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-Lurid Crime Tales-
Would-be thieves electrocuted by 24,000-volt transformer while attempting to steal copper wire
  • [Daily Mail, Where America Gets Its News] The two thieves were found at a substation of the Detroit Public Lighting Department on Friday morning

  • Police believe the men were attempting to steal copper wire when they were electrocuted

  • Not only were the bodies badly burned, but the current was so strong that they were fused together

  • The men have not been identified but they are two black males appearing to be in their 20s or 30s
Posted by: Fred || 12/31/2017 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  The competition for the 2017 Darwin Awards just got a lot more electrifying....
Posted by: CrazyFool || 12/31/2017 0:50 Comments || Top||

#2  but they are two black males

Who started off as white?
Posted by: gorb || 12/31/2017 0:53 Comments || Top||

#3  Karma, meet frick and frack.
Posted by: anymouse || 12/31/2017 0:53 Comments || Top||

#4  Watt a shocking tragedy.
Posted by: Besoeker || 12/31/2017 2:03 Comments || Top||

#5  Taught about electricity, current, grounding - no.
Taught polar bears are drowning because of evil man made warming - yes.
Posted by: P2kontheroad || 12/31/2017 6:54 Comments || Top||

#6  White science & technology putting the black man down again?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 12/31/2017 7:01 Comments || Top||

#7  Immigrants from the former Upper Volta?
Posted by: Frank G || 12/31/2017 8:19 Comments || Top||

#8 
Taught about electricity, current, grounding - no.
Taught polar bears are drowning because of evil man made warming - yes.


You really think they spent any time in school?
Posted by: Rob Crawford || 12/31/2017 8:41 Comments || Top||

#9  ..an existential question? (there's copper wiring in schools too)
Posted by: P2kontheroad || 12/31/2017 8:43 Comments || Top||

#10  Think of it as evolution in action. The group of people stupid enough to try and steal copper from live transformers will go down slightly.
Posted by: Silentbrick || 12/31/2017 10:55 Comments || Top||

#11  The men have not been identified but they are two black males appearing to be in their 20s or 30s

Yeah, but what were they beforehand?
Carbon snark of the day
Posted by: swksvolFF || 12/31/2017 11:11 Comments || Top||

#12  Does Detroit get a carbon credit for this?

As an aside, I had a similar situation occur on a project. The building lost power one morning during the punchlist and the local power company guy was with us. He left when he got a call, came back and said two guys had tried to steal the copper buss bars out of a switchgear in a substation. Completely incinerated both of them, they only found two pairs of shoes and the carbonized arms of one of them attached to one of the buss bars...that much current can literally turn a human into a fireball and leave little behind...
Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom || 12/31/2017 12:17 Comments || Top||

#13  {shudder} I watched a buss bar in my service panel catch on fire - that was only 120 VAC, 100 amp. Hate to see more volts & amps than that!
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 12/31/2017 13:09 Comments || Top||

#14  Hope no one lost power because of these idiots.
Posted by: Barbara || 12/31/2017 15:56 Comments || Top||

#15  A n extremely graphic lesson in I^2 R losses in power distribution.

Upper Volta—hahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!! That’s a keeper.
Posted by: Alaska Paul || 12/31/2017 19:33 Comments || Top||

#16  'Lectricity be hard!
Posted by: Dave D. || 12/31/2017 20:45 Comments || Top||


Teacher fired after students exposed to classical art nipples
[NEWS.HJNEWS] Lincoln Elementary School art teacher Mateo Rueda had no idea what was in store for his career when he wrapped up a lesson Dec. 4 by telling students to look through some art postcards in the classroom library for examples of color usage in notable paintings.

The cards, which were part of an educational package called "The Art Box" produced by Phaidon publishing, were placed in the library before Rueda began working at the Hyrum school. He knew the set portrayed a wide variety of classic artworks, but he has since said he was not aware that three or four of the 100 pieces featured in the box showed nudity.

Before the week was out, Rueda would find himself at the center of a controversy at the school, would be contacted by police after someone filed a classroom pornography complaint against him, and would eventually be out of a job.

The situation came to light Wednesday when The Herald Journal published a letter from the mother of one of Rueda’s students complaining about the art teacher’s dismissal and praising his work with students.

She also let her feelings be known on Facebook, where her posts gained wide circulation among local school parents and educators.

Cache County School District officials have declined comment on the matter, noting that this is "an ongoing personnel issue."

However,
the man who has no enemies isn't anybody and has never done anything...
one district official who asked not to be identified said that Rueda’s termination had more to do with the teacher’s interaction with students after the students noticed the nudes than it did with the actual pictures themselves.

