Society's ChildS


Red Flag

Ukraine facing potential labor 'catastrophe' as millions of citizens flee country


RT
Tue, 04 Sep 2018 16:39 UTC
Central Railway Station in Kiev
© SputnikCentral Railway Station in Kiev
Nearly a million Ukrainians are leaving the country every year, according to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavel Klimkin, warning the country will face severe labor shortages in the years to come.

"We are really in a catastrophic situation with a million Ukrainians leaving every year," the minister said in an interview with Ukrainian ICTV.

Klimkin said that Poland alone has received around 1.4 million Ukrainians recently, and that nearly 30 percent of the population of the western Polish city of Wroclaw now speaks Ukrainian.

According to Ukraine's foreign ministry, about three million Ukrainian migrants currently live in Russia, and up to two million in Poland.
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Snowflake

Israel broadcaster apologizes for daring to play music from Wagner, Hitler's favorite composer


RT
Tue, 04 Sep 2018 15:11 UTC
play instrument
© Global Look Press/ Jodi & Jake
Israel's public broadcaster has apologized for "erring" in its decision to broadcast a piece by Hitler's favorite classical music composer and known anti-Semite Richard Wagner.

Kan broadcasting corporation came under fire from disgruntled listeners on Friday after it aired parts of Wagner's opera Gotterdammerung, or 'Twilight of the Gods', according to Israeli news site Haaretz.

While there is no law in Israel preventing the airing of Wagner's compositions, TV and radio stations have refrained from doing so amid concern it could offend the public given the 19th century composer's anti-Semitic views.

A spokeswoman for Kan apologized to its listeners in a statement on Sunday and stressed its decision to not air Wagner has not changed.

Comment: Just because someone listens and enjoys Wagner's music doesn't exactly make them a Nazi.

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Attention

South African bank says farmers should repay debt for property even if the government expropriates it


RT
Tue, 04 Sep 2018 16:05 UTC
farm field south africa
© Siphiwe Sibeko / Reuters
White farmers in South Africa will have to pay back their loan for property that could be expropriated under the land reform proposal that is currently being pushed by the ruling African National Congress (ANC).

The controversial bill, allowing the government to confiscate lands from white farmers without compensation and redistribute them to the black citizens, is currently pending further study after the Portfolio Committee on Public Works withdrew the draft.

An email from Nedbank, which emerged on social media last week, made it clear that expropriation without compensation is not going to be deemed as a legitimate reason for borrowers to default on their payments. Nedbank is among the country's ten largest lenders.

Comment:

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Heart - Black

Nevada woman dies in jail after callously being denied medical help, DA finds no wrongdoing


RT
Tue, 04 Sep 2018 15:41 UTC
jail cell
© Darrin Klimek / Getty Images
Unpaid traffic tickets saw a Nevada woman in jail, where she began to suffer drug withdrawals and seizures. Days later she was dead, after being denied medical care.

A report by state investigators, published this week and revealed by the Reno Gazette Journal, found that staff at Mineral County Jail violated multiple policies by denying 21-year-old Kelly Coltrain medical help, even after she informed them she was dependent on heroin and would suffer seizures without the drug.

In a days-long ordeal caught on her jail cell's CCTV camera, Coltrain vomited and shook as her condition worsened. Officers rejected her pleas for medical help, instead handing her a mop and bucket to clean up her own vomit.

Coltrain died in her cell, and her body lay motionless for six hours before her jailers realized what had happened. Officers made no attempt to resuscitate her, and did not call for medical assistance until the following morning.

Comment: Kelly Coltrain's death is a tragedy, but mostly for her family and friends. And yet over a similar death, that of Sergie Magnitsky, Bill Browder turned the world upside down.

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Biohazard

Three hospitalized in West London acid attack


RT
Tue, 04 Sep 2018 15:34 UTC
London police line
© Neil Hall / Reuters/File Photo
Three people have been rushed to hospital after a suspected acid attack in Notting Hill, West London. On Tuesday afternoon, emergency services rushed to the area after three men were sprayed with a noxious substance.

A photo, reportedly taken after the attack, showed paramedics and firefighters at the scene.

People claiming to have witnessed the attack, which took place on Westbourne Grove, used to Twitter to express their disgust.

Comment:

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Clipboard

Flashback Trade misinvoicing: How Western companies are stealing billions from Africa

Brian LeBlanc
Think Africa Press
Fri, 09 May 2014 00:00 UTC
Imported rice at the port in Abidjan.
Imported rice at the port in Abidjan.
The little-understood practice of misinvoicing or re-invoicing relies on legal grey areas and financial secrecy and costs the continent dearly.

Lately, the media has been replete with stories about how Africa is losing billions of dollars a year through a process called "trade misinvoicing." The concept of trade misinvoicing is simple: companies and their agents deliberately alter the prices of their exports and imports in order to justify moving money out of, or into, a country illicitly.

The practice is very common in Africa. To name just a couple instances, it has allegedly been used to avoid paying import duties on sugar in Kenya and to shift taxable income out of Zambia and into tax havens abroad.

The amount Africa loses to trade misinvoicing is astounding. Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a Washington, DC-based think tank, estimates that $286 billion worth of capital was extracted out of Africa using this process over the past decade. Between 2002 and 2011, due to illicit financial flows, sub-Saharan Africa lost 5.7% of it's GDP, a 20.2% increase. Of these illicit financial flows, 62% were due to misinvoicing.

