Breaking News Thread

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Re: Breaking News Thread

Post by Dr. No »

10 yearsa go today. No doubt our police and armed forces have done an outstanding job keeping us safe. I wonder how much of the 10 years fear was actual intelligence.
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Chief of Staff, 007's gone round the bend. Says someone's been trying to feed him a poisoned banana. Fellow's lost his nerve. Been in the hospital too long. Better call him home.
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Re: Breaking News Thread

Post by FormerBondFan »

http://www.imdb.com/news/ni15468039/

RIP Frances Bay- Happy Gilmore's Grandma
3 hours ago

Actress Frances Bay, who you know from Happy Gilmore, Seinfeld, Happy Days, and Blue Velvet, passed away on Thursday in her home in Los Angeles. She was known for playing quirky older women and was, if I may say, wonderfully adorable. Bay always wanted to be an actress but didn't start working steadily until the age of 50. She went on to receive a star on Canada's Walk of Fame. She was married to her high school sweetheart, who died in 2002 in a car crash which also caused severe damage in Mrs. Bay's leg causing it to be amputated.. They had a son who regrettably passed away at the age of 23. Despite such trauma, she always seemed to be full of happiness and humor when you saw her work. She will be missed. »

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Re: Breaking News Thread

Post by Blowfeld »

If there was doubt Barack Obama was a proper Born in the U.S.A. Yank they are gone now! :lol:
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Oops. President Barack Obama probably didn't mean to do this.

In a photo taken Tuesday at the United Nations, pool photographer Allan Tannenbaum snapped an image of the president waving. The gesture, however, blocked the face of another world leader in the picture.

We're not exactly sure whose face the president's hand is concealing. Pajamas Media says that it could be Tsakhia Elbegdorj, the president of Mongolia.

Ology.com reports the photo was taken during the Open Government Partnership meeting.

LOOK: President Obama's hand blocks a face in a photo at the United Nations.
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Re: Breaking News Thread

Post by Capt. Sir Dominic Flandry »

Oceania is now at war with Eastasia.
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Re: Breaking News Thread

Post by carl stromberg »

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/se ... ewsfeed=true


Dad's Army and Are You Being Served co-creator David Croft dies

Dad's Army co-creator David Croft has died.

David Croft, the TV comedy writer and producer responsible for BBC sitcoms including Dad's Army, It Ain't Half Hot Mum, Hi-de-Hi, 'Allo 'Allo and Are You Being Served?, has died aged 89.

Croft died "peacefully in his sleep" at home in Portugal on Tuesday, his family announced on his website.

"He was a truly great man, who will be missed by all who had the great fortune of knowing and loving him," they said in a statement.

"We know that he would have been proud that you had all been watching."

Croft's long-running partnership with Jimmy Perry spawned Dad's Army, arguably the most successful British sitcom of all time. Originally aired between 1968 and 1977, it remains one of BBC2's most popular shows even today.

The duo also wrote It Ain't Half Hot Mum – which they considered the funniest of all their collaborations – Hi-de-Hi! and You Rang M'Lord.

Croft also wrote Are You Being Served? and 'Allo 'Allo with Jeremy Lloyd, and later teamed up with Richard Spendlove to write Oh Doctor Beeching!

Croft, who graduated from Sandhurst, rose through the army ranks to major, and served in North Africa, India and Singapore.

His experiences in the armed forces provided much of the material for Dad's Army and It Ain't Half Hot Mum.

Croft was born into showbusiness. His parents were both actors and he appeared in a cinema advert as a child, before landing a small part in a 1939 film of Goodbye, Mr Chips.

He wrote scripts for pantomimes before working in television as a producer, director and writer.

Five of his shows made the top 50 of a 2004 survey of the 100 best sitcoms of all time in 2004, led by Dad's Army in fourth place.

Melvyn Hayes, who starred in It Ain't Half Hot Mum, said: "The man was a genius. I was very privileged to have the opportunity to work with him. We worked together for quite a while before It Ain't Half Hot Mum.

"I remember doing the [It Ain't Half Hot Mum] pilot and he'd say 'just play it as we rehearsed it. If it dies on its arse it's my fault and Jimmy's [Perry]'.

"All actors get an idea and say 'can I try this, can I try that'. He'd say 'it's very funny but save it for panto'."

