A new sexual abuse scandal has engulfed the UN peacekeeping contingent in the Central African Republic after the UN announced that it has opened an investigation and notified troops from contributing countries of the child abuse cases in Bangui.

"If the allegations are substantiated, this would constitute a grave violation of UN principles and of the code of conduct of peacekeepers," spokesperson of the Secretary General, Stephane Dujarric said in New York. "The member-state will be requested to take swift and appropriate punitive action."

According to the UN, countries that have troops in the Central African Republic (CAR) were notified on Monday and now have ten days to report back to UN on their action plans in response to the allegation.

The latest case of sexual abuse by peacekeepers in Bangui was recorded by the UN CAR mission (MINUSCA) last Friday, and involves underage girls. Dujarric did not specify how many girls were involved or the country of origin of the perpetrators.

I have a hard time with people not being willing to recognize what's obviously in front of their faces. It's a voluntary mind game people play with themselves to justify whatever it is they think they want. This is massively exacerbated by an array of social engineering tactics, many of which are to create the very mind sets and desires people so adamantly defend.

But that's no excuse for a lack of simple conscious recognition and frankly makes absolutely no sense.

We can't blame these manipulators for everything. Ultimately we all have free choice. Plainly seeing what's right in front of our noses, no matter how well sold or disguised, is our human responsibility. That people would relinquish this innate right and capability totally escapes me.

Melbourne - Getting to go to a Disney-themed event is every little girl's dream, especially when you get to dress up as your favorite Disney character. Samara Muir, 3, had dressed up as Queen Elsa, from the movie Frozen. But Samara's happy day ended in tears.

Rachel Muir took her three-year-old daughter Samara to a Disney-themed event being held at Watergardens Shopping Center in Taylors Lakes, Australia, last month. The mother and daughter waited in line with many other children and their parents to try out the snow pit.

Maybe it was because the lines were so long, and everyone had been standing there for over two hours, or maybe it was just for no reason at all, but the woman in front of the pair turned around and looked at the Samara and said, "I don't know why you're dressed up for because Queen Elsa isn't black," Rachel Muir told the Courier.

"I asked the woman what she meant by the comment and then one of the woman's young daughters screwed up her face, she pointed at Samara and said "you're black and black is ugly." Rachel said Samara burst into tears and covered her face.

The Daily Show's Jon Stewart on Monday called out Fox News on its hypocritical response to the mass shooting of a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina.

The news network criticized President Barack Obama and others for "taking advantage" of the tragic shooting to advance a narrative regarding gun violence and gun control in the US. "It's almost like a sickness — like, 'Oh, tragedy happens. Let's see how we can advance this narrative,'" Fox News anchor Sean Hannity said.

But Stewart pointed out that Fox News has done the exact same thing when it can take advantage of a tragedy to advance its own political purposes.

"Remind me this past December when two New York City cops were tragically killed during a time when people were protesting police shootings of unarmed black men. Talk to me about the restraint Fox used in not advancing the narrative."

At least 19 people were arrested after clashes erupted between police and hundreds of Ethiopian Israelis who took to the streets of Tel Aviv to protest against racism and police brutality.

Angered by the recent decision by Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to close a criminal investigation into a police officer who beat up an Ethiopian Israeli soldier back in April, hundreds of Ethiopian took to the streets to speak up against the police's racist attitudes.

The demonstration that began in the Sarona area of Tel Aviv at 3:00pm, proceeded peacefully to Tel Aviv's centrally-located Rabin Square.

"Violent police should be locked up," they wrote on large placards as they chanted, "We've had enough, we're a new generation."

As about 500 Ethiopian-Israeli protesters made it to the government complex at the main square, they tried to block off the intersection of Ammunition Hill and Menachem Begin, when they were confronted by hundreds of Border Police and riot police that were deployed to the area earlier.

After the crowd ignored orders to clear the area, clashes erupted between protesters and police forces.

The following is an excerpt from WAGES OF REBELLION: The Moral Imperative of Revolt.

The public's inability to grasp the pathology of our oligarchic corporate elite makes it difficult to organize effective resistance. Compliant politicians, entertainers, and our vapid, corporate-funded popular culture and news media hold up the elites as leaders to emulate. We are repeatedly assured that through diligence and hard work we can join them. We are taught to equate wealth with success. This narrative keeps us from seeing the truth.

