Russian journalist dies after setting herself on fire outside government building – “Blame the Russian Federation for my death”
A Russian journalist died after setting herself on fire outside a government building Friday — writing on Facebook an hour before her suicide, “Blame the Russian Federation for my death.”
Irina Slavina, editor-in-chief of the small local news outlet Koza Press, self-immolated in front of the local branch of the interior ministry in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, about 260 miles east of Moscow.
About an hour before her death, Slavina penned a foreboding message on Facebook directing followers to blame Russia for her death. A day before, she wrote that police raided her apartment in search of pro-democracy materials.
Slavina, who ran a press shop that billed itself as having “no censorship” and “no orders ‘from above,’” said she was being probed for ties to the Open Russia opposition group, which is financed by a fierce critic of the Kremlin, Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
During the raid, cops swarmed her apartment, hunting for “brochures, leaflets and accounts” tied to the group and left with her notebooks, laptop and phones, as well as her daughter’s laptop and her husband’s phones, she wrote on Facebook Thursday.
“I’m left without the means of production,” she wrote of the event.
Russia’s Investigative Committee confirmed it was opening an investigation into a self-immolation, but did not confirm her name in its statement.
The committee’s local branch in the Nizhny Novgorod region later said Slavina’s self-immolation had nothing to do with the searches carried out at her apartment on the previous day.
However, supporters of the Russian opposition movement took to social media to say Slavina had been under significant pressure from authorities for years.
“Over the past years security officials have subjected her to endless persecution because of her opposition (activities),” Dmitry Gudkov, an opposition politician, wrote on Instagram.
“What a nightmare,” another Kremlin critic, Ilya Yashin, wrote on Twitter.
“All of these cases of police amusing themselves, these shows of men in masks — these are not games. The government is truly breaking people psychologically.”
With Post wires
Photo Credit: facebook
Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty praised for showcasing plus-size men
The Barbadian songstress, 32, is once again reaping praise on social media for employing plus-size male models for the Savage X Fenty capsule collection drop.
On Friday, one fan shared an eye-full of hardly dressed hunks spotted on SavageX.com.
“OKAY RIHANNA,” the fan wrote on Twitter, adding a side-eyes emoji at the end. Since Friday morning, the tweet has already garnered more than 198,000 likes and over 25,000 retweets — proving even shout-outs for the beloved celebrity mogul have viral potential.
Many of the top-rated replies are rather risqué in their appreciation of “big boys,” but it’s clear that RiRi’s fans feel seen.
“Never in my adult life have I seen a male model that has a similar body to mine,” said @codyjacobmusic. “I feel . . . almost emotional? Like I finally can buy something I saw and want and KNOW it was made for people like me in mind.”
“She just proves that these other brands are pretentious and discriminatory for NO REASON,” added @chidi_x6x, suggesting that inclusivity is also good for business.
The move is on-brand for the Fenty fashion house, whose continued campaign for inclusivity has been a viral headline mainstay since their launch in 2017, when they began featuring curvy physiques in their campaigns and in-store displays.
It’s not just about body positivity. Fenty Beauty’s flagship foundation was lauded for its comprehensive range of 40 shades. And earlier this year they introduced a “gender-neutral” skin care line, marketed to men, women and nonbinary people together.
On Friday, Savage X Fenty’s “Vol. 2” fashion show — a scantily clad spectacle to rival over 20 years of Victoria’s Secret fashion shows — dropped on Amazon Prime Video, and fans are already applauding her multi-cultural cast of models.
via: https://nypost.com/2020/10/02/rihannas-savage-x-fenty-praised-for-showcasing-plus-size-men/
Photo Credit: savageX.com
Sick online suicide challenge could be linked to 11-year-old’s death – the “Jonathan Galindo challenge”
An 11-year-old Italian boy died by suicide this week and police are concerned his death is linked to a macabre new “game” sweeping social media called the “Jonathan Galindo challenge” — a possible revival of 2017’s blue whale challenge, reports said Friday.
The boy jumped off his Naples balcony around 1 a.m. on Tuesday after penning a disturbing message on his tablet that read: “I love you mom and dad. Now I have to follow the man in the black hood. I have no more time. Forgive me,” news.com.au and Italian news wire ANSA reported.
The child was reportedly happy, healthy, well-adjusted and played sports, ANSA said.
Cops are now probing whether “the man in the black hood” is a reference to an online character called Jonathan Galindo who asks children to do a set of horror-themed tasks that culminates in a demand they kill themselves, the outlets reported.
The character, described as a cross between a human and a dog — with a round black nose, a creepy, toothy grin and long dark ears — was actually created by special effects producer Samuel Canini back in 2012, news.com.au reported.
