Society's ChildS


House

Expensive wastelands: Billionaires' Row where mansions worth £350MILLION have been abandoned and left to rot for up to a quarter of a century

  • The Bishops Avenue in Hampstead is one of Britain's most expensive streets
  • But at least 16 mansions on the road are currently unoccupied
  • One group of 10 houses has been abandoned for more than 20 years
  • Resident claims that just three homes on the street are lived in all the time
More than a dozen properties on one of London's most expensive streets are currently standing empty after being abandoned by their super-wealthy owners, it has emerged.

The Bishops Avenue in Hampstead, north London - dubbed 'Billionaires' Row' - has at least 16 giant mansions standing vacant, with a combined value of an estimated £350million.

Some of the homes have been unoccupied for up to 25 years, with the interiors left to rot and rooms taken over by plants, according to a new investigation.
Bishop Av.e Hampstead
© UnknownVacancies: Around a third of the houses on 'Billionaires' Row in Hampstead are standing empty

Question

United Arab Emirates: Should the government mandate breastfeeding?

breastfeeding
© Igor Balasanov / Getty Images A mother breastfeeds her newborn.
When it comes to infant nutrition, the experts agree that breast is best. But should government be legislating lactation?

That's what is happening in the United Arab Emirates. Last week, the Federal National Council's Health, Labor and Social Affairs committee passed a clause in its broad Child Rights law making breastfeeding a "duty, not an option, for able mothers."

Members of the committee ultimately declared, after what was described as "a marathon debate" that every infant has the right to be breastfed for the first two years of life, according to a report in the National.

Under the law, a wet nurse would be provided for women unable to breastfeed for health reasons.

Still, the minister of social affairs voiced concerns about the enforcement of such a law. "If the law forced women to breastfeed, this could lead to new court cases," said Mariam Al Roumi, according to the National's report.

Among the concerns was the type of repercussions that could come from a mother's neglecting to nurse: Would a husband be permitted to sue his wife? How else might a mother be punished?

Many in the U.S. have been reacting to the notion of legislating what a woman should do with both her own body and her own child.

Eye 1

Meredith Borowiec throws her three newborn babies into trashbin, kills two of them and receives 18 month jail sentence

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Meredith Borowiec gave birth to three children between 2008 and 2010, and left each newborn child to die in a dumpster.

Two out of the three perished.

The third baby, also deposited into a trash can by the loving mother, was rescued from the bin by a man who turned out to be the child's father, though he did not know it at the time. (He told CBC News in 2010: "I pulled into my parking spot and hadn't even got to the back of my truck and a girl said, 'I think hear a baby in the dumpster.' So I, you know - no knowledge at this time that this is my kid whatsoever - I went running over.")

Borowiec has already spent 18 months in custody, during which time she gave birth to a fourth baby.

This week she was sentenced to 18 more months in jail, as well as three years of probation. She was found guilty of two cases of infanticide, and one case of aggravated assault.

Dollars

Best of the Web: An Idea Whose Time Has Come! California revises cottage food laws and boosts economy by creating over 1,000 new businesses

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© Dustin HughesMark Stambler prepares his daily bread for his at home business in Los Angeles
A government official appears at a man's door. The man has been breaking the law: He has sold bread baked at home.

This isn't a page from Kafka - it happened to Mark Stambler in Los Angeles.

For decades, Stambler has followed traditional methods to bake loaves of French bread. The ingredients are simple: distilled water, sea salt, wild yeast and organic grains. Stambler even mills the grain himself. To make it easier to steam loaves, he built a wood-fired oven in his own backyard. Stambler's loaves came in first place at the Los Angeles County Fair and the California State Fair.

Soon after that, Stambler got the idea to expand his hobby into a home business, which became Pagnol Boulanger. Word of mouth spread. In June 2011,The Los Angeles Times profiled Stambler and his bread in a full-page feature.

Unlike his bread, that profile was bittersweet. He was busted the very next day. As he described it, the health department "descended like a ton of bricks on the two stores that were selling my bread...they could no longer sell my bread."

Handcuffs

'Punishing' kids with stun gun? Caretaker arrested for alleged abuse


A woman was arrested Thursday in Kissimmee on allegations of using a stun gun to punish children in her care.

Letina Smith, 41, faces three counts of child abuse after a 7-year-old, 8-year-old and 9-year-old told officers that Smith punished them with an electric weapon.

The children described the weapon as being pink, rectangle-shaped and having two points with electricity flowing between them, Kissimmee police said. The children also said Smith touched them with the weapon when they misbehave, according to police.

