ONSTAGETV – ONSTAGE SEPTEMBER 15, 2012 SEGMENT 5 MR. VEGAS from ONSTAGE on Vimeo.

Man murders girl, 16, before she can testify against him for raping her two years ago…and he lured her to her death by posing as a teen on Facebook
Franklin Davis allegedly posed as a teenage boy on Facebook and told Shania Gray he had a crush on her; they agreed to meet
Davis picked Gray up from her Texas school on Thursday, drove her to a secluded park and fatally shot her
Police say Davis killed Gray to stop her testifying against him in his upcoming sexual assault trial
Davis allegedly raped Gray in 2010 when she babysat for his two children; he told her he would kill her if she told anyone, according to the victim’s friends
By LAURA PULLMAN
PUBLISHED: 09:08 EST, 10 September 2012 | UPDATED: 12:16 EST, 10 September 2012
Comments (25)
Share

A man facing charges of raping a teenage girl two years ago murdered the 16-year-old last week so that she could not testify against him in his upcoming sexual assault trial, said police.
Franklin Davis, 30, of Irving, Texas, confessed to shooting dead Shania Gray after he was arrested on unrelated driving offenses on Friday and police began questioning him about the girl’s death.
Davis allegedly raped and sexually assaulted Gray in 2010 when she babysat for his two children. In July 2011, he was charged with four counts of sexual abuse and was released on bail the following month.
On Thursday, after Davis allegedly set up a fake Facebook profile pretending to be a teenage boy in order to lure Gray into seeing him, Davis met up with the schoolgirl, drove her to a remote park and killed her, police said.
Scroll down for video

Murdered: Franklin Davis, right, confessed to killing 16-year-old Shania Gray, right. Davis murdered Gray so that she could not testify against him for raping her two years earlier, police said
Using the fake profile, Davis sent the schoolgirl messages saying they had mutual friends and that he had a crush on her. He told her he would stop by her school to say hello on Thursday, Sherry Ramsey, a close friend of the victim’s family, told The Dallas Morning News..

More…
Breakthrough in case of 16-year-old girl found dead in woods after tweeting she had a ‘stalker’ as father says she was ‘afraid’ to ride bus to school
Teenage girl ‘stabs brother to death in fight over cellphone’… after calling 911 to warn she was about to kill him
Around 4pm Thursday, after finishing her second day at a new high school, the 16-year-old believed she was meeting up with her new Facebook friend.
Instead, she was picked up by Davis, who then drove her to the secluded Campion Trails Park in Irving, fatally shot her and dumped her body in a nearby river, according to police.
It is not clear what made Gray get into Davis’ car, whether she was held at gunpoint or if Davis was wearing a disguise, said Ramsey. Gray’s family say she would not have got into Davis’ car willingly.
‘I can only imagine Shania’s face when she got into the car and recognized his face, the fright she felt,’ Ramsey told the paper. ‘That’s the part that haunts me the most.’

Lured to her death: Davis allegedly set up a fake Facebook profile pretending to be a teenage boy and sent Gray messages saying he had a crush on her. He told her he would come say hello to her at her school on Thursday afternoon; that was the last time she was seen alive
The two first met when Gray babysat for Davis’ two children. Davis and his wife were separated but he would sometimes come to the home when Gray was babysitting, reported the Morning News.
After the teenager turned down many babysitting requests, Gray told her grandmother that Davis had raped her. He told Gray at the time of the assaults that he would kill her if she told anyone, Ramsay said.
The family went to the police and, in July 2011, Davis was charged with four counts of sexual assault of a child.
Gray’s family say they did not know of any contact between their daughter and Davis since he allegedly raped and sexually assaulted her.
His trial was scheduled for October 29 and police believe that Davis killed the 16-year-old so that she could not testify against him.
A police investigation was launched after Gray’s family reported the schoolgirl missing on Friday morning.

