Society's ChildS


Cross

Texas Supreme Court rules for family that refuses to educate kids while awaiting the rapture

Supreme court Texas
If you thought you were about to be Raptured away into paradise, would you bother teaching your kids about things like math, science and literature?

One Christian family in Texas has been accused of refusing to educate their nine children because they believe the Rapture is imminent — and they've just won a big case in front of the Texas Supreme Court.

Comment: Its a wonder in this fascistic day and age that the parents weren't arrested and the children not taken into 'protective custody'.


Handcuffs

U.S. immigration officials making secret deals with companies in the business of locking up families

U.S. immigrant detention center
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is striking deals with private prison companies to lock up a "guaranteed minimum" of mothers with their children in euphemistically-termed family detention centers.

The 2009 congressional mandate for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to keep a minimum of 34,000 people minimum locked up at any given time is already well-established. But a new report by the Center for Constitutional Rights and Detention Watch Network reveals that this federal quota rests, in part, on aggressive deals with companies in the business of locking up families.

"Guaranteed minimums, which appear mostly in ICE contracts with private contractors (though some exist with local governments), guarantee that ICE will pay for a minimum number of people to be detained at any given time," states the report, whose lead authors are Dawy Rkasnuam and Conchita Garcia of Detention Watch Network. "Because the government seeks to avoid paying for detention space that isn't being used, guaranteed minimums are essentially local 'lockup' quotas that influence ICE's decision-making about immigration enforcement, whether or not people will be released, where people will be detained, and ultimately, who will profit or benefit from their detention."

According to the investigation, which based its findings on documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, such local quotas are "even more widespread than previously reported, covering at least 24 detention facility contracts," accounting for at least 12,821 of the 34,000 beds established by the national quota. Ninety-three percent of those beds are in privately-run detention facilities.

Comment: The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, which is directly correlated with the rise of the highly profitable private prison system. Conditions in detention centers are barbaric; prisoners are forced to work for substandard wages (if they are paid at all), hunger and lack of medical care is common, basic sanitation is lacking and prisoners are often put into solitary confinement. Immigrants fleeing desperate conditions in their home countries have now discovered what American 'exceptionalism' actually means.


Pistol

Gunman critically injures woman, kills himself in downtown Denver, Colorado

Denver shooting
© Eric Lutzens/The Denver PostPolice respond to a shooting near 1531 Wynkoop in downtown Denver Tuesday afternoon, June 28, 2016.
Denver police, in responding to an active shooter report in downtown Denver, discovered the shooter dead with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The shooter targeted a woman, who is now in critical condition with multiple gunshot wounds.

Denver Health's public information officer, Dr. Eric Lavonas, confirmed during a press briefing that one person was critically injured and in emergency surgery.

Doug Schepman, spokesman for Denver Police Department, told reporters that the department received a report of an active shooter at 2:42 p.m. inside the Alliance Center at 1536 Wynkoop Street, a building with offices for various non-profit groups.

Schepman also confirmed that the victim in critical condition was a woman with multiple gunshot wounds, and that she was targeted by the shooter, a man.

YouTube user Craig Hawkins caught on video people evacuating from a building near 15th and Wynkoop, where the shooting occurred.


Attention

Freight trains catch fire after head-on collision in Texas panhandle, evacuation ordered due to heavy smoke

freight train collision panhandle texas
Two freight trains have collided near the city of Panhandle, Texas. The wreckage is on fire, and a portion of the city was evacuated due to the heavy smoke. One person was injured, while rescue crews are looking for 3 more. The collision took place Tuesday morning, about five miles (8 km) east of Panhandle, alongside US Highway 60 towards Amarillo

Both trains were identified as belonging to BNSF, one of the largest freight railroads in North America and a subsidiary of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

Ambulance

Blast at Turkey's Ataturk Airport caught on camera (graphic video)

Ataturk airport
© Ismail Coskun/IHLAS News Agency/ReutersPeople walk outside Turkey's largest airport, Istanbul Ataturk, Turkey, following a blast June 28, 2016.
CCTV footage showing one of the two deadly explosions that took the lives of at least 10 people at Istanbul's Ataturk Airport has emerged online.

The video shows a bright flash in a crowded terminal, which is followed by a cloud of thick black smoke and panic among the passengers.

The blasts occurred late Tuesday in the airport's International Arrivals Terminal.

The Turkish media claims that the explosions were terrorist attacks targeting two separate locations in the airport.

Al least 10 people were killed and around 60 others injured in the blasts, according to reports.


