I feel no sympathy for anyone who gets punched in the face by a cop.  If you get punched in the face by a cop, you were resisting arrest, almost assuredly. And I have no sympathy for anyone who resists arrest, even if you don't feel you should be getting arrested.  The best way to deal with the police is to cooperate.  Why is this not obvious to people?  If you have nothing to hide then that will come out in the end.  If she had no warrant, what were they going to book her on?  They'd figure that out and let her go.  But instead she resists arrest and gets arrested for that, and punched to boot.  Which she deserved as far as I'm concerned.


The person is male. Racially, the person is hispanic / latino. The person is 32 years old. The person has a college or university degree. The person earns 35000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 5.0 in openness, 5.5 in conscientiousness, 2.0 in extraversion, 5.5 in agreeableness, and 4.5 in stability.

Video Shows Cop Punching Woman In The Face, But She’s The One Arrested For ‘Assault’ —  A uniformed Arizona police officer who was filmed punching a woman has been placed on administrative leave while the incident is investigated.   “Our agency is very concerned by what is depicted in this video,” police in Flagstaff, Arizona, said in a Wednesday evening press release.   The footage, shot and posted to Facebook on Wednesday, shows a woman struggling with two officers who apparently believe there is an outstanding warrant for her arrest. She can be heard on video saying the issue has already been resolved.   “You cannot arrest me until I know I have a warrant,” she tells the officers as she struggles with them.   Suddenly, one of them strikes her in the face with a closed fist.   Authorities have identified that officer as Jeff Bonar. They haven’t released the name of the woman, but she identifies herself in the video as Marissa Morris. “You just fucking punched me in the face,” Morris can be heard yelling after Bonar hits her.   A number of people appear to be watching the scene from a porch. The man who filmed the confrontation — identified by The Arizona Republic as Danny Paredes — can be also heard shouting, “Hey, you can’t hit a girl like that.”   Bonar cuffs Morris and the two other officers lead her away and place her in the back of a patrol car while a man ― presumably Paredes ― can be heard saying, “I got it on video, Marissa.”   Morris’ boyfriend, Jimmy Sedillo, told The Arizona Republic he and his children, ages 3 and 9, witnessed the incident.   “She had a warrant a few weeks ago,” Sedillo said. “He still assumed she had a warrant.” Sedillo told Phoenix’s KTVK his girlfriend was ultimately charged with assaulting an officer and resisting arrest.Morris, who reportedly remains behind bars, could not be reached for comment.   “An internal affairs investigation is being initiated,” Flagstaff police said. “Further details will be released as the investigation progresses.”

I understand that there are more good cops than bad cops and overall cops are needed in society, but at what point do we start training these guys more than they are trained? Literally anybody can be a cop it seems and all these viral videos of cops hurting people are all too common. This is why a lot of the public is growing a huge distrust for cops.


The person is female. Racially, the person is white. The person is 27 years old. The person has a went to technical / vocational school. The person earns 25000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 6.0 in openness, 6.0 in conscientiousness, 6.0 in extraversion, 6.0 in agreeableness, and 6.0 in stability.

This article is just horrifying. I understand that the police officers deal with hard to arrest people but punching someone yet alone a woman and mother is just horrible. I think less violent and severe tactics should have been taken in this case. It is there discretion but I think he was just taking his anger out on this lady and in no way should that be allowed. In front of her children and family. Maybe she was just worried the arrest was not suppose to happen, you should not be able to become violent out of anger.


The person is male. Racially, the person is white. The person is 29 years old. The person has a college or university degree. The person earns 85000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 6.75 in openness, 6.75 in conscientiousness, 6.75 in extraversion, 6.75 in agreeableness, and 7.0 in stability.

3 U.S. military trainers killed in gunfire by security units at Jordan base —  At least three U.S. military trainers in Jordan were fatally shot by security forces Friday when their vehicle failed to stop at the gate of a military base, Jordanian and U.S. officials said.   The U.S. military service members “came under fire” as they approached a Jordanian training facility, said Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook. Few other details about the incident were given. Cook said U.S. and Jordanian authorities were investigating the cause.   Earlier, Jordan’s military said there was “an exchange of gunfire” after the vehicle’s driver ignored demands to stop outside an air base in southern Jordan. A Jordanian officer was injured, the statement said.   Other details of the incident at the King Faisal Air Base were not immediately clear. Investigators were trying to piece together the events, including whether a possible miscommunication was to blame.   The U.S. official said two of the service members died later in Jordan’s capital, Amman, where they were airlifted for treatment.   Jordan is a close ally of the United States, and military training by U.S. personnel is common. Jordan is also part of the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State in neighboring Syria.   [Prominent Jordanian writer gunned down]   The U.S. Embassy in Amman said in a statement it was “in contact with the appropriate Jordanian authorities, who have offered their full support.”   A U.S. diplomat in Amman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters, said American and Jordanian officials “do not believe” the incident was terrorism-related, but he offered no further details.   The King Faisal base, about 150 miles southeast of Amman and near the border with Saudi Arabia, has long been used for joint exercises between Jordan and its various allies, including the United States, Britain and Saudi Arabia. The base is also part of the network in Jordan to train Western-backed Syrian rebels.   According to U.S. diplomats and Jordanian officials, there are more than 1,000 U.S. military personnel based in Jordan, the majority serving as advisers to Jordan’s armed forces and Syrian rebel factions.   Jordan’s military has been on high alert since June, when a suicide attacker driving a bomb-rigged truck barreled through Syria’s border with Jordan, setting off a blast outside a Syrian refugee camp that killed seven Jordanian troops. It was the deadliest attack along the tense border, which hundreds of thousands of Syrians have crossed during the more than five-year conflict in their homeland.   In November 2015, a Jordanian police officer opened fire at a police training academy south of Amman, killing two U.S. contractors.

After reading the article, it just makes me so sad that there are soldier that are still being killed. It's great that they are willing to sacrifice their own lives for their country but it's still sad. They have family that they are leaving behind and they will have to suffer for the rest of their lives. It's very sad to know that we are still in war after so long.


The person is male. Racially, the person is white. The person is 29 years old. The person has a went to college but did not get a degree. The person earns 39000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 6.5 in openness, 6.0 in conscientiousness, 1.0 in extraversion, 6.0 in agreeableness, and 5.5 in stability.

Just read a story about an incident in Jordan where at least two American soldiers were killed in what appeared to be a mix up. A vehicle carrying American soldiers failed to yield at a gate to an military base in Amman and Jordanian troops ended up opening fire on the vehicle. Apparently, there had been an attack on the base recently, so I can understand why the patrols would be on their toes.


The person is female. Racially, the person is white. The person is 38 years old. The person has a postgraduate / professional degree. The person earns 42000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 3.5 in openness, 7.0 in conscientiousness, 6.5 in extraversion, 5.5 in agreeableness, and 6.5 in stability.

This really sounded like a misunderstanding that resulted in the loss of life.  How very tragic for these three people and their families.  Perhaps better measures should be taken at this facility to be sure that they are identifying people correctly and that nothing else like this happens again.  I think a lot of military casualties are extremely sad, but it seems especially bad when it is not even in combat and just in a situation like this that should have been harmless.


The person is male. Racially, the person is black / african american. The person is 37 years old. The person has a college or university degree. The person earns 40000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 5.5 in openness, 7.0 in conscientiousness, 1.0 in extraversion, 6.5 in agreeableness, and 6.0 in stability.

I feel sorry for the troops that lost their lives. I do not believe we should be in the middle east, but the troops are not making those choices. I do not see how you have a shoot out with a country that you are supporting. I know there is a language barrier, but this should have never happen. I wonder is something else is going on.


The person is male. Racially, the person is white. The person is 41 years old. The person has a college or university degree. The person earns 28000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 2.0 in openness, 2.5 in conscientiousness, 1.5 in extraversion, 2.0 in agreeableness, and 1.0 in stability.

