Society's ChildS


Yoda

Pro-Russian Crimeans celebrate landslide vote for return to motherland

Shaun Walker, Harriet Salem
The Guardian
Sun, 16 Mar 2014 07:45 UTC
Link to video: Pro-Russian separatists: Crimea is just the beginning

With Soviet-era music blaring from loudspeakers and the Russian tricolour everywhere, the overwhelming feeling in Sevastopol was that the city was finally "going home" after a 23-year stay in Ukraine.

The home of the Russian Black Sea fleet, and a bastion of pro-Russian support in Crimea, there was barely a dissenting voice in the port during Sunday's referendum, which most of the world considers illegitimate but here is seen as a just exercise in self-determination.

With half the ballots counted, Crimean officials said that 95.5% of voters had chosen union with Russia, with a turnout of over 80%. Given the absence of recognised election observers, it was impossible to verify how honestly the ballots were counted, but in Sevastopol at least, such figures did not seem implausible.

"Today is the greatest day of my life; we are returning to mother Russia," said Ludmila Balatskaya, 72, a former deputy in the city government, as she sat on a bench beneath a flag of Sevastopol in a polling station.

"I was just a little girl when they just informed us that Crimea was now Ukraine. Everything fell down around me. We are Russia, we have always been Russian people in our souls here in Crimea, but today that becomes a practical reality again" she said, tears in her eyes.

Image
© Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Europe A girl holding a Russian flag stands outside a booth inside a polling station in Bachchisaray, Ukraine, on Sunday.
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People

Good for them! Crimeans vote on union with Russia‏

Mike Collett-White and Ronald Popeski
Reuters
Sun, 16 Mar 2014 16:02 UTC
Supporters of the Crimean parliament
© RIA Novosti/Valeriy MelnikovParticipants hold different-colored pieces of paper to display the Russian flag at the rally in support of the Crimean Parliament and Sevastopol City Council's decision to reunite with Russia, staged on Nakhimov Square in Sevastopol.
Russian state media said Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to break with Ukraine and join Russia on Sunday, as Kiev accused Moscow of pouring forces into the peninsula and warned separatist leaders "the ground will burn under their feet".

With over half the votes counted, 95.5 percent had chosen the option of annexation by Moscow, the head of the referendum commission, Mikhail Malyshev, said two hours after polls closed. Turnout was 83 percent, he added - a high figure given that many who opposed the move had said they would boycott the vote.

Comment: The Ukrainian acting defence minister invents numbers to justify the claim of an invasion. The number allowed according to a 1997 treaty is 25000 and currently there are just 22000. The legality of this is also recognised by the CIA, which Reuters convieniently forgets in this article.

CIA says Russia troop numbers well below treaty threshold:
CIA director John Brennan told a senior lawmaker Monday that a 1997 treaty between Russia and Ukraine allows up to 25,000 Russia troops in the vital Crimea region, so Russia may not consider its recent troop movements to be an invasion, U.S. officials said.

The number of Russian troops that have surged into Ukraine in recent days remains well below that threshold, Brennan said, according to U.S. officials who declined to be named in describing private discussions and declined to name the legislator.

Though Brennan disagrees that the treaty justifies Russia's incursion, he urged a cautious approach, the officials said.


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Light Sabers

People power: Activists stop Kiev's military trucks heading to Russian border


RT
Sun, 16 Mar 2014 02:19 UTC
Kiev military convoy
© UnknownScreenshot from video
Activists in eastern Ukraine in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions are blocking columns of heavy military equipment heading from Kiev to the border with Russia.

Late Thursday activists from the Donbass people's militia blocked the way of columns with about 20 trucks carrying heavy military equipment near Donetsk heading to the Russian border, a local activist and former officer of the Ukrainian Emergencies Ministry told RT.

"At about 5pm [1500 GMT], local activists called me," said Sergey Rzhavsky. "They reported that a column [with military equipment] was situated near the town of Volovaha from the side of the Valeryanovka settlement. We, the Donbass People's Self-Defense Units of Pavel Gubarev [the local governor, currently arrested in Kiev] promptly headed there. We saw about 20 heavy trucks there with some carrying airborne combat vehicles."

