Society's ChildS


People 2

Forget sleep walking - now people are texting in the night: Rise in number of people who use their phone while asleep

  • A U.S. sleep expert has said an increasing number of people have started to use their phone and send text messages while they are asleep
  • Sleep texters often have no recollection of sending the messages when they wake up the next morning
  • Dr Werber warned the practice prevents people from getting enough deep sleep that helps the brain perform higher functions
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Lots of people send texts just before they go to sleep, but a U.S. sleep expert has said an increasing number of people have started to use their phone and send messages while they are asleep. Dr Werber warned the practice prevents people from getting enough deep sleep that helps the brain perform higher functions
Many people rely on their smartphone throughout the day to surf the web, check their email and send messages to friends. But what about during the night?

A sleep expert has said an increasing number of people have started to use their phone and send text messages while they are asleep and often don't remember writing them.

Dr Josh Werber warned sleep texting could have embarrassing consequences as well as leading to health problems as people are not getting enough quality sleep.

Dollars

France: Income tax bills will rise for many

Money
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Income tax bills will be dropping into letterboxes in the next few days and they will contain an unpleasant surprise for millions of taxpayers.

The avis d'impôt sur le revenu for 2012 will see an increase for many, due to the freezing of inflation-linked income limits, and families could also see a rise in tax due to changes in the quotient familial.

For 50,000 higher earners, a new tax band for those earning more than €150,000 per "part" will also mean a rise in tax.

Some observers say that 15 million people will face rises, but Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault says it will be much less.

Attention

Self-employed, small businesses under attack in France

Business Minister Sylvia Pinel
© Ygor75/Wikimedia CommonsBusiness Minister Sylvia Pinel
A new draft law will force auto-entrepreneurs to leave the popular simplified business regime if they earn more than the minimum wage two years running.

Business Minister Sylvia Pinel aims to please the artisan lobby with her proposals, which are expected to drop the upper limit for the regime from €32,600 for services to €19,000 and from €81,500 to €47,500 for sales businesses. Bodies representing artisans, especially in the building trades, have long claimed that auto-entrepreneurs cause "unfair competition".

While these precise figures - mentioned by the minister in June - have been left out of the draft law, which has now been officially presented to the cabinet, Ms Pinel said the levels will correspond to the "Smic" minimum wage (on which the above figures were based).
The final figures will be fixed later by decree after a parliamentary working group, headed by Socialist Laurent Grandguillaume, holds further discussions on the regime, starting this month.

Document

Report on France: School teaches sexism

school
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A report by school inspectors has highlighted that schools continue to enforce stereotypes and inequality between the sexes.

The report by the l'inspection générale de l'éducation nationale highlights attitudes such as:

- Choosing girls to look after the class while the teacher is briefly absent because they are more responsible.

- Giving preferential treatment to boys because they are supposed to struggle more at school

- Marking boys in terms of cognitive ability, while marking girls on the basis of positive attitude.

Over half of girls pass through to terminale (ages 17+), without repeating a year, compared to 40% of boys. However girls are much less likely to pursue sciences, compared to their counterparts in Asia and the Middle East.

Question

Three mysterious explosions so far in August 20 2013: New Jersey, Louisiana and Oklahoma

And they are talking about accidents?!?

Mysterious Explosion at New Jersey Navy station explosion - 8 hurt (ABC Local)

MIDDLETOWN (WABC) - At least eight sailors were injured after an explosion and fire at the Naval Weapons Station Earle in Middletown, New Jersey, Tuesday morning.


Naval officials confirm that some kind of explosion happened during maintenance work on a 35-foot utility vessel in one of the buildings along the waterfront around 9 a.m.

Comment: Earth is always moving!

The question is, what new factors have entered the solar system to cause all this mayhem at U.S. industrial factories and power plants?


Arrow Down

50,000 abandoned dogs roaming streets of Detroit in packs

Stray Dogs
© Associated PressThousands of stray dogs, including the one in this image, are reportedly roaming the streets of Detroit.
Packs of wild, abandoned dogs are roaming the streets of Detroit, leaving city officials overwhelmed at the prospect of handing an issue that raises both animal rights and safety concerns.

"It was almost post-apocalyptic, where there are no businesses, nothing except people in houses and dogs running around," the Humane Society of the United States director Amanda Arrington told Bloomberg News about a recent visit to Detroit. "The suffering of animals goes hand in hand with the suffering of people."

Bloomberg reports that packs of the dogs have been spotted in groups as large as 20. In one case, Detroit police officer Lapez Moore said the city's animal-control unit recently found several of the dogs inside a flooded basement where thieves had torn out the building's water pipes.

"The dogs were having a pool party," Moore said. "We went in and fished them out."

