Society's ChildS


Dollars

Credit ripoff: Two major US credit reporting bureaus fined for deceptive marketing practices


RT
Wed, 04 Jan 2017 22:03 UTC
equifax HQ Atlanta GA
© GoogleEquifax headquarters Atlanta, GA
Two major US credit reporting bureaus have been ordered to pay more than $23 million in restitution and penalties after being exposed of deceiving customers and tricking them into expensive recurring payments.

Atlanta-based Equifax and the Chicago-based TransUnion will have to pay a total of $17.6 million in restitution to their customers and a total of $5.5 million in fines to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) under the terms of a consent order announced on Tuesday.

"TransUnion and Equifax deceived consumers about the usefulness of the credit scores they marketed, and lured consumers into expensive recurring payments with false promises," CFPB Director Richard Cordray said, announcing the penalties. "Credit scores are central to a consumer's financial life and people deserve honest and accurate information about them."
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Handcuffs

Germany arrests acquaintance who dined with Berlin Christmas attacker


RT
Wed, 04 Jan 2017 22:02 UTC
Berlin Christmas attack
© Fabrizio Bensch / ReutersPolicemen investigate the scene where a truck ploughed into a crowded Christmas market in the German capital last night in Berlin, Germany, December 20, 2016.
German police have detained an acquaintance of the alleged Berlin attacker Anis Amri during a raid at a refugee facility, the federal prosecutor's office announced. The detained man is said to have dined with Amri on the eve of December 19 attack.

The attacker's suspected accomplice, a 26-year old Tunisian man, was snatched during a police operation at a refugee facility in Berlin-Spandau, Frauke Kohler, spokeswoman for the Federal prosecutors office confirmed on Thursday.

"According to the current findings, the suspect and Anis Amri knew each other since around late 2015," Johler said.

"In the course of our investigations we found out that the two had met on the eve of the attack in a restaurant in Berlin-Mitte," and were involved in an "intense discussion," the official said.

"This resulted in [our] allegation that the suspect, the 26-year-old Tunisian, could have been possibly involved in the [terrorist] act, or at least could have known about the plan of the assault."

Comment: See also:

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Arrow Down

Man stabs nearly a dozen children in Chinese kindergarten


PressTV
Wed, 04 Jan 2017 21:46 UTC
Chinese school children
© ReutersChinese children waiting behind a fence for their parents at a kindergarten in Tangying county, Henan province.
A man armed with a kitchen knife has stabbed nearly a dozen children at a kindergarten in southern China, wounding at least three of them seriously. Local authorities said on Wednesday that the man "sneaked into" the school in the southern autonomous region of Guangxi Zhuang mid-afternoon and stabbed the children before being detained at the scene by police.

State broadcaster CCTV said on social media that the assailant allegedly climbed a wall to enter the facility. According to the official Xinhua news agency, three children were seriously injured and rushed to the hospital for treatment. Police have identified the attacker as Qin Peng'an, a man from Nanshan village that is under the jurisdiction of Pingxiang city. An initial police investigation found that Qin felt bullied in the village so he stabbed the children out of anger and revenge.

In recent years, China has had several incidents of assailants entering schools and stabbing children. Most of these violent attacks are carried out by people with vendettas against society. In February last year, a knife-wielding assailant wounded at least 10 children in the southern island province of Hainan, before committing suicide. In 2014, a man stabbed three children and a teacher to death at a primary school. The teacher had refused to enroll his daughter. A man killed two relatives and then slashed 11 people outside a school in China's commercial hub, Shanghai, in March 2013.

The events have forced Chinese authorities to increase security around schools and kindergartens.
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Star of David

IDF soldier who killed immobile Palestinian assailant convicted of manslaughter (UPDATE)


RT
Wed, 04 Jan 2017 16:12 UTC
IDF soldier convicted of manslaughter
An Israeli military tribunal has convicted Elor Azaria, a soldier of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), of manslaughter after a high-profile months-long trial.

In March of 2016, 19-year-old Azaria fatally shot Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, a Palestinian assailant who had already been incapacitated, in Hebron in the West Bank.

