Ohio: Relatives of 11 murdered women wept in court on Friday as Ohio jurors found a man guilty of killing them and burying their bodies in his house.

Jim Allen, the father of Leshanda Long, whose skull was recovered from a bucket found in the Cleveland home of Anthony Sowell, said he was glad justice had been served.

"The pain will never be completely gone, but this is a good day for my family," Allen said.

Sowell, 51, was found guilty on 82 counts after 15 hours of deliberations over three days by the jury. He was only found not guilty on one count of aggravated robbery against Gladys Wade, who had testified he attacked her in 2009.

Prosecutors for the case said Sowell was sexually motivated and acted alone when he killed the women, whose decomposed remains were found in his backyard and inside his home after his arrest in October 2009.

Sowell had blamed the smell emanating from his house on a nearby sausage factory.

He did not show any emotion as Judge Dick Ambrose read out each verdict, but as he left the courtroom, he hoisted his handcuffed hands in the air, looking directly at the cameramen and photographers.

Sowell could now face the death penalty, and Ambrose scheduled the trial to resume on August 1, when jurors will have to decide whether to recommend the death penalty.

Donnita Carmichael, daughter of Tonia Carmichael, the first victim identified by the medical examiner's office, said she was relieved this part of the trial had ended.

She hugged her grandmother and Tonia's mother Barbara in the courtroom as the verdict was read. They both wept.

"I'm excited for my family and now we can try to move on from this," Carmichael said. "We have been through a lot."
The gruesome case that unraveled on October 29, 2009 had officials scrambling to explain why the crimes weren't discovered sooner.

The women allegedly killed by Anthony Sowell were exclusively poor, black and hampered by lifestyles that took them on and off the streets.

Because of their socioeconomic situation, they were not always reported as missing immediately.

Testimony in the trial lasted for three weeks, and the defense and prosecution refused to comment after the verdicts were returned, saying the case is under a gag order.

The deceased victims are: Tonia Carmichael, Leshanda Long, Amelda Hunter, Crystal Dozier, Kim Smith, Diane Turner, Telacia Fortson, Janice Webb, Nancy Cobbs, Tishana Culver and Michelle Mason.


Read more at: http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/us-serial-killer-found-guilty-of-murdering-11-women-121452&cp

Norway attacks: profile of suspect Anders Behring Breivik

The blond-haired 32-year-old appears to have set up accounts on the social networking sites Facebook and Twitter just a few days ago.

Although police have not officially named Breivik as the suspect, Norwegian media identified him as the gunman. Police say the suspect is talking to police and was keen to "explain himself".

Eyewitness reports from the island of Utoya, where the shootings took place, have also described a tall, blond haired, blue-eyed Norwegian man dressed as a police officer.

On the Facebook page attributed to him, Mr Breivik describes himself as a Christian and a conservative. It listed his interests as hunting, body building and freemasonry. His profile also listed him as single. The page has since been taken down.

Police chief Svinung Sponheim said that internet posting by Breivik suggested he has "some political traits directed toward the right, and anti-Muslim views".

Police officials have also said that the suspect appeared to have posted on websites with Christian fundamentalist tendencies.

Mr Breivik had served in the Norwegian military doing national service and had no criminal record according to reports.

He is believed to have grown up in Oslo and studied at the Oslo School of Management, which offers degrees and postgraduate courses.

Government business records show him as the sole director of Breivik Geofarm, a company Norwegian media is describing as a farming sole proprietorship.

The company was set up to cultivate vegetables, melons, roots and tubers, Norway's TV2 says, and speculation in local media is rife that through such a link he may have had access to fertiliser, an ingredient used in bomb-making.

The Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang quoted a friend as saying that the suspect turned to right-wing extremism when in his late 20s. The newspaper also said that he participated in online forums expressing strong nationalistic views.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/8656515/Norway-attacks-profile-of-suspect-Anders-Behring-Breivik.html

Norwegian incident reiterates that terrorists come from all religions..

Picking on one religion and lumping everyone alienates even the moderates.

Exceptions do not make the norm ... For one such incident , you can easily find 10 which belong to a particular religion .

Now that does not mean that the religion is bad or all people from the religion are bad - it just means that the said religion has certain elements which induce & produce much more radicals than other religions ...

eg London / Madrid bombings ... 9/11 .. 26/11 just to name a few ...

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Fido.

http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/education/article/1030513--protesters-oppose-muslim-prayer-in-public-schools
They waved signs that warned of “creeping jihad” and proclaimed “Islam must be reformed or banned.”

They chanted — “No Islam in our schools”; “No Mohamed in our schools”; “No Sharia law in our country.”

About 100 protesters, many from groups such as the Jewish Defense League, the Christian Heritage Party and Canadian Hindu Advocacy, came to the Toronto District School Board Monday evening to protest its approval of formal Friday prayer services for Muslim students at Valley Park Middle School.

Standing at the back of the crowds, far from the megaphone-wielding speakers, York University students Mariam Hamaoui and Sarah Zubaira had their own signs espousing their right to pray in school.

They came to thank the school board for providing a place for the Valley Park students to pray. Previously those students had left their school to attend prayers at a nearby mosque on Fridays.
Bringing an imam into the school was a means of preventing some of the approximately 300 Muslim students from failing to return to classes after those prayers, said school board director Chris Spence. It also meant they don’t have to cross a busy street.

