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Energy and food prices surge in Taiwan

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Flooding in Taipei
Electricity and fuel price hikes have driven up commodity prices and affected the livelihoods of people from all walks of life, the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) caucus said yesterday.

Citing data provided by the Council of Agriculture, the caucus told a news conference that using the council's list of 322 agricultural and seafood products as basis, the prices of 189 items had risen in comparison with the same period last year.

While Premier Jiang Yi-huah has claimed that the electricity price hike in October, the second scheduled increase since President Ma Ying-jeou began his second term in May last year, would only affect a few people, the latest data suggested otherwise, TSU Legislator Huang Wen-ling said.

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Best of the Web: Roger Waters: 'What Israelis do to Palestinians today is comparable to how the Nazis treated Jews last time around'

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On Music, the Political Role of Artists and His Activism for Justice Around the World, Including in Palestine.

Frank Barat: When did you make the decision to make the Wall tour (that ended in Paris in September 2013) so political? And why did you dedicate the final concert to Jean-Charles De Menezes?

Roger Waters: The first show was October 14th 2010. We started working on content of show with Sean Evans in 2009. I had already decided to make it much broader politically than it had been in 1979/80. It could not be just about this whinny little guy who didn't like his teachers. It had to be more universal. That's why 'fallen loved ones' came into it (the shows are showing pictures of people that died during wars) trying to universalise the sense of grief and loss that we all feel towards family members killed in conflict. Whatever the wars or the circumstances, they (in the non western world), feel as much lost as we do. Wars become an important symbol because of that separation between 'us and them,' which is fundamental to all conflicts. Regarding Jean-Charles, we used to do Brick II with three solos at the end and I decided that three solos was too much, it was boring me. So sitting in a hotel room, one night, I was thinking about what I could do instead of that. Somebody had recently sent me a photograph of Jean-Charles De Menezes to go on the wall. So he was in my mind and I thought that I should sing his story. I wrote that song, taught it to the band, and that's what we did.


Comment: Jean-Charles De Menezes was a young Brazilian contract electrician working in London, England at the time of the London Bombings in 2005. He was pursued and murdered by covert British military-intelligence operatives in the aftermath of the attacks and shot numerous times in the head in front of shocked onlookers. It's very likely the reason they were so desperate to terminate him was because he was working on the trains that were rigged for the false-flag terror attacks, knew the official story was bogus, and was threatening to go public with what he knew.

For more on this and the other evidence that 7/7 was carried out by the British government with assistance from the Mossad, check these out:

7/7 Ripple Effect: London Bombings documentary the British and Israeli governments want no one to see

London Bombings - The Facts Speak For Themselves


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Man alleging Chicago police torture released from prison after 30 years

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© AP Photo/Illinois Department of CorrectionsThis undated file photo provided by the Illinois Department of Corrections shows inmate Stanley Wrice. On Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2013, a Cook County judge overturned the rape conviction for Wrice who has been in prison for 30 years. He will be released from Pontiac Correctional Center on Wednesday. The ruling comes two days after key witness Bobby Joe Williams testified detectives working for former Chicago police lieutenant Jon Burge tortured him into falsely testifying against Wrice.
A man who says Chicago police tortured him until he confessed to a rape he did not commit walked out of an Illinois prison on Wednesday after spending 30 years behind bars.

Stanley Wrice's release from the Pontiac Correctional Center came a day after Cook County Judge Richard Walsh overturned the 59-year-old's conviction, saying officers lied about how they had treated him.

The ruling was just the latest development in one of the darkest chapters of Chicago Police Department history, in which officers working under former Lt. Jon Burge were accused of torturing suspects into false confessions and torturing witnesses into falsely implicating people in crimes.

Wrice has insisted for years that he confessed to the 1982 sexual assault after officers beat him in the groin and face. And a witness testified at a hearing Tuesday that he falsely implicated Wrice in the rape after two Chicago police officers under Burge's command tortured him.

He was sentenced to 100 years in prison.

Sheriff

Top official in U.S. tornado-ravaged county indicted

Tim Conley
© Charles Bertram/Herald LeaderMorgan County Judge-Executive Tim Conley in his office in West Liberty on Feb. 20, 2013.
The top elected official in an Appalachian county ravaged by a tornado nearly two years ago was arrested Monday on charges of mail fraud, theft and conspiring to launder money in an alleged scheme to steer work to a construction contractor in exchange for kickbacks.

An indictment against Morgan County Judge-Executive Tim Conley included a charge that he misused his position to ensure the contractor received excessive payments to clean up storm debris in the aftermath of the deadly tornado that hit the area March 2, 2012.

As the county's chief executive officer, Conley became the public face behind recovery efforts after the tornado leveled much of downtown West Liberty, the county seat, and damaged other areas. The storm killed six people in Morgan County, part of an outbreak of tornadoes that killed 25 people statewide.

