News Stories

[NoemiChan]

Originally Posted by killer3000ad

Fast and Furious actor, Paul Walker, killed in car crash.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25173331

His death is meaningful.. and more meaningful how he spent the last moments of it. Helping for a cause. Thank you, Paul Walker, in behalf of all Filipinos world wide.

[ganbaru]

Thai protesters step up action, PM forced to leave building
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...9AT01S20131201

Rare diplodocus dinosaur sells for $650,000 at British auction
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...9AQ12V20131127

[Wigwams]

New York train derailed.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25176496

Ukraine protests.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25173719

[Endless Soul]

To be honest, I had to look up who Paul Walker was. I've only seen the first Fast and Furious movie, and that was by accident.

Endless "Not a fan" Soul

[NoemiChan]

Originally Posted by Endless Soul

To be honest, I had to look up who Paul Walker was. I've only seen the first Fast and Furious movie, and that was by accident.

Endless "Not a fan" Soul

Pun???

[speedyexpress48]

Originally Posted by KiraYamatoFan

http://globalnews.ca/news/1001023/ac...n-fiery-crash/

Talk about total irony. It's such a sad day for people who became fans of "The Fast and the Furious" series.

edit: killer3000ad beat me to it.

Oh man...the guy who got me into automobiles passed away. RIP.

[SaintessHeart]

Dagong shines a light on China's shadowy debt pile

[ganbaru]

Analysis: Saudis have few options as they push tougher foreign policy
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...9B105G20131202

U.S. sends new submarine-hunting jets to Japan amid East Asia tension
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...9B104220131202

[Tom Bombadil]

Chinese launch of moon rover yesterday. This is taken from the third stage rocket after the rover-rocket separation.

[Chaos2Frozen]

Amazon announces drone delivery service

Retail behemoth Amazon has announced plans to fly packages direct to your door via unmanned drone, starting in the US in 2015.

Amazon Prime Air's robotic vehicle will pick up your order from a production line, clip the package to its belly and fly off to your house. Really.

Urban areas will see the drones first, where package delivery time will be reduced to as little as 30 minutes from placing your order.

[Jinto]

In b4 a drone delivers a package to an inaccessible place or to be taken away by just anyone.

[monir]

Originally Posted by Jinto

In b4 a drone delivers a package to an inaccessible place or to be taken away by just anyone.

Or being shot down by one of the 300 million guns we Americans own.

[GDB]

Originally Posted by Jinto

In b4 a drone delivers a package to an inaccessible place or to be taken away by just anyone.

Yeah, I can't imagine how this will possibly work for an apartment complex. And I don't even mean the ones you see in the city, but like, suburban complexes (where it's multiple buildings, maybe 8-12 apartments per building).

[ganbaru]

As Hospital Prices Soar, a Single Stitch Tops $500
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/03/he...0.html?hp&_r=0

[MrTerrorist]

Originally Posted by Jinto

In b4 a drone delivers a package to an inaccessible place or to be taken away by just anyone.

I for one welcome our Drone Overlords.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by GDB

Yeah, I can't imagine how this will possibly work for an apartment complex. And I don't even mean the ones you see in the city, but like, suburban complexes (where it's multiple buildings, maybe 8-12 apartments per building).

You can always tie CO2 bottles to the parcel and launch it through the apartment windows.

Brazil's child sex trade thrives as World Cup looms

(Reuters) - With Brazil hosting the World Cup next year, officials fear an explosion in child prostitution as sex workers migrate to big cities and pimps recruit more underage prostitutes to meet the demand from local and foreign soccer fans.

"We're worried sexual exploitation will increase in the host cities and around them," said Joseleno Vieira dos Santos, who coordinates a national program to fight the sexual exploitation of children at Brazil's Human Rights Secretariat.

"We're trying to coordinate efforts as much as we can with state and city governments to understand the scope of the problem."