This incident made me feel bad.  I assume it was just an accident and a case of confusion and miscommunication.  But it still feels sad to think that someone was killed needlessly like this.  American troops do a lot for us and the rest of the world.  This is a bad way to go down.  I'm not sure what I hope happened.  Either way it was a tragic event.  It doesn't sound like the Jordanians did anything wrong.  They wee rightfully protecting their base.  It's very unclear what the Americans could have been thinking, but they clearly made a mistake and suffered from it.  Hopefully the truth is discovered and people can be content with the tragic event.


The Jewish Struggle to Understand Trump's Election —  Synagogues hosted prayer and healing services on Wednesday for congregants grappling with the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. PHILADELPHIA—On November 8, 1938, Nazi paramilitary soldiers and German civilians looted and vandalized thousands of Jewish businesses and synagogues. Jews were murdered. Up to 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and taken to concentration camps. On November 8, 2016, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. The next day, a man discovered that someone had painted swastikas on an abandoned storefront in South Philly, placing the symbols next to Trump’s name and the words “Sieg Heil,” a salute used by Nazis during World War II. Maybe it was an anti-Trump protester. Maybe it was an anti-Semite. Either way, it underscored the ways in which Trump’s election has evoked the persistent Jewish nightmare: That America will become like Germany in 1938. Jews, who have a keen eye for the repetition of history, might be forgiven for worrying about the fragility of American democracy. This is the scale of fear, grief, and anger about Trump in some Jewish communities across America. In Philadelphia, at least three synagogues held prayer services on Wednesday; congregations in a number of other cities, including Durham, North Carolina, and Washington, D.C., held similar events. “No matter who we voted for and how we are feeling this morning, we all know that we and our country are in desperate need of healing,” read the Facebook invite for an event at the Germantown Jewish Centre in north Philly. “We will sit together, sing together, pray together, and have a chance to share what is on our hearts with the support of the community.” A woman was crying when I walked into the cavernous sanctuary of GJC on Wednesday night. Roughly 100 people were gathered in a circle of chairs toward the front of the room; the cream ceiling and warmly brown furniture gave the space a living-room feel. In the center of the gathering, a single candle sat burning on a small round table. The space was still except for the occasional baby squeal or patter of toddler feet at the side of the room; people had brought their children because, as someone on Facebook observed, they need to heal, too. Trump’s daughter Ivanka came up—whether Jews would be safe because one of the president’s children is an Orthodox convert. The congregants were concerned about the racism and sexism revealed during the campaign, and discussed the stages of grief. They talked of making aliyah, or emigrating to Israel—not as a plausible possibility, but as a back-of-mind option in case things get really bad. And yes, people brought up Nazi Germany. Unlike Muslims, Mexicans, African Americans, the disabled, and women, Jews have not been directly insulted by Donald Trump during this election. Anti-Semites have arguably been empowered by his campaign: Jewish journalists have been consistently threatened and harassed on Twitter since the election got underway, often by people who self-identify as Trump supporters. But the fear seems to be less that Trump will specifically persecute Jews than the sense that America under Trump will become an increasingly hostile space for Jews and other minority groups. Trump doesn’t have to be an anti-Semite to bear responsibility for anti-Semitism. While exit polls suggest that roughly 25 percent of American Jews voted for Trump—fewer than voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, but more than voted for John McCain in 2008—the group as a whole is overwhelmingly liberal and Democratic. Adam Zeff, the rabbi at GJC, said in an interview that the synagogue’s neighborhood, Mt. Airy, is so left-wing that it’s almost “self-parody.” Most Jews live in cities or stay concentrated in “little enclaves,” as Zeff called them—he pointed out that on the map of the election results, there are tiny blue spots even deep in Trump country. “That’s where Jews live,” he said, along with other minority groups. It wasn’t Jews Trump promised to ban some 13 months ago. It was Muslims. This clustering creates a dual challenge for Jewish communities. People at GJC spoke about Trump’s election like they might about a death in the family—with a sense of real and personal loss, and a staggering alienation from their fellow Americans. “It is kind of shattering to people to feel like, wow, there’s such a difference,” said Zeff. “To think that racism, anti-immigrant sentiment, and misogyny could be given a pass by so many people makes Jews feel like anti-Semitism could also be given a pass.” And yet the congregants also spoke about the need for understanding. “The people for whom this is a happy day—we have to think about them, too,” Zeff said during the prayer service. Mt. Airy is about a half hour drive from Bucks County, a swing area in Pennsylvania where nearly half of voters went for Trump this year. But even within such a short distance, it’s difficult to imagine how the liberal Jews of Philadelphia and the Trump supporters one county up would start to know one another or be in community. The other challenge for Jews who are scared is putting that fear into context. Other groups are hurting just as much as Jews are right now, and in some cases, their fears are more tangible. It wasn’t Jews Trump promised to ban from entering the country some 13 months ago—it was Muslims. It wasn’t Jewish neighborhoods Trump described in apocalyptic terms in the presidential debates—it was black neighborhoods. At times, Jews have struggled or declined to find solidarity with both of those groups, often over the issue of Israel. “When disaster strikes, the Jewish impulse is to look inward, to say, ‘What t’shuva,’” or repentance, “do I need to do?” Zeff said. If his community looked inward and asked what kind of allies they have been to African Americans, Latinos, and other groups in Philadelphia, Zeff said, “I know what [those groups’] answer is, which is: not very good ones.” For Jews, as for other groups who feel threatened by Trump, this new era has begun with a struggle of contradictions: to understand Trump supporters while maintaining their value commitments; to experience their particular and unique pain while finding solidarity with others. When Zeff sent out a note to his synagogue about the election, “I got a response back from a congregant that said, ‘This is very nice, rabbi, but you’re asking us to do two contradictory things: You’re asking us to reach out, and you’re asking us to stand up,’” Zeff told me. He wrote back, “‘Yes, and isn’t that the lot of the Jew?’”

People love to blame Trump for anything and everything that goes wrong in this country while he is in power.  The truth is that hate crimes have been ongoing for many decades, an d it has nothing to do with the man in office.  There were multiple hate crimes while Obama was in office and really every other president before him.  People, especially the media, love to scapegoat Trump.  Just like the article said, Trump has actually done a lot to try to build up the Jewish communities.  Black unemployment is at a record low.  Yet people continue to blame him.  Shaking my head.


This article is ridiculous.  I'm part Jewish and all of this is absurd.  Likening our country to Nazi Germany in any way is just embarrassing.  The idea that our democracy is under threat because we had a democratic election is too stupid for words.  I like Jews and am part Jewish, as I said, but I have no sympathy for this kind of nonsense.  Trump has supported Israel far more than any other President in recent memory.  Obama abandoned Israel and sided with Iran.  Is that what Jews want in a President?  They feel safe with that?  They feel threatened by a President who supports them and vows to defend them?  People are stupid, even Jews, some of the smartest people in the world.


I can relate to the Jewish in the sense that I too struggle to realize and accept the fact that Trump got elected. I think the realization that he got elected is one that I tend to think  made me realize the USA was not the country I thought it was. At the end of the day its good that it happened because we realized that we are not perfect as a country.


The person is female. Racially, the person is white. The person is 33 years old. The person has a college or university degree. The person earns 110000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 4.5 in openness, 7.0 in conscientiousness, 1.5 in extraversion, 7.0 in agreeableness, and 7.0 in stability.

A number of Jewish Americans have been concerned about the possibility a rise in antisematic behavior following the election of President Donald Trump. Some extremists painted symbols of hate in prominent Jewish areas, leading some Jewish Americans to question whether the extremists' behavior was related to Trump's election.


I find all sorts of things wrong with this article and perspective.  Trump has been the greatest Presidential ally for Israel, possibly since its creation.  Obama abandoned Israel and buddied up to Iran--Israel's mortal enemy.  Is that the type of President Jews want?  Obviously that's a false dichotomy, and certainly Jews are allowed to dislike Trump for all sorts of reasons.  But to place this all on Trump is missing the point, in my opinion.  Trump is a symptom of any rise in anti-semitism, not the cause.  The 2016 push-back by whites and males was a long time coming, and was due to cultural changes that have absolutely nothing to do with Trump.  Trans, gays, women, minorities--all of that stuff being shoved in people's faces, aggressively, leads to push back.  Welcome to it.


