Gunman Takes Hostages At Discovery HQ - 9/1 - Breaking. Police in Maryland say a gunman entered Discovery Communications headquarters in Silver Spring at 1 PM Wednesday and has taken at least one person hostage. Montgomery County Police tell WJLA-TV that a gunman is in the building. A person inside the building tells Associated Press the man had something strapped to his chest and has hostages. Shots were reportedly fired in the building's lobby. The gunman, who has been identified as James Lee, may be connected to a radical environmental group with a manifesto posted at savetheplanetprotest.com. In a 5 PM press conference, police said they "shot" the suspect (no word if it was fatal), took him into custody, and released all hostages, who are said to be safe. Police say they are still combing the building for explosive devices. More at washingtonpost.com and wtopnews.com. By mid-afternoon, all local DC TV newsers - 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9 - and WTOP radio were wall-to-wall with the story, along with CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News.....
A Salt Lake City mortgage company employee allegedly got drunk, opened fired on his firm’s computer server with a .45-caliber automatic, and then told police someone had stolen his gun and caused the damage.
Joshua Lee Campbell, 23, has been charged in 3rd District Court with criminal mischief, a second-degree felony; carrying a dangerous weapon while under the influence and providing false information to police, both Class B misdemeanors; and public intoxication, a Class C misdemeanor.
Salt Lake County prosecutors say Campbell called police late on Aug. 12, claiming a man had stolen his gun and fired into the $100,000 computer server owned by RANLife Home Loans, located at 268 W. 400 South.
However, investigators allege that Campbell had been drinking that night at the Twilight Concert in Pioneer Park with a co-worker and had returned to his office afterward and shot the server.
A probable cause statement alleges that Campbell told police he had been “mugged, assaulted with his own firearm and drugged” by a mystery assailant.
However, acquaintances of Campbell reportedly told police he had earlier been drunk, was armed and had threatened to shoot the computer and maybe himself.
The case has been assigned to Judge William Barrett. No court hearings had been set as of Wednesday.
A man in Germany has lived for over five years completely unaware that he had a bullet lodged in his head.
It's thought the Polish man didn't know he'd been shot because he had been very drunk when it happened at a New Year party in Herne, in 2004/05.
In fact the .22-calibre bullet only came to light after the 35-year-old visited a doctor because he'd noticed a lump on the back of his head.
Doctors initially thought it was a tumour but after taking X-rays realised it was a something a lot more solid and removed it… and the man celebrated with a drink.
A spokesperson for Bochum Police said: "He must really have a strong constitution. He was of course intoxicated at the time he felt the blow. It was New Year's Eve so naturally he'd had a bit more than usual to drink."
Law enforcement agencies in Washington D.C. have begun to use technology that they say can predict when crimes will be committed and who will commit them, before they actually happen.
The Minority Report like pre-crime software has been developed by Richard Berk, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
Previous incarnations of the software, already being used in Baltimore and Philadelphia were limited to predictions of murders by and among parolees and offenders on probation.
According to a report by ABC News, however, the latest version, to be implemented in Washington D.C., can predict other future crimes as well.
“When a person goes on probation or parole they are supervised by an officer. The question that officer has to answer is ‘what level of supervision do you provide?’” Berk told ABC News, intimating that the program could have a bearing on the length of sentences and/or bail amounts.
The technology sifts through a database of thousands of crimes and uses algorithms and different variables, such as geographical location, criminal records and ages of previous offenders, to come up with predictions of where, when, and how a crime could possibly be committed and by who.
The program operates without any direct evidence that a crime will be committed, it simply takes datasets and computes possibilities.
“People assume that if someone murdered then they will murder in the future,” Berk also states, “But what really matters is what that person did as a young individual. If they committed armed robbery at age 14 that’s a good predictor. If they committed the same crime at age 30, that doesn’t predict very much.”
Critics have urged that the program encourages categorizing individuals on a risk scale via computer mathematics, rather than on real life, and that monitoring those people based on such a premise is antithetic to a justice system founded on the premise of the presumption of innocence.
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Pre Crime Technology To Be Used In Washington D.C. 140410banner4
Other police departments and law agencies across the country have begun to look into and use similar predictive technologies. The Memphis Police Department, for example uses a program called Operation Blue CRUSH, which uses predictive analytics developed by IBM.
Other forms of pre-crime technology in use or under development include surveillance cameras that can predict when a crime is about to occur and alert police, and even neurological brain scanners that can read people’s intentions before they act, thus
