US WOMAN TOLD HER CHILDREN TO PRAY BEFORE STABBING THEM TO DEATH

US Woman Told Her Children To Pray Before Stabbing Them To Death

A Chicago-area woman has been charged with killing her 5-year-old son and a 7-year-old girl as she babysat them, allegedly stabbing each dozens of times in a bedroom this week as they pleaded for their lives, authorities say.

Elzbieta Plackowska, 40, of Naperville, Illinois, allegedly told police she instructed her son Justin Plackowska and the girl, Olivia Dworakowski, to kneel and pray before she fatally stabbed them and two dogs at the girl’s home on Tuesday evening, Naperville police said.

Plackowska — charged Thursday with two counts of first-degree murder — allegedly gave investigators a number of reasons why she killed the children, the most recent of which was that she was upset with her husband and wanted to cause him pain, according to police.

“She began stabbing her son Justin and told him he was going to heaven tonight,” DuPage County prosecutor Bob Berlin told reporters Thursday, citing Plackowska’s alleged statements to police. “He pleaded for his life and told her to stop, but she continued stabbing him until he was dead.”

Plackowska was being held Thursday without opportunity for bail. If convicted, she would face a mandatory sentence of life in prison with no possibility of parole.

CNN’s attempts to reach lawyer Mike Mara, a DuPage County public defender representing Plackowska, weren’t immediately successful.

Police officers found the children’s bodies in Olivia’s home Tuesday night after Elzbieta Plackowska, covered in blood, arrived at a nearby friend’s house and claimed she had been robbed, police said.

The friend called police. Around the same time, Olivia’s mother called police to say she had come home from work and couldn’t enter the house because there was a strange lock on the door, and that she couldn’t find Plackowska or the children, Berlin said.

Officers forced entry into the home and “walked into a scene of unimaginable horror,” finding the bodies on the floor of the master bedroom, Berlin said.

Investigators said Plackowska offered several explanations, including that she believed an intruder killed the children, police said. Later, she told police that the children had evil inside them and she needed to drive the devil out, authorities said.

“She ultimately admitted that she had lied to the police in her earlier statements and stated she was angry with her husband,” Berlin said.

Plackowska told investigators that she told the children to get ready for bed, and the kids entered the master bedroom, Berlin said. Plackowska said she then went to the kitchen, took two knives, entered the bedroom and told the children to kneel on the floor and pray, according to Berlin.

She told police she stabbed Justin repeatedly, and then stabbed Olivia because Olivia saw her attacking Justin, according to Berlin. She said Olivia, like Justin, pleaded for her life, Berlin said.

Police said Justin was stabbed about 100 times, and Olivia about 50 times.

“She did not express any remorse,” Berlin said.

Naperville Police Chief Bob Marshall told reporters that the “senseless taking of the lives of these two children defies logic, and our community is grieving.”

In all my years of law enforcement, this is the most gruesome and horrific crime scene that I have seen,” Marshall said at the news conference.

Plackowska told police she was upset with her husband in part because he was gone most days, working as a truck driver, and that she felt he didn’t treat her as she deserved.

Plackowska is awaiting a November 21 arraignment.

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Recent AP poll says majority of Americans have some prejudice against blacks

Don’t hate the messenger, listen to the message. I came across this fascinating article AP poll: Majority harbor prejudice against blacks from the Associated Press on race relations in America. It is 2012, approximately 150 years since the abolition of slavery and a mere 50 years since The Civil Rights movement was successful in getting the Civil Rights Acts passed in the mid-1960s. Do the math: You can see how long it took America to legally admit all Americans weren’t benefiting from the Constitution.

But that was federal legality. This poll is about our reality as a people, as a nation. How far have we come in race relations? According to the poll, not far enough. On the surface it looks like we have healed, progressed, morphed into an accepting, tolerant, equality leaning “Republic,” but the simmering currents underneath is telling a different story.

According to the AP poll, 51 percent of Americans “now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared to 48 percent in a 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-black attitudes fell.”

