Bill Clinton: Garner 'didn't deserve to die'

By Alexandra Jaffe, CNN

updated 1:36 PM EST, Tue December 16, 2014

Clinton: Garner 'didn't deserve to die'

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Clinton acknowledged that Garner's cigarette sale was illegal, but said he 'didn't deserve to die'
• He said while economic opportunities have improved for minorities, issues remain
• Clinton urged Americans to get past their "preconceptions" that are "wired into" their lives

(CNN) -- Former President Bill Clinton said that the African American man killed with a chokehold by a white police officer "didn't deserve to die," and that while race relations have improved, Americans have to move beyond harmful preconceptions that are "almost wired into" their experience.

In an interview with Fusion that aired Monday, a network aimed at younger Latino viewers, Clinton acknowledged that Eric Garner, the man who died by chokehold after police found him illegally selling loose cigarettes on the street, was "obviously not well, overweight and vulnerable therefore to heart and lung problems" and that he was "doing something that was illegal."

But he added: "He didn't deserve to die because of that."

RELATED: Bill Clinton on protests: 'We have to make people feel that everybody matters again'

Clinton has spent much of the past week speaking on the killing of Eric Garner, telling CNN En Español last Friday that the "The fundamental problem you have anywhere is when people think their lives and the lives of their children don't matter, they they are somehow disposable, just like a paper napkin after a lunch at a restaurant or something."

"If we want our freedom to be in deed as well as word in America, we have to make people feel that everybody matters again," Clinton said last week.

The police officer in the case was not indicted, sparking a new wave of protests following months of unrest surrounding a similar incident involving Michael Brown, an unarmed black teen who was shot dead by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. That officer was also cleared by a grand jury, and the two incidents have prompted a nationwide discussion surrounding race relations and attitudes in the United States.

Clinton said in Monday's interview while Brown's killing "may not be a crime ... it shows you the divide that exists between the community and the police."

He did say that economic opportunities have improved for minorities, that "there are more opportunities for people, without regard to race, to be accepted into every business profession and avenue of American life than ever before."

But Clinton also said that there remain "preconceptions that, when people are scared, are triggered again."

"And when people like this get killed, the people in their neighborhoods, they feel almost that they're disposable ... like they're not really important, they don't really matter," he said.

Clinton added: "Whenever there's insecurity, these preconceptions are almost wired into us and we have got to get beyond them."

Clinton's wife, former secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is considering a presidential bid and has been more reserved in addressing the issue of race in her recent public appearances. She recently said the nation needs to face some "hard truths" about race.

Ex-Marine wanted in 6 killings committed suicide

Associated Press

KATHYY MATHESON and SEAN CARLINPENNSBURG, Pa. (AP) — An Iraq War veteran suspected of killing his ex-wife and five of her relatives was found dead of self-inflicted stab wounds Tuesday in the woods of suburban Philadelphia, ending a day-and-a-half manhunt that closed schools and left people on edge.

