Society's ChildS


Alarm Clock

Is nature saying wake up and smell the corpses? America's pungent corpse flowers are all mysteriously blooming at once

corpse flower
© Mike Ball/Flickr
Botanists across the US are trying to figure out why so many titan arums - better known as corpse flowers - are blooming simultaneously around the country this year.

This is super weird, because there have only been 157 recorded blooms ever between 1889 and 2008. But this year in the US alone, at least seven flowers have bloomed.

Before we dive headfirst into this foul-smelling mystery, what's a corpse flower, and why are botanists so into them?

The scientific name for corpse flowers is Amorphophallus titanium, which literally means "giant misshapen penis" in Latin (no, really).

They not only produce one of the biggest flowering structures in the world, sometimes reaching heights of over 1.8 metres (6 feet), their scent happens to mimic the distinct stench of decomposing flesh, with a bit of old fish mixed in.

Native to parts of western Sumatra, these gigantic flowers bloom about once every six years, giving everyone in their vicinity a good whiff of their natural perfume.

Comment: What's also interesting about the timing is 4 of the 7 flowers bloomed within days of Killary's nomination as the Democratic party's presidential candidate. The stench of death is in the air, literally and figuratively.


TV

CNN president says 'Vice, Buzzfeed not legitimate news organizations' but uses them as sources

Vice and BuzzFeed graphic
© Reuters / Wikipedia
CNN President Jeff Zucker completely dissed Vice and Buzzfeed in a feature profile for Variety magazine, calling the rival media outlets "native advertising shops" and saying CNN "crushes" them.

Zucker went on to say that the two aren't worthy of being called journalistic outlets.

"I don't think Vice and BuzzFeed are legitimate news organizations," Zucker said, reportedly cracking a "mischievous" smile, as reported by Variety on Tuesday.

"They are native advertising shops. We crush both of them. They are not even in our same class," he added.

That said, CNN has been using Vice and Buzzfeed quite a lot in their broadcasts, and doesn't hesitate to refer to them as sources.

Heart - Black

Family of drowned SEAL trainee feels Navy lied to them

Navy SEAL
© Video News / YouTube
James Derek Lovelace's family was told he died in an accident in his first week of Navy SEAL training. However, a video which shows an instructor ignoring Lovelace struggling during drills and being dunked underwater have the family feeling "misled."

Lynsi Price, Lovelace's sister, told the Virginian-Pilot that when she learned her brother died in May, she did not receive much in terms of answers.

"We were told and made to believe that this was a tragic accident. ... we trusted these men," she said.

Airplane

Emirates passenger jet crash-lands in Dubai, engulfed in flames

Emirates jet plane crash
© jamesdxb / Instagram
An Emirates plane carrying 300 people caught fire on a runway at Dubai International Airport after crash-landing. All departures have been suspended, and arrivals have been diverted to other airports.

Emirates said flight EK521 was involved in an "accident" that occurred at 12:45pm local time (08:45 GMT) on Tuesday.

Photos on social media showed smoke billowing from the aircraft, which crash-landed on arrival from Thiruvananthapuram, India.

The fire has since been completely extinguished, according to the Dubai government's press office.

Emirates has also confirmed that "all passengers and crew are accounted for and safe."

Target

Colombia destroys over 100 cocaine labs in 5 days

Colombia drug raids
© John Vizcaino / Reuters
Colombia's anti-narcotics police have raided and destroyed 104 cocaine laboratories across the country's southeastern jungle region in what the authorities called a "structural blow" to the cocaine production and trafficking business.

The special operation, executed over a period of five days, saw 104 labs, which had been producing some 100 tons of narcotics annually, go up in flames. The production facilities, authorities say, belonged to Los Urabenos, also known as Clan Usuga, a drug trafficking neo-paramilitary group that is believed to have a close connection to the notorious FARC rebels.

"This is a structural blow to the finances of drug trafficking," anti-narcotics police director General Jose Angel Mendoza told Reuters in the jungles of Guaviare province.

Stormtrooper

Police going door-to-door forcing black residents to prove they are really legally allowed to vote

police_door to door
© Unknown
Hancock County, Georgia Seemed to forget that this is 2016, and not the Jim Crow south anymore. More than 180 black residents of Hancock County were visited by sheriff deputies, with paperwork in hand, to demand that residents either appear in person to prove they have the right to vote or be purged from the rolls.
Last week, for instance, a U.S. appeals court struck down a North Carolina voter ID law that it said was specifically designed to lower turnout among black voters. And now the New York Times is reporting that a town in Georgia is using its police department to challenge the rights of its black residents to vote.

The 180 black residents make up roughly one fifth of Sparta's total registered voters, the Times notes.

Sheeple

13-year-old strip searched then thrown in jail for burping in class

13-Year-Old Strip Searched Then Thrown in Jail for Burping in Class
13-Year-Old Strip Searched Then Thrown in Jail for Burping in Class
In America, burping in class is a serious crime. Need proof? Just look at the story of this 13-year-old from Albuquerque, New Mexico's Cleveland Middle School.

