Society's ChildS


Family

Recession Trend: 51 Million Americans Live With Extended Family

Return Back Trend
© Lawrence Atienza, ShutterstockMoving back in with mom and dad has become a growing trend in the wake of the recession, according to an October 2011 Pew Research Center Report.
Tales of foreclosed families and unemployed college students moving back in with mom and dad aren't just anecdotal: A new report finds that more than 51 million Americans now live under one roof with multiple generations of family

That number, up from 46.5 million in 2007, represents the largest increase in multigenerational households in modern U.S. history. Unemployment is the biggest driver of the trend, according to a new Pew Research Center report.

About 6.9 million of America's multigenerational homes consist of two adult generations, such as an adult child returning home to his or her parents. Another 4.2 million households contain three generations or more, while about 857,000 consist of grandparents caring for a grandchild.

Vader

Police State Justice Under Obama

Obama, police state
Lawlessness, injustice, and contempt for democratic values define his administration. He delivered change all right - for the worst, and nothing ahead looks promising.

Obama-style "rules of engagement" include bullets, bombs, slit throats, knives in the back, or drone attacks justice.

Targeted victims are declared guilty by accusation. Due process and judicial fairness are discarded artifacts. US citizens are as vulnerable as global enemies.

No one is safe anywhere in a world ruled by rogue leaders, taking the law into their own hands with impunity.

As a result, freedom and security were jettisoned to memory hole oblivion. Let's count the ways.

Muslims are targeted for their faith, ethnicity, and at times prominence and charity.

Torture remains official US policy.

America's domestic and overseas gulags match the worst anywhere. Out of sight and mind, inmates are dehumanized and brutalized.

America's business is war and grand theft globally. Countries are raped and pillaged on the pretext of humanitarian intervention.

Everyone except corporate favorites and complicit elites suffer.

Ten Muslim Southern California students were convicted for exercising their First Amendment rights. Others are hunted down and prosecuted ruthlessly for political advantage.

Thousands of political prisoners suffer unjustly, including undocumented Latinos here because destructive trade pacts destroyed their livelihoods.

State-sponsored murder is official policy. Innocent victims include Troy Anthony Davis. Others wait their turn on death row. Federal, state and local authorities call it justice. Human rights activists call it crimes against humanity.

Wolf

US: Washington Former Police Officer Accused in 1957 killing of Illinois Girl Now Charged with Raping Another Girl

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© The Associated PressThis undated photo provided by the Sycamore, Ill., Police Department shows Jack Daniel McCullough of Washington state. McCullough, a former police officer accused in the 1957 kidnapping and killing of a 7-year-old Illinois girl, was charged in a separate case with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl from the same small town. Illinois State Police announced the grand jury indictment on Friday, Sept. 30, 2011, but didn’t say when the sexual assault happened.
A 71-year-old Washington man accused in the 1957 kidnapping and killing of a 7-year-old Illinois girl has been charged in a separate case with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl from the same small town.

Illinois State Police announced the grand jury indictment of Jack McCullough on Friday but didn't say when the sexual assault happened. He was indicted this summer on felony murder, kidnapping and abduction charges in the death of Maria Ridulph of Sycamore.

McCullough was arrested in Seattle in July in one of the oldest cold-case murders in the nation to be reopened. He has been held on $3 million bail in a jail about 65 miles west of Chicago.

The 14-year-old girl told investigators McCullough raped her when she was 14 in Sycamore, prosecutors and state police said. He's now also charged with one count of child sexual assault and four counts of indecent liberties with a child.

"Sadly, we have another victim, and for the families of all victims, the pain never goes away," Illinois State Police director Hiram Grau said in a news release.

Heart - Black

Amanda Knox appeal verdict: 'I didn't commit Meredith Kercher's murder'

A tearful and emotional Amanda Knox told an Italian court that she had nothing to do with the murder of Meredith Kercher as a jury went out to decide whether to acquit her or uphold her 26-year prison sentence.
Amanda Knox
© EPAAn emotional Amanda Knox denied being behind Meredith Kercher's murder, saying 'I am innocent'

Her voice trembling and struggling to maintain her composure, Knox stood up in the frescoed, medieval courtroom in Perugia and declared: "I did not kill, I did not rape, I did not steal. I was not there."


Heart - Black

Bahrain doctors tried for treating protesters


The U.N. condemned Bahrain's brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters Friday. Human rights groups say that since March, 34 people have been killed and more than 1,400 arrested. And now, Bahrain has put doctors on trial -- just for treating injured protesters. CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips spoke with one doctor who faces a long prison term.