Bradley William Stone's body was discovered a half-mile from his Pennsburg home, about 30 miles northwest of Philadelphia. The 35-year-old former Marine sergeant had cuts in the center of his body, and some kind of knife was found at the scene, Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman said.
Stone, who had been locked in a custody dispute so bitter that his ex-wife feared for her life, went on a 90-minute shooting and slashing rampage before daybreak Monday at three homes a few miles apart, authorities said.
"There's no reason, no valid excuse, no justification for snuffing out these six innocent lives and injuring another child," Ferman said. "This is just a horrific tragedy that our community has had to endure. We're really numb from what we've had to go through over the past two days."
The killings set off the second major manhunt to transfix Pennsylvania in the past few months. Eric Frein spent 48 days at large in the Poconos after the September ambush slaying of a state trooper.
© AP Photo/Montgomery County Office of the District Attorney This undated photo provided by the Montgomery County Office of the District Attorney in Norristown, Pa., shows Bradley William Stone, 35, of Pennsburg, Pa., a suspect in six shooting deaths in… Stone's former wife, 33-year-old Nicole Stone, was found shot twice in her apartment after a neighbor heard glass breaking and saw Stone fleeing around 5 a.m. with their two young daughters, authorities said. The girls were later found safe with Stone's neighbors.
Police went to two other homes and discovered five more people dead: Nicole Stone's mother, grandmother, sister, brother-in-law and 14-year-old niece. A 17-year-old nephew suffered knife wounds to the head and hands, and Ferman said he was in "very serious" condition.
The adults were all shot. The teens were slashed.
Authorities said Stone bashed in the back doors of the first two homes and smashed his ex-wife's sliding glass door with a propane tank.
"It's a relief that they found him," said Stone's neighbor Dale Shupe. "Now we know he's not out trying to do more harm to anybody else."
As the manhunt dragged on — with SWAT teams making their way through neighborhoods and the Philadelphia police sending in a heat-sensing helicopter — at least five schools within a few miles of Stone's home closed, and others were locked down. Veterans' hospitals and other places tightened security.
Ashley Tessier, of Pennsburg, took her sick 7-month-old son to the pediatrician in a stroller Tuesday as SWAT teams knocked on doors along her route. She said she felt she had no choice, since she postponed Monday's doctor visit because residents were told to take cover.
"Seeing all this is really terrifying — the dogs, the guns, the SWAT team," she said.
The rampage unfolded in the towns of Harleysville, Lansdale and Souderton.
© AP Photo/Matt Rourke A police officer moves near a home Monday in Souderton, Pa., where a suspect is believed to have barricaded himself inside after shootings at multiple homes.
Stone and his ex-wife had fighting over their children's custody since she filed for divorce in 2009. He filed an emergency request for custody this month and was denied Dec. 9, Ferman said.
Neighbors said Nicole Stone lived in such fear of her ex-husband that she would sometimes ask her apartment complex's maintenance staff to go in and check her place first because she was afraid he might be lying in wait.
"She would tell anybody who would listen that he was going to kill her and that she was really afraid for her life," said Evan Weron, a neighbor in Harleysville.
Stone was in the Marines from 2002 to 2008. His specialty was listed as "artillery meteorological man."
Stone told a 2011 child support hearing that Veterans Affairs deemed him permanently disabled and that he was collecting benefits from the agency, according to court documents. The VA had no comment Tuesday.
Ferman said Stone sometimes used a cane or walker, but she said had no evidence he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Stone faced several driving-under-the-influence charges, and Ferman said he was undergoing treatment through veterans' court as part of his sentence.
Stone remarried last year, according to his Facebook page and court records, and has an infant son. Neither his wife nor the son was injured. Nicole Stone became engaged over the summer, neighbors said.
___
Associated Press writer Michael Rubinkam in Pennsburg contributed to this report.

Outrage in Pakistan after Taliban gunmen kill at least 141 at school

The Washington Post

Tim Craig and Pamela Constable40 mins ago

© Mohammad Sajjad/AP Photo A plainclothes security officer escorts students evacuated from a school as Taliban fighters attack another school nearby in Peshawar, Pakistan, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2014. Taliban…