Parent Venessa Rose Pixton said this was the nature of a complaint she lodged with the school after learning about events of that day from her 11-year-old son, who was in Rueda’s class.

"It wasn’t the pictures so much that really bothered me; it was the method in which he went about it afterward," Pixton told The Herald Journal, though contending in the same interview that she thinks the teacher shirked his responsibility by not reviewing the pictures thoroughly before allowing children to access them.

"My son felt that Mr. Mateo belittled them," Pixton said. "He said Mr. Mateo even told the class ’There’s nothing wrong with female nipples. You guys need to grow up and be mature about this.’"

Rueda flatly denies he said this or took such a tone.

"No, that did not happen," he said this week. "I did say that when you grow up, you’re going to find yourselves going to museums or to places where unavoidably there’s going to be nudity."

Parent Kamee Jensen, who wrote the letter to the editor defending Rueda, said neither the pictures nor the teacher’s comments upset her daughter.

"The school sent out an email to parents asking if children were upset by what happened in class. I asked my daughter if she ever felt uncomfortable, and she said no. She was just very upset that her teacher was in trouble," Jensen said.

Posted by: Fred || 12/31/2017 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Lawsuit in 5 ... 4 ... 3 ...
Posted by: gorb || 12/31/2017 0:55 Comments || Top||

#2 
She was just very upset that her teacher was in trouble

Good training for life, later on in the real world.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 12/31/2017 1:27 Comments || Top||

#3  Life imitates the Simpsons.
Posted by: P2kontheroad || 12/31/2017 6:59 Comments || Top||

#4  So, "Heather has two mommies" is OK, but Venus de Milo isn't?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 12/31/2017 7:03 Comments || Top||

#5  Parent Venessa Rose Pixton said this was the nature of a complaint she lodged with the school after learning about events of that day from her 11-year-old son, who was in Rueda’s class.


STFU "Venessa"
Posted by: Frank G || 12/31/2017 8:47 Comments || Top||

#6  Ditto g(r)om.

It's stuff like this that makes conservatives look bad.
Posted by: AlanC || 12/31/2017 9:08 Comments || Top||

#7  Anyway, I wonder if these people know that they kids see on Internet - I know that my 12th years old does.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 12/31/2017 9:31 Comments || Top||

#8  I like the characterization of this sort of thing that I saw a few weeks ago - the retroactive application of political correctness. I hope the teacher sues their asses off.
Posted by: Raj || 12/31/2017 11:43 Comments || Top||

#9  So, "Heather has two mommies" is OK, but Venus de Milo isn't?

So my daughter comes home one day, a bit upset. She tells us, "The boys in class found a picture in the library of a girl - naked - standing on a clamshell and they were being very rude about it."

Ah...Boticelli. So I retrieve my book of art, flip to the page, "This one?" "Yes".

-puts on Father voice-
"See honey, naked in these pieces of art is ok. See, look at how another artist does it."
-flips page-
15 minutes of giggling. Have not tried again.
Posted by: swksvolFF || 12/31/2017 20:56 Comments || Top||


-Short Attention Span Theater-
California Led U.S. with 490 UFO Sightings in 2017
[PJ] UFO sightings are nothing new. The Puritans reported strange sightings and lights in the sky as early as the 1600s. With the advent of movies about outer space and unidentified flying objects came even more sightings. The National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) has an entire website dedicated to the "collection and dissemination of objective UFO data." The organization curates reports of UFO sightings in the U.S. and Canada via a web form and a phone hotline, which has operated almost continuously since 1974. NUFORC logged a total of 4,655 sightings in 2017, down from the 2016 total of 5,619.

A recent report came from New Mexico on December 14. A woman reported that she and her husband saw a triangular object with bright green lights near Santa Fe. She claims they "saw an object flying across the Interstate in a southeasterly direction. It appeared triangular with bright green lights around its entire periphery."

"From my husband's perspective, it appeared larger than a full moon," she reported. "By the time it crossed my field of vision (I was in the passenger seat), it appeared slightly smaller than a full moon. It was perhaps several hundred feet in front and above us and appeared to be moving at about 100 mph or less. It seemed to be heading down and then it vanished."