The good news is the issue of trade misinvoicing has found its way to the forefront of development talks.

Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and former South African President Thabo Mbeki are just a few African heavyweights who have been trying to urge the international community to begin addressing the problem of illicit financial flows and trade misinvoicing.

Comment: Apparently, not much has changed...
Not So Fun Fact: Theresa May Leads the West in Stealing Africa's Wealth

May's government facilitates Western plunder of Africa's wealth. In 2012, developing countries including those in Africa, lost $700bn through 'trade mis-invoicing'. That's five times the aid receipts developing countries received that year. Trade mis-invoicing takes money out of these countries and hoards it in tax havens.

And where are these havens? Well, May's government allows the largest network of tax havens through its overseas territories, facilitating a lot of this capital flight. Half of the 240,000 tax-dodging shell companies revealed in the Panama Papers were registered in the British Virgin Islands alone, for example.

Add such capital flight to repayments on debt and Western profit extraction, and the picture is staggering. Net resource outflows from developing countries end up totalling about $3tn per year, which is 24 times the amount they receive in aid.


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Sherlock

Greek police investigating death of Australian model Sinead McNamara on board yacht of Mexican billionaire

Helena Smith
The Guardian
Mon, 03 Sep 2018 12:32 UTC
Sinead McNamara
© FacebookSinead McNamara, who died on the Mayan Queen IV early on Friday.
Greek police are conducting an investigation into the death of an Australian model onboard a superyacht off the Ionian island of Kefalonia.

Three days after the body of Sinead McNamara was discovered at the back of the luxury vessel, local police said they had broadened an inquiry into her death.

"The yacht left our waters last night but we are still gathering evidence," Kefalonia's police port official, Stamatis Limneos, told the Guardian. "The inquiry is ongoing."

Local media reported that the 20-year-old had killed herself, with news outlets saying she was found in a comatose state in a cabin.

The model, originally from Port Macquarie, had been employed as a crew member on the 93.25-metre Mayan Queen IV, owned by the Mexican mining magnate Alberto Baillères.

The billionaire businessman is believed to have left the yacht last Tuesday and only crew members were onboard at the time of McNamara's death. A father of seven, Baillères is listed as the world's 143rd wealthiest individual with a net worth of $9.6bn (£8.26bn), according to Forbes magazine.
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Heart - Black

Poachers declare open season on elephants: 87 carcasses found near wildlife sanctuary in Botswana


RT
Tue, 04 Sep 2018 14:16 UTC
elephants poaching Botswana
Baby elephants, orphaned by poachers, are now being cared for at a new sanctuary in Botswana
Scores of elephant carcasses have been found near a wildlife sanctuary in Botswana in what conservationists say is the largest case of poaching ever seen in Africa.

Elephants Without Borders is conducting an aerial survey in the area near Okavango Delta and found many of the elephants were killed in the last fortnight and were targeted for their tusks.

Five white rhinos have also been poached in the space of three months. The survey is only half-completed, and more carcasses are expected to be uncovered.

"I'm shocked, I'm completely astounded. The scale of elephant poaching is by far the largest I've seen or read about anywhere in Africa to date," Dr Mike Chase of Elephants Without Borders told the BBC. "The poachers are now turning their guns to Botswana. We have the world's largest elephant population and it's open season for poachers."
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USA

Tapes show cops repeatedly tasering suspect who later died in hospital


RT
Tue, 04 Sep 2018 11:41 UTC
police taser man tulsa oklahoma
© PoliceNetwork / YouTube
Tulsa police released a video showing officers repeatedly tasering a black suspect, who showed impressive resistance to electric shock. The man never regained consciousness in the hospital and died three days later.

The footage shows the altercation between 25-year-old Joshua Harvey and the officers on August 24 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The man was screaming and removing his clothes in the street, according to police statement.

Things escalated when Harvey tried to break into an office building housing Arvest Bank. As the officers approached the individual, who looked actively disturbed, he pulled the glass doors of the building so hard that it shattered. Injured by the broken glass, he ran inside the bank, where officers caught up with him.
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Powertool

Drill hole blunder not meteorite caused depressurization on Soyuz spacecraft


RT
Mon, 03 Sep 2018 15:43 UTC
drill hole soyez
© NASAA suspected drill hole found in the Soyuz spacecraft.
A depressurization event on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft docked at the International Space Station (ISS) may have been caused by a hole which somebody apparently drilled accidentally and then covered up.

Several Russian media reports say the air leak, which was discovered last week on the spacecraft, may not have been caused by a micrometeorite, as initially speculated. Rather, a drill hole in the internal hull of the Soyuz spacecraft's orbital module leaked air, RIA Novosti reported citing a source in Energia, the producer of the capsule.

"The hole was made on the ground. The person responsible for the act of negligence has been identified," the source told the news agency.

Another source said a worker apparently accidentally drilled the hole, but instead of reporting it, simply sealed it. The sealant held for at least the two months the Soyuz spacecraft spent in orbit, before finally drying up and being pushed out of the hole by air pressure.

Comment: Well, at least the space agency was honest - even if their worker wasn't.

See also:

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