SLAMABAD, Pakistan — The bloody siege of an elite army high school Tuesday by Taliban gunmen, which killed at least 141 students and teachers, was an apparent retaliation for a major recent army operation after years of ambivalent policies toward the homegrown Islamist militants.
The mass targeting of children, in a military zone in the northwestern city of Peshawar, drew condemnation from around the world, as well as from across Pakistan’s political and religious spectrum — a rare display of unity in a country where Islamist violence is often quietly accepted and sometimes defended. The attack was also condemned by Taliban leaders in Afghanistan.
Some analysts suggested that after years of suicide bombings and attacks on markets, mosques, hotels and military bases, the insurgents had finally gone too far, and that widespread public outrage over this attack might signal a decisive turn in the nation’s — and the government’s — reluctance to fully take on the Taliban.
The massacre was the most intimate assault ever against Pakistan’s military, the nation’s most respected and powerful institution. The only comparable incident was in December 2009, when a small group of assailants penetrated army headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi and killed more than 30 people praying at an army mosque.
The death toll Tuesday also rivaled one of the highest in Pakistan in recent years, when suicide bombings in 2007 killed about 150 people in Karachi during celebrations to welcome former prime minister Benazir Bhutto back to Pakistan after years in self-exile. Bhutto was assassinated soon after.
Yet even when previous attacks have drawn strong condemnation and vows of action from military officials, Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishment have remained deeply ambivalent about taking on the domestic Islamist forces and have often been accused of playing a double game in their partnership with the West in the war on terrorism.
One chief reason is that such extremist groups have long acted as proxies in Pakistan’s rivalry with India, an issue that trumps all others for Pakistan’s security leaders and that has long been seen as a far greater threat than Islamist militants. Terrorist attacks are routinely decried as the work of unknown foreign hands.
Pakistan’s civilian leaders, for their part, have long deferred to the army in security and foreign policy, and they have also been reluctant to act against Islamist violence, for fear of alienating the nation’s deeply religious Muslim masses and organized groups.
“Despite this national tragedy, I don’t see any chance of the nation as a whole building an anti-terrorism narrative,” said Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, a veteran Pakistani legislator from the northwest. He noted that a variety of religious and political leaders have “deep sympathy” for the militants. “For now they may tone down their support,” he said, but in time they will “start showing their true colors again.”
The army, however, has always been carefully attuned to public opinion, and Tuesday’s attack provoked a remarkably swift, broad and emphatic outpouring of revulsion and anger. News channels showed grim scenes of dead children in hospital beds, many still wearing green school uniforms, and of weeping mourners carrying hastily made pine coffins out of hospitals in Peshawar.
“Today is the saddest day of the history of our nation,” said Haniyah Siddiqui, 18, who was shopping in the port city of Karachi. “It is high time to make up our mind to fight terrorists and eliminate them in toto, not just mourning or condemning the tragic incident.”
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who rushed to Peshawar, denounced the assault as a “cowardly act” and vowed to maintain military action “until the menace of terrorism is eliminated” from Pakistan. “The nation needs to get united and face terrorism,” he added. “We need unflinching resolve against this plague.”
Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager and Taliban attack survivor who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize for promoting girls’ education, said from England that she was “heartbroken” by “these atrocious and cowardly acts” but vowed that even as she and millions mourn the students’ deaths, “we will never be defeated.”
Her denunciation was echoed by Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the leader of Pakistan’s Jamaat-ud-Dawa Islamist movement, whose followers were blamed for a 2008 terrorist siege on the Indian city of Mumbai. Saeed said the attack was “carried out by the enemies of Islam. It is open terrorism. . . .These are barbarians operating under the name of jihad.”
Even the Afghan Taliban, which operates separately from the Pakistani group but shares a religious agenda, took the unusual step of indirectly condemning the attack. A statement from spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said, “The intentional killing of innocent people, women and children are against the basics of Islam, and this criterion must be considered by every Islamic party and government.”
The Pakistani Taliban quickly claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was to avenge Pakistan’s sweeping military operation in June in North Waziristan, part of a tribal region that straddles the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The group had been warning for months that it would take revenge.
Hasan Askari Rizvi, a military analyst, said the attack was “unprecedented,” even in a country that has experienced thousands of terrorist attacks over the past decade. He said the Taliban appears to be growing more desperate as the military operations continue.
“Now they are attacking the soft targets,” Rizvi said.
But Mohammad Khorasani, a spokesman for Pakistani Taliban, said the attack was “a gift for those who thought they have crushed us in their so-called military operation in North Waziristan.” He said such opponents were “always wrong about our capabilities. We are still able to carry out major attacks, and today was just the trailer.”
In a statement, the group said six militants, including three suicide bombers, carried out the assault. After a gun battle that lasted nearly nine hours, Pakistan police officials said a total of seven militants had been killed.
An army spokesman, Maj. Gen. Asim Bajwa, said the attackers sought “to inflict maximum harm” and took no hostages. Hundreds of people were also wounded as classrooms erupted in chaos and carnage, with students and teachers shot point-blank.
The school, while open to the public, is funded by Pakistan’s army, and many students are children of military personnel based in Peshawar.
“My son was in uniform in the morning. He is in a casket now,” wailed one father, Tahir Ali, as he collected the body of his 14-year-old son, Abdullah, according to the Associated Press. “My son was my dream. My dream has been killed.”
Pervaiz Khattak, chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said the Taliban attackers started “indiscriminate firing” after entering the school through a back door. The first students targeted were gathered in the auditorium to receive first-aid training, police said.
Muhammad Harris, 16, said he was in a room with 30 students and four teachers when they heard commotion in the hall. The students said some of the attackers appeared to be speaking Arabic.
“Our female teacher went outside when we heard the firing and was shot dead,” Harris said. “One attacker was crying, ‘Help me, I am injured.’ But he was not and was trying to trap us and shoot us.
Dozens of relatives, desperate for information about missing students, tried to reach the school on foot but were pushed back by a cordon of military guards as emergency and security vehicles rushed by. Some relatives shouted angrily; others milled in distress.
One man looking for his nephew, an eighth-grader named Walid, said he had searched through the emergency wards and the morgue at Lady Reading Hospital, where many victims of the attack were taken.
“I saw all of the patients and all of the dead,” said Hameed Mohammed, 38. “There was no sign of him.”
As darkness fell, families were still waiting at the roadblock and the military school compound was shrouded in fog. From a distance, men with flashlights could be seen, searching slowly from room to room.
Constable reported from Kabul. Brian Murphy and Karen DeYoung in Washington, Aamir Iqbal and Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar, Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad and Nisar Mehdi in Karachi contributed to this report.