Comment: Two explosions reported at Istanbul's Ataturk airport, 28 killed, more than 60 wounded

Another of the explosions, which apparently shows one of the bombers shot by police. While on the ground, he moves around, then a large explosion appears to blow him into pieces:




Handcuffs

French police arrest 81 people amid mass rally against labor bill

French protesters
© AFP 2016/ THOMAS SAMSON
French police have arrested 81 people amid Tuesday's mass demonstration against a labor reform bill, local media reported Tuesday.

Earlier in the day, a mass rally took place at 14:00 p.m. local time (15:00 GMT), with hundreds of thousands protesters marching from Bastille to Place d'Italie.

Between 64,000 and 200,000 people took part in the demonstration, Europe 1 media outlet said citing its sources in police. Some 2,500 police officers have been deployed to keep order.

Heart - Black

'No more baby. Taken care of': Ohio student gets life in prison for tossing newborn in dumpster

Emile Weaver
© Muskingum County Sheriff's officeEmile Weaver
Ohio sorority sister was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after a jury found her guilty of giving birth to a baby girl and then throwing her away in a dumpster, reports the Washington Post.

The most damning evidence? The Muskingum University student texted the man she assumed was the father after the deed, writing: "No more baby. Taken care of."

Emile Weaver, 20, was found guilty of aggravated murder, abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence by an Ohio jury in May.

According to police reports, Weaver gave birth to the child in the bathroom of the Delta Gamma Theta house in April of 2015. When word got out about the bloody mess discovered by another sorority member, two other students checked the dumpster where they discovered a trash bag.
"We kept shaking the bag,"explained Madison Bates in court testimony "And I saw a baby's foot."

According to several members of the sorority, Weaver had long been suspected of hiding her pregnancy. Prosecutors stated that Weaver had attempted to hide pregnancy for nine months, while trying to kill the baby, identified in court records as "Addison." They state that the young woman drank alcohol, smoked marijuana, consumed labor-inducing supplements and even played dodge-ball in the hopes of inducing a miscarriage.

Newspaper

Rolling Stone wins dismissal of defamation lawsuit by three UVA students over rape article

Rape on Campus
© Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone magazine on Tuesday won the dismissal of a lawsuit by three former University of Virginia fraternity members who claimed that they were defamed in a now-debunked article it published about a campus gang rape.

U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel in Manhattan said details in the November 2014 article about the alleged attackers were "too vague and remote" from the plaintiffs, George Elias IV, Ross Fowler and Stephen Hadford, to be "of and concerning" them.

The plaintiffs were not named in the article and had no connection to the alleged rape described in it, Castel said.

Sheriff

French police deploy tear gas, up to 40 arrested at anti-labor reform rally in Paris

French riot police
© Stephanie Mahe/ReutersFrench riot police take position during clashes at a demonstration against plans to reform French labour laws in Paris, France, June 28, 2016.
Police have deployed tear gas against a stone throwing mob in Paris as thousands came to vent their frustration with proposed labor reform, media reported. The confrontation has resulted in at least 39 arrests.

The demonstration in the French capital attracted at least 55,000 participants, according to the organizers. Police, however, put the number of demonstrators at between 14,000 and 15,000.


The uproar was reported near Boulevard de l'Hôpital, which prompted police to cordon off the area. More than 2,500 officers were deployed, according to police, who later reported that 39 protesters had been arrested.

Battles broke out when at least 200 hooded and masked men started throwing stones at police, who in turn deployed tear gas against the protesters.


Comment: See also: Mass protests across France: Resistance against the global Orwellian nightmare


Eye 1

Two explosions reported at Istanbul's Ataturk airport, 28 killed, more than 60 wounded

Ataturk airport
© Murad Sezer/ReutersAtaturk airport in Istanbul, Turkey.
At least 28 people have been killed and 60 more injured in two blasts that rocked Istanbul's Ataturk airport, according to Turkish officials. The explosions were reportedly suicide bomb attacks.

The blasts occurred in the airport's International Arrivals Terminal. A Turkish official confirmed to Reuters that two explosions have hit the airport. According to some Turkish media, the blasts were terrorist attacks targeting two separate locations in the airport.

Twenty-eight people have lost their lives in the blasts that hit the airport, Istanbul Governor Vasip Sahin said, Turkey's NTV channel reported. More than 60 people have been injured, six of them seriously, in explosions at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul, according to the Turkish state Anadolu news agency.

Many people caught in the blasts and near the airport posted photos and videos from the scene, showing the destruction caused by the explosions as well as people hiding in various places in search of safety.

Gunfire was heard from the car park near the airport, CNN Turk reports, citing the witnesses. Four armed men were reportedly seen running away from the terminal building after the explosions, according to Turkey's NTV channel.


Comment: Interesting timing of this alleged terror attack. Footage of one of the explosions was caught on CCTV:

Witnesses have reportedly told NBC that they saw 3 attacks, one of whom was wrestled to the floor before his explosives were detonated.