NUFORC spoke with the witness via telephone and "found her to be very eloquent, and very sober-minded. We suspect that she is an excellent witness."
Graphic courtesy of the late Gahan Wilson collection.
Posted by: Besoeker || 12/31/2017 02:31 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  So that stuff they spike the MJ with is a hallucinogenic?
Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom || 12/31/2017 12:13 Comments || Top||


-War on Police-
Colorado deputy killed, 4 others shot responding to domestic disturbance outside Denver
[FOXNEWS]
Posted by: Fred || 12/31/2017 14:19 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Crap
Posted by: Frank G || 12/31/2017 16:11 Comments || Top||

#2  Senseless insanity. We'll pray for the speedy recovery of the survivors.
Posted by: Besoeker || 12/31/2017 16:24 Comments || Top||


Bangladesh
Missing BNP leader Syed Sadat found, arrested
[Dhaka Tribune] Four months and eight days after his disappearance, police have jugged
Book 'im, Mahmoud!
BNP leader and businessman Syed Sadat Ahmed from Dhaka.

Around 10pm on Saturday, Detective Branch (DB) arrested him from Rampura Bridge area, DB Joint Commissioner Abdul Baten said.

"We arrested him on Saturday night. We will give you details on Sunday morning," he said.

A source at DB said Sadat was shown arrested in a vandalism case filed at Ramna cop shoppe in 2015. On Sunday morning, he would be sent to court.

Sadat, a BNP executive committee member and the managing director of ABN Group, was allegedly picked up by a group of men in a microbus on August 22.

Luna Sadat Ahmed, the politician’s wife, said she and the family had not heard anything about Sadat’s reappearance or arrest.

"All we have heard is in the media. Police have not told us anything. We are trying to find out what is going on," she said.

"Seven or eight people identifying themselves as law enforcement picked him up in a microbus. We have had no trace of him since," she added.

ABN Group Manager Nazrul Islam also said Sadat was kidnapped from the Airport Road on August 22 afternoon.

Posted by: Fred || 12/31/2017 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


China-Japan-Koreas
No plans to pause US-South Korea military exercises: Mattis
[PRESSTV] US Defense Secretary James Mattis says the United States does not plan to pause a joint annual military exercise with South Korea during the upcoming Winter Olympics in the Asian country.

South Korea will host the Olympics in February amid rising tensions with North Korea.

Seoul and Washington usually hold their two annual military drills, called Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, in March and April, with some 17,000 American troops and more than 300,000 South Korean soldiers participating in the exercises.

Pyongyang is highly critical of those exercises, considering them preparations to invade the North. In response, it has been developing its weapons programs.

Earlier this month, North Korean state-run media described a joint exercise between the US and South Korea as a naval blockade against the North and warned that it would take "merciless self-defensive" measures.
Posted by: Fred || 12/31/2017 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under: Commies

#1  In response, it has been developing its weapons programs.

And if the exercises were suspended, NK would respond by... (wait for it!)... developing its weapons programs.
Posted by: PBMcL || 12/31/2017 0:46 Comments || Top||

#2  Seoul and Washington usually hold their two annual military drills, called Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, in March and April, with some 17,000 American troops and more than 300,000 South Korean soldiers participating in the exercises.

Ummmm...Somebody should put some knowledge to the Farsi Fake News: The 2018 Winter Olympics will take place in Pyeongchang, South Korea, from Friday, February 9, 2018 to Sunday, February 25, 2018.
Posted by: Frank G || 12/31/2017 9:33 Comments || Top||


Economy
President Trump pulls brakes on $13B Obama-backed rail-tunnel plan
[FOX] An Obama-era plan to have the federal government finance half of a $13 billion rail tunnel project ran into a red light Friday from the Trump administration.

The plan, proposed under President Barack Obama in 2015, includes revitalizing a deteriorating Amtrak tunnel connecting New Jersey to New York City, repairing damage to a dual-tunnel conduit, and reconstructing the New Jersey railroad network’s aging Portal Bridge, Crain’s New York Business reported.

Amtrak, which owns most of the rail tunnels and tracks between Boston and Washington, D.C., contends that the existing tunnel connecting New Jersey and New York City is damaged and could fail within 10 to 15 years, threatening daily rail transportation in the Northeast.

The original Obama-era plan called for costs to be split among New York state, New Jersey and the federal government.
Posted by: Besoeker || 12/31/2017 07:12 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  ...Interestingly, the reports I've seen on this clearly state - though not till almost the bottom of the page - that the Administration isn't arguing over the importance of the project, just how the cost should be split up.

To which I say, good for the Administration.

Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski || 12/31/2017 7:49 Comments || Top||

#2  Money better spent on a wall.
Posted by: Besoeker || 12/31/2017 8:05 Comments || Top||

#3  Money better spent on a wall.

