Author: Sunfire

Mail.com

WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) — All Massachusetts authorities could say for sure is that they found the lifeless body of a small boy, apparently cast off the side of a highway.

An autopsy should reveal if the child is Jeremiah Oliver, the Fitchburg 5-year-old missing for months before police learned of his disappearance and began looking for him. Jeremiah’s case has led to criminal charges against his mother and her boyfriend and calls for changes within the state’s child welfare agency. Three state workers have been fired.   Continue reading “Autopsy to ID dead boy; body cast off side of road”

Mail.com

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A woman who shot and killed her two young grandsons before committing suicide last year left a note to the boys’ parents saying they did not deserve to have the children, according to a police report.

The report, obtained by The Associated Press through a Freedom of Information request, suggests a possible motive for the first time and sheds new light on her mental health problems: The grandmother, Debra Denison, had a history of conflict with the boys’ mother and had attempted suicide a half dozen times before.   Continue reading “APNewsBreak: Vengeful note left in 2 boys’ murder”

Mail.com

KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) — An avalanche swept down a climbing route on Mount Everest early Friday, killing at least 12 Nepalese guides and leaving four missing in the deadliest disaster on the world’s highest peak. Several more were injured.

The Sherpa guides had gone to fix ropes for other climbers when the avalanche struck an area known as the “popcorn field” for its bulging chunks of ice at about 6:30 a.m., Nepal Tourism Ministry official Krishna Lamsal said from the base camp, where he was monitoring rescue efforts.   Continue reading “Avalanche sweeps down Everest, killing at least 12”

Mail.com

MOKPO, South Korea (AP) — The investigation into South Korea’s ferry disaster focused on the sharp turn it took just before it began listing and on the possibility that a quicker evacuation order by the captain could have saved lives, officials said Friday, as rescuers struggled to find some 270 people still missing and feared dead.

Police said a high school vice principal who had been rescued from the ferry was found hanging Friday from a pine tree on Jindo, an island near the sunken ship where survivors have been housed. He was the leader of a group of 323 students traveling on the ship on a school excursion, and said in a suicide note that he felt guilty for being alive while more than 200 of his students were missing.   Continue reading “Doomed ferry’s sharp turn, slow evacuation probed”

RT News

A fake Twitter feed made to look like it belonged to Peoria’s mayor prompted a police raid. The account was flagged up by police for tweeting about sex, drugs and the exploits of ex-Toronto mayor Rob Ford who admitted to smoking crack last year.

What started off as an internet prank led to a raid and several people being questioned in Peoria, Illinois. Police launched a probe in the town in connection with a phony Twitter account that was created under the name of the mayor, Jim Ardis.   Continue reading “Fake Twitter account of US mayor sparks police raid”

Mail.com

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A federal judge in Oregon has found that an immigrant woman’s constitutional rights were violated when she was held in jail without probable cause at the request of U.S. immigration authorities, one of several recent federal court decisions to scrutinize the practice of keeping people in jail after they’re eligible for release so that they can be considered for deportation.

The rulings make it clear that local officials are not required to honor immigration authorities’ requests that someone in custody continue to be held even though their original charges were resolved or they are eligible for bail, and that local jurisdictions may be held liable for doing so.   Continue reading “Oregon ruling spurs halt on immigration detainers”

RT News

Jimmy Carter has become first former US president to speak out against the controversial Keystone XL project, which would see tar sands oil flow from Canada to the US.

Carter joined a group of nine other Nobel Prize winners who signed a letter to President Obama, urging him not to endorse the plan.   Continue reading “Jimmy Carter among Nobel Prize winners urging Keystone rejection”

RT News

Protesting Walmart’s tax privileges as it pays its workers notoriously low wages, the store’s employees and others have delivered a $7.8 billion “tax bill” to the Arizona home of the retail giant’s chairman, Rob Walton.

A report released this week showed Walmart is the beneficiary of $7.8 billion a year in tax breaks and subsidies from the US tax system. Employees of the retail giant and others used the opportunity to remind Walmart heir Walton how many of the company’s workers are forced to depend on social programs to get by, while Walmart reaps billions in profits.   Continue reading “Walmart employees deliver chairman $7.8 bn ‘tax bill’ for company’s tax breaks”

RT News

“Searching for an apartment in New York City can be challenging,” the prestigious New York University acknowledges on its website’s “Off Campus Living” page. On the contrary, the son of the school’s president apparently didn’t have any problem.