The artist claims to have no ties to the horror challenge and said the character was created for his “own weird amusement, not for some modern-day thrillseeker looking to scare and bully people,” an account ostensibly belonging to Canini wrote on Twitter in July.
Galindo, who is not a real person, targets kids online and asks them to complete a set of ever-increasing dares, starting with banal requests like “watch a scary film” to more violent tasks like self-harm and suicide, the outlet reported.
It is disturbingly similar to the blue whale challenge, believed to have originated in Russia in 2016, before spreading to other countries including the US. As a part of the “challenge,” kids were asked to complete 50 tasks over 50 days with the final request being a demand for their suicide.
n 2017, a Texas family claimed their son’s suicide was related to the blue whale challenge after their 15-year-old was found hanging in his closet with his phone propped up on a shoe, broadcasting the death.
At least 130 suicides around the globe were linked to the blue whale challenge, news.com.au reported.
Another similar challenge emerged in 2018 called the Momo challenge, which came from accounts depicting an image of a creepy young woman with stringy black hair, matchstick legs and eyes bulging from their sockets.
The Momo challenge included violent images sent to children, threats of being cursed if the kid didn’t adhere to Momo’s orders and eventually, a demand they kill themselves.
via: https://nypost.com/2020/10/02/online-suicide-challenge-could-be-linked-to-boys-death/
Photo Credit: nypost.com
Twitter says it will suspend users who ‘wish death’ after Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis
Twitter says it will suspend users who tweet that they hope for President Trump’s death following his positive coronavirus diagnosis.
The social media platform told Motherboard it could dole out the suspensions under an “abusive behavior” rule that’s been in place since April.
“Content that wishes, hopes or expresses a desire for death, serious bodily harm or fatal disease against an individual is against our rules,” Twitter said in a statement to the outlet.
The anti-abuse policy explicitly bans tweets “hoping that someone dies as a result of a serious disease e.g., “I hope you get cancer and die.”
It’s not clear how often the rule will be enforced, as many have taken to Twitter to send ill wishes to the president since his and first lady Melania’s positive tests were announced early Friday morning.
Twitter told Motherboard it “won’t take enforcement action on every Tweet.”
“We’re prioritizing the removal of content when it has a clear call to action that could potentially cause real-world harm,” Twitter added.
Trump, 74, checked into the Walter Reed military hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, Friday evening after he was administered experimental “polyclonal antibodies.”
He had been experiencing fatigue, according to his doctor, who has not confirmed reports that he was also suffering from a fever.
“I want to thank everybody for the tremendous support,” Trump said in a video message before he flew by helicopter to the hospital.
“I’m going to Walter Reed hospital,” he added. “I think I’m doing very well, but we’re going to make sure that things work out.”
via: https://nypost.com/2020/10/02/twitter-will-suspend-users-who-wish-death-after-trump-gets-covid-19/
Photo Credit: nypost.com
Boy, 10, severely injured by explosive found in box of Christmas ornaments
A 10-year-old Michigan boy lost two fingers and suffered a minor head injury after finding an explosive in a box of Christmas ornaments.
Brittany Moist said her son, Connor, was visiting his great-grandparents near Dewitt on Friday when he found the container of holiday decorations, which had been purchased from a yard sale last year, WLNS reported.
One of the ornaments — a silver one attached to a circular wire — caught his eye because it looked like a smoke bomb, she said.
“It had a hook on it like all the other ornaments and it had a little wick on it and he thought it was a smoke bomb, so he took it downstairs,” the mother told the station.
Connor’s godmother, Shanda Storie, who was there at the time and saw Connor with the silver device, said she tried to stop the boy from lighting it.
“I said, ‘Wait, Connor,’ and as I was walking toward him to grab it from him, he got excited and he lit it,” Storie said.
That’s when the device exploded — mangling the index and middle finger on the child’s left hand and leaving him with burns, hearing loss, and requiring five stitches on his forehead.
The boy was taken to a hospital, where doctors performed emergency surgery and had to remove the two fingers, his mother said.
“They rushed him down to like, do the X-rays and then straight to emergency surgery and then I met him in his room and he was already bandaged up, he was really scared,” Moist told WLNS.
Connor will undergo physical therapy and counseling.
“He’s been waking up at night afraid because he remembers what happened. If he hears a loud noise, he panics. He’s not dealing with the explosion very well,” Moist said.
via: https://nypost.com/2020/09/30/boy-10-severely-injured-by-explosive-in-box-of-ornaments/
Photo Credit: GoFundMe
17 people died this year from methanol-tainted hand sanitizer: report
At least 17 people have died and thousands were injured from exposure to hand sanitizer made with the toxic chemical methanol amid a coronavirus-fueled demand for the germ-fighting gel, according to a report.