Saying that "there is no grounds for the claim of self-defense," the judge stated "Azaria's shooting was unjustified."

Comment: See also: Update: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is unsurprisingly supporting a pardon for Azaria.
"This is a difficult and painful day - first and foremost for Elor, his family, Israel's soldiers, many citizens and parents of soldiers, among them me ... I support granting a pardon to Elor Azaria," Netanyahu said on his Facebook page.


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Pistol

Two injured after gunmen attack restaurant in Istanbul


RT
Wed, 04 Jan 2017 21:33 UTC
Istanbul restaurant shooting
© Mammadli Turkan / Twitter
At least two people were injured in a gun attack on a restaurant in Istanbul's Fatih district, local media reports. Police are looking for the suspects who fled the scene, Turkish news outlets say.

The incident happened at around 5:30PM local time, according to Tarafsizhaber, who reported that two people approached the restaurant in a car and started shooting after getting out of the vehicle.

The owner of the restaurant, Osman Y. was wounded in the assault, while another person, apparently a passerby was hit in the chest, CNN Turk says. The perpetrators then reportedly fled the scene, while those injured were taken to hospital.

"I heard the sound of gunshots. I saw someone falling. A bullet hit my car's window," an eyewitness who escaped unharmed is quoted as saying by Tarafsizhaber. Police have allegedly established that the attackers arrived to the restaurant in a rented car, the outlet says.
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Eye 2

Psychopath: Man confesses to killing lover, told detectives he planned to eat victim's penis and cut his head off

Ben Kochman
NY Daily News
Tue, 03 Jan 2017 20:11 UTC
Jerry Pagan
Homeless man Jerry Pagan, 32, confessed to the grisly murder and castration of his older lover Richard Reed, 68, at his Bronx home in New York in December
A homeless man was indicted Tuesday for killing his Bronx lover, authorities said.

Court papers show that Jerry Pagan, 32, confessed in grisly detail to murdering 68-year-old Richard Reed. He told detectives that, before authorities intervened, he had planned to eat his victim's penis and chop his head off.

"I stabbed him with a knife and hit him over the head with a hammer and cut off his penis and put it in the sink," Pagan said to cops in a videotaped interview, the court papers show.

The accused killer added that he "was going to fry the penis up and eat it, too."
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Airplane

Aeroflot A321 skids off runway in Kaliningrad, Russia; passenger evacuations


RT
Wed, 04 Jan 2017 13:23 UTC
Aeroflot Kaliingrad
© ATWOnline
A passenger plane veered off the runway with 171 people on board, just after it landed in the western Russian city of Kaliningrad. One of the plane's landing gear legs was damaged and the passengers had to be evacuated from the plane via inflatable slides. A video of the plane with the front of the body lying on the ground emerged online.


Comment: It was a collapsed nose landing gear.


The Aeroflot A321 jet, which was flying from Moscow, had seven crew members and 164 passengers. It stopped 150 meters away from the runway, Ruptly video agency reports. Emergency slides were used to evacuate the passengers. Following the incident, three people required medical help.

The local transport prosecution office has launched a probe into the cause of the crash-landing, an official statement on their website stated. There is no equipment to evacuate the A321 plane, and the airport remains closed, a source in the emergency services told TASS news agency. "In other, better-equipped airports, the plane evacuation process takes from 40 minutes to three hours."

Maria Shatokhina, who was on board the plane, shared with RT her account of what happened, and how she felt. "The landing was okay and on time, some passengers even started applauding. Then, the plane started shaking really hard, and it started to veer off to the left. I was near the window, on row 17, near the wing. We stopped, and then the smoke appeared inside the aircraft. Many people - most of them children - were crying. One boy, just behind me, was telling his mother, 'Mum, it's fine, calm down, don't cry!'

"Everyone stood up, there was no panic and no shouting. The only thing I heard was, 'evacuation.' Then, I got out to the inflatable slide. I saw an engine and the cockpit just lying on the ground, I became really scared. It could all have exploded. I'm shaking with fear even now."

Comment: The passengers and crew were lucky with this one, no fatalities. The flight originated from Moscow Sheremetyevo International Airport.