The person is female. Racially, the person is white. The person is 21 years old. The person has a high school degree or diploma. The person earns 20000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 3.0 in openness, 5.0 in conscientiousness, 5.0 in extraversion, 4.0 in agreeableness, and 3.5 in stability.

Spain’s Deadly Train Crash —  A train crash in Spain has killed at least four people and injured nearly 50 others after it derailed in the northwest region of the country.   About 65 people rode the Portugal-bound train, including crew, when it crashed just before 9:30 a.m. local time. Photos of the wreck showed the train’s carriage flipped on its side and smashed from where it likely hit part of a bridge near the tracks. It crashed just 20 minutes after leaving the Spanish city of Vigo, in Galicia, and was headed for Porto, Portugal.   It’s not clear what caused the wreck, but passengers said the train began to rock. As the BBC reported:   A passenger in a video posted by local daily La Voz de Galicia said the train had suddenly started swaying from one side to the other.   "It wouldn't stop," she said. "I was sitting down and I fell to the ground. And then the train stopped. It was that quick."   A witness woman told Spanish television about hearing a "very strong bang" before seeing billowing black smoke. Friday’s crash is near the site of a 2013 train crash, one of the country’s worst in recent decades. In that crash, a high-speed train derailed and hit a wall near Santiago de Compostela, about a 30-minute drive northeast from Friday’s wreck.

This is so sad to hear about... I really hope that they are able to find out, soon, the cause of the accident, as I'm sure this will give the victims, and their families, some sort of comfort. It also had to be traumatic for the people watching, to see such a thing happen and lives destroyed like that.


I feel so sorry for the passengers and victims onboard. This would be my worst fear being on a train or plain having no control or way out of such a big accident. They must have been so afraid once the train started rocking back and forth. I wonder what actually caused this horrible accident in the first place. They said that a similar one happened earlier so it must be connected. A full investigation should be done to find the cause and fix it. The train should be shut down to avoid loss of life while it is investigated and corrected. It seems to be a totally avoidable way to lose a life and needs to have more security measures put into place.


Anytime a train or car crash happens you start to think of what caused it. You wonder if the conductor was drunk or what? Usually there is a hidden reason as to why they happened and a lot of the time we never find out what truly happened. Its near the site of a 2013 crash though which leads me to believe that this happens regularly there!


I always worried about traveling in an airplane, but the recent news and this article makes me think twice about traveling by train. I feel very sorry of the four people who lost their life and the fifty injuries  in the train wreck.  I hope they find out what caused the wreck for it does not happen again.


Four people were killed in a train crash that happened in Spain's northwest region. The train's carriage had flipped on its side after hitting a bridge near the train tracks. Fifty more people were injured. It is a true tragedy for this community to suffer a horrific accident of this nature. I feel for the people of the area.


The person is male. Racially, the person is white. The person is 47 years old. The person has a college or university degree. The person earns 105000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 6.5 in openness, 6.0 in conscientiousness, 6.0 in extraversion, 4.5 in agreeableness, and 4.0 in stability.

Americans feel guilty about wasting too much food, but still do it —  Americans eat a lot, also throw a lot of food. That is the main point worth underlining in the new study published at Plos One, a peer-reviewed journal. Surprisingly, it is just one of the two large-scale papers about food waste.   In 2010, the study says that about one-hundred and thirty-three billion pounds of edible food both at the retail and consumer levels went uneaten. That’s about one-thousand two-hundred and forty-nine calories per person per day. Two-thirds of which were attributed to consumers, meaning people in homes that waste the food that they purchase.   In addition to the significant waste of resources, the paper says that this behavior of consumers has a substantial negative impact to the environment as about ninety-five percent of food waste enter the United States landfills.   In a press release, Ohio State University professor Brian Roe explains that the results provide the data required to develop targeted efforts to reduce waste of food each year. “If we can increase awareness of the problem, consumers are more likely to increase purposeful action to reduce food waste,” he said. “You don’t change your behavior if you don’t realize there’s a problem in the first place.”   The team of researchers has developed a national survey to identify the awareness and attitudes of Americans regarding food waste. Last year, it was administered to five-hundred people representative of the country’s population.   The study has found that about fifty-three percent of American respondents said that they’re aware that it is a problem; that’s about ten percent higher than the related research published by Johns Hopkins last year.   Doctoral student Danyi Qi, one of the authors of the research, says that they’ve found three things that people consider regarding food waste: First, about sixty-eight percent of respondents believe that throwing away edible food after the package date has passed is reducing the chance of food-linked diseases and illnesses. Meanwhile, about fifty-nine percent believe that some food waste is ‘necessary’ for freshness and flavorful certainty.   Second, seventy-seven percent said they feel a “general sense of guilt” when throwing food away. Also, about fifty-eight percent claimed to understand that throwing away of food is bad for the environment. Meanwhile, only forty-two percent said they believe wasted food is a “major source of wasted money.”   And third, which is perhaps the most interesting, is that fifty-one percent of respondents believe it would be difficult to reduce home food waste. Plus, about forty-two percent said they don’t have enough time to worry about it. For the economic perspective, fifty-three percent admit that they waste a lot of food but still buy more in bulk or in large quantities during store sales.   For the throwing-the-blame perspective, about eighty-seven percent believed that they waste less food than other similar households.   The research in full is available at the PLOS One website, and it is titled ‘Household Food Waste: Multivariate Regression and Principal Components Analyses of Awareness and Attitudes among U.S. Consumers.’

It is such a shame isn't it that so many people in our country don't understand how important it is to not waste food don't you think? I know that I am also to blame sometimes, and when I throw away food that's been in my fridge I often feel guilty, do you? I really try hard not to waste food though. I wish others felt the same way.


After reading this article, i feel that i can definitely relate to it . I defintely am guilty of sometimes wasting food even when it's still fresh. There are times when i buy a really large meal and just leave it in the fridge until it's expired. So reading this article, it made me feel very guilty and uneasy because of how close it hits.


The person is female. Racially, the person is white. The person is 62 years old. The person has a college or university degree. The person earns 29000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 2.5 in openness, 6.5 in conscientiousness, 1.0 in extraversion, 6.5 in agreeableness, and 2.0 in stability.

Food waste in the United States is just shameful.   So many children and adults are hungry, yet we have learned nothing.   There are some companies that were established solely for people to drop off uneaten food or expired food.   There are few places anywhere you can take large amounts of food to redistribute.


We shouldn't be wasting food like that us Americans when there are so many starving children around the world. We need to find a way to preserve leftover food , renew it and give it to the people in need. It can be the homeless or children in need. The bottom line is we need to make better use of the food so other people can enjoy it.


Food waste is becoming a rather large problem in America. A 2010 study found that one hundred and thirty three billion pounds of edible foods went uneaten in 2010. That is absolutely ridiculous. With as many starving homeless and poor people as are in this country it should not be that so much food is being wasted.


The person is male. Racially, the person is white. The person is 45 years old. The person has a went to college but did not get a degree. The person earns 40000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 4.0 in openness, 6.0 in conscientiousness, 2.5 in extraversion, 5.5 in agreeableness, and 5.5 in stability.

Shooting Occurs Near California Polling Station —  Police have rushed to the scene in Azusa on the night of the election. The person who opened fire earlier this afternoon is dead. Police identified him as a Hispanic male. Police found the suspect dead when they entered the home he had barricaded himself in. It is unclear if he killed himself or whether he died from police fire. The suspect had an assault-style rifle. Police are now searching the area to make sure there are no other suspects and there are no victims. Officials also confirmed the shooting was not related to the election. Previous reports the suspect was a woman were false, police say. Shooting Victim Identified The one fatality from the shooting Tuesday afternoon was a man in his 70s, police say. He was killed after an assailant with an assault-style weapon opened fire. The shooter is still surrounded by police, barricaded in a nearby home.

There are a lot of troubled people in the world today. Every time I read an article or see a news story about another shooting, I get a little bit on edge. These kind of things happen too much these days. I long for the time when we were growing up when you didn't see this in the news every day. It's good that more people weren't hurt.


