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The George Zimmerman case rocked America, and spawned the Black Lives Matter movement as we know it today. The case is the subject of Oxygens The Jury Speaks, premiering Saturday, July 22 at 9/8c, which explores the controversial jury decision to acquit Zimmerman of the murder of unarmed 17-year-old, Trayvon Martin. The case was covered extensively in the media at home and abroad, and divided society, leading to outrage and ongoing protests. Here are the most shocking facts from the case.

1. George Zimmerman was obsessed with reporting suspicious characters to the police

A neighborhood watch coordinator, in the months leading up to Martins shooting, Zimmerman called police on multiple occasions to report suspicious characters in the neighborhood all of them black males.

2. Zimmerman ignored police instruction

On the night of February 26, 2012, when Zimmerman rang police to report another suspicious character Trayvon Martin he was instructed by the police dispatcher not to get out of his car. He got out anyway, and pursued Martin, eventually shooting him dead.

3. Zimmerman was not arrested by police that night

Police took Zimmerman in for questioning, and Zimmerman told them hed acted in self-defense, calling for help and fearing for his own life. After five hours of questioning Zimmerman was released on the grounds that the police chief believed there was no evidence to suggest he wasnt acting in self-defense when he killed Martin. This decision was based on Floridas Stand Your Ground law, which prohibited police from making an arrest in a case where lethal force was used in the administration of self-defense.

4. Trayvon Martin had no visible wounds other than the gunshot

Zimmerman alleged that Martin attacked him, and that he was acting in self defense when he shot the teen. However, autopsy reports showed that Martin died from a single, close range gunshot to the chest, with only one small wound on his left ring finger.

5. Trayvon Martin was unarmed at the time of his death

Further complicating Zimmermans story of self-defense was the fact that Martin was unarmed at the time of his death. In his pockets, police found Skittles, Arizona fruit juice, a lighter, some cash, and headphones. The Skittles came to symbolize the injustice and racial profiling many believed Martin was a victim of.

6. Zimmermans father wrote a letter suggesting his son was the real victim

In an open letter to the Orlando Sentinel on March 15, 2012, Robert Zimmerman, George Zimmermans father, suggested that the media and public were being unfair to his son. He said that because Zimmerman was Hispanic, he could not possibly be a racist.

7. Martin was on the phone to his girlfriend when he was shot

Martins 16-year-old girlfriend said she heard someone ask Martin what he was doing, and Martin asked that person why they were following him. She then reported hearing some kind of altercation, before the line went dead.

8. The Sanford Police Chief stepped down as a result of the investigation

As scrutiny of the Sanford Police Department mounted, the Chief, Bill Lee, temporarily stepped down amid accusations that the case and investigation were mishandled.

9. It took 44 days months for Zimmerman to be arrested

After the shooting, it took police more than a month to arrest Zimmerman. His trial only began on June 24, 2013, more than a year after the shooting.

10. George Zimmerman was found not guilty

By July 13, 2013, the jury found Zimmerman, to the shock of the nation, not guilty. A Facebook post that went viral included the phrase black lives matter, and the three words were picked up to title the Black Lives Matter movement. The movement is still a triggering issue across America today, inspiring protests in the memory of Trayvon Martin and other black citizens believed to have been unjustly killed, their murderers allowed to go free.

[All photos: Getty Images]

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10 Of The Most Shocking Facts From The George Zimmerman Case ... - Oxygen (blog)

Courtroom dramas arent just the stuff of television soaps and sagas. Real life can sometimes be just as shocking as fantasy. Oxygens The Jury Speaks, premiering Saturday, July 22 at 9/8c, looks at some of the most unbelievable trials in history and examines the verdicts that made us gasp from the perspective of the jurors. If youve ever wondered why a juror voted the way they did, and how it affected the rest of their lives, The Jury Speaks has first hand interviews with the jurors whose verdicts changed the world. In the meantime, ere are some of the most shocking trial verdicts in history.

1. George Zimmerman

Neighborhood watch coordinator George Zimmerman infamously shot and killed unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin on February 26, 2012 in Sanford, Florida. After police arrived at the scene, Zimmerman was briefly questioned but not arrested, with the local police chief saying there wasnt enough evidence to counter Zimmermans claim that he had acted in self defense. When the incident hit the media, protests rippled across America, and six weeks after the shooting Zimmerman was finally arrested. On trial, Zimmermans representatives argued self defense, and he was shockingly found not guilty of murder, despite accusations of racial profiling.