The disturbing trend includes cases of users — some of whom ingested the substance — going blind, becoming poisoned and being hospitalized throughout the US this year, an investigation by the nonprofit news site FairWarning.com found.
Hand sanitizers tainted with the dangerous wood-alcohol compound were rushed into stores amid a shortage of ethanol — a safer chemical used to make the product — as the pandemic raged earlier this year, according to the report.
But despite the unsettling number of deaths — along with 2,000 reports of illnesses or injuries — the US Food and Drug Administration has no authority to force recalls of over-the-counter drugs such as hand sanitizers, according to the report.
“I think consumers would be shocked to learn that the FDA doesn’t have authority to pull those products,” said Michael Carome, director of the Health Research Group at the advocacy organization Public Citizen.
In one case, a 44-year-old man in the Southwest was left permanently blind after drinking hand sanitizer made with methanol last spring. Five more adults were poisoned by the substance in May and June, according to toxicologists.
“[It’s] absolutely clear that there was something circulating in our state,” said Steven Seifert, medical director of the New Mexico Poison and Drug Information Center.
Methanol-tainted hand sanitizers hit the shelves at shops across the US, including Dollar Tree, where it was sold as the store brand, according to the report.
In another case, sanitizer from a Mexican company, Soluciones Cosméticas — which sells Bersih brand — was found to be contaminated with methanol after it was seized at the border by customs agents.
Another Mexican producer, Eskbiochem, made nine different methanol-tainted sanitizers that were sold in the US, according to the FDA.
The FDA warned customers about the dangers of hand sanitizers made with methanol, asked companies to pull it from the shelves, and vowed to continue seizing products at the border.
FDA officials declined comment on whether the agency should have recall authority over hand sanitizer, but called safety its “top priority.”
via: https://nypost.com/2020/10/01/methanol-tainted-hand-sanitizer-has-killed-17-this-year-report/
Photo Credit: nypost.com
Black church’s virtual service hacked with racist threats and porn, North Carolina pastor says
A group of hackers interrupted a church’s virtual service in North Carolina over the weekend with racist language and porn, according to the pastor and local media reports.
The church, Sharpe Road Church of Christ in Greensboro, is predominantly Black.
“It’s difficult, and it’s discouraging that we’re at a place like this in 2020,” Pastor Nicholas Glenn told The Christian Chronicle. “During these times, we need to be positive, and we need to be unifying. It’s just real discouraging that we have to deal with this type of hatred.”
Glenn said four or five unknown people logged into the Sept. 27 service on Zoom — the code was shared on the church’s Facebook page — and began posting “hate speech” and “derogatory” messages in the chat box, according to the newspaper.
They also shared pornographic pictures “that would play on top of the actual worship service broadcast,” he said.
Glenn reported the incident to the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office, The Greensboro News & Record reported. Spokesperson Lori Poag told the newspaper the case was “turned over to an internet crimes detective.”
A representative from Zoom called the incident “truly devastating and appalling” in a statement to the News & Record.
The company has since traced the accounts and removed them from the platform, Glenn told the newspaper. Their identities, however, were not released.
“They made death threats,” he said, according to the News & Record. “We want to know who these people are, but we have no indication who they are yet, and why they picked us. It was just a horrific experience and we don’t want anybody to go through this.”
Sharpe Road Church of Christ has been holding services virtually since March, when the coronavirus pandemic forced houses of worship to close, WFMY reported. About 400 people typically attend.
According to the church’s Facebook page, those services are streamed on Facebook Live and Zoom.
Glenn told The Christian Chronicle the broadcast is split in different feeds for the two platforms, meaning the entire congregation didn’t see Sunday’s disturbance.
“But more than 100 members were watching on Zoom,” the Chronicle reported.
Photos of the stream during the hack have been shared on Facebook by a parishioner. The messages posted included “MAGA 2020,” “White Lives Matter” and frequent uses of the n-word.
The zoombombers also repeatedly told congregants to “get off church and go pick your cotton.”
Glenn told Fox 8 his wife noticed the messages first and asked him to stop the broadcast. After pausing the service to remove the hackers, “church picked back up where it left off,” the TV station reported.
In a Facebook post Tuesday, Sharpe Road Church of Christ called it an “act of hatred” but said “we are not discouraged from our work in the kingdom.”
“We got the memo a long time ago. You hate us. You think you’re better. You don’t want us here,” Glenn said in a Facebook post on his personal page, The Christian Chronicle reported. “I want you to get our memo. We love you despite your hatred towards us. You’re not better…. You’re equal. The same God that made you and called you good, is the same God who created me and called me good. FYI, we aren’t going anywhere.”
via: https://currently.att.yahoo.com/att/cm/black-church-virtual-hacked-racist-172159414.html
Photo Credit: currently.att.yahoo.com
Montana sex shop giving away vibrators to women who vote
A sex shop owner in Montana has a plan to “make America orgasm again.”
