"WORST I"VE EVER SEEN" 7 people shot, 5 dead in shooting near Atlanta

Feb. 7, 2015: Police stand in the doorway of a home while investigating the shooting scene where authorities say five people are dead, including the gunman, in Douglasville, Ga. (AP)

A gunman killed five people Saturday, including himself, after a shooting in near Atlanta that also left two children injured, authorities said.

Authorities arrived at the Douglasville subdivision of two-story homes, about 20 miles west of Atlanta, after receiving a 911 call around 3 p.m., Douglas County Sheriff’s Lt. Glenn Daniel told The Associated Press.

Daniel said a man came to a house and shot his ex-wife and several children. Investigators have not released the names of the suspect or the victims because their family members have not yet been notified.

Daniel told Fox News that the gunman was among the five killed, and that the shooter died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. MyFoxAtlanta.com reported that two additional children were injured, and taken to a nearby hospital.

It was not immediately clear when the couple divorced or whether the family had prior contact with police.

“I’ve been in law enforcement out here 20 years and this is the worst I’ve ever seen,” Daniel said.

Daniel said that neighbors apparently heard or saw the shooting and came outside to assist the victims until rescuers arrived. Some victims appeared to have been shot inside the residence while others were apparently shot outside.

Investigators obtained a warrant to enter the home, now surrounded by crime scene tape, on Saturday so they could take and exam evidence from the crime scene.

Kenya Beyah, who lives about four doors down from the home where the shooting began, left flowers at the scene Saturday evening. She didn’t know the family but said she saw kids playing outside from time to time, she told The Associated Press.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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"WORST I"VE EVER SEEN" 7 people shot, 5 dead in shooting near Atlanta

WORST ATTACK YET: Images show Boko Haram"s destruction, group says

Amnesty International has released satellite images that it says show widespread destruction in two Nigerian towns attacked by Boko Haram last weekend. 

The international human rights organization says that the photos show the towns of Baga and Doron Baga in northeast Nigeria before and after the attacks. The images were taken on Jan. 2 and Jan. 7 of this year. Boko Haram fighters seized a military base in Baga on Jan. 3 and, according to witnesses, killed hundreds of civilians in cold blood in the ensuing days.

“Residents have not been able to return to bury the dead, let alone count their number. But through these satellite images combined with graphic testimonies a picture of what is likely to be Boko Haram’s deadliest attack ever is becoming clearer,” Daniel Eyre, Amnesty International’s Nigeria researcher, told The Independent. 

Amnesty International calculates that 3,700 homes and other structures were demolished by the Islamic militants over the course of the attack. 

In the aftermath of the assault on the multinational military base, residents were forced to escape to safety across Lake Chad in canoes. They said insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades and automatic assault rifles and hurled explosives.

“They came in their hundreds driving several Hilux patrol vehicles, trucks and some were on motorcycles and immediately began to throw explosives and bombs,” fisherman Audu Labbo told The Associated Press.

Initial reports citing the testimony of eyewitnesses suggested that as many as 2,000 civilians may have died. However, the Nigerian military has claimed that only 150 were killed, a number that includes casualties among the militants. Outside observers, including Amnesty International, have repeatedly accused Nigeria’s government of giving false information about attack casualties to downplay the strength of the insurgency. 

The terror group, whose name roughly translates to “Western education is forbidden” in English, shot to prominence in the West this past April when it kidnapped 276 girls from a school in the town of Chibok. Dozens escaped but 219 remain missing.

Boko Haram is believed to control approximately 20,000 square miles of territory across two states in northeastern Nigeria. Amnesty International estimates that the group killed 4,000 people in 2014.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Click for more from The Independent.

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WORST ATTACK YET: Images show Boko Haram"s destruction, group says

Samuel Rosenberg: The worst things you can do on a job interview

Samuel Rosenberg

NEW YORK, United States, Thursday July 3, 2014 – Once you know about all the worst things you can do during a job interview, you can plan and prepare properly so that you can commit to an excellent employment interview which will rapidly increase your chances of landing the job and increasing your financial reserves.

You would have heard that it is vital to make a good first impression when you go on a first date with a potential new partner because, according to experts, you make up your mind about somebody during the first five minutes when you meet them. Interviewers, even subconsciously will be using that same first five minutes to decide whether they are likely to employ you or not, so you need to plan to make a positive impact during the entire interviewing process.

You will know that it is wrong to turn up for an interview as a bank manager, dressed like you have just left the gym, because if you are not extremely presentable and wearing smart clean clothes, you may start your interview by providing a very poor first impression.

Even if the job doesn’t require you to be dressed smartly, it will still pay you to present yourself beyond the standards required during your interview. Dressing smartly, yet flamboyantly, may also prove off putting for the interviewer.

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You will be asked, at some stage during the interview, why you want the job. If you fail to answer the question with enthusiasm and conviction, the interviewer will know that you have not prepared an answer for the easiest question they will ask.

There are a range of questions you should ask and others that you should avoid at this early stage as they will only become valid if it is likely that you are to be offered the position.

Telling the interviewer which days you don’t want to work or asking how much holiday time is available, will make you sound as though you are bothered more about the time you’re not going to be at work, than when you are there.

Although you may wish to take your potential boss’s place in the next few years, it won’t help your application when you offend or threaten the interviewer’s own job.

