Society's ChildS


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Two American companies lay off hundreds as military uniforms to be made by prison labor


Two southeast companies that make U.S. military uniforms are shedding hundreds of jobs, as the government looks to federal inmates for the fatigues.

American Power Source makes military clothing in Fayette, Ala., but its government contract expires in October. Federal Prison Industries - which also operates under the name UNICOR will snag the work, and leave the task to inmates. FPI has the first right of refusal for U.S. Government contracts, under a 1930 federal law.

American Apparel, the Selma, Ala., based military clothing manufacturer closed one of its plants and continues to downsize others due to the loss of some of its contracts to FPI. According retired Air Force colonel and spokesman Kurt Wilson, the company laid off 255 employees and cut the hours of 190 employees this year alone. So private workers end up losing their jobs to prisoners.

"The way the law is - Federal Prison Industries gets first dibs and contracts up to a certain percentage before they have to compete against us," Wilson, the executive vice president of business development and government affairs, said. "The army combat uniform, for instance, is an item that they take off the top. As a result American tax payers pay more for it - but the bottom line is each soldier is paying more for their uniform."

American Apparel charges $29.44 per uniform, but the FPI uniform costs $34.18 - a 15 percent difference.

2 + 2 = 4

'Unschooling': Home Learning the Future of US Education?


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'Possibly Contaminated' Rats Being Illegally Sold by Butchers in London

Rats
© Medical Daily
Journalists have uncovered large quantities of illegal and potentially contaminated bush meat being sold in one of the busiest food markets in east London.

Bush meat is wild terrestrial animals hunted for commercial gains. It is considered the opposite of livestock, which is raised for the express purpose of being slaughtered for food.

The Ridley Road Market in Dalston, in east London, is apparently known to be a hotbed of illegal activity. It is reported that butchers there conduct sales of illegal "smokies," a delicacy made by charring goat and sheep with a blowtorch. At least two stores were found to sell "grass cutter" or cane rats, possibly imported from Ghana, where they are a luxury.

The practice of "smokies" has been outlawed due to public health and animal welfare concerns. The practice has also been linked to mafia-style gangs in Wales, who steal sheep and goats and slaughter them in unlicensed houses.

Eye 1

13-year-old Florida Boy Faces Life in Jail for Murdering his 2 Year Old Brother

fernandez
Cristian Fernandez was 12 years old when he smashed his brother's head against a bookcase, killing the two year old.

Now 13, Fernandez is being tried as an adult for murder in Jacksonville, Florida. If convicted, he could spend life behind bars, reports the Daily Mail.

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Boy Scouts Inaction May Have Contributed To Hundreds Of Sexual Attacks

Scout
© Atlanta Blackstar
The Boy Scouts of America may have been tacitly complicit in the sexual assaults of hundreds of boys by failing to report the predators to police and hiding the allegations from parents and the public.

A Los Angeles Times study of 1,600 confidential files dating from 1970 to 1991 found that scouting officials often urged admitted offenders to quietly resign and helped many of them cover their tracks.

Volunteers and employees suspected of abuse were allowed to cite bogus reasons for their departures such as business demands, "chronic brain dysfunction" and even duties at a Shakespeare festival.

The paper discovered the details in the organization's confidential "perversion files," a blacklist of alleged molesters that the Scouts have used internally since 1919.

BSA lawyers around the country have been fighting in court to keep the files from public view.

The blacklist often didn't work as men expelled for alleged abuses sometimes slipped back into the program, only to be accused of molesting again, the paper reported.

A more extensive review by the newspaper has shown that Scouts sometimes abetted molesters by keeping allegations under wraps.

In the majority of cases, the Scouts learned of alleged abuse after it had been reported to authorities. But in more than 500 instances, the Scouts learned about it from victims, parents, staff members or anonymous tips.

In about 400 of those cases - 80 percent - there is no record of BSA officials reporting the allegations to police. In more than 100 of the cases, officials actively sought to conceal the alleged abuse or allowed the suspects to hide it, The Times found.

BSA officials declined to be interviewed for the Times article. In a prepared statement, spokesman Deron Smith said, "We have always cooperated fully with any request from law enforcement and today require our members to report even suspicion of abuse directly to their local authorities."

The files reveal a culture in which even known molesters were shown extraordinary deference.

Camcorder

Airport body scanners to be scrapped after failing to receive European approval

  • Scanners use X-ray technology to show up hidden explosives or weapons
  • Fears machines could emit harmful levels of cancer-causing radiation
  • European report said risk 'close to zero' but bosses still failed to give go-ahead
Controversial airport 'strip-search' scanners are to be scrapped after they failed to get approval from European bosses.

Experts feared the 'naked' body scanners, which use X-ray technology to show up hidden explosives or weapons, could emit harmful levels of cancer-causing radiation.

New trials of the device, which display a 'naked' image of the person being scanned - were blocked by the European Commission last November.
Image
© Agence France Presse/Getty ImagesControversial: A demonstration of the scanners that European bosses have failed to give approval of. A full body scan is shown, left, and a screen showing the results of the scan, right

Comment: Good for Europe! The PornScanners Are Here to Stay: TSA Spends Hundreds of Millions on Body Scanners
TSA lied: airport scanners can store and transmit images


Attention

6-Year Olds Striving To Be Sexy, Skinny, and Thinking of Themselves As Sex Objects

Child
© PreventDisease
More 6-year old girls, some younger, are beginning to think of themselves as needing to be sexy, pretty, skinny and even as sex objects according to a new study of elementary school children.