Hayes added: "He was a joy to work with. He was an actors' director. He was someone you could talk to and who inspired you.

"He based his writing on truth. He had a great innings and was very successful at everything he touched. Dad's Army is always on, somewhere in the world."

League of Gentlemen star Mark Gatiss, co-writer of BBC1's Sherlock and occasional scriptwriter on Doctor Who, paid tribute on Twitter, saying: "Flags at half mast in Walmington-on-Sea tonight. Farewell to the great David Croft."

Croft, who was awarded an OBE in 1978, is survived by his wife, children and grandchildren.
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Re: Breaking News Thread

Post by Kristatos »

carl stromberg wrote:http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/se ... ewsfeed=true


Dad's Army and Are You Being Served co-creator David Croft dies
Don't panic! Don't panic!
"He's the one that doesn't smile" - Queen Elizabeth II on Daniel Craig
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Re: Breaking News Thread

Post by carl stromberg »

Kristatos wrote:
carl stromberg wrote:http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/se ... ewsfeed=true


Dad's Army and Are You Being Served co-creator David Croft dies
Don't panic! Don't panic!
Don't tell him Pike!
Bring back Bond!
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Re: Breaking News Thread

Post by katied »

Steve Jobs died. :( :( :( :( :(
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Re: Breaking News Thread

Post by FormerBondFan »

katied wrote:Steve Jobs died. :( :( :( :( :(
Another victim of this EVIL disease, which must be stopped and has no right to exist.
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Re: Breaking News Thread

Post by Goldeneye »

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Steven P. Jobs, the Apple Inc. chairman and co-founder who pioneered the personal computer industry and changed the way people think about technology, died Wednesday at the age of 56.

His family, in a statement released by Apple, said Mr. Jobs "died peacefully today surrounded by his family...We know many of you will mourn with us, and we ask that you respect our privacy during our time of grief."

The company didn't specify the cause of his death. Mr. Jobs had battled pancreatic cancer and several years ago received a liver transplant. In August, Mr. Jobs stepped down as CEO, handing the reins to Tim Cook.

"Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being," Mr. Cook said in a letter to employees. "We will honor his memory by dedicating ourselves to continuing the work he loved so much."

During his more than three decade-long career, Mr. Jobs transformed Silicon Valley as he helped turn the once sleepy expanse of fruit orchards into the technology industry's innovation center. In addition to laying the groundwork for the high-tech industry alongside other pioneers like Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison, Mr. Jobs proved the appeal of well-designed products over the sheer power of technology itself and shifted the way consumers interact with technology in an increasingly digital world.
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"The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come," Mr. Gates said in a statement Wednesday.

The most productive chapter in Mr. Jobs's career occurred near the end of his life, when a nearly unbroken string of successful products like the iPod, iPhone and iPad changed the PC, electronics and digital media industries. The way he marketed and sold those products through savvy advertising campaigns and its retail stores, in the meanwhile, helped turn the company into a pop culture icon.

At the beginning of that phase, Mr. Jobs once described his philosophy as trying to make products that were at "the intersection of art and technology." In doing so, he turned Apple into the world's most valuable company with a market value of $350 billion.

After exhibiting significant weight loss in mid-2008, Mr. Jobs took a nearly six month medical leave of absence in 2009, during which he received a liver transplant. He took another medical leave of absence in mid-January without explanation before stepping down as chief executive.

Mr. Jobs is survived by his wife, Laurene, and four children.

Although his achievements in technology alone were immense, Mr. Jobs played an equally groundbreaking role in entertainment. He turned Apple into the largest retailer of music and helped popularize computer-animated films as the financier and CEO of Pixar Animation Studios, which he later sold to Walt Disney Co. He was a key figure in changing the way people used the Internet and how they consumed music, TV shows, movies, books, disrupting industries in the process.

"Despite all he accomplished, it feels like he was just getting started," Disney CEO Robert Iger said in a statement Wednesday.

Mr. Jobs also pulled off one of the most remarkable comebacks in modern business history, returning to Apple after an 11-year absence during which he was largely written off as a has-been and then reviving the then-struggling company by introducing products such as the iMac all-in-one computer, iPod music player and iTunes digital music store.