According to Rzhavsky, the activists engaged in negotiations with the troops that lasted about an hour or two. During the negotiations, the activists found out that the trucks were heading to a polygon situated near the border with Russia for some military training, he said.

"Since we do not want fratricidal carnage, we suggested the military to refrain from using force. We were unmasked, without any means of self-defense. We asked them to turn around and leave, because the military equipment was really heavy and if the columns passed the city it would escalate tensions, [and evoke] shock and panic," he said.

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Stormtrooper

Metropolitan police strip searched more than 4,500 children in five years

Joe Sandler Clarke
The Guardian
Sun, 16 Mar 2014 15:22 UTC
the metropolitan police
© Oli Scarff/Getty ImagesThe Met said the force's use of strip search was found by the police watchdog to be “proportionate and appropriate”.
Data obtained under freedom of information reveals thousands of 10 - 16-year-olds faced procedure from April 2008

More than 4,500 children as young as 10 have been strip searched by the Metropolitan police over the past five years, data released under the Freedom of Information Act shows.

The figures obtained by the Guardian show 4,638 children aged between 10 and 16 were asked to remove their clothes and then searched by police between April 2008 and the end of last year. Just over a third were released by police without charge.

During a strip search suspects are required to take off all their clothes and can be asked to bend over and spread their legs. The police are allowed to do this only if they suspect the person is hiding class A drugs or an object that could cause harm. Under law, a strip search can be carried out only on those under arrest and must take place in a police cell or at a detention centre and must be approved by an inspector.
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Eye 1

Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps is finally dying


CBS News
Sun, 16 Mar 2014 18:43 UTC
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© Charlie Riedel/APPastor Fred Phelps preaching at his Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas.
The estranged son of the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church said his father is "on the edge of death."

Fred Phelps Sr. became famous for organizing picket lines of brightly-colored signs carrying hateful messages against tolerance during the funerals of military personnel and famous figures. His actions led to at least two federal and several state laws restricting protests during military funerals.

In a statement on his Facebook page, Nathan Phelps, who has been estranged from his father for 30 years, said the senior Phelps was dying in hospice care in Topeka, Kan., and that he had been ex-communicated from his own church in August of 2013.

"I'm not sure how I feel about this. Terribly ironic that his devotion to his god ends this way. Destroyed by the monster he made," Nathan Phelps wrote.

"I feel sad for all the hurt he's caused so many," he continued. "I feel sad for those who will lose the grandfather and father they loved. And I'm bitterly angry that my family is blocking the family members who left from seeing him, and saying their good-byes."
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Bell

People Power! 95.7% of Crimeans vote to join Russia in preliminary results


RT
Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:15 UTC
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© Reuters / Thomas PeterPeople celebrate as they wait for the announcement of preliminary results of today's referendum on Lenin Square in the Crimean capital of Simferopol March 16, 2014
Over 95 percent of voters in the Crimean referendum have answered 'yes' to the autonomous republic joining Russia and less than 4 percent of the vote participants want the region to remain part of Ukraine, according to preliminary results.

With over 75 percent of the votes already counted, preliminary result show that 95.7 percent of voters said 'yes' to the reunion of the republic with Russia as a constituent unit of the Russian Federation.

The overall voter turnout in the referendum on the status of Crimea is 81,37%, according to the head of the Crimean parliament's commission on the referendum, Mikhail Malyshev.

The preliminary results of the popular vote were announced during a meeting in the center of Sevastopol, the city that hosts Russia's Black Sea fleet.

Over a half of the Tatars living in the port city took part in the referendum, with the majority of them voting in favor of joining Russia, reports Itar-Tass citing a representative of the Tatar community Lenur Usmanov. About 40% of Crimean Tatars went to polling stations on Sunday, the republic's prime minister Sergey Aksyonov said.

