Society's ChildS


Arrow Up

Poor shall inherit the earth? Somali refugee family lives in £2.2m London mansion

eery london
A family of Somali refugees are living in a £2.2m mansion which is thought to be one of Britain's most expensive council houses.


Muriidi Abati, 57 who earns £7 an hour and his wife Marhan Mohamed, 44, have lived in the Georgian townhouse with their 7 children for 15 years. They are paying only £90pw to Islington Council.

Critics have said it was "ridiculous," refugees given "a home for millionaires" while many others live in squalor.

Comment: And the British establishment wonders why their citizens are resentful? It would be one thing if the Abatis were millionaires from their own efforts. But... socialism.


Heart - Black

Police identify two young children and lesbian couple 'savagely' killed in upstate New York

Home in NY
Police secure the perimeter of a home in Troy, N.Y., Dec. 26, 2017, after four bodies were discovered in a basement apartment. Troy police say the deaths are being treated as suspicious.
Police have identified the 5-year-old girl, 11-year-old boy and same-sex couple found dead in an upstate New York apartment in a killing described by the police chief as "savagery."

The slain children were Shanise Myers, 5, and her brother Jeremiah Myers, 11, the Troy Police Department said today.

The children's mother, Shanta Myers, 36, was also killed, as well as Brandi Mells, 22, who police said was in a relationship with Shanta Myers.

Take 2

2017 - The year of fake news - Some of the worst media fabrications, including Trump and Russia bashing (VIDEO)

Fake News 2017
© Fake News of 2017 / RT
Fake news stories on the Russia-Trump investigation dominated the western media agenda in 2017. Despite soon proven false, many of the reports were quickly amplified by other outlets and spread across social media.

The fake news for 2017 kicked off in January with reports that Russia's hacking had extended to infiltrating the US House of Representatives.

Pills

Opioid crisis driven by a stressed culture looking for quick fixes

bid pharma opiods
Culture is contributing to the opioid crisis in the US; drug companies ease supply, and lobbies raise the demand from doctors, while they and patients are misled about the risks, law professor Richard Ausness told RT.

Life expectancy in America has declined for the second year in a row, and figures show that powerful painkillers have affected it as opioids played a bigger role in overdose deaths last year than any other legal or illegal drug.

According to a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were over 63,600 drug overdose deaths in the US in 2016. In comparison, 58,220 US soldiers died during the more than decade-long Vietnam War.

Comment: The drug addict's mind may in fact be more similar to the criminal mind than is generally thought. This needs not be a stigma but an understanding that can open the doors to more effective treatment. In the book Inside the Criminal Mind, Dr. Stanton Samenow explores the thinking errors at the roots of both crime and many destructive behaviors. Getting direct feeback on such thinking errors can pave the way for fundamental change.


Sheriff

Police officer fatality rate drops to lowest level in four years while number of people killed by police continues to increase

police
© Carlo Allegri / Reuters
The number of police officers who died in the line of duty dropped to its lowest levels in four years in 2017. Officials attribute the decrease to advances in safety gear and training.

As of Thursday, 128 federal, state and local law enforcement officers died in the line of duty in 2017, a decrease of 10 percent from last year, according to a preliminary report from the nonprofit National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (NLEOMF) released Thursday.

The total number of officers killed in the line of duty this year is the lowest since 2013, when 117 officers were killed. Since then, the number of fatalities has been on the rise for the past three consecutive years, reaching a peak of 143 fatalities in 2016.

Comment: Can't be said often enough: Don't call the cops if you're living in a police state


Ice Cube

Utah police officer punches his way through icy pond to rescue 8-year-old boy on Christmas day

Icy pond
© Getty ImagesA Utah deputy rescues an 8-year-old child from a frozen pond on Christmas day.
An 8-year-old Utah boy is alive today because of the heroic actions of one Washington County Sheriff's Office sergeant who heroically punched his way through an icy pond to save the boy who had fallen through.

What are the details?

The Christmas incident occurred after the young boy chased a dog who ran onto the water. Another child who was with the boy ran for help after the other boy had gone under the ice.

KSTU-TV reported that the officer, Sgt. Aaron Thompson, who was one of the first responders to arrive at the scene, entered the pond without any equipment and began punching through the ice in an attempt to save the boy.

According to KSTU, the child was approximately 25 feet away from the shore.

Network

UK receives first batch of Russian natural gas to help keep Britons from freezing this winter

Russian tanker Christophe de Margerie
© sovcomflot.ru
Russian tanker Christophe de Margerie has brought the first batch of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Yamal to the United Kingdom. London had to urgently turn to Russian gas targeted by US sanctions due to supply outages.

A global positioning service puts the tanker in Harwich on Wednesday, although it had previously shown the ship was heading for the Isle of Grain port in Kent, where there is a regasification terminal.

Earlier this month, Novatek, one of the largest Russian gas producers, said that it sold the cargo of 170,000 cubic meters of LNG to Petronas LNG UK Limited (PLUK), the UK branch of Malaysia's Petronas.

Yamal LNG, located in the Russian Arctic, is a joint project of Russia's Novatek, France's Total, China National Petroleum Corporation and the Silk Road Fund. Novatek holds a 50.1 percent share in the project. Its partners own 20 percent, 20 percent, and 9.9 percent respectively.

Arrow Down

US life expectancy on the decline, falling behind other wealthy nations

USFLAG
© Salon
American lives are shorter on average than those in other wealthy nations, and the gap is growing ever wider, according to the latest data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As recently as 1979, the typical American could expect to live roughly 1.5 years longer than the average resident of one of the other countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development - a group of 35 wealthy, predominantly Western nations.

The typical American baby born in 1979 could expect to live about 73.9 years, while the typical baby born in one of the other 34 OECD countries would live roughly to age 72.3.

Comment: It seems like Christopher Ingraham really wants to blame Trump for the decline of US life expectancy. Better yet, why not just blame Russia?

A reason not considered for the decline of life expectancy is how the adoption of faulty thinking can put a negative strain on the immune system. Combine that with the Standard American Diet and you've got a nasty mix. Fake news and fake food makes a society sick.


Gold Coins

Head of one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges kidnapped in Ukraine

A Russian IT specialist and managing director of one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges Pavel Lerner has been kidnapped in Kiev, Ukrainian media reports.

Paul Lerner
© Paul Lerner / Facebook
Lerner stopped responding to phone calls on December 26, according to a Ukrainian media Strana.ua.

"The programmer was dragged into a Mercedes-Benz Vito car by unknown persons in dark clothes and balaclavas, and taken away in an unknown direction," the website writes.

Cell Phone

Apple apologizes to customers for 'misunderstanding' over slowing down older iPhones

Apple phone
© Damir Sagolj / Reuters
Following a strong backlash for conceding they reduced the processing speed of aging iPhones, Apple apologized to customers and lowered the price of the out-of-warranty battery replacements by $50.

The tech giant is currently facing nine lawsuits in relation to how the company handles the power management of its batteries in older iPhones.

In response, the company sent a letter to customers Thursday, attempting to clear up what it said were some "misunderstandings" about the issue.

"We've been hearing feedback from our customers about the way we handle performance for iPhones with older batteries and how we have communicated that process," Apple said. "We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down. We apologize. There's been a lot of misunderstanding about this issue."

Comment: See also:
Woman sues Apple for nearly a trillion dollars for deliberately slowing down older iPhones
Apple's chief executive Tim Cook now only uses private jets to travel & gets hefty pay increase