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A gang of teenage girls may have blown up a house with a home-made liquid bomb,
which killed a man in a neighbouring property, after arguing with another girl
about a love rival.

Purple liquid was poured through the letterbox of the
Victorian house before the an explosion destroyed three houses.

Their intended victim, Charlotte Anderson, was caught in the blast and was
rushed to intensive care suffering with severe burns.

Ten hours earlier Miss Anderson had phoned police to say a gang of girls aged
16 and 17 was causing trouble outside her home, in Harrow. They were directing
abuse, about a boy, at Miss Anderson’s ground floor flat.

Devastation: Three houses weer destroyed in the blast, and one man was killed

Witnesses said they saw someone pouring a "purple, smelly liquid" through the
letterbox of the house.

Experts say the liquid could have vaporized and caused the explosion, which
killed Emad Qureshi, 26, who was at home with his parents in a neighbouring
house at the time of the blast.

He was crushed to death by falling rubble.

Miss Anderson was pulled from her wrecked flat by a neighbour and she was
rushed to hospital, where her condition was described as "non life-threatening".

Explosion: The massive blast destroyed three houses

Scotland Yard launched a murder investigation and is hunting the girl gang.

A police source said the liquid could have been made using a "recipe" found
on the internet

 

DCI Colin Sutton said: "Our major line of inquiry is that this liquid caused
the explosion and that the explosion was an attempt to murder this young woman."

Police originally thought the devastating explosion had been caused by a gas
leak, a theory which has now been played down.

DCI Sutton said: "We still haven’t ruled out a gas explosion but experts say
it is unlikely to be the cause. What we can say is that we are happy there is no
link to any terrorist organisation or acts here.

"A strong line of inquiry for us at the moment is the dispute, this call at
the address and of course the substance that was put through the letterbox."

Investigators initially believed the explosion was caused by a gas leak but now
say it could have been started deliberately

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There is a time for food, and a time for ethical appraisals. This was the case even before Bertolt Brecht gave life to that expression in Die Driegroschen Oper. The time for a reasoned, coherent understanding for the growing food crisis is not just overdue, but seemingly past. Robert Zoellick of the World Bank, an organization often dedicated to flouting, rather than achieving its claimed goal of poverty reduction, stated the problem in Davos in January this year. ‘Hunger and malnutrition are the forgotten Millennium Development Goal.’

Global food prices have gone through the roof, terrifying the 3 billion or so people who live off less than $2 a day. This should terrify everybody else. In November, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization reported that food prices had suffered a 18 percent inflation in China, 13 percent in Indonesia and Pakistan, and 10 percent or more in Latin America, Russia and India. The devil in the detail is even more distressing: a doubling in the price of wheat, a twenty percent increase in the price of rice, an increase by half in maize prices.

Finger pointing is not always instructive. In this case, it may be. The US and various European countries are moving food crops into the bio-fuel business, itself an environmentally unsound business. This, in addition to encouraging developing countries to not merely ‘liberalize’ their agricultural sectors, but specialize in exporting specific cash crops (cotton, cocoa), has done wonders to precipitate the shortages. Consumption in developing economies, added to the vicissitudes of climate change, water availability, and rising fertilizer costs, are others.

Political stability is being undermined. Food shortages are proving endemic. Food riots are becoming common. Riots have been sparked in Cameroon, Egypt, Burkina Faso, Uzbekistan and Yemen. There have been riots over spiraling grain prices in Mauritania and Senegal. In Mexico City, mass protests were sparked by a price hike in tortillas. In Haiti, biscuits are being made from a mud compound. The Somali capital Mogadishu bore witness to the deaths of five people.

Governments, indifferent and incautious to the demands of a hungry public, have already fallen victim to the food crisis. Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis was dismissed by a senate vote in Haiti after skirmishes between UN forces and protesters. The UN commander Major General Carlos Alberto Dos Santos Cruz urged calm amidst the carnage. ‘It is important for the people to have a peaceful life in Haiti,’ he claimed in April 2008. The message then: be peaceful on an empty stomach.

The Bush administration, so often in arrears on the relief front, has earmarked some 770 million dollars or so in funds dealing with the problem. There is one glaring hitch: the money would only start flowing in 2009. ‘There is definitely a lag time when it comes to assistance,’ states the senior manager of the Foreign Aid Reform Project at the Brookings Institute, Noam Unger.

More troubling is the critique offered of the crisis by officials within the administration. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, at the Peace Corps conference held at the end of April, targeted various culprits. The audience barely stirred at some of the explanations: distribution, oil prices, and the ‘alternate fuels effort’. They duly woke up when Rice moved on to targeting the export strategies of various countries – India and China foremost amongst them. ‘We obviously have to look at places where production seems to be declining and declining to the point that people are actually putting export caps on the amount of food.’