This was a very short article without a lot of context to it. It did not tell why the man with the assault style weapon killed the man that was in his seventy's. At first, I thought it was going to be about a man that was denied the right to vote, but that story proved to be false.  I do feel sorry for any body who loses their life to gun violence.


I'm feel for a person that kill themselves. I feel that everybody has the right to make that choice because it is their life and they are the one's that have to deal with their feeling emotional or physical.  The article did not go into great detail about the man, but I hope his family or anybody else are not suffering.


This article sais alot about the state of the country. I think many hispanic people are just angered and don't know where to tell there frustration. This man was probably trying to make some type of statement. With trump putting so much attention on this border and getting illigals out im sure he is scared and doesnt know what to do. This is a horrible way to go about it but I can see both sides. This poor older man who was shot for no reason. People need to think before they act, and more mental health help should be available to people feeling violent or angry.


Just read an article about a shooting that happened in California. The details were sparse, but apparently a man opened fire with an assault rifle in the public space and only killed one elderly man. Say what you will, but this seems like close to an ideal resolution to a scenario like this. The article then doubled back and said the suspect was still alive despite pronouncing him dead earlier in the text. Odd.


The person is female. Racially, the person is white. The person is 26 years old. The person has a college or university degree. The person earns 65000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 6.5 in openness, 6.0 in conscientiousness, 6.0 in extraversion, 7.0 in agreeableness, and 6.0 in stability.

Wife Who Died Alongside Husband, Children in Murder-Suicide Alleged Abuse, Had Plans to Leave —  Megan Short, who died alongside her husband, Mark, and the couple's three children in an apparent murder-suicide over the weekend, had been planning to leave her husband, according to Mark Short's relatives. Mark Short's cousin and aunt told NBC10/Telemundo62 reporter Andrea Cruz that Megan and Mark Short had been going through a tough separation recently, and that Mark had been trying to keep the family together. "He was a family, family guy. He was all family. He worked himself to death to try and keep his family together," James Short, Mark Short's cousin, said. "It was just work, work, work and family. That was it." Megan Short, though, alleged on Facebook that her husband was abusive, a friend told the Reading Eagle. She posted about her desire to leave the marriage on her Facebook profile, the friend said. Mark Short's relatives, who live in Folcroft, Delaware County, where he grew up, said that he took his wife and their children, 2-year-old Willow, 5-year-old Mark Jr. and 8-year-old Liana, to Disney World in February in hopes of improving his relationship with his wife and convincing her to stay together. That didn't help, though, the relatives said, and Megan Short still planned to leave. Police have said their investigation revealed the couple had "domestic issues," but they have not provided additional details. On Saturday, police found 40-year-old Mark and Megan Short, 33, along with their three children and the family's dog, all dead of gunshot wounds in the living room of their home in the Berks County Borough of Sinking Spring. Officers paid a visit to the stately single home where the family lived on Winding Brook Drive when one of Megan Short's relatives called them, concerned after she failed to show up for a planned lunch, authorities said. Police have not yet said who they believe did the shooting, but said investigators did find a "murder-suicide note" in the home, along with a handgun near one of the adults' bodies. Authorities called the family's deaths "an apparent tragic domestic incident." Mark Short's relatives described him as a laid-back man who worked in the real-estate industry and would do anything for anyone, particularly his family. "He was just a really good guy. You wouldn't think he would do this kind of thing, but in the situation he's in right now, you never can tell with people," James Short said of his cousin. "Don't think any less of him, because he's a really, really good guy. He would do anything for anybody," James Short continued. "You don't know the situation, so don't try to judge." James Short and other relatives said that Megan Short began dating Mark, who was seven years her senior, when she was just 17 years old, and that the couple had a child and married not long after that.  The family struggled with serious health issues in their youngest child, Willow, who was born with a congenital heart defect that required her to have a heart transplant when she was just days old. Articles in both the New York Times and the Reading Eagle chronicled the Shorts' struggles with Willow's health problems. Megan Short also recently wrote about the post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety she suffers due to dealing with her young daughter's illness in a blog post on the Philly at Heart blog. "There are very few moments when you can clearly see your life as separated into the before and after," Megan Short wrote. "Having a child born with a severe congenital heart defect has been the most significant shift of my life." She wrote that she began taking medication and going to therapy for her PTSD in the blog post, which was published in April. Despite the family's struggles, their Facebook pages seem to tell a different part of the story. Mark and Megan Short's profiles both show dozens of photos of them together and with their blond-haired children, smiling. On a photo of Mark Short and Megan posted on his page in December, he wrote, "She's still the most beautiful girl I've ever met ... I'm the luckiest guy in the world to have her as my wife and the mother of my three amazing children." Mark Short's relatives said they expected his body to be released Monday afternoon following an autopsy, and that they plan to have his funeral in Delaware County. They said Megan Short's family is handling arrangements for her and the children.

Hey did you  hear about that murder suicide that happened the other day? He shares the name as the school principals at the twins school, I really hope there is no correlation.  Its really scarey to think you really never know someone. I wonder somedays if my husband will snap on me. I can be a pain in the butt but he works alot and you never know what the future holds


This story is very very sad.   it seems almost every day and family member kills their entire family.   This article was distressing to read - their little girl had so many health problems.   The mom had PTSD.  Friends and relatives relayed they were great people.   Facebook indicates a wonderful life.  They are gone from this world and none of us know what happened behind closed door.


The person is male. Racially, the person is white. The person is 47 years old. The person has a two year associate degree. The person earns 29000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 6.5 in openness, 6.5 in conscientiousness, 7.0 in extraversion, 7.0 in agreeableness, and 7.0 in stability.

This is so sad and tragic. The most selfish thing to do is to take innocent lives, especially your own wife and kids! If this man had a mental breakdown over losing his wife he should have went to see a shrink and worked it out with his spouse. His kids were innocent and he denied them their lives. This was the most un-Godly and cowardly thing to do and I just have no words. I feel nothing but anger towards this man and extreme pity towards his wife and kids.


The person is female. Racially, the person is white. The person is 28 years old. The person has a two year associate degree. The person earns 50000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 6.0 in openness, 6.0 in conscientiousness, 5.0 in extraversion, 4.5 in agreeableness, and 3.5 in stability.

a man killed his family in a murder suicide. his wife had confessed to being abused on facebook. she was very close to leaving when she was murdered. they also had a few children together. this entire situation is so disturbing and sad. the fact that she was so close to escaping this situation but never got to breaks my history.


So, I just read a story about a family in which the husband and wife were going through domestic strife and the husband ended up murdering everyone and then killing himself. According to the article he attempted to put a band-aid on deeply rooted relationship issues by taking the family to Disney Land. Who thinks like that? Honestly, I can see taking any available route when desperate, but if your wife wants to leave you she is going to leave you.


