Society's ChildS


Dominoes

French mayors looking for help from Paris to deal with 'overwhelming' refugee flow


RT
Tue, 19 Dec 2017 17:57 UTC
france migrants
© Reuters
The mayors of seven major French cities say they have been "backed up against a wall" by an unending influx of refugees. Paris must address the strain on the areas, which are struggling to accommodate new arrivals, they wrote.

The mayors of Lille, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Grenoble, Rennes, Toulouse and Nantes have called out the government for inaction, asking it to do more to tackle the refugee crisis. The resources at the mayors' disposal are far from adequate to cover the needs of asylum seekers who want to stay at already-overcrowded shelters, the mayors wrote in an article to Le Monde on Saturday.

Despite the steady increase in the number of available housing facilities, they are all "completely full," according to the mayors, referring to a rise in refugee applications towards the end of the year. "The year 2017 ends with a massive increase in asylum applications and the arrival of newcomers puts extreme pressure [on local administrations]," they wrote.
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Newspaper

British diplomat found dead in Beirut, murder probe launched (UPDATE)


RT
Sun, 17 Dec 2017 19:43 UTC
Rebecca Dykes
Rebecca Dykes in a photograph circulated by her family
A murder investigation is reportedly under way following the discovery of a female British diplomat's body in the Lebanese capital, Beirut. The UK Foreign Office has confirmed the death, but has not revealed any further details.

The body of Rebecca Dykes was found on the side of a motorway Saturday, with local sources telling the BBC that the UK embassy employee had been sexually assaulted and strangled. Beirut police are reportedly investigating the death.

Comment: Update (December 19):

An Uber driver has reportedly admitted to the murder:
According to Lebanon's NNA agency, officers raided a property in the early hours of Monday morning, resulting in the arrest of an Uber driver named only as Tarek H. He has reportedly admitted picking up the diplomat in his taxi before attempting to rape her and strangling her.

Police sources say Dykes, who was due to fly home for Christmas on Saturday, had been strangled. An initial post-mortem examination was conducted, but an official cause of death was not revealed. A second examination has been scheduled.


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Red Flag

Death count in Puerto Rico to be recounted after claims that government under-counted storm-related deaths


RT
Tue, 19 Dec 2017 17:40 UTC
puerto rico hurricane destruction
© Carol Guzy / Global Look Press
The governor of Puerto Rico has ordered a recount of all deaths since Hurricane Maria, after accusations that the government under-counted the storm-related deaths, which were estimated to be ten times the official count of 64.

'We always expected that the number of hurricane-related deaths would increase as we received more factual information - not hearsay - and this review will ensure we are correctly counting everybody," Governor Ricardo Rossello said in a statement on Monday.

Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico as a Category 4 storm nearly three months ago with winds of up to 154 mph (248 kph), causing up to an estimated $95 billion in damage. The hurricane took out the island's electricity supply, leaving 3.4 million people without power and limiting access to clean drinking water, food and medical care. The official death toll was 64.
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Books

Dogs help struggling young readers in Lithuania library


Digital Journal
Fri, 15 Dec 2017 17:46 UTC
therapy dog
© Petras Malukas, AFPEight-year-old Urte reads to therapy dog Mona at Lithuania's national library in Vilnius.
Mona, a black flat-coated retriever, listens intently to eight-year-old Urte as she reads aloud from a children's book while they sit on a red pillow in Lithuania's grand national library in Vilnius.

Mona and her side-kick, a golden retriever named Gongas, are therapy dogs trained to give struggling young readers the positive attention and confidence boost that teachers sometimes fail to provide.

"While reading to a dog a kid isn't stressed; he's relaxed because nobody will point out his mistakes or tell him to re-read a passage," programme coordinator Viktorija Pukenaite told AFP.

Unlike traditional lessons in schools where teachers are in charge, children are in full control of the 15-minute reading therapy sessions with the dogs, which are carefully selected using special tests.
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Bizarro Earth

Child abuse victim's boyfriend kills predator step-father after court refused to jail him

Jack Burns
Free Thought Project
Mon, 18 Dec 2017 12:00 UTC
Robert Noce Jr., 47, pleaded “no contest” to the accusations from 15-year-old Brittany Monk
When a teenage girl begged for help from police and claimed that her stepfather began sexually abusing her when she was 4 years old, the case eventually went to a judge who let her abuser off on an incredibly light sentence.

Robert Noce Jr., 47, pleaded "no contest" to the accusations from 15-year-old Brittany Monk, and instead of sentencing him to time in prison, Judge Trudy White sentenced him to just five years of probation.

Two weeks after the judge's decision not to punish the child molester, Noce was found dead on Independence Day 2015. He had been killed by Monk and her boyfriend, a revenge killing that is just now making national headlines.
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Shoe

Ban the Americans! US Olympic sprinter at center of doping scandal after undercover Telegraph investigation


RT
Tue, 19 Dec 2017 16:16 UTC
Justin Gatlin
© John Sibley / ReutersJustin Gatlin
American sprinter Justin Gatlin, who won the world 100m title this year, has been implicated in a fresh doping row after members of his team allegedly offered to supply performance-enhancing drugs to an undercover reporter.

