Society's ChildS


Book 2

18 years of school and I am now an over-educated nanny! Best-educated generation in U.S. history also the most plagued by poverty and unemployment

college education
© Los Angeles TimesToday's college students are inheriting a world far scarier than any generation before them.
You've probably heard about the array of problems facing millennials as we graduate and attempt to enter the job market. Well, what you've been hearing is true.

Emily, would you please put a bowl of water on the floor so I can drink like a dog?"

It was a sweet and funny request, and I was happy to do it. But it was also a reminder, once again, that I work for a 4-year-old.

You've probably heard about the vast array of problems facing my generation as we graduate and attempt to enter the job market. As a 24-year-old recent college grad, I can tell you that what you've been hearing is true.

I graduated last May with unpaid internships waiting for me in Mexico, Spain and Nicaragua. Even more exciting, my research proposal had been accepted, and I was all set to go to Namibia for three months of studying baby baboons. I had a passable GPA, a kick-ass resume and a nagging worry that all was for naught.

"To study the social and behavioral sciences is a labor of love," my professor told our graduating class, "because you aren't in it for the money!"

And sure enough, after an incredibly frustrating and depressing series of failed attempts to find funding for my research projects, watching my would-be departure dates slip by one at a time, I finally took a job as a nanny.

Dollars

Stealth inflation: Dollar devaluation at the grocery store

grocery cart
There are certain facts that are difficult to face in the world. One is that the currency you have spent you life working for isn't worth what you thought it was. In reality, it may not even be worth the paper that it's printed on. The United States paper currency has been very slowly devalued for over a century now. This was accelerated into high gear on August 15, 1971 when Nixon took the United States off the gold standard. By removing the gold backing (value) from the United States currency, it opened the door to the unfettered money printing that we have today. Many analyst over the years have seen the potential of a currency crisis and put their reputation on the line by bringing this information to the public. I will not attempt to parrot their thorough, highly-researched findings and predictions here.

The Dollar Is A Strong Fear Monger

One of the issues of debate among the public, informed and uninformed, is the fact that even though all the pieces are in place for a rapid devaluation, there seems to be a lack of perpetual hard evidence on main street. Specters of gyrating gas and commodity prices ebb and flow like a intensive care patient's heart rate monitor. Yet life seems to continue without the anticipated decline and flat line. However, in the age of information, things are done differently. Computer algorithms and Utah's NSA supercomputers reign over information, and strategic decisions are made using real-time data. Decisions can be precise, well hidden, and highly methodical given such technological advantages.

Flashlight

British police uncover another 'complex' paedophile ring, this time involving 'more than 500 victims'

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© Paul Kingston/NNPNeville Husband in 2003 when he was jailed for historical sexual abuse as a prison officer at Medomsley detention centre in County Durham.
Head of major inquiry into Medomsley detention centre in County Durham shocked by scale of historical sexual abuse

Police investigating sexual abuse at a Durham detention centre say they believe they have uncovered an organised paedophile ring operating in the 1970s and 80s with more than 500 potential victims.

The head of a 70-strong major inquiry into historical abuse at the Medomsley detention centre, near Consett, told the Guardian the inquiry was triggered by mounting evidence about isolated individuals. However, they were now investigating a complex paedophile ring, with many more victims than previously thought.

D Supt Paul Goundry, senior investigating officer, said: "We always knew this would be a major inquiry but the scale of it, and the sheer number of victims who have come forward, has been a shock."

He said that as well as sexual abuse they had evidence of a "brutal regime where violence was both extreme and routine". He suggested that prosecutions would be pursued for the offences, some of which occurred more than 40 years ago.

Nearly 100 men who had come forward were already receiving therapy via a local sexual assault referral centre and others had sought support from the children's charity NSPCC.

Question

Malaysia says there's sealed evidence on MH370 that cannot be made public

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© ReutersSteven Wang, a family member of a passenger onboard Malaysia Airlines MH370, is surrounded by the media outside Lido Hotel in Beijing March 26, 2014
A Malaysian team have told relatives of Chinese passengers on board the missing Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370 that there was sealed evidence that cannot be made public, as they came under fire from the angry relatives at a briefing on Wednesday.

The sealed evidence included air traffic control radio transcript, radar data and airport security recordings.

The briefing at the Metropark Lido Hotel in Beijing focused on UK satellite analysis which led Malaysia to conclude that flight MH370 ended in south Indian Ocean, off Perth.

The Chinese relatives were told that a five-member high-level team from Malaysia plans to brief them once every five days. The team include MAS pilot Lim Jit Koon and senior civil aviation official Ahmad Nizar Zolfakar.

During the question-and-answer session, a relative said: "Thanks for demonstrating your ability to read every word out of the powerpoint slides."

Beer

Three Secret Service agents sent home from Holland for being drunk

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© APApril 14, 2012: U.S. secret service agents walk around the Convention Center in Cartagena, Colombia, prior to the Summit of the Americas.
Three Secret Service agents on President Obama's detail were sent home from the Netherlands after apparently spending a night out drinking in Amsterdam ahead of the president's arrival Monday.

Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan told Fox News that the agents had been sent home "for disciplinary reasons" and had been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation.

Fox News is told top officials are furious this happened in the wake of the 2012 prostitution scandal in Colombia. In the latest incident, Fox News is told one agent was so intoxicated he couldn't get his key to work to enter his hotel room -- so he passed out on the floor in the hallway.

The Washington Post reported that the three agents, all members of the Secret Service Agency's Counter Assault Team (CAT), went out in the Dutch capital Saturday night. Staff at their hotel alerted the U.S. Embassy after finding one of the agents passed out in a hallway Sunday morning.

Radar

Private satellite company Inmarsat used radar pings and mathematical model to determine MH370 theoretically crashed in southern Indian Ocean

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Solution: Inmarsat's scientists analysed the faint pings from MH370 using a technique based on the Doppler effect, which describes how a wave changes frequency relative to the movement of an observer, in this case the satellite. The changes in ping times indicated that the plane was moving south.
A private British satellite company used a wave phenomenon discovered in the nineteenth century to analyse the seven pings its satellite picked up from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 and determine its tragic final destination.

The new findings led Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak to conclude that the Boeing 777, which disappeared more than two weeks ago, crashed thousands of miles away in the southern Indian Ocean, killing everyone on board.

Investigators working on the disappearance of the plane believe that it may have been flown on a suicide mission.

Radar pings from MH370, automatically transmitted every hour from the aircraft after the rest of its communications systems had stopped, indicated it continued flying for hours after it disappeared from its flight path from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

People

Louisiana parish bans saggy pants - About time somebody did!

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© Joe Raedle Getty Images
The Jefferson Davis Parish Police Jury has unanimously passed an ordinance making it illegal for any person to appear in a public place wearing pants below the waist and exposing the skin or undergarments.

Police Juror Steve Eastman initially asked the panel to consider banning saggy pants at the parish courthouse in January in response to courthouse employees' complaints about having to see people's underwear and body parts.

Juror Bryon Buller took the suggestion a step further and asked the panel to consider making it illegal for anyone to show their undergarments in public to limit indecent and lewd behavior.

"The guards that check people going into the courthouse complained about people coming into the courthouse dressed like that," Eastman said.

Dollars

Crime does pay: Italian mafia family makes more money than McDonald's and Deutsche Bank combined, report claims

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One of Italy's most notorious mafia groups made more money last year than McDonald's and Deutsche Bank put together, a study has claimed.

A report by the Demoskopika research institute in Rome has said that the annual turnover of the 'Ndrangheta organised crime syndicate was around €53bn - the equivalent to about 2.5% of Italy's GDP.

The size of the profits, based on the mafia's traditional money-spinners including drug dealing, illegal rubbish disposal, extortion, embezzlement, arms sales, prostitution and people-smuggling, make the crime family bigger than numerous global conglomerates.

The claims also highlight concerns that mafia groups' power and influence is rising unchecked - with some warning the Mob is increasingly spreading its tendrils overseas. The 'Ndrangheta is thought to have around 60,000 people worldwide involved in its activities, the report said.

Nuke

Fukushima cleanup suspended after subcontracted worker's death

TEPCO pit under a storage house
© AFPThis handout picture taken by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) on March 28, 2014 shows a pit under a storage house where a worker was burried in earth and rubble while digging a hole at the site at TEPCO's Fukushima dai-ichi nuclear plant in Okuma in Fukushima prefecture.
The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, TEPCO, suspended the cleanup at the facility after one of the workers died while digging a ditch Friday.

A man in his fifties was buried under gravel as he was digging near the nuclear plant's storage area, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.

The worker was dug out and rushed to hospital, but failed to regain consciousness and was pronounced dead three hours after the incident.

"In the three years since the disaster, we had not had any worker deaths caused by work [inside the plant]. The fact that such a serious accident has occurred is deeply regrettable," s
aid Masayuki Ono, a spokesperson for TEPCO in Tokyo, Reuters reported.

All cleanup operations at the plant have been suspended for an immediate safety inspection, Kyodo News reports.

Like most of the laborers at the disaster-hit nuclear plant, the worker was hired by TEPCO through a subcontractor.

Arrow Down

'Unemployed EU citizens can be expelled'

Unemployed
© The Local, Germany
Germany has raised the prospect of expelling EU citizens who fail to find work and have no job prospects in the country.

A draft report from a government panel, which was released on Wednesday, said that even if they were EU citizens, unemployed foreigners did not have a right to stay under EU law after three months if their job search had no chance of success.

But it added that receiving benefits alone was not reason enough to expel someone.

In discussing the limitations on residency, the draft proposal points to an EU court ruling which said six months was an appropriate period to reassess whether someone should be allowed to stay.

It also stressed that member states are allowed to limit the time that citizens from other EU countries can look for work.

The panel was formed by Chancellor Angela Merkel in January this year amid fears that EU citizens from poorer countries such as Romania and Bulgaria would flock to Germany to claim benefits.