Millions exposed to dangerous lead levels in US drinking water, report finds —  More than 18 million Americans are served drinking water by providers that have violated federal laws concerning lead in water, with only a tiny proportion of offenses resulting in any penalty, a new report has found. The toxic water crisis in Flint, Michigan, is “not anomalous”, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) report states, with widespread violations of national rules designed to protect people from lead, a known neurotoxin that is harmful even in small doses. NRDC’s analysis of US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data shows that 5,363 water systems, which provide water to more than 18 million people, breached the federal Lead and Copper Rule last year. These violations include the failure to properly test water for lead or inadequate treatment of water to prevent lead from leeching from old pipes into the drinking supply. Instructions provided varied greatly, ranging from those that contained protocols the EPA advised against a decade ago to those that were periodically updated Read more The violations occurred across virtually every US state last year. Most seriously, 1,110 community water utilities provided water that exceeded the EPA’s actionable limit for lead in water. This means that more than 3.9 million Americans were exposed to dangerously high levels of lead in 2015. Despite the widespread failure of water suppliers across the US, very few were punished by the EPA last year. Of more than 8,000 violations of federal laws, enforcement action was only taken against 11% of cases. Penalties were sought for just 3% of violations, meaning there is “no cop on the beat”, according to the NRDC. In a statement, the EPA said it recognized there are “ongoing challenges in compliance with the Lead and Copper Rule”. “The agency has intensified work with state drinking water programs with a priority focus on implementation of the rule, including engagement with every state drinking water program across the country to ensure they are addressing any high lead levels and fully implementing the current rule,” the regulator said. The EPA said that many water systems that violated the rules in 2015 have already resolved their problems. A revised Lead and Copper rule won’t appear until 2017 at the earliest, despite the widespread problems in Flint and beyond. “Flint symbolizes how disastrous the gaps are in the system and there really is a much broader problem across America,” said Erik Olson, director of NRDC’s health program. “Americans take for granted that the water flowing from their taps is clean and safe but that assumption is often false. “Providing safe drinking water to citizens is a fundamental government service. If you’re not doing that, you’re not doing your job. Unsafe drinking water is a national problem and it needs a national solution.” Flint residents hold bottles of contaminated water after attending a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on the water crisis. Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty Images Olson said that water utilities are routinely “gaming the system” to underplay the amount of lead found in water. The Guardian has revealed that at least 33 US cities have used various methods that can mask the true level of lead when conducting tests. In the wake of the Flint water crisis several schools have shut off their drinking water due to high levels of lead, raising the question: ‘How big is this issue?’ Read more The failure of the system to pick up violations is underscored by the fact that Flint wasn’t among the places considered in violation of the Lead and Copper Rule last year. The city, which has a poverty rate of around 40%, failed to treat drinking water to prevent lead corrosion when it switched its supply from Lake Huron to the Flint river. According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released this week, lead levels in the blood of Flint children aged under six were “significantly higher” once the supply change was made. The chances of a child having dangerously high lead levels increased by nearly 50% after the switch, the CDC found, risking developmental, behavioral and learning problems for thousands of children in Flint. Flint’s water is now considered by the EPA to be safe to drink if a filter is used. However, some lawmakers have voiced concerns that more needs to be done to avoid a repeat of the disaster that befell the Michigan city. “Flint wasn’t an isolated example,” said Dick Durbin, a Democrat senator. “We need a coordinated effort at all levels, we need people in communities to speak up so they don’t become the next Flint.”

This article really concerns and scares me. This could be any one of us effected by high levels of lead and never knowing. I am suprised that there is a level expectancy but no prosecution for exceeding it and not regular testing of water. The general population does not now about there water unless it becomes a national crisis like flint. I am very cocerned because they said so many communities are effected what is this doing to the children who are growing up on this water. I will be switching to bottled water because I just do not trust the water anymore to much covering up going on its so sad.


Reading this article on contaminated water is mind-boggling.   The work is done, reports are made, violations noted, and no one assesses any penalties.  Ludicrous!   Why do any of the work if nothing is done with the findings.  What other profession allows this!   Our government is ridiculous.   We need more Erin Brockovich's in this world to fine these folks millions and millions of dollars in fine.  I worry about our children.


I think having cities in the United States with bad drinking water is bad for the entire nation and should be address by the entire nation. I think there should be real punishment for the people in charge that do not make sure that the city has clean drinking water. I'm sad to read all the stats about other cities having the same issue.


Why isn't the EPA assessing fines for violations?   So presently you just get a violation but no repercussions.   Another example of ridiculous wasted government who sits on their behinds and doesn't do their job.   I feel every year we need a completely new group of employees in every division in the government.   It's ridiculous.   The next most treasured commodity will be clean water everywhere.


Death of former Putin aide at D.C. hotel is ruled accidental —  A onetime aide of Russian President Vladimir Putin whose body was found last year in a D.C. hotel room died of head injuries suffered in accidental falls after days of “excessive” drinking, authorities in Washington said Friday as they closed the death investigation. Mikhail Y. Lesin, 57, a former Russian advertising executive who helped create the Kremlin’s global English-language Russia Today television network, was found dead Nov. 5 in the upscale Dupont Circle Hotel, and for much of a year, the manner of death was ruled “undetermined.” [Former Putin aide found dead in D.C. hotel] The manner has been amended to an accident with “acute ethanol intoxication” as a contributing cause, the office of U.S. Attorney Channing D. Phillips said Friday. Lesin was alone in his hotel room at the time of the falls, the statement said. The new ruling was made by the office of the D.C. chief medical examiner. Shortly after Lesin’s body was found, his family said he died as the result of a heart attack. More than four months later, the chief medical examiner’s office and D.C. police set off worldwide speculation when they said Lesin had suffered blunt-force injuries to his head and elsewhere on his body, although not explicitly declaring his death a criminal act. [Death investigation remains mystery] The statement Friday said that the investigation determined from video footage, interviews and other evidence that Lesin entered his room for the final time about 10:45 a.m. Nov. 4 after days of excessive alcohol consumption and was found dead the next morning. He “sustained the injuries that resulted in his death while alone in his hotel room,” the statement said. [Former aide died of blunt force trauma, medical examiner says] Lesin died of blunt-force injuries to his head, the statement said, and also suffered injuries to his neck, torso, arms and legs caused by falls. In describing the investigation, the statement referred to “new evidence” developed in the nearly year-long investigation. Asked about that reference, Bill Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office, said, “We typically do not comment on specifics of our investigation and have no further comment on this particular matter.” On Friday, interim D.C. police chief Peter Newsham said, “I am comfortable with the ruling being an accidental death.” The investigation of Lesin’s death was conducted by D.C. police and the U.S. attorney’s office with assistance from the FBI, the statement said. Lesin, who made his fortune in the advertising business in the 1990s, was an architect of the Kremlin-dominated media landscape under Putin. As minister of the press during Putin’s first term as president from 2000 to 2004, Lesin orchestrated the takeover of the independent television network NTV and oversaw government propaganda and censorship laws during the war in Chechnya. In 2005, he helped launch Russia Today, now RT, a government-funded channel that broadcasts news with a pro-Moscow slant around the world. Known for his volatile temper, Lesin was reported to have antagonized powerful media interests, and an investigation by the anti-Putin whistleblower Alexei Navalny in 2014 revealed that Lesin owned real estate in the United States worth millions of dollars. He resigned later that year as head of Gazprom-Media, a holding company that owns several prominent pro-Kremlin TV networks, and kept a low profile until his death. Two days before his body was found, Lesin failed to appear as expected at a $10,000-a-table fundraiser in Washington organized by the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, whose honorees included a philanthropist and chief executive of the largest private bank in Russia. Kremlin critics earlier this year theorized that Lesin may have been killed because officials feared that he was about to cut a deal with federal authorities investigating his land dealings in California. However, a longtime friend and business associate of Lesin’s, Sergey Vasiliev, said in March that he believed that Lesin died after a bout of heavy drinking, an account he said he formed after speaking to the Russian Foreign Ministry and others familiar with the sequence of events. Andrew Roth and Peter Hermann contributed to this report.

You can never trust Russian government. Putin usually \cleans up\" anyone who is again him or not \"useful\". A guy does not \"accidentally\" die in a hotel from mysterious injuries-he gets taken out. Anyone who buys this story is out of their mind. Dictators and communists always take out people who are against them!"


The person is female. Racially, the person is white. The person is 25 years old. The person has a college or university degree. The person earns 60000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 5.0 in openness, 6.0 in conscientiousness, 2.0 in extraversion, 5.0 in agreeableness, and 6.0 in stability.

lol, yeah, definitely an accidental death when the guy shows up with blows all over his body, makes perfect sense. I'm not surprised, though ‚Äî anything involving Russia is going to have some kind of cover up at play. It's hard to say who did it, though ‚Äî his own government or someone outside of it. It's a messed up situation.


Any time an official or aid is found death from Russia or another major country, I feel like they did not die or natural causes. The story said the aid died from drinking too much then falling. I could believe that if the story did not say that the aid fell more than one time. I can see one fall hitting your head then dying, but I can not see more than one fall.


Well I mainly just feel sad for the family of this guy.  I mean, it sounds like he drank himself to death.  That was clearly his own decision and his own doing, not something that he fell victim too.  I guess it is unfortunate that it happened but jeez if you are going to abuse alcohol that badly then what do you expect?  This is the type of thing htat happens when people make bad choices and unfortunately too often it is their family members who are left behind to pay the price and suffer.


