WorldFailure

Bacon Lover In Piggly Wiggly Rampage
26 May 2012


Lonneshia Shafaye Appling.

The Georgia woman, 26, was so determined to shoplift beer, bacon, cheese, and chicken wings from a Piggly Wiggly that she punched, spit at, and pepper-sprayed store workers who confronted her as she tried to flee the supermarket Wednesday afternoon, according to cops.

Appling, pictured in the adjacent mug shot, allegedly hid items worth $88.27 in a canvas bag. She “attempted to check out, only putting one item on the counter,” according to a worker quoted in an Athens-Clarke County Police Department report. When a Piggly Wiggly employee--who had been tipped to the pilfering by a shopper--asked Appling about the concealed items, she tried to exit the store. After worker Jonathan Orr tried to stop Appling, she “pulled out some pepper spray and sprayed him in the face.”

Ancient and modern: The wrong ancient gods
by Peter Jones
19 May 2012



The Royal Mint has just released some gold coins to celebrate the London Olympics.

John Bergdahl, who designed them, explained the source of his ‘inspiration’ as ‘the first Olympic Games in ancient Greece, where the first athletes pledged their allegiance to the gods of Olympia.’

Really? That ‘gods of Olympia’ will have set the alarm bells ringing for most readers, because there were no ‘gods of Olympia’. There were gods of Mt Olympus, but it is unwise to stage events like chariot races on mountains, and Olympus was 140 miles from the place where the Games were actually held every four years for nearly 1,000 years from 776 bc, i.e. Olympia in the north-west Peloponnese.

Ukraine police shut down gay pride march
May 21, 2012


Gay pride organiser Svyatoslav Sheremet is beaten up by thugs in Kiev on 20 May 2012 (Reuters)

KIEV, Ukraine (UPI) -- Amnesty International Monday criticized the Kiev, Ukraine, police for canceling the city's first gay pride parade citing safety concerns.

Police shut down the parade Sunday 30 minutes before it was due to start because, they said, about 500 ultraconservative protesters were en route to the parade's rally point, Amnesty International said in a release.

"It has been clear from the start that the Kiev police department did not want this march to go ahead. Their reluctance to commit to the event and to put adequate security measures in place to protect demonstrators left organizers fearing for their safety," said Max Tucker, Ukraine campaigner at Amnesty International.

Man who had 30 kids with 11 women wants child-support break
By Rene Lynch
May 18, 2012


Desmond Hatchett of Knoxville, Tenn., has 30 children with 11 women, according to officials and media reports. (WREG / May 18, 2012)

[For the record, 1:10 p.m. June 1: A report in the Knoxville News-Sentinel has found that some details in this post are incorrect. Hatchett has 24 children, not 30. And he was not in court in May to ask for a reduction in child-support payments; he has not been in court since 2009, a Tennessee judge told the News-Sentinel.]

You have to say this much for Desmond Hatchett: He has a way with the ladies.

The 33-year-old Knoxville, Tenn., resident has reportedly set a Knox County record for his ability to reproduce. He has 30 children with 11 women. And nine of those children were born in the last three years, after Hatchett -- who is something of a local celebrity -- vowed "I'm done!" in a 2009 TV interview, saying he wouldn't father more children.

Mosques' advice: 'don't report abusive husbands'
16 May 2012

Six out of ten mosques in Sweden gave women advice about how to deal with spousal abuse and polygamy that contradicted Swedish law, a media investigation has revealed.

Using hidden cameras and telephone recording equipment, two women posing as abused spouses visited ten of Sweden's largest mosques as part of a report put together by Sveriges Television (SVT) investigative news programme "Uppdrag granskning".

The women then asked leaders at the mosques for advice about how to address issues such as polygamy, assault and non-consensual sex. Six out of the ten mosques visited by the women, who had also claimed that their husbands had multiple wives, told them that they should nevertheless agree to have sex with their husbands even if they didn't want to. Six of the mosques also advised the women against reporting spousal abuse to the police. Leaders at another mosque were divided on the issue, while women received vague advice from yet another mosque. Only two of the mosques gave the women clear advice directing them to report their abusive husbands to police.

Wrong man was executed in Texas, probe says
15 May 2012


File photo of the "death chamber" at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Huntsville Unit in Huntsville, Texas.

AFP - He was the spitting image of the killer, had the same first name and was near the scene of the crime at the fateful hour: Carlos DeLuna paid the ultimate price and was executed in place of someone else in Texas in 1989, a report out Tuesday found.

Even "all the relatives of both Carloses mistook them," and DeLuna was sentenced to death and executed based only on eyewitness accounts despite a range of signs he was not a guilty man, said law professor James Liebman. Liebman and five of his students at Columbia School of Law spent almost five years poring over details of a case that he says is "emblematic" of legal system failure. DeLuna, 27, was put to death after "a very incomplete investigation. No question that the investigation is a failure," Liebman said.

Giraffes die from stress as vandals terrorise Polish zoo
14 May 2012


Two giraffes at a zoo in central Poland's Lodz, similar to the ones pictured here in South Africa in 2010, died of stress after unidentified vandals went on a night-time rampage.

AFP - Two giraffes at a zoo in central Poland's Lodz died of stress after unidentified vandals went on a night-time rampage, the zoo's management said Monday.

The vandals broke in overnight Saturday to Sunday, destroying benches, signs and sculptures and hurling pieces of the debris at the animals.