According to the New York Post, that cautionary understatement on the official NYU site hardly applied to Jed Sexton — a Harvard-educated aspiring actor who in 2002 miraculously happened upon a newly renovated duplex embedded right between NYU’s facilities in the heart of Manhattan’s Greenwich Village.   Continue reading “NYU president turned faculty apartments into a duplex for his son”

RT News

The United States Navy announced that it will postpone the commissioning of its new nuclear-powered submarine, the North Dakota, due to an investigation into the quality of the components developed by the weapons contractor.

Additionally, the Navy stated that further design work would be necessary before the submarine could be commissioned. The Virginia-class North Dakota was scheduled to enter active service in May, but no new date has been set.   Continue reading “Navy delays commissioning of new nuclear submarine, opens investigation”

Mail.com

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A ferry carrying 459 people, mostly high school students on an overnight trip to a tourist island, sank off South Korea’s southern coast on Wednesday, leaving nearly 300 people missing despite a frantic, hours-long rescue by dozens of ships and helicopters. At least four people were confirmed dead and 55 injured.

The high number of people unaccounted for — likely trapped in the ship or floating in the ocean — raised fears that the death toll could rise drastically, making it one of South Korea’s biggest ferry disasters since 1993, when 292 people died.   Continue reading “292 missing, 4 dead in South Korea ferry disaster”

RT News

No city or county in Oklahoma will be allowed to set their own mandatory minimum wage or employee benefits, according to a law signed by Republican Governor Mary Fallin on Monday.

The new law, formerly known as Senate Bill 1023, comes amid a nationwide movement pushing lawmakers to raise the minimum wage across the US. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, although a number of states have raised their standard and US President Obama proposed raising the national minimum to $10.10.   Continue reading “Oklahoma prohibits towns from setting own minimum wage standards”

RT News

​It’s been two-and-a-half years since the United States government unveiled an insider threat program to keep classified networks and sensitive intelligence secure, but the officials in charge would literally rather storm away than speak about it.

From the floor of Congress last Thursday, US Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) acknowledged that the interagency Insider Threat Task Force established in 2012 “for deterring, detecting and mitigating” future potential risks “was intended to train federal employees to watch out for insider threats among their colleagues.” But media reports in the years and months since, as the senator put it, have suggested “that this program might not do enough to distinguish between true insider threats and legitimate whistleblowers.”   Continue reading “FBI agents storm out from Senate hearing to avoid testifying on Insider Threat program”

Mail.com

NEW YORK (AP) — A special New York Police Department unit that sparked controversy by tracking the daily lives of Muslims in an effort to detect terror threats has been disbanded, police officials said Tuesday.

NYPD spokesman Stephen Davis confirmed that detectives assigned to the unit had been transferred to other duties within the department’s Intelligence Division. An ongoing review of the division by new Police Commissioner William Bratton found that the same information collected by the unit could be better collected through direct contact with community groups, officials said.   Continue reading “New York police disband unit that spied on Muslims”

RT News

A software company that promises to help Americans avoid the annual misery of filing their IRS returns has, in fact, spent years trying to convince lawmakers to make sure filing taxes remains difficult, thus protecting its business, a new report found.

Every year Americans spend an estimated $2 billion and 225 million hours preparing their tax returns by April 15. The process can include obtaining information from a bank or employer, intensive financial disclosures, and, for many Americans, an appointment with a professional accountant who is qualified to evaluate how much money the state and federal government is due.   Continue reading “TurboTax maker spending millions to kill simplified IRS tax filing”

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s database of facial recognition records is expected to contain 52 million images by 2015, according to a new report that is likely to reinvigorate civil liberty advocates concerned about the agency’s data collection.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) obtained internal documents as a result of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the bureau’s Next Generation Identification (NGI) program.   Continue reading “FBI facial records could contain 52 million images by next year”

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Dozens of twitter users have sent threats to American Airlines after a 14 year-old Dutch girl tweeted the air company telling them she was a member of Al-Qaeda and that she was “going to do something really big,” on June 1.

One user, @ShyyLicious, said “I have a bomb under the next plane to take off,” another, @ddlovatosteddy, said “I’m gonna bomb your 737 jet,” while @nonfreak tweeted “release her or I’ll bomb your HQ. You gonna arrest me now?” All the threats were hoaxes.   Continue reading “Teenager creates twitter storm after terror tweet”

Gee, and here I thought the current weather problems we’ve been having 
were all due to chem-trails, HAARP, and Fukushima radiation!

RT News

Increasing levels of pollution in Asia are strengthening storms over the Pacific Ocean, a study has revealed. Scientists warned these changes could have a radical knock-on effect on climate systems around the world if left unchecked.   Continue reading “Asian pollution fueling storms across Northern Hemisphere – study”