Society's ChildS


Network

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai cancels industry trade speech over death threats

Ajit Pai
© Aaron P. Bernstein / Reuters
Weeks after repealing net neutrality, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai canceled a planned appearance at a tech industry trade show because of death threats, according to a report.

On Wednesday, Gary Shapiro, president of Consumer Technology Association (CTA), released a statement that said Pai would not be attending the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this year.

Pocket Knife

London Mayor's response to knife crime epidemic: £10,000 on 'knife wands' for schools, effectiveness not being tracked

London Mayor Khan and Juncker
© OLIVIER HOSLET/AFP/Getty Images
London Mayor Sadiq Khan's response to the knife crime epidemic overtaking his city has been to issue metal-detecting 'knife wands' to schools - but City Hall is not tracking how many times they are being used, or how many knives are being confiscated, if any.

Seventy-six schools across the capital are already using the wands, under what City Hall described as "Sadiq's robust and comprehensive knife crime strategy", and is "urging" more to take up his offer to provide them.

Breitbart London asked the mayor of London's office how long the initiative had been planned, and whether it was a response the Mayor's Office for Policing And Crime (MOPAC) figures, as well as where it has already been rolled out, how effective it has been in driving down knife crime, and how much it is expected to cost.

Comment: Seems like a rather impotent response to the problem. And if spending the money and making the effort, why not track how effective the strategy is? But while Breitbart seems to have it in for the Mayor, it isn't really clear if anything he's done has actually lead to this increase in crime. See also:


X

Outrage in Turkey after religious affairs agency approves child marriage as young as nine, later retracts

Turkish girls
© ReutersIn this file photo, Turkish students wait for the arrival of President Erdogan.
Turkey's religious affairs state agency came under heavy criticism on Thursday from the main opposition party after it reportedly said girls as young as nine could marry under Islamic law.

The Diyanet religious affairs directorate said on Tuesday the minimum age for girls to marry was nine, while for boys it was 12, according to Turkish media including Hurriyet daily quoting the agency's official website.

The post, which took the form of an explanatory statement on Islamic law, has since been taken down, after a backlash from the opposition and women's rights groups.

The head of the High Commission of Religious Affairs Ekrem Keles on Thursday told Hurriyet that the earliest age for a girl to marry is 17 and 18 for a boy.

Comment: More bizarre opinions from Turkey's directorate on religious affairs:

Dumped by text? That's nothing - top religious body in Turkey okays divorce by text message


Info

'Fire and Fury': Hope Hicks' family, friends say she'll need therapy after she leaves Trump

Hope Hicks and Donald Trump
© media.gq
Family and friends of Hope Hicks believe the White House communications director will have to seek professional counseling after she leaves her job in the administration, according to a report published Thursday.

"Following the Trump victory and her [Hope Hicks] move into the White House, her friends and intimates talked with great concern about what kind of therapies and recuperation she would need after her tenure was finally over," an excerpt from Michael Wolff's forthcoming book "Fire and Fury" stated, as reprinted in GQ.

Hicks, 29, was the first person President Trump's campaign hired in 2015. She had worked for Matthew Hiltzik's New York-based public relations firm before jumping to Ivanka Trump's fashion brand, where the eldest Trump daughter recommended Hicks for her father's campaign.

Comment: See also:


Health

Flashback California Democrats propose to spend $1 billion dollars on health care for illegal immigrants

california immigrants
© Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images
Democrats, who have a monopoly of power in California politics, are proposing to spend $1 billion a year to provide health care to illegal immigrants living in the state. Medi-Cal, which is the state's Medicaid program, would eliminate legal residency requirements.

The proposal was offered as part of a $4.3 billion proposal from San Francisco Democrat Assemblyman Phil Ting, the head of the Assembly budget committee. According to NBC Bay Area, 7% of people residing in California lack health coverage, many of them illegal immigrants.

California has already eliminated legal residency requirements for Medicaid coverage for people under 19; Ting's proposal would extend that to all ages.

Comment: Sounds like the democrats have been smoking to much of the green stuff. Then again, being a sanctuary state, why not make more enticing for people to come stay illegally? Though the sign below turned out to be a fake, it sums it up nicely - democrats need the votes!

california road sign
© Kambree Kawahine Koa/TwitterA fake Sanctuary State sign placed on the 15 Freeway between California and Nevada.



Health

Flu crisis strikes the UK: Operations cancelled, no beds available, long waits

NHS flu crisis
© David Sillitoe for the GuardianMany hospitals have come under the cosh since Christmas amid very cold weather and higher than usual prevalence of flu.
The number of people forced to wait long periods in ambulances rose dramatically during the Christmas period, whilst Britain's hospitals were dangerously full.

National Health Service (NHS) figures show 16,893 patients waited more than 30 minutes in ambulances at Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments in the week before New Year's Eve.

This represents a 42 per cent rise on the 11,900 which endured half hour handover waits the week previously. Those stuck for more than an hour almost doubled, shooting up by 95 per cent to 4,700 compared to 2,400 the week before.

Ambulance

Carbon monoxide leak kills teen, sickens 41 others in New Jersey

new jersey
© Dan Bowens/Twitter
Dozens of people were forced out of their apartments into blizzard conditions in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, as a carbon monoxide leak poisoned at least 41 people and killed a teenager.

A 13-year-old girl is dead and three of her relatives are in critical condition Thursday evening, following the poisonous gas leak in a 12-unit apartment building, WNBC reported.

A total of 41 people were treated, including 27 police officers, about 20 percent of the police force, according to WNBC.

Many of the exposure victims were children, according to WABC. Kids were reportedly seen fainting, as emergency responders set up a triage outside the residential building.

Family

German transsexual woman loses case to be recognized as child's legal mother since he is the father

german court
© Kai Pfaffenbach / Reuters
A German transsexual woman whose sperm was used to fertilize an egg with her female partner can be registered only as the child's father, according to a ruling by the country's highest civil court.

The woman, who changed sex in 2012, has been in a registered civil partnership since September 2015. A child was born to the couple in June that year after the plaintiff's frozen sperm was used to fertilize an egg. However, the Federal Court of Justice ruled Thursday that while the law recognizes transgender people as their chosen sex, a change in gender does not alter the legal relationship between a parent and child in cases where the child was born after the transition.

Syringe

Government mistakenly kidnaps innocent elderly man, forcibly injects him with anti-psychotics - then gives him $50 gift card for food

Eugene Wright
A senior citizen was kidnapped by police, taken to a local hospital, and forced to take injections of psychiatric drugs and they had the wrong guy.

Eugene Wright told reporters he still has nightmares about being kidnapped, caged, and forced to take drugs. The 63-year-old Meadville man says he was just minding his own business outside his home in June of 2017 when he was taken into custody by police at the request of Stairways Behavioral Health.

They claimed Wright was threatening people at a local physician's office but he told the police and the representative from Stairways that was impossible because he was at work. What happened next was nothing short of a living hell and resembled a scene out of 1984. Wright says he's now suing for having his civil rights violated. He said:
They explained to me earlier that day at 10 a.m. I was at an orthopedic office threatening people. I was at work.

Bizarro Earth

Police keeping 'open mind' about whether UK murder was revenge for gang rape

abduction
© CCO/Pixabay
Last month Alex Vanderpuye was stabbed to death in east London. It has now emerged that when he was 13 he was part of a notorious gang who gang-raped a young girl in Hackney.

In 2008 Alex Vanderpuye was jailed for six years after being convicted of the rape and false imprisonment of the 14-year-old girl. Nine years later Vanderpuye was stabbed to death in the street.