The problem, for Rice, is rising food consumption. Improved diets within China and India are bothering free market fundamentalists who insist that export caps stifle trade. According to this rationale, Indians are far better off buying the rice from the global market than eating their own in times of crisis. How silly of them to ensure a domestic supply first before shipping off the rest for the global market. Rice is crying foul at such protectionist deviancy, will ‘have a look at it’ and take the matter to the World Trade Organization.

Members of the American public are not so sure. A narrative of catastrophe is gradually building – stockpile or perish. The Wall Street Journal (April 25) was one of the first to issue the clarion call: ‘Start Hoarding Food Americans!’ The paper had various suggestions. Stock up on some products – dried pasta, rice, cereals, canned products. Buy them all in bulk to save. Sit the children down give them a good talking to – no, not about the birds and the bees, but about ‘how our generation and the two behind it, screwed their world into a death spiral through greed and predatory capitalism.’

Solutions suggested by such economists as Jeffrey Sachs, somewhat patchy yet desperately needed, are forthcoming: allow easier access for sub-Saharan African farmers to fertilizers; reduce the amount of crops going into bio-fuel development; shore-up climate change policies.

Sachs, in his work Common Wealth, also advocates the abolition of states in the face of a crowded planet. But it was state regimes besotted by neoliberal economics that brought us here. They can take us back and remedy the damage. Abolishing them would simply absolve their regimes.

In the meantime, the US and some countries in the West may have to brace themselves for a starving army guided by the morality of the stomach. The food riots are coming.

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I’ve posted in the past about the insanity of extending the reach of drunk driving laws in MADD’s attempted return to the glory days of Prohibition. See, for example, Felony Bicycle DUI, DUI on a Scooter, DUI on a Foot-High Toy Bike, DUI in a Wheelchair? and DUI on a Horse?.

Where are we going with all of this? Take a look at a fascinating semi-documentary on YouTube created by a gentleman who was arrested for drunk driving in Columbus, Ohio…for walking his bicycle.

That’s right. Jeff Brown was walking his bicycle — across his own front yard — when he was stopped by a police officer. The cop began to cite him for not having a headlight on the bike, then said, “I smell the presence of alcohol on your breath”. Jeff was stunned — and refused to take a breath test. Result: convicted of drunk driving — with four days in jail, a 6-month driver’s license suspension and a criminal record.

So Jeff decided to appeal…and started looking into why the Ohio Legislature in 2004 had changed the drunk driving laws from driving motor vehicles to include operating such “vehicles” as golf carts, lawn mowers, farm tractors and bicycles – and from driving on public roads to include driving on your own private property. He found the reasons for the new laws were based on supposed fatality figures from MADD and the federal government….figures which are, to say the least, deceptive. Jeff’s film does an exceptional job of analyzing the fraudulent manipulation of these “statistics”.

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What would you do if you found a bag with more than $100,000 inside?A 17-year-old Cedar City, Utah boy knows the feeling. The money was from a cash register at Southern Utah University

VIDEO

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British public life cannot be a “God-free zone”, the head of the Catholic church in England and Wales warned last night.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor said he was unhappy about attempts to “eliminate the Christian voice” from the public forum. He urged Catholics to prevent the country from becoming a “world devoid of religious faith” through a deeper engagement with God by praying, studying and performing charitable acts.

Speaking in a lecture at Westminster Cathedral, he said there was “considerable spiritual homelessness”, and even if people wanted to believe they felt faith was not an option.

“Many people have a sense of being in a sort of exile from faith-guided experience. This is the effect of the privatisation of religion today: religion comes to be treated as a personal need. You cannot banish religion to the church premises. There are social currents that want to isolate religion from other forms of knowledge and experience in order to marginalise it.”

The cardinal said modern culture prevented people from expressing their aspirations, and that their spiritual and religious impulses were not being channelled because there was a “pervasive message” that committing oneself to God was to “take a step back from being independent and mature”.

He suggested, however, that Christians were partly to blame for the prevalence of modern atheism, which was a product of a “distorted kind of Christianity”.

“What did we do to generate unbelief? We need to examine what we might have done to give people a misleading idea of God. Faith in Britain might be improved by a deeper grasp of the mystery of God on the part of our believers.”

He also called for a better dialogue between believers and non-believers based on mutual esteem, rather than a rejection of difference, in order to address the split between the Gospels and culture. He then questioned the grounds on which some prominent atheists attacked faith.

