Society's ChildS


Car Black

Chicago City's car racket: Seizes and sells cars over tickets, but still sticks drivers with the debt

Elliott Ramos
WBEZ Chicago
Mon, 07 Jan 2019 23:05 UTC
Chicago botello car sold illegally
© Manuel Martinez/WBEZSandra Botello, 42, stands for a portrait on the spot where her car was seized and eventually sold to a private tow company in the city of Chicago on December 20, 2018.
Sandra Botello moved to Chicago five years ago for what she called "the opportunities."

Now 41, she and her children had been evicted from her home in Idaho when her landlord's property was foreclosed.

The move to Chicago indeed delivered opportunities. She earned an associates degree and then enrolled at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and now works as an executive administrative assistant downtown. And, two of her four kids snagged scholarships to private schools.

But her time in Chicago has also been mired with a major hurdle. It started with citations for the city road tax collected through "city stickers." After failing to keep up with ticket payments, the city seized her car and sold it to a private towing company, only to have none of the sale price applied to her debt.

Botello is not alone.
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Attention

NAACP connects earthquake warning signs in Oregon to white supremacy


AP
Sat, 05 Jan 2019 00:00 UTC
NAACP earthquake signs
A new city policy requiring public signs on brick buildings warning they might collapse in an earthquake is part of a long history of white supremacy aimed at forcing black people to move out of neighborhoods, the NAACP of Portland, Oregon, says.

The group on Thursday decried the policy affecting some 1,600 unreinforced masonry buildings that are on average 90 years old, many in areas with a predominantly black population, The Oregonian/OregonLive reports .

The policy "exacerbates a long history of systemic and structural betrayals of trust and policies of displacement, demolition, and dispossession predicated on classism, racism, and white supremacy," the group said.

The NAACP said the policy will make it tougher for owners of brick buildings to get loans and will discourage investment. It says that means buildings will have to be sold, and that developers will demolish and redevelop, increasing the cost to live there and forcing current residents out.
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Eye 1

'The devil spoke to me through app': Uber driver admits to murdering six people in 2016 Michigan shooting spree


New York Post
Mon, 07 Jan 2019 21:45 UTC
uber driver murder
A man charged with killing six strangers between picking up rides for Uber pleaded guilty to murder on Monday in Michigan.

Jason Dalton's surprise move occurred as lawyers and a judge planned to pick a jury in Kalamazoo County court. There was no deal for Dalton: He pleaded guilty to murder and attempted murder, and he faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison with no chance for parole.

"I've wanted to do this for quite a while," Dalton told a judge.
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Bad Guys

Illegal aliens in DACA program surged Hispanic vote, flipping GOP counties blue

John Binder
Breitbart
Thu, 03 Jan 2019 21:27 UTC
vote illegal aliens
© Getty Image
Illegal aliens enrolled and eligible for President Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program helped surge the Hispanic vote in the midterm elections, which resulted in historically GOP counties turning blue for Democrats.

A study by the Latino Policy & Politics Initiative reveals that the country's Washington, D.C.-imposed policy of mass illegal and legal immigration - whereby more than 1.5 million foreign nationals are admitted every year - has aided in not only demographically shifting the American electorate but also turning once-Republican counties across the country over to Democrats.
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Books

Mass US copyright expiry brings thousands of works into public domain

Alison Flood
The Guardian
Wed, 02 Jan 2019 00:00 UTC
Legislation in 1998 extended copyright by 20 years, so this year marks the first time in two decades that the pool of freely available work has been added to public domain.
book vortex
© Mike Dale/AlamyThousands of books entered the public domain on 1 January.
Robert Frost's haunting little poem, Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening, entered the public domain in the US on 1 January alongside thousands of works, by authors from Agatha Christie to Virginia Woolf, in an unprecedented expiration of copyrights. Unprecedented because it has been 21 years since the last major expiration in the US: the passing of the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act added a further 20 years to existing copyrights, meaning that the swathe of 1922 works which passed into the public domain in 1998, after a 75-year copyright term, are only now being followed by works first published in the US in 1923.

"The drought is over," proclaims Duke Law School's Center for the Public Domain, highlighting some of the works which are now available royalty-free, by authors from Edgar Rice Burroughs to Kahlil Gibran, PG Wodehouse to DH Lawrence, Edith Wharton to EE Cummings. It's not only books: copyright in the US is also expiring on a host of films, paintings and music.
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Pistol

Activist offering $50k reward to find murderer in shooting death of 7yo girl in Houston - Update: Race considered not a factor in shooting

Cathy Hernandez
Click 2 Houston
Wed, 02 Jan 2019 21:42 UTC
jazmine barnes
© Twitter/@shaunkingJazmine Barnes
The death of 7-year-old Jazmine Barnes has caught the attention of a community activist in New York City, who has offered a large sum of money to whoever turns in her killer.