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Brazilian mother forced to flee to her country's embassy in Norway after officials try to take her daughter, 3, into care 'for not eating like a Norwegian'

Jesumary
In hiding: Vitoria Alves Jesumary has fled to the Brazilian Embassy in Oslo after claiming social services tried to take her daughter because she is not 'eating like a Norwegian' (stock image)
A Brazilian woman has fled to her embassy in Oslo with her three-year-old daughter after Norwegian child protection services threatened to take the child into care.

Vitoria Alves Jesumary, 37, a Brazilian native, claims social services tried to take her daughter Sofia because she is not 'eating like a Norwegian'.

Ms Jesumary has now been hiding at the embassy for a week and is refusing to leave until she is allowed to return to Brazil with her daughter.

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Irish emigration poses a threat to economic recovery

Irish exodus
© Flickr/Julie Danielle
Generations of young people and skilled workers are leaving Ireland to seek out a better life abroad, the Financial Times reports. Ireland's inflows and outflows of population have shifted drastically over the course of the past few years. While the country once posted one of the higher immigration rates across the continent, in 2012 it led the way in emigration, with some net 35,000 people leaving the country. The financial crisis appears to have been the trigger for the shift, causing many Irish residents to think that they have better futures outside of their home country.

The problem has only been exacerbated by the status of Ireland's youth. With youth unemployment above 25 percent, as it is in many parts of Europe, young people in the country have increasingly found themselves without work. Plus, with unemployment benefits for youth being trimmed in Ireland's austerity measures, many people simply do not have the means to sit around and wait for work to become available. For such people, emigration becomes the only option.

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Irish exodus casts shadow on recovery from financial crisis

As an unemployed electrician, Alan Douglas has endured a difficult few years, not least because of the collapse of the once buoyant Irish building industry. But getting a letter from the Irish welfare authorities advising him to take a job in Coventry in the UK was a new low.

"It made me feel like I was being pushed out of my own country," says Mr Douglas, 26, from Bray, near Dublin.

He is one of 6,000 people who have received letters encouraging them to look for jobs abroad. One jobseeker was sent details of a job as a bus driver in Malta, which paid just €250 (£209) a week but came with a "Mediterranean climate".

Irish exodus
Emigration has reached record levels, with 75,800 people between 15-44 leaving last year.

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Texas teen who killed four people got off on probation because he's rich

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© Shutterstock
A 16-year-old boy who drunkenly killed four people got probation this week because the judge - with no apparent irony - agreed with the boy's defense that he was a victim of "affluenza," whose parents taught him wealth and privilege shield consequences. The teen had faced up to twenty years in prison.

Sixteen-year-old Ethan Couch admitted to four counts of manslaughter after he and seven other boys stole alcohol from Walmart, piled into his car and struck and killed four pedestrians while going 70 miles per hour in a 40 zone.

One of his passengers remains in the hospital with severe brain damage, and nine other bystanders were also injured.

Couch's BAC was a .24 and he also had Valium in his system. According to reports, he was belligerent at the scene, at one point saying, "I'm outta here." Prosecutors were hoping to get up to 20 years.

Vader

"Oh you're gonna shoot me?" Last words of former valedictorian shot to death by police officer

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Cameron Redus
Another tragic police shooting happened last week in San Antonio. A 23 year old college student and prior valedictorian, Cameron Redus, was killed by a University of the Incarnate police officer Thursday night. Redus was pulled over for allegedly speeding when the situation escalated into the officer firing multiple shots at Redus, killing him on site.

"I heard (a man) say, 'Oh, you're gonna shoot me?' like sarcastic almost," said Mohammad Haidarasl, 22, who was on his couch in his ground-floor unit at the Treehouse Apartments in Alamo Heights at about 2 a.m.

Less than a minute later, Haidarasl heard four to six gunshots.

According to KTRK,

It's news that has shocked two communities - the shooting death of 23-year-old Cameron Redus by an officer with the University of the Incarnate Word Police Department in San Antonio.

"He's not an aggressive person at all, so the story just doesn't really make sense to any of us," said Sarah Davis, one of Redus' longtime friends

"Cameron was the sweetest, kindest, gentlest person," added friend Annie Jones. "So compassionate."

Redus graduated from Baytown Christian Academy: where he was co-valedictorian. His mother is a teacher there.

Comment: All over America police are acting like ruthless thugs, shooting or tasering people and animals for little if any reason.
The entire country has been transformed into a police state, and most unfortunately quite a few Americans seem to like it that way. See: Why have police in America turned into such ruthless thugs?


Meteor

Obamacare could force THOUSANDS of volunteer fire departments to close


Volunteer fire departments all across the U.S. could find themselves out of money and unable to operate unless Congress or the Obama Administration exempts them from the Affordable Care Act.

'I thought the kinks were worked out of Obamacare at the first of the month,' Central Florida volunteer firefighter Carl Fabrizi told Sunshine State News.

'Man, oh, man, this could potentially destroy some real good companies in Florida.'

The U.S. Department of Labor takes the term 'volunteer' literally, but the IRS says volunteer firefighters are technically employees if they're on the job more than 30 hours per week, making them subject to Obamacare's employee-mandate rules.