Society's ChildS


Stock Up

Modi election magic: India's rupee went from Asia's worst to best currency

india currency rupees
Indian Rupee likely to strengthen at least in short term, BoAML's Garg Says

Asia's worst-performing currency took five weeks to become its best.

The turnaround has been fueled by the improved chances of Prime Minister Narendra Modi winning a second term amid recent tensions between India and Pakistan. The optimism has led to local shares and debt luring robust flows, which have turned the carry-trade returns on the rupee to the highest in the world in the past month.

No Entry

No profiting from hate: Online bookstores pull manifesto by mass shooter Breivik after outcry

The cover of Breivik's manifesto
© Global Look Press/ZUMAPRESS.com/Alexander WiddingThe cover of Breivik's manifesto / Andres Breivik
At least two online bookstores stopped selling the manifesto compiled by Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik, who reportedly inspired the mosque massacres in Christchurch, New Zealand last week.

Breivik, an extremist white supremacist, is currently serving a maximum 21-year sentence for slaughtering 77 people and injuring over 300 in an act of political violence. He timed his 2011 bomb and gun attack with the release of an anti-Muslim manifesto explaining his motivations. The 1,518-page text is mostly a compilation of what other people wrote and Breivik liked, and is available freely online.

Until recently, one could also order a hard copy of the manifesto from Amazon. This was the case until the British news outlet the Times highlighted this fact on Sunday in an accusatory report. A text by Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who murdered nine people at a black church in Charleston in 2015, was also available for purchase, the newspaper said, accusing the international giant of profiting from hate literature.

"Online retailers - just like social media companies - need to stop playing into the hands of terrorists by giving them the notoriety they crave and even selling their so-called manifestos," the Times was told by Brendan Cox, the husband of Labour MP Jo Cox, who was murdered by a white supremacist in June 2016. "Too many corporates are actively making future attacks more likely."

Comment: See also: Christchurch Terror Attack: Mass Censorship, Mystery Shooters, And The Globetrotting Lone Gunman


Handcuffs

Germany: 10 held in suspected Islamist terror plot to massacre civilians using car and guns

German policeman
© Reuters/Michael Dalder
German prosecutors say 10 people have been detained on suspicion of plotting an Islamist attack using a car and guns, with the aim of killing as many "infidels" as possible.

The arrests were made following an "anti-terror" raid in the central Frankfurt Rhine-Main region on Friday, according to Welt, who cite the state criminal police office and the prosecutor's office in Frankfurt.

A 21-year-old and two 31-year-old brothers are noted as the "main suspects" in the group and are believed to be associated with the local Islamist Salafist community. All are accused of plotting an "Islamist terrorist-motivated attack" to kill as many "infidels" as possible. Several of the suspects are German citizens, according to the prosecutor's office, but no other nationalities were specified.

Pistol

Indiana teachers shot with plastic pellets during active shooter drill

active shooter drill
An active-shooter training exercise at an Indiana elementary school in January left teachers with welts, bruises and abrasions after they were shot with plastic pellets by the local sheriff's office conducting the session.

The incident, acknowledged in testimony this week before state lawmakers, was confirmed by two elementary school teachers in Monticello, who described an exercise in which teachers were asked by local law enforcement to kneel down against a classroom wall before being sprayed across their backs with plastic pellets without warning.

"They told us, 'This is what happens if you just cower and do nothing,'" said one of the two teachers, both of whom asked IndyStar not to be identified out of concern for their jobs. "They shot all of us across our backs. I was hit four times.

"It hurt so bad."

Now, these teachers and the state's largest teachers union want to stop this from happening in other Hoosier schools. The Indiana State Teachers Association is lobbying lawmakers to add language prohibiting teachers from being shot with any sort of ammunition to a school safety bill working its way through the Statehouse.

Black Cat 2

New watchdog report states government bought dogs and cats from Asian markets for 'cannibal' experiments

cute kitten
© EEI_Tony / Getty Images/iStockphotoU.S. government scientists bought dogs and cats from Asian meat markets and fed them to kittens in "cannibal" experiments, according to a watchdog report.
U.S. government scientists conducted experiments on thousands of kittens including "cannibal" studies where cats and dogs bought from Asian meat markets were fed to other cats, a watchdog report released Tuesday says.

The report from the White Coat Waste Project, obtained by the Daily News, says that the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS) has been breeding and using cats for studies since 1982 - and they are often killed a short time after the experiments take place. The USDA also made "false and misleading claims to Congress, the media, the public," the report claims.

"The USDA's taxpayer-funded kitten cannibalism experiments read like a burgeoning serial killer's diary," Justin Goodman, vice president of advocacy and public policy at White Coat Waste Project said in a statement sent to The News.

Not only does the government agency breed and kill cats on its own premises, the study states - but the ARS has also bought "hundreds of pet, stray or 'unwanted' " dogs and cats from Asian, African and Latin American countries. This happened as recently as 2015, the report said.

