October 17, 2015

Ricky Gervais's Tweet Saved Hundreds Of Starving Dogs

When an influx of 680 dogs arrived at a public shelter in Odai, Romania, the workers knew these dogs didn't have anywhere else to turn. Despite not having enough food, bedding or even bowls for water, the shelter took them in.




They needed help and fast, so London-based partner rescue, K-9 Angels created a fundraising page with an urgent plea for donations "to ease the emergency situation at the shelter."ver the course of several days, the group had raised only about £4,000 for the Romanian shelter. The money was enough to make sure the dogs had enough food for about two months, but it didn't come anywhere near what the shelter needed to pay for basic supplies, vaccinations and labor costs. In fact, it was about £26,000 short.



(Tweet sent out by Gervaise generated 14000 more)

We have now spent over £6,000 on aid including food, beds as they where all sleeping on cold wet stone floors, bowls as where eating from the floor and sanitizer to clean the shelter," said Eisermann. "We have also set up a regular food order and [are] looking into funding a worker at the shelter as they are very short staffed."



And the dogs, now starting to recover, are that much closer to getting the care they need before they can find their new homes.

https://www.thedodo.com/ricky-gervais-dogs-1407436318.html

October 17, 2015

Robocalls Emerge As Latest Fix For Nation's Student Loan Crisis

The Obama administration and the student loan industry reckon they know how to fix America’s student debt crisis: Bombard Americans’ cell phones with robocalls and text messages telling them to pay up.

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tead of cracking down on alleged abuses, the Education Department wants to give its loan contractors more power. In doing so, the department is aiding their quest to maintain profitability -- its four largest loan servicers have generated at least $5 billion in combined income over the last three years -- at a time when consumer groups argue the loan companies need to hire more workers and better train them.

In several notices filed over the past year with the Federal Communications Commission, trade associations representing loan specialists, debt collectors, college administrators and financial aid counselors have tried to persuade the agency to exempt federal student loans from typical consumer protections. They reason that “millions” of loan defaults could be averted if contractors working for the Education Department were permitted to use computerized auto-dialers to call and text borrowers on their cell phones.

Since cell phone owners are charged for calls and texts they receive, the FCC has generally not permitted companies to auto-dial consumers when they haven't given consent. Nearly half of American households eschewed land lines to rely solely on cell phones, according to a recent survey by the National Center for Health Statistics.

In April, one of the Education Department’s main contractors -- Nelnet Inc. -- told the FCC that borrowers they were able to auto-dial were less likely than others to fall behind on their payments or default and were more likely to resolve delinquencies.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/robocalls-student-loans_561fff03e4b050c6c4a4e72e

October 17, 2015

Anti abortion clinics (crisis pregnancy centers) challenge law requiring notification

A day after Gov. Jerry Brown signed the first statewide regulation of “crisis pregnancy centers” into law Friday, two clinics in the Sacramento Valley filed a federal court suit in Sacramento saying the measure violated their freedom of speech and religion. On Tuesday, two more clinics and the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, which has 111 affiliates in California, filed a similar suit in San Diego.

Crisis pregnancy centers offer free counseling and services to pregnant women, including pregnancy tests and ultrasound examinations, but try to steer them away from abortions. There are about 2,500 centers nationwide with at least 228 of them in California, according to a legislative staff analysis of the bill, AB775.

The measure, introduced by Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, is scheduled to take effect in January. It requires state-licensed reproductive health centers, including crisis pregnancy centers that have a doctor on staff, to notify clients of the full range of low-cost or free reproductive services available under state law, including abortion. The notices must list the phone number of the county social service center.

Clinics without a doctor are not licensed by the state and will have to tell clients they are unlicensed.
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Antiabortion-clinics-challenge-law-requiring-6569349.php

October 17, 2015

Wealth therapy tackles woes of the rich: 'It’s really isolating to have lots of money'

The Occupy Wall Street movement was a good one and had some important things to say about income inequality, but it singled out the 1% and painted them globally as something negative. It’s an -ism,” said Jamie Traeger-Muney, a wealth psychologist and founder of the Wealth Legacy Group. “I am not necessarily comparing it to what people of color have to go through, but ... it really is making value judgment about a particular group of people as a whole.”

The media, she said, is partly to blame for making the rich “feel like they need to hide or feel ashamed”.

‘It’s easy to scapegoat the rich’

Traeger-Muney, who moved to Israel six years ago, runs a global firm and specializes in working with inheritors, who often get a bad reputation in the press.

“You can come up with lot of words and sayings about inheritors, not one of them is positive: spoiled brat, born with a silver spoon in their mouth, trust fund babies, all these things,” she said, adding that it’s “easy to scapegoat the rich”.

“Sometimes I am shocked by things that people say. If you substitute in the word Jewish or black, you would never say something like that. You’d never say – spoiled rotten or you would never refer to another group of people in the way that it seems perfectly normal to refer to wealth holders.”

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/17/wealth-therapy-tackles-woes-of-the-rich-its-really-isolating-to-have-lots-of-money

October 17, 2015

Policy makes Plan B more accessible to American Indian women

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — The federal Indian Health Service has finalized a policy that makes emergency contraception more accessible to American Indian and Alaska Native women.