Briefcase

Ukrainian parliament repeals anti-protest laws

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© AP/Sergei ChuzavkovIn this Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2013 file photo, Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov gestures while speaking at a cabinet meeting in Kiev, Ukraine. The prime minister of crisis-torn Ukraine has submitted his resignation. In a statement Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2014 on the government website, Mykola Azarov offered his resignation in order to encourage what he called "social-political compromise."
Ukraine's parliament has repealed anti-protest laws that set off violent clashes between protesters and police after they were put in place this month.

The vote on Tuesday came hours after Prime Minister Mykola Azarov submitted his resignation. He is one of the government figures most disliked by opposition supporters who have held protests for two months.

The protests turned violent after President Viktor Yanukovych pushed through laws to crack down on protests and raise possible prison sentences for creating mass disorder.

The prime minister of protest-torn Ukraine submitted his resignation on Tuesday, saying he hoped the move would help bring peaceful resolution to the crisis that has gripped the country for two months.

Mykola Azarov's resignation would remove one of the figures most despised by the opposition. It came as the parliament opened a special session that is expected to repeal harsh anti-protest laws that were imposed this month. Those laws set off the police-protester clashes in which at least three protesters died.

USA

After billions in U.S. "investment", Afghan roads are falling apart

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© Kevin Sieff / The Washington PostThe Afghans say they are working to keep up the roads but are hamstrung by a cutoff in American funds.
They look like victims of an insurgent attack - their limbs in need of amputation, their skulls cracked - but the patients who pour daily into the Ghazni Provincial Hospital are casualties of another Afghan crisis.

They are motorists who drove on the road network built by the U.S. government and other Western donors - a $4 billion project that was once a symbol of promise in post-Taliban Afghanistan but is now falling apart.

Western officials say the Afghan government is unable to maintain even a fraction of the roads and highways constructed since 2001, when the country had less than 50 miles of paved roads. The deterioration has hurt commerce and slowed military operations. In many places, the roads once deemed the hallmark of America's development effort have turned into death traps, full of cars careening into massive bomb-blast craters or sliding off crumbling pavement.

Comment: 12 years on, Afghanistan is in worse condition than it ever was. Thanks for nothing America.


Bell

Gerald Celente: Disastrous global collapse and riots will engulf the world

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© King World NewsGerald Celente
Today the man who remarkably predicted months ahead of time that the Fed would taper in December, and then again in January, warned King World News that people need to brace themselves for a disastrous global collapse and riots that will engulf the entire world.

He also discussed exactly what will trigger and then accelerate this tragic collapse and ensuing chaos. Below is what Gerald Celente, founder of Trends Research and the man many consider to be the top trends forecaster in the world, had to say in this remarkable interview.

Eric King: "Gerald, so far this has proceeded exactly as you predicted, with the first taper in December and the second taper here in January. How bad will this get for the emerging markets?"

Celente: "This selloff in the emerging markets, with their currencies going down and their interest rates going up, it's going to be disastrous and there are going to be riots everywhere....

USA

The Superbowl is the biggest human trafficking event of the year, says law enforcement

Human Trafficking
© ChameleonsEye/Shutterstock

Federal officials are descending on New Jersey this weekend, in anticipation of a major spike in human trafficking that is rumored to accompany the Super Bowl every year. It is believed that America's biggest game is also the largest concentration of human slave laborers of the year.

When a dense mass of humanity converges on a city like bees to a honeycomb, there are certain needs that arise.

The shrewdest of human traffickers know which ones must be fulfilled and which ones can be indulged: toilets have to be cleaned and food has to be served, but sex can also be provided for those with the money to pay for it.

Every year, many people (there are no official numbers) from within the country and abroad are seduced by the promise of paid labor to travel to the city hosting the big game. Often, these jobs do not exist, and many victims are forced to enter into slavery without any means of escape.

"Whether it be the Olympics, the World Cup, or the Super Bowl, any high-profile event that brings a large influx of visitors to a new locale can also create circumstances conductive to human trafficking and sexual exploitation," said Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, to USA Today.

Stop

Masked and radical, Ukraine protesters blockade justice ministry

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© AFP/Aris MessinisAn anti-government protester walks near a road block in Kiev on January 27, 2014.
They stood like a unit from a paramilitary army, in camouflage fatigues and clutching baseball bats, their faces concealed underneath helmets and black balaclavas.

Radical activists Monday blockaded the Ukrainian justice ministry in Kiev, in a provocative move that risked derailing talks to end Ukraine's crisis and was condemned even by some within the opposition.

Activists from the Spilna Sprava (Common Cause) radical group had late on Sunday stormed the building, bursting past the token protection provided by three guards and occupying the building.

They symbolically smashed the official sign of the building, destroyed one of the ground floor windows and set up a table outside with two icons and the Ukrainian constitution.

Two barricades several metres high were set up on the adjacent roads manned by activists with motorcycle helmets whose heads peered over the sacks of snow forming the blockade.