In Simferopol, the capital of the republic, at least 15,000 have gathered to celebrate the referendum in central Lenin square and people reportedly keep arriving. Demonstrators, waving Russian and Crimean flags, were watching a live concert while waiting for the announcement of preliminary results of the voting.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the citizens of the peninsula have been given an opportunity to freely express their will and exercise their right to self-determination.
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Airplane

Missing Malaysia Airlines plane may have sent last signal while on ground, official said


News Sky
Sun, 16 Mar 2014 18:30 UTC
Image
The two red arcs show the possible routes after the jet went missing
The missing Malaysia Airlines plane carrying 239 people could have been on the ground when it sent its last satellite signal, an official has said.

US intelligence is focusing on the pilot and co-pilot's possible role in the plane's disappearance and are worried it may have landed somewhere to be used later as a weapon.

The Boeing 777-200's final 'ping' was picked up nearly seven hours after the flight vanished from air traffic control screens.

At first it was thought contact was lost less than an hour into its flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8.

But now investigators say a 'ping' was detected from one of two air corridors going north and south from the sea off Malaysia.

One is a northern route stretching thousands of square miles from northern Thailand to Kazakhstan and the other is a southern zone from Indonesia towards the southern Indian Ocean.
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Arrow Down

Canadian hospitals stretched as self-harming teens seek help


CBC News
Sat, 15 Mar 2014 18:44 UTC
Emergency
© CBC NewsEmergency rooms across the country are producing alarming statistics on teens being hospitalized for self-inflicted wounds and suicidal thoughts.

Mental health services are strained as a growing number of teens show up at emergency rooms across Canada with self-inflicted injuries and suicidal thoughts, say pediatric psychiatrists.

"We're seeing twice as many kids as we were 10 years ago," said Dr. Hazen Gandy, division chief of community-based psychiatry at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa.

"Commonly it's cutting," he said of kids typically aged 12 to 17 who slash their arms, thighs or bellies with everything from razor blades to the sharp edges of protractors.

"It could be burning themselves. It could be bruising themselves by repeatedly banging their fist against the wall. It's a way of kind of giving the body a whole different set of inputs that allows them not to feel so awful inside."

Self-harming is a symptom of deeper issues such as anxiety or depression that stem from complex causes, Gandy said. But what's clear is how climbing caseloads are affecting the health system, he said.

"One of my greatest concerns is that as these services are stressed, greater numbers of mental health providers are now themselves showing wear and tear and are on the verge of burnout," said Gandy. He has practised in Ottawa for 20 years and says he has seen wait times grow to eight to 10 months for outpatient services.

"This is an issue across the country."
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Boat

Italian region votes on declaring independence, just like Crimea


RT.com
Sun, 16 Mar 2014 15:00 UTC
Image
© Reuters / Manuel Silvestri
As Crimeans make their way to the polls this Sunday, another region further in the heart of Europe is also deciding its fate in a referendum: the Italian region of Veneto, which is voting on whether to break with Rome.

The independence movement insists the industrial northern region's wealth is being drained by Rome's mismanagement of the financial crisis.

Following in the footsteps of Scotland and Catalonia, Venice - the capital of the Italian region of Veneto - will be holding a referendum to form an independent republic. About 3.8 million people in the region are eligible to vote in the referendum, which runs through Friday.

Leaders of the independence movement say they are not going to wait for Rome's approval, and if the population votes in favor they will begin the separation process. The latest polls carried out by the independence movement show that over 60 percent of the population is in favor of becoming independent.
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Arrow Down

Wounded veteran denied ride at Texas Six Flags, then was refused a refund

Oliver Darcy
The Blaze
Sat, 15 Mar 2014 12:10 UTC
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© Screen grab via KMOV-TVStephen Jackel says a Texas Six Flags treated him so poorly he broke down in tears in front of his 14-year-old daughter.
A military veteran who lost both of his legs in Afghanistan says he was reduced to tears when a Texas Six Flags refused to allow him to accompany his 14-year-old daughter on a ride.

Sgt. Stephen Jackel told KMOV-TV that he was told by the amusement park he was not permitted to go on the ride because their policy states individuals must have one functional leg and arm.

Six Flags insists the policy is in place for safety reasons.

However, Jackel - who uses two prosthetic legs - insists park personnel never informed him of the policy when he purchased his tickets.
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