The written policy released this week requires the morning-after pill to be available to women of any age over the counter at IHS-run facilities, no questions asked. That's in line with a 2013 U.S. Food and Drug Administration decision to lift age limits and make the medication available without a prescription.

Women's health advocates had pushed for a written policy for years, saying verbal directives to IHS area directors in 2012 and 2013 to improve timely access to the pill for women 17 years and older could be rescinded at any time.

"This is a very important victory for Native women but also all women in this country, for something like this to occur in a federal agency during this time when there's so much control by the opposition, by the right-wing," Charon Asetoyer, director of the Lake Andes, South Dakota-based Native American Women's Health Education Resource Center, said Friday. "We really have to look at this through a human rights lens that we are not being denied what other women have access to."

http://www.startnetzero.net/news/read/category/News/hashtag/News/article/the_associated_press-policy_makes_plan_b_more_accessible_to_american_in-ap

October 17, 2015

dogs with regrets

This dog's owner came to get his from the kennel and found him like this. Super keen to go home







http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3275757/The-dogs-immediately-regretted-life-choices.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3275757/The-dogs-immediately-regretted-life-choices.html

October 17, 2015

toddlers r more likely to choose brightly coloured bottles of hazardous cleaning products than toys

A worrying new film shows how young children are more attracted to the brightly coloured bottles of hazardous cleaning products than they are to a soft toy.

The filmed social experiment involved giving toddlers the choice of which item they wanted to grab - and more than half reach for the hazardous products.

The voice-over on the Dutch public service video reveals that 50 per cent of the youngsters went for stain remover, 64 per cent went for paint and most shockingly 82 per cent went for bleach.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3275924/Worrying-social-experiment-reveals-toddlers-likely-choose-brightly-coloured-bottles-hazardous-cleaning-products-toys.html#ixzz3omg8mMbx

October 17, 2015

‘I made it home:’ Homeless vets celebrate new Harbor Gateway apartments - 79 unit building

“I’m 56 years old and I’ve done a lot of crazy things in my life,” Anderson told the crowd of dignitaries that gathered for the unveiling of the 79-unit apartment building for homeless vets. “The first time I slept in a bed, it was like new to me. ... Now I can be a father to the daughter I get to see now.”

Anderson is among the 68 residents who are fast filling the new apartments at 16304 S. Vermont Ave. The four-story project, costing $22 million and taking 2 1/2 years to plan and build, was an ambitious collaboration with Affirmed Housing and PATH Ventures taking the lead.

And it is, homeless advocates agree, the public-private model that needs to be quickly replicated throughout the Los Angeles area amid a homelessness crisis that has overwhelmed communities and government officials.

It is, said South Bay Rep. Maxine Waters, “what we need all over this country.”

http://www.presstelegram.com/veterans/20151015/i-made-it-home-homeless-vets-celebrate-new-harbor-gateway-apartments

October 16, 2015

11-year-old girl's stick-figure drawing leads to arrest of burglary suspect

STRATFORD, Conn. - (WVIT/NBC) An 11-year-old girl, who drew a stick figure of a burglar, was honored by police in Connecticut after the sketch led to the arrest of a suspect.

In a room full of police, Rebecca DePietro of Stratford, Conn., was wearing hot pink. But she didn't need a uniform to be honored for some detective work of her own after a string of burglaries on her street.

She drew a stick figure sketch of the suspect after police came to her door a few months ago asking if she'd seen anyone suspicious.

"I drew a picture of him. It wasn't like the best picture it was just a head some legs,” said DePietro. "I thought like, ‘Oh, (the detective will) probably just going to crumple it up and throw it out.’"

Instead, police took the two-minute doodle seriously.

"For us to take that sketch and match it up, it was remarkable," said Stratford Police Chief Patrick.

http://www.wptv.com/news/local-news/water-cooler/rebecca-depietro-11-year-old-girls-stick-figure-drawing-leads-to-arrest-of-burglary-suspect

October 16, 2015

Researcher kills rare bird to study it, controversy ensues

He's being compared to the dentist who killed Cecil the lion, but is a researcher who killed a bird for study the same as a big game hunter?

It's a question that's sparking debate after a researcher from the American Museum of Natural History killed a moustached kingfisher in Guadalcanal. New York scientist Christopher Filardi spotted the kingfisher last month while observing wildlife with other researchers.

It was no ordinary sight — the kingfisher hasn't been seen in over 50 years and it is believed that 250 to 1,000 adult moustached kingfishers exist in the world.

In order to further study the rare bird, Filardi "collected" it — in layman's terms, he killed it. As you may have guessed, some people are not happy about this.

"It is a tired and nonsensical, self-serving claim that you must kill some animals in the name of research so as to study them enough to save them," PETA Senior Director Colleen O'Brien told the New York Daily News.

But that's exactly what Filardi is claiming in a defense of his actions posted on the Audubon Society website. Because so few of these types of kingfishers have been captured (he cites one example in 1927 and one in 1953), scientists haven't had an opportunity to study the bird on a deeper level.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Researcher-kills-rare-bird-to-study-it-6568571.php