After reading this article, i couldn't help but wonder if it is telling the truth of not. I thought that you would never really know if it was accidental or not because the government could just be hiding the truth from everyone. They are not as democratic as the United States so i am sure they hide things fro mtheir people.


The person is male. Racially, the person is white. The person is 36 years old. The person has a college or university degree. The person earns 40000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 7.0 in openness, 7.0 in conscientiousness, 7.0 in extraversion, 7.0 in agreeableness, and 7.0 in stability.

A month after Hurricane Matthew, 800,000 Haitians urgently need food —  FONDTOUTANU, Haiti — There is no food, so along the road through the mountains there are children begging for something to eat. Most of the trucks rumble past with donations for somewhere else. But one stopped here the other day with sacks of rice, beans and dried herring, setting off a stampede. Valleur Noel, a trim, short man with a checkered shirt and a shiny crucifix, climbed to the top of the tailgate and told everyone to calm down. It was futile. His organization, Pwoje Men Kontre, had 412 bags of food, a gift from the German ambassador and U.S. donors. Within minutes there were people pouring through a notch between the mountains, hollering and stumbling down the rocky hillside toward the truck. “No pushing, no pushing!” Noel yelled. “There is enough for everyone!” It wasn’t true. The latecomers got nothing. But many others did, and Figaro Phito, 29, hugged his sack with both arms, like a pillow. “This will keep us alive until another donation arrives,” he said. “Because that is our only way to survive right now.” A month after Hurricane Matthew blasted through southwestern Haiti, the region is a blighted, apocalyptic landscape of wrecked homes and growling hunger. At least 800,000 people need food urgently, according to the United Nations, including more than two-thirds of families in the worst-hit departments of Grand’Anse and Sud. Emergency help is arriving, but there is not enough of it, and it will take several more weeks to reach remote mountain communities where officials say the destruction was total. The desperation is so explosive that truckloads of food and medical supplies have been looted by crowds gathered along the roadways. A teenage boy was killed Tuesday by police in the city of Les Cayes, where hungry crowds burned tires and blocked roads. Haitian police shot four people, one fatally, on Oct. 26 in the coastal village of Dame Marie, where the arrival of an aid shipment sent crowds surging onto the docks. The Oct. 4 hurricane hit some of the poorest places in the Western hemisphere. It smashed fishing villages and shredded mountain hamlets with the force of a bomb blast, obliterating crops, killing livestock and leaving fruit trees as bare as matchsticks. Haiti, a country still digging out from its devastating 2010 earthquake, will need months of emergency aid to stave off famine, according to relief groups and government officials. More than 141,000 storm victims are in shelters, and those are just the ones with someplace to go. “We are sleeping under the trees,” said Jeudina Alexis, 63, who hadn’t eaten in two days but now had a sack of food from Noel to carry home up the mountain. In some towns, 80 to 90 percent of homes were destroyed by Matthew’s 140-mile-per-hour winds. The Category 4 storm converted tin roofing panels into flying razors and broken tree branches into spears. The death toll stands at 546, according to the government, but local officials have reported more than twice that many killed. Some remote mountain villages are so inaccessible that government emergency workers say they will not be able to reach them until the end of November. One man who walked out of the mountains recently after hiking two days told authorities that too many people had died in his town to bury the bodies, so villagers burned them and put the ashes in the river. The United Nations has raised just one-third of the $120 million in emergency funding it says it needs to help 750,000 people, including 315,000 children, get through the next three months. Noel has told his donors he will need to feed people for even longer. “If they plant sweet potatoes and corn, it will be three or four months before they can harvest, but they don’t have seeds,” he said. ‘We are starving, too’ The storm-hit areas have reported at least 3,500 suspected cholera cases in recent weeks, but some of the outbreaks are happening in far-off settlements where help has yet to arrive. The aid organization Doctors Without Borders recently sent staff by helicopter to one village, Pourcine, to investigate reports of a patient with cholera, only to find 20 stricken from it. The disease spreads rampantly once the bacteria enters the water supply. “We are sending materials to contain the epidemic, but there are people dying from cholera every day,” said Emmanuel Massart, the group’s field coordinator in Grand’Anse. It is largely a challenge of distribution. Tim Callahan, the U.S. official in charge of the American emergency response, said the U.S. government has delivered 34 metric tons of water treatment tablets to Haiti, enough to supply the entire country for three months. But getting them to families is another matter because roads are impassable or nonexistent in the worst-affected areas. The 2010 earthquake killed at least 200,000 and damaged many of the government buildings in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince. The city was largely spared by the recent storm, and that has allowed the Haitian government to take a more active role in directing the relief effort, Callahan and others say. Peter Mulrean, the U.S. ambassador to Haiti, said the fact that so many international relief organizations were doing post-quake reconstruction left them better prepared to respond to the hurricane. Unlike in the post-quake period, when aid efforts were often haphazard and inefficient, international relief organizations have been coordinating their donations and activities with Haitian officials, using the network of modern, air-conditioned emergency response centers set up in every region after the earthquake. “We want Haitian institutions to come out stronger than before,” Mulrean said. But the man-made disasters of Haitian politics remain an obstacle. Last year’s contested presidential election led to a political impasse and the installation of a caretaker government. New elections are scheduled for Nov. 20, but it’s hard to see how Haitian officials can deliver and count ballots in hurricane-hit areas. Making matters worse, the public schools that double as polling stations are being used as homeless shelters. At the Lycee Nord Alexis in Jeremie, the battered capital of Grand’Anse, children sleep on the cement floors of classrooms, some naked or clothed in adult-sized T-shirts that hang below the knee. Food comes irregularly. The blind, disabled and maimed lie around in dark, stifling rooms, swarmed by mosquitoes. Guerline Brumaches, 40, was languishing in a corner, naked from the waist up, with a suppurating wound the size of a baseball on her swollen left foot where she had been cut by flying debris. A month-old chemistry lesson was written on the chalkboard above her. Flies nibbled at her foot. “If I lose my foot, I don’t know what I’ll do,” she said. The school had no running water. One of the stairwells had become a latrine. Xavier Charlemagne, 20, said there were several hundred people sleepingevery night in the classrooms and corridors. “We’re not leaving until they give us tarps,” he said. Jeremie is the only town with large-scale daily food distribution in Grand’Anse, in part because it is the only place with armed security to suppress potential rioting. The U.N. World Food Program gives out 1,000 one-month rations of rice, chickpeas and cooking oil each day in the central plaza, in the shadow of a 200-year-old cathedral with a ripped-off roof. But the sight of so many convoys headed to Jeremie has stirred resentment in towns that say they are not getting their share. At one highway junction where a broken-down truck carrying beans had been attacked a day earlier, dozens of young men lingered on a recent day, watching for signs of mechanical trouble among the vehicles groaning up the pass, as if stalking wounded herd animals. “We are starving, too,” said Ricardo Dauphin, 29, alongside dozens of other men in the town of Carrefour Charles, watching U.N. trucks roll by in a cloud of dust, escorted by police and Brazilian soldiers. There is no electricity across a wide swath of southern Haiti where utility lines are down, so at night families burn storm debris and garbage with huge bonfires that leap into the darkness and foul the air. On a muddy hillside near the town of Cavaillon, scores of people have settled in crude lean-tos made of sticks, plastic and tattered bedsheets. The nearby river flooded in the storm, forcing those living along the banks to higher ground. Olicia Jean-Louis, 23, said her widowed mother was washed away in the storm, along with the family’s house and all the secondhand footwear they used to sell in the market. Now Jean-Louis was in charge of her siblings, ages 12, 10, 5 and 2. The youngest ones had started calling her “mama,” she said. None of them had eaten that day, Jean-Louis said. It was raining again, and the 2-year-old boy, naked, leaned into her threadbare blue dress, his nose running. Asked what she would do next, Jean-Louis shook her head. “I will rely on you,” she said. “Can you help me?”

It's terrible to hear about what people have to go through in Haiti after a crisis like hurricane Matthew. I take for granted what it's like to live in an area where I and my family do not have to worry about these situations. I hope everyone receives the help they need in Haiti, as I'm sure they need all of the assistance they can get.


