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Wouldn't this be a great idea if the project is extended to convert recycled shipping containers into homes for the poor and needy at the most reasonable rates possible?
Jeff Karoub of AP via TMXmoney:
Shipping container home seen as seed for renewal, not cure for all of Detroit's housing ills.
An unusual home taking shape inside General Motors' sprawling Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant is intended to be part of a movement to rebuild the city's economy and deteriorating, disappearing housing stock.
Skilled-trades workers, taking breaks from their tasks at the factory that produces the electric Chevrolet Volt and other vehicles, dart in and out to do door, window and wall installation and framing, as well as electrical and plumbing work. Meanwhile, a non-profit urban farming group is preparing property a few miles away that will welcome the project, what's believed to be the city's first occupied shipping container homestead.
Come spring, the house-in-progress will be delivered to Detroit's North End neighbourhood and secured on a foundation where a blighted home once stood. After finishing touches and final inspections, the 40-foot-long former container will feature 320 square feet of living space with two bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen, and will serve as home base for a university-student caretakers of a neighbourhood farm and agricultural research activities.
One shipping container home won't turn around Detroit's housing woes. The city emerging from bankruptcy has roughly 40,000 vacant homes waiting to be demolished. But it's a start and, organizers hope, a model to lure and keep residents as Detroit removes blight and recovers from bankruptcy.
Shipping containers converted into living or working spaces are common in some other cities. For instance, in Salt Lake City's rundown warehouse district, a non-profit group last year converted them into "micro-retail" spaces. A Seattle-based company designs and builds houses out of reclaimed containers.
Containers have been modified for both basic and luxury living elsewhere. But Tyson Gersh of the Michigan Urban Farming Initiative is unaware of another project involving a major manufacturer and non-profit designed to serve many socio-economic needs through what he calls "social innovation."
Organizers hope the container project can lure millennials .....
From the pic of the guy, you would think he looks more like a 40 yr old than a teen. When the story first appeared a few days ago in the financial segment of our online news world, I had read only the headline and not bothered to read the story itself and had wondered how he could have made that much money .... but then knowing how our stock markets are manipulated I thought that the teenager's account must be handled by a parent with insider trading info who was using the kid's identity to escape detection of their crime and now that the cat's out of the bag, the family would be in deep doodoo.
Well, well, well .... it turns out that a dumb reporter was taqiyyah-ed to by the teen and the dumb reporter's report was picked up by other equally dumb reporters and news outlets around the world and the story started making the rounds everywhere until someone put their noodle to better use than believing everything one reads and decided to investigate.
From YahooFinance:
Mo Islam, the 17-year-old "whiz kid" investor who suggested he'd made $72 million trading stocks on his high school lunch breaks, admits now he made much less than that.
As in, zero.
After a long day in the media spotlight, Islam admitted to the New York Observer late Monday night that the whole thing had been a fabrication and that he had not made anything at all trading stocks.
"The people I'm most sorry for is my parents. I did something where I can no longer gain their trust," he told the magazine in a question-and-answer session at the office of a public relations firm.
The controversy started with a New York magazine article that suggested Islam was fabulously wealthy for a boy his age, the result of astute stock picking at school.
But skeptics pounced on the story almost immediately, and in a CNBC interview at midday Monday, Islam said the New York article was not accurate. He intimated that his trades had netted a few million dollars but dodged repeated questions.
(Late Tuesday morning, New York posted an apology to readers in which it said it had been duped.)
O man! This made my day!
From Inquisitr:
A Swiss butcher is in hot water after he reportedly deceived Muslim customers for more than three years. According to Mad World News, the butcher is accused of false advertisement for telling customers the meat he sold was calf meat when it was actually pork. The purchase and consummation of pork is against Muslim religion so, of course, many customers were appalled and outraged to learn of the butcher’s deceit.
The scandal was discovered during a routine control of food security when an inspector reportedly questioned the label for the meat. The product displayed for purchase didn’t look like calf meat as the tag stated, reports Morocco World News. The falsely advertised meat led to further investigation, which revealed a number of shocking details. Over the past three years, he’s reportedly sold an estimated 3.1 tons of pork to Muslim customers alone.