"The rich are different from us," F. Scott Fitzgerald is said to have remarked to Ernest Hemingway, to which Hemingway allegedly replied, "Yes, they have more money."

The exchange, although it never took place, does sum up a wisdom Fitzgerald had that eluded Hemingway. The rich are different. The cocoon of wealth and privilege permits the rich to turn those around them into compliant and expendable workers, hangers-on, servants, and sycophants. Wealth, as Fitzgerald illustrated in his 1925 novel The Great Gatsby - a tome on the depravity of the rich in the giddy world of speculation that would lead to the Depression - as well as his short story "The Rich Boy," which appeared a year later, breeds a class of people for whom human beings are disposable commodities. Colleagues, business partners, clients, associates, shareholders, investors, employees, kitchen staff, servants, gardeners, tutors, personal trainers, even friends and family, bend to the whims of the wealthy or disappear. Once oligarchs achieve unchecked economic and political power, as they have in the United States, the citizens too become disposable. And that, in the eyes of the elite, is what we are.

"Let me tell you about the very rich," Fitzgerald writes in "The Rich Boy." "They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different."

The six Baltimore, Maryland police officers charged in the in-custody death of Freddie Gray pleaded not guilty and received their trial date. They will be tried separately, but are all assigned the same judge and trial date.

Two months after the officers involved in arresting the 25-year-old Gray were charged with counts ranging from misconduct in office to second-degree depraved heart murder, all six officers promised to enter written not-guilty pleas by Friday.

Administrative Judge W. Michel Pierson issued what the Baltimore Sun called "an unusual order"canceling the defendants' scheduled arraignments "upon the entry by each defendant of a plea of not guilty." The six officers had been set to be arraigned on July 2.

Judge Barry Williams was assigned the cases "for all further proceedings."

With the global demand for food on the rise, our society could collapse as soon as in 2040 due to fatal food shortages and "unprecedented epidemic of food riots," if counter measures are not taken, researchers have warned.

Food security experts and analysts in the field of the economics of sustainable development were asked to develop the worse-case scenario illustrating a "plausible, relatively-severe production shock affecting multiple agricultural commodities and regions."

According to a report from Lloyds of London prepared with the help of Anglia Ruskin University's Global Sustainability Institute, "the global food system is under chronic pressure to meet an ever-rising demand, and its vulnerability to acute disruptions is compounded by factors such as climate change, water stress, ongoing globalization and heightening political instability."

Researchers say that the food system is becoming "increasingly vulnerable to acute shocks," driven by the world's population growth and shifts in consumption patterns as countries develop. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) projects that global agricultural production will need to more than double by 2050 to close the gap between food supply and demand, the report, supported by UK's Foreign Office says.

When systems are broke and broken, collapse is the only way forward.

It's a big, complex topic because there are as many types of collapse as there are systems. Some systems appear stable on the surface but collapse suddenly; others visibly decay for decades before finally slipping beneath the waves of history, and some go through stages of collapse.

The taxonomy of collapse is broad, and each unsustainable system (i.e. a system that will fail despite claims to the contrary) has its unique characteristics.

Rome didn't fall so much as erode away. That's the template for collapse.

While collapse may be sudden, the decay that generated the collapse had been rotting away the foundation for years or decades. In distilling the vast literature on collapse into nine dynamics, I am drawing upon many other authors' work.*

Here are the nine dynamics of decay that lead to collapse:

1. complacency and intellectual laziness
2. profound political disunity
3. rise of unproductive complexity
4. those bearing the sacrifices opt out/quit
5. decay of effective leadership
6. rise of bread and circuses social welfare and entertainment to distract/placate restive citizenry
7. decline of wealth-producing capacity--status quo living off financial trickery
8. sclerosis--status quo controlled by vested interests
9. resource depletion/environmental damage

All of these dynamics are currently in play around the globe.

Americans who qualify as obese now outnumber those who are considered merely overweight, according to a new study. The figures also show that 67 percent of women and 75 percent of men in US are suffering from weight problems.

The report, published by researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, studied data from more than 15,000 men and women aged 25 or older of a nationally representative group collected between 2007 and 2012 as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).

It estimated that 67.6 million Americans over the age of 25 were obese in 2012, and a further 65.2 million were overweight.

The NHANES included body mass index (BMI) information. A person with a BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 is considered normal, a BMI between 25 and 29.9 is considered overweight and a BMI over 30 is considered obese.