Society's ChildS


Airplane

Air Algerie plane wreckage photos

One day after Air Algérie Flight AH5017 crashed en route from Burkina Faso to Algeria in a desolate part of northern Mali with 118 people on board, the first images of the plane's wreckage began to emerge on Friday.
Image
© ECPAD / AFPIndeed! It appears that the aircraft has disintegrated!
- The wreckage of flight AH5017 was spotted late on Thursday in Mali by a French military drone. It crashed just after passing the Burkinabe border as it headed north to Algiers and was carrying 118 people, including 54 French citizens. An earlier count of 51 French nationals was revised to include dual citizens.

- The crash left no survivors, said French President François Hollande. He added that one of the black box flight recorders had been recovered and would be analysed.

Dollar

Monsanto to pay $93 million for poisoning small town residents with Agent Orange chemicals

Monsanto
© unknown
Big wins can happen in small places. The West Virginia State Supreme Court finalized a big blow to the biotech giant Monsanto this month, finishing a settlement causing Monsanto to pay $93 million to the tiny town of Nitro, West Virginia for poisoning citizens with Agent Orange chemicals.

The settlement was approved last year, but details were worked out only weeks ago as to how the funds were to be spent.

The settlement will require Monsanto to do the following:
  • $9 million will be spent to clean dioxin contaminated dust from 4500 homes.
  • $21 million will be spent to test to see if people have been poisoned with dioxin.
  • Citizens will be monitored for such poisoning for 30 years, not just a few months.
  • An additional $63 million is to be allotted if additional tests for dioxin contamination testing is necessary.
  • Anyone who lived in the Nitro area between Jan. 1, 1948, and Sept. 3, 2010 will be tested for dioxin. Although they must show proof they lived in the area, they will be eligible for testing even if they no longer live in Nitro.
  • Former or present employees of Monsanto are not eligible for any of these benefits.
  • An office will be set up to organize testing for Nitro citizens. The registration of participants is to be overlooked by Charleston attorney Thomas Flaherty, who was appointed by the court.
  • Residents have a right to file individual suits against Monsanto if medical tests show they suffered physical harm due to dioxin exposure.

Arrow Down

Police turn blind eye to Swedish 'slave trade'

Slave Trade
© TT

Police in Gothenburg have confirmed that sex trafficking in the city has developed into a full-blown slave trade - but that they lack the resources to do anything about it.

Gothenburg police busted a large Romanian pimping network in 2011, but it wasn't long before new brothel-keepers from various countries took over.

Now the problem is back with a vengeance, with police admitting they lack the resources to address it - and are thus forced to ignore the reports.

"We haven't worked with the issue at all for a year now," Stefan Adamsson, police officer in the Gothenburg trafficking unit, told The Local. "We would need to be three times as many police to be able to do anything about it."

Newspaper Expressen reported earlier this week that human traffickers had gone from "just" selling sex to selling women as lifelong slaves.

The newspaper's sources said the cost for a slave - "for life" - is €2,000 ($2680). For 700 kronor ($100) one can rent a couple of girls for a day, for cooking, cleaning, or anything else. "Do what you like with them," one seller reportedly said.

"It has really always been a form of slave trade," Adamsson told The Local. "It's just a different name. Some are sold to work and some are sold for work, but they are just different forms of human trafficking."

Human trafficking is an acknowledged problem in large Swedish cities, with well-established red-light districts in Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. However, there are no clear statistics on how widespread the black-market business actually is as much of the trade is conducted online.

Stock Down

Sanctions against Russia smack German economy

The United States and Europe last week announced the imposition of stronger sanctions against Russia in response to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. German industry may be among the losers.

Image
© REUTERSCompanies like oil producer Rosneft -- here, a Rosneft drill site in eastern Siberia -- have been slapped with US sanctions. That has created problems for German companies.
It wasn't that long ago that Kremlin officials could hardly avoid laughing when asked about the economic sanctions imposed on Russia by the West. As long as every NATO member state jealously sought to protect its own business interests, things "weren't all that bad," they gloated.

But since last week, their moods have darkened. For months, the European Union in particular had been reluctant to enact effective penalties against Moscow. Last Wednesday, though, the 28 EU heads of state and government cleared a psychological hurdle: For the first time, they opted go beyond sanctions targeting individual political leaders in Moscow, adding prohibitions against doing business with specific Russian companies that contribute to the destabilization of the situation in Ukraine. A concrete list is to be presented by the end of the month. European development banks have also been banned from providing loans to Russian companies.

The US, for its part, penalized a dozen leading Russian conglomerates, including oil giant Rosneft, natural gas producer Novatek, Gazprombank and the weapons manufacturer Kalashnikov. From now on, they are forbidden from borrowing money from American monetary institutions and from issuing medium- and long-term debt to investors with ties to the US.

Cut

'Google must not be left to censor history' - Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales

google
© Reuters / Baz Ratner
The power to "censor history" should not be left in Google's hands, Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales warned, after the search engine giant revealed it had approved over 90,000 so-called 'right to be forgotten' requests.

Wales said a European Court ruling allowing people to have links scrubbed from the search engine's index was "open-ended." He further slammed the law for being unclear.

"The law as it stands right now is quite confusing. We have this one ruling of the ECJ (European Court of Justice) which is very open-ended and very hard to interpret," he told BBC Radio 4's Today program.

People

Paris bans pro-Palestinian protest after recent violence

Gaza my love
© AFP Photo/Kenzo TribouillardA protester wearing a Guy Fawkes mask hold a sign reading "Gaza my love" as others carry Palestinian flags during a demonstration in Paris to denounce Israel's military campaign in Gaza on July 23, 2014
French police have banned a protest against Israel's Gaza offensive that was due to take place in Paris on Saturday, following several similar rallies that turned violent.