But the reality of the situation is more dire than an impromptu animal pool party. Local shelters say they are forced to euthanize about 70 percent of the dogs that are brought it, and their facilities are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of abandoned and stray animals.

Megaphone

50 years after 'I have a dream' the struggle continues


It's been 50 years since iconic civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream Speech." Although a lot of progress has been made, the struggle continues. Linda So reports.

Comment: To watch recordings of Martin Luther King's speeches and understand who killed him and why, watch the unique historical documentary Evidence of Revision.


Heart - Black

Bamboozled! Life-saving transplant denied, health insurance cancelled over 26-cent shortfall

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© Alex Remnick/The Star-LedgerSandy Marujo's cousin Sergio Branco has leukemia and needs a bone marrow transplant. The family waged a battle to have Branco's COBRA insurance reinstated. It was cancelled because of a 26-cent shortfall on an insurance payment.
Twenty-six cents almost cost Sergio Branco his life.

Twenty-six cents.

Most of us could scrape that up from under our couch cushions or on the floor of a car.

Sergio Branco has 26 cents, too. The question was whether or not he would be permitted to pay it.

Branco, a 33-year-old father of three, was a truck driver for Russell Reid, a Keasbey-based waste-management company.

"In his spare time, he would play with his children, liked having barbecues and people over for gatherings," his cousin Sandy Marujo said. "He is a big kid at heart."

In January, Branco wasn't himself. He didn't feel right.

"He complained about bone pains and being extremely fatigued," Marujo said. "He decided to go to the emergency room."

The Edison man underwent several tests, which indicated he had a very weak immune system. It could be leukemia, the doctors said.

A few days later, a bone marrow test confirmed the diagnosis: acute myeloid leukemia. The disease, left untreated, travels fast and can kill within months, or even weeks, of diagnosis.

Branco started a series of treatments including chemotherapy and transfusions, and he took three months off from work under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).

Doctors soon said he'd need a bone marrow transplant to prolong his life. They found a 10-point match - the best possible match. The transplant and related care for the disease would cost more than $500,000.

Good thing the family had health insurance through Branco's job, they thought.

But when his three-month leave under FMLA ended, Russell Reid fired him, Branco's family said.

Comment: There was no "change of heart" on the part of Russell Reid, just the fear of a lawsuit and a lot of bad publicity! Psychopaths have no feelings.


X

New Brunswick python pet shop owner had blood on his hands

barthe brothers
Noah Barthe, left, and Connor Barthe pose in this undated photo posted on the Facebook page of their mother, Mandy Trecartin. (Facebook)
A reptile store owner under investigation for criminal negligence in the deaths of two boys after a large python escaped its enclosure had blood on his hands and shorts when police arrived at the scene in Campbellton, N.B., according to newly released court documents.

Jean-Claude Savoie was distressed and pacing outside Reptile Ocean on Aug. 5, when he said four-year-old Noah Barthe and his six-year-old brother Connor were dead, police state in the documents.

Inside, police found the boys' bodies on a mattress in an apartment above the store, where they had been sleeping.

An African rock python kept in the apartment escaped its enclosure, slithered through the ventilation system and asphyxiated the boys, according to autospy reports.

Ambulance

Tour bus sideswipes car and then overturns along California freeway

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© Leo Jarzomb / APEmergency personnel respond to the scene where a tour bus overturned on the eastbound Interstate 210 in Irwindale, Calif. about 20 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, on Thursday morning, Aug. 22, 2013. The California Highway Patrol says the driver of the bus carrying gamblers to an Indian casino east of Los Angeles made an unsafe lane change, causing the crash that injured more than 50 people on board
A tour bus carrying gamblers to an Indian casino overturned along a Southern California freeway after sideswiping a car, injuring more than 50 people on board Thursday, authorities said.

The driver made an "unsafe lane change" to the left, struck the car "and then overcorrected to the right," California Highway Patrol Officer Elizabeth Van Valkenburgh said. The skidding bus careened through a chain-link fence and down a dirt embankment, where it came to rest on its right side between the freeway and railroad tracks.

Ambulances and helicopters converged on Interstate 210 in Irwindale, about 20 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, where firefighters laid out red, yellow and green tarps to evaluate the injured.

Fifty-two people, mostly elderly, suffered minor injuries, according to doctors and fire officials. At least one passenger reported wearing a seatbelt, Van Valkenburgh said.

Some of the passengers were able to get out on their own, while others needed to be rescued by firefighters or drivers who stopped to help, said Los Angeles County Fire Capt. Brian Jordan.

Comment: This is eerily similar to another casino bound tour bus crash that occured earlier this year:

Two killed, dozens injured in bus rollover on Bush Turnpike in Texas