Society's ChildS


Cow Skull

Highest danger alert this year as heavy smog envelops Beijing

beijing smog
© Stringer / Reuters
Beijing has issued an orange alert and has urged residents to stay indoors because of heavy smog which has covered the capital. This is the highest-level smog alert so far this year, and the warning level is second only to 'red' in terms of its severity.


The orange alert was issued a day after the level of small particles (so called PM 2.5 particles with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or less) reached 274 micrograms per cubic meter. The World Health Organization (WHO) considers only 25 micrograms to be a safe level.

The particle level fell below 200 on Sunday but was still considerably higher than that which is deemed safe safe.

Question

San Francisco cops puzzled by creepy metal-spiked baseball bats scattered around city

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© Via twitter@Bill_Donlon
San Francisco police are puzzled by the mysterious appearance of dozens of spiked baseball bats all across the city for the third day in a row. Treating it as a "strange occurrence," authorities have asked for public help in shedding light on the phenomenon.

Wooden or metal baseball bats first graced the streets early Thanksgiving morning, chained to parking meters or poles. The number of improvised and potentially deadly weapons found in the city continues to grow. On Thursday police discovered 15 bats across the city, some with metal spikes sticking out of them. By Saturday morning the number had increased to 27 as more of these objects of various designs were found around the city.

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© AP
When the sightings of these strange bats were first reported to the police, SFPD was placed on alert and treated the sites as standing as a potential risk to human lives.

Local media reported that police in the Parkside neighborhood thought one of the bats was a pipe bomb, clearing the area and calling in a bomb squad."We thought it was possibly an explosive device. As you can see we evacuated the area," said San Francisco police Lt. Nick Rainsford on Thursday. "This is a little stranger than normal," San Francisco resident Gerrie Burke told ABC7 News. "So, we called the cops just in case and like two cars showed up immediately."

The bomb squad X-rayed and cleared the bat. As the objects spread throughout the city, police still have no clue who is behind the move, or even the kind of statement that the perpetrators have been trying to make. "There were bolts in this thing. They had drill holes in it. They knew what they were doing. Whoever did this put it together, this was not put together in an hour," Burke said. The bats are being taken in by police as evidence. SFPD is now asking the public to shed light on what they called a "strange occurrence."

According to San Francisco Police Sgt. Michael Andraychak, the spikes on the bats allow them to be considered a prohibited or deadly weapon, which is a felony.

Better Earth

Lone Indian man creates lush new forest ecosystem planting 1,360 acre forest

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© PhBasumata/flickrThe forest, called the Molai woods, is a safe haven for numerous birds, deer, rhinos, tigers and elephants — species increasingly at risk from habitat loss.
A little over 30 years ago, a teenager named Jadav "Molai" Payeng began burying seeds along a barren sandbar near his birthplace in northern India's Assam region to grow a refuge for wildlife. Not long after, he decided to dedicate his life to this endeavor, so he moved to the site where he could work full-time creating a lush new forest ecosystem. Incredibly, the spot today hosts a sprawling 1,360 acre of jungle that Payeng planted single-handedly.

Red Flag

Paris police arrest over 200, use 'huge amounts' of tear gas on protesters at banned Global March for Climate

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© Ruptly
Crowds gathered in the French capital on Sunday to attend a global march for the climate, despite the ban on gatherings enforced by French authorities. When one of the groups charged a police cordon, tear gas was deployed to push them back.

"Huge amounts" of tear gas were fired at protesters near Place de la Republique in central Paris, according to witnesses' reports on Twitter, with objects flying in the direction of security forces. The march, which was set to take place in dozens of cities around the world, was restricted in the French capital falling under the ban on gatherings introduced after the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris. La Republique metro station, closest to the scene, has been closed by authorities, citing security measures.

The riot police repeatedly attempted to push back the activists, spraying the crowds with tear gas. Ahead of the summit, 24 green activists were put under house arrest, with police saying they were suspected of planning violent protests, according to Reuters.


Around 100 people were arrested in the scuffles, AP reported citing police. The detained protesters were found to be in possession of projectiles and other suspicious objects, Paris police chief Michel Cadot said, adding that about 200 to 300 people who violated the official protests ban during the state of emergency have been identified by police.

Comment: Climate Change Swindlers and the Political Agenda


People 2

Report verifies US airstrike killed 6 children in Syria

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© www.telesurtv.net
Report says the U.S. tried to cover up the killings of six children and other civilians as monitor group says airstrikes have killed 250 civilians so far. The United States military has been accused of the killing of six children and three more civilians in Syria as part of an airstrike the U.S. air force had carried out back in August in the north city of Atmeh, an exclusive report by the Middle East Eye website said Thursday.

The accusation was made by the father of the six children, Muawiyya al-Amouri, who told the Middle East Eye that the U.S. government was trying to cover up the deaths of his family members as well as refugees who were staying at his home at the time. "A plane belonging to the alliance shelled my house with six missiles. They destroyed my house and my children died. I had some refugees in my home from Ariha [near Idlib city] who died as well," Amouri said.

children
© www.telesurtv.netSix of these children were killed in a US airstrike.
Amouri, who was not in the house at the time, said that five of his daughters had been killed: Fatimah, aged 10; Hayat, aged nine; Amina, aged seven; Asia, aged five and Marwa, aged four; as well as his 10-month-old son Abdullah.The accusations were previously made by other relatives of Amouri back in August against the U.S., according to a report by the New York Times then, and Washington had ordered an investigation into the incident. However, Thursday's report said the U.S. Central Command is now saying the killings did not take place and the airstrikes in Atmeh targeted the Islamic State group there.

Comment: The children died tragically, a massacre without warning and without reason. Excuses? Denial? Cover up? There was no ISIS, no Nusra Front. And, the US response was to say these killings never took place? How low. How callous. How despicable and self-serving to deny the deaths and therefore responsibility for them.