Valley Park has been holding the prayers in the cafeteria for three years and there have been no complaints within the school community of about 1,200, he said.

Hamaoui, 18, said she had to go to the basement to pray when she attended Etobicoke Collegiate Institute because “there was no other place.”

“I think people should be open minded. I don’t see the problem to go pray. Praying is helping everybody,” she told reporters and the protesters who aggressively confronted her.

“Universities let anybody pray. I don’t see the problem with having middle schools,” she told one woman.

To a man who told her that prayer belonged at home, she said, “Is our school not a second home?”

“It’s our constitutional right,” said Zubaira, who wore a hijab for the first time on Monday.

Speaking to reporters inside the board office, Spence said schools have an obligation to religious accommodation.

“It’s not a matter of if we should be doing it — it’s how,” he said.

But, “accommodation is fluid. It’s not written in stone,” said Spence, who added the board is feeling its way on the difficult issue.

Outside on the board steps, Toronto grandmother Frances Flynt said she came to the protest to “oppose having a mosque in a school.”

She said her grandchildren are only permitted to sing secular songs like Jingle Bells at Christmas. “They’re not allowed to sing hymns in school,” she said.

Artist and atheist Ryan Browne came alone to the protest.

“I felt so strongly about it I decided I’d come down and do something about it,” he said, adding that he fears “our public institutions can be apprehended by certain interest groups.

“I work for the TDSB, I try to teach in an environment of equity. I just find this kind of rhetoric intolerant,” said Omar Qayum, a Muslim math teacher at Agincourt Collegiate.

For the past five years, he says, he’s been taking time on Fridays to pray with his students and there have been no problems.

“We have a Catholic school system. It is publicly funded. My tax dollars go to Catholic schools. I don’t have a problem so long as other religious groups have that same right but that’s not the case . . . When they talk about gender segregation, we have Catholic schools that are all girls and all boys. It’s just that Muslims are an easy target. We are a minority. Islamophobia is an industry these days,” said Qayum.

Some comments from readers:

Public School

This is public school. There should be no religion in these schools. If you wish to have your religion in a school then you should have a school dedicated to your religion like Catholic schools for example. But If you are putting your kids in a public school then there is no place for religion there.

Submitted by all4acrazyblonde at 8:52 AM Tuesday, July 26 2011

What is it these people

don't understand? When Omar Qayum, a teacher for the public school board doesn't get it, then his bosses aren't doing their job explaining what exactly a public school board is. When he says, “We have a Catholic school system. It is publicly funded. My tax dollars go to Catholic schools," he completely misses, or ignores, that protestant Christians also pay taxes to have the Catholic system operate and yet do not have a right to organized Christian prayer in the public school. For these Muslim services to continue it would only level the playing field if Christians were allowed their daily bible reading and prayer that was taken away from them in the 80's. It is time for the province to step up to the plate. Either the public school is secular, or it is religious, you can't pick and choose which religions get access to the public school. Will we allow the Scientologists opportunity to move their students up the bridge during class time?

Submitted by R. Davidson at 8:49 AM Tuesday, July 26 2011

The protestors did a bad job. Their signs focused on the percieved problems with Islam when they should have focused on the need for secular schools. The fact that this happens during school hours and that the content is not monitored by the school is the issue. There is a difference between non-discrimination and excessive adaptation - allowing volunteers to take the students to and from the mosque to ensure they are safe, able to pray and able to return in a reasonable amount of time would be fair. Allowing a religious leader into the school to teach non-curriculum lessons is not fair because he is in a position of authority within the school without being a part of the school.

I'm against religion in schools and think they should be completely secular. I'm against Catholic schools as well despite the fact I attended them. My parents took the time to give me religious education on their own time and the majority of my fellow students parents did not. My parents taught me a very liberal interpretation of Catholicism but my school did not. From some of my teachers I learned homophobic things at school. 'Third world' countries were spoken of as places to pity and people to pray for. We didn't discuss how inequality came to exist, just prayed for it to end. It came from good intention on the part of the staff maybe but all the world is not in need of missionaries. I started to disagree with the religious teaching when we were learning that birth control increases AIDS (by encouraging sexual activity). The focus on chastity seemed unrealistic. Anyway the Catholic schools follow the Ontario common ciriculum but religion affects the way some things are taught. Children don't always have the ability to think critically and so religious education may strongly affect their views without them having a chance to know the other side of the debate.

It would be a mess to try to get rid of the Catholic school system since it was part of the constitution and no politician wants to take this on so the existance of this system will continue to be used as justification for turning the public secular school system which into a fractured religious one.

They keep saying 90% of the children at Valley Park School are Muslim. I feel really bad for the other 10%. Not because there is anything wrong with going to school with Muslims but because it is really difficult to be in the minority when the majority is so homogonous and so strong. It is the same way I feel when minority children go to school in small town homogonous schools - that is a really difficult experience for them as they will be percieved as outsiders. The best schools in my opinion are the ones that are the most diverse - students from all religious, ethnic and cultural backgrounds. This allows students to learn about multiple different groups and get to know members of those groups on a personal level.

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My prayer to you
Is that you do all the things you set out to do
And live your life the way you love

Thurston Moore, Psychic Hearts