SEVEN people were slaughtered and two left fighting for their lives at a mobile home park in America's Deep South.
Cops in Georgia made the grisly discovery this morning after a family member of one of the victims called 911.
Glynn County Police Chief Matt Doering said: "It's not a scene that I would want anybody to see."
He added it was the worst mass slaying in his 25 years of police work in this coastal Georgia county.
He would not say how the victims died, and he also declined to say whether police believe the killer was among the dead or remained at large.
No arrests had been made.
Investigators were talking to neighbours about whether they saw or heard anything unusual at the dingy mobile home shaded by large, moss-draped oaks with an old boat in the front yard.
Police had not interviewed the survivors, who remained in critical condition and may be the only witnesses.
"I assume they know something, but we have not been able to speak to them," the chief said.
All seven bodies were identified by Saturday evening.
Massacre
Doering said families of the victims had been notified, but he would not release any names or ages before receiving the autopsy results.
"I really don't know the ages," Doering said. "There were some older-aged victims and we believe there were some in their teens."
Located a few miles north of the port city of Brunswick, the mobile home park consists of about 100 spaces and is nestled among centuries-old live oak trees near the centre of New Hope Plantation, according to the plantation's Web site.
Lisa Vizcaino, who has lived at New Hope for three years, said the management works hard to keep troublemakers out of the mobile home park and that it tends to be quiet.
"New Hope isn't run down or trashy at all," Vizcaino said. "It's the kind of place where you can actually leave your keys in the car and not worry about anything."
Vizcaino said she didn't know the victims and heard nothing unusual when she woke up at 7am on Saturday morning. After word of the slayings spread, she said, the park was quieter than usual.
"Everybody had pretty much stayed in their houses," Vizcaino said. "Normally you would see kids outside, but everybody's been pretty much on lockdown."
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Mass killing at trailer park
BOOSTING YOUR RETIREMENT FUND
THERE'S a good reason to celebrate the recent stock market recovery, because it may have plugged a giant hole in your pension.
Last autumn’s crash hacked nearly 25 per cent off the value of the nation’s pensions, but much of that lost value has now been recovered.
The total value of the UK’s investment- linked workplace pensions fell from £450 billion last September to just £344 billion in March, according to figures from Aon Consulting. But they have since rebounded to stand at £451 billion.
The recovery has also helped to plug the massive £80 billion shortfall in the UK’s 7,800 private sector final salary schemes and repaired many people’s personal pensions and investment Isas as well.
You could call it the great pensions rebound, although there is a long way to go before pension values reach what they were before the credit crunch.
The flipside is that anybody who drew their pension fund when stock markets hit rock bottom in March will be cursing their bad luck.
Since then, shares have risen more than 40 per cent.
This shows just how volatile pension investing is at the moment, says helen Dowsey, pensions expert at Aon Consulting.
Even a month can make a big difference.
“Someone who retired at the end of July may have a significantly higher retirement income than someone retiring in June. This highlights the need for people to plan their retirement carefully, and understand their investments, whose value can change dramatically in a short space of time.”
Despite the pensions rebound, most people still have a long way to go to save enough money for their retirement. The average pension pot is about £25,000, which could buy you income worth a meagre £25 a week, on top of your state pension.
So don’t squander this great opportunity, but review your pension plans, and consider investing more before markets rise even higher.
Your first step is to find out exactly where you stand at the moment. So dig out your most recent annual pension statements, or if you can’t find them, request a copy from your company.
Your statement should show the total value of your pension pot and which funds it is invested in, and should also show how much income you are likely to receive in today’s prices at age 65.
Worryingly, almost one in three workers don’t know where their retirement savings are invested, and have never reviewed their pension’s performance, according to research from insurer Prudential.
People need to take a more active role in the management of their pension, says Andy Brown, director of investment funds at Prudential. “You routinely check your savings, utilities, insurance, mobile phone contract and broadband to make sure you’re getting the best deal. Checking the performance of your pension should be no different.”
Thanks to this inertia, a huge amount of pensions money is now sitting in underperforming funds, says Tom McPhail, pensions specialist at adviser hargreaves Lansdown.
“Many people put their money into mediocre pension funds and never review them again, which means it stays there year after year, at great cost.”
Plenty of underperforming funds have swollen immensely, putting billions of pounds into the hands of second-rate managers.