The company produces $65.2 billion a year in revenue compared with $7.1 billion in its business year ending September 1997. Apple has become one of the world's premier designers of consumer-electronics devices, dropping the "computer" in its name in January 2007 to underscore its expansion beyond PCs.
Steve Jobs: Personal Media Pioneer
Photos: Steve Jobs Through the Years
[SB10001424052748703396604576087822749141458]
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Timeline: Steve Jobs and Apple
The Apple Evolution
[SB10001424052748703808904575024692608065072]
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Although Mr. Jobs officially handed over the reins of the company to Mr. Cook, his long-time deputy, in August, his death nevertheless raises a high-stakes question for Apple of how the company—which has been in the vanguard of technological creativity for most of the past decade—will sustain its success without his vision and guidance. Other icons of American capitalism, including Walt Disney, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and International Business Machines Corp., experienced some transitional woes but eventually managed to thrive after their charismatic founders passed on.

But few companies of that stature have shown such an acute dependence on their founder, or lost the founder at the peak of his career. Several years after Mr. Jobs was fired from Apple in 1985, the company began a steady decline that saw it drift to the margins of the computer industry. That slide was reversed only after Mr. Jobs returned to Apple in 1997.

Mr. Jobs also leaves behind innumerable tales about his mercurial management style, such as his habit of calling employees or their ideas "dumb" when he didn't like something. He was even more combative against foes like Microsoft Corp., Google Inc., and Amazon.com Inc. When Adobe Systems Inc. waged a campaign against Apple for not supporting Adobe's Flash video format on its iPhones and iPads in April 2010, Mr. Jobs wrote a 1,600 word essay about why the software was outdated and inadequate for mobile devices.

The CEO maintained uncompromising standards about the company's hardware and software, demanding "insanely great" aesthetics and ease of use from the moment a consumer walked into one of Apple's stylish stores. His attention to the smallest details in the development and design process were instrumental in shaping some of the most distinctive features of Apple's products, while his meticulously planned onstage demonstrations helped fuel excitement that was unmatched by his peers.

At event after event to introduce new products, Mr. Jobs often puckishly proclaimed "There is one more thing" before revealing the most significant news at the very end of a speech. He enforced strict secrecy among Apple employees, a strategy that he believed heightened anticipation for upcoming Apple products.

Mr. Jobs, the adopted son of a family in Palo Alto, Calif., was born on Feb. 24, 1955. A college dropout, he established his reputation early on as a tech innovator when at 21 years old, he and friend Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer Inc. in the Jobs family garage in 1976. Mr. Jobs chose the name, in part, because he was a Beatles fan and admired the group's Apple records label, according to the book "Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders" by Wall Street Journal reporter Jim Carlton.

The pair came out with the Apple II in 1977, a groundbreaking computer that was relatively affordable and designed for the mass market consumer rather than for hobbyists. The product went on to become one of the first commercially successful personal computers, making the company $117 million in annual sales by the time of Apple's initial public offering in 1980. The IPO instantly made Mr. Jobs a multimillionaire.

Not all of Mr. Jobs's early ideas paid off. Apple's Apple III and Lisa computers that debuted in 1980 and 1983 were flops. But the distinctive all-in-one Macintosh--foreshadowed in a ground-breaking TV ad inspired by George Orwell's novel "1984" that famously only aired once -- would set the standard for the design of modern computer operating systems, in which users point and click on icons with a mouse rather than typing in commands.

Even then, Mr. Jobs was a stickler about design details. Bruce Tognazzini, a former user-interface expert at Apple who joined the company in 1978, once said that Mr. Jobs was adamant than the keyboard not include "up", "down," "right" and "left" keys that allow users to move the cursor around their computer screens.

Mr. Jobs's pursuit for aesthetic beauty sometimes bordered on the extreme. George Crow, an Apple engineer in the 1980s and again from 1998 to 2005, recalls how Mr. Jobs wanted to make even the inside of computers beautiful. On the original Macintosh PC, Mr. Crow says Mr. Jobs wanted the internal wiring to be in the colors of Apple's early rainbow logo. Mr. Crow says he eventually convinced Mr. Jobs it was an unnecessary expense.

Many ideas in the Macintosh came from a visit in 1979 to Xerox Corp.'s Palo Alto Research, where Mr. Jobs saw a machine called the Xerox Alto that had a crude graphical user interface and a mouse. The episode underscored his recurring role as a refiner and popularizer of existing inventions.