When you are asked if you have any questions, the worst thing you can say is; “no”. This shows that you are not interested in the job, the company or the people involved. You should have at least three good questions ready to ask your interviewer so that even if they have already covered one answer for you, you still have two in reserve.

You can prepare questions to ask specific information about the job to show your level of interest. By asking about the immediate needs in your new workplace, they will understand that you wish to know about the challenges ahead of you. It is permissible to ask why the position has become available as this will let you know if a problem existed before that you can overcome or whether a new position is being opened at this time. By asking questions about the company, you will have proved that you have taken the time and effort to do your homework about the business.

People like to talk about themselves, so asking a little about your new manager’s background will give them the opportunity to talk while you weigh up whether you want to work with this person.

By asking about the next steps in the process, they will understand your level of interest in the position.

Leave your cell phone off during the interview, giving it no chance to ring, bleep or vibrate. Leaving it on will embarrass you and will show the interviewer that you haven’t prepared properly.

One of the ways that you can create a great first impression, is to follow up with your interviewer as soon as you can, by sending them an email to thank them for the meeting and to provide them with any positive points you forgot to mention, to correct any mistakes that you are sure they will have noticed and to highlight your major skills and applications. You won’t get every job you apply for, but you must learn how to make the best from your errors so that your next interview gives you a
better chance of being successful.

The writer is the founder and CEO of Axcel Finance Ltd., the leading regional microfinance institution. Share your thoughts and email your questions to srosenberg@axcelfinance.com

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Samuel Rosenberg: The worst things you can do on a job interview

Worst companies to work for in 2013

IT cannot be a happy day when the organisation that you work for makes the top ten of this infamous list: ‘Worst Companies to Work For In 2013″. Nevertheless, although the dubious winners on this line-up are all from North America, we in Jamaica should perhaps be brave and enterprising enough to come up with one of our own.

Can you imagine for a second, if we did a similar list here. Just suppose the findings of the research appeared to be spot on and your employee ID told you that were a long-serving employee (not the owner or a son or daughter) of said company, it might just cause you to do some serious introspection. I don’t know about you, but I would perhaps feel very badly for myself and my fellow employees. My main takeaway from this article was the feedback from employees who they felt that their unhappiness stemmed from the serious issues they had with middle management. There were some people who felt that “they were unfairly treated, or treated like children or pressured with extreme demands”.The listing was done by 24/7 Wall Street and the method they used was to examine employee reviews at jobs and career community site Glassdoor. The website hosts employee reviews and uses those opinions to score companies on a scale of one to five, with five representing the best place to work and one the worst. 24/7 Wall Street identified the nine publicly traded companies that received scores of 2.5 or lower.I will start with the ‘winner’: DISH, which has come in for this dubious distinction the second year in a row. I cannot imagine that the management or directors are at this point clinking champagne glasses as we speak. The workers of this company say they despise the organiSation for which they work. “DISH’s management is regarded as so inconsiderate to employees, customers and shareholders that Businessweek recently called it “The Meanest Company In America”. In reviews at Glassdoor, employees regularly complained about very poor pay despite their difficult work in unpleasant conditions.Tthe most common criticisms were the low salaries, relative to the type of work and very poor benefits. “One manager on Glassdoor said that he had never seen employees treated so poorly. The benefits are pitiful and the salaries are not current with industry — I should know as I work in a (department) that see the salaries.” Ouch! That stings. Although times are economically challenging for most companies, this is one that perhaps needs to embark on a tour of self-examination. Two times is certainly not a charm.Second place went to Express Scripts Holding Company, one of America’s largest managers of prescription drug services, while the third in the line up of ‘beauty contestants’ was Dillards Department Store which is controlled by the Dillard family. They have built about 300 stores in 29 states and operate in a very competitive environment. Some of the bellyaching of the employees include: sales-per-hour targets which workers say are unreasonable and which lead to intense employee rivalry. “Lower level employees are faceless numbers to many members of upper management and are treated like pawns in a chess game,” said one reviewer.A company with a familiar name that made the list was Sears Holdings, which owns both Sears and Kmart. Sears Holdings ranked next to last in customer service in ACSI’s retail category, ahead of only Walmart. Employees at the company felt that the company had lost its identity and that the workers suffer from morale issues. The CEO, Eddie Lampart, a hedge fund manager made the decision to invest in technology to track customers’ needs. However employees felt that the company would be better off investing more resources in the company’s locations.NCR, the company that manufactures self-checkout machines, ATMs and airport self-service kiosks, made it to number eight on the list. Well, some of their employees did not have many kind things to say about them. They said that much of the company’s technology was out-of-date and that the company still asked them “to carry around cumbersome manuals”. The other complaints were about poor benefits and that the company often demanded a full-time commitment. Number nine was Fiserv, a company which provides information management and e-commerce products to the financial services industry, banks credit unions and brokers. A common theme among the employees who provided reviews was that the company was “needlessly stingy”. “Low pay and paltry raises were frequent gripes and several employees also expressed frustration about less-than-stellar health benefits”. So, now that we know what happens on that side of the pond, how does your company measure up?Yvonne Grinam-Nicholson (MBA, ABC) is a Business Communications Consultant with RO Communications Jamaica, specialising in business communications and financial publications. She can be contacted at: yvonne@rocommunications.com. Visit her website at www.rocommunications.com and post your comments.

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Worst companies to work for in 2013