A letter was left behind that included his motives was found after he killed himself when police arrived. Between 15 and 20 students had been seen dead or very seriously wounded, said one eyewitness. One firefighter that arrived shortly after the shootings started, dragged a number of the seriously injured students from the school and described the scene as a true massacre.

There was blood everywhere, on the walls on chairs and between 15 and 20 dead said the firefighter who was covered with blood and added this is like something in the United States. The shooting started around 8:30 outside the school when the gunman opened fire on two boys and then continued to a full classroom and shot children aged 11 to 13.

32-year-old Min-Jin, the internationally acclaimed Korean violinist, was understandably distraught when she looked around and found her violin, along with two bows valued at £62,000 and £5,000 respectively, gone somewhere into the crowd at Euston station.  She implored a staff member at the Pret a Manger counter to call the police, but the thief or thieves were not apprehended.

The violin was insured, of course, but it also has sentimental value, not to mention that it was on long-term loan from an unknown owner.  Lark Insurance Broking Group is the insurer, and Sarah Ottley, a spokeswoman for the company, said that the violin would be very hard to sell, since it is recognizable by any dealer or repairer in the business.  The company is offering a £15,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of the classic violin, so the thief is going to have a tough decision to make.

We can assume that whoever has it is will be brainstorming like mad to figure out a way to collect the reward without getting caught, since hocking it doesn’t look like a good prospect.  It should be an interesting challenge for detectives and for the person or persons who nabbed the violin.  It is fabulously valuable, but only to collectors or musicians, and any of them would identify the stolen property immediately.   By now the culprits probably wish they had just picked a pocket and left the rarity alone.

Praxedis, a town of about 8.500 located in the Juarez Valley on Mexico’s border with Texas, sits in the no man’s land of a route employed by drug cartels to transport cocaine, marijuana and more lethal drugs to the U.S.  Residents of the valley say that at night the roads are swarming with the pickups and SUV’s of gangs wielding assault rifles and sniper weapons.  Everyone is afraid, including the police.

The drug traffic and resulting violence in Mexico have been escalating over the past years, with about 28,000 killings to date, many of victims being innocent bystanders.  Drug cartels are powerful and ruthless, offering little choice between cooperation and death.  Right now the Juarez Valley is described by many as the most deadly spot on Earth.

Marisol Valles Garcia is 20 years old.  She will be completing her degree in criminology this December, and was working as a police secretary when the new mayor offered her the job as chief of police on a force that had, at the time, only three officers.

The former police chief was murdered in July last year, and quite understandably, no one stepped up to fill the position.  The new police chief has hired ten more officers including three women and hopes to hire more, but their focus will be on trust and values rather than bigger guns.

The survey further indicates that such incidents are twice as likely in primary as in secondary schools.  The problem, according to many of the participants, lies mainly with the parents, and with government regulations regarding teachers’ actions in these situations.  Too many parents are providing a poor role model for their children and making matters worse by not supporting teachers’ efforts to control their child’s behaviour.

The fact is that without discipline and structure, most students are not going to learn, and many feel that the restrictions placed on educational staff prevent them from keeping that necessary discipline in the classroom.  When parents of the offenders threaten educators with lawsuits and even bodily harm, what example is set for the children?

It has been suggested that parents of children who are habitually disruptive or violent and refuse to cooperate with educators should lose their child benefits, which can amount to

£20 a week.  The hope is that this might motivate adults to make a stronger effort to help rather than hinder the teachers’ efforts to educate.  Opinions vary on the subject, but there can be no question that a problem exists.