Society's ChildS


House

Survey finds renters are struggling more than homeowners

Annie Nova
CNBC
Fri, 02 Nov 2018 17:24 UTC
for rent sign rental
Financial stress visits renters more than homeowners.

That's the main takeaway from a new report by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.

Rental costs are rising much faster than renters' salaries. Between 1960 and 2016, the median income for a renter grew by just 5 percent. During the same period, the median rent ballooned by more than 60 percent, according to The Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. (Both figures account for inflation.)

To be sure, buying a house has also become harder for many Americans - to do so now costs four times the median household income. The homeownership rate fell to 63 percent in 2016 - the lowest rate in half a century.

Comment:

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Black Cat

Taliban attack on Ghazni checkpoint leaves at least 13 Afghan security personnel dead


RFE/RL
Mon, 05 Nov 2018 16:57 UTC
attack security personel Ghazni Afghanistan
© File
Afghan officials say at least 13 members of Afghanistan's security forces have been killed in a battle in Ghazni Province about 150 kilometers southwest of Kabul.

Mohammad Arif Noori, a spokesman for Ghazni's provincial governor, told RFE/RL that the battle began early on November 5 when Taliban militants attacked a checkpoint in the Khogyani district near the provincial capital.

Noori said six Afghan police and seven soldiers in the Afghan National Army were killed in the fighting. He said at least four other police officers were wounded.

Comment:

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Cardboard Box

Georgia Democrats accused of 'hacking voting system' - blame Rep rival Kemp for 'power abuse'


RT
Mon, 05 Nov 2018 16:51 UTC
Georgia democrat protesters
© Global Look Press via ZUMA Press / Steve EberhardProtesters at the Georgia State Capitol building
The Democratic Party has firmly denied attempting to hack Georgia's voter registration system after the state's secretary, who is running for governor, leveled the meddling charges against them just days before the midterms.

The Republican Secretary of State of Georgia accused his midterm rivals of attempting to hack the state's voter registration system just two days before the crucial election. While providing no details of the incident, besides that the alleged attempt failed, Brian Kemp's office did say that the federal authorities are investigating the claims.

Ahead of the November 6 vote, in which Kemp will face off against Democrat Stacey Abrams, the system "remains secure" and should allow the vote to proceed as planned as "no personal data was breached."

Comment: Hacking attempt from IP address associated with DHS on system containing personal information for millions of Georgians has officials 'mad as hell'

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Attention

'Sexting MP' Griffiths claims explicit messages were sent during manic episode, condition linked to childhood sexual abuse


RT
Mon, 05 Nov 2018 12:10 UTC
Andrew Griffiths
© Chris McAndrew / UK Parliament
MP Andrew Griffiths, who sent 2,000 sexually explicit messages to women, leading to his resignation, has said that he was having a manic episode and that his condition is linked to being sexually abused as a boy.

The disgraced MP for Burton told the Sunday Times that he had considered suicide after the messages were exposed and that the episode lead to him spending 31 days in a psychiatric hospital.

The MP, 48, repeatedly attempted to 'sext' a 28-year-old bar worker and her friend. He was exposed in July after the Sunday Mirror published extracts from the over 2,000 messages - many of which were of violent and graphic nature. In some of the messages Griffiths referred to himself as "daddy," while others were boasts of his connections to celebrities and the Royal Family.

Addressing the episode, Griffiths told the newspaper: "I don't for one second try to excuse what I did.

"The texts were horrible and I apologize hugely for them, and to everyone I have hurt. I am ashamed and embarrassed.
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Fire

Multiple explosions kill 8 people, leave 16 injured in Baghdad


Sputnik
Mon, 05 Nov 2018 16:44 UTC
Baghdad explosions
© El ComercioIn Baghdad, a series of explosions killed at least eight people.
Eight people were killed, and 16 others suffered injuries in a series of explosions in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, local media reported on Monday, citing a source in local security forces.

According to the Al-Arabiya broadcaster, the attacks were carried out late on Sunday.

One of the explosions took place in the northern part of the city, in the vicinity of the Aden square, while three others hit the eastern area of Baghdad, and another one hit the south of the city.

Last year, a blast of a mine-studded car in the southwest of Iraqi capital, Baghdad, killed 55 people. The Daesh* terrorist group reportedly claimed responsibility for the attack.

*Daesh (also known as ISIS/ISIL/IS) is a terrorist group banned in Russia and many other countries.
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Brain

Surgery students 'losing dexterity to stitch patients' - UK Professor laments over state of schooling

Sean Coughlan
BBC News
Fri, 30 Nov 2018 12:00 UTC
surgeon operate
© Getty Images
A professor of surgery says students have spent so much time in front of screens and so little time using their hands that they have lost the dexterity for stitching or sewing up patients.

Roger Kneebone, professor of surgical education at Imperial College, London, says young people have so little experience of craft skills that they struggle with anything practical.

"It is important and an increasingly urgent issue," says Prof Kneebone, who warns medical students might have high academic grades but cannot cut or sew.

"It is a concern of mine and my scientific colleagues that whereas in the past you could make the assumption that students would leave school able to do certain practical things - cutting things out, making things - that is no longer the case," says Prof Kneebone.

