Society's ChildS


Bizarro Earth

Fired for giving a kid a 66 cent cookie!

Josh Eidelson
Salon
Fri, 27 Sep 2013 20:08 UTC
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Organizers say the cookie was just an excuse to target a Subway worker who had helped lead fast food strikes

A worker in Seattle at the sandwich chain Subway says his boss told him he was being fired for giving a 66 cent cookie to a three year-old. Labor activists allege the "cookie excuse" was actually a cover for management's real motivation: forcing out an activist employee who helped bring the recent national wave of fast food strikes to Seattle.

"I did give the free cookie," the fired worker, Carlos Hernandez, told Salon. "But I know that's not the reason." Hernandez said he'd frequently given free cookies to children in the store before, and a manager had previously congratulated him on doing so because it represented "very good customer service." Hernandez said he usually paid the 66 cents for those cookies out of his own pocket, but that on the day in question he forgot to because there was a long line of customers in the store. "I love kids," said Hernandez. "I believe that kids are the most honest people in the world."

"They're definitely trying to set an example," said Jessica Hendricks, a former Subway worker who's now an activist with the labor-community coalition Good Jobs Seattle. "It wouldn't be the first time the company used scare tactics against us in order to make us do exactly what they wanted."
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Bulb

Goodwill drops theft charges against teen who gave customer discounts

Kami Dimitrova
ABC News
Fri, 27 Sep 2013 20:03 UTC
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© Collier County Sheriff's Office
A Goodwill store in Naples, Fla., reversed course today and decided to drop grand theft charges against a teen employee who had given discounts to poor customers.

The decision came four days after the store had fired Andrew Anderson, 19, and had him arrested for granting discounts that totaled $4,000. As recently as today, the store defended its actions saying the money could have been better used on Goodwill's other charitable projects.

Goodwill contacted ABC News this afternoon to say that the organization was dropping charges against Anderson.

"After completing our internal investigation we have determined that the individual's actions were not for personal gain, but rather for the benefit of others," the statement read.
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Cardboard Box

Japan's budget-conscious send dead into space, as funeral costs hits $27K

Cheryl K. Chumley
The Washington Times
Tue, 01 Oct 2013 13:24 UTC
Talk about a send-off. With burial costs averaging almost $30,000, Japan's budget-conscious and cash-strapped are turning to space as a funeral option for their loved ones.

For the comparatively low-cost of $1,990, bereaved families can send their cremated deceased to circle the earth in a capsule aboard a space craft for several months. Bloomberg reported they can follow the craft's journey via a mobile telephone app. And just like a meteorite, their loved ones' remains would disintegrate in fire during the return journey through the earth's atmosphere - "blazing as a shooting star," the company that hosts the ceremony promised.

Moreover, the family members are provided a "space-grade" aluminum capsule that contains a tiny gram of their loved one's remains as a keepsake, said Benjamin Joffe, a company spokesman.

The space craft will carry up to 400 capsules of cremated remains per trip - keeping the cost low for Japanese families struggling with funeral costs, Bloomberg reported.

Japan is one of the world's fastest-growing populations, with a large elderly segment. Japan Institute of Life Insurance says it costs on average $27,400 to rent a burial plot and purchase a tomb stone.
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Arrow Down

Alarm over children being sexually exploited in Northern Ireland care homes was raised seven years ago

Noel McAdam
Belfast Telegraph, UK
Mon, 30 Sep 2013 21:48 UTC
Edwin Poots
© Belfast Telegraph, UKHealth Minister Edwin Poots.
Reports sounding alarm bells over the sexual exploitation of children in care homes in Northern Ireland date back seven years, the Assembly has been told.

The chair of Stormont's health committee, Maeve McLaughlin, said it was "shocking" that reports in 2006 pre-dated the recent Barnardo's report which was itself published in 2011. Her comments came as Assembly parties united yesterday to voice concern over the recent revelations and backed an inquiry involving Health Minister Edwin Poots and Justice Minister David Ford into claims that 22 teenagers missing from children's homes were sexually exploited.

Referring to a Social Services Inspectorate report called 'Our Children And Young People: Our Shared Responsibility', she said: "Although the vulnerable nature of young people involved in sexual exploitation is shocking, it is just as shocking that reports date back to 2006 in which organisations and agencies were recommended and mandated to respond to the abuse of children.

"That, in anybody's terms, is wrong and has failed children."

The Sinn Fein MLA also welcomed what she called Mr Poots' change of heart moving from the appointment of an independent expert to reviewing practices to establishing an independent expert-led inquiry - but said a number of questions still need to be answered.

"An inquiry with proper independence, powers to investigate and accountability mechanisms is required (and) if departments have failed after they have been mandated to act, they will need to be accountable," she said.
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Chart Pie

Bad government policy has created the worst inequality on record ... and it's destroying our economy


Washington' s Blog
Thu, 26 Sep 2013 00:00 UTC
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It's Not an Accident ... It's Policy

America is experiencing unprecedented inequality. And a who's who of prominent economists (and investors) say that inequality is hurting the economy.

Defenders of the status quo pretend that this inequality is something outside of our control ... like a force of nature. They argue that it's due to technological innovation or something else outside of policy-makers' control.

In reality, inequality is rising due to bad policy.

