couple let baby starve to death while raising virtual baby on-line

this world we live in and life we live will never stop being cruel and strange. - sj

A Korean couple allowed their child to starve to death because of their addiction to raising a 'virtual' child in a Second-Life-style game online known as Prius, reports say.

Kim Yoo-chul, 41, and Choi Mi-sun, 25, would feed their three-month-old baby only when not at 12-hour-online sessions in a local internet café. The pair were obsessed with raising their internet child, called Anima, resulting in the neglect of their unnamed real daughter.

After one such session in September the couple found their daughter dead and called police. An autopsy found the baby died from prolonged malnutrition.

"The couple seemed to have lost their will to live a normal life because they didn't have jobs and gave birth to a premature baby," Chung Jin-Won, a police officer, told Korean press.

"They indulged themselves in the online game of raising a virtual character so as to escape from reality, which led to the death of their real baby."

The pair were arrested in the city of Suweon, south of Seoul, on Friday after months on the run.

"Online game addiction can blur the line between reality and the virtual world," Professor Kwak Dae-kyung of Seoul's Dongguk University told press. "It seems that taking care of their on-line game character erased any sense of guilt they may have had for neglecting their daughter."

torture, suffering and death for protestors in Iran

Those protesting and fighting for reform and all that is right in Iran are going to pay. Big time. - sj

Saeed Mortazavi: butcher of the press - and torturer of Tehran?

from the Times Online - UK
June 25th
Jenny Booth & James Hider

The Iranian regime has appointed one of its most feared prosecutors to interrogate reformists arrested during demonstrations, prompting fears of a brutal crackdown against dissent.

Relatives of several detained protesters have confirmed that the interrogation of prisoners is now being headed by Saaed Mortazavi, a figure known in Iran as “the butcher of the press”. He gained notoriety for his role in the death of a Canadian-Iranian photographer who was tortured, beaten and raped during her detention in 2003.

“The leading role of Saeed Mortazavi in the crackdown in Tehran should set off alarm bells for anyone familiar with his record,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East and North Africa director of Human Rights Watch.

As prosecutor-general of Tehran since 2003 and as a judge before that, he ordered the closure of more than 100 newspapers, journals and websites deemed hostile to the Establishment. In 2004 he was behind the detention of more than 20 bloggers and journalists, who were held for long periods of solitary confinement in secret prisons, where they were allegedly coerced into signing false confessions.

Mr Mortazavi has also led a crackdown in Tehran that has seen women arrested for wearing supposedly immodest clothing.

Earlier this year he oversaw the arrest and trial of Roxana Saberi, the American-Iranian journalist sentenced to eight years for spying, and his name has appeared on the arrest warrants of prominent reformists rounded up since the unrest started, such as Saeed Hajarian, a close aide of Mohammad Khatami, the reformist former President. With more than 600 people now having been arrested, including dozens of journalists, many fear the worst.

Mr Mortazavi became notorious for his role in the death of Zahra Kazemi while in Iranian custody on July 11, 2003. Kazemi, a freelance photojournalist with dual Iranian-Canadian nationality, was arrested while taking photographs outside Evin prison, Tehran, during an earlier period of reformist unrest in the city, also ruthlessly repressed.

The first news of what happened to Kazemi, 54, came in a statement from Mr Mortazavi, which said that she had died accidentally of a stroke while being interrogated.

Two days later a contradictory statement was issued, saying that she had fallen and hit her head.

On July 16 Mohammad Ali Abtahi, the Vice-President, admitted that Kazemi had died of a fractured skull after being beaten.

Mr Abtahi, who is no longer in office, was also arrested in the round-up of hundreds of dissidents and reformists overseen by Mr Mortazavi last week.