Bird flu is back: here's what you need to know

Vox.com

Julia Belluz7 hrs ago

© Reuters/Phil Noble Ducks in cages are seen at a duck farm in Nafferton, northern England on Monday. The European Commission on Monday praised the action taken by Britain and the Netherlands to contain…

1. European health officials have been killing off thousands of birds to contain outbreaks of bird flu in several countries that may or may not be related.
2. Health officials are concerned because any time there's an outbreak in animals, there's the possibility that the virus could infect humans, leading to a flu pandemic.
3. But you don't need to worry just yet: it seems the outbreaks don't involve H5N1, the bird-flu strain that is most dangerous for humans.

What's going on in Europe?

On Sunday November 16, a case of bird flu was found on a duck-breeding farm near Yorkshire, England.

Confirmation of the particular virus strain will come later this week, but officials so far said it's not the deadly H5N1 bird flu strain that can kill humans.

The news from England came just as Dutch officials announced that they had detected H5N8 bird flu at a poultry farm in the village of Hekendord. This strain is highly contagious and lethal to birds, but has never been found in humans.

Earlier this month, on November 4, the same H5N8 strain was found at a farm in northeastern Germany.
Now, scientists across Europe are collaborating to figure out how and whether these outbreaks are related.
The Dutch government has temporarily banned the transport of poultry and eggs and t he European Commission is expected to introduce other containment measures.

What is bird flu and how deadly is it?

Like humans, birds — from chickens to ducks and other wild poultry— get sick with the flu sometimes. When they do, bird flu virus can spread easily among them by way of respiratory secretions and feces, reaching epidemic proportions very quickly.

The reason experts worry so much about bird flu, however, is because it's an easily transmissible respiratory virus and some strains have managed to infect humans — with deadly outcomes.

Right now, bird flu has only rarely made people sick, and mostly involved very close contact with infected birds, and not human to human spread.

But there's the concern, whenever the virus surfaces,that it could makes the leap into humans and mutate to become more easily passed among people, leading to a pandemic. As the Guardian notes, "Pandemics have occurred every 20 to 30 years, but it has been almost 40 years since the last one happened."

