The News Thread

[[ETM]]

Oscar Pistorius might have killed his girlfriend by mistake. :crazy:

[Robby P]

[Mara]

Is that a real ad? Because it's super unfortunate.

[Ezee E]

Is that a real ad? Because it's super unfortunate.

Over my head. Why?

[D_Davis]

Over my head. Why?

He shot his girlfriend dead this morning.

[Sven]

Oh. I thought it was unfortunate because it looks like he's lodging his head into his hindquarters.

[Morris Schæffer]

Oscar Pistorius might have killed his girlfriend by mistake. :crazy:

They're ruling out accident. Not sure what got into him.

[Mr. Pink]

Russian meteorite crash footage:

[youtube]ih_wh6vc1X8[/youtube]

[youtube]b0cRHsApzt8[/youtube]

[B-side]

I'll go ahead and be that guy:

Fake.

[B-side]

Hm. Seems I was wrong. Every major news organization is reporting it as legitimate, and the number of injured is around 250 now.

[Mr. Pink]

Yeah, I verified it before I posted the videos, but footage is so much cooler than links.

I still should have probably included a news link, 'cause I thought it might be fake too when I saw those.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Looks like a viral video for a JJ Abrams film.

[Neclord]

We're living in a Michael Bay movie.

[[ETM]]

Hm. Seems I was wrong. Every major news organization is reporting it as legitimate, and the number of injured is around 250 now.

Over 400 is what I've read. Larger fragments have demolished a large warehouse and hit a supermarket.

[[ETM]]

I LOL'd at the first comment:

[Morris Schæffer]

Apparently, a rock 50 meters in diameter will miss Earth by 27,000 km the next night. Perhaps these fragments are from that rock?

[Morris Schæffer]

We're living in a Michael Bay movie.

They're the size of Volkswagens and basketballs.

[chrisnu]

North Korea threatens South with "final destruction"

BAD IDEA

[MadMan]

North Korea threatens South with "final destruction"

BAD IDEA

:| Wonderful. I guess Kim Jong's song is just as batshit crazy as he was.

[amberlita]

Whether Oscar Pistorius is guilty of pre-meditated murder or not, the prosecution and the police seem to be making every effort to completely bungle their case.

[number8]

lol the lead detective on his case was just charged with attempted murder.

[transmogrifier]

Whether Oscar Pistorius is guilty of pre-meditated murder or not, the prosecution and the police seem to be making every effort to completely bungle their case.

If his story is true, he must be the stupidest person who ever lived. You are sleeping next to your girlfriend, get up to do something, and then hear a noise from the bathroom. Instead of thinking "Maybe that's my girlfriend" and then (a) checking the bed or (b) asking "Is that you my dear, taking a leak?" you instead get a gun and fire through a locked door at the source of the sound.

So that's what it comes down to - he's either a murderer or a complete and utter clueless moron. A couple of great choices there.

[number8]

Well, the latter would still make him a murderer.

[amberlita]

If his story is true, he must be the stupidest person who ever lived. You are sleeping next to your girlfriend, get up to do something, and then hear a noise from the bathroom. Instead of thinking "Maybe that's my girlfriend" and then (a) checking the bed or (b) asking "Is that you my dear, taking a leak?" you instead get a gun and fire through a locked door at the source of the sound.

So that's what it comes down to - he's either a murderer or a complete and utter clueless moron. A couple of great choices there.

There were a few points of enlightenment in a Slate article a few days ago:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/201..._s_murder.html

Five Things We Know About the Oscar Pistorius Murder Case

[

Show Spoiler

Pistorius has a history of troubles with women. Last year, Pistorius allegedly threatened to break the legs of a man whom he suspected of being involved with his then-girlfriend while Pistorius was in London for the Olympics. “[Pistorius] carries a gun everywhere and I have seen him be controlling to women,” said Mark Batchelor, a friend of the man Pistorius threatened. After they broke up, Pistorius’s ex-girlfriend, Samantha Taylor, told South Africa’s Rapport newspaper that she was “prepared to reveal what (Pistorius) made me go through;” on advice from her lawyers, she later withdrew her statement. In 2009, Pistorius was arrested and charged with common assault after slamming a door on a woman with whom he had fought at a party. (The charges were later dropped, and Pistorius sued the woman and the police.)

It’s not clear, however, whether Pistorius and Steenkamp had problems. Some have speculated that Steenkamp had received text messages from ex-boyfriend Francois Hougaard, a South African rugby player, and that this precipitated an argument between her and Pistorius. These rumors are entirely unconfirmed, and Hougaard has issued a statement denying any involvement in the shooting. Independent correspondent Daniel Howden tweeted that, in Tuesday’s hearing, a friend of Steenkamp’s said that “Steenkamp told her Oscar treated her like gold. Said she would marry him if he asked.” The two had been dating since November 2012.


Pistorius is jumpy. In an article for The Times of London, Fay Schlesinger and Rick Broadbent wrote:

"The sprinter has spoken of his excess energy, his determination and his recklessness - the keys to his success, but also the reason he has lived on a knife edge.
He goes to bed as early as 8pm but struggles to sleep. After he got rid of his television and set his phone to turn off automatically he would read books voraciously. He told The New York Times that when a house security alarm went off recently, he grabbed the gun he kept by his bed and crept downstairs. It turned out to be nothing."

In November, he tweeted about mistaking his washing machine for a burglar. (“Nothing like getting home to hear the washing machine on and thinking its an intruder to go into full combat recon mode into the pantry!” he wrote) A few weeks before he shot Steenkamp, he almost shot a friend in a restaurant when a gun he was holding accidentally discharged.


Many South Africans are terrified of burglary. South Africa is a country with a violent history and a police force that is widely considered corrupt. As such, many South Africans take self-protection into their own hands. A GlobalPost article reported that South Africa’s “intruder detection services industry is estimated to be a 60 billion rand ($6.8 billion) market.” Many South Africans supplement this external security by arming themselves. In his affidavit, Pistorius claimed that “I have received death threats before. I have also been a victim of violence and of burglaries before. For that reason I kept my firearm, a 9 mm Parabellum, underneath my bed when I went to bed at night.” He went on to note that the bathroom did not have any bars on its windows, and that contractors had left ladders outside the house.

Pistorius’s house was located in Silver Woods Country Estate, a gated ”security village” that, according to its website, is “enclosed with a solid, electrified security wall with strict access control utilizing the latest security measures throughout the estate.” The house was in the east of Pretoria, one of South Africa’s three capital cities. It is worth approximately 5 million rand, or $560,000. It does not appear that Steenkamp lived with Pistorius.

]

[transmogrifier]

Well, the latter would still make him a murderer.

True.