Nearly half of the 3- to 6-year-old girls in a previous study by University of Central Florida psychology professor Stacey Tantleff-Dunn and doctoral student Sharon Hayes said they worry about being fat. About one-third would change a physical attribute, such as their weight or hair color.

The number of girls worried about being fat at such a young age concerns Tantleff-Dunn because of the potential implications later in life. Studies have shown that young girls worried about their body image are more likely to suffer from eating disorders when they are older.

The media's portrayal of beauty likely is one of the strongest influences on how they perceive their bodies because children spend so much time watching movies and television, Tantleff-Dunn said.

"The genetic and environmental origins of pregnancy-associated cancers are likely to pre-date the pregnancy but the hormones and growth factors necessary for a baby to develop may accelerate the growth of a tumour," Roberts said.

Eating disorder experts say prepubescent girls are developing eating disorders as young as 5 and 6 years old. They may be getting their obsession from parents who are preoccupied with their own body images, and media images of skinny pop stars like Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears, the experts say.

Children learn (unhealthy) mainstream attitudes towards food and weight at a very young age. The number of children younger than 12 entering the hospital for eating disorders increased 119 percent between 1999 and 2006.

Question

Security Firm to Hold Zombie Crisis Scenario

Zombies
© Jonathan Nackstrand/Agence France-Presse via Getty ImagesKnow how to stop the undead? An October exercise in California will pit military trainees against a horde of role-players exhibiting zombie like behavior. Here, participants in a “zombie walk” in Sweden show their stuff.
San Diego - Forget the H1N1 pandemic. Could a future crisis arise from an outbreak of viruses that destroy brain cells and render people violently catatonic, like zombies?

The far-fetched scenario of a government grappling a zombielike threat - think movies like Night of the Living Dead or, more comically, Zombieland - has captured the attention and imagination of Brad Barker, president of the security firm HALO Corp.

Next month, his outfitwill incorporate - no kidding - zombies into a disaster-crisis scenario at the company's annual Counter-Terrorism Summit in San Diego, a five-day event providing hands-on training, realistic demonstrations, lectures and classes geared to more than 1,000 military personnel, law enforcement officials, medical experts, and state and federal government workers.

HALO will take over the 44-acre Paradise Point resort in the city's popular Mission Bay and create a series of terrorist scenarios, with immersive Hollywood sets including a Middle Eastern village and a pirates' haven. Retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, aformer CIA and National Security Agency director, and Mexico Interior Secretary Alejandro Poiré Romero will speak during the summit, which runs Oct. 30 to Nov. 2.

Barker calls the scenario "Zombie Apocalypse." That phrase took off last year after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention unveiled a campaign aimed at underscoring the importance of being prepared for major emergencies, natural disasters and pandemics.

In the CDC's Preparedness 101 program, fictional zombies are used to drive home the message that Americans must be ready for any emergency - even the kind that, hypothetically, could stem from a brain-eating virus pandemic. Zombies also star in a 40-page comic book the CDC published, a tongue-in-cheek take on the serious scenario of a mutated virus that quickly spreads as the government dispatches its military to maintain order while infectious disease specialists scour for a vaccine.

Info

Three-Year Old Cambodian Boy Revered as Healer

Ray Rong
© Heng Chivoan/Phnom Penh PostRay Rong, 3, blesses bottles of water in Svay Chrum village, Prey Veng province. Hundreds of people come to see the child and get the water every day, believing it can heal their illnesses.
Even before dawn, a few hundred people have gathered to sit in line, reminiscent of the queues of waiting patients which snakes outside the grounds of the Kantha Bopha Hospital during pandemics.

They have travelled from different cities and provinces to get a chance to be healed by Ray Rong, a resident of Prey Veng's Svay Chrum village. Rong is known far and wide as one of the best healers in the area, and the blessing water and herbal medicines he gives to patients are claimed to defeat a hundred different kinds of diseases. Many other traditional healers proffer the same goods, but there's one important difference: Rong is only three years old.

Still too young to speak clearly, Ray Rong is the third child of five to Tep Saray and Un Saroeurn, a pair of impoverished farmers.

In the last couple of months, the boy has risen to fame on the back of claims that he has healed hundreds of people. Every day, at least two hundred patients, including some from across the border of nearby Vietnam, wait outside his house to get blessed water and medicine. Some of Rong's patients travel hundreds of kilometers and spend several nights sleeping near the toddler's house in the hopes of getting a chance to meet him.

The 60-year-old Yay Hom was one of Ray Rong's patients, who brought incense, candles, cake and pure drinking water as an offering to the child healer.

"I have to wait for my turn to be called in and see the healer," she says. "I have suffered from diabetes for 10 years. My blood sugar level was never less than 410 mg/dL." (Healthy blood sugar levels range from 70-180 milligrams per deciliter.) "I took medication and saw other doctors, but I never felt better. After the holy child gave me magic water to drink and some fig fruits, my blood sugar level dropped to 110 mg/dL."

Bizarro Earth

Your Tax Dollars Used to Manhunt Children as Police Seek Child Suspected of Robbery

Police are on the lookout for a 4ft tall suspect with a likely under-developed voice.

An unusual wanted ad posted by police in Washington, D.C. on Sunday night described their suspect as being merely 6 or 7 years old.

While with a group of boys described as being between the ages of 7 and 14, the child's accused in connection to a robbery at a McDonald's restaurant.