PETA Says Duluth Zoo Negligent In Deaths of 13 Animals

by Kristina Chew
June 23, 2012
4:00 am

Extreme weather events are taking their toll on animals in zoos, sometimes with tragic results. Earlier this week, after Typhoon Guchol felled a 120-year-old pine tree near the enclosure for 30 Japanese squirrels in Tokyo’s Inokashira Park Zoo, about a dozen have still remained at large. Zookeepers have been setting traps and arming themselves with nets to capture the missing squirrels and are advising people not to chase or otherwise tease the animals.

Rain led to flooding that caused the deaths of at least 13 animals in the Lake Superior Zoo on Wednesday. Three birds (a turkey vulture, a raven and a snowy owl) as well as six sheep, four goats and a donkey named Ashley are believed to have died after a creek overflowed; the zoo grounds also suffered extensive damage. The raven’s body has not been found and it is thought that it may have flown away, as Sam Maida, CEO of the Lake Superior Zoological Society that oversees the zoo, told the StarTribune.......

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By the Numbers: The U.S.’s Growing For-Profit Detention Industry

by ProPublica
June 22, 2012
9:30 am

The growth of the private detention industry has long been a subject of scrutiny. A recent eight-part series in the New Orleans Times-Picayune chronicled how more than half of Louisiana’s 40,000 inmates are housed in prisons run by sheriffs or private companies as part of a broader financial incentive scheme. The detention business goes beyond just criminal prisoners.

As a Huffington Post investigation pointed out last month, nearly half of all immigrant detainees are now held in privately run detention facilities. Just this week, the New York Times delved into lax oversight at industrial-sized but privately run halfway houses in New Jersey.
We’ve taken a look at some of the numbers associated with the billion-dollar and wide-ranging for-profit detention industry—and the two companies that dominate the market:.....

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Sandusky Guilty of 45 Out of 48 Counts of Child Sex Abuse

Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky has been convicted of 45 of the 48 counts against him. He was convicted of sexually abusing ten young boys. Eight men who said that Sandusky had abused them testified during the trial; their accounts — often graphic and certainly troubling — described abuse by Sandusky in the facilities of the Penn State campus or in his home. He now faces up to 500 years in prison after being found guilty of 45 counts of serial pedophilia.

Sandusky was the long-time defensive coordinator for Penn State’s powerhouse college football team. The charges against Sandusky tarnished not only the university’s famous football program but the reputation of legendary late football coach Joe Paterno who was fired as details of the scandal emerged. Penn State’s president Graham Spanier was also fired by the Board of Trustees after Sandusky’s arrest last November. Two other high-ranking university administrators face ongoing criminal proceedings for allegedly knowing about the abuse committed by Sandusky but failing to report it......