Society's ChildS


Heart

Japan: Mysterious 'Ultra Seven' donor sends 1 million yen to foster home


The Mainichi Daily News
Wed, 16 Nov 2011 10:26 UTC
Japan Anon Donation
© The Mainichi Daily NewsThe envelope with 1 million yen and an attached letter that was sent to a foster home in Muroran, Hokkaido Prefecture, is seen in this recent photo.
A home here for children who cannot live with their parents has received 1 million yen in cash from a donor identified only as a popular TV series hero "Ultra Seven."

The money and a handwritten letter arrived at the Wakasugi Gakuen foster home in Muroran, Hokkaido, in the post on the evening of Nov. 11, officials from the facility said.

The letter read, "Dear Wakasugi Gakuen staff, I would like you to use this small gift only for the children." The sender also suggested several ways for the money to be used, including buying clothes, textbooks, toys, games, and movie tickets.

The Ultra Seven donor is the latest in an ongoing anonymous goodwill movement that began in December 2010 with the donation of schoolbags to a child consultation center in Maebashi, Gunma Prefecture, by a donor going by the name "Tiger Mask," a popular manga character. The incident has been followed by a number of donations of money, schoolbags and other materials in the names of popular animation characters and historical figures to various children's facilities across Japan.
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Dollar

Investors take latest budget stalemate in stride

John W. Schoen
MSNBC Bottom Line
Wed, 16 Nov 2011 06:10 UTC
Maybe it's because investors are optimistic a deal will be reached. Or maybe it's because they're already expecting the worst.

This time around, though, Wall Street seems to be shrugging off next week's congressional deadline to break the political gridlock that sent financial markets into a tailspin last summer.


"I think the expectations just aren't that high given what we went through in August," said Wells Fargo senior economist Mark Vitner.

The congressional budget "supercommittee," which faces a Nov. 23 deadline to find $1.2 trillion in spending cuts and new tax revenues, was born out of the budget stalemate that sent the financial markets on a wild ride in August.

After transforming a routine debt ceiling increase into a self-imposed deadline, hard-line Republicans squared off against the White House, demanding deep spending cuts, forcing the Treasury to the edge of default As the bitter, partisan battle dragged on, the stock market plunged by 20 percent in a matter of weeks. Since then, stocks have recovered about half the lost ground.

Comment: "Wall Street seems to have concluded that the sequester is not as scary as originally intended.." That says a lot about who is in control of the United States Government.

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Info

Mysterious Symbols in China Desert Are Spy Satellite Targets, Expert Says

Natalie Wolchover
Life's Little Mysteries
Tue, 15 Nov 2011 16:41 UTC
Pattern in Desert
© Google - Imagery copyright Cnes/Spot Image, DigitalGlobe, GeoEyeA strange zigzag pattern in the Gobi Desert in China. Coordinates: 40.452107,93.742118.

Newfound Google Maps images have revealed an array of mysterious structures and patterns etched into the surface of China's Gobi Desert. The media - from mainstream to fringe - has wildly speculated that they might be Chinese weapons-testing sites, satellite calibration targets, street maps of Washington, D.C., and New York City, or even messages to (or from) aliens.

It turns out that they are almost definitely used to calibrate China's spy satellites.

So says Jonathon Hill, a research technician and mission planner at the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University, which operates many of the cameras used during NASA's Mars missions. Hill works with images of the Martian surface taken by rovers and satellites, as well as data from Earth-orbiting NASA instruments.

The grids of zigzagging white lines seen in two of the images - the strangest of the various desert structures - are spy satellite calibration targets. Satellite cameras focus on the grids, which measure approximately 0.65 miles wide by 1.15 miles long, and use them to orient themselves in space. [Gallery: Mysterious Structures In China's Gobi Desert]
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Mail

US: Postal Service loses $5.1 billion, warns default near

Emily Stephenson, Philip Barbara & Eric Beech
Reuters
Tue, 15 Nov 2011 20:00 UTC
Image
© United States Postal Service (USPS)
Washington - The Postal Service reported a net loss of $5.1 billion for its 2011 fiscal year and on Tuesday warned that [it] could run out of cash by September of next year if Congress did not offer relief.

The rise of e-mail and online bill payments combined with the recession has eroded mail volume, which fell by 3 billion pieces, or 1.7 percent, during 2011.

The Postal Service, which receives no taxpayer money for operations, says it is limited in how it can respond to shrinking revenues and high labor costs.

Operating revenue for the 2011 fiscal year ended September 30 was $65.7 billion, down 2.1 percent from 2010.

Revenue from First Class Mail, the Postal Service's most profitable product, fell 5.8 percent, overwhelming gains in shipping and advertising mail.

Joseph Corbett, the Postal Service's chief financial officer, said during a conference call with reporters that the agency could run out of cash by the end of fiscal year 2012.
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Heart - Black

China, Beijing: 17 Preschoolers Killed in Bus Crash


USA Today
Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:00 UTC
Image
© Agence France-Presse / Getty ImagesChinese police stand beside a damaged school bus after it collided with a red truck on a road in the Yulinzi township in northwest China's Gansu province on November 16.
At least 17 kindergarten kids and two adults were killed Wednesday when a nine-seater school minibus crammed with 64 people crashed on its way to class in western China, officials and state media said.

The children were aged 5 and 6, an emergency official said. News of the crash ignited public anger across China, highlighting an underfunded education system that especially shortchanges students in remote areas.