Starting out: Gray was murdered after her second day at a new high school, Hebron High School in Carrollton

Tragic: Davis drove Gray to a secluded park, shot her and then dumped her body in the Trinity River, according to police
On Saturday afternoon, a body was found in the Trinity River on the border of Irving and Dallas, which was later identified as Gray’s.
Carrollton police had arrested Davis on unrelated traffic offenses on Friday and held him in jail. They then began questioning him about Gray’s death and say he confessed to the murder after her body was found.
Police retrieved the weapon, a 38. Calibre pistol, from a nearby pond. Davis was charged with capital murder on Sunday and is being held at Dallas County Jail. Police believe that no one else was involved with Gray’s murder.
This evening, a vigil is being held for the murdered teenager at John D. Horn High School in Mesquite, Gray’s previous high-school.
Gray was a sports star who competed in three Junior Olympic competitions and played on the basketball team.
She was a straight A student who had a beautiful singing voice, said Ramsay.

High achiever: As well as being a straight A student, Gray was a sports star who competed in three Junior Olympic competitions and played on the basketball team
Watch video here

Kweku Adoboli invented trades and had an unauthorised slush fund to conceal losses, the court is told
CAHAL MILMO SATURDAY 15 SEPTEMBER 2012

earn More!
www.sharebuilder.com/ingdirectFree Day Trading Classes
Become an Expert Trader With A Free Day Trading Course Near You Today!
www.PowerTradingWorkshop.com
The moment when bosses at UBS realised the enormity of the crisis created by Kweku Adoboli came at 2.30pm on 14 September last year when an email from the London trader arrived in the inbox of one of its auditors. The subject line read: “An explanation of my trades”.

That anodyne description headed what prosecutors yesterday said was a confession to 30 months of reckless gambling on the markets by the 32-year-old to try to make good snowballing losses that threatened to topple the Swiss bank and were created by his thirst for an ever-increasing bonus.

An hour before his email arrived, Mr Adoboli, a director on UBS’s City trading floor hitherto considered one of its brightest and best, had abruptly left the office leaving a note to say he had an appointment to see a doctor.

The financier was indeed in need of advice. But a jury at Southwark Crown Court in south London heard that it was a lawyer rather than a medic whose counsel Mr Adoboli, of Whitechapel, east London, required.

Over the previous four weeks, the trader had been fielding a series of fraught calls from William Steward, a chartered accountant in UBS’s London headquarters, who was trying to reconcile unbalanced entries and “other oddities” in Mr Adoboli’s accounts on the bank’s “double entry” auditing system.

Initially, just as he had done on numerous occasions before, the eloquent financial whizz successfully offered a convoluted explanation that all was well and his trades in a niche financial product known as exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were sufficiently hedged – or counterbalanced by opposite deals of a similar value – to keep UBS and its shareholders safe.

But Mr Steward kept encountering discrepancies and gaps in Mr Adoboli’s records. In particular, on 14 September the trader was unable to offer the names of the “counterparties” or buyers for trades which the accountant could see had exposed UBS to losses of billions of pounds.

Jurors heard yesterday that nearly two and a half years of allegedly fraudulent trading by Mr Adoboli, a system of false accounts, and an unauthorised slush fund said to have been used to conceal potential losses that at one point reached £7.4bn had “crashed like a car hitting a wall at high speed”.

In the opening line of his email, prosecutors said, the trader confessed that the ETF trades – deals in bundles of stocks, bonds or commodities that are traded as a job lot – queried by Mr Steward were a fiction.

He wrote: “Dear Will, it is with great stress that I write this mail. First of all, the ETF trades that you see on the ledger are not trades that I had done with a counterparty as I previously described.”

Over the following paragraphs, the court heard that Mr Adoboli in effect acknowledged he had flouted his bank’s rules and lied to colleagues to conceal losses that eventually amounted to £1.4bn.