The prosecutor released a brief statement in reference to the case. He simply stated that the customers would not have purchased the meat had they known what type it was.
“If customers had known it was pork, they would not have bought it because Islam forbids the consumption of this type of meat.”
However, that’s not all. The butcher’s deception is actually considered “double-fold.” Not only did he lie to customers, he’s reportedly made a staggering amount in sales for the falsely advertised meat. Since pork costs much less than calf meat, the butcher was able to raise the price of the meat in order to make sizable profit.
The butcher’s scandal has even sparked controversy on social media platforms. Although some expressed disdain for the butcher’s deceit, several readers argued customers should know how to identify different types of meat. Others argued in support of the Muslim customers, citing that the meat was sold in a Halal store so most customers automatically assumed they were purchasing authentic calf meat.....
North America has gone stark raving mad. No hope for any of us when we have lunatics ruling over us .... we are all going down!
From Yahoo ... Zachary Fagenson writing at Reuters
For decades, 90-year-old Arnold Abbott has hauled pans filled with roast chicken and cheese-covered potatoes onto a south Florida beach park to feed hundreds of homeless people.
For his good deeds, Abbott finds himself facing up to two months in jail and hundreds of dollars in fines after new laws that restrict public feeding of the homeless went into effect in Fort Lauderdale earlier this year.
“I’ve been fighting for the underdog all my life, so this is nothing new,” Abbott said.
He was first cited last Sunday, along with two clergymen and a volunteer from his nonprofit, Love Thy Neighbor.
On Wednesday, several police cars waited for Abbott at a downtown Fort Lauderdale park, and officers pulled aside the frail man, clad in a white chef’s coat, soon after the first plates were ready to be served.
“The ordinance does not prohibit feeding the homeless; it regulates the activity in order to ensure it is carried out in an appropriate, organized, clean and healthy manner,” Fort Lauderdale Mayor John P. Seiler said in a statement.
Abbott moved to Florida from Massachusetts in 1970 and was a civil rights activist and wholesale jewelry salesman. He and his wife first began feeding the homeless on their own in 1979. He started the foundation and feeding full time in 1991 after his wife died, in a tribute to her memory.
The dispute highlights a debate between two schools of homeless rights activists: Those who argue that banning public feeding criminalizes the homeless, and others who say feeding and panhandling helps keep them on the street.....
It is exactly these kind of males which make me feel guilty when I lump all Muslim men as violent and not suited to live with the rest of the human family. I guess at least 2% of Muslim males are lovable and kind like this guy .... I hope.
From ITV:
Man feeds scores of abandoned cats in war-torn Syria
An ambulance driver has taken it upon himself to feed scores of cats abandoned by their owners in a war-torn part of Syria.....
...Alaa spends around £2.50 on meat each day to feed a small army of hungry strays - an act of kindness he has kept up for the past two months......
No, this is not about Mitt Romney. This is about a Japanese nut in our increasingly insane world.
From AP via CTV:
Interpol said Friday it has launched a multinational investigation into what Thailand has dubbed the "Baby Factory" case: a 24-year-old Japanese businessman who has 16 surrogate babies and an alleged desire to father hundreds more.
Police raided a Bangkok condominium earlier this month and found nine babies and nine nannies living in a few unfurnished rooms filled with baby bottles, bouncy chairs, play pens and diapers. They have since identified Mitsutoki Shigeta as the father of those babies -- and seven others.
"What I can tell you so far is that I've never seen a case like this," said Thailand's Interpol director, police Maj. Gen. Apichart Suribunya. "We are trying to understand what kind of person makes this many babies."
Apichart said that regional Interpol offices in Japan, Cambodia, Hong Kong and India have been asked to probe Shigeta's background, beginning last week. Police say he appears to have registered businesses or apartments in those countries and has frequently travelled there.
