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German government to crack down on immigrant child brides, underage marriages


RT
Wed, 05 Apr 2017 19:29 UTC
girl ocean sunset
© Cyndi Monaghan / Getty Images
Germany's government has moved to stamp out child marriages by drafting a law that will raise the age of consent to 18 and give authorities the ability to break up unions involving minors.

The law is an effort to tackle underage marriages prevalent in some immigrant communities, according to local reports, after the Federal Ministry of the Interior released statistics showing 1,475 foreign children had been documented as married last year.
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Passport

LGBT rights group campaigning for UK passports to include gender neutral 'X'


RT
Wed, 05 Apr 2017 15:14 UTC
british passport
© Britta Pedersen / DPA / Global Look Press
British passports should allow people who do not identify as male or female to define themselves as gender neutral 'X,' an LGBT rights group says.

Stonewall has warned many people who define themselves as transgender in the UK are "afraid to travel abroad" because they fear intrusive questions or difficulties at passport control, the Independent reports.

"This can be especially worrying for those traveling with children, particularly if they had, or adopted, children when they were legally a different gender."

Stonewall made the call as part of its five-year plan, 'A Vision for Change,' launched on Wednesday. Its aim is to create gender equality for the estimated 650,000 transgender people in the UK.
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V

UPDATE: President of Surrey Creep Catchers arrested following sting

Emily Lazatin
CKNW News
Mon, 03 Apr 2017 14:04 UTC
Surrey Creep Catchers
The President of the Surrey Creep Catchers has been arrested by Surrey RCMP according to one of the group's members.

Decoy Nicole Hunter says Ryan Laforge was arrested for assault Monday evening after a sting at a Tim Hortons at Surrey Central Mall.

In a video, the vigilante group's president and decoy Hunter, are seen trying to detain a man who allegedly took an offer to sleep with a mother and her six-year-old child.

The video shows Laforge shoving the alleged pedophile against a wall.

Comment: Vancouver's News1130 reports no charges will be filed against Ryan LaForge:
Mounties say no charges have been laid against the founder of Surrey's Creep Catchers after Ryan LaForge was arrested last night in Surrey.

Police say they've had a chance to review some of the video of the incident and will now carry out a thorough investigation. They're also not commenting on the allegations of child luring and assault that Creep Catchers has brought forward.

The group has members that pose as underage people to meet up with potential predators in person where the situation is videotaped.

Surrey RCMP is using this latest incident to, again, say it doesn't support vigilantism. "Vigilantism, no matter how well meaning, does not involve police, and therefore is void of ongoing safety considerations. Vigilantism is a risk to the safety of all those involved including victims, or potential victims, the alleged suspects, and/or the safety of those persons intent on broadcasting the suspected crime," says Corporal Scotty Schumann.

The most recent incident played out in an underground parking lot on King George Boulevard. Images from a video posted online show the man being chased outside by the vigilante group after they "set him up" for sex with a six-year-old and her mother.


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Handcuffs

Six suspected ISIS & Al-Nusra Front recruiters detained after St. Petersburg attack


RT
Wed, 05 Apr 2017 19:44 UTC
Detaining nationals of Central Asian republics suspected of assisting terrorists. St. Petersburg April 5, 2017
© UFSB of the Russian Federation Press service / SputnikDetaining nationals of Central Asian republics suspected of assisting terrorists. St. Petersburg April 5, 2017
Six suspected ISIS and Al-Nusra Front recruiters, said to come from Central Asian countries, were detained in St. Petersburg days after the blast in the city's Metro. President Putin says any post-Soviet country could be the target of a terrorist attack.

Six nationals of Central Asian countries were detained following a series of anti-terrorism raid by Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) the Interior Ministry and National Guard in St. Petersburg, the Investigative Committee said in a statement.

The suspects, who came to Russia to seek employment, "have been recruiting people of Central Asian descent since 2015 in St. Petersburg to become followers of Islamic State [IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL] and Al Nusra Front, and to carry out terrorist attacks," the committee said.

Having searched the suspected recruiters' flat, the security services also retrieved Islamist propaganda literature and documents, which may be a piece of intelligence worthy of further investigation.

While investigators will specifically try to uncover the men's connections, it is not yet clear if they were in contact with the prime suspect believed to have set off a suicide bomb inside the St. Petersburg Metro earlier this week, the committee said.

Comment: The federal Investigative Committee said that there was no evidence "at this time" of any connection between the people detained on April 5 and the Kyrgyz-born suspect in the April 3 subway bombing that killed 14 people in St. Petersburg.
In a statement, the investigators said the detainees had come to Russia to work.
...
The statement said the authorities had not yet decided whether to press charges against the detainees.
See also: UPDATE: Terror attack in Russia: Two explosions on St Petersburg Metro - 10 people reported dead, 50 injured

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Info

How I learned to stop worrying and love Russia

Paul Goncharoff Moscow Expat Life
Russia Insider
Wed, 29 Mar 2017 10:02 UTC
Vladamir Putin
Putin's Russia is conservative and pragmatic. If that doesn't sound scary to you — it means you're a normal person.

Editor's Note: This is a truly insightful and entertaining firsthand account of Russia through the eyes of someone who, like so many of us, was brought up to loathe the "Russkies". Find a comfortable chair, pour yourself a drink, and enjoy!

As a native New Yorker, brought up in the 1950s and 60s, I damn well knew what those Russkies were; pinkos, spies, commissars and worse! At public school I regularly had to squat under my desk while the nuclear attack alarms went off, all the while our homeroom teacher barked at us to make sure our eyes were closed and our faces turned away from the windows. All that bother because the communists were especially intent on turning our school into a thermonuclear barbecue.

