Just so there's no confusion: Michigan family fly Nazi AND Confederate flags outside their home




The controversial symbols appeared in Flint, Michigan, a month ago
Neighbors slammed the flags as inappropriate and asking for trouble
The homeowner refuses to be drawn on why he hung the flags there



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3084898/Just-s-no-confusion-Michigan-family-fly-Nazi-Confederate-flags-outside-home.html#ixzz3aMaufoNR

http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2015/05/nazi_and_confederate_flags_fly.html#incart_2box_

Homeless Muslim migrant rescues Israeli woman in Rome
Bangladeshi immigrant in Rome hailed as a hero after diving into River Tiber to rescue Israeli woman who had jumped from a bridge.

http://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.656720.1431772100!/image/2064558393.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_640/2064558393.jpg

ROME - A homeless Muslim immigrant is being hailed as a hero by Italians after he rescued an Israeli woman who had jumped into the River Tiber in what police say was a suicide attempt.

On Tuesday, the 32-year-old Bangladeshi, Sobuj Khalifa, spotted the woman from the bridge under which he had found refuge and quickly dove after her into the river, which cuts through the center of the historic city and is notoriously polluted.

Video of the rescue shows Khalifa holding on to the woman with one arm and swimming for the riverbank with the other, while rescuers arrive on the scene and people atop the bridge clap and shout "bravo!"

"I saw her fall from the bridge, I thought she was dead" he is seen telling police officers in broken Italian. "But (when I reached her) I saw her eyes moving, I thought she could be still alive."
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/1.656719

Transportation Emerges as Crucial to Escaping Poverty


James Baker was pedaling to work along a slick, snow-covered road in Frederick County, Md., when a traffic light changed abruptly. He braked and skidded to the ground, unhurt but making a mess of his clothes before a long day of work and school.

He was on his bicycle that snowy morning last December, about an hour northwest of Washington, because the bus service in Frederick was so erratic. Routes were far apart and the buses often late, making a 30-minute bike ride, whatever the weather, a better option.

His commuting problems highlight a central theme for many low-income people trying to build a better life: A lack of reliable and efficient transportation is often a huge barrier.

In a large, continuing study of upward mobility based at Harvard, commuting time has emerged as the single strongest factor in the odds of escaping poverty. The longer an average commute in a given county, the worse the chances of low-income families there moving up the ladder.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/05/07/upshot/transportation-emerges-as-crucial-to-escaping-poverty.html?_r=0&referrer=

This is the touching moment a professor held a student's baby during class so she wouldn't have to leave mid-lecture.
Sydney Engelberg, a social psychologist at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, scooped up the baby after it started to cry during his organizational behavior class.
The 67-year-old native of South Africa who has taught for 45 yeas and has five grandchildren, teaches in the master's degree program, which means he has plenty of older students.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3084589/Hebrew-University-professor-holds-student-s-crying-baby-lectures-doesn-t-leave-class.html#ixzz3aKezIAMj

China To Use Big Data To Rate Citizens In New 'Social Credit System'

How good a citizen are you? China hopes to answer that question for every one of its citizens with a numerical rating system based on their financial standing, criminal record and social media behavior. A new translation of the government’s plans for a so-called social credit system sheds light on how China aims to utilize "Big Data" to hold all citizens accountable for financial decisions as well as moral choices.

China’s plans to roll out a citizen rating system has been in the works for years. Rogier Creemers, a China expert at Oxford University, recently published a translation of a document circulated through various levels of government detailing the six-year rollout of the program. According to a State Council notice, the central government hopes to have every adult in China assigned a credit code in addition to a government-issued identity card by 2020.

“Accelerating the construction of a social credit system is an important basis for comprehensively implementing the scientific development view and building a harmonious Socialist society,” the memo reads, adding that it has “important significance for strengthening the sincerity consciousness of the members of society.” The "guiding ideology," the name of a subsection in the memo, states that a key principle of the system is "government promotion."