After reading the article, the only feelings i can say that i have is one of sadness. It's terrible that these people had this unfortunate hurricane hit them. There was nothing they could have really done and they definiteyl did not deserve this. The fact that there are little children with no food or water really hurts me. There are most likely animals out there that are in need of food and water as well.


This situation in Haiti is terrible and saddening. no person in this day and age should suffer at the hands of their government while no one does anything to help. It is sad to see such suffering and hungry people. How can a country be that terrible. How does next to nobody help these poor innocent people.


The person is male. Racially, the person is white. The person is 19 years old. The person has a went to college but did not get a degree. The person earns 40000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 4.0 in openness, 6.0 in conscientiousness, 1.5 in extraversion, 6.0 in agreeableness, and 6.0 in stability.

I just read an article about recent tragedies that have taken place on the island of hati. It talked about a hurricane and then the earthquake that happend their. Both were awful, terrible events. Many people were dis placed and chaos ensued. This was because many homes were destroyed and people did not have the chance to settle down after these disasters


In the 21st century, people are still starving after major disasters.   This earthquake destroyed Haiti and in my opinion, there was not enough food that was brought in from other countries.   I constantly wonder how this continues to be such a slow, slow process.   I have been to Haiti and the country is hard enough just to live without major catastrophic disasters.


Miami Marlins star pitcher Jose Fernandez killed in boating accident —  Miami Marlins pitcher José Fernández, who defected from Cuba at 15 and went on to become one of baseball's brightest stars, was killed early Sunday in a boating accident, Florida authorities said.   Fernández, who was 24, and two other men were found dead after their boat was discovered at the entrance of Miami Harbor, said Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokesman Lorenzo Veloz. Coast Guard personnel on patrol noticed the vessel upside down on the north end of a rocky jetty shortly after 3:15 a.m., Veloz said at a news conference. Divers recovered two bodies under the boat, and a third victim was found on the rocks. The names of the two other victims -- also in their 20s -- are being withheld until relatives are notified. The men were Fernandez's friends, Veloz said. Veloz said Fernández's death was a loss to Miami, to baseball and to anyone who ever met him. "He was pillar to our community. He was involved in everything that he could be to give back," Veloz said. "I had the experience of talking to him several times -- down-to-earth, great person ... I'm sorry I'm getting goosebumps right now. It's really hitting home and it's horrible." Based on impact evidence and the severity of damage, officials concluded the boat -- a 32-foot SeaVee center console model -- hit the rocks at full speed, Veloz said. Top speed on the boat would be between 50 mph and 65 mph, depending on the engines with which it was equipped, according to SeeVee's website. Fernández was a passenger on the boat, and was not the owner, Veloz said. "The boat is a total loss right now from what we can see," Veloz said. "It's horrible, it's bad, it's bad." Drugs and alcohol did not appear to be factors in the accident, he said, but he added that investigators had been been unable to get under the overturned wreckage. Autopsies have not been conducted. None of the three victims was wearing a life vest, he said. "The magnanimity of his personality transcended culture, religion and race, I mean it just did," Marlins President David Samson said at a news conference where he was flanked by the team and other officials. Several people appeared visibly shaken. "Jose is a member of this family for all time," Samson said. "His story is representative of a story of hope, and of love and of faith, and no one will ever let that story die." Sunday's game against the Atlanta Braves has been canceled. The Marlins' game against the Atlanta Braves on Sunday was canceled, Samson said. "When you watch kids playing Little League... that's the joy that Jose played with -- and the passion he felt about playing," said Marlins Manager Don Mattingly, stopping midsentence to wipe away tears. He appeared too emotionally shaken to continue. People we've lost in 2016 Fernández was born in Santa Clara, Cuba, and defected to the United States in 2008. Drafted by the Marlins in 2011, he went on to become the franchise's star pitcher, named National League Rookie of the Year 2013 and a two-time All-Star. But his story is about more than baseball accolades, and Mattingly certainly isn't the only person to shed tears over Fernández's death. The oft-smiling Fernández had many friends in the game, owing to his cheerful demeanor and fierce competitiveness. He also owned what Miami Herald sportswriter Dan Le Batard once called a "rags to pitches" story that many, especially those in Florida's Cuban-American communities, found inspiring. In 2008, Fernández made his fourth attempt to flee Cuba, according to a 2013 Miami Herald story. He'd been jailed for a previous failed attempt and, this time, was attempting to reach America, via Mexico, with his mother and sister. Once on the open water, the newspaper reported, someone fell off of the boat, and Fernández, a good swimmer, asked no questions; he jumped in to save the person. It turned out to be his mother, Maritza. "I dove to help a person not thinking who that person was. Imagine when I realized it was my own mother. If that does not leave a mark on you for the rest of your life, I don't know what will," he told the Herald. Once in the United States, Fernández had trouble adjusting. Fifteen at the time, he missed his grandmother, Olga, desperately, Le Batard wrote in a 2013 profile. Back home, he was "really, really poor," Fernández told his fellow Cuban-American Le Batard, and he was happy to make $4 a day selling tomatoes and onions. In the U.S., the simplest things, such as computers and motion-activated faucets, eluded him. He wrote phone numbers down in a book because he didn't realize his phone would store them, the profile said. His grasp of English didn't extend much beyond curse words. But there was one language besides Spanish that he understood perfectly: baseball. As a high school sophomore, Fernández threw 94-mph fastballs, as fast as some pros, and he led Braulio Alonso High School to two state championships, Le Batard reported. The Marlins selected him in the first round of 2011 Major League Baseball draft, and he first took the mound for them in April 2013 en route to National League Rookie of the Year honors. It was after that season -- when Fernández told Le Batard how much he missed Olga, who had climbed to her Santa Clara roof with a radio to catch the Marlins games when Fernández pitched -- that the Marlins arranged a surprise. A heartwarming reunion While he conducted an interview in the Marlins locker room that ventured into the topics of his mother and grandmother, whose names he has tattooed inside his bicep, the interviewer asks Fernandez what Olga would tell him if she were there in Miami. "I don't think she would be here," he replied, his sadness evident in his eyes. Little did he know that Olga had arrived in Miami a half hour prior. The Marlins had arranged for her visa. As Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria escorts Olga into the locker room, Fernández beams a boyish grin, clearly in disbelief. He says only, "Oh," as she rushes over to him. His face is bright red as Olga embraces him for the first time in six years. "Oh my God," he says, almost as if he's exhaling. "You've got to be kidding me." "You look so great, papi. You look so great," Olga tells him in Spanish as he clutches her, kissing the top of her head. Jeffrey Loria explained the team's motivation in getting Olga to the United States. "Having watched the dynamic unfold with him, caring about his grandmother so much, it kind of came to our attention here. We have a big family here in this organization and there was a link missing in that family so we closed the gap. We got her here," he said. Baseball world stunned News of his death sent shockwaves through the baseball community, with players and fans alike taking to social media to express their grief. "We are stunned and devastated," Major League Baseball said in a statement. "I've never met anyone who extracted more joy, more passion out of what he did than José Fernández," baseball analyst Buster Olney said on ESPN. "When you watched him pitch, he loved it so much. He had so much emotion." "He's sort of the American dream for the Cuban baseball player," Le Batard said. "This kid is a symbol for Cuban life and the things that can be accomplished in this country." Former MLB pitcher Dan Haren tweeted: "Jose Fernandez is one of the most genuine guys I've ever played with. He loved life, he loved baseball... he will be missed dearly." Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred issued a statement saying, "He was one of our game's great young stars who made a dramatic impact on and off the field since his debut in 2013." Many fans spoke of their sadness that, having already achieved remarkable sporting success, Fernández's life had been cut short just as he was starting a family. Five days ago, the young star had posted a picture to Instagram of his pregnant girlfriend, with the caption: "I'm so glad you came into my life. I'm ready for where this journey is gonna take us together." Baseball fan Matt Birnbach wrote: "Jose was a reason you watched baseball. He was must-see TV and his personality is what made him great. Absolutely crushed right now."

I just read an article about a baseball player who was killed with two other men when his boat crashed at high speed. They really made a concerted effort to paint this guy as a saint and I'm sure that he was a nice enough person, but the circumstances of his death were very mysterious. I wouldn't be surprised if drugs or alcohol were involved.