"We are looking into two motives. One is human trafficking and the other is exploitation of children," said Thai police Lt. Gen. Kokiat Wongvorachart, Thailand's lead investigator in the case. He said Shigeta made 41 trips to Thailand since 2010. On many occasions he travelled to nearby Cambodia, where he brought four of his babies.
Shigeta has not been charged with any crime. He is trying to get his children back -- the 12 in Thailand are being cared for by social services -- and he has proven through DNA samples sent from Japan that he is their biological father. He quickly left Thailand after the Aug. 5 raid on the condominium and has said through a lawyer that he simply wanted a large family and has the means to support it.
Kokiat said Shigeta hired 11 Thai surrogate mothers to carry his children, including four sets of twins. Police have not determined the biological mothers, Kokiat said.
The founder of a multinational fertility clinic that provided Shigeta with two surrogate mothers said she warned Interpol about him even before the first baby was born in June 2013.
"As soon as they got pregnant he requested more. He said he wanted 10 to 15 babies a year, and that he wanted to continue the baby-making process until he's dead," said Mariam Kukunashvili, founder of the New Life clinic, which is based in Thailand and six other countries. He also inquired about equipment to freeze his sperm to have sufficient supply when he's older, she said in a telephone interview from Mexico........
Had no idea Belugas can be this cute.
are not just events to do with minors seeking refugee status, they are also to do with drug trafficking and human trafficking. And, worst of all, potential terrorists also coming through ... I used to keep track of this long, long, ago. Not any more....if our North American governments don't give a damn, why should we?
Paolo Mastrolilli writing at LaStampa:
At U.S.-Mexico Border,Children’s Lives On The Line.
Juan Castro is trying to keep it together as he tells me this story, but the tears well up in his eyes. “There was this 11-year-old girl from Guatemala who had been raped. I had to ask her how, where, by whom, why and every single detail that could help build her case to stay in America,” he recalled. “As I brought up all the terrible memories with my questions, I looked into her eyes in search of any ounce of hope or a sign that her life hadn’t been broken.”
Juan is the director of legal services for Catholic Charities, San Antonio’s Caritas. His job is to visit the detention centers that house the minors who come to America alone, and help look for a way to keep them in the country.
Since the beginning of this year, 52,000 children have arrived, with a total of 90,000 forecast by December — and more than 120,000 expected for next year. Many of them arrive sick, with at least two confirmed cases of swine flu, scabies, lice, and some are now even saying AIDS. This is a humanitarian emergency which has now prompted President Barack Obama to ask for nearly $4 billion from Congress to try and contain it.
“They come for two reasons,” says Antonio Fernandez, head of Catholic Charities. “The first is that they are escaping violence in their countries, and the second is that they think the U.S. immigration laws have changed and they will be allowed to stay. It’s a wrong perception, because Obama signed the DACA amnesty bill, which prohibits the expulsion of those who have resided in the States since they were young children — not those who come today.”
And Castro notes the major change in the recent wave of arrivals is how few are Mexico natives, because the U.S. has an agreement with the Mexican government to quickly expel those illegals. Instead, these immigrants are coming from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Peru. Their families entrust them to the so-called coyotes — the traffickers — paying around $8,000 for their trips, usually knowing that they have relatives already living in the U.S. The coyotes get half of the money straight away, and the second half when they get to their destination.
“For these poor families, $8,000 is a fortune — years and years of hard work,” Castro notes. “If they can’t afford this amount, the children are obliged to pay their way in one of two ways: sex or drug trafficking.”
And Castro adds a grim statistic: “We know that the same number of boys and girls leave, but 75% of boys arrive, and 25% of girls.”
Along the road
What skews these figures? “Many don’t make it and they die. For the girls, however, they can end up in the hands of traffickers who get offered up to $20,000 for them — a lot more than the $4,000 that the child’s family has given them before they set out. Unfortunately these girls then get sold to the highest bidder and end up in prostitution.” .........