Shaun King said he is raising the reward he is offering to $50,000 cash for anyone who turns in the man responsible for the slaying of Barnes.

King shared new photos and videos of Barnes on Twitter along with a post saying the family wanted him to share the images of Barnes and that he was joining in on the search to find her killer.

Comment: The deadly shooting was apparently unprovoked with no motive, so police need all the help they can get to find this murderer.

Update (Jan. 7): Police have announced that the shooting appears to be a tragic case of mistaken identity and that they are looking at two African American suspects. One man has been arrested in connection with the shooting.

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Eye 2

Kevin Spacey pleads not guilty to accusations of groping 18yo boy

Jessica Sager
Fox News
Mon, 07 Jan 2019 20:56 UTC
Kevin Spacey
© EPA
Kevin Spacey appeared in court Monday to answer accusations that he groped an 18-year-old man in a bar on the resort island of Nantucket in 2016.

The two-time Oscar winner pleaded not guilty to a charge of felony indecent assault and battery.

Spacey, sporting a white and purple floral printed shirt and purple tie under a taupe coat, smiled but did not respond to reporters as he entered the court.

Upon entering the courtroom, Spacey sat whispering and occasionally chuckling with his attorney, Alan Jackson.
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Attention

6-year-old Michigan girl rescued after posting photos of dead father, unconscious stepmother online

Natasha Anderson
Fox 8 News
Sat, 05 Jan 2019 06:58 UTC
House
Authorities in southeast Michigan say a 6-year-old girl has been rescued from a home after posting photos on social media of her dead father and unconscious stepmother after being alone for up to 24 hours.

The girl, who lived in Mount Morris Township, just north of Flint, woke up around 8 a.m. Thursday and found her father, 40, and his wife, 36, incapacitated on their mattress, according to WJRT.

The girl reportedly threw water on her parents in an attempt to wake them, but neither regained consciousness.

Police said the girl eventually took photos of them lying on the mattress and used Facebook Messenger to send the photos to her grandparents in Tennessee.
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Footprints

Gov. Bill Haslam grants full clemency to Cyntoia Brown, eligible for release Aug. 7

Adam Tamburin and Anita Wadhwani
Tennessean
Mon, 07 Jan 2019 01:46 UTC
Cyntoia Brown
Gov. Bill Haslam ordered an early release for Cyntoia Brown, a Tennessee woman and alleged sex trafficking victim serving a life sentence in prison for killing a man when she was 16.

Haslam granted Brown a full commutation to parole on Monday. Brown will be eligible for release Aug. 7, 15 years after she fatally shot a man in the back of the head while he was lying in bed beside her. She will stay on parole for 10 years.

"Cyntoia Brown committed, by her own admission, a horrific crime at the age of 16," Haslam said in a statement. "Yet, imposing a life sentence on a juvenile that would require her to serve at least 51 years before even being eligible for parole consideration is too harsh, especially in light of the extraordinary steps Ms. Brown has taken to rebuild her life.

"Transformation should be accompanied by hope. So, I am commuting Ms. Brown's sentence, subject to certain conditions."

Comment: See also: #FreeCyntoiaBrown: The child sex slave jailed for killing her abuser

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Play

China unveils new flying saucer-like Sky Hawk stealth drone

Liu Xuanzun
Global Times
Sun, 06 Jan 2019 17:23 UTC
China Sky Hawk stealth drone
A video featuring China's flying saucer-like stealth drone, the Sky Hawk, was shown for the first time on China Central Television (CCTV) on Saturday, with leading military experts saying the technologies mastered by Chinese developers will allow the drone to fly faster, farther and avoid detection.

Independently developed by China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation, the Sky Hawk conducted a test flight at an undisclosed location in China, the CCTV report said.

The video showed the drone taking off and landing, marking the first time that the aircraft has been publicly seen in flight.

The drone reportedly first flew in February, but no video was available before Saturday's broadcast. It was on display at Airshow China 2018 in Zhuhai, South China's Guangdong Province in November but was never flown there.

The step-by-step revelations mean the drone is being developed and manufactured on schedule, and that China considers the drone feasible, Song Zhongping, a military expert and TV commentator, told the Global Times on Sunday.

Featuring a "flying wing" aerodynamic design similar to the US B-2 stealth bomber, the Sky Hawk is a high-altitude, long-range and high-speed unmanned aerial vehicle capable of conducting reconnaissance and patrol missions in hostile environments, CCTV reported.

Comment: The video has been released by Global Times:



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