"Picasso had a saying, 'Good artists copy. Great artists steal,'" Mr. Jobs said in a PBS documentary on the computer industry from the mid-1990s. "I've been shameless about stealing great ideas."

Even in his appearance, Mr. Jobs seemed to cultivate an image more like that of an artist than a corporate executive. In public, he rarely deviated from an outfit consisting of Levis jeans, a black mock turtleneck and New Balance running shoes.

As Apple expanded, Mr. Jobs decided to bring in a more experienced manager to lead the company. He recruited John Sculley from Pepsi Co. to be Apple CEO in 1983, famously overcoming Mr. Sculley's initial reluctance by asking the executive if he just wanted to sell "sugar water to kids" or help change the world.

After Apple fell into a subsequent slump, a leadership struggle led its board's decision to back Mr. Sculley and fire Mr. Jobs two years later at the age of 30. "What can I say – I hired the wrong guy," Mr. Jobs brooded in the same PBS documentary. "He destroyed everything I had spent ten years working for."

Mr. Jobs then created NeXT Inc., a closely watched startup that in 1988 introduced a distinctive black desktop computer with advanced software that was initially targeted at the academic computing market. But the machine was hobbled by its exorbitant price tag and some key design decisions, including its use of an optical disk drive and a Motorola Inc. microprocessor at a time when Intel Corp. chips and floppy drives had become the norm.

NeXT eventually stopped selling hardware and failed to make money as a software company. But its operating system would become a foundation for OS X, the software backbone of today's Macs, after Apple purchased NeXT for $400 million in December 1996.

In 1986, using part of his fortune from Apple, Mr. Jobs paid filmmaker George Lucas $10 million to acquire the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm Ltd. The company he formed out of those assets, Pixar Animation Studios, first sold hardware, then software, and later turned to feature films. Pixar went on to create a string of computer-animated hits, from "Toy Story" to 2008's "Wall-E." Mr. Jobs sold Pixar to Disney in January 2006 in a $7.4 billion deal that gave him a Disney board seat and made him the entertainment company's largest shareholder.

Meanwhile, Apple began foundering. Computers using Intel chips and Microsoft software grew to dominate the market, a trend that accelerated after Microsoft's Windows emulated many elements of the Mac's visual interface.

Apple, by contrast, had to finance both hardware and software development internally. Fewer developers of application programs created products to make the Macintosh more useful. Apple would eventually decide to license its operating system to other hardware companies, but it was too late to reverse the swing to Windows-based machines.

By 1997, Apple had racked up nearly $2 billion in losses in two years, its shares were at record lows and it was on its third CEO--Gil Amelio--in four years. Eight months after the deal to buy NeXT in December 1996, Mr. Amelio was ousted and Mr. Jobs appointed interim CEO, a title that became permanent in January 2000. One former Apple employee recalls Mr. Jobs joking soon after he returned that "the lunatics have taken over the asylum and we can do anything we want."

Mr. Jobs, who was given a salary of $1 a year along with options to Apple stock, made a series of changes that started paying off quickly. He ended the nascent software licensing program that created Mac clones, killed the struggling Newton handheld computer and trimmed a confusing array of Mac models to a handful of systems focused on the consumer market.

In May 1998, he introduced the iMac, an unusual one-piece computer that sported a colorful casing in translucent turquoise and gray. The popular machine--which sent competitors scrambling to improve their own designs—was embodied by a bold ad campaign that featured the phrase "Think Different," with the picture of one of Mr. Jobs's heroes, such as Albert Einstein and Muppets creator Jim Henson.

While shareholders cheered the changes, Mr. Jobs flexed his power on Apple's Cupertino, Calif., campus. Within months of taking over, he had replaced four of the five top executive positions with former NeXT underlings. He issued emails forbidding employees on the famously laid-back campus to bring pets to the office, smoke even in parking lots, and threatening to fire anyone caught leaking company documents.

One personal assistant became a target when he failed to arrange the installation of a high-speed digital data line to Mr. Jobs's office fast enough to suit the interim CEO. The worker said Mr. Jobs fired him for the delay, but rescinded the firing the next day after he had cooled down. (The worker ended up resigning soon afterwards).

