When terrorists attacked at a mall with guns in Nairobi today today, The Times’s Tyler Hicks, a staff photographer, happened to be next door. Here’s what he saw….
h/t – Times new York
Category: Featured
‘Portway has pled guilty to some of the most vile and heinous crimes known to our society, namely participating in the sexual exploitation of young children through the possession and distribution of child pornography and soliciting the kidnapping of a child for the purpose of killing and consuming that child,’ federal prosecutors wrote in court documents, obtained by the Boston Herald.
The sentencing papers, filed yesterday, include frightening excerpts from online chats Portway had with like-minded child pornographers and potential killers, including Florida puppeteer Ronald Brown who planned to kidnap children he knew through his local church.
According to the Herald, Brown went as far as to send Portway a photograph of a young boy ‘with lines drawn on him to identify the different cuts of meat.’
The two chatted about kidnapping the boy, taking him to a rented house and eating him over several weeks before feeding the ‘leftovers’ to alligators. Brown has since been convicted.
In May, Portway pleaded guilty to solicitation to kidnap a child and to distribution and possession of child pornography. As a British national, he will likely be deported after serving his sentence.
A Chinese student slit his teacher’s throat in an act of revenge after his mobile phone was confiscated.
The student, named only as Lei in local news reports, had been discovered playing with his phone by his teacher Sun Wakang during a chemistry lesson at a school in in Fuzhou, eastern China’s Jiangxi province.
The following day Lei went to Mr Sun’s classroom where the teacher was sat marking papers, and slit his throat from behind.
The 32-year-old father-of-one died at the scene as the student fled.
Today young Lei called the local emergency number and confessed to the crime before turning himself in to police in Shanghai.
A 43-year-old married special education teacher has been arrested for allegedly having a sexual relationship with one of her students.
Amy Belliveau, who was in her first year of teaching for the district in Newington, Connecticut, allegedly had sexual contact with the 20-year-old student between April and June this year.
It is against state law for a school employee to have sexual contact with a student, regardless of the student’s age. Officials described the pupil as a ‘high-functioning’ special needs student.
An investigation into her conduct was launched after a tip from the school district on June 13.
She was placed on administrative leave from Newington Transitional Academy when the investigation was launched and she was fired following her arrest.
A Beverly Hills police sergeant snuck a peek at Whitney Houston’s naked dead body and made “inappropriate” comments about the pop icon after she was pulled lifeless from a hotel bathtub last year, a claim filed by a former Beverly Hills SWAT supervisor states.
“Damn, she’s still looking good, huh?” the sergeant allegedly said after lifting a sheet covering Houston’s corpse.
The sergeant knelt beside Houston to remove the sheet “to an area below the pubic region,” and also said she “looked attractive for a woman of her age and current state,” the legal claim filed by ex-SWAT officer Brian Weir and obtained by the Los Angeles Times states.
Weir filed his claim for damages against the police department and the city alleging that he was retaliated against after he reported the misconduct.
He said the sergeant acted with reckless disregard for the integrity of the potential crime scene and should have known his behavior “would outrage ordinary family sensibilities.”
Weir said that after he complained to his superiors, he was removed from the city’s elite SWAT and K-9 units, denied promotions and training and relieved of supervisory duties.
Jonathan A. Ferrell was a 24-year-old former football player for Florida A&M University who worked two jobs and moved to North Carolina to be with his fiancée.
On Saturday, the car Ferrell was driving crashed into trees off a northeast Charlotte road. The wreck was so severe that Ferrell would have had to climb out of the back window to escape, the Associated Press reported.
An obviously shaken Ferrell walked about a half-mile to the nearest house and was “banging on the door viciously” to attract attention, police say.
The woman who lived there opened the door, and when she saw Ferrell, shut it and called police at about 2:30 a.m.
When officers arrived, Ferrell ran toward police, who attempted to stop him with a Taser. He continued to approach them when officer Randall Kerrick fired his gun, hitting Ferrell 10 times and killing him.
“I truly forgive him. I pray for him. And I pray that he gets off the police force,” said Georgia Ferrell, the victim’s mother. “You took a piece of my heart that I can never get back.”
Police determined the shooting was excessive and charged Kerrick with voluntary manslaughter. A police statement Saturday said the investigation showed “Kerrick did not have a lawful right to discharge his weapon during this encounter.”
h/t Buzzfeed
Before we knew the names of the victims, the motive behind the attack, or even how many shooters there were, some conspiracy theorists thought they figured out what had happened at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday morning.
Alex Jones, the antigovernment broadcaster who reaches millions every day through his syndicated radio show and Infowars Web empire, speculated the shooting may be a “false flag” operation intended to distract Americans from Syria, as well as the anniversary of the Benghazi attack and the simmering IRS scandal.
“You’ve got all the other scandals, so this is a great way to change the subject,” Jones said on his radio show Monday morning, which is broadcast on more than 80 stations across the country. “It’s a way to divert everyone.”
For Jones, the shooting may be the latest in a long line of “false flag” operations, in which the government allegedly stages phony terror attacks to gin up popular support for disarming Americans or taking away their civil liberties. He confidently labeled the Boston Marathon bombing a hoax within hours of the explosion, but was more circumspect Monday.
