Society's ChildS

Gold Bar

Rattled investors seek shining path to gold and silver

Gold coins in the Austrian auction house
© Leonhard Foeger / Reuters
Gold prices have surged nearly 30 percent this year, proving the commodity to be a commonly favored safe-haven for investors in the face of increased market volatility and uncertainty.

On Wednesday, gold reached its highest level in 33 months outperforming many other commodities as well as S&P 500 index. The precious metal peaked at $1,372 per troy ounce.

The rally of another precious metal has been even more impressive. The price of silver since the beginning of the year has gained almost fifty percent, trading at over $20 per ounce as of Thursday.

Comment: This news will also propel the gold and silver prices higher: Desperation? Bank of England cuts interest rates for first time in seven years, extends QE


Network

Cryptocurrency exchange hack steals $72 million worth of Bitcoins

Physical Bitcoin
© Jim Urquhart / Reuters
The price of Bitcoin has plummeted once more after a major digital currency exchange in Hong Kong admitted that over $72 million worth of the cryptocurrency might have been stolen following a cyberattack on the company's systems.

Hong Kong-based exchange Bitfinex halted trading after discovering a "security breach" that resulted in "some" of their clients losing their bitcoins. While the company did not announce the scale of the attack, some estimates show up to 120,000btc have been moved out of the users' online wallets, which equals to roughly $65 million at current prices.

"We are investigating the breach to determine what happened, but we know that some of our users have had their bitcoins stolen," the company said. Also stopping any withdrawals and deposits, the company said it is now working with authorities to investigate the matter.

"We will look at various options to address customer losses later in the investigation. While we are halting all operations at this time, we can confirm that the breach was limited to bitcoin wallets; the other digital tokens traded on Bitfinex are unaffected," Bitfinex said in a statement.

Bad Guys

Jailed Islamic State jihadist warns 'loads of attacks in England, Germany & France'

Islamic State militants
© Stringer / Reuters
A former Islamic State jihadist, German-born Harry Sarfo, has revealed that the terrorist group is actively seeking volunteers in Germany and the UK to carry out "loads of attacks at the same time in England, Germany and France."

Members of the far-reaching Islamic State's (IS, formerly ISIS) intelligence service, called Emni in Arabic, allegedly told Sarfo they were first and foremost interested in waging terrorism across the globe.

In an interview with the New York Times, Sarfo, who is currently serving a three-year term on terrorism charges at a maximum security prison near Bremen, recalled what one masked commander once told him.

"He was speaking openly about the situation, saying that they have loads of people living in European countries and waiting for commands to attack the European people. And that was before the Brussels attacks, before the Paris attacks."

Pistol

Norwegian man arrested after threatening to 'shoot and kill' Maine police in Dallas-style attack

Portland police
© Steve Dipaola / Reuters
A man was arrested after threatening to "shoot and kill as many police officers" as he could, in the style of the Dallas sniper attack. The threats were posted on Twitter and via email, prompting the evacuation of a local courthouse and a parking garage.

The alleged perpetrator, Espen Brungodt, a 28-year-old Norwegian, is believed to have sent the menacing messages to the Portland Police Department, public safety officials in Maine and two staffers at the Portland Press Herald newspaper.

The threats circulating on Twitter originated from the account @brownclown42, under the name of John Mackenzie. The account has since been deleted.

Info

Another Savchenko hunger strike: But you'll never hear about this one!

Nadiya Savchenko
Chroniques du Grand Jeu (The Great Game Chronicles)
Translated from French by Tom Winter, August 2, 2016

What haven't we heard of the hunger strike of the poor and heroic Savchenko, locked up in the jails of the ogre Putin. For our small infiltrated corporate media, she was the muse of the fight for freedom against the Russian brutes, and no matter that she was a killer of journalists, and too close to neo-Nazi groups.

Moscow shrewdly released her late in May (in exchange for two Russian instructors). Cleverly, because this free electron is totally uncontrollable and does not have a much higher opinion of the pro-Western oligarchs than the Russians themselves. The wily Lavrov warned: let it be a headache for Kiev. As for us, we wrote shortly before:
"And then there is the release of the raving mad, the neo-Nazi heroine of the Western media, the killer of journalists, Nadia Savchenko. In exchange, one must add, for two Russian prisoners that the Ukrainians accused of being agents of the GRU (not impossible). And there, the Kremlin may have played a very fine hand. Savchenko is a real psychopath and her return to Kiev is truly a poisoned chalice for the junta. Just landed at the airport, bare of foot and threatening of tone she declared her candidacy for president and spat on the "shirkers". Her aura and her support of the neo-Nazi militias may well take her further, to the great dismay of pro-Western oligarchs each one more rotten than the next."

