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New York's finest hotels are suffering from bed bug infestations

Darren Boyle
Daily Mail
Tue, 09 Feb 2016 20:28 UTC
bed bugs
Tourists visiting some of New York's most prestigious hotels have reported being bitten by bed bugs despite their five star surroundings.

Guests at the Waldorf Astoria and Marriott Marquis hotel are among those to have been affected by the infestation. Reports of bed bugs in the city's hotels have jumped by 44 per cent over the past year.

According to the Bed Bug Registry, which lists reports of alleged incidents, there are almost 6,000 incidents in their databases relating to New York. The registry said that reports of infestations had increased by more than 44 per cent between 2014 and 2015.

According to the reports, it is not only cheap motels who rent rooms by the hour who are affected by the uninvited guests.

One couple who were staying at the Astor on the Park hotel overlooking Central Park posted a video on YouTube of the mattress of their $400-a-night room.

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Ambulance

Cop speeding down road with no siren or lights activated hits and kills woman


RT
Thu, 11 Feb 2016 19:24 UTC
speeding cop hit woman
© MLive.com Staff / YouTube
The prosecutor's office in Berrien County, Michigan, has released a highly dramatic dashcam video from a police cruiser that hit a female pedestrian crossing the street. The police car was speeding, and had neither lights nor siren activated, witnesses said.

"I need an emergency unit to my location. I think I hit a person," Benton Township patrol officer Eugene Anderson informs radio dispatchers on the video just moments after the sound of smashing glass and a loud bang is heard as his police cruiser hits a woman.

Based on a squad car video, witness reports and a physical investigation of the scene, Anderson, who was responding to a domestic violence call, was traveling at 64 mph in a 35 mph zone when his car struck the woman, the Herald Palladium reported.

Kimberly Bedford, 48, who was crossing the road at 9 p.m. Sunday, died at the scene. The incident took place in September.

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Alarm Clock

America it's time to confront our toxic legacy

Robert C. Koehler
Common Dreams
Thu, 11 Feb 2016 18:46 UTC
Toxic legacy
© Wikimedia Commons / Archive
U.S. Army Huey helicopter spraying Agent Orange over Vietnamese agricultural land.
Maybe if we declared "war" on poison water, we'd find a way to invest money in its "defeat."

David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, writing at Tom Dispatch this week about what they called "The United States of Flint," make this point:
"The price tag for replacing the lead pipes that contaminated its drinking water, thanks to the corrosive toxins found in the Flint River, is now estimated at up to $1.5 billion. No one knows where that money will come from or when it will arrive. In the meantime, the cost to the children of Flint has been and will be incalculable."
I sit with these words: "No one knows where the money will come from."

In the president's latest budget proposal, $7.5 billion is earmarked to "fight ISIS," an absurd non-threat to the nation's survival, but no matter. We're engaged in endless war with whoever the latest enemy happens to be and this war is endlessly funded, no questions asked. Mostly we're engaged in war preparation, of course (and the containment of the consequences of past wars — at least the ones that can't be ignored). As usual, the Pentagon and other war-engaged institutions will consume well over half the nation's discretionary spending, including a $59 billion "slush fund that permits the Pentagon to break through Congress' legislated budget caps," according to the National Priorities Project.
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Bullseye

UK police crack down on homeless beggars using millions in taxpayer money

Michaela Whitton
The Anti Media
Thu, 11 Feb 2016 18:22 UTC
homeless
Police forces throughout the U.K. are being accused of needlessly criminalising rough sleepers by using plain-clothes officers to catch people begging on the streets. In 2015, Sussex Police arrested more than 60 people in the coastal city of Brighton, while arrests for begging in Birmingham jumped by more than two-thirds as part of a mass crackdown on those desperate for small change. Critics have questioned the ridiculous system that costs taxpayers thousands and sees people who have nothing being fined hundreds of pounds.

The vintage legislation used to clamp down on beggars is Section 3 of the Vagrancy Act 1824 that states that it is an offence to beg in a public place. This archaic law was introduced nine years after the Battle of Waterloo to deal with jobless soldiers discharged following the Napoleonic War, and states:
"Every petty chapman or pedlar wandering abroad, and trading without being duly licensed, or otherwise authorized by law; everycommon prostitute wandering in the public streets or public highways, or in any place of public resort, and behaving in a riotous or indecent manner; and every person wandering abroad, or placing himself or herself in any public place, street, highway, court, or passage, to beg or gather alms, or causing or procuring or encouraging any child or children so to do; shall be deemed an idle and disorderly person."
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Heart - Black

City of Cleveland adds insult to homicide by billing family of Tamir Rice for ambulance ride


RT
Thu, 11 Feb 2016 18:17 UTC
Tamir Rice
© Family Photo via Richardson & Kucharski co. LPA / AFP
Tamir Rice
The family of an African-American boy killed by police now has an insult to add to their injury: the city is billing them for their son's ambulance ride. Tamir Rice was shot in a playground by cops who mistook his toy gun for a real one.