Apple had some stumbles during Mr. Jobs's second coming, including a cube-shaped Macintosh that failed to catch on and was scrapped in 2001. The failure was one reason that Apple posted a quarterly loss and warned it would miss estimates several times in 2000 and 2001.

But big hits followed. In 2001, Apple introduced a PowerBook laptop made from titanium, a metal more frequently found in fighter airplanes. The same year, it introduced the iPod, which transformed digital music players with features such as its smooth shape and DJ-like wheel for navigating through songs. As of Sept. 2010, Apple had sold more than 275 million iPod devices since its introduction, and it has more than 70% market share in the market for digital music players.

A key differentiator was the iTunes Music Store, opened in 2003. At the time, the music industry was largely sitting on the sidelines of the digital revolution, badly wounded by illegal downloads but unable to agree on an easy, inexpensive way to sell songs online. But Mr. Jobs helped convince major record labels to sell recordings for 99 cents each, along with antipiracy restrictions that most consumers found acceptable.

The store, which has sold more than ten billion songs, became the largest music retailer in the U.S. in 2008. It also became an incentive for consumers to buy iPods because, for much of its history, songs from the iTunes store could only be downloaded to Apple's music player and not devices made by other companies.

At the same time, Mr. Jobs was building a deep bench of executives. He recruited former Compaq Computer Corp. executive Tim Cook in the late 1990s to straighten Apple's operations and promoted him over time to chief operating officer. Ron Johnson, senior vice president of Apple retail, was hired from Target Corp. in 2000 to launch Apple's stores worldwide. Apple's lead industrial designer Jonathan Ive took charge of the physical look-and-feel of the company's products and is said to share in Mr. Jobs's sensibilities about design.

In 2004, Mr. Jobs had to lean on this bench when he disclosed that he had had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his pancreas. Apple revealed the procedure in early August 2004, but a person familiar with the situation said Mr. Jobs first learned of the tumor during a routine abdominal scan nine months earlier. The board and Mr. Jobs said nothing to Apple shareholders as the Apple executive, during that time, dealt with the tumor through changes to his diet, the person said.

In June 2007, Mr. Jobs made another splash when Apple introduced the iPhone. The cellphone pushed the envelope in the mobile phone market with features that included a touch-screen interface, allowing tricks such as blowing up images by spreading a thumb and finger on the phone's surface.

Mr. Jobs was typically hands on in the creation of the iPhone. People familiar with the matter say the CEO was the one that made a decision to change the screen of the iPhone from plastic to glass after he unveiled the product at the Macworld trade show in 2007. The iPhone team scrambled to procure glass that would meet his exacting standards, so the devices could be manufactured in time for the launch, which took place just seven months later.

Despite skepticism about Apple's ability to enter an already-competitive market dominated by the likes of Research in Motion Ltd.'s Blackberry devices, Apple quickly became a force in the mobile phone market, selling 92 million iPhones as of December 2010. The product kicked into a higher gear earlier this year when Apple said it would begin selling iPhones through Verizon Wireless in addition to carrier AT&T.

Last year, Mr. Jobs also unveiled the iPad tablet computer to great fanfare, billing it as "magical and revolutionary". In the first nine months of the product's release, Apple sold 14.8 million iPads as consumers snapped them up to use as a casual multimedia device for activities such as emailing, watching video and reading. People who work closely with Mr. Jobs said the project was so important to him that he was intimately involved in its planning even while recovering from his 2009 liver transplant.

A major selling point for both the iPhone and iPad has been the App Store, which allows developers to easily make application programs that users can download for free or for a small fee; the store meanwhile has seen more than seven billion downloads as of the end of 2010.

One cloud to Mr. Jobs's reign came in 2006 when Apple also disclosed that an internal investigation had discovered that stock option grants to Apple executives between 1997 and 2002-- including to Mr. Jobs-- were improperly dated. Apple became the most high-profile technology company caught up in a broad series of options backdating scandals that helped inflate the profits executives made from their stock awards.

Apple later disclosed that Mr. Jobs helped select the favorable option dates, but denied that he did anything wrong since he didn't understand the accounting implications of his actions. Apple's investigation ended up blaming two ex-Apple executives – former general counsel Nancy Heinen and former chief financial officer Fred Anderson – for their role in the backdating. Both were later charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission. They ended up settling the charges. Mr. Jobs was never charged with any wrongdoing.