“It may be real crazies, but look at the timing. Obama rolling out a national campaign against guns yesterday, and then this happens,” he said.
For conspiracy theorists, the “why” for such tragedies is always the same. “We’ve all got to give up our rights because it’s so scary. It’s all about mind control,” Jones explained.
And he’s not alone. On conspiracy message boards and forums, users who see themselves as citizen journalists have cut together YouTube videos that they claim show possible “actors” at the scene. One video shows a near-victim laughing with a local TV reporter when the two didn’t realize they were on air. “One would think at a moment such as this, a reporter and a ‘near victim’ wouldn’t be laughing, especially when they didn’t realize they’d be caught on camera,” the conspiracy website Before It’s News explained.
Nina Davuluri – of Indian descent – was born in New York. For the dumb racists who don’t know where that is, New York is in a country called America. New York is a part of The United States.
That small point is important because after Nina won the Miss America title last night, these dumb racists took to Twitter and questioned, why a foreigner won Miss America?
Here’s a small sample of what the racists had to say.
I totally agree!
This is what the NRA has in mind. If you want to take your AR-15 semi automatic gun to the Farmers Market, then go right ahead. Lots of wild animals there. Great place for hunting.
Two men heading to Appleton’s downtown farmers market with AR-15 rifles slung over their shoulders and handguns in holsters swiftly attracted the attention of police officers last weekend.
Now, they’re attracting attention across the Internet, with some gun rights advocates expressing outrage that the pair were held at gunpoint and handcuffed, while others voice frustration at what they consider a foolish and dangerous stunt.
The men, Charles Branstrom, 27, and Ross Bauman, 22, ultimately were released without tickets or charges.
Gun rights advocates think the police acted inappropriately.
“I would never blame police for following up on ‘man with a gun’ calls, but they still have to behave within the limits of the law and abide by people’s constitutional rights,” said Nik Clark, president of Wisconsin Carry, Inc., a gun rights group. “I believe the police were acting outside of their legal authority when they pointed guns at the individuals and involuntarily detained them.”
Milwaukee’s police chief ridiculed the pair.
“In a post Aurora-Newtown environment, it’s a reckless and irresponsible stunt to strut around in public with an assault-style weapon and think police should assume you’re well-intentioned,” Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn said Thursday, referring to mass shooting incidents in Colorado and Connecticut.
“It’s just absurd,” Flynn said. “This has nothing to do with the Second Amendment. These characters and those who support them should be ashamed of themselves.”
Appleton police declined to comment beyond a prepared statement issued after a Journal Sentinel inquiry Thursday. It said police responded after getting calls about the men from concerned citizens, briefly detained the men and released them after determining they intended no harm and were in legal possession of the guns. The department “has no ongoing investigation and considers the issue resolved,” the statement reads.
Police Chief Steve Bracknell, who is responsible for the Florida town where George Zimmerman resides, agreed in a series of emails that Zimmerman is a “ticking time bomb” and another “Sandy Hook” waiting to happen.
Bracknell expressed his views in response to two emails from Santiago Rodriguez, who reached Bracknell through a contact form on the police department’s website. Bracknell confirmed the emails’ authenticity to ThinkProgress and subsequently tried to distance himself from the remarks.
Rodriguez’s first email was an extended, and sometimes angry, critique of how the Lake Mary Police Department handled their response to the recent altercation between George Zimmerman, his wife and his father in law. Rodriguez told Bracknell that he had a responsibility to charge Zimmerman because he was another “Sandy Hook… waiting to happen.” Bracknell responded with a detailed defense of the police department’s conduct, but explicitly endorsed Rodriguez’s comments on Sandy Hook.
Asked to elaborate on his email, Bracknell attempted to distance himself from Rodriguez’s comments, saying he did not agree and was “referring to the fact that [Zimmerman] seems to be involved in incidents” involving firearms.
In his second email, Rodriguez called Zimmerman a “ticking time bomb” who will snap “sooner or later.” Again, Bracknell agreed.
The full email exchange between Rodriguez and Bracknell is available here.
The police are still deciding whether or not to charge Zimmerman in connection to the incident. They are attempting to recover video of alleged assault that Zimmerman’s wife, Shellie, recorded with her iPad. Zimmerman’s attorney, Mark O’Mara, acknowledged that Zimmerman broke the iPad into pieces before the police arrived. According to witnesses, Zimmerman also punched his father-in-law in the nose.
Categories
Man Robs Bank Wearing Barack Obama Mask
Hail to the thief!
A New Hampshire man was busted for robbing a bank while wearing a President Barack Obama mask, police said.
In a scene straight out of the 1991 film, “Point Break,” John Griffin Jr., 52 — wearing a “full face” mask of the President and sporting a blue suit, white shirt with a powder-red tie — held up a Bank of America branch in Merrimack about 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, police said.
Griffin fled with an undetermined amount of money, but responding officers spotted him behind a nearby office complex, cops said.
“It was probably within five minutes or so from the bank robbery getting called in to our officers deploying to the area,” Scott Park, a detective with the Merrimack Police Department, told WMUR-TV.