Child prostitution is driven mostly by local demand in Brazil, with more than 75 percent of clients coming from the same or nearby states as their victims, according to estimates from the secretariat. Sex tourism targeting children is active in larger cities along the coast and increases at times of big events such as Carnival or New Year's Eve festivities.

It won't be different with the World Cup, and authorities face a big challenge as sex workers of all ages, and the people who control them, look to cash in.

The Minas Gerais State Association of Prostitutes, an organization that represents sex workers in one of Brazil's largest states, is even offering free English lessons to prostitutes in Belo Horizonte, another World Cup host city.

"There'll be a lot more people circulating in this area during the games for sure and the city will be full of tourists," said Giovana, a 19-year-old transvestite working a corner near Fortaleza's Castelão stadium.

"I know there'll be more work for everybody - women, girls, everybody."

BIG BUCKS

The World Cup tournament is expected to attract 600,000 foreign visitors to Brazil and they will spend an estimated 25 billion reais ($11 billion) while traveling in the country, said the Brazilian tourism board, Embratur.

The championship as a whole could inject 113 billion reais into the Brazilian economy by 2014, FIFA has said, citing an Ernst & Young report.

For its part, Brazil's government will have spent 33 billion reais on stadiums, transport and other infrastructure by the time the tournament kicks off, plus $10 million on advertising.

In contrast, very little is being spent on fighting the sexual exploitation of minors, campaigners say.

Despite more than a decade of government vows to eradicate child prostitution, the number of child sex workers in Brazil stood at around half a million in 2012, according to the National Forum for the Prevention of Child Labor, a network of non-profit groups.

That's a big increase since 2001, when 100,000 children worked in the sex trade, according to UNICEF estimates.

The Human Rights Secretariat earmarked 8 million reais for World Cup host cities to set up projects to fight child prostitution, but not all cities had programs in place to absorb the funds, said Santos.

Santos' department is finishing a review of child prostitution in key locations and will then decide what action to take. But any programs will only scratch the surface.

"We realize we're only touching the tip of the iceberg with these actions for the World Cup, but we hope to build capacity and implement longer-lasting programs in the future," he said.

Beyond the Human Rights Secretariat, the government could not provide data on total spending to fight child prostitution. But campaigners say some programs have been shut down and they argue the government isn't doing enough to address the problem.

"This subject isn't really part of the government's agenda and we don't see a willingness to combine efforts or increase resources to address the sexual exploitation of children," said Denise Cesario, executive manager of Fundação Abrinq, a local partner of Save the Children International.

THE LURE OF FORTAZELA

Sex tourism happens across Brazil but Fortaleza - a top tourist destination with sandy white beaches and 300 days a year of guaranteed sunshine - is the industry's main hub.

A culture of machismo, combined with extreme poverty and drug use, has created the perfect environment for sexual exploitation, say social workers like Cecília dos Santos Góis, who works at children's rights charity Cedeca.

In the poor and arid outskirts of Fortaleza, it's culturally acceptable for fathers to sell their daughters into the sex trade as a source of income, Góis said.

More phone calls are made from Fortaleza to a nationwide toll-free number to report child sexual exploitation than from any other Brazilian city on a per capita basis, experts say.

While international sex tourism is prominent in Fortaleza, it represents only a third of all reported child prostitution cases. Prostitutes with Brazilian clients, from Ceará or surrounding states, are far more common, prosecutors said.

Many of Fortaleza's young sex workers see prostitution as a way of escaping their circumstances. Jessica, 16, a tall brunette with thin plucked eyebrows and baby blue nail polish, began sex work with local clients, earning about $18 a night, before graduating to bigger nightclubs and groups of foreign tourists for about $90 a night.

Police arrested her in a September raid on a club on Iracema beach, the epicenter of Fortaleza's sex trade. They took her to one of four shelters for underage prostitutes, a discreet two-story house, accessible only through a narrow iron gate watched around the clock by security guards.

WAITING FOR A PRINCE

Sitting in the small room she shares with three younger girls, Jessica said one of her regular clients, a Spaniard, had promised to take her to Europe.