“The interesting question about atheism is, what is the theism being denied? Have you ever met anyone who believes what Richard Dawkins does not believe in? The God that is being rejected by such people is a God I don’t believe in either.”

The cardinal’s lecture was the last in a series on faith and public life in Britain. Other speakers have included Tony Blair, who said religion needed rescuing from extremism and irrelevance, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who said religion could provide a solid foundation for human rights. Williams takes a more flexible approach than his Catholic counterpart to a multicultural and multi-faith Britain.

Murphy-O’Connor has been outspoken in his attempt to secure the place of Christianity in society. He has attacked the caricature of the Catholic church as “some heartless, insular institution that wants to deny people their freedom”, describing it as a distortion to persuade people the church had no constructive role to play.

Last month, in an interview with the Guardian, he hit out at the representatives of an “aggressive secularism” he said was gaining ground in the UK, defended the church’s role in the debate over “hybrid” embryos, and argued that Christian leaders should hold a privileged position over the leaders of other faiths when it came to their input into public policy in Britain.

He has also accused the government of being motivated by anti-religious thinking over adoption laws and single faith schools.

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The FBI has withdrawn an illegal National Security Letter seeking information from an online library and has lifted a gag order that until Wednesday prevented any discussion of the information request.

Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation helped the Internet Archive push back against what they say was an overly broad and unlawful request for information on one of its users. The FBI issued its National Security Letter in November, but ACLU, EFF and Archive officials were precluded from discussing it with anyone because of a gag order they say was unconstitutional.

After nearly five months of haggling, the FBI eventually withdrew its NSL, which requested personal information about at least one user of the Internet Archive. Founded in 1996, the archive is recognized as a library by the state of California, and its collections include billions of Web records, documents, music and movies.

Because the FBI’s NSL sought information about what the suspected users were accessing in the digital library, it violated a 2006 update to the NSL authority that prevented access of information about library patrons’ activities such as what books they checked out, EFF and ACLU lawyers said. The ACLU is representing NSL recipients in two other cases, but lawyers noted that virtually none of the 200,000 letters issued by the FBI, CIA, Defense Department and other agencies between 2003 and 2006 ever were challenged in court.

The few cases that have gone before a judge all have prompted the FBI to back down, ACLU lawyer Melissa Goodman said.

“It’s quite notable that every single time someone has challenged an NSL in court .. the FBI has ultimately withdrawn its record demand,” she said during a conference call Wednesday afternoon. “I think that really calls into question how much the FBI really needed that information in the first place.”

The ACLU provided details on the other cases in a press release:

NSLs are secretly issued by the government to obtain access to personal customer records from Internet Service Providers, financial institutions, and credit reporting agencies. In almost all cases, recipients of the NSLs are forbidden, or “gagged,” from disclosing that they have received the letters. The ACLU has challenged this Patriot Act statute in federal court in two other cases where the judges found the gags unconstitutional: one involving an Internet Service Provider (ISP); the second a group of librarians. In the ISP case, the district court invalidated the entire NSL statute. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is expected to hear oral arguments in the government’s appeal of that case next month.

Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, said his initial reaction to receiving the letter was “nothing but sadness,” but he was heartened by the ACLU and EFF’s successes in getting the letter withdrawn.

“The goal was to help other recipients of NSLs and other libraries to understand that you can push back on these,” he said.

The FBI’s letter demanded the “name, address, length of service, and electronic communication transactional records … and all electronic mail (e-mail) header information,” from the Archive about at least one user of the Web site.

Kahle said the Archive didn’t keep any private information on its users aside from an unverified e-mail address, so he couldn’t have handed any of that information over even if he wanted to. However, he called the FBI’s attempts to gag him “horrendous” and unnecessary. He also worried about the overreaching implications of such demands, which prompted him to challenge the FBI’s letter.

“As a library we know that we’ve long protected patrons from government intrusions,” he said.

The Archive has cooperated with the government in the past, Kahle and his lawyers said, and they had agreed not to discuss some aspects of the NSL case. Documents posted on the ACLU’s Web site are partially redacted. Participants in Wednesday’s call would say only that the Archive had handed over some publicly available information to the FBI, but they refused to say what was shared.

EFF attorney Kurt Opsahl, who represented the Archive, would not speculate as to what prompted the FBI to issue the letter in the first place. Nor would he say whether the Archive was subjected to any other Bureau letters.

“As you might imagine, in that there are gag orders,” he said, “if there was another NSL, I wouldn’t be able to talk about it.”

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A girl of 13 killed herself after becoming obsessed with a fashion which links death with glamour, an inquest heard.