Of all the bird flu strains, H5N1 is the one public-health experts worry about the most. It's believed to be the most dangerous form of bird flu, and it has caused serious outbreaks mostly among animals in Asia and the Middle East, as well as some 650 human cases since 2003.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most human cases of H5N1 virus have turned up in people who had direct contact with infected animals in Asia and 60 percent of those infected later died.

Should I be worried about the outbreaks in Europe?

Probably not. The outbreaks in Europe appear to involve strains of the virus that haven't been deadly in humans. The H5N8 strain in Germany has never infected humans, and health officials confirmed that the bird flu in England — while a form of H5 — is not the deadly H5N1 strain.

As well, officials have been working to contain spread, killing off birds that may have been infected, including some 6,000 ducks in England and, in the Netherlands, some 150,000 chickens.

Still, flu outbreaks can take health officials by surprise and there's still a lot we're learning about bird flu and how it spreads. What's more, the WHO has long warned that a pandemic could start off with just the scenario we're seeing now: infected birds on a farm. 

Modern slavery 'traps 35.8 million people'

AFP

Yousuf Nagori12 hrs ago

© Provided by AFP Three freed women slaves hug their children after being rescued by authorities as they arrive in the town of Matli, northeast of Karachi, Pakistan, on September 13, 1998
Forced to pick cotton, grow cannabis, prostitute themselves, fight wars or clean up after the wealthy -- some 35.8 million people are currently trapped in modern-day slavery, a new report said Monday.
The 2014 Global Slavery Index (GSI), in its second annual report, said new methods showed some 20 percent more people were enslaved across the world than originally thought.
"There is an assumption that slavery is an issue from a bygone era. Or that it only exists in countries ravaged by war and poverty," said Andrew Forrest, chairman of the Australian-based Walk Free Foundation which produced the report.
The foundation's definition of modern slavery includes slavery-like practices such as debt bondage, forced marriage and the sale or exploitation of children, as well as human trafficking and forced labour.
The report, which covers 167 countries, said modern slavery contributed to the production of at least 122 goods from 58 countries.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates profits from this forced labour are $150 billion (120 billion euros) a year.
"From the Thai fisherman trawling fishmeal, to the Congolese boy mining diamonds, from the Uzbek child picking cotton, to the Indian girl stitching footballs... their forced labour is what we consume," read the report.
- Mauritania tops list -
The biggest offender, with the highest proportion of its population enslaved, remains the west African nation Mauritania, where slavery of black Moors by Berber Arabs is an entrenched part of society.
Mauritania has anti-slavery legislation but it is rarely enforced and a special tribunal set up in March has yet to prosecute any cases, the report said.
In second place was Uzbekistan where, every autumn, the government forces over one million people, including children, to harvest cotton.
Countries like Qatar in the Middle East were a major destination for men and women from Africa and Asia who are lured with promises of well-paid jobs only to find themselves exploited as domestic workers or in the construction industry.
The countries doing the most to combat the problem were the Netherlands, Sweden, the United States, Australia, Switzerland, Ireland, Norway, the United Kingdom, Georgia, and Austria.
- Austerity blamed -
Europe, while at the bottom of the list -- with Iceland and Ireland the best ranked -- has 566,000 people involved in forms of modern slavery, with people trafficked into Ireland to grow cannabis, or forced into begging in France.
"Trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation accounted for almost 70 percent of identified victims while trafficking for forced labour accounted for 19 percent," read the report.
"The global economic crisis and austerity measures of the EU have meant that increasing numbers of Bulgarians and Romanians migrate in search of highly paid jobs. Some of these workers can be tricked or coerced into situations of exploitation."
The highest numbers of modern slaves were found in India with an estimated 14.29 million enslaved.
However the Index said India had recently taken important steps to combat the problem, strengthening its criminal justice framework through legislative amendments and increasing the number of its Anti-Human Trafficking Police Units.
Africa faces some of the biggest challenges, the report said, with armed forces and rebel groups from Somalia to the Central African Republic using child soldiers to mineral-rich Zambia, Angola, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo forcing children and adults to "labour in dangerous mines."
Nigeria is a major source of human trafficking to Europe. In one example, Nigerian women get trapped in a cycle of debt bondage in the Italian sex industry.
"These findings show that modern slavery exists in every country. We are all responsible for the most appalling situations where modern slavery exists and the desperate misery it brings upon our fellow human beings," said Forrest.

