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It was nearly 10 p.m. on New Year's Eve, 1982. Two officers on New York Police Department's elite bomb squad rushed to headquarters at One Police Plaza, where minutes earlier an explosion had destroyed the entrance to the building. Lying amid the carnage was Police Officer Rocco Pascarella, his lower leg blasted off. "He was ripped up like someone took a box cutter and shredded his face," remembered Detective Anthony Senft, one of the bomb-squad officers who answered the call 25 years ago. "We really didn't even know that he was a uniformed man until we found his weapon, that's...

Could a gene be partly responsible for the behaviour of some of the worlds most infamous dictators? Selfish dictators may owe their behaviour partly to their genes, according to a study that claims to have found a genetic link to ruthlessness. The study might help to explain the money-grabbing tendencies of those with a Machiavellian streak — from national dictators down to 'little Hitlers' found in workplaces the world over. Researchers at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem found a link between a gene called AVPR1a and ruthless behaviour in an economic exercise called the 'Dictator Game'. The exercise allows players...

When nurses from Blood Bank of the Redwoods set up their needles, blood machines and cartons of high-fructose juice at Sonoma State University last week, 94 students, faculty and staff members donated blood. Math professor Rick Luttmann was not one of them. He was ineligible, he said, because of a federal Food and Drug Administration ban on blood donations from men who had had sex with men. A ban that he said amounts to unlawful discrimination. Blood drives are the newest battleground for SSU faculty members who, led by Luttmann, are out to purge organizations on the 8,500-student campus they...

NATO Accuses Taliban of Using Children in Suicide Missions · Troops say bomb defused on six-year-old boy · Claim follows 13 civilian deaths in air strike Chiade O'Shea Islamabad Saturday June 23, 2007 The Guardian Children as young as six are being used by the Taliban in increasingly desperate suicide missions, coalition forces in Afghanistan claimed yesterday. The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), to which Britain contributes 5,000 troops in southern Afghanistan, revealed that soldiers defused an explosive vest which had been placed on a six-year-old who had been told to attack Afghan army forces in the east of the...

WORKPLACE psychopaths are common in major businesses and are ruining the lives of their colleagues, an expert has warned. And they are often rewarded for their ruthless behaviour because they appear smart and creative but are really manipulative bullies who steal ideas, according to Sydney-based psychotherapist and author John Clarke.

When little Chanou was born in 2000 with a rare and painful illness that leads to abnormal bone development, doctors gave the Dutch infant less than three years to live. As it turns out, she only had seven months. That’s when her parents and physicians, discouraged by her grim prognosis, joined forces to do something that has become increasingly accepted in the Netherlands: They euthanized her. “It is in some ways beautiful,” Dutch pediatrician Eduard Verhagen told the London Times, when describing the dying moments of children like Chanou. “But it is also extremely emotional and very difficult.” Not as...

On O'Reilly tonight, they wree talking about the BTK killer. He was described as a sociopath, someone who has no concern for anyone but himself, a person capable of doing harm with no remorse at all. By that standards, aren't most politicians sociopaths?

Two teenagers caught on video beating a homeless man were identified late Saturday as they prepared to turn themselves in to police. Thomas Daugherty, 17, and Brian Hooks, 18, both of Plantation, are also suspected in the bludgeoning of two other homeless men in a three-hour spree in Fort Lauderdale last Thursday, said Fort Lauderdale police spokeswoman Detective Katherine Collins. One of the victims died. Police said they got more than 100 tips on the case from people who saw the video. Collins said Saturday night that the teens' attorneys were arranging their return to the area and their surrender...

Would you get P.O.’d if . . . 1. Your ten-year old son was kidnapped out of your front yard by two pedophiles and then taken to a taxpayer funded public library and shown, via the internet, a website that displays men having sex with boys? 2. Or, after your son had been force-fed this sick crap, the two kidnappers tried to sexually assault your boy? Would that make your blood boil? 3. Or how about after your son warded off the initial attempted assault, these sick SOBs killed your child by choking him with a gasoline saturated rag, then...

A woman who said she was forced to aid her husband in his rapes of two of their children was sentenced Monday to 110 years to life for her role in the crimes. The victims of the rapes were her son, now 18, and one of the couple's daughters, now 10. The Denver Post is withholding the parents' names to protect the children's identities. The two children night after night were led by the woman into the couple's bedroom, where they were raped by her now 60-year-old husband, according to trial testimony. The assaults started on the boy when he...

NEW YORK - A suspect in the case of an Alabama teenager missing in Aruba admits he lied about the last time he saw her on the night she vanished, but he insists she was fine, according to a television interview. Joran van der Sloot, 18, was one of three men jailed this summer in Natalee Holloway's May 30 disappearance. He talked to a producer for "A Current Affair" in Holland, where he is attending college. The interview is scheduled to air Monday. Holloway was last seen leaving a bar with van der Sloot and two brothers, Satish and Deepak...

Who is/was the WORST U.S. PRESIDENT EVER? Carter? Clinton? Make your choice and state your reasons.

For decades, neuroscientists have recognized that the brain has three distinct systems. One is derived from primitive reptiles that were adept at survival strategies. Another includes the limbic system – often called the “seat of emotions.” The third includes the neocortex and prefrontal lobes (comprising the right and left hemispheres of the brain) that account for thinking, verbal abilities and other “higher” functions. My theory is that Terri’s putative husband Michael, his attorney George J. Felos, and Judge George Greer – who ruled for years against Terri’s right to life – have highly developed reptilian brains and prefrontal lobes, but...

Camden reports its 54th homicide A store owner shot a robber who held a knife to his wife. The 2004 total was second to the city's 60 killings in '95. By Troy Graham Inquirer Staff Writer Hours before one of the most violent years ever in Camden came to a close yesterday, a store owner shot and killed a knife-wielding assailant, the city's 54th homicide of 2004.A man walked into Camden City Wireless & Fishing Supply at 27th Street and Westfield Avenue around 12:30 p.m., grabbed the owner's wife, and held a knife to her, saying he intended to rob...

Morris: Clintons Are Sociopaths Former top White House political strategist Dick Morris said Wednesday that recent criticism by Bill and Hillary Clinton of President Bush's national security policy is so over the top that the former first couple have revealed themselves to be a couple of "sociopaths." "It’s a good thing those two are sociopaths," he writes in the D.C. newspaper, The Hill. "Otherwise their consciences might bother them when they say things like that." Morris zeroes in on Sen. Clinton's comments last Friday to WLIE radio host Mike Siegel, which the mainstream press has helpfully covered up, that Bush...

<p>"Analyzed as individuals, they might easily be seen as sociopathic," Kenneth Eisold, president of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations told the top-level meeting.</p> <p>"But within the context of a group that never challenges them, their unethical behavior becomes normative - they have no internal conflict," he said.</p>