........At La Joya police station, Detective David Ortiz confirms that the situation is beyond control. He says it is the narco gangs, like Los Zetas, who are calling the shots. “Often the coyotes leave the children on one side of the river to let the Border Patrol agents be distracted and not notice the drugs being smuggled somewhere else. One evening I saw a suspicious-looking van so I began to follow it. Two other cars quickly arrived and sandwiched me in, trying to force my car off the road. They were trying to make me stop them for a ticket so I would let the van drive off. I ignored them though, and ended up finding 80 kilograms of marijuana in the van.”
But the postscript to the story is that Ortiz couldn’t prosecute the suspects. ...........
Height of stupidity! They should be more shamed of going on rampages and burning buses than the terrible defeat they suffered.
From Emirates247:
Several buses were set on fire and an electronics store was looted in Sao Paulo late Tuesday following Brazil's crushing World Cup defeat to Germany, police said.
Police did not give a figure but Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper said on its website that some 20 buses were torched in a garage where unused vehicles were stored........
........"Neymar must be vomiting at home watching this disaster. The horror," said Marina Genova, 54, watching at a popular bar district in Sao Paulo, referring to Brazil's injured star.
Amid the deluge of goals, a downpour only added to the already gloomy mood of thousands of fans in Brazil's canary-yellow jersey at the official "Fan Fest" on Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana beach.
Brazilians were already concerned about the team's chances after Neymar broke a vertebra in the quarter-final victory over Colombia.
But they never thought it would be this bad.........
These eating places would rather that good food is thrown out in the dump but not given to the homeless and the hungry.
Our brave new world!
From CBS:
A gesture of kindness cost a 73-year-old veteran his job at a Venice Cracker Barrel, reports WWSB-TV.
Joe Koblenzer has been working for three years as greeter for the restaurant. “It’s a fun job; a job really suited to me,” he told the station.
When a man who looked like he was homeless came by two weeks ago, Koblenzer didn’t think twice about helping him. “He looked a little needy,” said Koblenzer. “He asked if I had any mayonnaise and some tarter sauce. He said he was going to cook a fish.”
Koblenzer didn’t hesitate to help the man, bringing him tarter sauce packets. “I got it for him. As I walked out I put a corn muffin in.”
He thought the good deed was done, until his manager asked to speak to Koblenzer in the office. “The General Manager called me in and said he had some bad news for me. Joe we are going to have to let you go.”
Koblenzer admits it was his third strike. Two years ago he was written up for getting a fountain drink on the job and a second time he gave a cup of coffee to woman, though Koblenzer insists she paid for it.
Koblenzer says he’s not angry. “It’s a rule. They legally can do this because I did break the rule. I completely forgot about it. I am a host at Cracker Barrel with a little above minimum wage job.”
He says he’s sad and he misses the coworkers and customers he’s gotten to know. He even earned the maximum amount of stars on his apron for performance achievement and responsibility. “You know what? At 73, I was really proud of doing this. I was really proud of getting those stars.”.........
Only in America will you find such nutty nuts.
Although the names of the company owners are not given, I am gonna bet, based on a reference to a statue of Buddha, that they are either Japanese (the nuclear bomb has played havoc with their DNA) or Hindu (they believe in and worship everything under the sun).
From Reuters:
U.S. sues N.Y. company that workers say made them pray, say 'I love you'
A federal agency sued a New York customer service provider on Wednesday after allegations the company forced employees to pray, thank God for their jobs and say "I love you" to managers and colleagues at work, and fired those who protested.
The Long Island-based United Health Programs of America and its parent company, Cost Containment Group, required workers to practice a spiritual belief system called Onionhead while on the job, in violation of their civil and religious rights, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said in the complaint.
The company fired several employees who refused to adhere to the Onionhead doctrine, which was created by the aunt of the company's owner, the complaint said.
In one case, an IT project and account manager was disciplined after she complained to management in 2010 that she was Catholic and did not want to participate in the spiritual activities, according to the complaint.
A month after she complained, the employee was removed from her office and relocated to an open customer service area, while a large statue of a Buddha was placed in her former office. She protested to the owner that the move amounted to a demotion and was fired, the complaint said.........
wonder if it will spread to other cities..... especially to Toronto, my city.
