Archives for September 2009

The government's economic stimulus money isn't just for hard hats, contractors and teachers. It's also keeping battered women's advocates on the job and compensating crime victims for lost wages and uncovered medical costs.

The government is spending $225 million in stimulus money on programs that deal with violence against women, and $100 million more to help victims of crime. This comes amid a general decline in private and state funding for such programs. The money is spread among states, territories, American Indian tribes and nonprofit social service providers.

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Five men are on remand in the Alice Springs jail, awaiting trial over the death of Kwementyaye Ryder.

A cross erected near where the 39-year-old's body was found has been burnt, sparking concerns from his family that Alice Springs has become a racist town.

But Acting Police Commander Kym Davies says he does not believe the town has a problem with racially-motivated crime.

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Quite a few crimes were reported in the capital city during and after Eidul Fitr days.

According to a spokesperson for police, this happened due to the policemen’s effective patrolling, strict checking of people entering or leaving the city, and alertness.

The spokesperson said the city reported only one incident of cellphone snatching, one of housebreaking and one of car theft between September 19 and September 24.

He said the cellphone was snatched in I-9; car was lifted in Koral, and house was burgled in Bhara Kahu. He said more than 1,500 policemen patrolled the city’s residential areas in the daytime and at night. He said the patrolling helped check burglaries and thefts.

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South Africa's efforts to fight its high crime rate are "not working", says one of the country's leading experts, Dr Johan Burger, a senior researcher at the Institute for Strategic Studies. He said the high crime statistics released by the government this week bore testament to the fact.

"The main message from the crime statistics is that whatever we are doing is definitely not working," he said. "In fact, in most of the crime areas - especially the violent crime areas - the situation looks worse.

"We are extremely happy that the murder rate, the attempted murder rate and so on continues its downward trend, but even the downward trend is not something to be absolutely content with."

Burger said South Africa's murder rate of 37 per 100 000 people could not compare with that in most developed countries, where it was less than two per 100 000.

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We're the first to admit that we know little to nothing about fashion we're still trying to puzzle out the meaning of leg warmers and lowriders. But even we know that a blanket with sleeves is not fashion.
Yet apparently, it is. Along with the debuts this week from hotshot fashion designers showing off their lines during New York Fashion Week, runway audiences were "treated" to the latest "styles" in Snuggies, the original blanket with sleeves.

High-fashion models and a few dogs (the canine sort four legs, wagging tails) strutted their stuff wearing Snuggies in various new colors and patterns, including zebra, leopard prints, tie-dye, camouflage, microplush and college logo themed.

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The armed men wore masks when they crowbarred their way into the Nguyen family's home near the spiralling roller coaster tracks of the Canada's Wonderland amusement park.

One of them had a gun. He held it to the head of Manh Nguyen while his partner searched the home for valuables.

The gun was a Taurus 85, a 38-calibre lightweight revolver with a 3-1/2-inch barrel. And like dozens of the handguns used by Ontario criminals, it had been smuggled across the border by a crooked American gun dealer named Ugur Yildiz.

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Even before a United Nations fact-finding mission led by the South African judge Richard Goldstone released its report on the Gaza war earlier this week, accusing Israel and Hamas of having perpetrated war crimes and crimes against humanity, you knew what direction the ensuing discussion would take: Israeli officials, like supporters of Israel all over, would condemn the report as biased, while Hamas and its enthusiasts would sidestep blame, insisting the movement acted in self-defense.

The members of the mission also called on Israel’s government and the Palestinian Authority (which, in reality, has no jurisdiction over Gaza) to conduct independent investigations within six months, otherwise the UN should take the matter to the International Criminal Court.

The debate over war crimes can be tiresome, shot through with self-righteousness and deceit. When Hamas, to defend itself, insists that its rockets during the Gaza war were primed to hit Israeli military positions, but because of their shoddiness veered off course to hit civilian targets, this is nonsense. From the start, the movement’s rocket arsenal served no purpose but to be a terror weapon against civilians. Attacking nonmilitary targets has long been a cornerstone of Hamas’ deterrence capability, as when it dispatched suicide bombers to Israeli cities.

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Violent crime including murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault fell in the United States last year compared with 2007, an FBI report showed Monday. But even though violent crime was down across the board by 1.9 percent, 16,272 people were murdered -- around 45 every day of 2008 -- and 89,000 women were raped, the "Crime in the United States" report showed.

More than 834,000 people, or 2.5 percent fewer than in 2007, fell victim last year to aggravated assault, the most common form of violent crime in the United States, which the Federal Bureau of Investigation defines as an attack usually involving a weapon and intended to inflict severe injury or bodily harm.

Just over half as many, 441,885, were robbed last year, down 0.7 percent from 2007. The number of women who were forcibly raped was down from more than 90,000 in 2007 to 89,000, a 20-year low for the offense, the report, which does not seek to analyze the data, said. Sexual attacks on males are counted as aggravated assaults or sex offenses, and are not included in the statistics for rape.

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Sandy Springs - one of the metro region’s largest and newest cities - saw violent and property crime drop in 2008. Police Chief Terry Sult, who completes his first year with the department in October, praised the news but refused to let his department alone take credit.

The department is just three years old. The city, four years. That means the nearly 90,000 residents there have been eager to get involved in helping prevent crime and work to help solve it when it occurs, Sult said.

“We have a partnership with our community here and that has been the significant factor in any crime reductions,” Sult said Monday, following the release of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report. “There is real ownership of the police department here.

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Since the semester began, the campus area has seen several batteries and one violent robbery but the Madison Police Department says it’s nothing out of the ordinary.

MPD spokesperson Joel DeSpain said the area has seen more significant crime spikes in the past, and the current level of muggings and violent crime falls below previous crime spikes.

“At this point, we are not sounding the alarm,” DeSpain said. “But we are making sure people are practicing as safe of habits as possible.”

DeSpain said he made Dean of Students Lori Berquam aware of the instances since the city has had some issues with robbery spikes in the past. He said, “It’s better to be proactive,” especially with new students in the area.

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