did not see it fit for him,” he says. “There was a much bigger agenda for him, he had an album to put out. He wanted to do it but some folks on his team just felt the priority should have been on his album at the time.”
Though CeeLo didn’t record that track, he had a similar chart-topping reign with his smash hit ‘F— You,’ often censored as ‘Forget You.’ The track was inescapable in 2010, peaking at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. ‘Happy’ currently reigns at No. 1.
Another interesting tidbit is the story behind the Pharrell-produced songs on Justin Timberlake’s ‘Justified’ LP. He originally offered those songs to the late Michael Jackson before the King of Pop’s team turned them down. Jackson was still a fan of his work, however.
“Later he sang me all those songs and told me they should have been his and I told him they were for him,” Pharrell says.
Read More: Pharrell Reveals CeeLo Green Originally Passed on ‘Happy’
(Getty Images)
From 2011 to 2012, the number of New Yorkers who were at or near poverty levels remained constant at 46%. According to a new report [PDF] released by the City’s Center for Economic Opportunity andobtained by the Times, “nearly half of New Yorkers were making less than 150 percent of the poverty threshold, a figure that describes people who are struggling to get by.”
Being gainfully employed does not necessarily keep you from “struggling to get by”: 17% of families with a full time worker remained in poverty, as did 5.2% of families with two full time workers.
The poverty rate has stopped growing since the recession, but this belies the reality of a city that isimpossibly expensive to live in and has only seen an increase in low-wage jobs with no benefits.
Mayor de Blasio’s first deputy mayor Anthony Shorris says that the new administration “got elected almost entirely on this question,” and vowed to fight “this stubborn undercurrent” with paid sick leave, a living wage law, municipal ID cards, and universal pre-K.
New York’s reality mirrors what the country is experiencing. Per another report on the meager wage job boom in the Times:
The National Employment Law Project study found that there were about a million fewer jobs in middle-wage industries — including parts of the health care system, loan servicing and real estate — than there were when the recession hit.
Economists worry that even a stronger recovery might not bring back jobs in traditionally middle-class occupations eroded by mechanization and offshoring. The American work force might become yet more “polarized,” with positions easier to find at the high and low ends than in the middle.
The Game and T.I. were in a super-tense standoff with LAPD after a VIOLENT fight at an L.A. club early Wednesday morning.
A group of guys — who we’re told are “mutual acquaintances” of both Game and T.I. — were denied entrance at Supperclub. The guys began arguing furiously with security when one member of the posse threw a punch at a security guy. You hear the punch at the beginning of the fight video.
Security for the club then descended on 2 members of the posse, beating them to a bloody pulp … at one point kicking one of them in the face while he was down.
LAPD cops were present during part of the fight … as were off-duty officers who were working at the club.
That’s when an angry T.I. and Game stormed out of the club … mistakenly believing COPS beat their guys up. They got into it big time with the LAPD and that’s when the standoff begins.
You gotta watch the standoff … it is intense and on the edge of erupting into violence.
The 2 injured men were taken to LAPD’s Hollywood division but no one wanted to file charges so they left.
You hear people screaming “Bloods” and “Crips” in the video … but we don’t know if this was gang related. But it was definitely bad.
Read more: TMZ
Carers ignored the desperate cries for help of bedridden 98-year-old woman despite her calling for assistance 321 times in a single hour.
Shocking secret footage filmed inside Oban House care home in Croydon, south London showed great-grandmother Yvonne Grant begging to be taken to the toilet for up to two-and-a-half hours.
Tragically the hidden camera, which was placed in the room by concerned granddaughter Vanessa Evans, captured the final undignified days of Ms Grant’s life, as she died less than a month later.
Ignored: 98-year-old great-grandmother Yvonne Grant begged to be taken to the toilet for up to two-and-a-half hours. Her carers apparently did not respond, despite being stationed directly outside her room
The secret footage forms part of a BBC Panorama investigation into abuse at care homes, which airs this evening.
Since Ms Grant’s death in January last year, two members of staff have been convicted of common assault over their treatment of the former seamstress, the Daily Mirror reported.
The footage shows the mother-of-four crying out for help hundreds of times in less than an hour, including making 45 requests to be taken to the toilet.
When a member of staff finally arrives two-and-a-half hours later, they instructed Ms Grant to use her incontinence pad – something she had never done before.
Cries for help: Since Ms Grant’s death in January last year, two members of staff have been convicted of common assault over their treatment of the former seamstress
Tragic: The hidden camera, which was placed in the room by concerned granddaughter Vanessa Evans, captured the final undignified days of Ms Grant’s life, as she died less than a month later
Ms Grant was then helped out of bed and told to walk to the toilet by herself. When she couldn’t manage it, the 98-year-old was dropped roughly back onto the bed.
It wasn’t until some time later that she was finally taken to the toilet.
Speaking to the newspaper, Ms Grant’s granddaughter Vanessa Evans,43, said: ‘When I saw the video I was devastated and fuming. But I can’t say I was shocked.’
‘I was expecting to find something but I didn’t think it would be this extreme. Her calls were definitely ignored because the nurse’s station is right outside the room,’ she added.
Ms Grant, who moved into the Oban House care home in 2010 after losing her RAF hero husband John 24-years earlier, died within days of her granddaughter telling her that she had placed a secret camera in the room and recorded her suffering.
Read more: DailyMail
A death row inmate spent forty minutes writhing in agony before dying of a heart attack following a new cocktail of drugs administered in a lethal injection on Tuesday night.
Oklahoma prison officials halted Clayton Lockett’s execution after the left the man writhing and clenching his teeth on the gurney.
The 38-year-old, who was found guilty of shooting a woman and watching his friends bury her alive, was declared unconscious ten minutes after the first of the state’s new three-drug lethal injection combination was administered.
Three minutes later, though, he began breathing heavily, writhing, clenching his teeth and straining to lift his head off the pillow.
It later emerged his vein had ruptured.
The blinds were eventually lowered to prevent those in the viewing gallery from watching what was happening in the death chamber, and the state’s top prison official eventually called a halt to the proceedings.
Lockett died of a heart attack a short time later, the Department of Corrections said.
Local media present said Mr Lockett sat up and said ‘something’s wrong’ 13 minutes into the procedure.
‘It was a horrible thing to witness. This was totally botched,’ said Lockett’s attorney, David Autry.
HOW THE BOTCHED EXECUTION PLAYED OUT!
6:23 p.m. – The injection process begins. Lockett has heavy, slow blinks, laid still
6:29 p.m. – Consistently closed his eyes
6:30 p.m. – First check of consciousness; still conscious
6:33 p.m. – Announced Lockett was officially unconscious
6:34 p.m. – Lockett started to move his mouth
6:36 p.m. – Lockett began convulsing and mumbling
6:37 p.m. – Lockett sat up and said ‘something’s wrong’
6:39 p.m. – Prison officials lowered the blinds
7:06 p.m. – Lockett dies of massive heart attack
Read more: DailyMail
Ever forget your glasses and need to see something, like read a menu or a text on your phone? Here’s an awesome trick posted on YouTube from Minutephysics.
First you make a fist. Then open your fist just enough to create a tiny hole. Then peer through the hole at the object. Voila! You can see. You can even read. You don’t look like the coolest person in the room reading through your fist, but it works.
It works because limiting light to the eyeball increases focus, Minutephysics explains. Looking through pinholes is not a practical way to correct your vision full-time, as it also limits peripheral vision, which is why we invented glasses and contacts.
Still, it works in a pinch. And that’s why this video has gotten so popular on YouTube.
Take a peek for yourself:
Read more: Business Insider