Anonymous 'Hidden Cash' Twitter Hunt Moves... by newsbreaker
From BBC:
An anonymous tweeter in San Francisco has been hiding dollar bills around the city and posting pictures of their location to help people find them.
The first tweet - a picture of a vegetable patch - appeared on Friday. Since then, pictures of money hidden under plant pots, benches and parking meters have been posted, each with a clue as to their location. Sometimes the money is tucked away with only a famous landmark to suggest its whereabouts. The city's famous Golden Gate Bridge and Palace of Fine Arts have both featured in the game.
Each new message prompts people to search for the money, usually around $100 (£60). After just five days the account the @HiddenCash Twitter account has more than 120,000 followers, and as news of the game has spread, people who have located money have begun posting pictures of themselves clutching their find at the chosen spot.
San Francisco resident Forrest Hanson told the BBC's Newsday he found the money after a new picture showing the city's iconic bridge was published. "My friend and I jumped in our car and headed to Baker Beach, just West of the Golden Gate Bridge," he said. "There was a bridge, and a fence, and this bit of shrubbery... I happened to toe my foot in the sand in the right spot.".....
..........The person behind the account is believed to have made a fortune in the property market, and claims the project is "an anonymous social experiment for good". "There is nothing wrong with donating money to a traditional charity, but I also wanted to donate in a more spontaneous way," he told People magazine. "I want this to expand to other cities. I want this to become a movement," he said.....
Does she want to become the most hated female in Canada? Okay, we know that the victims' families are suing her, but for her to turn around and sue the victims? What kind of a hare-brained lawyer advised Sharlene Simon to do that?
Steve Mertl at DailyBrewYahooNews:
....Woman who struck cyclists, killing one, now suing them for stress she’s suffered.
This is a cautionary tale about our modern reflex to head straight to court to compensate us the tragedies in our lives.
An Ontario woman who struck three teenage boys on their bicycles, killing one, now is suing the kids' families for more than $1 million for the stress she's suffered as a result of the accident.
Before your head explodes, you should also know she's being sued by the teens' families, but I'll leave it to you to decide who's more deserving.
Of course their respective insurers will probably wind up with the tab, which means we all pay in the end through higher premiums.
Sharlene Simon was driving down a country lane in Simcoe County north of Toronto around 1:30 a.m. on Oct. 28, 2012, when she suddenly came on the three teens riding abreast returning from a local coffee shop.
Unable to stop in time, she plowed into the group, killing 17-year-old Brandon Majewski and seriously injuring 16-year-old Richard McLean. Their friend Jake Roberts, also 16, escaped with only scratches, QMI Agency reported.
Last December, a lawyer for Simon filed a statement of claim in Ontario Superior Court naming the estate of the dead teen and the families of his friends, alleging the driver "has sustained and will sustain great pain and suffering," including " a severe shock to her system" as a result of the crash, Postmedia News reported.
Simon is claiming $1.35 million because, according to her claim, "her enjoyment of life has been and will be lessened" by the accident.
Simon is herself the target of a $900,000 suit by the families of the victims that alleges Simon was speeding, intoxicated or texting at the time of the accident.
Neither side's claim has been proven in court.
It's not clear from the news reports which suit landed in court first. Lawyer Brian Cameron, acting for the victims' families, told QMI Agency their suit was mainly to recover medical and funeral costs.
Still, he was stunned at Simon's suit, which also names the County of Simcoe for failing to maintain the road......
Fascinating stuff !
Tom Chivers writing at TelegraphUK:
....There are a few things we take for granted in social interactions with people. We presume that we see the world in roughly the same way, that we all know certain basic facts, that words mean the same things to you as they do to me. And we assume that we have pretty similar ideas of right and wrong.
But for a small – but not that small – subset of the population, things are very different. These people lack remorse and empathy and feel emotion only shallowly. In extreme cases, they might not care whether you live or die. These people are called psychopaths. Some of them are violent criminals, murderers. But by no means all.