Nobel prize winning economist Joe Stiglitz said this month:
Inequality is not inevitable. It is not ... like the weather, something that just happens to us. It is not the result of the laws of nature or the laws of economics. Rather, it is something that we create, by our policies, by what we do.

We created this inequality - chose it, really - with [bad] laws ...
Gaming the System to Pillage and Loot

The world's top economic leaders have said for years that inequality is spiraling out of control and needs to be reduced. Why is inequality soaring even though world economic leaders have talked for years about the urgent need to reduce it?

Because they're saying one thing but doing something very different. And both mainstream Democrats and mainstream Republicans are using smoke and mirrors to hide what's really going on.
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Stop

'Rambo of the Taiga' busted in Siberia after 4 months on the run


RIA Novosti
Mon, 30 Sep 2013 15:08 UTC
A former paratrooper jailed for butchering Central Asian migrant workers in a gruesome vendetta was detained Monday after spending four months on the run from a maximum security prison in eastern Siberia, officials said.

Though Vladimir Avdeyev was nicknamed "Rambo of the Taiga" by Russian media, the 38-year-old was overtaken too fast to offer any resistance, the Irkutsk Region branch of the Federal Prison Service said on its website.

Avdeyev said he spent the entire time in the forest, had no contact with other people and subsided on whatever nourishment he could forage in the wilderness, the region's police said. The Komsomolskaya Pravda daily said he might have been turned in to police by local foresters for whom he worked as a logger.
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Ambulance

Chicago train crash injures 48

Gabrielle Levy
UPI.com
Mon, 30 Sep 2013 10:40 UTC
Two trains of the Chicago Transit Authority collided at station in suburban Forest Park during Monday morning rush hour, sending 48 people to nearby hospitals. An outbound Blue Line train stopped at Harlem station in Forest Park was hit at 8 a.m. by an out-of-service train going the opposite direction on the same track.

Officials are looking into why the out-of-service train was on the track in the first place, said CTA spokeswoman Lambrini Lukidis. Forest Park Mayor Anthony Calderone said the 48 people injured were taken to 10 hospitals, but none was seriously hurt. Blue Line service was suspended between Forest Park and Kedzie Avenue, and service was later resumed to Forest Park. Harlem Station was still being bypassed, and shuttle busses were being provided.

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Airplane Paper

No survivors expected in wreckage of jet that hit hangar, sparked fire at Southern California airport


The Washington Post
Mon, 30 Sep 2013 10:18 UTC
Santa Monica plane crash
© KTLA
Investigators awaited the arrival of a crane Monday at a Southern California airport where a private jet crashed into a hangar after landing, but they did not expect to find any survivors on the flight from Idaho, officials said.

"This was an unsurvivable crash," Santa Monica Fire Department Capt. John Nevandro said Sunday night at a media briefing at Santa Monica Municipal Airport.

Because the hangar collapsed in flames around it and a crane would be required before the plane could be reached, investigators had been unable to determine how many people were aboard the twin-engine Cessna Citation designed to hold eight passengers and two crew members, officials said.

It had taken off from Hailey, Idaho, and landed in Santa Monica when it went off the right side of the runway at about 6:20 p.m. on Sunday and struck the hangar, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said.
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Vader

To protect and to serve... or to repel and control? Dallas County now has its very own bulletproof, "mine-protected" military SUV

Eric Nicholson
dallasobserver.com
Sun, 29 Sep 2013 12:00 UTC
Bulletproof Military SUV
© Unknown
Now that the war in Iraq is officially over and the one in Afghanistan winding down, the Department of Defense found itself facing a conundrum. It had just spent billions of dollars buying heavily armored personnel carriers designed to stand up to insurgent attacks only to find that it had run out of wars to use them in.

The initial plan was to shove the vehicles, called MRAPS (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected) into a warehouse and let them collect dust. That changed when someone decided that, having served so admirably overseas, it would be only just to bring the MRAPs stateside and deploy them in the domestic war on crime.

And so, for the past couple of months, news reports have been popping up announcing that places like Murfreesboro, Tennessee and Ohio State University have been receiving their very own military-grade armored SUVs.
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Bad Guys

Kenya siege: Eight held in connection with attack on shopping centre

Afua Hirsch
Guardian
Fri, 27 Sep 2013 22:05 UTC
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© REX/Mark St George/FaceboookSamantha Lewthwaite in a family photo with her husband, Germaine Lindsay, the 7/7 bomber.
Kenyan police hold suspects under counter-terrorism legislation, which allows detention for long periods without charge

Kenyan police have arrested eight people in connection with the attack on the Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi in which at least 67 people died. Three others have been released after questioning, said the interior minister, Joseph Ole Lenku.

"Police are holding eight suspects as they seek to unmask the faces behind the terror attack," he said. All eight are being held under counter-terrorism legislation, which allows detention for long periods without charge.

The government also said that an international arrest warrant issued on Thursday for the Briton Samantha Lewthwaite, while not linked directly to the Westgate attack, was part of the ongoing security operation. "In view of the security situation, the level of Interpol alertness has been raised in respect to known global terrorists including the British woman Samantha Lewthwaite," a statement said.

Ole Lenku said investigators trying to identify the attackers were searching through the rubble of the mall where three floors collapsed after a series of blasts and a huge blaze. He said they were making good progress.
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