The bus collided head-on with a truck loaded with coal in China's Gansu province, leaving the orange school vehicle crumpled and twisted. Authorities blamed overloading for the accident, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Five people died at the scene, four children and the bus driver, said the official, surnamed Fan, the director of the emergency office of Gansu provincial work safety bureau. He said the other 14 had died either in hospital or on their way to hospital. The other adult victim was a kindergarten teacher, he said.
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Che Guevara

Latest Developments in the Occupy Protests


Boston Globe
Wed, 16 Nov 2011 05:06 UTC
Image
© The Associated Press/Seth WenigOccupy Wall Street protesters move signs and structures over a wall into an enclosed site near Canal Street in New York, Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011.
Some of the latest developments in the Occupy protests:

California

Anti-Wall Street activists began rebuilding their tent encampment on the steps of the University of California, Berkeley student plaza Tuesday night, hours after demonstrations were disrupted by a campus shooting.

The shooting occurred inside the Haas School of Business as thousands of demonstrators gathered on campus for a general strike and protests against big banks and education cuts. Officials did not know if the suspect was part of the Occupy Cal movement.

The shooting didn't prevent some 2,000 students and demonstrators from gathering and rebuilding their encampment despite earlier violence.

On Nov. 9, baton-wielding police clashed with protesters who tried to set up tents and arrested 40 people as the university sought to uphold a campus ban on camping.

The Occupy Cal students were joined by hundreds of Occupy Oakland demonstrators who marched the five miles from Oakland to Berkeley along Telegraph Avenue, chanting, "Here comes Oakland!" Police cleared their tent city outside Oakland City Hall on Monday amid complaints about safety and sanitation, and arrested more than 50 people.
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Che Guevara

Canada:Occupy Toronto Protesters Get Eviction Reprieve


CBC News
Tue, 15 Nov 2011 04:10 UTC
Image
© John RietiOccupy Toronto protester Bertrand Duhamel takes down his tent at St. James Park in Toronto on Nov. 15.
Authorities in several cities growing impatient with encampments

A lawyer representing Occupy protesters in Toronto has won an injunction against a city eviction notice that was issued earlier Tuesday.

Late Tuesday afternoon, Judge David Brown granted a temporary stay of the city's eviction notice to protesters occupying St. James Park.

Brown said he needs more information before he can rule on the city's plan to remove protesters from the park. The judge will hold a hearing on Friday to further discuss the matter and deliver his verdict by 6 p.m. ET on Saturday.

City officials issued eviction notices to Occupy protesters in both Toronto and Calgary on Tuesday, as authorities in multiple Canadian cities grew impatient with the tent encampments that first sprang up nationwide in mid-October.

The decision means they can't be removed from a downtown park at least until the judge hears legal arguments over the city's eviction order.
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Whistle

No Speedy Trial for Bradley Manning; Now in Pre-Trial Confinement for 560 Days

Ann Wright
Indypendent
Mon, 14 Nov 2011 00:00 UTC
Bradley Manning
© EPAArmy Pfc. Bradley Manning, in an undated file photo.
Five months ago, on April 22, 2011, over 400 citizens converged on Quantico Marine Base to protest the pre-trial conditions of alleged Wikileaks whistleblower US Army Private First Class Bradley Manning. Manning was arrested on May 26, 2010, on a U.S. military base in Iraq on suspicion of giving classified material to the website WikiLeaks.

No Speedy Trial-Manning still in pre-trial confinement after 560 days

Manning still is in pre-trial confinement, 560 days after he was arrested.

Manning was charged on July 5, 2010, with transferring classified materials on his personal computer, and communicating national defense information to an unauthorized source. An additional 22 charges were added on March 1, 2011, including wrongfully obtaining classified material for the purpose of posting it on the Internet knowing that the information would be accessed by the enemy; the illegal transmission of defense information; fraud; and aiding the enemy. In April, 2011, he was found fit to face a court martial and currently awaits the first hearing.
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Cut

US: TSA Tells Air Travelers: No Wrapped Gifts

Joseph Straw
New York Daily News
Mon, 14 Nov 2011 11:32 UTC
TSA
© The Associated Press/Pablo Martinez MonsivaisA Transportation Security Administration screener removes a wrapped holiday present at Reagan National Airport.
Presents will be unwrapped and opened by screeners

The Transportation Security Administration has a tip for Santas traveling by air this holiday season: wrap those gifts after you fly, not before.

If you pack wrapped presents, the TSA's little helpers - airport screeners - will tear them open, surely putting the kibosh on fliers' holiday cheer.

The Grinchy message may not help the agency's lackluster public image, but the policy is a security no-brainer - wrapped presents would be a gift to terrorists hoping to slip threats onto airplanes.

The wrapping paper isn't only a tool of terrorists.

Last week screeners opened one traveler's gift-wrapped packages at Los Angeles International Airptort and found 35 pounds of marijuana, according to Los Angeles' Daily Breeze.
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Heart - Black

US: Ohio Executes Man for Killing 3 Sons in 1982

Kantele Franko
The Associated Press
Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:00 UTC
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© The Associated Press/Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and CorrectionThis file photo shows Reginald Brooks, who is scheduled to be put to death Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011, for fatally shooting his three sons while they slept in 1982, shortly after his wife filed for divorce.
Ohio has executed a man who fatally shot his three sons while they slept in 1982, shortly after his wife filed for divorce.

Sixty-six-year-old Reginald Brooks of East Cleveland died Tuesday afternoon. It was Ohio's first lethal injection in nearly six months.

The execution was delayed by more than three hours as attorneys exhausted Brooks' appeals, arguing he was schizophrenic and that his mental illness made him incompetent for execution. They also said information that could have favorably affected his trial was withheld.

Prosecutors acknowledged Brooks was mentally ill but disputed that he was incompetent and that information was hidden. They say he planned to kill the boys in vengeance against his wife.

Gov. John Kasich denied clemency, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block execution.
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