Pensions website howmuchdoIneedtoretire. co.uk recently highlighted the worst performing £1 billion-plus pension funds over the last decade. It identified Abbey equity, Friends Provident UK equity, Scottish Life Managed, Clerical Medical Managed and Phoenix Life exempt Managed as the five greatest underachievers over the last 10 years.
Many people probably don’t even realise they are free to shuffle the funds in their company- run or personal pension schemes. reviewing your pension will become more important as more employers shut final-salary pensions and replace them with cheaper money-purchase schemes.
“More workers now have to take personal responsibility for their pension funds, or pay the price in retirement,” McPhail says.
Planning your best saving strategy
Where you should invest for retirement partly depends on what pension you have already, and your own attitude to risk.
The following tips, from Neil Thomas, director of independent financial adviser Simpsons of
Brighton, should help.
If you belong to a workplace final-salary scheme, your best option may be to buy additional years in the scheme (if you can). “Final salary schemes are attractive because your employer shoulders the investment risk. even if stock markets fare badly, your pension is still protected. Unfortunately, many companies are now closing their schemes.”
If you are in your company’s final-salary scheme, consider making additional voluntary
contributions (AVCs). “Charges are usually lower than on a personal pension, which should help boost your total return. But not every scheme offers AVCs, and the investment choice is often limited. You may prefer the greater flexibility of a stakeholder pension,” Thomas says.
Stakeholder pensions are an attractive way to top up your retirement savings, because your contributions earn tax relief at 20 per cent year or 40 per cent, depending on your tax bracket. You can also choose from a wide range of schemes offered by leading insurance companies such as Norwich Union, Prudential and Standard Life.
Isas are also tax efficient and offer greater flexibility than pensions. “You don’t get any tax relief on your contributions, but can draw income and capital gains free of tax. Plus you don’t have to buy an annuity, as you have to with your pension fund, and your dependants can inherit the money after you die, which they can’t with an annuity,”
Thomas says.
If you’re approaching retirement, you need to take careful stock of your pension planning, and choose your
annuity wisely. Investment-linked pension savers now receive a “wake-up pack” six months before they retire, setting out their options, including the freedom to shop around for their annuity.
Many people still make the mistake of buying their annuity from their pension provider, rather than seeking
better rates elsewhere.
From taking out your first pension to buying your annuity, you have to plan carefully. You should also take independent advice.
Woman's murder unsolved but not forgotten
She springs out of bed. Red lights on her clock radio flash 4:20 a.m. "Where is Simone?"
That question has passed Linda Sandler's lips a thousand times in the past 15 years. Especially in the dead of night, when her subconscious transports her back to July 24, 1994, when she was startled awake and knew – with a mother's intuition – that she would never see her daughter again. "I woke up thinking `this is wrong,' " Sandler says now. "Something is wrong."
It would be another nine agonizing nights before her worst fears were confirmed, but chances are good 21-year-old Simone Penni Sandler was already dead by the time her mother fumbled for the phone to call York Regional Police.
To this day her murder is a cold case mystery. No motive, suspects or leads. And while police re-ignited their investigation 18 months ago at the family's request, they have once again hit only dead ends.
Back in 1994, officers arrived at the Sandlers' home within 20 minutes that humid summer morning. But when they learned Simone had just crossed the threshold into adulthood, they backed off. Maybe she had slept out with a boyfriend, they suggested, or had skipped curfew. When the Sandlers contacted Toronto police in the following days, officials said their hands were tied, the family alleges in a complaint filed to the York Regional Police Services Board. Even though Simone had been working near the Eaton Centre on the afternoon she went missing, York police would have had to enlist the services of Toronto police in order to get help from them.
But they didn't, the document shows. An investigation did not start for an entire week. An ocean of time, detectives say today, for invaluable strands of evidence to uncoil, witnesses to slip away and leads to vanish.
Their inaction may have lasted even longer if a couple driving along Lake Shore Blvd. E. the following Saturday had not spotted something bobbing in the Keating Channel.
Simone's body was bloated and battered. She was naked from the waist down. A green garbage bag was knotted around her neck as she floated in the Don River among the empty potato chip bags, Styrofoam cups and construction debris.
The consummate ingénue, Simone was sweet and pretty, shy and trusting. Petite and fair-skinned with flaxen-coloured curls, she loved to pose for pictures, bake carrot muffins and work out at the YMCA. But her parents admit she lacked savvy and street smarts.
