If Laws Change, 'Penny Hoarders' Could Cash in on Thousands of Dollars

By NEAL KARLINSKY and MARY-ROSE ABRAHAM | ABC News

While most of us are out buying holiday presents some people are getting their gifts with a five-finger discount. Ad Week is reporting that one in every 11 people walks out the door with at least one item they didn’t pay for. With shoplifting up six percent this year, retailers stand to lose a whopping $119 billion of merchandise to shoplifters in 2011. And it’s not just kids with sticky fingers—75 percent of shoplifters are adults, most of whom have jobs. We know people are hunting for holiday deals, but this amount of theft is both surprising and sad.

Ad Week spoke with loss prevention experts on why shoplifting is the highest it’s been in five years. "Most shoplifters simply succumb to temptation, “Johnny Custer, director of field operations for Merchant Analytic Solutions, told Ad Week. “But add a sense of desperation because of the economy and holiday pressures, and you have the recipe for theft soup." Barbara Staib, a spokesperson for the National Association of Shoplifting Prevention, told Ad Week, "Seventy percent of shoplifters tell us they didn't plan to shoplift."

Exactly what are people stealing? Ad Week has compiled the top 10 most shoplifted items of 2011 and they’re truly bizarre.

1. Filet mignon

So many people are tucking choice cuts of meats under their jackets that supermarkets are now considered the stores with the most theft.

2. Jameson
Those with an unquenchable thirst for booze just help themselves to a free bottle of expensive liquor.

3. Electric tools
Apparently the the most common items men nab are electric toothbrushes and power tools. At least they’re fighting cavities.

4. iPhone 4
Electronics like smartphones and video games are high risk items, and one research group claims 100,000 laptops are stolen annually from big box stores.

5. Gillette Mach 4
Anyone who uses non-disposable razors knows they’re pretty expensive, so in tough financial times people don’t want to pay for them anymore.

6. Axe
The men’s deodorant and body wash we love to hate are often stolen in mass quantities and resold at flea markets and corner stores. Dial is popular amongst thieves too.

7. Polo Ralph Lauren
Clothing theft is up 31 percent since 2009. It’s hard to look good in a bad economy, so some score fresh threads the illegal way.

8. Let’s Rock Elmo
The Sesame Street toy topped the Toys’R’Us "Hot Toys" list this year, so parents are stealing this must-have toy for their kids if they can’t afford it.

9. Chanel No. 5
Who wouldn’t love a bottle of this popular woman’s fragrance? Expensive perfumes make up nearly four percent of loss in stores that carry them.

10. Nikes

As Ad Week points out, some shoppers wear flip-flops into a store, try on a pair of sneakers, and walk out wearing them. Sneaker heads will do whatever it takes to score the kicks on their wish list.

Internet has become 'surveillance machine': Assange
by Staff Writers
Hong Kong (AFP) Nov 28, 2011

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange blasted the mainstream media, Washington, banks and the Internet itself as he addressed journalists in Hong Kong on Monday via videolink from house arrest in England.

Fresh from accepting a top award for journalism from the prestigious Walkley Foundation in his native Australia on Sunday, Assange spoke to the News World Summit in Hong Kong before keeping a regular appointment with the police.

He defended his right to call himself a journalist and said WikiLeaks' next "battle" would be to ensure that the Internet does not turn into a vast surveillance tool for governments and corporations.

"Of course I'm a goddamn journalist," he responded with affected frustration when a moderator of the conference asked if he was a member of the profession.

He said his written record spoke for itself and argued that the only reason people kept asking him if he was a journalist was because the United States' government wanted to silence him.

"The United States government does not want legal protection for us," he said, referring to a US Justice Department investigation into his whistle-blower website for releasing secret diplomatic and military documents.

The former hacker criticised journalists and the mainstream media for becoming too cosy with the powerful and secretive organisations they were supposed to be holding to account.

In a 40-minute address, he also accused credit card companies such as Visa and Mastercard of illegally cutting WikiLeaks off from funding under a secret deal with the White House.

"Issues that should be decided in open court are being decided in back rooms in Washington," he said.

The Internet itself had become "the most significant surveillance machine that we have ever seen," Assange said in reference to the amount of information people give about themselves online.

"It's not an age of transparency at all ... the amount of secret information is more than ever before," he said, adding that information flows in but is not flowing out of governments and other powerful organisations.

"I see that really is our big battle. The technology gives and the technology takes away," he added.

