Society's ChildS


Snakes in Suits

Whitewash! Malaysian Prime Minister sez Flight 370 crashed in Indian Ocean

Thomas Fuller and Chris Buckley
NY Times
Mon, 24 Mar 2014 12:26 UTC
Image
© Credit Ng Han Guan/Associated PressA relative of a Chinese passenger on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in Beijing after being told of the latest news on Monday.
Malaysia's prime minister said Monday that further analysis of satellite data confirmed that the missing Malaysian airliner went down in the southern Indian Ocean. The announcement narrowed the search area but left many questions unanswered about why it flew to such a remote part of the world.

Experts had previously held out the possibility that the jet could have flown north instead, toward Central Asia, but the new data showed that it could have gone only south, said the prime minister, Najib Razak.

Mr. Najib appeared eager to bring closure to the families of the passengers on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, two-thirds of whom are Chinese. The families have grown increasingly angry about the lack of clear information about the plane's fate. The Boeing 777, with 227 passengers and 12 crew members onboard, was headed from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it disappeared on March 8.

The aircraft's last known position, according to the analysis, "is a remote location, far from any possible landing sites," Mr. Najib said. "It is therefore with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that, according to this new data, Flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean."

The new analysis of the flight path, the prime minister said, came from Inmarsat, the British company that provided the satellite data, and from Britain's air safety agency. The company had "used a type of analysis never before used in an investigation of this sort," he said.
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Wall Street

Western debt-slavery: Half of UK graduates cannot pay back student loans


RT
Sat, 22 Mar 2014 11:42 UTC
Image
© AFP Photo / Leon Neal
In a dramatic reassessment of UK student finance, the government estimates around 45 percent of graduates will be unable to pay back their loans. The shortfall could cancel out the profits made by the disputed tripling of tuition fees in 2012.

British Universities Minister David Willetts has said that the amount of graduates who will fail to pay back their student loans has greatly exceeded previous estimates. Before tuition fees were increased threefold in 2012, the government predicted that only 28 percent of loans would ever be paid back. However, in light of projections for the coming years, the government has reassessed this figure and almost doubled it to 45 percent.

This increase could potentially nullify the 10 billion pounds ($16 billion) in profits made by increasing tuition fees to 9,000 pounds ($15,000) a year in 2012. If the amount of students unable to pay back their loans grows to 48.6 percent, economists predict the government will start losing more money.

When the tuition fee hikes came into effect, the Conservative government hailed them as progressive and a way of allowing universities to make the money back they had lost in state funding. Rival party Labour condemned the move as a "tragedy" for a generation of young people, while the National Union of Students called the threefold increase an "outrage." The reform triggered widespread protest across the country.
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Magnet

Thirty-two hurt in train derailment at Chicago's O'Hare airport

Mary Wisniewski
Reuters
Mon, 24 Mar 2014 19:22 UTC
Image
© Reuters/Jim YoungA worker puts up a tarp to cover the scene where a Chicago Transit Authority subway train crashed into a platform at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago March 24, 2014.
Thirty-two people were injured after a Chicago Transit Authority train derailed and hit a platform at O'Hare International Airport early on Monday, with its front car landing on an escalator and stairs, a city fire official said.

It was not immediately clear how fast the train was moving, but authorities were looking at speed as a possible factor, said transit authority spokesman Brian Steele.

"It's evident the train was going faster than it should," he said at the scene.

The female train operator was among those hurt, though neither she nor any of the passengers faced life-threatening injuries, said Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford.

"Fortunately nobody was on the staircase," he said. "Anybody on the staircase probably would have been killed."

Langford said the eight-car train jumped a bumper at the end of the line just before 3:00 a.m. Chicago time.
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Smoking

Fascist West: Ireland follows Britain with smoking ban in people's own cars

Genevieve Carbery
The Irish Times
Mon, 24 Mar 2014 12:56 UTC
Image
© Chris Radburn/PA WireLegislation to ban smoking in cars where children are present will be ready in the next number of weeks, Minister for Health James Reilly said today.
Legislation to ban smoking in cars where children are present will be ready in the "next number of weeks", Minister for Health James Reilly said today.

There were "major difficulties" in preparing the legislation because of the many departments involved and a "whole host of issues" which had not been foreseen.

"One last issue" to be resolved was a "finer legal point" which the Attorney General was dealing with, he said. "I think they are nearly there and I look forward to it very shortly".
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Target

Why is police aggression increasing when crime is down?

Dave Lindorff
Who What Why
Wed, 19 Mar 2014 08:07 UTC
Tompkins square 1874
© unknownNew York police attack unemployed workers in Tompkins Square, 1874

You might not know it from watching TV news, but FBI statistics show that crime in the U.S. - including violent crime - has been trending steadily downward for years, falling 19% between 1987 and 2011. The job of being a police officer has become safer too, as the number of police killed by gunfire plunged to 33 last year, down 50% from 2012, to its lowest level since, wait for it, 1887, a time when the population was 75% lower than it is today.

So why are we seeing an ever increasing militarization of policing across the country?

Given the good news on crime, what are we to make of a report by the Justice Polivcy Institute, a not-for-profit justice reform group, showing that state and local spending on police has soared from $40 billion in 1982 to more than $100 billion in 2012. Adding in federal spending on law enforcement, including the FBI, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Drug Enforcement Agency and much of the Homeland Security Department budget, as well as federal grants to state and local law enforcement more than doubles that total. A lot of that money is simply pay and benefits. The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that the ranks of state and local law enforcement personnel alone swelled from 603,000 to 794,000 between 1992 and 2010. That's about two-thirds as many men and women as the entire active-duty US military.