Horse

Sickening! Incidents of sex abuse against horses on the rise in Switzerland

Horse grazing
© Michael Buholzer / Reuters
Switzerland is seeing a worrying increase in the number of sex attacks carried out against animals and in particular horses. Figures showed cases of animal abuse rose to 1,709 in 2014, an increase of 1,542 from the previous 12 months.

The findings are worrying animal rights groups as it is a problem that seems to be getting worse. The foundation, known as Tier im Recht (Animals in Law), said the amount of abuse cases reported was triple compared to a decade ago.

However, it seems as though horses are coming under particular threat, with almost 10 percent of cases maltreatment of the animals involving bestiality.

Attention

Austria sees huge jump in right-wing crime

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© Leonardo RomanThe Identitarian movement has grown in Austria.
Austria has seen a massive increase in xenophobic crimes in the past year, the interior ministry has confirmed.

Austria's police intelligence agency (Bundesamtes für Verfassungsschutz und Terrorismusbekämpfung) received 1,201 criminal complaints about racist and xenophobic crimes between January and September, compared to 750 in the same period last year - a jump of 60 percent.

The ministry said that there were significant increases in the areas of incitement and neo-Nazi activities.

The number of xenophobic and racist crimes in the first three quarters of 2015 was equal to the number reported for the previous three years, police figures showed. The interior ministry confirmed that this represented a real increase in crime, and not just an increased willingness to report racist and xenophobic crimes.

Eye 1

Racism on the rise: Belgian mosque threatened by poorly written letter - Who benefits?

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© © Youssef Boudlal / ReutersMembers of the Muslim community attend the Friday prayer at Attadamoun Mosque in the neighbourhood of Molenbeek, in Brussels, Belgium, November 20, 2015.
A menacing letter from the group called 'Christian state' has been sent to the major Belgian mosque Attadamoune. It threatens all Muslims will be killed, and their businesses destroyed.

The anonymous letter - printed out and full of spelling mistakes - said that "no mosque and none of your businesses will be safe" and threatened that "brothers [Muslims] will be slaughtered like pigs and crucified as our Lord converts their souls."

The document was found in the mosque's mailbox by Jamal Habbachich, one of the local Muslim leaders and the president of Molenbeek's mosque association, and he is set to address the government about the issue.

"We will turn to the authorities of our country and complain to the police, naturally. Because there are two situations when you receive this kind of letter: it is a document written by someone wacky unbalanced, or it's a very serious threat," Habbachich told the local media outlet RTBF.

"What also concerns me is the name of the author of the letter which we do not know, and who uses similar terminology to that of the Islamic state," he added.


Comment: How 'Christian' of them to threaten murder. It is telling that the spelling is poor, indicative of the lack of intelligence of the sender. Apparently racism is rife all over the world. This video went viral a few days ago about a proposed mosque in Virginia, USA.


Comment: The irony is that the folks who perpetrate these attacks aren't Muslim. Some of the attackers were reported as white, mercenary-looking types. Another has a history of being a homosexual rent-boy pothead... it seems as if the anti-Muslim sentiment is being generated via the mainstream media's propaganda.


Beaker

Toxic methyl bromide pesticide still widely used

methyl bromide poisoning
In this Aug, 12, 2005 file photo, a sign, required by law, warns of a pesticide application of methyl bromide on a field near Watsonville, Calif.
Nine months after a vacationing family nearly died from exposure to methyl bromide on the island of St. John, authorities have come to at least one troubling conclusion: The use of the banned pesticide was not an isolated event in U.S. Caribbean territories.

A criminal investigation into the March poisoning at the Sirenusa Condominium Resort continues and the family from Wilmington, Delaware, is in settlement talks with Terminix, the company that used the chemical on insects in a vacation rental adjacent to theirs. A separate investigation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and local officials into the broader use of methyl bromide in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico also is still underway.

Officials have disclosed few details about what they've learned. But the federal government and the U.S. Virgin Islands recently held a conference for pesticide companies, resort operators and hospitality workers to warn them about the dangers of methyl bromide and other pesticides.

Comment: Bromide is highly toxic, and one of the main sources of bromide exposure in humans is through the abundant use of bromide-containing pesticides, like methylbromide and ethylene dibromide. Bromides are also used as fire retardants and can be found virtually everywhere - in food, clothes, mattresses, cars and consumer electronics. Bromines are common endocrine disruptors, and are part of the halide family, a group of elements that includes fluorine, chlorine and iodine. What makes it so dangerous is that it competes for the same receptors that are used to capture iodine. If you are exposed to a lot of bromine, your body will not hold on to the iodine that it needs. And iodine affects every tissue in your body -- not just your thyroid.

Supplementing with iodine is one of the best ways to detoxify bromides. For more information on the importance of iodine and how to use it properly, see:


Bizarro Earth

Brazilian gov't demanding $5.2 billion in lawsuit against mining companies after collapse of waste water dam

Brazilian tower
© Sputnik/ Alexey Filippov
Brazilian authorities will sue two mining giants, demanding 20 billion reais (about $5.2 billion) from the companies and a mine operator they own following the collapse of a waste water dam in the country's southeast.

The lawsuit will be filed on Monday, Attorney General Luis Inacio Adams announced at a Friday press conference in Brasilia.

The dam at the Samarco iron-ore mine collapsed on November 5, leading to the death of over a dozen people and reportedly causing major contamination of nearby land and the Doce River. At least 10 people remain missing.

The Brazilian government wants mining giants BHP Billiton and Vale, as well as mine operator Samarco, which they co-own, to create a fund to cover clean-up costs and provide compensation for the victims.

Ecologists estimate that full environmental recovery following the incident will take about 100 years.