Wait, are we talking about walling off the New Jersey/New York corridor or our southern border?
Posted by: SteveS || 12/31/2017 10:46 Comments || Top||

#4  Close the tunnel. Install a trebuchet.
Posted by: ed in texas || 12/31/2017 10:57 Comments || Top||

#5  Obama's idea of joint financing was the feds should give half the money, and lend the other half to the states.
Posted by: Zhang Fei || 12/31/2017 19:45 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
10 ‘left-wing’ parties join hands to cobble alliance
[DAWN] In their maiden meeting to form an ’alliance of the left,’ the leadership of 10 progressive and left-wing parties on Friday agreed to work together in the future and formed an eight-member committee to find a way for the formation of an alliance.

In a communiqué that was issued to the media after the meeting, the leaders presented a list of demands. The demands included recovery of all the missing persons, following the due process if they had committed any crime; sending back immigrants colonists to their countries since the mischievous elements took their cover; protection of minority girls from the hooligans who were using the name of religion; regulation of sugar mills mafia; restoration of tenancy rights to till the protected forest land in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa; withdrawal of the unjust criminal cases against farmers of Hashtnagar and Okara Military Farms and their release and restoration of student unions.

The meeting rejected the election reforms bill passed by the parliament and demanded that the reforms might be reframed according to the petition filed by the Awami Workers Party (AWP) in the Supreme Court.

The meeting hosted by the AWP deliberated on the current economic and political situation and agreed that the mainstream political parties of the ruling class had miserably failed to present the solution to the growing economic and political crises in the country.

"In our view, corruption is an integral part of bourgeois system which needs to be replaced by an alternative system. And that alternative is socialism," said the communiqué.

The participants of the meeting said a vast majority of Pak population was still living under feudalism. The ruling classes were using religion to camouflage their exploitation and suppress the narrative of the social forces striving for a real socioeconomic change and this practice was exacerbating trends of fundamentalism, extremism and intolerance.

"Therefore, we resolve hereby to launch a concerted struggle against the flowing anti-people trends in the country," the parties announced. They made a pledge to launch a campaign against feudalism and fanaticism and support workers, farmers and tenants, work for supremacy of the parliament against the paradigm of a security state, establish Pakistain as a multicultural country so that every nationality might have full control over their resources, ensure gender equality with minorities, reconstitute a state on the principle of separation of state from religion, establish a socialist economy with no distinction of class in the education system founded on scientific lines, free and fair access of all the citizens with constitutional guarantee to shelter, employment, education and healthcare system, ensure a positive and non-aligned foreign policy, friendly economic and political relations with all neighbouring countries based on the principle of noninterference.

Posted by: Fred || 12/31/2017 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan



Who's in the News
18[untagged]
8Govt of Pakistan
8Govt of Iran
6Islamic State
3Moslem Colonists
2Hamas
2Muslim Brotherhood
2Sublime Porte
2al-Shabaab (AQ)
2Commies
1Lashkar e-Taiba
1Taliban
1Thai Insurgency
1al-Nusra
1al-Qaeda
1Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (IS)
1Boko Haram (ISIS)
1Fatah
1Govt of Iran Proxies
1Govt of Sudan
1Haqqani Network
1Houthis

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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.
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Meet the Mods
In no particular order...
Steve White
Seafarious
tu3031
badanov
sherry
ryuge
GolfBravoUSMC
Bright Pebbles
trailing wife
Gloria
Fred
Besoeker
Glenmore
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Two weeks of WOT
Sun 2017-12-31
  Iran protests: Telegram and Instagram restricted
Sat 2017-12-30
  IS says it was behind Saint Petersburg supermarket bombing
Fri 2017-12-29
  Senior Pakistani Taliban leader blown by own explosives in Kunar province
Thu 2017-12-28
  Islamic State claims attack on Shiite center in Kabul, 41 dead
Wed 2017-12-27
  Swede among 'terror' suspects arrested in the Netherlands
Tue 2017-12-26
  Six Islamic State, involved in killing policeman, killed in Kirkuk
Mon 2017-12-25
  ISIS military commission chief killed in US drone strike in Afghanistan
Sun 2017-12-24
  Taliban’s IED expert famous as Osama killed in NDS operation
Sat 2017-12-23
  Terror Attack in Pennsylvania's State Capital?
Fri 2017-12-22
  US drone strike kills Qaeda propaganda chief in Yemen
Thu 2017-12-21
  ISIS shadow judge among 5 killed in Afghan forces operations
Wed 2017-12-20
  US drone targets compound in Kurram
Tue 2017-12-19
  Ballistic missile intercepted over Saudi Arabia capital Riyadh just seconds before it slammed into royal palace
Mon 2017-12-18
  Senior Al-Shabaab Militants Killed In Somalia Drone Strike
Sun 2017-12-17
  Suicide bombers attack Pakistan church, killing at least 9, officials say

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