Fresh off her first year in hospitality and tourism at Humber College, Simone took a summer job with a now-defunct casting company called Actors and Models Studio.
Her office was a sandwich board parked at gritty Yonge and Gerrard Sts., between the now-shuttered La Maison croissant shop and the Evergreen Youth Shelter. Her task was recruiting passersby to become extras on film and TV shoots.
Getting through those long summer days downtown was tough at first for Simone. But quickly, she struck up a partnership of sorts with the street rats and homeless kids who hung around the area.
Implausible as it seemed for this sheltered Thornhill girl to carve a niche among these social misfits, Simone was absorbed by the group, even falling for a new boyfriend. "Joe," tattooed but attractive, was a year older. He had a way about him, detectives said, and certainly "knew how to work it." Later on, "friends" would say that Simone was often seen holding Joe's hand. But others said the two broke up a week before her disappearance.
The group invited her to gatherings in the wooded areas off Cherry Beach to smoke marijuana around sandpit bonfires. Detectives would later place Simone at one of these "parties" the night she disappeared. But they will never really know how she spent her last hours.
Her case was fraught with challenges, says Mark Mendelson, one of the original investigators.
Detectives could never crawl out of the weeklong black hole in their investigation. The river's toxic waters removed any hint of a murderer's DNA. Other evidence was probably washed away in a thunderstorm four days after Simone's body was discovered, forcing police to call off their search for clues.
While there are always more tests in the works, and evidence can be found in the unlikeliest places, detectives say, even today's technology has failed to detect a flake of dead skin or a single strand of hair on the garbage bag tied around her neck. Biologists methodically separated each knot in the plastic weapon, recently dissecting it with fresh intent, but found nothing.
After Simone's body was discovered, an autopsy merely concluded she had died of strangulation. The body was so badly decomposed that dental records were used for final identification. There had been an unsuccessful attempt at rape.
"It was one of those nasty investigations," Mendelson says. "Every time we thought we turned a corner and answered a question, we didn't. We just picked up three more questions." Perhaps, the biggest impediment was the quality of witnesses – the homeless kids Simone had befriended, the wayward youth, the hot dog vendors. Sure, they recognized the girl who had become a local fixture. But could they shed light on what happened to her? Who did it? A resounding no.
There were many fruitless attempts to find people and confirm alibis. Even a $100,000 reward offered in 1998 for information yielded nothing.
The last time Stephen Sandler saw his daughter was the Saturday she disappeared. She smiled at him, mid-stride from across the street.
"Do you want a lift to the subway?" he called out. "No thanks, Dad," she said, a hand at her face shielding her eyes from the sun's glare. Today, the Sandlers are left with that vision, the hurt as fresh as the day their daughter went missing.
Over the years, the family has accumulated part of their pain in a bulging red folder. Documents burst out the sides – explanations, apologies and promises from top York police brass, government officials and politicians that something like this will never happen again.
The Sandlers toyed with legal action against York Regional police, believing that Toronto officers might have located their daughter sooner had they gotten the go-ahead to proceed with an investigation. But the Sandlers decided against a legal course of action.
It won't bring back Simone. Nothing will. Not even finding her killer.
"But someone should not be getting away with this," Linda and Stephen both said. "If they do find out, it will at least give us some sense of closure."
Pregnant women warned to protect against H1N1
Since more than 10 percent of the H1N1 swine flu fatalities in Brazil were pregnant women, doctors in Japan are asking expectant mothers — who have a higher risk of developing complications if infected — to wash their hands and take other precautions.
The Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology, an organization of OB-GYN doctors, is calling for pregnant women with suspected swine flu symptoms to get treatment at fever clinics and general hospitals rather than OB-GYN clinics to prevent the H1N1 virus from spreading to other expectant mothers during the epidemic.
JSOG is recommending Tamiflu and Relenza for pregnant women who catch the new flu. A guideline in the United States says the two antiviral drugs have no negative side effects on babies. The organization is also urging the government to give expectant women priority for swine flu vaccines.
The figures announced Wednesday by the Brazilian government sent shock waves around the world. Of the 557 people who died, 58 were pregnant. No such deaths have been reported so far in Japan.
The government is expected to formally place expectant mothers on the vaccine priority list in September.