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Eye 1

Almost a quarter of Brits admit to spying on their partner's cellphones


RT
Wed, 04 Jan 2017 18:38 UTC
cell phone
© Christian Ohde/face to face / Global Look Press
It isn't just unscrupulous tabloid journalists who are happy to snoop through other people's phones - 22 percent of British people admit to illicitly spying on their partners devices.

According to new research by mobile insurance company Row.co.uk, women are the highest offenders, with a quarter of them admitting they regularly go through their other half's texts, calls, social media, emails, and internet history. Fewer men admitted to the same offence, but those who did, rifle through their partner's phones far more often, with one in 10 snooping at least once a week. Only eight percent of women spied on their lovers as regularly.

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver hit the headlines in 2012 after his wife Jools confessed to going through his phone and emails to make sure he wasn't cheating.

"Yeah, I'll check [Jamie Oliver's] email. I'll check his Twitter. I'll check his phone. Everything seems fine," she told the The Sunday Times Magazine at the time. "He says I'm a jealous girl, but I think I'm fairly laid-back, considering."
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Health

Obama admin's new transgender care rule under a pile-up of lawsuits

Paige Winfield Cunningham
Washington Examiner
Tue, 03 Jan 2017 12:01 UTC
Gay flag Doctor
© US News
Lawsuits are mounting against the Obama administration's new requirements for transgender care, but the issue might turn in challengers' favor under the incoming Trump administration.

The Catholic Benefits Association, which represents more than 700 Catholic employers including many hospitals, filed a lawsuit in federal court Dec. 28 in an effort to get its members exempted from the rule. Five states and several other Christian healthcare providers are already fighting the requirement in another case against the rule. A Texas judge halted the rule over the weekend.

The rule, which went into effect Jan. 1, says that doctors can't refuse to provide medically necessary health services within their scope of practice because of a patient's gender identity. For instead, a gynecologist couldn't refuse to perform a cervical Pap test for a transgender man.

The rule doesn't explicitly require doctors to perform gender transition services, but it says providers can't refuse services they already provide based on discrimination. The Department of Health and Human Services wrote that it would deal with complaints of discrimination on a case-by-case basis, by looking into whether a doctor provides the same service when it's not related to gender transition.

"These provisions do not ... affirmatively require covered entities to cover any particular procedure or treatment for transition-related care," the rule says.


Comment: Rules, regulations, biases all seem to impact the human requirement. Should they? It took a very, very long time to even acknowledge, let alone address, discrimination gaps for sex, sexual orientation and gender identity. Even without the Obama stigma, it is unlikely all factions in this discussion will get on the same page any time soon.

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Bomb

Man threatens to bomb Walmart for booze & bullets with IS explosives


RT
Tue, 03 Jan 2017 19:03 UTC
Walmart liquor
© Yelp
A Louisiana man was arrested and charged with theft and impersonating a war veteran after he entered a Walmart store and tried to steal more than $500 worth of alcohol and shotgun shells, saying he would bomb the store if he was not freed by managers.

On Monday, Keyon Pullins, 23, entered the Walmart location in Baton Rouge dressed in full military gear. He proceeded to gather five bottles of Ciroc vodka, five cases of Crown Royal whiskey, one bottle of Grey Goose vodka, and eight packs of 12 gauge shotgun shells. While attempting to leave the store without paying, Pullins was confronted by the Walmart's managers, according to the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office.

"[Pullins] requested that the managers let him go, due to him being in full military uniform," the sheriff's office said in an arrest report, cited by WAFB. "The managers stated that they would not do so, so [Pullins] attempts to leave. When he did so, managers grabbed him by the back of his uniform and pulled him back into the store...[Pullins began to scream and cuss at the managers stating that he was in the military and 'to just let him go about his business.'"

Pullins was then taken into a store office for questioning, according to the report, where he claimed he would access a bomb from the jihadist group Islamic State (formerly known as ISIS or ISIL) and use it on the Walmart location.

Comment: Pullins has a history of shoplifting at Walmart and an active felony warrant for theft. One tipoff: he had no military name tag on his borrowed uniform.

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