A 2011 AP poll show that prejudice is also directed at the Hispanic population, with “52 percent of non-Hispanic whites expressing anti-Hispanic attitudes. That figure rose to 57 percent in the implicit test.” However it was noted that this data has no others to compare it to.

So, it appears like the election of the Barack Hussein Obama, the first “black” president of these United States, hasn’t brought us closer as one would have hoped; instead, it has brought some of the deeply rooted, previously covert bias to the surface. Now, even elected officials feel they have the right to disrespect the office of the presidency by shouting “you lie” at the president in the hallowed halls of power. Or send clearly racially charged emails, or constantly refer to him by his first name, or hang effegies of him on their front lawn. You know, the usual little prejudicial jabs we can recognize.

Code words like “communist,” "socialist,” “Nazi,” Kenyan Muslim” and “Un-American” are now used instead of “n**gger, which was the word of choice to express racial hate in the Jim Crow years. The brave ones actually do still use the N-word. “He doesn’t understand our values,” "He doesn’t understand our Anglo-Saxon world way of life,” “He has an anti-Colonial world view,” are phrases now used by high-ranking Republican officials, including Newt Gingrich and the GOP nominee Mitt Romney. If those at the top send out these coded messages, what do you expect from the poorly informed rabid racists in the lower ranks?

There are those who insist racism doesn’t exist, or if it does, it’s on a minimal scale. These types call any talk of addressing the divisive race baiting prevalent on our airwaves, at political rallies and beyond, playing “the race card.” There is no convincing the close-minded who will only see what they project as their reality. Attempting to do otherwise is akin to impossible. They ignore the fact that one cannot legislate morality, tolerance, acceptance, decency, intellect, sanity, hate, love. The federal government attempted to regulate laws to improve how society works which, unfortunately, cannot reach inside of us to rearrange our core beliefs and values. So why would they think racism has been eradicated?

Can this deepening racial divide hurt President Obama in this election? According to the AP, it can, and Obama may lose “five percent points off his share of the popular vote.”

To those who like to say race doesn’t matter, seems it still does, in a big way. But some of us already knew that, poll or no poll. We live it, breathe it, are affected daily by it, and that’s not “playing the race card” --it is called “America’s sobering reality.” So let’s get real for a minute, instead of getting defensive, loud, belligerent and acting ignorant. You will only prove my point.

If you like to write about U.S. politics and Campaign 2012, enter "The American Pundit" competition. Allvoices is awarding four $250 prizes each month between now and November. These monthly winners earn eligibility for the $5,000 grand prize, to be awarded after the November election.

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FDA ignores energy drinks danger; teenage girl among five deaths linked to Monster (Video)

 

Why didn’t the Food and Drug Administration warn the public of the potential danger of energy drinks like Monster? Don’t answer that, it was rhetorical, for the FDA has proven time and time again that keeping harmful food off the market is not their top priority. There are the numerous food recalls, deaths and alarming studies to prove it.

Now a 14-year-old girl and four others are dead, with all deaths linked to the energy drink Monster. According to NBC, Anais Fournier of Hagerstown, Md., went into cardiac arrest and died in December of 2011 after drinking two Monster drinks within a 24-hour period. On Friday, her parents filed a lawsuit in a Riverside, Calif., Superior Court, blaming the company that markets the Monster energy drinks for the death of their daughter. The suit claims the excessive doses of caffeine directly caused their child’s death.

The FDA now reports that the investigations don’t prove Monster caused the heart attack or death, but her parents strongly believe it did. The autopsy has the cause of death as “cardiac arrhythmia due to caffeine toxicity that impeded her heart’s ability to pump blood,” and Monster has excessive amounts of caffeine. Anais was reportedly watching a movie with her boyfriend when he frantically told her parents that “something was wrong with” her. She was rushed to the hospital but it was too late. (Read more here: Md. Girl's Death Among 5 Investigated in Connection With Monster Energy Drink).

During a CNN report on Saturday, Dr. Sanjay Gupta explained the danger lurking in many of these energy drinks peddled to unknowing consumers. He said a 24-ounce can of Monster is equivalent to seven cans of soda, which means a massive amount of caffeine is being consumed when we drink just one can, much less two, in under 24 hours. Having an underlying medical condition exacerbates one’s chances of these drinks being a ticking time bomb.