The wave of the Arab Spring peoples' revolutions that had rolled across Tunisia and Egypt, crashed when it hit the tiny Gulf kingdom of Bahrain.

The government quashed the demonstrators. And the people who had failed in their challenge to the authorities are still paying the price.

Dr. Nadu Dhaif was one of many health workers who treated the injured in makeshift clinics and supported their cause. Now, as she explained in a Skype interview, a Bahraini court has handed down its judgment.

"I was sentenced for 15 years in prison," she said. "It was a complete total shock."

Binoculars

Activists throughout Canada set to show solidarity with Wall Street protesters

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© Unknown
New York, New York: The protesters who have been camping out in Manhattan's Financial District for more than two weeks eat donated food and keep their laptops running with a portable gas-powered generator. They have a newspaper - the Occupied Wall Street Journal - and a makeshift hospital.

They lack a clear objective, though they speak against corporate greed, social inequality, global climate change and other concerns. But they're growing in numbers, getting more organized and showing no sign of quitting.

Cult

English expat 'rips his own eyes out' during church service in Italy - says 'voice' told him to do it

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© Giovanni V, flickrChurch in Viareggio
An English expatriate in Viareggio (northern Italy) has been admitted to a psychiatric hospital after ripping out his own eyes with his naked hands during a church service.

The 46-year-old, a long-term resident in the Tuscan municipality, began screaming and banging his head against the floor during mass, explains his elderly mother, who was with him at the time.

He claimed he heard voices telling him to tear his eyes out.

The man was rushed to nearby Versilia hospital for an emergency operation, but surgeons were unable to save his sight, meaning he will now be blind for life.

Doctor Gino Barbacci, who treated him, said the man did not complain or show any signal of physical pain, and answered correctly when asked his name.

People

Canadian Version of Wall Street Occupation Planned

brooklyn bridge arrests
© Jessica RindalDI/ReutersPolice officers reach into a crowd of protesters to make an arrest on the Brooklyn Bridge during an Occupy Wall Street march in New York October 1, 2011.

Organizers in Toronto and several other Canadian cities say they plan to follow the example of anti-Wall Street activists in the United States by taking to the streets later this month to protest the global financial system.

The New York activists say they are protesting to bring attention to corporate greed and government-backed bailouts of American banks. Similar demonstrations have already spread to Albuquerque, N.M., Boston and Los Angeles.

In Toronto, activists say they plan to converge in the city's financial district on Saturday Oct. 15. A tentative schedule on a website called Occupy Toronto says the occupation will begin at 10 a.m. ET that day. The group plans to use the weekend to organize itself and says it will wait to march on the streets until the Toronto Stock Exchange opens on Monday.

Canadian protests are also planned for Calgary, Vancouver, Victoria, Ottawa, Montreal, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, according to a website called Occupy Together.

Butterfly

US: High school football cheerleader collapses, dies

Angela Gettis
© KABC televisionAngela Gettis, 16-year-old high school cheerleader, collapsed near the sidelines during a football game and died later at a hospital. Her family said she had no known heath problems.


Los Angeles, California - A high school cheerleader died early Saturday, hours after collapsing on the sideline during a football game between rival Los Angeles schools.

The student was briefly revived after passing out Friday night on the sideline at Fremont High School, according to Los Angeles Unified School District spokesman Tom Waldman. She was rushed to a hospital where she died about three hours later.

The girl, a student at Washington Prep High School, apparently suffered sudden cardiac arrest, Waldman said.

Wolf

US: TSA Pats Down Breast Cancer Survivor Even After Getting Scanned

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Lori Dorn, the wife of Laughing Squid's Scott Beale, recently submitted to a backscatter scan at JFK airport. The TSA pulled her aside for a breast patdown, even though she stated she had breast implants in place after her bilateral mastectomy. Of course, that didn't stop them.

They didn't even let her take out the Device Identification Card that would could have explained where the implants came from and their medical purpose. No. Instead they humiliated her in public:
Instead, she called over a female supervisor who told me the exam had to take place. I was again told that I could not retrieve the card and needed to submit to a physical exam in order to be cleared. She then said, "And if we don't clear you, you don't fly" loud enough for other passengers to hear. And they did. And they stared at the bald woman being yelled at by a TSA Supervisor.