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Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Kentucky State Police said yesterday that the September 12 death of census worker Bill Sparkman was suicide. His body was found naked in a Clay County, Kentucky cemetery, with “Fed” written on his chest and his census identification taped to his neck. This prompted widespread speculation that anti-government sentiment was responsible. However, police now believe that Sparkman deliberately killed himself, and tried to make it look like murder so his son could receive an insurance payout. Trooper Don Trosper, a Kentucky State Police spokesman, said, “[w]e believe this was an intentional act. We believe the aim was to take his own life.”

This conclusion is based on the police’s analysis of several elements of the crime scene; Sparkman was not hanged in the typical manner; his knees were less than six inches off the ground, and he could have avoided death simply by standing up before he suffocated. Captain Lisa Rudzinski, a leader of the investigation stated, “We do not believe he was placed in that position.” The letters of the word “Fed” were written bottom first, which is unlikely if they had been written by an attacker. The rag found in his mouth contained only Sparkman’s DNA. Police also believed he left glasses taped to his head so he could see while preparing.

Police suspect Sparkman’s motives included debt, failure to find a full-time job, and a desire to provide for his son through his life insurance.

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

On Monday, Lucy Allan MP (Member of Parliament) called for a public inquiry into an alleged child sexual exploitation ring in Telford, Shropshire, England, which may have been operating for 40 years and had as many as a thousand girls as victims. This came in direct response to an investigative report by the Sunday Mirror the previous day. Allan wants an independent inquiry, similar that for the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal, which came to light in 2012 and had a similar scale and duration.

The Mirror alleges that hundreds of girls were raped, beaten, drugged and sold for sex. Victims were as young as 11 and at least three were killed. Details of negligence and outright misconduct by the authorities, including local council staff, the police and social workers, are also contained in the exposé.

“There must now be an independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Telford so that our community can have absolute confidence in the authorities,” Allan said. “The IICSA will not investigate whether any of the authorities in Telford should be accountable. That is why we must have an independent inquiry into what happened in Telford; such an inquiry is outside the current scope of the IICSA.”

IICSA is the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, which plans to look into the Telford situation, according to the BBC. In 2013, Operation Chalice saw the breakup of a child sex grooming ring in Telford with seven men of South Asian origin convicted. However, if the Mirror’s report is accurate, it was only the tip of the iceberg.

Some of the alleged failings by authorities include social workers being aware of abuse without a police investigation for up to a decade; classifying underage girls as prostitutes instead of victims; not keeping records of alleged perpetrators out of fear it could look like racism; police not investigating despite five reports being filed. The Mirror also said the authorities actively tried to obstruct their investigation.

“Child sexual exploitation [CSE] is a vile, evil crime. It’s an issue right across the UK and has been for a long time. Telford will be covered by the national CSE review. We welcome this. All agencies continue to work very closely together and this remains our top priority,” said a spokesperson for Telford and Wrekin Council according to Russia Today. “Our approach to CSE is now very different from 10-20 years ago. We have learned lots of lessons and are constantly on the lookout for indicators of CSE so that we can pass information on to police and bring these evil criminals to justice. Indeed, further cases are now coming to court.”

Saturday, May 20, 2006

The People’s Republic of China has announced the completion of an enormous dam across the Yangtze River, an important milestone for the world’s largest hydroelectric project. The official Xinhua News Agency reports the event as a “landmark in the construction of the project.”

Launched in 1993, the Three Gorges Project, including the 2,300 metre long, 185 metre high dam with 26 power generators, is being built in three phases on the middle reaches of the Yangtze River – China’s longest river. Built with over 16 million m³ of concrete, the Three Gorges Dam is considered the biggest reinforced concrete dam in the world.

The Three Gorges Reservoir is capable of holding nearly 40 billion m³ of water, including a space of 22.15 billion m³ for extra flooded water. With a length of more than 6,300 km and a natural fall of 5,400 metres from the west to the east, the flood-prone Yangtze River is the third largest in the world.

The gigantic project is expected to generate around 15 million megawatts of electricity, 84.7 billion kWh annually when the entire project is completed in 2008. But whilst proponents of the world’s largest hydropower project laud the increased electricity generation and improved flood control as benefits to China, opponents claim destruction of the environment, ruin to China’s cultural heritage – disaffecting millions of local residents.

“In my view, building the Three Gorges dam is a ridiculous and evil farce,” says dam opponent Dai Qing. “Many people have known something is wrong with the project, but few have dared to speak up,” she said. After it becomes operational, the 660km reservoir created by the dam will drown 13 towns, 4500 villages and 162 archaeological sites.

Friends of the Earth (FoE) are also strident vocal critics. “The dam is having a titanic social and environment impact,” the group said this week. “Sometimes people are being moved out by truncheon and bulldozer because they refuse to leave their home for fear of not being rehoused. Human rights violations are massive and brutal,” it said. FoE pointed to evidence that the dam was already having a serious environment impact.

FoE points to a scientific study by the East China Normal University in Shanghai, published in March in Geophysical Research, which said that in 2004, the Three Gorges dam has reduced the supply of sediment to the Yangtze delta to just 35 per cent of the norm.

Millions of tonnes of silt are drawn along the Yangtze river every year, and critics argue the dam will intercept much of it – with potentially disastrous consequences. They say the lack of sediment further downstream would lead to soil erosion, and the accumulation of sediment in the reservoir could raise the dam level, submerging even more land.

Opponents say the reservoir could fill with the accumulated garbage from tens of millions of households. The China Yangtze River Three Gorges Project Development Corp. has spent $2.5 million on a vessel to collect as much as 7 million cubic feet of garbage that accumulates at the dam each year, according to Xinhua. Some argue that the impact of the dam project will contribute to the extinction of the rare Yangtze river dolphin.

The dam project will force the relocation of a total of 1.13 million people, and communities that have lived in the area for millennia will disappear. Researchers warn sedimentation and rising water levels in the reservoir will lead to the evacuation of tens of thousands more people.

But as the waters rise, that which can not be saved will disappear along with some world famous natural scenery. Critics say the dam is under threat from earthquakes, with two geological fault lines nearby. Officials working on the project counter this by saying the worst that can happen is a tremor measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale, while the dam is built to withstand force 7.0.

“Although the dam is now complete, we still have a long way to go and cannot become self-satisfied or relax our efforts in the least,” Li Yongan, general manager of the Three Gorges Project Development Corp, said. The official China Daily in an editorial called for people to remember the more than 100 workers whom died during the dam’s construction. “The best possible way to repay such a debt of gratitude is to make sure the highest safety and quality standards are observed up till the very end of the entire building process,” the editorial said.