Society's ChildS


Dollar

Best of the Web: Election apocalypse: Greek bank-runs and hoarding canned food


Herald Sun
Thu, 14 Jun 2012 17:28 UTC
athens
© Getty A woman walks past a family begging on a street in Athens.
Nervous Greeks are withdrawing up to 800 million euros ($1.01 billion) a day and stocking up on canned food as they fear the country will be forced to leave the eurozone after this Sunday's election.

Greek citizens fear the ramifications of a return to the country's previous currency, the drachma, if the radical left-wing party and strong election contender SYRIZA wins this weekend.

Bankers said daily withdrawals from the major banks were hitting €500-€800 million ($631.8 million-$1.01 billion), Reuters reported.

Meanwhile, retailers say consumers are stocking up on non-perishable foods like pasta and canned goods.

Comment: Much of the rhetoric regarding a possible 'Grexit' seems to be targeted towards scaring the Greek population into voting in politicians who will sacrifice Greece to the beurocratic Brussels technocrats and the corrupt ponzi banking system. The human impact on the general Greek population is deteriorating rapidly.

The effect of Sunday's election results is spooking the markets and unprecidented action is underway:From Oanda
The decision to halt trading is very much tied to the uncertainty in Europe and in particular, the Greek election. Given these events, there is the potential for extreme exchange rate volatility at a time when global currency markets are closed. OANDA's concern is that exchange rates could undergo significant fluctuations as the exit polls are being made public.dfgdfg


Read More...
Attention

Children found blindfolded, bound at Walmart


Associated Press
Thu, 14 Jun 2012 09:15 UTC
Police say two children from suburban Chicago who were found bound and blindfolded outside a Kansas Walmart are in temporary protective custody.

Lawrence police spokesman Trent McKinley says the presumed parents of the children have been arrested on suspicion of child abuse and endangerment and will appear in court Thursday.

Police found a 5-year-old boy Wednesday sitting beside a large SUV with his hands tied and a blindfold over his eyes. A bound and blindfolded 7-year-old girl was inside the vehicle, along with three other children, ages 12, 13 and 15. All are in protective custody.


The family, from Northlake, Ill., was heading to Arizona when the vehicle broke down Monday in Lawrence.

McKinley says officers are working with Illinois social services to determine where to send the children.
Read More...
Wall Street

Nokia to cut 10,000 jobs by end of 2013


The Guardian
Thu, 14 Jun 2012 06:07 UTC
Image
All the profits for us and none for you
Nokia will lay off 10,000 jobs globally and close plants by the end of 2013 in a further drive to cut costs, the company said on Thursday.

The cuts mean that it will close some research and development projects, including in Ulm in Germany and Burnaby in Canada.

The Finnish phone-maker said it would also close the manufacturing plant in Salo, but would keep its research and development operations there.

The company also confirmed the sale of its luxury phone business, Vertu, to the private equity firm EQT.

Nokia, which will retain a 10% minority shareholding in Vertu, said the sale was the best option for the business.
Read More...
Arrow Up

China now seen as top economic power

Olivier Knox
The Ticket
Wed, 13 Jun 2012 12:46 UTC
Image
© Patrick Semansky/APPresident Barack Obama
It's not just how it's playing in Peoria: President Barack Obama's standing overseas has eroded sharply since he took office three and a half years ago, even as many of America's closest friends increasingly say that China is now the world's dominant economic power, according to a report out Wednesday.

Solid majorities in Britain, France, Germany and Spain say China - not the United States - is the globe's most potent economy. That perception has changed markedly in the past four years. In Britain, for example, the margin in 2012 is 58-28 percent in China's favor, compared with 44-29 percent for the United States in 2008.

Those are some of the stark findings of Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project, which also found that approval of Obama's handling of world affairs has plummeted 30 points in China, from 57 percent to just 27 percent.

That may not matter at the polls in November, but it could complicate Obama's efforts to hold together international coalitions on issues like Iran's nuclear program or forge a consensus to bring an end to bloody violence in Syria.
Read More...
Arrow Down

Victims In Psychic-Inspired Hoax Sue Police

Benjamin Radford
Discovery News
Tue, 12 Jun 2012 15:40 UTC
Psychic
© Corbis

A Texas couple who own a ranch that police searched following false information that was provided by a psychic are suing the police and several major news organizations for defamation.

The case began June 6, 2011, when a psychic called police and described a horrific scene of mass murder: dozens of dismembered bodies near a ranch house about an hour outside of Houston, Texas. There were rotting limbs, headless corpses, and, chillingly, many were children in this mass grave they described.

Deputies from the Liberty County Sheriff's office went to investigate but didn't see anything amiss. After a second call the following day, dozens of officials from the Texas Department of Public Safety, the FBI, and the Texas Rangers were on the scene -- not to mention cadaver dogs, news helicopters, and gawkers. It all turned out to be a false alarm. There were no dead bodies; the psychic was wrong (or lying).