The trader, with an apparent slip, concluded: “I take full responsibility for my actions and the stilt [sic] storm that will now ensue. I am deeply sorry to have left this mess for everyone and to have put my bank and my colleagues at risk. Thanks, Kweku.” By the time of his arrest the following day after meetings with UBS managers that lasted until 2.30am, Mr Adoboli’s painstakingly constructed financial fortress of investments outwardly based on shrewd analysis of global events and market behaviour had been revealed to be built on a quicksand of unhedged gambles and contrived deals to cover subsequent losses, the court heard.

The trader, who denies four fraud charges, will claim that his actions, including the formation of a rainy day fund to offset losses, were known about by colleagues and managers, the court heard.

But Sasha Wass QC, prosecuting, said Mr Adoboli had acted alone and conducted himself as a “master fraudster” by using his knowledge of UBS’s “back office” operations to manipulate its accounting system, extending the deadlines for payments, exceeding the daily trading limit of $100m and massaging away losses.

What were supposed to be carefully-controlled investments designed to increase the value of pension funds and other holdings by predicting market movements had turned into open-ended liabilities, the court heard.

Ms Wass said: “In effect, Mr Adoboli was risking the very existence of the bank by gambling its resources ultimately for his own benefit. He had ceased to act as a professional investment banker and had begun to approach his work as a naked gambler. He had become what is sometimes referred to as a rogue trader.”

The well-spoken trader, who was head boy at his English public school and graduated from Nottingham University in 2003 with a degree in e-commerce and business studies, had enjoyed a meteoric rise through the ranks of UBS, which employs 63,500 people worldwide.

After joining as a graduate trainee, he started life in the bank’s “back office” responsible for reconciling the deals carried out by traders.

By 2005, he had moved to the “front office” with the prospect of joining the ranks of the City’s élite, who regularly pick up six-figure bonuses.

His salary that year was £33,000 plus a bonus of £7,500. By 2010, when Mr Adoboli was a director on the ETF desk, his income had increased ten-fold to a £110,000 salary and a £250,000 bonus.

The court heard that the trader’s downfall had begun in October 2008 when he registered a $400,000 loss on a single trade which he explained away with a fictitious matching profitable deal. At the same time he began “off-the-book” deals which led to the formation of what he described as his “umbrella” – a shadow fund which by May last year held tens of millions of pounds.

But the court heard the umbrella ultimately could do nothing to withhold the storm that hit Mr Adoboli and UBS a year ago. Ms Wass said the trader’s motivation had been simple: “He did this to increase not only the profit of the bank and, more importantly, the bonus he hoped to receive.

“When you put your life savings in a pension fund, you do not expect an investment banker to gamble it on the toss of a coin.”

A slush fund was used to conceal losses that at one time amounted to £7.4bn, the court heard

Double your losses: The ‘martingale’

Behind the losses attributed by prosecutors to Kweku Adoboli lay a gambling mindset known as the “martingale”, the court heard.

The principle behind the gambling system is simple and – provided its user’s funds are limitless – cannot fail on any two-way bet. It involves the gambler doubling his or her bet after each loss on the basis that eventually their luck will change.

For example, if a £100 bet on the toss of a coin resulting in heads is lost, the gambler simply places a £200 bet on heads and so on. Logically, heads will eventually turn up and all losses will be made good.

But in the words of Sasha Wass QC yesterday: “The trouble is that ‘eventually’ can be a long time coming.”

The court heard that the deals and trades made by Mr Adoboli were considerably more complex than a straight martingale system but he had been sucked into a gambler’s mindset and “started throwing good money after bad”.

Ms Wass added: “It takes very deep pockets to continue to run such a system: pockets the size of the UBS bank. It is these pockets, these resources that Mr Adoboli was using to back his bets.”

The explosive email in full: ‘I have left the office for the sake of discretion’

This is the text of the “bombshell email” that Kweku Adoboli sent to William Steward, a chartered accountant at UBS, after allegedly causing the Swiss bank to lose £1.4bn.

Dear Will,

It is with great stress that I write this mail. First of all the ETF [exchange-traded funds] trades that you see on the ledger are not trades that I have done with a counterparty as I previously described.

