Society's Child
Nine year-old Zhenya Melnikova left her music lessons at a Moscow art school at 4 pm on Monday. When 5 hours later she was still not home her parents reported her missing to the police.
Officers joined by volunteers searched for the girl until midnight when she was eventually found at a railway station.
The girl told police she got on a shuttle bus after school. For some reason, which is not yet clear, the girl didn't have with her the 40 roubles (US$1.30) her mother usually gave her to pay the fare, nor a mobile phone. Despite Zhenya's young age and the freezing cold outside, the driver allegedly ordered the child to get off.

Baby Jonylah Watkins died after she and father were shot in Chicago, March 11, 2013.
Jonylah Watkins was shot along with her father Jonathan Watkins, 25, in Chicago's Woodlawn neighborhood Monday afternoon, police confirmed this morning, in the latest death in the city's escalating gang violence dilemma. Baby Jonylah was transported to Comer Children's Hospital where she underwent five hours of surgery, according to ABC affiliate WLS.
The Cook County Medical Examiner's office confirmed the baby's death early Tuesday.
Jonathan Watkins is recovering from his wounds at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Garry McCarthy, Chicago's police chief, said that Watkins underwent several surgeries and is in critical but stable condition.
The Rev. Julio Guarin-Sosa, pictured, a visiting priest from Columbia, was arrested on suspicion of sexual battery and molestation of a minor in Yuba City. He is being held in the Sutter County Jail and is scheduled to be arraigned today.
Guarin-Sosa had been helping out at St. Anne's parish in Lodi. Stockton Bishop Stephen E. Blaire had required, and was provided a letter, attesting to Guarin-Sosa's good standing prior to the priest's ministry work at St. Anne's.
The New York Times reported that Valle could be sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping conspiracy, and also faces a five-year jail sentence for using a law enforcement database to research potential victims.
During the trial, prosecutors highlighted internet records showing Valle, who became known as the "cannibal cop," visiting several websites devoted to fetishes involving the kidnapping and cooking of young women. During his bail hearing in November 2012, they said, Valle said in an online chat that he wanted to have "girl meat" as a Thanksgiving meal.
"I took my machine gun in the helicopter - in the Texas hill country - me and my buddy 'Pigman' ... his name is 'Pigman' - I'm the swine czar," said Nugent. "I killed 455 hogs with my machine gun. i did it for Bill Maher and all those other animal rights freaks out there."
Boasting that the weapon he used fired 750 rounds a minute, the right-wing provocateur said, "My haters will hate me more for that."
It is here, in this corner of Dumas, Texas, that a sport utility vehicle slammed into a gas tanker Sunday afternoon. The tanker's flammable cargo sent both vehicles up in flames, seriously injuring the truck driver and killing all five passengers in the Chevrolet SUV.
All of those who died were teenagers.
The crash, coupled with another one in Warren, Ohio, the same day, highlight that motor vehicle wrecks continue to be the No. 1 killer of youths in the United States.

Alternative for Germany has greater potential to unsettle Mrs Merkel than previous Eurosceptic groups.
A new party led by economists, jurists, and Christian Democrat rebels will kick off this week, calling for the break-up of monetary union before it can do any more damage.
"An end to this euro," is the first line on the webpage of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). "The introduction of the euro has proved to be a fatal mistake, that threatens the welfare of us all. The old parties are used up. They stubbornly refuse to admit their mistakes."
They propose German withdrawl from EMU and return to the D-Mark, or a breakaway currency with the Dutch, Austrians, Finns, and like-minded nations. The French are not among them. The borders run along the ancient line of cleavage dividing Latins from Germanic tribes.
The plans draw on work by Hans-Olaf Henkel, former head of Germany's industry federation (BDI) and a chastened europhile -- the "worst error of my professional life", he told me.
The appeal of German exit is obvious. It is the least traumatic way to end the 20pc to 30pc misalignment between North and South, the cancer eating Europe. Club Med keeps the euro. It enjoys instant devaluation, while still able to uphold euro debt contracts. The spectre of sovereign defaults recedes.
Since the region's debt crisis erupted in Greece in late 2009, the European Union has created complex rescue mechanisms to prop up distressed countries and their shaky banking sectors, setting aside a total of 700 billion euros.
But little has been done to tackle the devastating social impact of the crisis, with more than 26 million people unemployed across the EU, including one in every two young people in Greece, Spain and parts of Italy and Portugal.
That crippling level of unemployment has led to protests and outbreaks of violence across southern Europe, raising the threat of full-scale social breakdown, including rising crime and anti-immigrant attacks that can further rattle unstable governments.
"We saved the banks but are running the risk of losing a generation," said Martin Schulz, a German socialist who has led the European Parliament, the EU's only directly elected institution, since January last year.

A graph depicting American trust in government, which has hit historic lows during the administration of President Barack Obama.
Data collected from a survey taken in January of this year indicates that all demographics and partisan groups experienced an increasing lack of faith in government leadership, according to a release posted on the Pew Research website late last week.
"However, there are disparities," the official summary noted. "[M]ore than twice as many Hispanics as whites (44 percent vs. 20 percent) trust the federal government, and more blacks (38 percent) than whites trust the government."
On Friday, the United States Department of Agriculture quietly released new statistics related to the food stamps program, officially known as SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). The numbers reveal, in 2012, the food stamps program was the biggest it's ever been, with an average of 46,609,072 people on the program every month of last year. 47,791,996 people were on the program in the month of December 2012.
The federal government also says that in a given month in 2012, the number of households on food stamps was 22,329,713.
The state with the highest average number of participants per month in 2012 was Texas, with an astonishing 4,038,440 folks drawing from the program. The second highest is California, with 3,964,221, and then Florida, at 3,353,064.
Washington, D.C., with an estimated population of 617,996, had an average of 141,147 participants. Meaning, roughly 23 percent of folks living in D.C. are on food stamps, according to the numbers provided by the federal government. The participation rate in Texas, which has an estimated population of 26,059,203, 15.5 percent.












Comment: The author is trying to put blame on "liberal policies" which is interesting because Texas with the highest percentage of food stamp recipients is certainly not liberal. Perhaps the real reason is soaring income inequality and the predation of the psychopathic elites on the rest of us?
The Price of Inequality
The Criminalization and Looting of America's Poor
Why the Mainstream Media Remains Ignorant to the Working Class
Hunger and homelessness rise in the U.S.