The anti-secrecy activist then help up a handwritten sign from an aide telling him to "stop" talking or he would be late for a mandatory appointment with police.

Assange, 40, is under house arrest in England pending the outcome of a Swedish extradition request over claims of rape and sexual assault made by two women. He says he is the victim of a smear campaign.

Phew! Mayan prediction of world ending in 2012 may be a 'misreading' - it's just the start of a new era, says expert

• Conspiracy theorists predict 'end of the world'
  
• Expert says it's a misreading - it's a symbolic date
• Refers to a new period in the religious calendar

By Rob Waugh

Last updated at 6:07 PM on 1st December 2011

An inscription found in the Mayan temple of Tortuguero make a prediction of an apocalyptic even in 2012 - with some conspiracy theorists predicting the world being swallowed by a black hole, the sun, or just clipped by a passing asteroid.

The Mayan inscriptions refer to Bolon Yokte 'descending from the sky' in 2012 - a god associated with war and the underworld.

But a German expert, Sven Gronemeyer, says that the whole thing could just be a misreading.

The tablet on which the inscription was found has a break which makes the end nearly illegible - but even so, the legible parts don't necessarily spell oncoming doomsday.

Gronemeyer said his decoding of a Mayan artefact with a reference to a 2012 date denotes a transition to a new era in the Mayan calendar - and not a possible end of the world.

Bolon Yokte is a figure also associated with change.

Many Mayans also dismiss the apocalyptic predictions as largely a Western idea.

Rather than the end of time itself, the inscription refers to the start of a new era.

The interpretation of the hieroglyphs by Sven Gronemeyer of La Trobe University in Australia was presented for the first time at the archaeological site of Palenque in southern Mexico.

His comments came less than a week after Mexico's archaeology institute acknowledged there was a second reference to the 2012 date in Mayan inscriptions - touching off another round of talk (and panic) about whether it predicts the end of the world.

Mr Gronemeyer has been studying the stone tablet found years ago at the archaeological site of Tortuguero in Mexico's Gulf coast state of Tabasco.

He said the inscription describes the return of mysterious Mayan god Bolon Yokte at the end of a 13th period of 400 years, known as Baktuns, on the equivalent of December 21, 2012.

Mayans considered 13 a sacred number. There is nothing apocalyptic in the date, he said.

The text was carved about 1,300 years ago. The stone has cracked, which has made the end of the passage almost illegible.

Mr Gronemeyer said the inscription refers to the end of a cycle of 5,125 years since the beginning of the Mayan Long Count calendar in 3113 B.C.

The fragment was a prophecy of then ruler Bahlam Ajaw, who wanted to plan the passage of the god, Mr Gronemeyer said.

'For the elite of Tortuguero, it was clear they had to prepare the land for the return of the god and for Bahlam Ajaw to be the host of this initiation,' he said.

Bolon Yokte, god of creation and war, was to prevail that day in a sanctuary of Tortuguero.

'The date acquired a symbolic value because it is seen as a reflection of the day of creation,' Mr Gronemeyer said. 'It is the passage of a god and not necessarily a great leap for humanity.'

Last week, Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology said a second inscription mentioning the 2012 date is on the carved or moulded face of a brick found at the Comalcalco ruin, near the Tortuguero site. It is being kept at the institute and is not on display.

Experts doubt the second inscription is a definite reference to the date cited as the possible end of the world, saying there is no future tense marking like there is in the Tortuguero tablet.

The institute has tried to dispel talk of a 2012 apocalypse, the subject of numerous postings and stories on the internet.

Its latest step was to arrange a special round table of Mayan experts this week at Palenque, which is where Mr Gronemeyer made his comments.

Half a German city evacuated after two-ton 'Blockbuster' RAF bomb is found at the bottom of the Rhine

45,000 people to be evacuated after WW2 bomb found in river

Seven old people's homes, two hospitals and one jail also being cleared

Biggest evacuation in German postwar history

By Allan Hall

Almost half the German city of Koblenz is under evacuation orders as experts prepare to defuse a two-ton ‘Blockbuster’ RAF bomb in the Rhine.

The 10ft bomb, one of the biggest in the wartime arsenal of Bomber Command, was discovered after 65 years when the river level dropped during the driest November on record.

The fuse is badly corroded, and the authorities are evacuating 45,000 of Koblenz’s 120,000 population to leave a security zone of a mile around the bomb - which is capable of destroying an entire city block.

The evacuation - the biggest in German postwar history - will involve fleets of buses and 1,000 volunteers helping police and firemen.