Comment: Russia transformed under President Putin from a broken and bankrupted state to one that is able to grow even under significant Western sanctions. Putin's popularity among Russians, amid all the global mudslinging and economic warfare is a testament to the genuine developments Russia has achieved. Its people know hardship, and because of it they also understand their success is genuine versus mere political talk.

The West is engaging in a foaming-at-the mouth propaganda war against Putin and against the Russian people. In days when the world should rightfully be joining with Russia and morning their loss from the Saint Petersburg metro attacks, the West launches new campaigns to stave off any type of sympathy. They try to tarnish the image of Russia when it is one of the few nations actually doing good in the world. One can only hope that those with some decency will begin to see the US' appalling behavior for what it is.

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Arrow Down

Despicable: Malaysian MP condones child marriage, rape victims marrying their rapists


RT
Wed, 05 Apr 2017 12:00 UTC
child marriage
© Global Look Press
Girls as young as nine are "physically and spiritually" ready for marriage, a Malaysian MP says, also claiming there's "nothing wrong" with females marrying their rapists. It comes after Malaysia failed to criminalize child marriage in a recent law.

"They reach puberty at the age of nine or 12. And at that time, their body is already akin to them being 18 years old. So physically and spiritually, it is not a barrier for the girl to marry," Shabudin Yahaya, a member of the Barisan Nasional Coalition, told Parliament on Tuesday, as quoted by Reuters.

He went on to say there is "nothing wrong" with a rape victim marrying the man who raped her, as doing so would allow her to avoid a "bleak future."

Comment: Children who are forced into marriage are being robbed of their future. They rarely continue their education, denying them any hope of independence or the ability to earn a livelihood. They are also exposed to the risks of too-early pregnancy, child bearing, and motherhood before they are physically and psychologically ready. Girls under 15, their bodies still developing and their pelvises narrow, are five times more likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth than women over 20, the U.S. Agency for International Development estimates.

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Jet3

F-16 jet crashes outside Washington, DC


RT
Wed, 05 Apr 2017 15:26 UTC
U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighter jet
© U.S. Air Force / Reuters
A F-16 fighter jet has crashed two miles south of Joint Base Andrews, just outside Washington, DC. At least one person ejected from the plane and has been located by rescue crews.

The pilot ejected safely and was recovered by a military rescue helicopter, Air Force officials told AP.

The F-16 from the 113th Wing was on a training mission, and crashed in a wooded area of Clinton, Maryland. The plane reportedly belonged to the Maryland Air National Guard.
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Star of David

#AlKhalil4: Israel arrests four Palestinian leaders for planting olive trees during Land Day commemoration

Sheren Khalel
Mondoweiss
Tue, 04 Apr 2017 15:04 UTC
Land Day protest in Hebron
© Human Rights DefendersLand Day protest in Hebron where four human rights activists were arrested for planting olive trees.
Four Palestinian leaders and activists from Hebron were held in Israeli prison for five days over the weekend, their crime — planting olive trees on private Palestinian land at risk of being confiscated by the Israeli government.

Around 50 activists gathered for the commemoration of Land Day last Thursday to plant olive trees on Palestinian land near the illegal Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba in Hebron. The tree planting was a symbolic form of non-violent resistance to commemorate Land Day, a day in 1976, when the Israeli government annexed 20,000 dunams (5,000 acres) of land, killed 6 Palestinians and wounded around 100 protesters.
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Stock Down

World's best economist spills the beans!

Paul Craig Roberts
CounterPunch
Wed, 05 Apr 2017 14:47 UTC
Junk economics
If you want to learn real economics instead of neoliberal junk economics, read Michael Hudson's books.

What you will learn is that neoliberal economics is an apology for the rentier class and the large banks that have succeeded in financializing the economy, shifting consumer spending power from the purchase of goods and services that drive the real economy to the payment of interest and fees to banks.

His latest book is J is for Junk Economics. It is written in the form of a dictionary, but the definitions give you the precise meaning of economic terms, the history of economic concepts, and describe the transformation of economics from classical economics, where the emphasis was on taxing incomes that are not the product of the production of goods and services, to neoliberal economics, which rests on the taxation of labor and production.

This is an important difference that is not easy to understand. Classical economists defined "unearned income" as "economic rent." This is not the rent that you pay for your apartment. Economic rent is an income stream that has no counterpart in cost incurred by the receipient of the income stream.
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Smoking

Anti-Smoking Fascism: 71% of people in Kentucky support statewide smoking ban


WVAH
Tue, 04 Apr 2017 14:00 UTC
Smoking is healthier than fascism
Smoking: it's healthier than Fascism!
A new poll from an anti-smoking group in Kentucky, one of the nation's largest tobacco producing states, says 71 percent support a statewide smoking ban for most public places.


Comment: As we all should be aware by now, remembering the polls telling the world that Killary was going to win the election by a huge margin, pollsters can produce almost any result they want in their polls. It depends on who you ask, how many people you ask, what questions you ask, what questions you don't ask and how you ask the questions. With these variables, decide what answer you want and then craft your poll accordingly. This poll was commissioned by an anti-smoking group so no surprise with the end result.


Anti-smoking advocates hope the poll will fuel a push for a public smoking ban in a state that leads the country in the number of tobacco-related cancer cases per 100,000 people.

But working against them is the state's population of smokers and the state's long history of tobacco farming that has sustained generations of voters.

Click here to see the Kentucky Health Issues Poll.

Source: Associated Press
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