NightBlogger

Telltale signs of a deteriorating US economy while in the UK, armed gangs poach game for food in the black market.

Police believed the same group of people is responsible for a recent string of burglaries, 10TV News reported Monday. The burglars have targeted homes near wooded areas and kicked in windows and doors, police said. Anna Iulianelli said she returned home last week to find the family’s dog locked in a room, 10TV’s Lindsey Seavert reported. “I went in my bedroom and saw all the jewelry (was gone),” Iulianelli said. She said the burglars broke in during the middle of the day. More

In a north London suburb last week, a schoolgirl was beaten, gang-raped and then had drain-cleaning fluid poured on her body apparently to destroy DNA evidence. In the eternal cesspit of senseless urban crime, I feel that a dreadful nadir of sorts has been reached, a benchmark of slaked lust and casual, sadistic cruelty. Police sources say the 16-year-old will never fully recover from the injuries caused by the caustic soda and, at the time of writing, she remains under heavy sedation in a burns unit, fighting for her life. Elsewhere in London this week, a medical student was stabbed to death in a row over an orange in a Brixton fruit shop. A pupil who was expelled for allegedly having a knife took his school to the High Court. And about the time most of us were sitting down to dinner, watching The Bill on television or putting the children to bed, a teenage girl underwent an unimaginable ordeal in an ordinary suburban street. Last year, nearly a quarter of a million decent, law-abiding citizens packed their bags and left the capital for good, seeking what they hope will be a better life elsewhere. They moved to outer boroughs, other city suburbs, rural areas, abroad, the back end of beyond…. More

North Asia correspondent Shane McLeod
ABC News
In Japan, a US marine has been sentenced to four years jail over a sex abuse case that sparked diplomatic protests. There was uproar in Japan in February when a teenaged girl accused a 38-year-old marine staff sergeant of raping her in a car in Okinawa. The girl later withdrew her accusation, and Japanese police dropped rape charges.

But an investigation by the US military has led to a court martial, which has found the sergeant guilty of “abusive sexual contact”. He has been sentenced to four years jail, with one year suspended as part of a plea bargain. The case led to diplomatic tensions between Japan and the United States.
At the time Japan’s Prime Minister described the incident as “unforgivable”.

Photo Boris

GW’s great-grandfather, set up the takeover of the Hamburg-America Line, a cover for I.G. Farben’s Nazi espionage unit in the United States. In Germany, I.G. Farben was most famous for putting the gas in gas chambers; it was the producer of Zyklon B and other gasses used on victims of the Holocaust.

The Bush family was not unaware of the nature of their investment partners. They hired Allen Dulles, the future head of the CIA, to hide the funds they were making from Nazi investments and the funds they were sending to Nazi Germany, rather than divest. It was only in 1942, when the government seized Union Banking Company assets under the Trading With The Enemy Act, that George Walker and Prescott Bush stopped pumping money into Hitler’s regime.
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Photo supermoving
globeandmail.com
Transcripts of 210,000 trials held at Britain’s famous Old Bailey court from 1674 to 1913 are now available online

The transcript from Oscar Wilde’s trial for gross indecency at London’s Old Bailey court went online for the first time yesterday alongside a raft of murder, robbery and abduction cases. Up for free examination are 110,000 pages of transcripts - including Wilde’s trial and the notorious story of Dr. Crippen and the murder of his wife. Lurid tales of murder and rape, stories of pickpocketing and robbery - every type of crime was paraded before the London court.

The Oldbaileyonline.org site was billed as the largest single source of searchable historical information about British lives that has been published. The transcripts cover every one of the 210,000 trials held at the Old Bailey from 1674 to 1913. The court is still in operation.
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