Society's ChildS


Alarm Clock

Financially anxious: One in three children have 'money worries'

money worries
© AlamyOne in three children said they worried about money "at least some of the time"
One in three children aged 8 to 15 worry about money "at least sometimes", according to one of the most authoritative regular surveys of children's pocket money.

Children in greater London were revealed as the most financially anxious: more than half (54pc) said they had money concerns some of the time and 12pc said they worried about money all the time.

Syringe

German govt warns against crypto-Scientologist "say no to drugs" ads

hamburg scientology
© Morris Mac Matzen / ReutersThe building of the Church of Scientology is seen in Hamburg
Ad stands for rehab facilities with the particular slogan 'Say no to drugs - say yes to life' in Germany are under serious suspicion of being nothing more than a Scientology recruitment scheme, police warn. The sect is illegal in Germany.

The enigmatic group, which believes our human souls have alien beginnings, does not enjoy the same legal status everywhere. In the United States it boasts dozens of Hollywood A-listers among its members and biggest donors.

Not so in Germany, where the religious sect has been deemed "unconstitutional" since 1997 by domestic security, despite its existence there since the 1970s. This has led to a proliferation of masquerading tactics.

The group has already been found operating under different names in Germany, and according to the recent statement from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hamburg residents are being warned about particular ad stands featuring the most common anti-drug slogan of all.

Comment: See also: Scientology, the CIA, and MIVILUDES: Cults of Abuse


Handcuffs

Bank robbers half eaten burger leads investigators to arrest

Chicago bank robbery
© Kalamazoo County sheriff's officeSurveillance images of a man who robbed a bank in Oshtemo Township, Mich., on Jan. 8, 2015.
A half-eaten hamburger led authorities to a Chicago man who acted as the getaway driver in a series of bank robberies in western Michigan over the last two years, federal prosecutors said. Dominick T. Johnson, 34, was sentenced Wednesday to 72 years and eight months in prison for the heists he carried out with his 24-year-old half-brother Nathan Benson, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Prosecutors say Johnson was the brain and the wheels behind the three successful bank robberies that happened between May 2014 and January 2015 in Kalamazoo County, about 150 miles northeast of Chicago. In two of the robberies, Johnson listened in on a cellphone from a car while Benson forced employees into bank vaults at gunpoint, prosecutors said. Cellphone tower data placed him near the banks at the time of the crime.

While speeding away from one robbery in Oshtemo Township, Johnson apparently tossed "a partially eaten hamburger" from the vehicle, and investigators were able to pull his DNA from it, prosecutors said. The duo made three other failed bank robbery attempts, twice thwarted by police and once when Johnson crashed their vehicle on the way to the heist, prosecutors said.

Johnson was convicted in January in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids of seven crimes, including conspiracy, bank robbery and weapons charges. Benson was found guilty for his role in the robberies and sentenced to 14 years in March.

Pistol

The gunman versus 'balcony man': the shocking moment Munich killer argued with brave onlooker in 90-second rant before firing four shots and calmly walking away

Munick rooftop shooter
© Twitter
Munich killer Ali Sonboly was involved in an astonishing shouting match with a man on a balcony just minutes after his shooting spree.

The 90-second exchange, in which Sonboly shouted that he had been bullied for seven years, was captured on camera and immediately uploaded onto social media.

Sonboly, the 18-year-old son of a taxi driver and department store worker, killed nine people during his rampage and injured dozens more.

The Bavarian capital went into lockdown as police hunted him, but Sonboly had walked onto the roof of the Olympic Shopping Centre in the district of Moosach as onlookers watched and began taunting him.

Wedding Rings

Honey trap: Happy bride and husband photographed yards away from ex-lover's murder location

Mahil and groom
© news.anotao.comMundill Mahil and Varinder Singh, 'til death do them part.
Posing against an impressive London skyline, newly-wed Mundill Mahil appears every inch the happy bride. The pretty brunette appears to have the world at her feet as she gazes into the eyes of her handsome young husband, Varinder Singh - a rising Labour Party star.

But the photograph provoked fury last night from the family of the ex-boyfriend she led to a grisly death just five years ago. Mahil - then a medical student - played the honeytrap in the brutal murder of TV executive Gagandip Singh. He was beaten and tied up before being burnt alive in the boot of a car parked just a stone's throw from Greenwich Park in South-East London. Mahil received six years for her part in the plot but was released after three years.

Comment: Oblivious to the past? Or, lingering revenge for the dubious sexual assault? A callous choice at best, all considered.


Eye 1

Bus driver pleads guilty to raping 15-year old girl, state prosecutors allow him to walk free

school bus
© Mike Blake / Reuters
A Tennessee school bus driver who admitted to raping a 15-year-old student has dodged a jail term. Despite pleading guilty to aggravated statutory rape, he was sentenced to 10 years' probation and registered as a sex offender.

