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Cardboard Box

Income inequality in U.S. unlikely to improve according to Harvard study

income inequality 2013 usa
The widening gap between America's richest and the middle and working classes is unsustainable and is unlikely to improve a survey released on Monday by the Harvard Business School has found.

The study which is called "an economy doing half its job" said that while large American companies were showing signs of recovery and were maintaining their competitive edge on the world stage, many middle and working class US citizens were struggling, as were small businesses.


Comment: For some perspective on just how difficult the daily struggle is for most Americans, see:
US poverty Levels: 49.7 million are poor, and 80% of the total population is near poverty


The new survey was designed by the Harvard Business School (HBS) and is the latest in a series of surveys on their US Competiveness Project. Every year HBS asks alumni worldwide to share their views about the state and future of the US business environment and US competiveness. In addition to this, the 2013-2014 survey also focused on three key areas: competitiveness, education, workforce skills and transportation infrastructure.

On balance respondents were pessimistic about the trajectory of US competitiveness. 47 percent saw a decline in the next few years, while just 33 percent thought things would improve.But respondents were less negative than in past surveys. For example, in 2011, 71 percent thought US competitiveness would deteriorate.

Jan W Rivkin, co-chair of the project, said the findings of the 2013-14 survey showed that while firms might be looking healthier citizens were likely to be struggling more and more.

Ambulance

UK to join America in sending military, humanitarian personnel to fight Ebola outbreak

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© Reuters / 2TangoHealth workers wearing protective clothing prepare to carry an abandoned dead body presenting with Ebola symptoms at Duwala market in Monrovia August 17, 2014
Britain has announced it will send military and humanitarian experts to Sierra Leone to set up medical treatment centers in areas affected by the Ebola outbreak.

A 62-bed facility will be built and operated by military engineers and medical staff. The medical center will become operational within 8 weeks. The health facility is in addition to the UK's 25 million pound package of support to contain and control the disease. This includes multilateral support as well as direct funding to aid agencies operating on the ground, the official press release by the UK government said on Monday.

Comment: The Ebola outbreak is spiraling out of control. For more information, check out:


Eye 2

Monstrous: Peacekeepers in Somalia rape women who seek aid and medicine

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© Reuters / Siegfried ModolaKenya Defence Forces (KDF) soldiers, who are part of the African Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), march to their armoured vehicles before an area patrol on the outskirts of the controlled area of the old airport in the coastal town of Kismayu in southern Somalia
Peacekeepers in Somalia used humanitarian aid to lure women and teenagers, who come to ask for medicine and food, and to rape them, HRW said on Monday. The victims often conceal it fearing reprisals, while the troops are immune from local prosecution.

The HRW report "'The Power These Men Have Over Us': Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by African Union Forces in Somalia" has documented the sexual exploitation and abuse of Somali women and teenagers in two bases of The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) since 2013.

The soldiers used humanitarian assistance to coerce women into sexual activity. There are also allegations of raping women who came seeking water or medical assistance.

Comment: For an even wider perspective of the traumas Somalia has witnessed in only the past three years, check out:


Handcuffs

Destroying the evidence: Oregon man assaulted and arrested for filming police SWAT raid

Gresham OR man arrested filming police
Screenshot from youtube.com/channel/UC7y5vU66c4xgVnv4umKh0FA
Footage recently posted to YouTube shows an Oregon man being arrested for filming, or "interfering" with, a militarized police raid across the street from his apartment.

The man - whose YouTube account is Skylow Production - said he was sleeping at his Gresham, Oregon apartment at around 4 a.m. local time on Sept. 2 when he heard the sound of broken glass and flash bang grenades.

"I grabbed my iPad and ran outside as fast as I could to see what was going on," he said in the video's description. "There were 5 or more tank/military trucks just cruising through my neighborhood," which is "right across the street from Mt.Hood Community College."

In the video, two law enforcement officers, decked out in military gear, approach the man filming across the street, telling him to go back inside, as he was supposedly "interfering" in the execution of a search warrant.

"You go inside right now....it's a lawful order....go inside right now," one officer said while swinging at the iPad.

A third officer can be heard saying over a loudspeaker, "All neighbors stay inside and away from windows." The two cops addressing the man filming the action then turn around and begin handcuffing the man, as they say "quit resisting us."

Comment: Despite the fact that it is perfectly legal to film the police, it is common for people to be assaulted / arrested for the practice. Fact is, in the US militarized police state, they don't want any evidence of their crimes. And sadly, not much would be done anyway as the police generally get away with almost any form of brutality these days!

A Disturbing Trend: Many Innocent Americans Arrested for Legally Filming On-Duty Public Servants


Blackbox

American passenger's girlfriend says 'Something is being covered up': Investigation to find missing MH370 has been sabotaged

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Loss: Sarah Bajc's (left) boyfriend Philip Wood (right) was one of 239 people on board Malaysia Airlines flight 370, which went missing last March 8
Six months after her boyfriend went missing on Malaysia Airlines flight 370, an American woman is losing faith that the plane will ever be found - believing something in the investigation is being covered up.

Sara Bajc's boyfriend Philip Wood, 50, was one of 239 passengers and crew on the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, which mysteriously disappeared off radar last March 8. Despite a massive search effort, no sign of the plane was ever found.

Now Bajc and other family members of the missing passengers are demanding raw data on the disappearance be released for independent analysis, no longer trusting the Malaysian investigation.

'I think that if the existing investigation team is left in charge ... we may not ever find the plane. Because I believe there are active steps being taken to interfere with finding the plane,' Bajc told NBC News.

Bajc says she isn't sure how much is being covered up, but knows something is being concealed.

