Which raises a very familiar question: Do people kill people, or do meat cleavers kill people? Do we ban meat cleavers? Or are meat cleavers OK because they aren't a threat to the Gestappo?
A Chinese immigrant who butchered five relatives, including four small children, with a meat cleaver in a fit of jealousy pleaded guilty on Wednesday to murder and manslaughter charges and must serve at least 125 years in prison.
Mingdong Chen admitted that he killed his cousin's wife, 37-year-old Qiao Zhen Li, and her children, 9-year-old Linda, 7-year-old Amy, 5-year-old Kevin and 1-year-old William Zhou in October 2013.
The 27-year-old Chen showed no reaction as he entered his plea. Under a deal with prosecutors, he must spend at least 125 years in prison before becoming eligible for parole.
Prosecutors said Li called her mother-in-law in China on the evening of Oct. 27, 2013, saying Chen was in the house with a knife and threatening the family. When the mother-in-law heard children crying in the background, she called other relatives in New York, and they rushed to the home in Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood. By the time they arrived, the five relatives were dead and Chen was dripping in blood.
Police said the family had been slaughtered, each of the five repeatedly stabbed and slashed in the throat and neck. Their bodies were found strewn about the house, where Chen had been staying for about a week.
When detectives questioned Chen, he told them he was jealous of the success of his fellow Chinese immigrants, police said. Relatives said he had been fired from different restaurant jobs.
But what set off Chen's rampage remained a mystery to family members, prosecutors and the judge.
"The burning question is why these things happen, but in the sum total of things it really doesn't much matter," said Assistant District Attorney Mark Hale.
Hale said prosecutors offered Chen the deal because it would spare Li's husband and other relatives from having "to relive the worst day of their lives." Hale said they also wanted to ensure that Chen would publicly admit the killings.
Li's husband was in court on Wednesday but declined to comment.
In 2014, a judge ruled that Chen was not competent to stand trial because he had exhibited signs of mental illness that made him incapable of being able to assist in his defense.
State Supreme Court Judge Vincent Del Giudice said Wednesday that Chen appeared to "be clear, lucid and competent." He said he accepted the plea deal under the condition that Chen would "be incarcerated until the day he dies."
If I was a ruthless government activist I might very well feel it was reasonable to induce a few vulnerable people (see FL school official whose hypnotism of students led to three deaths) into committing these crimes, sacrificing a 'few' lives for the 'greater good.' Never let a crisis go to waste, and if there isn't one, make one. I hope that's just excess cynicism on my part.
Early Friday morning, shots rang out at another American school, this time it was Northern Arizona University. A gunman killed one person and injured three others outside one of the school's halls.
The incident is the 46th school shooting in the United States this year, the latest since Chris Harper Mercer opened fire at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, just over a week ago. Mercer killed nine, seriously injured seven and then turned the gun on himself.
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10/09/2015 16:49 Comments ||
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They have also found the virus in a Dr.'s eye that was "cured" and laying dormant for months. Also the virus can be found in the semen of people that have been declared cured for up to 6 months so it can be transmitted sexually too.
Either way, with this large number of people surviving it gives this virus an open door to mutate from what it was originally since the outbreak burned itself out it the past pretty quickly as everyone died.
One person was killed and three were injured in a shooting outside a dormitory early Friday morning at Northern Arizona University in the city of Flagstaff.
The gunman is now in custody and the surviving victims are being treated at Flagstaff Medical Center, the school said.
"We are asking the faculty to be sensitive to the needs of our students and their families," Northern State University President Rita Cheng said at a news conference 6 a.m. local time. "This is not going to be a normal day at NAU. Our hearts are heavy."
Northern Arizona University Police Chief Gregory T. Fowler identified the gunman as 18-year-old student Steven Jones and said he used a handgun.
Jones allegedly used his gun at 1:20 a.m. during a confrontation that spiraled out of control outside Mountainview Hall on the northeast side of the campus.
The suspect had stopped firing his handgun by the time campus police arrived and did not attempt to flee the scene, according to Fowler. He was taken into custody without further incident.
BOSTON -- A group of New York inmates has toppled Harvard's prestigious debate team.