It is due to take place on Sunday so as not to disrupt Saturday Christmas shopping.

Some 700 patients at two hospitals will have to be moved, as well as the residents of seven old people’s homes and prisoners in a local jail.

The city’s main train station will also have to be emptied as well as several hotels.

Authorities this week built a temporary dam of some 350 sandbags around the bomb which is covered by just 16 inches of water.

The plan is then for bomb disposal teams to pump the water out and get to the bomb proper to begin the delicate job of removing the detonator.

It is expected to take several hours to make the bomb safe. Should it show signs of going off, experts

The low level of the Rhine has already exposed four other unexploded bombs.

Police closed a road and a stretch of railway near Rhein bei Vallendar near Koblenz on Saturday so that three smoke bombs found in the river could be blown up.

An artificial traffic jam was created on a nearby autobahn to slow traffic while the explosion work was underway.

Fire department boss Manfred Morschhäuser told the German news agency DAPD said the area will be pumped free of water at the weekend so the bomb can be detonated.

In the meantime, the fire department has established a telephone hotline.

Morschhäuser said: 'Several hundred callers are getting in touch each day with their questions and problems.

'Each household included in the evacuation will be notified via flier.

'And on Sunday we'll go ringing from house to house.'

A day later and just a few kilometres downriver in Neuwie a 500-kilo aerial bomb was spotted in the river. This required the evacuation of around 1,000 people living in the nearby area.

Koblenz was a German operations centre during the Second World War and was hit repeatedly by air raids carried out by RAF and U.S. bombers.

While it had heavy industry producing ball bearings and tank parts, it was also the home of Army Group B which oversaw the conquest of France.

Later in the war the city was the hub for defensive operations for German forces following D-Day. Eighty-seven per cent of Koblenz was eventually destroyed in more than two dozen air raids.

German newspaper The National reports 'an estimated 2,000 tonnes of American and British aerial bombs and other munitions are still found every year.'

Husband shoots entire family, killing four children, after his wife returns from an abused women's shelter before turning the gun on himself

By Daily Mail Reporter

Laura Gonzalez was happy to be back at work after three weeks away that included a stay at a battered women's shelter.

She saw it as the beginning of a new life: one without her husband and the father of her four children, as she told co-workers. She wasn't going back to him this time, she said, and left for home.

Less than an hour later, her 24-year-old husband, Jose Avila, launched a brutal final assault, shooting his wife three times before he began shooting the children.

Scroll down for video

Avila's final act was to kill himself.

Two of the children died at a hospital Thursday, a day after their two siblings were killed in the shooting that rattled the small southeast Texas town of Bay City.

Their mother is hospitalized in critical condition.

As details trickled out, a picture emerged Thursday of a family long struggling with violence, including an assault reported by Gonzalez just before Thanksgiving.

After that, she went to a battered women's shelter.

'I asked her how she was doing because I knew she was at the crisis center. She said she was trying to make something of her freedom and a better life for herself and her children,' said Alejandro Gonzalez, a fellow waiter at La Casona, the Mexican restaurant where Gonzalez worked.

'She wanted to make a better life for his kids because they see all the violence,' he added, recounting the conversation he had with Gonzalez hours before Avila turned on her.

Although Gonzalez left the trailer home she shared with her husband after reporting the assault, Bay City Lt. Andrew Lewis said she refused to press charges.

'She was scared. She didn't have papers, he didn't have papers, and they were both scared they were going to get deported,' according to their neighbor Juan Elizondo to WFMY.

Lt Lewis said he didn't know how long she stayed at the shelter for.

Wednesday's violence unfolded on a quiet street in Bay City — a town about 65 miles southwest of Houston — just as two nearby schools were letting out.

The couple started arguing inside the trailer, and Avila shot his wife twice, Lewis said.

She ran out to the front yard, where Avila shot her a third time. Then, he turned on the children.

'We heard ... that he was walking around waving a gun,' Lewis said, describing the violent scene that unfolded on a lawn now decorated with a makeshift memorial of teddy bears, candles and prayer books.

At least one student witnessed the incident.

Two of the brothers, aged 3 and 5, died of their wounds at a Houston hospital Wednesday.

Their 2-year-old sister and 4-year-old brother had been on life support but died Thursday. Gonzalez was in critical condition Thursday night at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center in Houston, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Police have not officially released the names of the victims, but co-workers and neighbors identified Avila's wife as Laura Gonzalez.

