Society's ChildS


Gear

How insane is France? Brittany bar boss has been fined €9,000 for using illegal workers by asking customers to bring their glasses and trays back to the counter after use

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© CafeRepaireLocmiquelic.frChez Mamm Kounifl
A Brittany bar boss has been fined €9,000 for using illegal workers - for asking customers to bring their glasses and trays back to the counter after use.

Maryka Le Floch, who has run the popular Mamm Kounifl music bar in Locmiquélic, Morbihan, for 10 years, told Le Télégramme officials from social security agency Urssaf had accused her and her husband of using customers as unpaid "waiters" by asking them to return glasses.

She said the pub, which has received the label Café de pays and hosts regular folk and Celtic music evenings with local bands, was often so busy that it was counter service only and they asked customers had to return trays and glasses.

Camcorder

France: Fewer speeding drivers

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© The Connexion
The number of drivers caught speeding in France has fallen for the first time since fixed-point automatic speed cameras were introduced a decade ago.

Interior ministry figures seen by L'Express magazine show 15 million cars were flashed for breaking the speed limit in the 10 months to the end of October - down from 17 million over the same period last year.

The magazine says the downward trend continued in November - down 15% year on year - meaning 2013 will be the first time that automatic radars have failed to exceed the previous year's total.

However the reason for the decline is not necessarily a change in driving habits. It is reported that up to 600 speed cameras are currently out of action because of a maintenance backlog at the new company responsible for keeping the devices operational.

Whistle

John Bolton: Edward Snowden 'ought to swing from a tall oak tree'


Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton spoke out against former government contractor Edward Snowden for leaking classified details on the National Security Agency's controversial surveillance practices, suggesting Snowden should "swing from a tall oak tree" as punishment.

Speaking on Fox News on Monday, Bolton, who served under former President George W. Bush, characterized Snowden's actions as treason, and urged against any public talk of amnesty.

Arrow Down

Google's Location History: Big brother Android keeping tabs on your every move?

I just read a number of articles over the weekend and I am still not sure whether I am going to be amazed or creeped out. Several technology journals and publications have started to feature a tool that Google Maps and Google Now uses to apparently monitor and track the movement history of certain persons. What does this mean? It means that if your location history was collected, then Google knows where you were last November 25, 2013 at exactly 1:00 in the morning. So if you were doing something "nasty" at someplace that is not so "respectable" at that certain date, time and place, then somebody else knows what you were doing.


Now before you scream "Damn NSA" and blame Obama once again for being spied upon and losing your privacy, this is not the US government's fault. And this is not a clandestine operation too. This tool, operated by Google, actually asks permission from you to gather data from your Google gadget (like an Android Phone or on Android Tablet / Phablet) the moment you set up your gear. In many cases, the gadget user would say yes ( I wouldn't if I owned an Android gadget, and since I set up my wife's Samsung smartphone, I did not consent in sending Google the location data contained in her phone all the way to Google's "Orwellian" headquarters (or at least its servers wherever they are). But that's just me.

Wedding Rings

Sick Society Gets Sicker: Utah polygamist with FIVE wives and 24 children to get his own TLC reality series

polygamy
© Associated PressFamily time: Mr Williams with his wives, from left, Robyn, Paulie, Rosemary, Nonie, and Rhonda, at their home in a polygamous community outside Salt Lake City
  • A pilot episode featuring Brady Williams and his family drew good ratings on the network in September
  • The Williams family are among an estimated 15,000 independent polygamists in the West who don't belong to an organized, fundamentalist Mormon church
TLC has announced it will air a full series about a progressive polygamous family from Utah that starred in a one-hour pilot earlier this year.

The cable TV network said Thursday it will produce nine, one-hour episodes about Brady Williams and his five wives and 24 children. The first episode is set to debut March 9.

The September pilot episode drew good ratings.

Members of the Williams family are among an estimated 15,000 independent polygamists in the West who don't belong to an organized, fundamentalist Mormon church. Williams and his wives withdrew from the Apostolic United Brethren during the mid-2000s after re-evaluating their core beliefs.

The family no longer teaches the tenets of fundamental Mormonism to their children at home, opting instead to take from other teachings such as Buddhism to instill good, morale values in their two dozen children, who range in age from 2-20.

Their move into the national spotlight comes with much less risk than it would have just a month ago. A federal judge in Utah last week struck down key parts of the state's polygamy laws, saying a provision that forbids cohabitation violates the First Amendment.

The ruling decriminalizes polygamy, making only bigamy - holding marriage licenses with multiple partners - illegal.

Magic Hat

U.S. jobs to increase 10.8 percent by 2022, labor growth to slow

jobs
© Shannon Stapleton Reuters, / October 24, 2011A sign marks the entrance to a job fair in New York
The number of United States jobs is forecast to increase by 10.8 percent in the next decade, with fastest growth in the healthcare sector as it serves an aging population.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' employment projections for 2012 to 2022 released on Thursday said the United States will see nearly 16 million jobs added in that decade.

Even with this increase, growth in the civilian labor force is expected to slow to 0.5 percent annually in the next decade. That would be down from the 0.7 percent annual increase between 2002 and 2012, and potentially hurt economic growth.

Slower growth in the labor force could reduce the increase in gross domestic product to 2.6 percent annually from 2012 to 2022, compared with the at least 3-percent annual growth in the last two decades, BLS said.

The slowdown in U.S. labor growth is partly due to declining birth rates and low international immigration rates, both needed to sustain the country's population growth.

A large number of baby boomers are expected to retire from the workforce in the next 10 years, as they will be between 58 and 76 years old in 2022. The U.S. civilian labor force will be older and more ethnically diverse in 2022, BLS predicts.