According to George Washington University law professor, Jonathan Turley, the boy was acting like a class clown, doing what many class clowns do: disrupting class. Because of his loud burps, his teacher, Margaret Mines-Hornbeck, reported the boy to Officer Arthur Acosta. The seventh grader was then taken to an administrative office after being searched for drugs, as the assistant principal accused the 13-year-old of participating in a marijuana transaction.

During the search, the boy was asked to remove his jeans and shoes, then flip the waistband of the shorts he had been wearing underneath. This was all in vain considering no drugs were found.

After the traumatizing experience, the boy was suspended for the remainder of the year, all because he burped too loud. But sure enough, that wasn't the end of it.

Instead of letting this matter go after such a harsh punishment, Cleveland Middle School decided to charge him criminally using a provision that says "[n]o person shall willfully interfere with the educational process of any public or private school by committing, threatening to commit or inciting others to commit any act which would disrupt, impair, interfere with or obstruct the lawful mission, processes, procedures or functions of a public or private school."

Making matters even worse, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit decided to uphold the Albuquerque school officials' action by claiming police and school leadership were justified in sending the 13-year-old to juvenile jail.

Bad Guys

25 Nazi Waffen-SS veterans found living freely in Britain 70 years after WW2

nazis hitler ww2
© Wikipedia
Veterans of Nazi Germany's infamous Waffen-SS have been discovered living in Britain 70 years after the end of WWII. At least 25 ex-soldiers of the SS Galizien division, made up of ethnic Ukrainians from the Galicia region of Ukraine, have been found living in the UK since the end of the war.

Some of the former soldiers, who served in a crack paramilitary force, were once listed as alleged war criminals by the Soviet Union. However, the Foreign Office granted 8,000 of them permission to reside in the UK. Today, the last surviving veterans are spread across the country.

Some have admitted to suppressing rebellions and to handing over communists to the German police.

Two survivors, Myron Tabora, 90, and Ostap Kykawec, 92, were both listed as suspected war criminals by the USSR in 1948. SS personnel cards for the pair can still be found in archives. Both were lieutenants in the SS Galizien and were of interest to famous Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal.

Comment: Project Paperclip was just the tip of the iceberg. Nazis were recruited, protected, and coddled by the victors of WWII in their own interests. Nuremberg was a parade, but in the background, the Nazis just put on new hats after the war.


Arrow Down

"Freedom" and "democracy" in the U.S.: Report shows 91% of Americans didn't want Clinton or Trump

illusion of choice
A recent report published by The New York Times has pointed out that an overwhelming majority of Americans, 91% of them in fact, did not support or vote for Clinton or Trump in the recent primary elections.

The figures were calculated from statistics that were gathered by the U.S. Census Bureau, Federal Election Commission, Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, The Sentencing Project, and the Pew Research Center.

The figures illustrate that scores of people living in America are not allowed to vote, they are considered ineligible due to their age, prior arrests, or incomplete citizenship applications.

In total, there are 103 million people who are essentially banned from voting, so this demographic would technically fall into the category of people who did not support Trump or Clinton in the primaries, although their actual preference can't be determined.

Furthermore, there is an increasingly significant portion of the US population that is deciding not to vote on principle, because they don't feel particularly enthusiastic about any of the candidates.

Arrow Up

Thailand's first female tourism minister seeks crackdown on rampant sex industry

Thailand crackdown sex industry
© AFPKobkarn Wattanavrangkul wants rich holiday-makers to flock to Thailand for its beauty and luxury and not its seedy red light districts
Thailand's sex industry is under fire after the country's first female tourism minister vowed to shut down the country's many brothels and go-go bars. Kobkarn Wattanavrangkul wants future holidaymakers to flock to Thailand for its beauty and beaches and not its seedy red light districts and world-famous ladyboys.

But those working in the industry say any clampdown would devastate the local economy and leave thousands out of work. Thailand is predominantly Buddhist country and with traditional values, but it is also home to one of the world's most infamous sex industries. Every year, hordes of tourists flock to the bright lights of go-go bars and massage parlours in Bangkok and other tourist towns.

But Tourism Minister Kobkarn Wattanavrangkul had tried to play down the role of the sex industry in drawing visitors. "Tourists don't come to Thailand for such a thing," Kobkarn said. "They come here for our beautiful culture. We want Thailand to be about quality tourism. We want the sex industry gone."

Prostitution is actually illegal in Thailand but the law is almost invariably ignored - mainly because of police corruption. Those trying to promote the welfare of sex workers say Kobkarn's goal is unrealistic. The military government is in denial about the proliferation of prostitution and its contribution to the economy and tourism, said Panomporn Utaisri of NightLight, a Christian non-profit group that helps women in the sex trade to find alternative work.