Man pushed to his death under New York subway

AFP

16 hrs ago

© Provided by AFP People wait for the Subway on October 24, 2014 in New York City
A 61-year-old man was killed Sunday in New York when he was pushed onto subway tracks by an unknown assailant, said police, who released a video of the suspect.
The incident took place in the Bronx, where the victim, identified as Wai Kuen Kwok, was waiting for the D train, at the 167th street stop, with his wife. The couple were headed to Chinatown, in lower Manhattan.
The suspect pushed the man from the platform just as a train arrived in the station, shortly before 9:00 am (1400 GMT), as his horrified wife watched helplessly.
The victim and his attacker did not appear to know each other and had not argued, witnesses said.
Police released a video of the suspected killer, who left the scene by bus. On the video, a man wearing a black jacket over a dark t-shirt gets off the bus, goes into a store, and emerges to smoke a cigarette as he ambles away.
A reward of $2,000 was offered for any information that could help the investigation.
Every year, dozens of people are killed by the subway in New York though accident or suicide.
However, this is first known incident of a person being pushed to his or her death on the tracks since December 2012, when two were killed in separate attacks.
On December 28, a woman pushed an Indian immigrant to his death in Queens.
Weeks earlier on December 3, a man was pushed from a stop in Manhattan during a fight with a deranged man.
A New York Post front page picture of the man on the tracks a split-second before he was killed by the oncoming train provoked public fury as to why no one helped him -- and why the tabloid newspaper published the photo.

American questioned for shipping human body parts

Associated Press

THANYARAT DOKSONE, Associated Press14 hrs ago

© AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit Thai police officer shows a picture of a tattooed human skin which was found in a package of a U.S. tourist, during a press conference at Bangpongpang police station in Bangkok,Thailand. Monday, Nov. 17, 2014. A shipping company in… BANGKOK — A parcel delivery company in Bangkok put three packages bound for the United States through a routine X-ray and made a startling discovery: preserved human parts, including an infant's head, a baby's foot and an adult heart.
The body parts were stolen from the medical museums of one of Bangkok's biggest hospitals, its administrators said Monday.
Police Col. Chumpol Poompuang said the sender was a 31-year-old American tourist, Ryan McPherson, who told them he had he found the items at a Bangkok night market. Police tracked down McPherson after being alerted by the shipper, DHL.
"He said he thought the body parts were bizarre and wanted to send them to his friends in the U.S.," Chumpol said, adding that the man was questioned along with an American friend for several hours and released without charges.
It apparently was not the first brush with notoriety for McPherson and his friend, identified by police as Daniel Tanner, 33. Photos of the two talking with police on Sunday closely resemble men by the same names and ages who were producers over a decade ago of a video series featuring homeless people brawling and performing dangerous stunts after being paid by the filmmakers, who were based in Las Vegas.
They claimed sales of about 300,000 copies at $20 each, though their "Bumfights" videos were banned in several communities and generally shunned by retailers after criticism that the films' subjects were being exploited.
McPherson and Tanner exited Thailand into neighboring Cambodia on Sunday, and could not be contacted for comment.
The three packages seized in Bangkok, which contained five body pieces, were labeled as toys, police said. They were being sent to Las Vegas, including one parcel that the man had addressed to himself. Police said they were contacting the FBI to get information about the would-be recipients of the items.
Clinical Professor Udom Kachintorn, the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Bangkok's Siriraj Hospital, told reporters that the five human body parts were stolen from the hospital's museums. Two of them belonged to the department of anatomy and the other three to the department of forensic medicine.
He said the two Americans visited the museum last Thursday but that closed circuit television video did not show them taking any items away.
Police Col. Chumpol had initially said a baby's heart and intestines were among the body parts. But police at a news conference Monday said the heart, which had been stabbed, was from an adult and there were no preserved intestines.
Police Lt. Gen. Ruangsak Jarit-ake displayed graphic pictures of the five body parts and told reporters that the parts had been preserved separately in formaldehyde inside sealed acrylic or plastic boxes. Two of the parts were pieces of tattooed adult skin — one with a jumping tiger and the other bearing an ancient Asian script. One of the pictures showed the baby's foot had been sliced into three sections.
"DHL has a policy of prohibited items, which include human body parts. To the best of our knowledge, we have never experienced a similar case before," said Chananyarak Phetcharat, DHL Express Thailand-Indochina's Managing Director.
According to DHL, the parcels were declared as "Puzzle-unlimited collectors ED", "Steamer Cap" and "Antique Train Collector E."
In some Thai cults, preserved fetuses or spiritual tattoos are believed to give the owners good fortune or protection from evil. They can also be used to practice black magic.
In 2012, a British citizen was arrested with six roasted fetuses covered in gold leaf after a tip-off that infant bodies were being sold through a website offering black magic service.
The district attorney's office in San Diego, California, in 2002 filed felony charges including battery against McPherson and Tanner and two others in connection with production of the "Bumfights" videos. A judge reduced the counts to misdemeanors and the four pleaded guilty in 2003 to arranging a fight without a permit. They were fined $500 each and ordered to perform community service at a homeless shelter, but McPherson and one colleague were sentenced to 180 days in jail in 2005 for failing to complete their community service.
___
Associated Press writer Jocelyn Gecker contributed to this report. © AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit Thai police officers show pictures of a tattooed human skin during a press conference at Bangpongpang police station in Bangkok,Thailand, Monday, Nov. 17, 2014. 