Comment: Contrary to popular belief animal experimentation isn't extraordinarily useful for human application:
The Health & Wellness Show: The Quackery and Cruelty of Animal Medical Research


Stop

Pro-Palestinian student protesters blocked from campus during Queen's visit to King's College

Queen and student protesters
© (L) Alastair Grant / Reuters; (R) KCL Justice4Cleaners ‏/ Twitter
It is 'outrageous' that King's College London (KCL) singled out pro-Palestinian student activists and blocked their access cards ahead of the Queen's visit to the campus as a 'security measure,' one student who was barred told RT.

"I got my ID card. I tapped it on the barrier and it wouldn't work. The barrier wouldn't open," Mehreen, one of the KCL students barred from entering the campus during the Queen's visit, told RT.

"I tapped [the ID card] about three times... by the third time I knew that this was intentional."

She, along with several campus groups, now accuses the police and KCL of "profiling" and going after them for staging peaceful pro-Palestinian protests. They had earlier launched a campaign denouncing the college's ties to Israeli institutions that work with arms companies.
"I'm a fee-paying student... and I'm not allowed to go to my lecture because I'm apparently a security threat to the queen? Outrageous."
Mehreen posted a video showing a campus security guard explaining that her access was blocked at the request of the Metropolitan Police. Others also shared videos of their ID cards not working.

Evil Rays

Virtue signalling: Swedes say they can house a refugee, but refuse once given the opportunity

swedes
© YouTube / Samhällsnytt
A Swedish TV channel took to the streets to quiz people on whether they would be willing to house a refugee, and then called their bluff by putting their answers to an immediate test.

Samhällsnytt (Social News) sent a reporter onto the streets of Sweden to quiz people on the country's current immigration policy and ask if they would be personally willing to help out.

Respondents said they believe the country should continue to take in refugees, and everyone featured said they'd be willing to provide accommodation for an immigrant in need in their own home.


However, once the do-gooders were presented with a (slightly intimidating) man to take home immediately, they quickly changed their tune and churned out a whole host of excuses as to why their particular accommodation would no longer be suitable.

Excuses ranged from having guests already renting their spare room, early morning meetings, busy schedules, leasing restrictions, homes that are too small, to sick children.

Comment: Read Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind to see why humans (not just Swedes!) do this. Human morality is often more giving the appearance of following social norms, than actually behaving in accordance with those norms.


Attention

Shock wave from Chinese chemical plant explosion shatters windows miles away

Chinese explosion site
© Reuters / StringerRescue workers are seen at the scene of the explosion that killed 47 and injured more than 600 people.
Incredible video footage of the explosion at a Chinese chemical plant shows how the sheer force shattered windows miles away. The death toll from the blast has risen to 62, with more than 600 people injured.

The explosion rocked the Chenjiagang Industrial Park in the city of Yancheng, in east China's Jiangsu province, on Thursday afternoon. The resultant fire was not brought under control until 3am the following day.

The death toll has risen to 62 people and about 640 were injured in the catastrophe, according to state media. Survivors were transported to 16 different hospitals where 32 are believed to be in a critical condition, and 58 others severely injured.

The blaze from the explosion spread to neighboring factories and even to a kindergarten where some children were injured.

Eye 1

Facebook stored hundreds of millions of user passwords in plain text visible by employees for years

facebook
Hundreds of millions of Facebook users had their account passwords stored in plain text and searchable by thousands of Facebook employees - in some cases going back to 2012, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. Facebook says an ongoing investigation has so far found no indication that employees have abused access to this data.

Facebook is probing a series of security failures in which employees built applications that logged unencrypted password data for Facebook users and stored it in plain text on internal company servers. That's according to a senior Facebook employee who is familiar with the investigation and who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

The Facebook source said the investigation so far indicates between 200 million and 600 million Facebook users may have had their account passwords stored in plain text and searchable by more than 20,000 Facebook employees. The source said Facebook is still trying to determine how many passwords were exposed and for how long, but so far the inquiry has uncovered archives with plain text user passwords dating back to 2012.

Blue Planet

Famous falcon family returns to FM building spire in Moscow

Falcon
© Global Look Press / Frans Lanting
A peregrine falcon family, which used to nest at the spire of the main building of Russia's Foreign Ministry, has finally returned home after a year of maintenance works on the roof.

The bird family was discovered by engineers, who were inspecting the roof for repairs work a few years ago. The ministry delayed the start of the repair work in order to wait for the peregrine chicks to grow up. When the works eventually started, the birds resettled to the spire of one of Moscow historic skyscrapers.

Peregrine falcons are very rare in big cities and mostly reside on the tops of high-rise buildings. In Moscow, peregrines nest at the spires of historic skyscrapers known as the Seven Sisters, which were built in the 1950s in so-called Stalinist style (a mix of Russian Baroque and Gothic). They include the main building of the FM and Moscow State University, and are considered an icon of Soviet architecture.