Hannah Bond hanged herself from her bunk bed with a tie after becoming an ‘Emo’.

Emo fans wear dark clothes, practise self-harm and listen to “suicide cult” rock bands.

Two weeks before her death, she started following U.S. band My Chemical Romance.

One of their songs contains the lyrics: “Although you’re dead and gone, believe me your memory will go on.”

Hannah, described as a model pupil, had started cutting her wrists but told her father it was part of an initiation into the Emo fashion.

Coroner Roger Sykes said yesterday that Hannah’s death was “not glamorous, just simply a tragic loss of a young life”.

Hannah’s mother Heather told the inquest she had researched the trend since her daughter’s death.

“There are websites that show pink teddies hanging themselves,” she said.

“She called Emo a fashion and I thought it was normal.”

She added: “Hannah was a normal girl. She had loads of friends. She could be a bit moody but I thought it was just because she was a teenager.”

Hannah’s father Ray, a karate teacher, said: “Two weeks before, I saw the cuts. I asked her about them and she said it was an Emo initiation.

“She promised me she would never do it again.”

Hannah gave her name as Living Disaster on her page on social networking website Bebo.

The page is decorated with a picture of an Emo girl with bloody wrists after slashing herself.

Another picture shows a child’s exercise book scrawled with the words: “Dear Diary, today I give up. . .”

The inquest in Maidstone, Kent, heard Hannah had been with her boyfriend at a friend’s house on the evening of September 22 last year.

She had been angry when she was told she was not allowed to sleep over and when she got home in East Peckham she went straight to her room, saying: “I want to kill myself.”

The inquest was told Hannah had not used drugs or alcohol before her death but Vanessa Everett, her head teacher at Mascalls School, said self-harm had become commonplace among other Emo fans.

Recording a verdict of suicide, Mr Sykes said: “The Emo overtones concerning death and associating it with glamour I find very disturbing.”

•The Emo phenomenon began in the U.S. in the 1980s. It is a largely teenage trend and is characterised by depression, self-injury and suicide.

Followers wear tight jeans with studded belts and wristbands. Their hair is dyed black and worn in long fringes to obscure their faces.

Emo - from the word emotional - is a reference to the angst-filled lyrics and melancholy themes of the rock music central to the culture.

One of the foremost of these “suicide cult” bands is My Chemical Romance, from New Jersey.

Their first single, Welcome to the Black Parade, from the album The Black Parade, was released in 2006 and became a huge hit, going to number one in Britain.

The concept album follows the story of a character called The Patient, who dies of cancer.

The Black Parade is a nickname for the place where Emo fans believe they will go when they die.

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Police should be harassing badly behaved youths by openly filming them and
hounding them at home to make their lives as uncomfortable as possible, the home
secretary will say today.

The crime initiative is part of a government strategy to win back voters by
proposing more radical approaches to tackling deep seated problems.

In a speech in London the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, will acknowledge that
the number of antisocial behaviour orders being issued is falling, but will
argue that there has been a shift to the use of parental orders instead.

As part of the crackdown on bad behaviour, she will urge police forces across
the country to follow the example of Essex police, who have mounted four-day
“frame and shame” operations by filming and repeatedly stopping identified
persistent offenders on problem estates.

The programme in Essex has been successful, even though it may raise human
rights issues about such tough tactics, especially if those harassed by the
police have not been found guilty of any criminal offence.

Smith will say: “There is no let-up in tackling antisocial behaviour. We know
that getting in early to stop troublemakers works, but I want stronger action to
deal with persistent offenders. I want police and local agencies to focus on
them by giving them a taste of their own medicine: daily visits, repeated
warnings and relentless filming of offenders to create an environment where
there is nowhere to hide.

“There can be no excuse for inaction while people still fear for the safety
of the streets and estates where they live. We will do more to protect them. We
all need to sharpen our resolve to tackle both the symptoms and the causes of
antisocial behaviour.”

The government has been accused by the Conservatives of going soft on its
previous “respect” agenda, closing down its respect unit and placing a new
emphasis on youth clubs and play.

The National Audit Office has also criticised the high number of breaches of
Asbos, arguing that ministers have little idea what measures are most effective.

Boris Johnson announced yesterday that he was imposing a ban on the drinking
of alcohol on all tubes and buses.

He has also raised the prospect of forming 100 Saturday schools where
children are drilled to march and learn manners.

Smith will be briefed at a conference in London today on the Essex operation
by its two creators, Inspector Jon Burgess and Sergeant Gavin Brock.

The police decided to target persistent offenders with filming techniques
first used in identifying hunt saboteurs and football hooligans.