2. Darren Wilson

Black teenager Michael Brown was shot and killed by white police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri in August of 2014. Brown had allegedly been involved in a robbery shortly before he was confronted by Wilson. The two scuffled, fighting for Wilsons gun, and Brown eventually broke free and fled. Wilson pursued him, and eventually caught up. Brown, unarmed and surrendering, was held by Wilson at gunpoint, and allegedly took a step towards Wilson at which point, Wilson fired. A total of twelve bullets were discharged from Wilsons weapon, and Brown was shot six times. Like the Zimmerman case, protests alleging racial profiling took over the U.S., and when Wilson was found not guilty at trial, riots erupted in Ferguson and across the country.

3. O.J. Simpson

Probably the most famous case in American history, former footballer O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murdering his ex wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her partner, Ronald Goldman, despite compelling evidence. DNA evidence including bloody footprints and a glove, not to mention a high speed police chase in which Simpson was high-tailing for the Mexican border with a bag of cash werent enough to return a guilty verdict, and the country was polarized by the outcome. The verdict, watched lived by millions of Americans, shocked the nation.

4. Casey Anthony

In June, 2008, Casey Anthonys four year old daughter, Caylee, went missing in Orange County, Florida. However, Casey didnt report her daughter missing until July. Once the police began investigating, they found evidence suggesting Casey was responsible for her daughters disappearance. On trial, Casey changed her story multiple times and made up lies that were debunked. Despite decomposing human remains found in the trunk of Caseys car, the jury still decided there was reasonable doubt, and acquitted her of her daughters murder, and angry, disbelieving crowds protested at the courthouse and outside Caseys parents house.

5. Lorena Bobbitt

In a fit of rage, Lorena Bobbitt cut off her husband, John Wayne Bobbitts penis. She also threw it out a car window on a Virginia highway. At trial, Lorena said her husband was abusive and had raped her during their marriage. Shockingly, despite overwhelming evidence, Lorena was acquitted of the crime on the grounds of insanity. Meanwhile, Johns penis was surgically reattached, and he went on to star in porn films.

6. Amanda Knox

In 2009, Seattle student Amanda Knox was studying in Italy, where she lived with her British roommate, Meredith Kercher. Kercher was found raped and murdered in their flat, and Knox, along with her Italian boyfriend Rafael Sollecito and Ivory Coast immigrant Rudy Guede, were found guilty of the crime. The public found she was treated unfairly by the Italian courts, which were accused of being biased against her as an American. There were also suggestions that evidence against her had been tainted in the process of investigation. Knox was re-tried and acquitted in 2013, when she went back to America. In a shocking twist, Italian courts retried her in her absence, once again finding her guilty. There was another appeal, and she was exonerated in 2015.

7. Brock Turner

Brock Turner was caught sexually assaulting an unconscious woman by two witnesses. Turner was sentenced to only six months (and would only serve three), which left the public in a state of outrage, given his guilt, and the severity of his crime. Further outraged was caused as the judges decision hinged on the impact of the crime on Turner, rather than his victim.

[Photos: Getty Images and Wikipedia Commons]

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7 Of The Most Shocking Trial Verdicts In History - Oxygen (blog)

Building your own academic brand with Scholabrate will help you network, showcase your achievements and empower your career within academia

Academia today has a problem regarding the needs of the modern-day scholar. Many academics want to network with their peers and be noticed within their community, but dont always have the tools to do so. Academic Social Networks (ASNs), as we know them, are just libraries of published papers that focus only on encouraging researchers to upload their work, nothing more. This shifts the spotlight away from the individual, which weakens their online presence and stunts their ability to play a greater role within the academic community.

Seeing a gap in academia when it came to social networks, Dr. Aviv Pichhadze looked to create a platform that could both work within the frame of academia, while adding to its prestige, giving scholars the ability to showcase their talents. He created Scholabrate, a networking platform for academics that strives to solve the problem they are facing, a lack of personal praising and networking. This helps the scholars create their own personal online brand while establishing their credibility and recognition in academia. With its user-friendly design, colorful icons, and interactive dashboards, this platform can work to maximize the scholars footprint all the while advancing their careers. The platform bridges the gap between research, collaboration, and networking by giving the academic power over their own careers.

With its interactive profile page display, Scholabrate provides researchers a chance to shine by highlighting all of their achievements, including training, endorsements, mentorships and more, making insights about their academic works readily available. Scholabrates internal chat system ScholaTeam allows the academic the ability to network and collaborate in real time using video, file libraries, and other great features so they have time to work on more important things, like research and studies.