It took place at the Eastern New York Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in Napanoch. The Ivy League undergrads were invited last month to debate the inmates who take in-prison courses taught by Bard College faculty.
Harvard's team won the national title this year and the world championship in 2014.
But the inmates are building a reputation, too. The club has notched victories against teams from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the University of Vermont.
Against Harvard, the inmates were tasked with defending the position that public schools should be allowed to turn away students whose parents came to the U.S. illegally. Harvard's team responded, but a panel of neutral judges declared the inmates victorious. Heh. Vid @ link.
Posted by: Vast Right Wing Conspiracy ||
10/09/2015 00:00 ||
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America. The place where they put the smartest people in jail and put the dumbest in WH.
[DAWN] Lawmakers from India's ruling Hindu nationalist party in India-held Kashmire have kicked and punched an independent member of the state assembly for hosting a party where he served beef. Slaughtering of cows is banned in most Indian states.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members beat politician Engineer Rashid Ahmed, a Muslim, in the assembly soon after its session began Thursday.
Other opposition politicians rescued Ahmed and later staged a walkout.
The ruling party politicians were angry over a party hosted by Ahmed the previous night at which he served beef.
Differences have deepened within Kashmire's ruling coalition, with the Hindu nationalist party demanding a ban on slaughtering cows and selling beef in the Muslim-majority state.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/09/2015 00:00 ||
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'That's the last time I'll have Texas Roadhouse cater my dinner!'
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Nothing against the flight deck crew, but in all the pictures where a Yellow Shirt is directing the aircraft , he is positioned as if he is incommunicationwith the pilot ( who isn't there). Is there a camera located there that transmits real to the operator' s console?
Posted by: Sven the pelter ||
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As per FREEREPUBLIC this sunny Guam AM, the race is on to see iff Air-to-Air Combat Lasers can be put on the F-35 andor F-22.
Air-to-Ground???
As I've said before, SPAWAR + GLOBAL STRIKE + ORBITAL STRIKE + SPACE/STAR-STRIKE + VSTOL + SUPER-STEALTH, ETC. = the F-35 as the "Low/Light" end of the USAF-USN "Hi-Lo" Combat Aircraft MIx to the "Hi/Heavy" F-22 end = the original Size Specs of the F-35 + F-22 have to be "Upped" a grade ot two [three?]to be fully functional.
Right now the Fed-USDOD is putting way too many HT + NT ultra-modern capabilities into the F-35 for its size + mission.
[NATION.PK] Nasa has unveiled the first colour pictures of the haze that surrounds Pluto, along with pictures of patches of water ice on the dwarf planet.
The reveal drew early attention this week as the leader of the New Horizons mission said there would be an "amazing" announcement. Alan Stern described the planet as "alive" -- prompting many to hope for a big announcement today.
The colour pictures show for the first time that the hazes are a bright blue.
"Who would have expected a blue sky in the Kuiper Belt? It's gorgeous," said Alan Stern New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado, in a statement.
The blue in the picture allows scientists to judge how exactly it is made.
"That striking blue tint tells us about the size and composition of the haze particles," said science team researcher Carly Howett, also of SwRI. "A blue sky often results from scattering of sunlight by very small particles. On Earth, those particles are very tiny nitrogen molecules. On Pluto they appear to be larger -- but still relatively small -- soot-like particles we call tholins."
Nasa also said that it had found small, exposed regions of ice on the dwarf planet. Those bits of ice correlate with previously seen red patches on the surface -- and scientists aren't sure why.
"I'm surprised that this water ice is so red," says Silvia Protopapa, a science team member from the University of Maryland, College Park. "We don't yet understand the relationship between water ice and the reddish tholin colorants on Pluto's surface."
The water only appears in patches. Scientists are planning to explore why exactly those patches form, and why they appear where they do.
"Large expanses of Pluto don't show exposed water ice," said science team member Jason Cook, of SwRI, "because it's apparently masked by other, more volatile ices across most of the planet. Understanding why water appears exactly where it does, and not in other places, is a challenge that we are digging into."
Posted by: Fred ||
10/09/2015 00:00 ||
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Throw a few fire pits out and some throw on some parkas and it is a regular party place!
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
BOSTON -- A group of New York inmates has toppled Harvard's prestigious debate team.