Posing as a movie producer, a reporter working for British newspaper the Telegraph visited Gatlin's training camp in Florida under the pretext of working on a movie about running.

The reporter managed to gain the trust of Gatlin's coach Dennis Mitchell and his agent Robert Wagner, before asking for assistance to obtain steroids to get their 'actor' in shape and make him look like a real runner.

Mitchell and Wagner were secretly filmed offering "to supply and administer testosterone and growth hormone" via an Austrian doctor who would provide prescriptions under a false name, and smuggle the drugs to the US. The total cost of the illicit operation was estimated at $250,000.

Comment: Will we see the IOC and WADA institute a full-scale investigation into American doping in athletics? An agent for a world-class sprinter just admitted on camera that every sprinter in the US takes performance-enhancing drugs. That sure sounds like a widespread problem. Maybe the entire US team should be banned from the Olympics now too. The US tried to pretend like they had the higher ground in the ridiculously white-washed full ban of Russia from the 2018 Winter Olympics. It should be crystal clear that they are just as involved in cheating and doping as every other country.

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Red Flag

Police, without a warrant, raid house of journalist behind explosive story on Finland's spy program targeting Russia


RT
Tue, 19 Dec 2017 16:03 UTC
Finnish police
© Lehtikuva / ReutersFILE PHOTO
Finnish police have raided the house of the journalist behind an explosive report on Helsinki's extensive spying on Russian military. The reporter is said to have destroyed a computer hard drive with a hammer before the raid.

The raid was confirmed by the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper, which had earlier published the report on Finland's long-running spy program. On Sunday evening, officers searched the home of Laura Halminen - one of the authors behind the explosive article. They seized her computer, private and corporate mobile phones, iPad, and several USB flash drives. According to the newspaper, the police did not have a search warrant.

Halminen said that she had destroyed the hard drive on her computer with a hammer earlier on Sunday, so that police would not be able to track the source of the report. "I wanted to destroy the computer to ensure that the source of the information is well-protected," she said.
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House

RV's become only option for many as San Francisco's homeless figures jump to 40%

Adelle Nazarian
Breitbart
Tue, 19 Dec 2017 10:19 UTC
RVs Become Only Housing Option for Many in Unaffordable San Francisco
RVs Become Only Housing Option for Many in Unaffordable San Francisco
Housing prices and the homeless epidemic in Northern California are two factors that have contributed to what is being described as a "crisis" in which trailers and recreational vehicles (RVs) have become the only viable option for residents of the Bay Area.

"We've never seen it like this," Tom Myers, executive director of Community Services Agency of Mountain View, told the San Jose Mercury News. "We have to be prepared that this will be the new normal for us. It's a crisis." According to the publication, San Francisco averages more than three complaints a day about RV communities.
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Cell Phone

Lorry driver killed motorist by crashing into his truck while looking at pornography on his phone


The Telegraph
Fri, 15 Dec 2017 15:50 UTC
Felix Gillon
© LEICESTER POLICEFelix Gillon, a lorry driver, was watching pornography on his phone when he crashed into a broken down truck and killed the driver
A lorry driver watching pornography on his mobile phone killed a motorist when he veered onto the hard shoulder and crashed into his truck, a court heard.

Former soldier Felix Gillon has been jailed for eight years after being convicted of causing the death of Kerry Pemberton by dangerous driving on May 3 last year.

The 56-year-old had looked up "porn star candy love" just four minutes before the collision, and a further 25 webpages were accessed just after - including pornographic images and galleries.

Witnesses to the incident saw Gillon drift in and out of the hard shoulder between two and four times on the M69 southbound carriageway at around 3.13pm.

Gillon's Scania vehicle then struck Mr Pemberton's Iveco lorry, with the 55-year-old eventually being crushed against the safety barrier.
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Monkey Wrench

Das Boot ist kaputt! Germany has the world's best submarines, and none of them work


RT
Tue, 19 Dec 2017 15:42 UTC
U33, U34 and U36 German submarines
© Morris MacMatzen / Getty ImagesThe U33, U34 and U36 submarines are seen at the Eckerfoerde German Navy base.
Germany is effectively without its entire submarine fleet, and won't have one vessel operational for months to come. Each one of the navy's vaunted U-boats is either on maintenance or in desperate need of repairs.

The German navy once boasted that its cutting-edge Type 212A submarines equipped with hydrogen fuel cells allow them to navigate submerged for over two weeks before resurfacing, thus giving them an edge over most diesel submarines that can stay submerged for only a few days. Each such vessel costs the German budget some €400 million ($469.9 million), according to the German ARD broadcasting corporation. However, the German military have recently admitted that all of their six precious vessels are out of action.

Berlin lost the last of its submarines this October when the Type 212A vessel named U-35 suffered serious damage to its rudder after hitting a rock during a diving maneuver off the Norwegian coast. The damage was so severe that the submarine had to be escorted to the German port of Kiel by testing ship the Helmsand. The rest of the submarine fleet, it turned out, was already out of service by that point.
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