Networking and collaborating with your peers is key to making it in academia. Scholaborate is the future of ASNs and what we need to provide the academic community with, in order to assist them in keeping up with the rest of the social networking world. This technology, with its user-friendly and interactive platform, will help expand academics professional circles, giving them the opportunities to meet and collaborate with fellow scholars in their field they wouldnt have had the chance to connect with otherwise.

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Meet Scholabrate: The Social Network for Academics to Help Them Think Outside the Box - Techworm

Islamabad: Facebook's vice president Joel Kaplan on Friday met Pakistan's Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan and discussed various measures being taken to remove blasphemous content from the popular social networking site.

Kaplan, who is visiting Pakistan, exchanged views with the interior minister about actions being taken to make the social networking site free of material hurting the religious sentiments of people.

Representational image. Reuters

Khan's office in a statement said that the Facebook vice president reiterated commitment to keep the platform safe and promote values that are in congruence with its community standards.

He also committed to remove fake accounts, explicit, hateful and provocative material that incites violence and terrorism.

In the meeting, Khan said that Pakistan is playing a proactive role in engaging the Internet service providers and finding solution to the issue of misuse of social media.

He said the entire Muslim community is "greatly disturbed and has serious concerns over the misuse of social media platforms to propagate blasphemous content".

"Nothing is more sacred to us than our religion and our holy personalities," said the minister.

He said the government of Pakistan firmly believes in freedom of expression but we cannot allow anyone to misuse social media for hurting religious sentiments or undertaking unlawful activities.

He also appreciated the understanding shown by the Facebook administration and the cooperation being extended to on these issues.

The interior minister appreciated Facebook for bridging communication gaps and providing people a platform not only to interact but also serving as a vehicle for promotion of education, businesses, socio-economic development and empowering women in the country.

He also encouraged Facebook to open up office in Pakistan.

Kaplan highlighted various initiatives of the social networking site that are aimed at skill development and economic growth programmes in Pakistan, working with developers, small businesses and women in the country.

He said that Facebooks Developers Circles, a free community-led programme for developers to connect, learn and collaborated with other local developers, have been started in Lahore and Karachi and would be launched in Islamabad soon.

Lahore is one of the largest Developer Circles in the world with more than 2000 community members.

Kaplan also informed the minister that Facebook has recently launched a digital literacy campaign called iChamp with a goal to touch secondary schools on a mass scale across Pakistan to educate youth on the benefits and safe use of the Internet.

The programme will be supported by Facebook's Free Basic project that provides free access to dozens of fun and learning websites.

This is for the first time that a senior member of Facebook management dealing with global public policy has visited Pakistan to discuss measures for addressing the issue of misuse of social media platforms especially Facebook which has over 33 million users in the country at the moment.

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Facebook assures Pakistan to remove blasphemous posts, prevent misuse of social media - Firstpost

by Alexander O. Onukwue

The first mention of Badoo for some people had really been about the social networking site, focused on dating and dalliances. But it has not been big in Nigeria since its launch in 2006 so that when you turned your Twitter and saw it was trending, you only reluctantly presumed it was the latest acquisition in the Mark Zuckerberg push to monopolise social media.

Then the conversation became about killings, stabbing, and the burning of people and it became clear that the Yankee platform is actually called /baduu/. On the other hand, this Nigerian phenomenon phonetically ending with an o is a vicious anti-social network that has left a trail of terror and grief since its launch since God knows when.

Like most people found on social media, the cult group resident and operational in Ikorodu are populated by active youth, mostly male but with possible female wings. Their purpose is not love, dating or the exchange of snaps, but to kill, to steal and to destroy. They have killed people with reckless abandon and the retaliatory attempt by residents or a counter group to mob them has led to many tragic and innocent deaths.

The origins of the cult is not yet known, but it does appear to have been around a while. Local sites like InsideMainland have had stories about their usual storms, but it is ironic that much of the attention that has come to covering it recently has been the killing of innocents resulting from the effort to cut them down.

Badoos infamy has made the possession of whistles and machetes a necessity for some households, according to the Vanguard. Nobody really wants to be chopped and burnt in the middle of the night as many have been, and with the new attack at a Church, one wonders whether church attendants would choose to provide an extra accessory for their Bibles.

Ikorodu is restless because of Badoo, turning it into a literal no-go area. It is a menace that has the possibility of spreading its toxicity, and just as the policies of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are strict and decisive in rooting our unacceptable behaviour, authorities must act swiftly to put a definitive end to this wild anti-social network.

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Badoo: The anti-social network we thought Facebook had bought - YNaija