House

SWAT team destroys man's home, offers no apology nor compensation

Leo Lech stands on a pile of wood
© Denver PostLeo Lech stands on a pile of wood in his neighbors yard that overlooks the back of his home. A fence was place around the perimeter of his home after the police incident ended on Thursday.
A manhunt for a shoplifting suspect turned disastrous for one homeowner who committed no crime other than living in house and being in the wrong place and the wrong time. The homeowner is now suing the city of Greenwood Village for compensation.

Leo Lech's home in Greenwood Village, Colorado had a market value of $450,000. That was before Robert Jonathan Seacat took shelter in the two-story home back in June 2015. The following actions from police left Lech's home with a lower market value, to say the least.

"They came and they destroyed the house. It was condemned, it had to be torn down, and they offered me $5,000," Lech told the Denver Post.

Lech is now suing the city to try to recoup some of his losses from the home he rented to his son.

Arrow Down

Trump Taj Mahal casino closing after years of losses, 11,000 lose their jobs

Trump casino
© Mike Segar / ReutersStriking workers from the Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, arrive to protest outside the offices of investor and casino owner Carl Icahn in midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York.
The Atlantic City casino, Trump Taj Mahal, opened by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will shut down after the US Labor Day holiday following the longest strike in the city's 38-year gaming era.

Donald Trump opened the casino in 1990, calling it "the eighth wonder of the world". It is currently owned by billionaire Carl Icahn.

In the closure announcement on Wednesday, the managing company blamed workers for blocking the casino's "path to profitability."

Comment: This is perfect example of how Trump takes care of people who depended on him for jobs.


Handcuffs

Man pulled over speeding state trooper, lets him off with a warning

Texas police officer pulled over for speeding
© The Battousai / YouTube
A man put a police officer under a citizen's arrest when he noticed the Texas state trooper speeding without flashing his emergency lights. It was all caught on the citizen's dashboard camera.

Phillip Turner claims that on Monday night, he noticed a Texas trooper flying down Interstate-35 sans emergency lights and going well over the speed limit. Turner is no stranger to interacting with the police: He is a videographer for the police watchdog group Photography is Not a Crime.

The Austin resident followed the trooper and flashed his brights at him, then both pulled over.

Passport

FATCA causing ever more Americans to renounce their citizenship

FATCA
A rapidly deteriorating political situation, accompanied by shrinking incomes and disastrous social conditions with racial problems to top it all off wouldn't go unnoticed in any state.

The inhabitants of such a country in the long-run would be appalled by the prospects of living in poverty for the rest of their lives, surviving on crumbs that fall from the oligarchs' table. Nobody wants to live without prospects or hope, therefore, people are often leaving such states in droves, renouncing their citizenship with no intention to ever return again.

And we are not talking here about those who fled the poorest countries of the world, even though a massive flow of such people has swept Europe over the last 12 months due to the massive number of refugees fleeing hunger, poverty and conflicts in the Middle East and Africa. In fact, we are talking about the so-called "stronghold of democracy," namely the United States.

The rapidly deteriorating living conditions of common Americans have been covered only by a handful of media sources, both in the mainstream and the alternative media. However, what the US media and politicians prefer to keep silent about is the massive exodus of American citizens from the United States.

Bomb

Feds investigate pipe bomb explosion on Maryland police vehicle

Pipe bomb attack
© Jonathan Ernst / Reuters
Federal agents joined local police to investigate a pipe bomb explosion that damaged a Maryland police vehicle. No one was injured but the explosion sent shrapnel into a nearby house and damaged the cruiser's windshield.

Residents began calling 911 early Wednesday morning complaining about what sounded like an explosion in Thurmont, a town in suburban Maryland.

"One of my officers went to his residence and parked his cruiser on the street as he usually does at about midnight and then around 12:30 one of the neighbors heard a big explosion," Thurmont police Chief Greg Eyler told The Frederick News-Post. "It looked like a metal pipe bomb was detonated on the hood and the windshield of the cruiser."

Comment: See also: Baltimore police serving arrest warrants kill black mother Korryn Gaines, 5yo also shot