I used the bookings as a way to suppress the PnL [profit and loss] losses that I have accrued through off-book trades that I made. Those trades were previously profit making, became loss making as the market sold off aggressively though the aggressive sell-off days of July and early August.

Initially, I had been short futures through June and those lost money when the first Greek confidence vote went through in mid-June. In order to try and make the money back I flipped the trade long through the rally.

Although I had a couple of opportunities to unwind the long trade for a negligible loss, I did not move quickly enough for the market weakness on the back of the first back macro data and then an escalation Eurozone crisis cost me the losses you will see when the ETF bookings are cancelled. The aim had been to try and make the money back before the September expiry date came through but I clearly failed.

I have now left the office for the sake of discretion. I will need to come back in to discuss the positions and explain face to face, but for reasons that are obvious, I did not think it wise to stay on the desk this afternoon. I will expect that questions will be asked as to why nobody else was aware of these trades. The reality is that I have always maintained that these were EFP [exchange for physical] trades to the member of my team, BUC, trade support and John Di Bacco [Adoboli’s manager].

I take full responsibility for my actions and the stilt storm that will now ensue. I am deeply sorry to have left this mess for everyone and to have put my bank and my colleagues at risk.

Thanks, Kweku

Drama unraveled at a funeral mass of a man in his 30s at Gem constituency in Kisumu when a group of men stormed the ceremony and demanded to beat the dead body before it was buried.

Mourners from all walks of life had gathered at the man’s place to bid him farewell. A pastor who was meant to preside the ceremony arrived and all sat down waiting for the service.

Prayers and dirges filled the area as many paid their last respect to the dead. A gang of at least 10 men stormed the ceremony and told the pastor to allow them cleanse the dead man because he had committed some serious offenses when he was alive.

Surprised by the strange twist of events, the pastor stepped aside as the leader of the gang started a conversation with the dead in a strange language. He then ordered 5 men to line up with whips and beat the man in his coffin.

“Omeera ..ne in ng’a marach ka pod ningima to nyaka waiki ka wasegolo richo ni duto! (You young man you were a very bad man when alive but we have pitied you and want you buried clean.)

Mourners ran in fear of a similar incident happening to them leaving the strange gang alone with the dead body.

The Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6)

By Charlotte Dugan

I have a manual grain mill. That means I buy my wheat and other grains in kernel form from a farmer in New York and grind them into flour by hand. What that further means is that I have between 30 and 45 minutes of round-and-round-and-round-and-round to do, left hand, right hand, both hands, any and every time I need flour for breads and biscuits. So what that ultimately means is that I have a lot of time early in the mornings when I am grinding that I have to figure out what to do with my thoughts. If you’ve ever done a manual, repetitive job such as that, you know that the discipline it takes mentally to keep going can be quite a challenge. Up to the plate steps the Teacher–God and/or Jesus are never at a loss for a lesson or an insight to teach us if we’re open to it, and so I’ve come to think of my time at the grain mill as my daily grind of spiritual food.

As I was grinding away a few weeks ago, what should come to mind but the phrase, “give us this day our daily bread.” That, as you know, comes from what has been termed in Roman Catholic circles as “The Our Father.” Being raised as such, this had deep roots for me as one of the prayers often handed out to me as a penance for my soul after observing Confession with a priest. But I took a good look at it this particular morning as my arms went round-and-round, and I found a hearty meal of spiritual insight.

The prayer appears in Matthew 6:9-13 and is taught by Jesus to his disciples as an example of what the contents of a prayer might hold. Prefacing in verses 5-8, Jesus instructs them about prayer with the following:

Matthew 6:5-8
(5) “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.
(6) But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
(7) And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.
(8) Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Pretty self-explanatory.