Rat poison linked to India sterilisation deaths, with death toll expected to rise

The Guardian

Jason Burke in Delhi10 hrs ago

Health officials investigating more than the deaths of 13 women who died after attending government-run family planning camps in eastern India now believe that they were killed by medicine contaminated with rat poison.
All antibiotics bought from Mahawar Pharmaceuticals, a factory in the the eastern city of Raipur, the state capital, have now been withdrawn, the Press Trust of India reported.
Quantities of zinc phosphide, a component of rat poison, was found at the factory, where antibiotics distributed at the two camps on Saturday and Monday, were made earlier this week.
“We have seen some toxin reaction in some patients, not infection. Renal failure, falling blood pressure, in all cases issued with this drug. What they were given was not antibiotic but a toxin,” said Dr Ashutosh Tiwari, secretary of the local branch of the Indian Medical Association in Bilaspur, where the deaths have occurred..
The results of tests on pills given to women and on the viscera of the casualties are still awaited, for final confirmation of the presence of the poison in the drugs.
Around 20 women who attended the camp remain in intensive care and the death toll is expected to rise.
More possible victims of the contaminated antibiotics arrived at hospitals from villages in Bilaspur district, about 100 km (60 miles) from Raipur, on Thursday and Friday, some clutching medicine strips from Mahawar and complaining of vomiting, dizziness and swelling.
At least one of the strips of antibiotic was from the same batch as those handed out at the mass sterilisation held on Saturday in the same district in Chhattisgarh state, one of India’s poorest.
Tiwari said two other patients, both male, had died of total renal shutdown after taking antibiotics from the same batch. They had been prescribed the drugs by local practitioners for minor problems.
“There was something in it which we use to kill rats in India. It is this that caused the mortality,” said Tiwari, who has been briefed on the results of the ongoing official inquiry, told the Guardian.
Police say they entered the Mahawar factory on Wednesday with the help of a security guard, but at first found nothing wrong. Drug inspectors returned the next day and shut it down.
Speaking in police custody, Ramesh Mahawar, managing director of Mahawar Pharmaceuticals, said he was innocent.
“The situation has been twisted in a wrong manner. We are just being harassed,” said Mahawar, who has been making drugs for 35 years.
The focus has now shifted away from the appalling conditions at the camp where veteran gynaecologist Dr R K Gupta conducted one tubectomy every two minutes in a two-hour sterilisation drive in a dirty room in a disused hospital.
The deaths in Chhattisgarh have drawn attention to India’s mass-sterilisation programme, as well as weak quality-control standards for drugs procured by state governments.
“States procure medicine through a tender and the manufacturers that bid the lowest quote win the order to supply, regardless of their manufacturing process or distribution systems,” said Bejon Kumar Misra, head of Partnership for Safe Medicines India, a non-governmental organisation.
But G N Singh, the drugs controller general of India, said quality and safety came before price in the tender process.
“If the drugs are found to be substandard, we will suspend the license of the manufacturer,” he said.
Corruption is rife in a sector long seen as a problem by health experts and campaigners.
India is the world’s top steriliser of women, and efforts to rein in population growth have been described as the most draconian after China. Indian birth rates fell in recent decades, but population growth is still among the world’s fastest.
Sterilisation is popular because it is cheap and effective, and sidesteps cultural resistance and problems with distribution of other types of contraception in rural areas.
Deaths due to sterilisation are not new in India, where more than 4 million of the operations were performed in 2013-14, according to the government.
Between 2009 and 2012 the government paid compensation for 568 deaths resulting from sterilisation, the health ministry said in an answer to a parliamentary question two years ago. A total of 1,434 people died from such procedures in India between 2003 and 2012.
Experts said on Thursday the true figure was much higher.
“Not all are reported, not all get compensation. Then there are those who suffer complications or side-effects, often due to infection. There is no data on them at all,” said Sonam Sharma, at the New Delhi-based Population Foundation of India.