If caffeine in large quantities is so dangerous, why hasn’t the FDA regulated it? Why isn't it warning consumers of the harmful effects? Dr. Mehmet Oz, host of the “Dr. Oz Show,” has recently warned the public about arsenic in apple juice, rice and rice products and the recall of everything from eggs, milk, meat and even the so-called healthy foods like cantaloupe, lettuce and spinach, just to name a few. This shows just how inadequate this agency has been—which is downright alarming. (Read about arsenic scare here: http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/13026533-first-it-was-apple-juice-now-its-rice-as-dr-oz-sounds-the-alarm-on-arsenic-in-rice).

Monster has since said in a statement to the press that they do not believe their drink is responsible for any of the five deaths. However, according to a CBS report, a 2008 study by Johns Hopkins had called for prominent warning labels on all energy drinks. (Read more here: FDA: Monster Energy Drinks Linked To 5 Deaths, Including Md. Teen).

Anais’s mom, Wendy Crossland, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that she is now fighting to get Congress to force the FDA to administer tougher regulations on these drinks.

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Indonesia Arrests 11 in Terror Plot to Bomb US Embassy, Other Targets 

 Indonesian police say 11 people have been arrested in a suspected plot to attack the U.S. embassy in Jakarta and other domestic and foreign targets.

National police spokesman Suhardi Alius said Saturday the arrests by a special anti-terror unit took place in four provinces.

Alius said the suspects, members of the newly-formed Harakah Sunni Movement for Indonesian Society, were preparing to launch a series of strikes.  He said targets also included a plaza near the Australian embassy in Jakarta, a local office of the American mining giant Freeport-McMoRan and the U.S. consulate in Surabaya.  A police facility in Central Java was also targeted.

Authorities say evidence from arrest sites include bombs, ammunition, detonators, bomb-making manuals and other explosives materials.

Neither the U.S. nor Australian embassies has commented on the arrests, and it was not immediately disclosed how far the attack plans had advanced.

Earlier this month, Indonesian police said they had uncovered evidence of a planned terrorist attack on dignitaries attending ceremonies on the resort island of Bali marking the 10th anniversary of bombings that killed 202 people.

The October 2002 attacks on two Bali nightclubs were carried out by militants from the al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah group.  The bombings were followed by a wave of terror attacks across Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country.

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US Apologizes To Japan Over Rape

                                                    US Apologizes To Japan Over Rape

US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell yesterday told an audience in Tokyo of Washington’s sorrow over the alleged rape of a woman in Okinawa by two servicemen.

The United States yesterday issued its most high-level apology; the latest move to soothe anger at a time of heightened anti-US feeling in Japan.

“I need to begin, if I may, with a heartfelt apology and (the expression of) deep commitment to Japanese friends,” Campbell, the US point man on East Asia, said in a symposium on the Japan-US alliance in Tokyo.

“These incidents are profoundly, deeply regrettable and the United States takes them very seriously,” he said.
The United States put all 47,000 military personnel – both in Okinawa and elsewhere – under an indefinite nighttime curfew in response to the alleged rape, following the arrest of two servicemen last week.

“We continue to work closely with Japanese colleagues to do everything possible to make clear our commitment to… our hosts in Okinawa who support American military engagement in Japan and in the region,” Campbell said.

The rape case came amid already high tensions in Okinawa, which has seen angry demonstrations against the US deployment to the island of the tilt-rotor Osprey aircraft, which local activists charge has a poor safety record.[AFP]

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US Christian Group Calls For Probe In Boko Haram Weapons Supply, Funding

Some US-based Nigerians are calling for a national and international probe that will uncover the sources of funding of Boko Haram, especially regarding how the terrorist group gets its deadly arms and weapons, Empowered Newswire reports.

In a chat with the news agency after addressing an international press conference in Washington DC, Dr. James Fadele, the Chairman of the Christian Association of Nigerian-Americans (CANAN), said it is now imperative for concerned governments, international agencies, global bodies and think tanks to carry out a probe on how the Boko Haram militants are able to get deadly weapons to carry out their mayhem in Nigeria.

