Society's ChildS


Stormtrooper

Ukrainazis National Guard assaults hospital in Slavyansk, executes more than 25 wounded patients

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© RT
Ukrainian armed forces have allegedly killed more than 25 wounded people in a hospital in Krasny Liman, on the outskirts of Slavyansk, as the National Guard seized the town from the local militia following heavy shelling.

"According to preliminary information, more than 25 people have been killed,"Denis Pushilin, Chairman of the Supreme Council of the People's Republic of Donetsk was quoted by Itar-Tass.

While there are no official figures yet, Pushilin fears the body count in Tuesday's assault on the hospital will eventually rise. "We fear that there may be more victims," Pushilin said, adding that the figures announced by Kiev and reported by locals "differ greatly."

The number of injured is still unknown as well. During an assault on the town people inside the hospital tried to flee in panic and hide in the basement. Medical staff scrambled to get the wounded, mostly elderly out, as mortar shelling on the medical facility continued.

Pistol

Three RCMP officers gunned down in Canada, two more injured

police roadblock moncton
© Marc Grandmaison/Associated Press A police roadblock in Moncton, New Brunswick, where a gunman killed three Canadian mounted police and wounded two others.
Two other RCMP officers wounded and manhunt under way for Justin Bourque, 24

A gunman has shot dead three Canadian mounted police and injured two more in one of the worst losses of life for the country's police forces in a decade.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police in New Brunswick said on their Twitter feed that they were in pursuit of 24-year-old Justin Bourque of Moncton who was considered armed and dangerous. The police force tweeted an image of a suspect wearing military camouflage and carrying two guns.
#Codiac #RCMPNB - 3 officers mortally wounded by shooter. 2 officers sustained non life threatning injuries. Shooter still actively sought.

- RCMP New Brunswick (@RCMPNB) June 5, 2014
RCMP spokesman Paul Greene said the two wounded RCMP officers had non-life-threatening injuries. The Horizon Health Network, a provincial health authority, said on its Twitter feed that two patients were taken to the Moncton hospital with gunshot wounds.

Constable Damien Theriault said police were urging people in a certain area of Moncton, New Brunswick, to stay inside.

He said the search for the suspect was concentrated around two streets.

Sean Gallacher, who lives near the area where police were concentrating their search, said he heard what he now believed were gunshots. "I was downstairs and heard a few bangs," said Gallacher, 35.

Four Canadian RCMP officers, known as "mounties", were killed in March 2005 by a gunman on a farm in the province of Alberta. It was the RCMP's worst single-day loss of life in more than 100 years.

Snow Globe

Neil DeGrasse Tyson worries that aliens have been to Earth and found no signs of intelligent life

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Astrophysicist and Cosmos host Neil DeGrasse Tyson told MSNBC host Chris Hayes that while it's audacious enough for human beings to say they're capable of defining intelligence, he would still like to know if there's other intelligent beings in the universe.

"My great fear is that we've in fact been visited by intelligent aliens," DeGrasse Tyson said to Hayes. "But they chose not to make contact, on the conclusion that there's no sign of intelligent life on Earth. How's that for measures of intelligence?"

One reason it's presumptuous for humans to act like they're the arbiters of intelligence, DeGrasse Tyson said, is the possibility that planets much older than ours are already sending us messages in a format that, while basic to them, is incomprehensible by our current standards.

For example, he explained, while radio waves are seen as commonplace in present-day Earth, no one could have understood them 200 years ago.

Colosseum

The coming collapse: Age of limits 2014

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I got back to the boat late last night, after an intense three days of presentations and discussions. This was my third year presenting at this conference, and I am at this point quite heavily invested in this annual event and have started to take on roles I didn't even know existed when I first showed up there three years ago not knowing what to expect.

For those who haven't heard of this conference before, here is a synopsis. The venue is unusual for a conference: it is a large campground that occupies a bit of high ground surrounded by a fast-flowing creek nestled in the Allegheny mountains, a few miles from the Maryland border, but quite accessible because it is just a few miles from Interstate 68 and a fast two-hour drive from Baltimore. For those flying via BWI airport, there are usually enough locals driving by BWI on the way to the conference that rides can be arranged. If flying with camping gear is problematic, there is a dormitory with bunk beds and some semi-private rooms. The accommodations are basic, but there are flush toilets, hot showers, free tea and coffee available virtually around the clock, bonfires for when it gets chilly, and two satisfying and plentiful meals a day. A visit to the sweat lodge, optionally followed by a dip in the creek, rounds out the non-intellectual part of the experience.

Comment: For more information on the questions and commentary posed by Dmitry Orlov in this blog post listen to the Sott Talk Radio interview: Lessons from collapse of USSR for USA: Interview with Dmitry Orlov
This week on SOTT Talk Radio we're speaking with Dmitry Orlov, a Russian-American engineer and a writer on the subject of societal collapse.