Final poppy planted to remember British WWI dead

AFP

Andrew Cowie7 hrs ago

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A teenage army cadet on Tuesday planted the last of 888,246 ceramic poppies at the Tower of London, representing every UK forces World War I fatality, as Britain marked Armistice Day.
A century on from the start of the 1914-1918 Great War, people around Britain stood for the traditional two-minute silence remembering all those who have given their lives in conflict.
Cadet Harry Hayes, 13, was watched by a crowd of thousands at the Tower of London as he completed the poppy installation "Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red".
The vast artwork, filling the moat surrounding the 11th-century fortress with a blood-red tide, has captured the public imagination and become the focal point for World War I centenary commemorations.
An estimated five million people have been to the castle to see the poppies -- the symbol of remembrance -- and in recent days, the floodlights have been kept on so people can visit through the night.
"We always hoped the installation would capture the public imagination yet we could not predict the level of support we have received," said former army chief General Richard Dannatt, now the Constable of the Tower of London.
The poppies have all been sold in aid of veterans' charities.
They were to be removed from Wednesday but a section will now remain until the end of November to allow more people to see them.
The 888,246 figure counts all the identified graves and dead commemorated on memorials in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's care, who were serving in the United Kingdom forces.
The figure therefore includes troops from British empire colonies, but does not include those from the separate forces of Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and South Africa.
Hayes said he was nervous as he installed the final poppy.
"It is an amazing honour," he told Sky News television.
The two-minute silence at 11:00 am (1100 GMT) marked the end of World War I at the same time on November 11, 1918.
Prime Minister David Cameron paid his respects at the Cenotaph, along with hundreds of civil servants from the surrounding ministries.
Thousands more people massed in the nearby Trafalgar Square, where poppies were dropped into the fountains.
Inside London's Westminster Abbey, clergy gathered round the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, a body brought back from the Western Front and buried among the kings in 1920.
Outside St Paul's Cathedral, hundreds of city workers stood together in silence as the dean led a service of prayer from the steps. Traffic came to a standstill as the bells chimed 11.
The England football team, training at their St George's Park base in Burton, central England, were joined by members of the armed forces in marking the silence on the main pitch.