"Pregnant women comprise only about 1 percent of the population but the number of deaths (among those women) is high," Hisanori Minakami, a professor at Hokkaido University who belongs to JSOG, said during a meeting Thursday to discuss the priority list for new influenza vaccines. "I have a sense of crisis."
Women are also concerned.
"I'm worried about the higher risk of pregnant women but I'm also worried what will happen to my newborn baby," said a 42-year-old woman in Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo, who is close to giving birth.
She wears a mask when she needs to go out and avoids crowds. "But I don't know which department to be treated at when I am infected," she said.
When women are pregnant, their immunity to viruses weakens, putting them at higher risk of complications. Seasonal and new flu viruses can lead to pneumonia and other diseases.
JSOG is urging pregnant women with potential flu symptoms — fever, runny nose, sore throat and cough — to call a general hospital and get treated early.
Nationwide, total swine flu deaths grew to seven Saturday when a woman in her 30s in Tatsuno, Hyogo Prefecture, died after contracting the virus, the municipal government of Himeji said the same day.
She was preceded by a female cancer patient, also from Hyogo, in her 60s, the Kagoshima Prefectural Government said.
The woman, from Makurazaki, Hyogo Prefecture, had cancer of the digestive system and a tumor that spread to her lungs after surgery, local government officials said.
She was treated with Tamiflu on Friday after being entering a hospital complaining of a sore throat, coughing and a 38-degree fever she had developed the previous day, officials said. But her condition worsened, and she died early Saturday, becoming the nation's sixth swine flu fatality.
In Shiga Prefecture, a 5-year-old boy infected with swine flu showed signs of resistance toward Tamiflu, the prefecture said Saturday, becoming the fifth Tamiflu-resistant patient in the country.
Prefecture officials said the virus is likely to have mutated in his body.
Although the boy was given Tamiflu, he showed no signs of recovery and was admitted to a hospital, the officials said, adding he has now fully recovered from the virus.
Let Malaysians advertise Pendet and wayang
We Indonesians are simply overreacting in our response to Malaysia's use of the Balinese Pendet dance in promotional TV spots. We are acting like a big brother and bullying our younger brother. And such responses will not help us become a better nation.
First, it was a small protest from a group of Balinese people, the rightful owner of the dance, then unfortunately it grew into a nationwide condemnation of Malaysia.
Just read the comments posted at www.thejakartapost.com or many other Internet forums discussing the issue, and you will easily find many condemnations from Indonesians against Malaysia, some even urging the government to ganyang (invade) Malaysia, invoking memories of the time Indonesia was in confrontation with Malaysia.
Unwisely, the government responded in the same way, with the tourism minister summoning the Malaysian embassy's top official and sending a letter of protest to his counterpart in Kuala Lumpur.
But it did not stop there. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono joined the fray, calling on the Malaysian government to deal more carefully with "sensitive" cultural issues between the two countries.
Our responses have really gone too far. Just read this news from Antara: Diponegoro University (Undip), one of Indonesia's leading institutes of higher learning, has stopped admitting Malaysian students for the 2009-2010 academic year in an expression of "nationalism".
"We have done it as a concrete expression of our sense of nationalism," Undip rector Susilo Wibowo said Tuesday as quoted by Antara, after attending a ceremony to mark the induction of new students.
But we don't know the real reasons behind it. It could be because there were no Malaysian students applying to study at the university this academic year, which begins in July.
The point here is that we just overreacted to this issue, or worse, we tried to bully one of our closest neighbors.
Malaysia uses various Asian cultural expressions, especially Chinese and Indian, in its tourism campaign "Malaysia Truly Asia". China and India have never protested Malaysia's use of their cultural heritage in its tourism campaigns.
Why then are we so angry whenever Malaysia uses our cultural heritage, including the Pendet, batik and wayang in their tourism campaigns? In reality, though, Malaysia has never claimed the Pendet as their dance, batik as their craft or wayang as their performance.
These are Indonesian cultural expressions brought to Malaysia by the millions of Indonesians who moved there, mostly as migrant workers.
If it's an issue of rights, we don't have copyrights for most of our cultural products. Much, if not the majority of our cultural heritage, was created by our ancestors for the good of society and mankind.
For instance, many of our best classical Javanese gamelan compositions were written by anonymous composers. They were composed for the kings and the people, and the composers deliberately did not put their names there, much less copyrighted them.