Billy McWilliams, who runs Erotique adult store in Bozeman, Montana, devised a patriotic promotion to encourage women to vote in the upcoming election — while also addressing a vastly overlooked gender disparity in this country: the so-called “orgasm gap.”
In an effort to inspire civic duty while also inspiring gender equality in the bedroom (or wherever), the 60-year-old businessman told SWNS he will give away 2,200 red, white and blue vibrators to American women who pledge to vote on Nov. 3, in an event he dubbed “the Great American Orgasm.”
“It’s not a Republican orgasm or a Democrat orgasm, it’s an American orgasm,” he said. “Someone has to help us come together.”
McWilliams has already mailed out 400 of the gaudy gifts, which come with an American flag sticker that also reads, “I came and I voted.”
“They are bullet vibrators and retail at around $12.95,” he said. “It’s small, it’s powerful, it takes a triple-A battery and it comes in red, white and blue.”
The 2020 general election is critical, said McWilliams, “and the more people who vote, the better for our democracy.”
But the political push is more than just a “get out the vote” campaign, as McWilliams also hopes to bring attention to a sexual injustice that plagues millions of unsatisfied American women.
“We are under-orgasming, particularly women,” he said.
“Fourteen percent of women in the United States have never had an orgasm,” he claimed. “Out of every three orgasms, men have two and women only have one. We have a fixable problem.”
“Some women will never get a vibrator because they don’t want to put it on their credit card,” he added. “This vibrator is an easy, discreet, no judgment sex toy and it makes women’s lives better.”
While also advocating for mental health, McWilliams suggested that vibrators are a fast and effective tool for managing anxiety during the pandemic.
“In these stressful times, everybody needs a little or a big orgasm — what the heck else are they doing?” he said. “This is our COVID stress relief.”
via: https://nypost.com/2020/09/30/montana-sex-shop-giving-away-vibrators-to-women-who-vote/
Photo Credit: SWNS
Madina Milana accuses Nene Leakes of cheating on husband with French Montana
A reality star has defended Wendy Williams in her revived feud with Nene Leakes — by accusing Leakes of cheating on her husband with rapper French Montana.
Leakes and the chat show queen had recently buried the hatchet after a long rift, but their beef boiled up again this week after Williams suggested in a TV interview that Leakes only quit “Real Housewives of Atlanta” because she likes “dramatic attention” — and said that a spin-off about her life would be “boring.”
After Leakes returned fire on social media, Williams pal Madina Milana — a star on “Growing Up Hip Hop: New York” — attacked Leakes, claiming she got sexy with French in a car.
“Why don’t you talk about the part where when we was in the truck you was letting French Montana touch all up on your s***ch,” Milana said in an Instagram video. “A whole married woman.” (Nene married Gregg Leakes in 2013 for a second time.)
Milana also said that Leakes had asked for her help fixing her relationship with Williams, by asking Milana to convince Williams to go to dinner with them both. Milana didn’t say when the French incident allegedly occurred, but Page Six reported in August 2019 that Leakes and Williams had ended their feud — and celebrated by partying at strip club FlashDancers with French.
Meanwhile, Leakes laughed off Milana’s claim, posting a picture of her searching through a purse saying, “Looking for this damn [lady part] that French done SNATCHEDDDDDD.”
A rep for Leakes declined to comment.
Photo Credit: pagexis.com
Florida barber shoots at clients complaining about him not keeping their appointments
An irate Florida barber shot at two clients who confronted him about not keeping their appointments, police said.
John Digiovanni, 35, of Boca Raton, was arrested Wednesday on two counts of attempted murder after a man told police he shot at him and his friend in the parking lot of the First United Methodist Church, WPTV reported.
The victims told detectives Digiovanni had scheduled appointments to cut their hair but didn’t show up for them in the past two weeks, police said.
One of the scorned customers reached out to Digiovanni on Monday about making the appointments and not keeping them, prompting the barber to start yelling and threatening him, police said.
The men then asked Digiovanni to meet them later that night to discuss what was bothering him before agreeing to meet at the church, police said.
One of the men told police Digiovanni began yelling from his car when he arrived at the church, while the victim insisted he just wanted to talk, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported.
But Digiovanni hopped out of his car and pointed a gun at one of the men, police said. He then shot at both of his clients before returning to his car, where he squeezed off one more round before driving away.
Investigators said video evidence backed up what the victims told detectives, but police didn’t specify whether the encounter was recorded by the victims or was caught on a surveillance camera, the newspaper reported.
No injuries were reported and neither man was struck, police said.
Digiovanni remained held without bail Thursday at the Palm Beach County Jail, online records show.
Photo Credit: Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office