'Failure to release information - whether its obfuscation, you know, actually covering something up - or dishonesty... creating false evidence or just hiding something, right? We don't know why or what is being covered up, but something is being covered up,' she added.

Attention

Ebola cases may be underreported by as much 'double or triple'

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© Cellou Binani/AFP/Getty Images
Despite knowing that he had symptoms of the Ebola virus, a Nigerian diplomat boards a plane in Liberia and flies from that small country to his nation's capital city of Lagos, a city with 21 million people. The man was fleeing a quarantine meant to contain the Ebola virus. Instead, his body - now a host for the disease - was transporting the highly contagious and deadly, single-strand virus to Nigeria's largest city.

It sounds like a plot from a medical sci-fi thriller, but it is not fiction.

This is quite real.

The diplomat was treated by a doctor and appears to have survived. However, the doctor was not so fortunate. He died less than three weeks after the encounter.

The Nigerian doctor who visited the diplomat in his hotel room and became infected with Ebola also saw hundreds of patients - operating on at least two of them before he ultimately passed away from the disease.

Nigeria's government acted quickly to try to stop the outbreak from engulfing the region. However, with hundreds of people who had close contact with the now-deceased doctor and several others who were infected, it may be a losing battle.

Syringe

Losing control? Barack Obama says U.S. military to join fight against virus in West Africa

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© APBarack Obama said the poor infrastructure of public health services in the Ebola-stricken region was responsible for the severity of the outbreak
The US military will join the fight against fast-spreading Ebola in Africa, president Barack Obama said, warning it will be months before the epidemic slows. Mr Obama said that in its current form, he did not believe Ebola would reach the United States, but warned the virus could mutate and become a much greater threat to those outside Africa.

He said the deadly toll of the disease was being exacerbated because of the rudimentary public health infrastructure in Africa.

"We're going to have to get US military assets just to set up, for example, isolation units and equipment there, to provide security for public health workers surging from around the world," Mr Obama told NBC's Meet the Press. "If we do that, then it's still going to be months before this problem is controllable in Africa."

But he added: "If we don't make that effort now, and this spreads not just through Africa but other parts of the world, there's the prospect then that the virus mutates. "It becomes more easily transmittable. And then it could be a serious danger to the United States," he said.

The death toll from the Ebola epidemic, which is spreading across West Africa, with Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone the worst hit, has topped 2,000, with nearly 4,000 people infected, according to the World Health Organisation

Comment: It's certainly looking like Ebola is is going out of control and medical authorities are not going to be able to handle its wrath:


Clipboard

Amnesty International claims both Kiev and Novorossiya committed war crimes

ukraine
© AFP Photo / Dimitar Dilkoff
Amnesty International has in its most recent report said both the Kiev troops and the anti-government forces could be responsible for war crimes in their "disregard for civilian lives."

"All sides in this conflict have shown disregard for civilian lives and are blatantly violating their international obligations," said Salil Shetty, Amnesty International's Secretary General.


Comment: Kiev has undoubtedly committed war crimes. Chances are the rebels have, too, based on some reports. But this statement on its own sheds no light on what's really going on, where one side (Kiev) is clearly the aggressor.


The conclusion was drawn on the basis of multiple interviews conducted on the ground in eastern Ukraine by Amnesty International researchers. They spoke to both people fleeing the conflict zones and to refugees, who have already found shelter in Russia's Rostov region.

"Civilians from these areas told Amnesty International that the Ukrainian government forces subjected their neighborhoods to heavy shelling. Their testimonies suggest that the attacks were indiscriminate and may amount to war crimes," the watchdog's statement reads.

Those interviewed also accused both the anti-government fighters and militants in the volunteer battalions, fighting alongside the government troops of abductions and tortures.

Comment: Amnesty International, despite the good work it has done, is hardly an unbiased, impartial body. See: Amnesty International: Imperialist Tool


Black Magic

Psychopathic projection: Kiev's Orthodox Church leader says Putin under Satan's influence

Patriarch Filaret
Patriarch Filaret
President Vladimir Putin has fallen under the spell of Satan and faces eternal damnation unless he repents, a top Ukrainian clergyman said on Saturday in an unusually blunt statement that squarely blamed the Russian leader for the war in Ukraine.

Patriarch Filaret heads the Kiev Patriarchate, a branch of the Orthodox Church that broke away from Moscow in 1992 after the fall of the Soviet Union and the declaration of an independent Ukraine.

His church, a rival of the Moscow Patriarchate which is closely linked to Putin, strongly supports Ukrainian nationhood and the Kiev government's struggle to defeat pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

"With great regret I must now say publicly that among the rulers of this world ... there has appeared a new Cain, not by his name but by his deeds," Patriarch Filaret said, invoking the Biblical character who killed his brother Abel.


Comment: Paramoralisms abound! Last time we checked, it was Kiev who invaded east Ukraine and started killing their brothers and sisters there.


"Like the first fratricide of history Cain, these deeds show that the afore-mentioned ruler has fallen under the action of Satan," he said in the statement, published on the patriarchate's website in Ukrainian, Russian and English.

Airplane

10 people killed after a small commercial plane crashes in Colombian jungle

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© UnknownThis file photo shows a twin-engine Piper PA-31 Navajo in flight.
Colombian officials say a plane crashed in the country's southwestern jungle, killing 10 people on board.

The director of operations for Colombia's civil aeronautics agency said Sunday that the bodies have been recovered from the flight, which was going from Araracuara to Florencia in the country's southwest.

Col. Juan Carlos Rocha said the plane was reported missing at about 3 p.m. (2000 GMT) Saturday. Officials are trying to determine why it crashed in the Puerto Santander region as well as the identities of the dead.