The family had moved into the trailer home near Bay City's Western-style downtown about a year ago, neighbors said.

They appeared to live a quiet life. On occasion, next-door neighbor Isuro Perez heard them arguing, but it appeared to be nothing out-of-the-ordinary. Just a run-of-the-mill dispute between a married couple.

'He always plays soccer out here in this field out here, plays soccer with his kids,' Perez said, pointing to a grassy area opposite the row of trailer homes. 'They were nice people, nothing went wrong really. They were a happy family.'

At work, though, Gonzalez portrayed a different picture.

Alejandro Gonzalez said he once saw her with a black eye.

And Ruby Gomez, a waitress at La Casona, said Laura Gonzalez had told her about problems she had with her husband.

'She had to leave to get the kids in the afternoon because he threatened her that if she left him he was going to kill the four kids and her,' Gomez said.

Once, Gomez said, Gonzalez told her Avila had locked her in the house and gone to work.

She escaped through a window and went to a shelter, Gomez recounted.

That was the second time she left him, and vowed not to go back.

The first time 'he convinced her that he was going to change and that he really loved his kids, and convinced her to return to live with him,' Gomez said.

Still, the tragic outcome of the relationship came as a shock to Gonzalez's co-workers and to other residents of Bay City — a town of just over 17,000 people surrounded by large ranches and farmland.

The shooting was the talk of the town Thursday, as residents drove slowly past the couple's home.

Some stopped to add something to the growing memorial. Others cried. Several prayed.

'It's going to be sad for the momma when she wakes up and finds out she lost her children,' said Gloria Carranza, a 41-year-old Bay City native who added pink and blue balloons to the memorial.

'Things like this don't happen in a small town like Bay City,' she said.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2069229/Husband-shoots-entire-family-killing-children-wife-returns-abused-womens-shelter-turning-gun-himself.html#ixzz1fTt43uHr

'I had to settle a beef': Terrified passengers flee as gunman opens fire on crowded New York bus and kills two

• Police: Killer shot 18-year-old man in apartment before jumping aboard bus and killing another
• One other victim in stable condition
  

By Daily Mail Reporter

A gunman slayed a man in an apartment before jumping aboard a crowded city bus and opening fire and fatally wounding another.

Police in Queens, New York have arrested the 20-year-old suspected shooter, who told them: 'I had to settle a beef.'

Witnesses described the scene as 'pandemonium', as one injured man fell from the bus and scores of terrified passengers fled.

The man shot his first victim in the neck in a second-story apartment in Jamaica, Queens.

The wounded 18-year-old then jumped from a window and fell to the ground below, police said.

He managed to stumble to the nearby Royal Chicken restaurant, where workers called emergency services – but he died before reaching hospital.

The shooter had fled the scene, running to a nearby bus stop and jumping on a northbound Q111 bus around 4 p.m.

Officers responding to the 911 call went to the apartment and found an ID the gunman had accidentally dropped, police said.

On the bus, the gunman began arguing with passengers and pulled out a 9mm Luger semi-automatic pistol.

He began firing and hit two men. One died on the bus.

The other, a 29-year-old man shot in the face, managed to escape while terrified fellow passengers fled.

He later was taken to Jamaica Hospital, where he was in stable condition, authorities said.

'The male gets on the bus and shoots two people,' Detective Martin Speechley said. 'We now have the shooter under arrest.'

Witnesses described the terrifying scenes as around 50 passengers fled the bus.

‘It was crazy. I saw people running from the bus,’ Shakeem Twitty, who was playing drums on sidewalk when he heard shots, told the New York Post.

Kevin Livingston, a manager at a nearby bank, added: ‘I saw cops running, so I came out and I saw a young man with a red coat lying on the ground.

'He was conscious, couldn’t have been more than 20. There were cops and people running everywhere.

‘I’m sick of it. I’m tired of seeing young black men dead of on the side of the road.’

Another witness told the New York Post: ‘It was pandemonium. I heard a shot and people started running over this way.’

Police caught the shooter and found the pistol on him.

When they asked him for a motive, the man allegedly said: ‘I had to settle a beef.'

The gunman is being questioned.

Ali Nasrey, a 27-year-old worker at Royal Chicken, said co-workers told him that the gunman was a stepfather ‘who shot his kid’.

Michael Prysner, an Iraq war veteran, found himself on the other side of the law when police cracked down on Occupy LA earlier this week. Prysner who has turned activist tells us about his experience when he was arrested.