The ban, announced by police on Friday, comes in the wake of clashes earlier this month at pro-Palestinian demonstrations, in which some protesters shouted anti-Semitic slogans and fought with police.


Comment: Protesting against the Israeli war crimes is not anti-semitic. Paris decided to place a ban on protests instead of investigating the cause of clashes. Sad state of affairs.


Two of those rallies had been banned but went ahead anyway.

Following Friday's announcement, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve appealed on organisers to cancel the rally.

V

Jordanian TV host burns Israeli flag live on air

 Zoher Al-Azzeh
© Nick Hallett
A TV host in Jordan burned a paper Israeli flag live on air during a discussion on the ongoing Gaza campaign.

In a clip posted to YouTube by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Zoher Al-Azzeh burned the flag on Jordan's 7 Stars TV while also calling for the US embassy in Jordan to be shut down, accusing America of using it as a "centre for spying".

Describing the Israelis as "occupiers", Al-Azzeh apologised to viewers for earlier having shown them graphic images of injured Palestinians, and then said: "For the sake of Palestine and its children, allow me to burn this filthy flag of the Zionist entity for the whole world to see", before holding what appears to be an A4 paper print-off of the Israeli flag and setting light to it with a cigarette lighter.

Document

The Lancet - An open letter for the people in Gaza from the world's leading general medical journal

Image
We are doctors and scientists, who spend our lives developing means to care and protect health and lives. We are also informed people; we teach the ethics of our professions, together with the knowledge and practice of it. We all have worked in and known the situation of Gaza for years.

On the basis of our ethics and practice, we are denouncing what we witness in the aggression of Gaza by Israel.

We ask our colleagues, old and young professionals, to denounce this Israeli aggression. We challenge the perversity of a propaganda that justifies the creation of an emergency to masquerade a massacre, a so-called "defensive aggression". In reality it is a ruthless assault of unlimited duration, extent, and intensity. We wish to report the facts as we see them and their implications on the lives of the people.

We are appalled by the military onslaught on civilians in Gaza under the guise of punishing terrorists. This is the third large scale military assault on Gaza since 2008. Each time the death toll is borne mainly by innocent people in Gaza, especially women and children under the unacceptable pretext of Israel eradicating political parties and resistance to the occupation and siege they impose.

This action also terrifies those who are not directly hit, and wounds the soul, mind, and resilience of the young generation. Our condemnation and disgust are further compounded by the denial and prohibition for Gaza to receive external help and supplies to alleviate the dire circumstances.

Vader

US paratroopers stationed in Italy arrested for beating, raping pregnant Romanian

us base caserma del din
© flickr.comThe U.S. base Caserma Del Din in Vecenza, Italy.
Two American paratroopers stationed at a US military base in Italy have been arrested for allegedly beating, raping and robbing a pregnant Romanian prostitute in her six month, whose sex services they originally offered to pay for.

The suspected rape happened in the city of Vecenza in north eastern part of Italy on Monday night last week, Italian media reported.

The suspects are believed to have agreed to pay for the sexual favors of a 24-year-old Romanian girl. But after the three reached a secluded area, they allegedly decided to get what they wanted for free.

The two soldiers reportedly beat up and raped the prostitute, who is in her sixth month of pregnancy, and this went on for a period of three hours. Then they allegedly left their victim in the remote field, and made off with her purse.

The victim's lawyer Alessandra Bocchi told journalists that her back is badly scratched and her face and entire body, including her belly, are bruised from the beating.

The life of the baby is not in danger.

Comment: The military is rife with sexual abuse and does little more than attempt to cover up scandals. The US military does not even protect its own soldiers, which is why many areas hosting US bases are reporting violence of this nature.

The U.S. Military's Rape Culture
Rape rampant in US military
Panetta: Could be 19,000 Military Sex Assaults Each Year
Military justice 'broken', say sexual assault survivors at Senate hearing
Already affecting 71% of U.S. female military personnel by 2004, reported sexual assaults jumped 50% higher in 2013 alone


Evil Rays

Wild monkeys living in Fukushima region have blood abnormalities linked to radiation

fukushima monkeys
© Reuters / Issei Kato

Monkeys living in the wild in the Fukushima region have tested positive for blood abnormalities linked to radioactive fallout from the 2011 nuclear power plant disaster, according to a new report.

The wild monkeys, Japanese macaques popularly known around the world for their habit of bathing in the country's hot springs, have demonstrated blood abnormalities that could leave them vulnerable to infectious diseases, reported the Guardian.

Specifically, the monkeys in the region which was impacted by fallout from the stricken Fukushima Daichii nuclear facility, were found to exhibit low white and red blood cell counts, along with low hemoglobin levels. The study examined a 61 monkey community living 44 miles from the disaster site to 31 monkeys almost 250 miles away, in the Shimokita Peninsula. The former community tested positive for radioactive caesium, linked to caesium in the soil of their habitat.

The macaques feed on tree buds and bark where caesium can accumulate in high concentrations during winter, according to professor Shin-ichi Hayama of the Nippon Veterinary and Life Science University in Tokyo, who spoke to The Guardian.

Comment: As usual a bevy of corrupt authoritarian scientists have arisen to counter the truth of the devastation caused by the Fukushima disaster. This disaster is ongoing as well as the cover-up.

Fukushima radiation killing children, government hiding the truth
Tokyo mother reports Japan's "total media blackout" of people developing symptoms, sickness and death related to Fukushima disaster
Radiation level in tuna off Oregon coast triples after Fukushima
Fukushima radiation more than 10 times the normal level is detected on California beaches