"I told him I was 18 and I was getting my passport," she said, tucking a rainbow-colored tank top into green and yellow tropical-print stretch pants. "I paid 500 reais for a fake ID and was saving money to buy a fake passport. But in the end I was afraid to go."

Pimps and clients are rarely punished and when prosecutors do manage to build a case, victims often change their testimony and the cases are thrown out, said Francisco Carlos Pereira de Andrade, a prosecutor specializing in child exploitation.

Of the 2,000 cases before his department, which only handles sexual violence against children, only about 20 involve child prostitution.

The face of sex tourism in Fortaleza is also changing, making it more difficult to catch criminals, Andrade said.

Instead of working the streets, organized rings of pimps, hotel managers and taxi drivers recruit young girls. Foreign clients order the underage prostitutes and they are delivered directly to their hotels, Andrade added.

Vanessa was 13 when police picked her up in October not far from the stadium and took her to the same shelter as Jessica.

She left her home in a poor neighborhood when she was 10, after her stepfather started to beat her, she said. She has lived mostly on the streets, going to shelters now and then and spending nights with clients, some of whom she calls friends.

On November 2, Vanessa broke into the maintenance room at the shelter, took a ladder and climbed the 2.5-metre (8-foot) wall surrounding the building, said Leonora Albuquerque, one of the shelter's coordinators. She convinced two other girls, aged 12 and 13, to go back with her to the area near the stadium. It was the fourth time she had escaped in less than six months.

"It's very hard to convince these girls to lead normal lives," Albuquerque said. "Most of them think abuse and selling their bodies is just a fact of life."

[MrTerrorist]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

You can always tie CO2 bottles to the parcel and launch it through the apartment windows.

Brazil's child sex trade thrives as World Cup looms

I hope you don't get involve with this while your at Brazil. Azu-Nyan will be very disappointed.

[ganbaru]

Originally Posted by MrTerrorist

I hope you don't get involve with this while your at Brazil. Azu-Nyan will be very disappointed.

I was glad than he didn't add any personal comment with the new; the new is already depressing by itself and his comment about loli would be even more tasteless than usual.

EDIT: Elderly Man With Alzheimer’s Shot Dead After Wandering Onto Resident’s Property
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/201...ents-property/

A 72-year-old who suffered from Alzheimer’s was shot dead after wandering onto a man’s property early Wednesday morning, ringing the doorbell and turning the door handle. After Joe Hendrix’s fiancé called 911 to report a possible intruder, Hendrix went outside to take matters into his own hands, and fired four shots at a silhouette in his yard, killing Ronald Westbrook.

Hendrix admitted to shooting Westbrook in the yard of his rural northern Georgia home after calling out to him and hearing no answer. The county sheriff said Hendrix went outside after waiting 9 or 10 minutes for the police, while his fiancé was still on the phone with the 911 dispatcher. The county sheriff said he was “certain” he and his fiancé felt threatened.

I can understand some of the arguments for those ''stand your ground'' laws even if I mostly disagree with them, but on this case it's simply insane.

[hawkeyesvn]

people from country with strict gun control law like me can never understand us people and their need/desire of owning a gun. In our mind, guns are pure killing tools, normal people shouldn't/doesn't need to use guns for self-defen.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by hawkeyesvn

people from country with strict gun control law like me can never understand us people and their need/desire of owning a gun. In our mind, guns are pure killing tools, normal people shouldn't/doesn't need to use guns for self-defen.

I laugh at countries with gun control laws without a control for long-sleeved shirts and urban crowding.

I mean, I can take a pen and go on a happy stabbing spree on other people's kidneys during the rush hour and nobody cares. I can mix styrofoam with petrol and melt that 5-year-old next door for stealing my lighter during Mid Autumn Festival. I can pack diesel-soaked fertiliser into cigarettes and watch smokers blow their hands off as they try to light that.

Like all owners of weapons and tools and such, most gun owners are rational. It is just the small group of paranoid fanatics whom the newspapers spin to sell their junk reads.