While using financial, Internet and other data to evaluate individuals is not a new phenomenon, China will likely be the first nation to do it publicly and have the systematization and rationalization for doing so down to a numerical index. In an interview with Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant, Creemers draws similarities to the former East German system but says the Chinese are taking it even further.

http://www.ibtimes.com/china-use-big-data-rate-citizens-new-social-credit-system-1898711

http://money.cnn.com/gallery/technology/2015/05/08/old-websites/7.html

ChadMichael Morrisette, a 34-year-old with his own visual design agency in West Hollywood, was touched and inspired when he read the message on Facebook.

ChadMichael-bully-apologyThe message was from Louie Amundson, whose name didn’t ring a bell, but Morrisette figured he was one of the members of the football team who picked on him for being gay.

“The entire football team bullied me,” Morrisette, who grew up in a small town in Alaska, shared with Yahoo Parenting. “It wasn’t one guy, it was six or seven guys who would follow me in the hallways, harassing me, insulting me, threatening my life.”

Morrisette shared a screen capture of Amundson’s letter on Facebook along with a message:

http://blog.sfgate.com/sfmoms/2015/05/15/amazing-story-of-a-man-who-received-an-apology-from-a-childhood-bully/

Authorities say a man living in a suburban Philadelphia assisted-living facility has lost his housing subsidy after officials found a prostitute underneath his bed.

Uri Monson tells The Intelligencer in Doylestown (http://bit.ly/1cpH33U) the man, believed to be in his 70s, paid prostitutes using profits earned from peddling alcohol to fellow residents.

Monson says the man was a "more mobile gentleman" who went on booze runs for his neighbors.

The incident was reported Thursday after county commissioners authorized contract extensions with private facilities housing former residents of the closed county-owned assisted living facility

Authorities say a man living in a suburban Philadelphia assisted-living facility has lost his housing subsidy after officials found a prostitute underneath his bed.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Senior-sells-booze-pays-prostitutes-loses-6255868.php

A Wisconsin woman was on a Southwest Airlines flight about to take off from New Orleans on April 3 when she received a chilling text message from her husband back home.

The message read: "Karen forgive me for what I am about do, I'm going to kill myself..."

The woman, Karen Momsen-Evers, told WTMJ in Milwaukee that a flight attendant told her she had to put the phone down to comply with FAA regulations. Evers says even after showing the airline employee her husband's desperate text, the flight attendant "slapped the phone down and said you need to go into airplane mode now."

According to the interview, Evers was not able to call from the plane despite asking again if there was a way for the crew to make an emergency phone call once the flight was airborne.

Evers contacted police as soon as the flight reached Milwaukee, but it was too late. Evers' husband had already killed himself.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Woman-says-airline-wouldn-t-allow-wife-to-call-6264336.php

LANGKAWI, Malaysia — Thousands of Rohingya Muslims and Bangladeshis abandoned at sea by human traffickers had nowhere to go Thursday, as Malaysia turned away two boats crammed with migrants, and Thailand kept at bay a third boat with hundreds more.


?itok=dOv-8ZYn&c=618713fc647d99f0fe805d76ee659125

"What do you expect us to do?" Malaysian Deputy Home Minister Wan Junaidi Jafaar said. "We have been very nice to the people who broke into our border. We have treated them humanely but they cannot be flooding our shores like this."



"We have to send the right message that they are not welcome here," he told The Associated Press, just days after about 1,000 refugees landed on the shores of Langkawi, a popular resort island in northern Malaysian near Thailand. Another 600 have arrived surreptitiously in Indonesia.

Southeast Asia, which for years tried to quietly ignore the plight of Myanmar's 1.3 million Rohingya, finds itself caught in a spiraling humanitarian crisis that in many ways it helped create. In the last three years, more than 120,000 members of the Muslim minority, who are intensely persecuted in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, have boarded ships to flee to other countries, paying huge sums of money to human traffickers. But in the face of a crackdown by security forces of various countries, the smugglers have been abandoning the ships, leaving the refugees to fend for themselves. An estimated 6,000 remain stranded at sea.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/international/asia/2015/05/malaysia_turns_away_800_boat_people_thailand_spots_3rd_boat
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/14/malaysia-turns-back-migrant-boat-with-more-than-500-aboard#img-1