Comment: For more on the militarization of the police:

Militarization of local police means that now cops kill 8 times more Americans than terrorists do

Why Do the Police Have Tanks? The Strange and Dangerous Militarization of the US Police Force

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People

Dangerous precedent: Alabama woman to be tried for murder for stillbirth when she was 16

Nina Martin
Alternet
Wed, 19 Mar 2014 07:46 UTC

fetus
© Zfotto/Shutterstock.com
Rennie Gibbs's daughter, Samiya, was a month premature when she simultaneously entered the world and left it, never taking a breath. To experts who later examined the medical record, the stillborn infant's most likely cause of death was also the most obvious: the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck.

But within days of Samiya's delivery in November 2006, Steven Hayne, Mississippi's de facto medical examiner at the time, came to a different conclusion. Autopsy tests had turned up traces of a cocaine byproduct in Samiya's blood, and Hayne declared her death a homicide, caused by "cocaine toxicity."

In early 2007, a Lowndes County grand jury indicted Gibbs, a 16-year-old black teen, for "depraved heart murder" - defined under Mississippi law as an act "eminently dangerous to others...regardless of human life." By smoking crack during her pregnancy, the indictment said, Gibbs had "unlawfully, willfully, and feloniously" caused the death of her baby. The maximum sentence: life in prison.
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Family

People power: Somerset flooding prompts Cardigan farmers to send fodder


BBC News
Mon, 24 Mar 2014 02:17 UTC
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© UnknownFarmers' Union of Wales Ceredigion chair Aled Rees said it was important to help other farmers
A consignment of animal fodder from farmers in Cardigan is going to Somerset to help farmers still affected by flooding feed their animals.

About 90 tonnes of donated hay and silage are heading for Sedgemoor market for distribution to farmers struggling to feed stock.

The Farmers' Union of Wales has organised the delivery.

County chair Aled Rees said it repaid English farmers who helped snow-hit colleagues in Wales a year ago.

Somerset was one of the worst hit counties in last month's devastating flooding and farmers need at least 12 months of supplies because fields have been badly affected.

Comment: As usual, the government has been giving little support to those who have and will suffer from extreme weather events. At the same time, lots of money are spent by our ''leaders'' in ways that do not benefit the community at large, but rather benefit their own agenda.There is no better time than now to join forces, get prepared, spread truth and help one another out in these times.

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Arrow Up

UK views Russia more positively than EU - poll


RT
Sun, 23 Mar 2014 14:02 UTC
UK
© Reuters / Neil Hall
British citizens view Russia more favorably than the European Union, a survey has revealed. The poll also shows that the UK is largely divided over whether it should remain a member of the European block ahead of the planned referendum in 2017.

Former Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, Lord Michael Ashcroft, commissioned a poll aimed at ascertaining the British public opinion of the EU. The findings of the poll were published this Saturday in a report entitled Europe on Trial: Public opinion and Britain's relationship with the EU.

As part of the survey, 20,000 people were asked to rate a list of 27 countries and institutions on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of how favorably they viewed them. Russia surpassed the EU with an average score of 4.07, coming 21st in the list. The only countries and institutions that scored worse than the EU in terms of public opinion were Israel, the EU Parliament, Saudi Arabia, Iran and North Korea.

The poll was, however, taken before diplomatic relations took a turn for the worse between the EU and Russia following the integration of Crimea into Russian territory.
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Stormtrooper

Communities grow weary of militarized police


RT
Sun, 23 Mar 2014 13:35 UTC
militarized police
© Reuters/Stephen Lam
As numerous law enforcement agencies across the United States begin enrolling large armored vehicles into the force, pockets of resistance are forming among some communities concerned with the trend.

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, the federal government has been granting armored vehicles like BearCats to cities and towns since the World Trade Center attacks in 2001. Additionally, about 200 vehicles designed to survive landmines and other explosions have also been distributed across the country, with another 750 requests pending.

While some communities have welcomed such acquisitions amid increased concern over mass shootings, others have balked at the idea. As RT reported last year, residents in Salinas, California, flooded the Facebook page of their local police department after it obtained a heavily armored vehicle capable of withstanding rifle fire and minefield explosions.

"That vehicle is made for war," mentioned one commenter at the time. "Do not use my safety to justify that vehicle," another one wrote. "The Salinas Police Department is just a bunch of cowards that want to use that vehicle as intimidation and to terrorize the citizens of this city."
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Monkey Wrench

Germany seizes cocaine-filled condoms sent to Vatican


AFP
Sun, 23 Mar 2014 09:45 UTC
100 kg of cocaine
© AFP Photo/Wolfgang KummGerman customs officers present 100 kg of cocaine during a press conference in Berlin, on August 19, 2011
Berlin - German customs officials have intercepted a package addressed to the Vatican containing 14 condoms filled with cocaine, the finance ministry said Sunday.

A ministry spokesman told AFP that a box packed with 340 grammes of cocaine valued at 40,000 euros ($55,200) was seized at the international airport in the eastern city of Leipzig in January.

The narcotics, posted from an unnamed South American country, were in liquid form and had been poured into the condoms and placed in the package addressed to the main postal centre at the Vatican.

"I can confirm the incident as reported" in the Bild am Sonntag newspaper, the spokesman said.

"But we cannot say anything more about the case," he added, saying it was now in the hands of local prosecutors.

Authorities handed the parcel to a police officer at the Vatican with the aim of laying a trap for a culprit who might try to claim it.

But the box had remained there since January.

German investigators believe the intended recipient, who remains unknown, was likely tipped off that the package had been intercepted.
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