Before Indonesia existed, anyone could play these compositions, even people from outside the Javanese kingdom. Now that Indonesia exists, does it mean nobody outside Indonesia can play and use them in their tourism campaigns, even if they have gamelan groups in their own countries?
Currently, hundreds of gamelan groups exist outside Indonesia. If they wish to promote their groups or if their country wishes to use these gamelan groups to promote tourism, they have every right to use gamelan images in their campaign.
Thus instead of getting angry or sending letter of protests or stopping admitting Malaysian students, we should be more positive and collaborate with the Malaysian government to promote our culture in that country.
When there are more Malaysians dancing the Pendet and playing the gamelan and to Indonesian pop songs, it will only mean more benefits, and not losses, to Indonesia. It will mean more commerce and tourism between the two countries.
Not only that, it would also strengthen cultural ties between the two nations.
Similarly, if Malaysia advertises more Indonesian cultural heritage, it would bring more benefits than losses to us.
Let says, Malaysia advertises the Pendet, and tourists go there because of the advertisement. There is a great chance these tourists will continue on to Bali to see the Pendet at its source. So it not only saves us precious advertising dollars - which we rarely ever spend anyway - but also brings in dollar from more tourist visits.
So let Malaysians dance our Pendet and play our wayang and advertise them. It will only do good things for us in Indonesia.
Fears as Chinese food pours in, farmers claim lost markets and biosecurity risk
CHINA is supplying an ever increasing quantity of food to Australian consumers, raising concerns about food safety and the capacity of local farmers to compete with cheaper imports.
According to the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service, between January 1 last year and May 31 this year more than 4200 tonnes of prawns were imported from China into Australia.
This was in addition to 153 tonnes of frozen broccoli and cauliflower, 65 tonnes of fresh apples, 95 tonnes of fresh pears, 325 tonnes of garlic, 72 tonnes of peas and 4292 tonnes of peanuts and peanut butter. Last year, imports of Chinese vegetables rose by 35 per cent from 2007, making it the second-biggest importer, behind New Zealand. As imports have risen, local production has declined.
"Chinese imports are putting the industry in Australia on a very unsound footing and I think Australians should be very concerned about food security," said Tasmanian vegetable grower Mike Badcock, a former chairman of peak body Ausveg.
Mr Badcock said Australian producers faced higher costs due to stricter standards.
"The biggest problem we have got is the government attitude that we have to meet the market, but it is not a fair market and I think the government is playing a very risky game for a short-time cheap product. Once the Chinese have ruined our industries in Australia the prices will go up," he said.
Mr Badcock cited the example of the Australian garlic industry. He said Chinese garlic, a quarter the cost of the local product, had flooded the market. "But once they ruined the producers of garlic in Australia, they put the price back up."
He said 90 per cent of garlic now sold in Australia came from China.
Federal Minister for Agriculture Tony Burke said 98 per cent of the fresh produce in Australia was locally grown. "The question that needs to be asked when deciding whether fresh produce should be allowed to be imported is whether or not there is an unacceptable biosecurity risk. Our systems for assessing that are rigorous and science-based," Mr Burke said.
But opposition spokesman on agriculture John Cobb said: "When we look at the stuff that is coming in and competing in Australia with Australian products, it is staggering."
He argued that when the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme came in, Australian products would become even more expensive.
Australians were alerted to food safety problems in China last year after melamine was found to have been added to baby formula. Six infants died and nearly 300,000 were hospitalised.
In the US, 1950 cats and 2200 dogs died after eating food contaminated with melamine. Melamine-tainted products were also fed to pigs, fish farms and chickens.
A US Department of Agriculture report last month said the most common reasons Chinese products were refused entry to the US were "filth", unsafe additives, inadequate labelling and lack of proper manufacturer registration, and potentially harmful veterinary drug residues in farmed fish and prawns.
Trevor Anderson of the Australian Prawn Farmers Association worries about the risk of diseases such as white spot and yellow head virus that exist in China but not in Australia.
He said a number of antibiotics had been found in Chinese prawns that resulted in bans and restrictions into the US, "who are much more rigorous than we are about these things".
Mr Anderson said Australian farms were run under "rigorous environmental standards".
"Not only are the Environmental Protection Authority watching every step we make, we are watching each other. We have a clean, green image to protect," he said.