Those who knew Mr. Jobs say that one reason why he was able to keep innovating was because he didn't dwell on past accomplishments or legacy but kept looking ahead and demanded that employees do the same. Hitoshi Hokamura, a former Apple employee, recalls how an old Apple I that was displayed by the company cafeteria quietly disappeared after Mr. Jobs returned in the late 1990s.

"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose," Mr. Jobs said in a commencement speech at Stanford University in June 2005, almost a year after he was diagnosed with cancer.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 11910.html
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Re: Breaking News Thread

Post by Omega »

Oh, man not releasing the iPhone 5 killed him! Bad joke I know.
Apple did dodge a bullet if he had died the day before it would have looked very bad after the disappointing iPhone presentation.

Jobs was an amazing guy I don't know how well Apple will survive without him, he really was the heart of the operation. He revolutionized everything, music and movies and phones, what he did affects everyones lives. Computing was only a small part of the world he helped to change looking back I think his role will always be more important the Bill Gates who basically stole everything he packaged from DOS to Windows.
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Re: Breaking News Thread

Post by FormerBondFan »

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... treet.html

Chinese toddler run over twice after being left on street
A Chinese toddler was run over twice and ignored by nearly 20 passers-by in Guangdong Province in a case that has caused outrage around the world.

It is a story that has deeply unsettled millions in China, posing troubling questions about whether three decades of headlong economic development has left nothing but a moral vacuum in its wake.

It begins last Thursday when a two-year-old girl totters into a narrow lane in a wholesale market in the thriving industrial city of Foshan in Guangdong Province and is hit by a small, white van. The driver pauses, and then pulls away, crushing the child for a second time under his rear wheels.

It is not the accident itself, but what happens next — or rather doesn’t happen – that has left millions of ordinary Chinese wondering where their country is heading.

One by one, no fewer than 18 passers-by are seen on closed circuit television ignoring the girl as she lies, clearly visible in the road, haemorrhaging into the gutter. Not a single one of them stops to help.

The first is a young man in a white T-shirt and trainers. He walks on past the prone form of girl who is by now bleeding profusely, without a second glance.

Next comes a cyclist who wobbles slightly to avoid the dying child and then pedals on, turning his head back momentarily, as if to check he really did see a child dying in the street.

As the pool of blood spreads, a third pedestrian comes by, clearly sees the bleeding girl, but steps out into the small lane to give her a wide berth.

All three could have moved the girl, later named by her parents as 2-year-old Yueyue, but none did, allowing another, larger vehicle following down the lane a few minutes later to run her over for a second time.

The pictures of the incident which happened last Thursday afternoon then show a succession of other cyclists and rickshaw drivers weaving round the girl, including a woman walking with a child who on seeing Yueyue visibly quickens her step, dragging her charge after her.

It is only the nineteenth passer-by, a 58-year-old street cleaner called Chen Xianmei, who drops her bag of rubbish and rushes to the bleeding child, attempting to scoop up her up, but finding her floppy and lifeless.

Mrs Chen, who is only 4ft 7in tall, then calls for the girl’s mother who comes rushing into view, taking up her child in her arms, who is now in intensive care in the military hospital in the city of Guangzhou.

Yueyue remains in a critical condition, a nurse told The Daily Telegraph by phone. Earlier doctors said she had suffered major head injuries and was breathing only with the assistance of a ventilator. The story of Yueyue was the leading item across China’s online news portals as the copies of the CCTV highly distressing footage attracted more than a million viewings in a number of hours.

Many viewers reacted with dismay, citing the incident as further evidence that China had become a “world without morals”.

“Everyone is praising the rubbish-collecting granny for helping, but isn’t it normal to help someone who is wounded or dying?”, asked Johnny Yao on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, “This just shows how abnormal is the moral situation in this society! The sad Chinese, poor China are we even rescuable?”

Others blamed China’s compensation culture for the apparent show of callousness, recalling a famous 2006 judgment when a Good Samaritan who helped a woman get to hospital was wrongly ordered to pay her compensation.

“They didn’t ignore the girl, they just didn’t dare help her,” said one comment among many that said that Chinese law had helped create a fear of intervening.