But how about the prayer itself? That morning, I saw what Jesus was trying to do–he did not give them a rote method of chanting a “penance,” but rather a beautiful standard by which to understand what prayer was and could be. As I recited the prayer in my mind, I thought it would be a great sharing for fellowship. Let’s look at it. I have not, however, “researched” this sharing. I am taking the words at face value from the English translation, but I think an enormous amount of insight could be gained by some word studies for those so inclined.

“Our Father” —Wow! Jesus, who made known God to the world, called him a “Father.” I would imagine a lot of the Jews sitting there were quite astonished at this shift in relationship with Yahweh and Elohim. Jesus opened to them the tender side of a loving God, not One on the smoking mountain unto whom they were afraid to come. “Father” opens up images of one whose lap you can crawl into, one who teaches alongside of you, and not one from whom you must hide.

In our fellowship that next Sunday I asked how each person opens his prayers. “Dear God” and “Heavenly Father” seemed to be pretty standard. Great, we’re on track with Jesus’ teaching. But then, if we’re honest, what is usually the next word we utter? One of our brethren piped up, “I!” Yep. There it is— “Dear God, I…” (I must note that a few beautiful souls admitted their next word is “thanks.”) Spoiler alert: there is not one single “I” in the whole prayer. The closest we see is “us,” a beautiful word that reminds us that we belong to one another, that we prosper or suffer together, that our sins and our triumphs affect not only ourselves, but also the rest of the Body of Christ.

What is the next thing Jesus taught? “In heaven”–a prepositional phrase telling us where our Father resides, and reminding us that He is God Almighty, whose perspective of both our lives and the world around us is far broader than our own.

“Hallowed be your name”—After acknowledging that God is our Father, and before we get to our own needs, we PRAISE Him! How beautiful! I am reminded how God, answering Job out of the storm, never addressed his suffering or his needs, but instead points out to Job how great He is!! Why? Because He’s a pompous attention-grabber? NO. God is Love, and as Love, He seeks the best for us. When we focus on Him and His greatness, what fear, what need, what despair can consume us? None. So, God our Father in heaven, we praise you!

“Your kingdom come” —the Hope! Next in line Jesus reminds us to look forward to our glorious future, when the Devil will be an afterthought.

“Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”—We are to recognize that God has a will, and do our best to line up with it. I’ve heard some mighty teachings on prayer being an invitation to God to come in and “POW!”, knock the Devil on his derriere.

Now, finally, we come to “us.” “Give us today our daily bread.” This statement could be taken very subjectively. Note that the word “us” was chosen instead of “me.” As a body of believers who live and move in diverse individual circles, we are nonetheless intricately connected to one another. We must ask ourselves how we define our personal “daily bread.” Has God prospered you above and beyond your needs? Perhaps it was not for you alone, but also that you could help someone else. Come to think of it, giving is itself a need, and we therefore must have something to give.

If we define our “daily bread” way beyond what we need, we will likely become unthankful. I submit that God keeps His Word, and that He does give us our daily bread need. Our modern society, however, would like us to believe, as Eve did, that God is withholding good from us, that our needs are not met, that we can and should have what we want, and have it now. I love Colossians 3:15, which states as an imperative, “And be thankful.” An “imperative” is a command: “(You) be thankful.” This is the only sentence in the entire prayer that addresses physical need.

“Forgive us our debts”: reminds us that we are sinners in need of forgiveness, “as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Boy, if you first recognize your own personal need for forgiveness, if you first look in the mirror and see the real you looking back, it sure makes it a lot easier to forgive someone who wrongs you.

And finally, “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” Jesus reminds us that life is a battle, and that we’re all in it collectively. It is imperative that we pray daily for one another to succeed in this war against spiritual powers. None of us is above that need, and our God is a God Who delivers!

As Jesus came to make known God, he came to also lead us into a relationship with Him, and certainly prayer is an indispensable component of that relationship. It is a prayer of recognition of who God is: a loving Father who forgives, supplies, and delivers. It is a prayer of praise that acknowledges the hope of a future life filled with God’s will. And it is a prayer that acknowledges our need now for community, forgiveness, help, deliverance, and of course, our daily bread.