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Abuse survivors groups react to pope’s resignation
Feb 11, 2013, - 0 Comments

Feb. 11, 2013 Yahoo

Pope Benedict XVI, 85, will become the first pontiff to resign since the 15th century, the Vatican announced on Monday. He steps down on Feb. 28.

The pope said he was resigning because he does not have the physical strength necessary to do the job.

"After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry," the pope said in a statement.

The pope took the helm in 2005, just when allegations that the church covered up sexual abuse by clerics were making waves in the U.S. and Ireland. Over the pope's next eight years on the job, sexual abuse allegations also surfaced in Germany, Norway and other European countries, and the ensuing crisis became one of the defining aspects of his tenure.

In a statement on Monday, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the pope had brought a "listening heart" to victims of sexual abuse.

But some advocates and victims groups said on Monday that the pope did not turn his listening into adequate action.

Suspected courthouse shooter, wife dead in Del.
Feb 11, 2013, - 0 Comments

Feb. 11, 2013 Associated Press

WILMINGTON, Del.  — A Delaware State Police spokesman says 3 people have died in a shooting at the New Castle County Courthouse in Wilmington.

Sgt. Paul Shavack confirmed three people died in Monday's shooting in Wilmington. Earlier, the city's mayor said the suspected shooter was dead along with his wife.

Wilmington Mayor Dennis Williams said he was told the man shot and killed his wife and wounded two other people about 8:10 a.m. Monday. Williams says the couple was estranged.

Serial killers Burke & Hare claim second victim - 1828
Feb 11, 2013, - 0 Comments

burke and hare

Burke & Hare

by Michael Thomas Barry

On February 11, 1828, Abigail Simpson is murdered by William Burke and William Hare in Edinburgh, Scotland. The Burke and Hare murders (also known as the West Port murders) were a series of murders committed in Scotland over a period of about ten months in 1828. The killings were attributed to Irish immigrants William Burke and William Hare, who sold the corpses of their 16 victims to Doctor Robert Knox as dissection material for his well-attended anatomy lectures.

DEAD IN THE WATER
Feb 11, 2013, - 1 Comment

Feb. 11, 2013

Natalie Wood and Joshua Swalls: Foul play, or splendid accidents?

HUNTING SMILEY: What's Natalie Wood got to do with it?

Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner

by EPONYMOUS ROX

Without a doubt, this glamorous woman’s fatal midnight plummet from the deck of The Splendour into the cool ocean waters off Catalina Island in 1981 has got to be the most high profile “accidental drowning” on record.

In the hours preceding her watery demise, she was overheard loudly quarreling with an enraged and jealous husband. They had been at this all day, in fact. All evening they’d been drinking.

Married, divorced, and remarried for a second try, the two were known to have a volatile relationship, with more than their fair share of public and private disagreements, be they drunk or sober. But this argument was different. The worst one yet.

When she drowned, she had prominent contusions in “no particular pattern” all over the front and back of her body. Some of these were fresh injuries, said to have been obtained as she frantically grappled with a small, wooden dinghy secured to the side of the yacht. Some she’d received just days before plunging to her death.

Mike Tyson is convicted of raping beauty pageant contestant - 1992
Feb 10, 2013, - 0 Comments

tyson

Mike Tyson

by Michael Thomas Barry

On February 10, 1992, former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson is found guilty of raping 18-year-old beauty-pageant contestant Desiree Washington. The following month, Tyson was given a 10-year prison sentence, with four years suspended.

South Africans mourn rape victim, say 'enough is enough'
Feb 10, 2013, - 0 Comments
Feb. 8, 2013 By Wendell Roelf, Reuters
 

Published at 10 p.m. ET -- BREDASDORP, South Africa - Hundreds of South Africans chanting "enough is enough" gathered on Friday at a building site where a 17-year-old girl was mutilated and left to die after being gang-raped.

Their tribute was testimony to how the killing of Anene Booysen has stirred outrage in a country where many people have become oblivious to rampant sex crimes and violence.

People marched in a procession to the site in the sleepy town of Bredasdorp, 80 miles east of Cape Town, where they placed flowers and candles by a simple wooden cross.

Booysen was found by security guards lying only a short distance from her house after partying at a nearby bar last Friday evening. She later died in hospital.

Criminal Injustice: Death and Politics at Attica
Feb 9, 2013, - 0 Comments

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