However many others said there could be no excuse, and that the scenes in the video should “shake the soul of every conscientious person” in China.

“Even if the passers-by couldn’t rescue her, they could dial 120 and 110 [China’s emergency numbers] and help to stop vehicles, then the little Yueyue wouldn’t have been run over by the second car,” said another comment posted by 'Dull Baby’.

“What’s up with people these days? They make so many excuses to turn a blind eye. The society is so indifferent, so heartless.” Yueyue’s father, a man surnamed Wang who was shown weeping with his wife on television news bulletins, said he didn’t want to enter the moral debate, only pray for his child’s survival.

“Yueyue is so lovely, often amuses us. Sometime if I quarrelled with her mother and if her mother cried, she would tell us not to cry, she always tried to amuse us. I don’t have any thoughts now, I just hope my child will wake up and call me Dad again.”

is only the nineteenth passer-by, a 58-year-old street cleaner called Chen Xianmei, who drops her bag of rubbish and rushes to the bleeding child, attempting to scoop up her up, but finding her floppy and lifeless.

Mrs Chen, who is only 4ft 7in tall, then calls for the girl’s mother who comes rushing into view, taking up her child in her arms, who is now in intensive care in the military hospital in the city of Guangzhou.

Yueyue remains in a critical condition, a nurse told The Daily Telegraph by phone. Earlier doctors said she had suffered major head injuries and was breathing only with the assistance of a ventilator. The story of Yueyue was the leading item across China’s online news portals as the copies of the CCTV highly distressing footage attracted more than a million viewings in a number of hours.



Now this is what I call a TOTAL OUTRAGE!
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Re: Breaking News Thread

Post by Dr. No »

It was a baby girl no wonder :( so sad. Human life is so fragile I wonder how anybody gets the idea in their head it is so easy to exterminate it.
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Re: Breaking News Thread

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On a lighter note
Washington Father Arrested for Forcing Daughter Into Renaissance Battle
http://seattle.cbslocal.com/2011/10/18/ ... ce-battle/
My first thought was she has her own set of armor! I don't think what he did is necessarily right, he delt with it the wrong way but I think the girl is probably trouble, or he is, runing awway from home is either she or he has the probelm, teenagers might be rebelling against their parents try to save them ruining their life, I don't know is this guy doing that but on first appearances I ethink he was try to get through to her, if he had really wanted to hurt her it wouldn't take 2 hours.

I only think this because of one of my friends growing up got off on the worng track and his grandparetns tried to discipline him and he do all kinds of things including threaten to call DSS on them.
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Re: Breaking News Thread

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Horrible earthquake in Turkey the pictures look devastating.
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Re: Breaking News Thread

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Re: Breaking News Thread

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I got into work late today, as all the buses were delayed by the driver of an earlier bus deciding to re-enact Live and Let Die for real:

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Re: Breaking News Thread

Post by mcbride007 »

Kristatos wrote:I got into work late today, as all the buses were delayed by the driver of an earlier bus deciding to re-enact Live and Let Die for real:

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Andy Rooney dead at 92

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http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-5 ... ead-at-92/
(CBS News) Andy Rooney, the "60 Minutes" commentator known to generations for his wry, humorous and contentious television essays - a unique genre he is credited with inventing - died Friday night in a hospital in New York City of complications following minor surgery. He was 92, and had homes in New York City, Rensselaerville, N.Y. and Rowayton, Conn.
"It's a sad day at '60 Minutes' and for everybody here at CBS News," said Jeff Fager, chairman of CBS News and the executive producer of "60 Minutes." "It's hard to imagine not having Andy around. He loved his life and he lived it on his own terms. We will miss him very much."

Rooney had announced on Oct. 2, 2011 in his 1,097th essay for "60 Minutes" that he would no longer appear regularly.

Rooney wrote for television since its birth, spending more than 60 years at CBS, 30 of them behind the camera as a writer and producer, first for entertainment and then news programming, before becoming a television personality - a role he said he was never comfortable in. He preferred to be known as a writer and was the author of best-selling books and a national newspaper column, in addition to his "60 Minutes" essays.
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Re: Breaking News Thread

Post by katied »

60 Minutes was required viewing on Sundays when I was a kid. I hated watching it,but now I'm glad my parents made me watch and sometimes tune in if there's something interesting on.
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