Comment: The prediction of a 'slowdown in U.S. labor growth' may also end up being attributed to how many people actually survive this decade, if you factor in: rising rates of both poverty and homelessness, disease-inducing diets, addictive, braincell poisoning of millions due to massive psychiatric drugging of the American population,a mostly Frankenfood-GMO-menu devoid of healthful niutrients, lack of affordable or adequate healthcare, and mega-war-everywhere-the-U.S.-can-make-war. Budget cuts to social assistance programs will only increase the existent hardship of struggling families to survive down the road.

We'll be lucky if we even make it to the next decade, let alone BE here to apply for a job, considering the dizzying rate at which conditions are devolving in the U.S. Jobs are needed NOW.


Arrow Down

Homeless no longer welcome at L.A.'s Union Station

LA homeless
© Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times Sheriff's deputies ask a man to leave the section designated for ticketed passengers only in Union Station. The station had become a gathering spot for the homeless, and a pilot program launched by the MTA in December put the station's seats off-limits to those without tickets, December 20, 2013

Alicia Mendivil said she was scared when a guard asked to see her ticket before she sat down in one of Union Station's art deco armchairs.

The holiday traveler from Yuma, Ariz., didn't feel much better when she learned the reason: a crackdown on homeless people who officials said had turned the cavernous downtown transportation hub into a shelter.

"You can tell a homeless person from somebody who's not, can't you?" said Mendivil, a Christmas wreath brooch winking from her lapel.

She had encountered a pilot program launched Dec. 9 by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority putting seats in the historic structure off-limits to all but ticketed Amtrak and Metrolink passengers.

Last summer, an average of 135 homeless people a night were gathering inside the terminal, commandeering bathrooms, sprawling across seats and intimidating customers with aggressive panhandling, MTA officials said.

Comment: Increasingly across the country,those without a home find themselves being treated as though they're not even human beings. More and more, and yet, same as it ever was, the reality on the ground is more along the lines of: out of sight, out of mind.

And what is the will of the community at large?


Stormtrooper

Brutalized and raped: Woman was probed, cavity searched, & X-rayed when she tried to reenter the USA

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© Eric Gay/APVehicles are searched indiscriminately at a border checkpoint.

Forewarning: The below article contains graphic descriptions of a woman being brutalized and sexually assaulted by the U.S. Border Patrol and medical professionals.


An American woman was humiliated and sexually assaulted for hours when she tried to re-enter the United States at a checkpoint manned by U.S. border patrol agents. Suspecting she had drugs inside her orifices, the federal agents detained her, chained her to a table, and subjected her to a series of invasive and traumatic cavity searches, finger penetration, scans and X-rays... all without a warrant. She was then billed for the "services."

The incident took place last year and has recently been brought to light by a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The victim is described as a petite 54-year-old U.S. citizen, identifying herself only as Jane Doe to protect her anonymity as a sexual assault victim. She is married and resides in Lovington, NM. She was traveling to visit a close family friend in Juarez, Mexico, who was recently deported. The lawsuit states that she makes the trip to visit him about once per month. This time, her return trip back into the United States at the Cordova Bridge near El Paso is not one she will ever forget.

Bad Guys

Ohio man indicted in rape and death of girl, 9

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© Wayne County Sheriff's OfficeJerrod Metsker, 24, has been arrested on a murder charge in the death of a 9-year-old Reann Murphy in Ohio.
— An Ohio man who authorities say raped and strangled a 9-year-old girl before dumping her body in a trash bin at the trailer park where they were neighbors has been indicted by a grand jury.

The grand jury in Wayne County returned an indictment Friday against Jerrod Metsker, 24, in the death of Reann Murphy. The grand jury charged him with two counts of aggravated murder, three counts of kidnapping and two counts of rape.

Authorities say the death penalty would be available as punishment if Metsker is convicted of murder. He is being held on $1 million bond. An attorney for Metsker previously said he couldn't comment on the case.

Murphy's body was found in the trash bin early last Sunday after a frantic search by neighbors and law enforcement after she was reported missing the previous day. Metsker was the last person seen with the girl at the trailer park in Smithville, 30 miles southwest of Akron, a sheriff's investigator said. Metsker later joined neighbors and relatives in a search for her, a neighbor said.

Newspaper

Dispute over Indian diplomat: Big rift and many unanswered questions

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© Washington PostOutrage in India over diplomat’s arrest: India has alleged that a U.S.-based diplomat was mistreated after her arrest in New York on fraud charges. The reported incident has sparked protests in front of the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi and other places in India. On Wednesday, Indian officials said they are transferring the deputy consul general, putting her in a post with full diplomatic immunity.
What began last week as an apparently minor New York arrest on visa fraud charges has become a major diplomatic row between the United States and India, and law enforcement officials and the State Department have clashed over whether U.S. legal or diplomatic concerns should prevail.

At the end of another day of testy U.S.-India exchanges, spokeswoman Marie Harf reiterated the State Department's "regret" over the way the arrest of an Indian diplomat was handled and said that "what we're focused on right now is working to move the relationship forward."

Forward movement seemed unlikely, however, as India on Thursday urged the United States to drop the charges against Devyani Khobragade, India's deputy consul general in New York, and insisted that she was the victim, not the perpetrator, in the case.

She was arrested last week and charged with underpaying an Indian household worker and lying about her wages to obtain a U.S. visa for the woman. The story has dominated Indian news media and led to anti-­U.S. demonstrations Thursday in the cities of Kolkata and Hyderabad, where an effigy of President Obama was burned.