In March 2015, a female student at Sale Creek High School was reported missing by her family. The same evening, the girl arrived home and shared horrifying details with her parents and the police.

The girl said that she boarded the bus that Alexander Rodriquez was driving in the afternoon. He took her to a loading station where the buses are kept and then ordered her to get into his car.

Rodriquez drove them to a Super 8 motel, where he later forced her to perform oral sex before raping her. The girl said that she repeatedly said, "no." She also told Rodriquez that his actions hurt, to which he allegedly said that he was "trying to make it hurt."

The student said that they remained at the motel until Rodriquez got a phone call, presumably from police asking if he knew anything about the missing teen's whereabouts.

Comment: What a sick world we live in that allows a sexual predator to walk free after admitting the rape of a child.


Ambulance

Billion-dollar Medicare scam exposed by the Feds in Miami

medical fraud
© Wolfgang Rattay / Reuters
Federal agents have broken up a billion-dollar Medicare scam. Philip Esformes and two other defendants are accused of running the biggest Medicare fraud in the nation's history. Esformes was arrested at his Miami Beach waterfront estate.

Esformes, 47, is the owner of a network of about 20 assisted-living facilities in the Miami-Dade area, the Miami Herald reported. He is accused of using the facilities to exploit Medicare, by filing false claims for unnecessary services for the past 14 years. In some cases, the services he billed Medicare for were not even provided.

He did not work alone on this. The US Attorney's office also charged Arnaldo Carmouze, 56, and Odette Barcha, 49. It is believed that they conspired to use their connections in healthcare to refer patients to Esformes. Physicians and healthcare professionals at one unnamed hospital were found to have received kickbacks in exchange for referring thousands of Medicare patients to Esformes' network.

Chart Pie

Half of all TSA employees accused of misconduct, 1/4 are repeat offenders

Airport secuirty
© Scott Olson/Getty ImagesAirport security at Chicago's O'Hare Airport.
Earlier this month, a special needs teenager returning home from a brain tumor treatment at St. Jude Hospital was left battered, bloodied and in jail after an encounter with Transportation Security Administration agents at a security checkpoint.

Seventy-two TSA agents are on the DHS terrorist watch list. The blue-gloved bandits have been caught in every crime from smuggling cocaine to sexually assaulting passengers in the bathroom to groping children — yet the American public is forced to keep funding them.

Aside from being a criminal gang of sexual predators and thieves, the TSA is entirely incompetent in their ostensible position of keeping airlines safe. Multiple reports and incidents have pointed out the sheer inability of the TSA to protect anyone.

Comment: The U.S. would be a much better place if the TSA were entirely eliminated. Not only is it useless; it is staffed by criminals. TSA must go. The latest: TSA agent films upskirt video and is arrested on voyeurism charge


X

Parole for Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten denied by California Governer

Mnason
© thecelebrityauction.co
California Gov. Jerry Brown denied parole for the youngest follower of murderous cult leader Charles Manson who is serving a life sentence for killing a wealthy grocer and his wife more than 40 years ago.

Brown overturned the recommendation of a parole board on Friday that found Leslie Van Houten was no-longer the violent young woman who committed a gruesome murder and was now fit for release.

She has completed college degrees and been a model inmate.

The Democratic governor acknowledged her success in prison and her youth at the time of the murders.

However, he wrote in his decision that she failed to explain how she transformed from an upstanding teen to a killer.

Shopping Bag

UN: Venezuelans fleeing economic crisis flood into Colombia

Venezuelan crises
© AFP Photo/George CastellanosVenezuelans carrying groceries cross the Simon Bolivar bridge from Cucuta in Colombia back to San Antonio de Tachira in Venezuela, on July 17, 2016
Bogota (AFP) - Venezuela's economic crisis has sent a huge but largely ignored wave of people into Colombia, and many more could be on the way, a senior UN refugee official said.

"It's a silent arrival of a lot of people who are crossing the border and staying illegally on the Colombian side," said Martin Gottwald, the United Nations Refugee Agency's representative in Colombia.

No exact figures are available, but the number of Venezuelans fleeing to Colombia is already "quite large," and Colombia should prepare itself for more, Gottwald told AFP in an interview.

"The avalanche is probably going to increase, with or without the reopening of the border," he said.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro closed the countries' border in August 2015 after an attack on an army patrol. He blamed right-wing paramilitaries from Colombia.

The leftist leader briefly reopened it last weekend to allow Venezuelans to stock up on food, medicine and other basic supplies amid severe shortages in Venezuela.

Comment: Like the U.S. proxy war against Syria and all the ensuing migration to Europe, the U.S. is largely - through covert and overt economic and hybrid warfare - responsible for what we are now seeing in Venezuela.

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