Rice was only 12 years old when he was shot and killed by Cleveland, Ohio police officers, in November 2014. Officers responded to a call that he was pointing a gun at people at a playground outside a recreation center, and opened fire within seconds of arriving on the scene. The investigation showed they were never told the crucial details: that Rice was a child, and that the gun was probably a toy.

Officers were accused of not immediately providing aid to Rice. He died in a hospital a day later.

On Wednesday, nearly 15 months after the boy's death, the city filed a claim against Rice's family in Cuyahoga County Probate Court. The claim says that that Tamir's estate is overdue on a $500 payment for the boy's "last dying expense." The invoice requests $450 for "ambulance advance life support" and $50 for mileage.
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Quenelle

Activist called to court for Flint water crisis Facebook post; 'threatening behavior' cited

Garret Ellison
MLive
Sat, 06 Feb 2016 17:48 UTC
facebook protest arrest
A Kalamazoo man sentenced to probation for crawling into an Enbridge pipeline as an act of civil disobedience will face a judge this month after a social media post critical of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder's handling of the Flint water crisis resulted in an alleged violation.

Christopher G. Wahmhoff, 37, will face Judge John Hallacy in Calhoun County Circuit Court on Feb. 22 after a comment on Facebook was cited as "threatening behavior" by his probation officer in a show cause affidavit.

Two years ago, Wahmhoff was found guilty of felony resisting police and misdemeanor trespassing after he slid on a skateboard into an Enbridge Inc. replacement pipeline under construction near Marshall on June 24, 2013 and stayed there 10 hours in protest of the company's expansion of a recently ruptured oil pipeline.

Comment: This can hardly be considered a threat but this reaction from law enforcement is to be expected when living in a fascist state.

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Eye 1

Top official openly admits the 'internet of things' will be used to spy on the public

Michael Krieger
Liberty Blitzkrieg
Wed, 10 Feb 2016 17:31 UTC
bathroom spy
You can't say you weren't warned. The writing on the wall that "smart devices" would prove to be manna from heaven for spy agencies and hackers around the word has been obvious for a very long time.

A year ago, I published two articles on this topic. The first highlighted the revelation that Samsung's Smart TV can and will listen to your conversations, and will share the details with a third party. The second had to do with the release of a high-tech Barbie that will listen to your child, record its words, send them over the internet for processing. If you missed these posts the first time around, I suggest you get up to speed:

A Very Slippery Slope - Yes, Your Samsung Smart TV Can Listen to Your Private Conversations

Big Barbie is Watching You - Meet the WiFi Connected Barbie Doll that Talks to Your Children and Records Them
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Red Flag

Modern day slavery: Government investigation confirms children are trafficked in the U.S.

Brian Shilhavy
Health Impact News
Wed, 10 Feb 2016 16:37 UTC
human trafficking
The trafficking of children and sexual slavery world-wide is a global epidemic. Most of the public's image of such horrific examples of modern-day slavery evoke images of poorer countries where this problem is well-documented.

However, a new government investigation confirms that the problem of trafficking children and modern-day child slavery is a very real problem right here within our own borders.

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) recently published a six-month investigation looking at 125,000 unaccompanied minors who have crossed the U.S. borders into the United States since 2011, reportedly fleeing violence and unrest in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Comment: SOTT Radio - The Truth Perspective Tammi Stefano - The Truth About Child Protective Services
On the second part of the show, the Truth Perspective interviewed Tammi Stefano, Executive Director of The National Safe Child Coalition (NSCC). Tammi has spent over two decades on frontlines fighting for child safety and serves on numerous committees aimed at protecting children from their abusers, who are often those who should be protecting them in the first place. We discussed the darker side of child protective services, the deep problems of corruption when it comes to children at risk, and what can be done.


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Family

One in a million chance: Manchester mom gives birth to black and white twins


Sputnnik
Thu, 11 Feb 2016 14:16 UTC
twin girls with different skin tones
© Hannah Yarker
A British woman has given birth to twin girls with different skin tones, an occurrence with odds of one in a million.

Hanna Yarker, from Sale, Greater Manchester, started noticing the difference between the sisters some time after they were born.

It dawned on her that while Anaya had taken after Yarker's fair skin and light eyes, Myla's complexion resembled her darker-skinned father Kyle Armstrong, who is mixed-race.
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Attention

Sickening: Syrian opposition group reportedly claims missile attack on Assad's mother's funeral

Maayan Groisman
The Jerusalem Post
Thu, 11 Feb 2016 13:54 UTC
Target on Assad
Syrian president survived alleged assassination attempt, but 4 of his convoy members were killed in the attack, when Grad missiles launched by the opposition faction hit the convoy.

Ahrar al-Sham, a central opposition group in Syria, has claimed responsibility for launching missiles against the convoy of Syrian President Bashar Assad during the funeral for his mother in al-Qardaha on Monday, Syrian media reported on Wednesday.

Assad survived the alleged assassination attempt, but four of his convoy members were killed in the Grad missile attack.

Comment: Nothing to see here, folks. Just some moderate rebels moderately trying to assassinate Syria's president (who was on his way to mourn the death of his mother), and moderately killing four random people in his convoy in the process.

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