Though the incident became a national embarrassment, the police refused to apologize, saying that procedures were followed and that the severity of the claims warranted an investigation: Whether a tip comes from an ordinary citizen, an anonymous informant, or a self-proclaimed psychic, information about mass murders cannot be ignored.

Now the couple that owns the ranch are suing. According to a story in The Dayton News,
Joe Bankson and Gena Charlton, through their attorney, Andrew B. Sommerman, filed a lawsuit on June 5, 2012, in the 193rd Judicial District in Dallas claiming that the sheriff's office and the media groups acted in reckless disregard and caused damage to the couple's reputation and good name. Bankson and Charlton...are now unable to return to their rented home in Hardin because "everyone looks at them askance because of the accusations made against them."
Bankson and Charlton accuse The New York Times, CNN, Thompson Reuters, ABC News, and other news media of publishing false statements claiming that bodies had been found on their property.
Read More...
Light Saber

Should Parents Be Allowed to Kill People Who Sexually Molest their Kids?

Bonnie Rochman
Time
Tue, 12 Jun 2012 21:10 UTC
child
© Mark Barrett / Photolibrary / Getty Images
Over the weekend, a Texas father beat to death a man he allegedly caught molesting his 4-year-old daughter. Should he stand trial?

Consider it a warning to those who would stoop to sexually abuse children: on Saturday, a Texas father who allegedly discovered a man sexually assaulting his 4-year-old daughter hit him so hard that he killed him.

And few seemed to care. "Dad's a hero in my book," was one of more than 5,400 comments on CNN. "No jury in this country will convict the father," read another.
Read More...
Ambulance

'I am just ill, I am not a monster': Chinese mother with rare condition

Rob Cooper
Mail Online
Tue, 12 Jun 2012 00:00 UTC
tumors on face
© Rex'I am NOT a monster': Li Hongfang, 40, has a rare condition which has caused tumours to grow on her face - but she is unable to afford treatment
A Chinese mother-of-two has been left disfigured by tumours which have been growing on her face for the last ten years.

Li Hongfang, 40, is shunned in public because of the rare condition which has caused her face to slowly swell.

She has been unable to get medical treatment for Chordoma because she cannot afford it. The illness is a form of bone cancer which causes tissue to grow.

The trouble started in 2001 when she noticed a small patch of swelling on her forehead which she initially ignored because it was not painful.

When her condition was finally diagnosed four years later, doctors said she had seven tumours growing on her face.
Read More...
Mr. Potato

Police catch alleged hit-and-run driver with his Zombie license plate

Dylan Stableford
Yahoo! News
Tue, 12 Jun 2012 00:00 UTC
Let this be a lesson to all you aspiring criminals out there: If you're thinking about committing a crime, perhaps don't do it driving a car with a vanity license plate that reads "ZOMBIE."

According to police in Allentown, Pa., Yardley Joy Frantz, a 29-year-old woman, struck a man and young boy late Friday afternoon, then fled the scene in a car with the aforementioned plate.

Pedro Gonzalez Jr. told police a car driven by Frantz hit his father, Pedro Gonzalez Sr., and nephew Carlos Correa, "who was riding a toy car," according to the criminal complaint published by the Lehigh Valley Morning Call. When Gonzalez Jr. confronted Frantz as she attempted to flee, Frantz "zapped him in the chest with a stun gun."
Read More...
Handcuffs

Who Profits from Prison?: Louisiana - the World's Prison Capital

Charles M. Blow
The New York Times
Fri, 25 May 2012 18:15 UTC
hands on prison bars
© iStockphoto/helenecanada
Louisiana is the world's prison capital. The state imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of its U.S. counterparts. First among Americans means first in the world. Louisiana's incarceration rate is nearly triple Iran's, seven times China's and 10 times Germany's.

That paragraph opens a devastating eight-part series published this month by The Times-Picayune of New Orleans about how the state's largely private prison system profits from high incarceration rates and tough sentencing, and how many with the power to curtail the system actually have a financial incentive to perpetuate it.

The picture that emerges is one of convicts as chattel and a legal system essentially based on human commodification.
Read More...
Stormtrooper

Who Profits from Prison?: American Teens Being Jailed for Having Sex or Being Late to School

Sarah Seltzer
AlterNet
Tue, 05 Jun 2012 17:55 UTC
prison bars 2
The case of an honors student in Texas shines light on a national problem: teens going to jail for absurd reasons.

Last week, the country was riveted by the story of young Diane Tran, a high school junior age 17, who was tossed in jail for a night because she was missing too much school.

The reason her case attracted so much attention? Tran missed those days of school--or arrived late--due to exhaustion. She worked two jobs to help support her siblings. Her parents had split and moved out of town. She became, in essence, a poster-girl for both the recession and for the criminalization of youth. Even those local newscasters expected to be dispassionate were moved to say their "hearts went out" to this girl.
Read More...