Professor Robert Hare is a criminal psychologist, and the creator of the PCL-R, a psychological assessment used to determine whether someone is a psychopath. For decades, he has studied people with psychopathy, and worked with them, in prisons and elsewhere. “It stuns me, as much as it did when I started 40 years ago, that it is possible to have people who are so emotionally disconnected that they can function as if other people are objects to be manipulated and destroyed without any concern,” he says.
Our understanding of the brain is still in its infancy, and it’s not so many decades since psychological disorders were seen as character failings. Slowly we are learning to think of mental illnesses as illnesses, like kidney disease or liver failure, and developmental disorders, such as autism, in a similar way. Psychopathy challenges this view. “A high-scoring psychopath views the world in a very different way,” says Hare. “It’s like colour-blind people trying to understand the colour red, but in this case ‘red’ is other people’s emotions.”
At heart, Hare’s test is simple: a list of 20 criteria, each given a score of 0 (if it doesn’t apply to the person), 1 (if it partially applies) or 2 (if it fully applies). The list in full is: glibness and superficial charm, grandiose sense of self-worth, pathological lying, cunning/manipulative, lack of remorse, emotional shallowness, callousness and lack of empathy, unwillingness to accept responsibility for actions, a tendency to boredom, a parasitic lifestyle, a lack of realistic long-term goals, impulsivity, irresponsibility, lack of behavioural control, behavioural problems in early life, juvenile delinquency, criminal versatility, a history of “revocation of conditional release” (ie broken parole), multiple marriages, and promiscuous sexual behaviour. A pure, prototypical psychopath would score 40. A score of 30 or more qualifies for a diagnosis of psychopathy. Hare says: “A friend of mine, a psychiatrist, once said: ‘Bob, when I meet someone who scores 35 or 36, I know these people really are different.’ The ones we consider to be alien are the ones at the upper end.”...............
There are some disgusting individuals out there. Badly brought up youngsters whose parents don't know where they are, what they are doing and care even less if their kids are caught and thrown in prison.
The little kiddo has autism.
I cried. I can probably blame being maudlin because of the martini inside me, but I cried.
Steven Erteit writing at LifeNews:
Boys and Girls Aid has had over 5,000 inquiries about these kids since the newspaper first ran their story. Sally Guyer, director of child and family services at Boys & Girls Aid told the Oregonian:
“But I want to stress that we’re not looking for ‘perfect,’” Guyer says. “We’re looking for healthy relationships in a variety of ways. Very often people who have been through difficulties better understand other people’s difficulties.”...........
How is it possible that the USA can continue importing Muslims in their tens of thousands when Muslims are the ones responsible for the terrorist acts in that country that has made travel a living hell for all? How??
From Anonymous at CafeMom:
....My DH suffers from OAB (Overactive Bladder) due to past problems with prostate cancer. (He is only 36 by the way and has been done with it for 3 years) We fly frequently and to be safe he usually wears a disposable brief (an adult diaper). He has been screened many times with the full body scanner and patted down many other times. On a few occasions, if he was being patted down, he has mentioned his "protection" and passed without further scrutiny.
Never an issue until last week. While waiting in the security line he had a strong bladder spasm and and a large release of urine into the diaper. After he emerged from the scanner the TSA officer (a female) asked if he was carrying liquids in his clothing. He explained his condition and what had happened. In the past, it was embarrassing enough for him to just tell a TSA employee that I was wearing an adult incontinence garment but now he was also announcing that he had wet himself.) She called over to another (male) officer (the boss, I guess) and explained the situation to him out loud in front of everyone else still going through the line. The problem was he did not understand what an "incontinence product" was when she told him. Myself, DH, and the female TSA employee tried explaining a few times before the woman finally just shouted " HE IS WEARING A DIAPER" which caused pretty much everyone to turn and stare at us (smaller airport so not that many people). The TSA officer then snickered which was almost enough for me to go off but I really didn't want to make an even bigger scene then there already was.
He then told us that the scanner was unable to tell what was under his clothing and that "further review" was required. I asked him what that meant and he asked us to get our bags and follow him.......