Comment: Except for in the very early days, a complete education was only really reserved for those attending elite schools, schools open to the public served a variety of other agendas, and it worked out quite well, for a while. But as Western society and its values have become increasingly distorted, and this is reflected in our education system, an increasing number of young adults are leaving school unable to function in the real world: Also check out SOTT radio's: The Health & Wellness Show: Public schools: Where creativity, freedom and critical thinking go to die

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Cut

Twitter suspends account of radical Pakistani cleric for threats against government after blasphemy acquittal of Asia Bibi


RFE/RFL
Mon, 05 Nov 2018 16:00 UTC
Pakistani cleric Khadim Hussain Rizvi
Pakistani cleric Khadim Hussain Rizvi
Pakistan's government says Twitter has suspended the account of a radical Pakistani cleric for posting inflammatory statements against the Supreme Court, prime minister, and military after the Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a Christian woman accused of blasphemy.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) said it requested that Twitter suspend the account of cleric Khadim Hussain Rizvi after his Tehrik-e Labaik Pakistan (TLP) party blocked roads for three days last week and threatened Supreme Court judges who acquitted Asia Bibi on October 31.

PTA officials said they'd complained that Rizvi incited "hate and violence" by urging the cooks and servants of the Supreme Court judges to kill them.

There was no immediate comment from U.S.-based Twitter.

Rizvi has said that "there will be a war" if the Pakistani authorities allow Bibi out of the country.
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Bad Guys

Nearly 80 children kidnapped by Ambazonia separatists in northwest Cameroon


RT
Mon, 05 Nov 2018 15:04 UTC
Anti-government protesters Bamenda Cameroon
© ReutersAnti-government protesters in Bamenda
Dozens of people, most of them children, have been kidnapped from a school in the city of Bamenda in Cameroon's northwestern Anglophone region, which is struggling with a separatist insurgency.

Armed men kidnapped 78 students from a Presbyterian school in the Nkwen village, Northwest Region Governor Deben Tchoffo said.

A video uploaded to social media showed the kidnapped children and the alleged kidnappers, calling themselves "Amba boys" in reference to the breakaway Ambazonia state that the separatists have been trying to create. The footage could not be immediately verified, but parents have reportedly been reacting to images of their children on social media, according to AP.

Comment: Some background on the growing tensions between separatists and the Cameroon government:
France and the US are supporting Cameroon's state-sanctioned reign of terror

In anglophone Cameroon, BIR troops allegedly set fire to homes and neighborhoods, routinely torture as a mode of interrogation and summarily execute suspected supporters of Ambazonia, the breakaway nation that, on October 1, 2017 symbolically declared its independence from the Republic of Cameroon after more than 20 years of seeking political and legal strategies to counter its progressive marginalization since decolonization.

Perhaps in the eyes of some their respective adherents, Ambazonia's struggle for economic, political and linguistic autonomy has little in common with Boko Haram more than 1,000km away. Yet in the eyes of the Cameroonian state, they are equivalent. Both have resulted in state security force's unbridled collective punishment of entire communities, displacing populations from the north and from the southwest on an increasing scale.

Days after viewers worldwide watched Cameroon's BIR soldiers summarily execute a baby, a child and their mothers, Paul Biya, now the second longest serving president in the entire world, tweeted his intent to run for reelection in October 2018. Before the announcement, Biya set his house in order. In early July, the Cameroonian president announced the cancellation of the concurrent legislative and municipal elections.


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Bulb

German Jews demand extra integration classes for Muslim migrants to avoid anti-Semitism attacks


RT
Mon, 05 Nov 2018 16:08 UTC
jews
© Global Look Press
With anti-Semitic attacks on the rise in Germany, the country's federation of Jews has suggested tailoring extra integration classes for migrants, who may still be influenced by their home countries' anti-Jewish sentiments.

Though the migrant flow is not pouring into Europe with the force of previous years, Vice President of Germany's Central Council of Jews Abraham Lehrer still believes that the "problem of immigrant Arab-Islamic anti-Semitism" still lies ahead. He was speaking days before the grim 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht - the Night of Broken Glass which marked the start of the violent assault on Jews by the Nazis.

According to Lehrer, many asylum seekers who arrive in his country are mainly influenced "by regimes" where anti-Semitism is "a part of [their] rationale" and where "the Jewish state is denied the right to existence."

As soon as the quest for job and housing is over for these people, they may re-experience this influence from their home countries and "will express their opinions openly," he says. "In order to prevent this scenario, we need to tailor integration courses more closely to these people, preferably by country of origin."


Comment: And everyone knows it's a bad thing to express certain opinions openly in Western democracies.


Lehrer suggested organizing additional hours in integration classes in which "fundamental values" such as democracy and treatment of women in the European society "are intensively taught."

Comment: This will probably have about as much success as sex education for migrants with the goal of combatting the string of rape cases currently plaguing Germany: Genius idea: Freiburg gang rape spurs Berlin to call for refugee sex education. Ideological 're-education' will probably only have the effect of reinforcing existing stereotypes, and breed additional resentment. Here's a better strategy: 1) send as many of the migrants home as possible, 2) force Israel to clean up its act and start behaving in a way that doesn't encourage anti-Semitism.

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No Entry

Three girl scouts and adult volunteer killed in hit and run while picking up roadside trash

AnneClaire Stapleton and Steve Almasy
CNN
Sun, 04 Nov 2018 15:34 UTC
accident scene
Three girls and a woman were killed Saturday morning when a truck driven by a Wisconsin man struck them as their Girl Scout troop was picking up trash along a roadway.

Another girl was injured and is in critical condition, the Lake Hallie Police Department said.

The driver of a black Ford F-150 "crossed over a lane of traffic and into the ditch, striking the Girl Scout troop," Sgt. Dan Sokup of the Lake Hallie Police Department told CNN affiliate WEAU.

The driver fled, but turned himself in later. Police identified him as Colton Treu, 21, of Chippewa Falls.
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