The CANAN leader spoke just as the association, which was formed last month in New York, launched its DC/Maryland regional chapter earlier this week. The event took place at an event in Jesus House DC, located in Silver Spring, Maryland, and was attended by Nigerian religious leaders from churches such as the RCCG, Gospel Faith Missions, Jubilee Christian Church International and Christ Apostolic Church.

Speaking earlier on Tuesday at a press conference attended by officials from the US Congress Homeland Security Committee, NGOs and religious groups and leaders in the US, the CANAN leader observed that "Boko Haram is sustained by the procurement of unbelievable amounts of heavy arms and weapons, clearly transported from country to country and certainly funded by some fat pockets."

He then called for a critical investigation into the likely backers of Boko Haram both in Nigeria and outside.
CANAN also frowned at the fact that while a number of top known politicians have been linked with Boko Haram, a conclusive investigation and trial has not been done.

"Only last week, it was reported that the Nigerian security outfit, Joint Task Force, JTF, announced that it has caught a Boko Haram commander in the house of a national politician in Borno State," the CANAN leader said.

Recalling that the Nigerian President himself had described the Boko Haram menace as a form of civil war, CANAN leaders who spoke with reporters from several US media also observed that earlier "a serving Nigerian Senator was once accused of links to one of the spokespersons of the deadly group. But we are concerned that all these disclosures don't lead to effective prosecution and justice."

Said Dr. Fadele, who is also the leader of the RCCG in North America, "We are concerned that the investigations often will hit a roadblock and we don't hear anything anymore about what seems like a high-level involvement in terrorism."
Restating the need for the US to designate Boko Haram as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, FTO, CANAN leaders said with such a designation "all their top political backers will understand that the stakes are now higher, and they will face a wider net of justice. This in turn will likely curtail them from funding the terrorists.

According to Fadele, "big names and political figures known to be supporting terrorism in any form, should be made to face the music, the lives of innocent Nigerians depend on it!”

On the expressed concern that the US designating Boko Haram an FTO might amount to internationalizing the problem, the Nigerian-American Christians stated, "such a view is already overtaken by events as the group has already threatened international peace, and the problems are no longer entirely domestic or academic."

They drew attention to a report last week that Boko Haram killed a Cameroonian local government official; and another this week in which the BBC said that the Chinese government has filed a diplomatic protest against the killing of a Chinese construction worker in Maiduguri.

According to CANAN, "While we Nigerian-American Christians are the first to affirm the sovereignty of Nigeria, we recognize that Boko Haram is part of the worldwide phenomenon of terrorism and its many aftermaths set in motion after 9/11.

They explained that it was the sincere belief of their group "that the Nigerian government is no longer capable by itself alone to effectively check this group without some drastic international help including the designation of the group as an FTO by the US.
It was observed that Boko Haram is still actively causing death and mayhem in Potiskum, in northeast Nigeria.

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MARK: REJECTS PUSH FOR SAME -SEX MARRIAGE

Nigeria Leads African Protest at World Parliamentary Meet, Mark Rejects Push For Same-Sex Marriage

Nigeria led the pack on Monday as a team of African countries protested the decision of organisers of the 127th Inter-Parliamentary Union to exclude some African countries.

Mark, who spoke as head of Nigerian delegation to the global parliamentary meeting in Canada, said that the city of Quebec, Canada, was given the nod to host the event because it promised to accommodate all parliaments of the world.

He said that Nigeria would not accept a situation where African countries were discriminated against at any meeting.

African countries like Mali and Uganda were denied participation at the IPU, as Canadian authorities denied their contingents entry visas. In some cases, only a few members of some parliaments were allowed entry into Canada.

In order to bring up the Malian security challenge at the meeting, Nigeria was, therefore, co-opted to liaise with authorities of the IPU and the parliamentary committee.

Speaking at the parliament’s meeting, Mark said that the world had a duty to combat divisive tendencies, but added that Nigeria would not accept lording of foreign culture on its people.

Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Honourable Emeka Ihedioha, who corroborated Mark’s submission, said that the Canadian authorities had gone against their promise to accommodate all parliaments of the world.

Also speaking at the event, Mark rejected the push for international acceptance of same-sex marriage, saying that countries of the world were free to protect their values.

Mark had said: “Well, we were very disturbed about the exclusion of some of our members from the IPU. You see, one of the reasons why Canada won over London was on the understanding that all the IPU member countries would be issued visas to come but even within Nigeria and from Nigeria, we had a lot of delays in obtaining our visas.

“Syria, for instance was not given visas, Uganda also complained that all their delegates were not issued visas.

“We had the same problem with Mali and that was why we got a delegate from Nigeria to work with the Malian delegation so that we can put their item on the agenda.

“So, I would say really that Canada has not done too well in the issuance of visas to IPU member nations...”

Ihedioha also said that African delegates had to lodge a formal protest against the Canadian authorities to protest the shoddy handling of the IPU.

He said: “African delegates have in no small terms told the Canadian authorities that we are not comfortable the way they have treated our nationals.

“For instance, the Nigerian delegation was given only a single entry visa. We told them that it is unbecoming.

“If you are part of a comity of nations and you chose to host an international organization such as IPU, then of course you must open up.

“And it is very important that you deal with every section by opening, you accommodate all delegates that may choose to come for around.

“You cannot invite people and denigrate and embarrass them. We have made it very clear to the Canadian authorities.

“The Ugandan delegation spoke on behalf of African delegation. Our position was made very clear to them.

“That was why United Kingdom was not given the right to host the conference when they chose to because United Kingdom had indicated that they will not allow Zimbabwe to come in.”

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WHY DO SO MANY REPUBLICIANS DISLIKES OBAMA?

Come to think of it, things have been awfully quiet on the End Times front. Living in the South, one grows accustomed to hearing about a never-ending series of conspiratorial threats and eschatological panics.

Prophetic fads sweep the region. It’s Satan worshippers one year, “secular humanists” the next. Subliminal messages are descried in popular music; supermarket barcodes harbor the Mark of the Beast; logos on boxes of soap suds give evidence of corporate diabolism.

Under President George W. Bush, a series of preposterously bad novels by evangelical authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins became huge bestsellers. Dramatizing the Book of Revelation as an action-adventure melodrama like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator films, the books portray born-again American suburbanites as Jesus’s allies in an apocalyptic struggle against a U.N.-sponsored “World Potentate,” who looks “not unlike a younger Robert Redford” and speaks like…

Well, like Barack Obama, actually. Which I think explains something about what appears to be happening in the 2012 presidential election. To an awful lot of white Protestant evangelicals across the Deep South especially, President Obama has become no less than a secular stand-in for the Antichrist — a smooth-talking deceiver representing liberal cosmopolitanism in its most treacherous disguise.

Dislike of Obama has grown to cult-like proportions across the region. Statewide polls show the president losing by thunderous majorities. A recent poll by the Public Religion Research Institute highlighted in The New York Times shows that “among Southern working class whites, Romney leads by 40 points, 62-22, an extraordinary gap.” In the Midwest, Obama leads among the same group. Subtract the African-American precincts, and the president might not win 30 percent of votes in states like Arkansas and Oklahoma — one reason many Republicans suspect that national polls must be skewed.

So is it all about race? Not entirely, no. Many of the same voters who see President Obama as an African-born Muslim Socialist would very likely support, say, Condoleeza Rice. (Or think they would, anyway.)

Nor, however, are their fears entirely irrational. Because if the polls are right — and a disinterested observer would have to say that professional pollsters have grown increasingly accurate at predicting recent contests — the 2012 presidential election may not bring about “The Rapture,” but it could definitely mark the definitive end of a political era.

Specifically, it doesn’t matter how badly President Obama loses the five Deep South states won by Alabama governor George Wallace in 1968 — along with, say, South Carolina, Texas and Oklahoma. Should he prevail in most of the nine “swing states” where everybody agrees that the contest will be decided, and where Obama currently appears to lead by strong majorities, the white, GOP-accented South will find itself politically marooned

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