Society's ChildS


Ambulance

Update: Massive Harlem explosion 'like thunderclap' levels two buildings, debris blown across wide area - 2 dead, at least 16 injured

David Usborne
The Independent, UK
Wed, 12 Mar 2014 11:40 UTC
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At least one building collapsed and several more were thought to be on fire following a massive explosive in Harlem that left nearly a dozen people injured, early reports suggest.

As emergency crews and firemen from across New York City rushed to 116th Street and Park Avenue on the Upper East Side, a large plume of dark smoke fanned across the city just as the morning rush hour was coming to an end.

It was visible within minutes from the bustling heart of commercial Midtown.

Witnesses, many on their way to work and some still in their apartments, said they had heard a very loud blast from where the apartment building once stood at East 115th St and Park Avenue in Harlem.

First reports said the building, which is thought to have been about five storeys, had been devastated by the blast.

Comment: More from the New York Times:
At least one person was killed when two buildings collapsed in East Harlem on Wednesday morning, according to authorities, and a senior city official suggested that there would most likely be more fatalities.

Witnesses reported hearing what sounded like an explosion before the buildings collapsed. Flames and smoke could be seen billowing from the street, and the force of the damage blew out windows in neighboring buildings.

At least 16 people were injured, including four seriously, according to city officials. The police said that two residential buildings - 1644 and 1646 Park Avenue - had collapsed.
Latest updates say 2 people have been killed.

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Nuke

Flashback We are not amused: British Queen has profitable investments in depleted uranium trade


Nuclear News
Tue, 06 Aug 2013 11:15 UTC
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© Unknown
UK Queen in depleted uranium trade? British anti-war campaign group the Stop the War Coalition has in a video claimed that Britain's Queen Elizabeth is one of the richest women on earth and much of her profits are from arms trade including the notorious depleted uranium trade.

The video apparently created by anti-monarchy activists and published on YouTube says the British monarch has managed to increase her wealth from £300 million early in her 60-year reign to £17 billion at present thanks to investments in arms firms that produce uranium used in depleted uranium (DU) shells, including Rio Tinto Zinc.

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2 + 2 = 4

Work until you die: Lifelong labor becomes new normal

Eric Pfeiffer
News,yahoo.com
Tue, 11 Mar 2014 10:19 UTC
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© Goalinvestor.com/Yahoo NewsFrom 1990 to 2010, the percentage of workers 65 and older staying in the job market rose for both women (from 28.2 percent to 43.8 percent) and men (52.5 percent to 65.3 percent).
For a growing number of Americans, there may never be such a thing as real retirement.

"The market is filled with people who are petrified of the idea of retiring because they might not have the funding to afford retirement," Goalinvestor.com's Melissa Doran Rayer, whose company provides financial planning services and created a data chart to show how retirement trends are shifting, told Yahoo News in a recent interview.
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Airplane

Malaysia Airlines search mired in confusion

Tania Branigan
The Guardian
Wed, 12 Mar 2014 07:05 UTC
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The search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight was descending into confusion and acrimony on Wednesday as Vietnam called off part of its search pending further information from Malaysia.

As families spent a fifth day waiting for news of flight MH370, which vanished on Friday with 239 people on board, disagreements within the international search operation were surfacing and Malaysian officials failed to clarify the aircraft's last known movements.

India announced it had joined the search for the missing jetliner on Malaysia's request, widening the net to an area near the Andaman Sea.

Vietnam said it had halted its air search and scaled back a sea search while it waited for Malaysia to offer more detail.

Comment: See- the forum discussion on this topic

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Ambulance

Massive explosion, fire in East Harlem, New York City - At least 11 hurt


ABClocal.go.com
Wed, 12 Mar 2014 09:35 UTC

Police and fire officials are on the scene of an explosion and partial building collapse at 116th Street and Park Avenue in Upper Manhattan Wednesday morning.

At least 11 injuries were reported, and Harlem Hospital has one patient with heavy trauma and is expecting at least one more.

East Harlem residents reported hearing a large explosion in the six-story apartment building around 9:30 a.m.

A fourth-alarm fire was burning, and the structural integrity appeared to be compromised. Witnesses reported seeing what appeared to be at least a partial roof collapse.
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Map

Nine fresh witnesses place Malaysia plane near Thailand

Richard Shears
Daily Mail
Wed, 12 Mar 2014 07:50 UTC
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Malaysia's acting transport minister Hussein Hishammuddin (centre) has said the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight is now covering 27,000 square nautical miles.
  • Nine new reports of noise and light in sky near Malaysia-Thai border
  • Eyewitnesses in villages reported sightings of plane low over the sea
  • Search now focuses on Strait of Malacca and Andaman Sea
  • Relatives in Beijing shout and throw bottles at Malaysian Airlines staff
  • They demand: 'Why is Malaysian military keeping what they know secret?'
  • Officials now reveal search is covering 27,000 square nautical miles
Malaysian authorities have defended their handling of the hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines passenger jet as they revealed the search is now covering 27,000 square nautical miles.

Officials have admitted they were unsure which direction the plane was headed when it disappeared as the international search mission carries on in its fifth day.

The mystery over the plane's whereabouts has been confounded by confusing and occasionally conflicting statements by Malaysian officials, adding to the anguish of relatives of the 239 people on board the flight - two thirds of them Chinese.

Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein described the multinational search for the missing plane as an unprecedented and complicated effort and defended his country's efforts.

He said two areas, in the Straits of Malacca and the South China Sea, were being searched by a total of 49 ships and 39 planes.
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© Daily MailPolice in Malaysia have said they had nine eyewitness reports of aircraft 'noise and lights' being seen in the north-east of the country, near the border with Thailand, after the plane's last recorded sighting on civilian radar systems.
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Quenelle

CIA Spying Hypocrisy: The Feinstein Syndrome: "Fourth Amendment for me, but not for thee"‏

Norman Solomon
Common Dreams
Wed, 12 Mar 2014 04:13 UTC
sen feinstein
© CSPANSen. Dianne Feinstein speaking on the Senate floor on Tuesday.
Who knows, soon we might see headlines and cable TV shows asking: "Is Dianne Feinstein a whistleblower or a traitor?"

A truthful answer to that question could not possibly be "whistleblower." It may already be a historic fact that Senator Feinstein's speech on March 11, 2014 blew a whistle on CIA surveillance of the Senate intelligence committee, which she chairs. But if that makes her a whistleblower, then Colonel Sanders is a vegetarian evangelist.

In her blockbuster Tuesday speech on the Senate floor, Feinstein charged that the CIA's intrusions on her committee's computers quite possibly "violated the Fourth Amendment." You know, that's the precious amendment that Feinstein - more than any other senator - has powerfully treated like dirt, worthy only of sweeping under the congressional rug.
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Airplane

Missing Malaysian jetliner befuddles online world

Andrea Rothman and Richard Weiss
Bloomberg
Tue, 11 Mar 2014 11:17 UTC
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The disappearance four days ago of a Malaysian Airline Systems Bhd. (MAS) aircraft with 239 people on board is confounding search teams and a global audience used to around-the-clock connectivity and real-time updates.

The Boeing Co. (BA) 777-200 wide-body, among the world's safest planes, vanished without any distress call or other indication something was amiss. Half a week later, nine nations including the U.S. and Australia have joined a search that while focused on the Gulf of Thailand between Malaysia and Vietnam now extends west to Indonesia and east to the South China Sea.

That the largest civil twin-engine airliner could disappear without a trace and elude a frenzied search that includes satellite surveillance runs counter to the advances in technology that have facilitated both flying and reconnaissance efforts after an incident. While authorities quickly traced two passengers who boarded the 777 with stolen passports, the area being combed has grown so vast that the search may take some time, said Remi Jouty, president of France's BEA air-accident investigation bureau, which was instrumental in finding the Air France (AF) Flight 447 jet that crashed over the Atlantic in 2009.

Comment: This story seems to be befuddling the online world in more ways than one, and seems to be successfully taking away a lot of attention from the still developing crisis in Ukraine (not to mention the Earth Changes!).

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Bizarro Earth

San Jose cop accused of taking woman to hotel and raping her during domestic violence call

AuthoDave Edwards
Rawstory.com
Tue, 11 Mar 2014 19:18 UTC
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© San Jose Police Dept.
A San Jose police officer has been charged with sexually assaulting a woman who he had taken to a hotel following a domestic disturbance with her husband.

According to the San Jose Mercury News, officer Geoffrey Graves and four other officers were called to the woman's home on Sept. 22. The woman was a hotel maid, and told officers that she wanted to spend the night at a nearby hotel.

The woman told police that Graves drove her to the hotel, but then returned about 15 minutes later. The officer partially undressed himself and sexually assault the woman, the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office explained at a press conference on Tuesday.
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War Whore

Florida's 'most corrupt town' up for elimination

Kate Seamons
Newser
Mon, 10 Mar 2014 17:46 UTC
florida sign
Hampton has more than its fair share of problems, per a recent audit

The small town of Hampton, Fla., has caught the attention of state lawmakers - who want to see it dissolved. That's because it's wildly corrupt, per a 42-page state audit of its books released last month, which CNN reports "reads like a primer on municipal malfeasance." The town of 477 people about 20 miles north of the Gainesville essentially functioned as a glorified speed trap, with 17 officers (roughly one per every 25 residents) known for sitting on lawn chairs or taking cover behind recycling bins along a 1,260-foot stretch of well-traveled highway US 301 armed with radar guns. That's not illegal - though AAA has gone so far as to put up billboards warning about it - but from there, things have allegedly taken a turn for the criminal.

CNN reports that on Friday, state and Bradford County investigators descended on city hall as part of a criminal investigation, taking the door to the police chief's office off its hinges in the process. This after the audit revealed 31 law violations. Hampton didn't pay bills on time, or withhold employee payroll taxes. It allegedly made thousands in dubious expenditures and kept cash from water customers in a bag intermingled with petty cash. Some of its records were "lost in a swamp," auditors were told, per Time. And it's unclear where all the ticket money - $616,960 between 2010 and 2012, until pressure forced the town to pack up its speed trap - went. The Florida Times-Union reports that the town has about three weeks to prove it's making progress on turning things around; otherwise, the legislature will very likely dissolve Hampton, which would then become part of unincorporated Bradford County. The town's acting mayor thinks its possible to save the town; she took over for the former mayor, who is in jail after allegedly dealing oxycodone. (In other Florida news, this may be the dumbest thing ever said during a DUI stop.)
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