An Essex police spokesman said: “The aim is to target a small group of
persistent offenders by openly filming them, knocking on their doors, following
them on the estate and repeatedly searching them, as well as warning them in no
uncertain terms that local people have identified them as lawbreakers.”

He claimed a four-day blitz in Basildon, which was followed up a few months
later, had dramatically reduced offending, and proved highly popular with
residents.

The scheme, codenamed operation Leopard, was approved by Essex’s Chief
Constable, Roger Baker, after specific estates had been identified as crime
hotspots, with more than 20 offences reported each week.

The police followed 14 people in their teens and early 20s. Each was well
known to the force, having built up criminal records for offences such as
intimidation, burglary, criminal damage, antisocial behaviour and vehicle crime.

Three surveillance officers spearheaded the operation, backed by uniformed
police and community support officers. A total of 60 stops were carried out.

As a result of other changes being introduced by the Home Office, it will be
easier to make these stops without needing to make a full record.

Ministers will defend the fall in the number of Asbos issued by claiming
other techniques such as acceptable behaviour contracts and parenting orders are
proving more effective.

Critics claim Asbos have become a badge of honour.

Acceptable behaviour contracts (ABCs) are written agreements between a young
person, the local housing office or registered social landlord, and the local
police in which the person agrees not to carry out a series of identifiable
behaviours which have been defined as antisocial. The contracts are primarily
aimed at young people aged between 10 and 18.

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An Alton man died Tuesday night after a St. Charles County Sheriff’s deputy used a Taser on him.

The sheriff’s department said it was called to the Piasa Pantry in West Alton around 9 p.m. Tuesday. The man, James Wilson, was having a fight with his sister.

When a deputy tried to break up the fight,
St. Charles County Sheriff Tom Neer said Wilson started threatening the officer and coming at him. The deputy used his Taser on Wilson, who then lost consciousness.

Deputies preformed CPR and paramedics took Wilson to the hospital, but they were unable to revive him.

The investigation regarding Wilson’s cause of death remains on-going, but the department has looked into the actions of the deputy.

“Our preliminary investigation at this time indicates that all policies and procedures were followed by the officer who is certified,” Neer said in reference to the eight hours of training he said deputies must complete before they are issued a Taser.

The deputy who deployed the Taser has been with the department for three years and is on administrative duty pending the outcome of the investigation, Neer said. An autopsy should reveal the exact cause of Wilson’s death.

The sheriff said this was the first time in his department that someone has died after being shocked with a Taser. His office started issuing Tasers to patrol deputies in 2004.

“It’s one of the most effective and useful tools that a law enforcement officer working the streets has at his or her disposal,” Neer said.

He added that the frequency of injuries to officers and suspects has been drastically reduced since his department started using the stun guns.

The Taser, made by Taser International, sends an electric shock to its target through wires attached to barbs that are fired from a hand held device.

Since they began their research in 2001, Amnesty International said they have confirmed 245 Taser-related deaths.

However, the company maintains the stun guns pose little, if any health risks. The guns are in use in more than 10,000 law enforcement agencies. And Taser International said no court has ever ruled a Taser to be the primary cause of death.

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Actor and comic Tommy Chong says he is linked to FBI raids Wednesday in Newport and Clermont County’s Union Township.

Chong tells Local 12 federal agents were after thousands of DVD copies of a documentary he recently made.

Tommy Chong, 30 years ago, appeared in the movie that made him famous, “Up In Smoke.”

But today, Tommy Chong is 69-years-old and selling a different movie, called “The United States of America Vs. Tommy Chong.”

The documentary details Chong’s 2003 federal prosecution and guilty plea for distributing drug paraphernalia. He was selling pot pipes online. Chong served nine months in prison.

Wednesday night, Chong told Local 12 he’s the focus of an FBI raid of two, local offices.

“They apparently confiscated 10,000 copies of the movie, “a/k/a Tommy Chong,” said Chong.

Only Local 12 cameras were on Mt. Carmel Tobasco Road Wednesday evening, watching federal agents raid the offices of 513 Ventures Agents also took evidence from the Spectrum Labs offices in Newport.

The companies market “detoxification products,” meant to help someone pass a drug test.

But Chong says agents seized 10,000 DVDs of his documentary. Federal prosecutors may be targeting Chong for trying to profit off his prosecution.

“I’m not profiting off the story of my first amendment violation at all,” said Chong.

The FBI isn’t confirming any of this. In fact, agents simply aren’t saying a thing about why they conducted the raids or what they were after.

Local 12 contacted one of the local people connected to Spectrum Labs and its affiliates, a Delhi man named Chris Swain. Mr. Swain said he would not have any comment.

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