Born in St. Petersburg, Orlov moved to the U.S. at the age of 12. Visiting his homeland between the late 1980s and mid-1990s, he was an eyewitness to the collapse of the U.S.S.R.

Orlov has written extensively on the stages leading up to collapse, and how different groups of people adapt to 'the new normal'. Orlov argues that the U.S. is heading the same way, and that the U.S.S.R. had it easy compared to what's in store for the Atlantic Empire.

Orlov is the author of two books Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects, and The Five Stages of Collapse: Survivors' Toolkit, and regularly publishes essays at his Club Orlov blog.



Health

Another rogue veterinary "treatment", or something else? Kentucky family's dog goes missing, returns hours later after unexplained surgical procedure

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A Kentucky family said they returned home from watching their horse run in the Preakness Stakes to find their dog missing, but the animal turned up later that day with wounds from an apparent surgical procedure.

Lori Dougherty, of Louisville, said one of her four golden retrievers was missing when she returned from the Baltimore race, where her horse, Ride on Curlin, had finished second.

She told WAVE-TV the 13-year-old dog, Roscoe, has followed the same morning routine for years, leaving home about 8 a.m. to examine neighboring yards and returning about an hour later.

Comment: On 2nd of May, 2014, it was reported about a Texas veterinarian, who was arrested for animal cruelty and who has admitted to keeping alive five dogs meant to be put down, among them his own pet, which was discovered lying motionless with one of her legs missing.

There is a saying, that you can judge a man's true character by the way he treats animals. What does it say about a person and society at large, when veterinarians make clearly unethical decisions? Especially considering the fact, that one of the main traits of psychopathy is cruelty toward animals?


House

More than half of Americans are struggling to afford their housing

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© iStockAs the housing market slowly recovers, a majority of homeowners and renters are finding it hard to meet rising rents and mortgage payments, new research finds.
Over half of Americans (52%) have had to make at least one major sacrifice in order to cover their rent or mortgage over the last three years, according to the "How Housing Matters Survey," which was commissioned by the nonprofit John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and carried out by Hart Research Associates. These sacrifices include getting a second job, deferring saving for retirement, cutting back on health care, running up credit card debt, or even moving to a less safe neighborhood or one with worse schools.

"Affordability issues are real and a major hurdle," says Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, an industry group. Home prices have increased 20% over the past two years while wages have barely gone up, he says. "Only by adding more new supply, via housing starts, can home prices be tamed," Yun adds. In fact, construction of housing units has averaged around 1.5 million a year for the past five decades, he says, but it's likely to be less than 1 million in 2014.

What's more, at least 15% of American homeowners (or residents of 78 counties across the country) were living in housing markets where the monthly mortgage payment on a median-priced home requires more than 30% of the monthly median household income - long considered the maximum for rent/mortgage repayments. Housing costs above that threshold are "unaffordable by historic standards," says Daren Blomquist, vice president at real estate data firm RealtyTrac. In New York county/Manhattan, mortgage payments represent 77% of the median income and in San Francisco County represents 70%.

Snakes in Suits

Billboard quoting Hitler and the Bible retracted by Alabama youth church group

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© Unknown
A billboard featuring a quote from Adolf Hitler next to smiling children was taken down on Tuesday at the request of the group that paid for the ad in the first place: a children's ministry in Alabama.

The group - Life Savers Ministries in Auburn, Alabama - requested the billboard, erected Friday near a popular shopping area, be taken down after the sign drew immediate criticism for quoting the Nazi leader to promote its services for under-privileged children.

"He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future," the billboard reads next to a photo of five children with arms locked.

Gold Coins

Steve Forbes: Return to the gold standard or face Great Depression II

gold bars
© Getty Images
Influential financial publisher and former presidential candidate Steve Forbes is out with a new warning that the U.S. faces an economic catastrophe due to the Federal Reserve's loose dollar policy, and returning to a strict "gold standard" is the only way to avoid disaster.

In Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy -- and What We Can Do About It, Forbes blames President Obama's money team for the stagnant economy, high prices, declining mobility and big government.

"[The Fed's] vastly misguided monetary policies are now setting the stage for a new economic and social catastrophe - one that could rival the financial crisis and horrors of the 1930s," he wrote in the book co-authored by Elizabeth Ames.


Red Flag

Police Out of Control! Officers fatally shoot family's dog after responding to home's alarm system

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© Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesFile photo of a police car
Round Rock police officers shot and killed a family dog after home's alarm system was activated.

Hope Lane tells KVUE-TV that her granddaughter forgot to shut the front door all the way after leaving for school, causing it to blow open, tripping the alarm.


Question

Mold, toxins, other reasons? Third unexplained death in Welsh house where mum and baby found dead a year ago

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Police are investigating the sudden death of a man in the same house where a mother and baby died in mysterious circumstances just a year ago.

Joanne Thomas, 27, and her four-month-old daughter, Harper, were found dead in Church Street, Troedyrhiw, in July last year.

An open verdict was recorded at their inquest which ruled out carbon monoxide poisoning and foul play.