The person is female. Racially, the person is white. The person is 27 years old. The person has a went to technical / vocational school. The person earns 25000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 6.0 in openness, 6.0 in conscientiousness, 6.0 in extraversion, 6.0 in agreeableness, and 6.0 in stability.

Reading this story just made me feel so sad. Reading about him you could tell he was just a great guy that everyone loved and did alot to give back. It is sad how easily life can be taken. You can also see the team cherished him as they even got a visa and brought over his mother for him. People will really miss him in the community and team and that is the best thing to leave behind a legacy. It is so odd that they went full speed into the rocks, I wonder if some kind of medical emergency happened as they said they did not suspect drugs or alchol. It is also sad that two other people lost there lives. Time is very precious on this earth


Jose Fernandez, a pitcher for the Miama Marlins baseball team, was killed in a tragic boating accident. He was only 24 years old when he and two others were found dead near the entrance of Miami Harbor. Coast Guard employees found his boat upside down and found the three victims lifeless nearby following this accident.


The person is male. Racially, the person is white. The person is 29 years old. The person has a college or university degree. The person earns 85000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 6.75 in openness, 6.75 in conscientiousness, 6.75 in extraversion, 6.75 in agreeableness, and 7.0 in stability.

After reading the article, my initial and first reaction is that i felt really bad for the player. There are things like accidents that we can't control and the fact that it happened to this person is very unfortunate. I feel really bad for the person and for the family of the player as well. I really hope he can make a full recovery and is able to find something he really enjoys.


The person is male. Racially, the person is asian / pacific islander. The person is 33 years old. The person has a went to college but did not get a degree. The person earns 36000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 4.25 in openness, 4.25 in conscientiousness, 4.5 in extraversion, 4.25 in agreeableness, and 3.75 in stability.

Its a shame what happened to that pitcher after all the struggles he had to get to the position he was in he died in a terrible boating accident it seems that fate does not care who you are when it is your time to die you will die in the exact time and place that you were meant to die I guess its life.


Brothers Behind Bars —  “The only photograph I had of her, growing up, is from a scrapbook from a social worker,” Shelton McElroy says about his mother, “from a visitation that we had at a women’s prison called Pewee Valley.” Shelton and his two brothers grew up careening between one foster home to the next. Their mother had been sentenced to prison when Shelton was just 4 and his brothers were 6 and 8 years old. Neither Shelton nor his brothers were ever adopted, and he sees his and one of his brother’s subsequent prison sentences as extensions of the same state-ward system they grew up in. “We never came out of it,” he says. “From being a ward of the state from 4 to 12, in less than six months, I was a prison ward of the state.”   At first, the brothers were sent to two different foster homes in their hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. “My earliest memories are of being in this place called the Home of the Innocent,” Shelton says. “I was in a crib with other kids, because they had so many kids, each of us couldn’t have our own crib. It wasn’t with Mom. I do have vague recollections with Mom.” As the youngest of the group, Shelton was allowed to go to the same foster home as his oldest brother, William. Middle-child David went to another foster home alone. About every other week, Shelton would visit him. Later on, when Shelton was 6 years old, the three were assigned together to a foster home in Fort Knox, a military base outside the city. For a time, it seemed possible that the sergeant who’d taken them in might even adopt the three of them together. “We ended up messing that up,” Shelton says. It came down to a bike. While at a swimming pool on base, David, then 8, stole a bicycle. Shelton jumped on the back, and the two started pedaling away from the pool and toward the sergeant’s house. But the sergeant’s two biological sons jumped out from behind some bushes, catching the two boys with the contraband red-handed. According to Shelton, the sergeant was embarrassed, and he sent the brothers back to the foster-care system. “We had that happen a lot,” says Shelton. “We’d go somewhere with particular people being interested in us, maybe 10 times, and then we would get sent away.” As the boys got older, Shelton says, the possibility of being adopted began to fade: “You get to an age where three black boys are… there’s really a low probability of anybody taking us. That started to be really apparent to the social workers.” The fact that David had been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and prescribed Ritalin likely did not help his case. William, on the other hand, exhibited no behavioral issues and instead showed musical aptitude and high intelligence. So administrators nominated him for a special foster-care program for promising children. “If you were in foster care, it was the one place in the whole state of Kentucky that everybody wanted to go,” Shelton says. But he wasn’t so lucky: “I ended up going to a group home for misbehavior.”   After just a few months, he was returned to the foster-care mill. That’s when, on Halloween, Shelton pointed a BB gun at a couple of young girls and demanded they give him their candy. “I was arrested and charged with wanton endangerment,” he says. That would be his first experience in a men’s jail; at the time, there were no separate facilities for juvenile arrestees in Kentucky. Because he was underage, Shelton had to be separated from the general population in the men’s jail until his trial. When he was finally sentenced, he was sent to another group home for a couple of years. Following his release, Shelton ran away from the foster-care system. He was homeless. Desperate and hungry, Shelton broke into the house of a friend who dealt weed—and who kept his stash at home. Shelton planned to steal the drugs and sell them. But he lingered too long, eating sandwiches and drinking beer. He was caught and charged with burglary. The mandatory sentence for that crime was between one and five years. The judge gave Shelton four. From 16 to 18, Shelton lived in Georgetown, Kentucky, a dry county with a handful of bootleg businesses. He got by with petty crime—stealing things and trading them for cash. At night, he slept in a bootlegging den. “Sitting down at a dinner table with my head on my arms for rest at night,” he says. By the time he turned 18, Shelton had not seen David for four years.   By his 19th birthday, Shelton was in prison again for a minor crime—but he broke out. “I climbed this 16-foot-high razor-wire fence and escaped,” Shelton says. “I was caught less than three or four hours later.” For that, a judge added three years to his sentence, for a new total of seven years. The maximum-security prison he was then sent to had two 16-foot-high razor-wire fences back to back and gun towers around the perimeter.   Shelton reimagines the scene in disbelief: “I come in a petty criminal, but now I’m incarcerated with people with every level and degree of charges.” He served at Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex, known as the “Pink Palace” because of its paint job. Inside, the building was organized into two halves, each housing about 1,000 inmates. The two sets rarely mix, but they can see one another through thick glass partitions. On occasion, some of them might run into each other in the library or medical area. One day in the cafeteria, as he was pushing his tray down the food line, someone caught his eye. “Across from me, it’s the first time in almost five years that I’ve seen my biological brother David,” he says. “You can’t really put that in words, what that’s like, to look across and see your brother through glass.” Through improvised sign language, they arranged to meet. “My brother was in there for murder at 19 years old,” Shelton says. “He had murdered a man who had tried to steal his drugs from him. It was a drug deal gone bad. He fought his case completely himself.” As Shelton tells it, the judge wouldn’t allow David to represent himself alone and assigned him an attorney, but David took the lead and eventually got his charge reduced to manslaughter and a 10-year sentence. The two brothers were able to move into a cell together. “It was awkward and strained and still is to this day,” Shelton says of the adjustment to one another after such a long absence. Shelton says it felt more like being half-brothers, and they would often even refer to one another as “brothers from different fathers.”   Being brothers also had an unexpected consequence. “It actually increased the potential for violence, because were somebody to have a beef with me, now they understand that my brother was there,” Shelton says. “You have to know that you’re going to fight my brother and me. Then you need to go get a couple of people, and then that turns into maybe a gang.” But that kind of escalation also put the differences between the two brothers into sharp relief. David may have been in for the more violent and serious crime, but it was Shelton who was into “a bunch of inappropriate activity” in prison. By contrast, David was a “model prisoner” who did not fight, who converted to Islam, and changed his name from David to Dawud. “I was playing poker and gambling and being involved,” says Shelton. “If anybody smuggled in any kind of drugs, I wanted in on it—maybe not to use it as much as to sell it. [David] wasn’t. I kind of brought more drama his way than he would have anticipated.” David also ended up leaving prison before his younger brother, because Shelton compounded his sentence by constantly getting into trouble while in custody.   At 25, Shelton was finally released from prison. He headed home to Louisville.   The three brothers had become strangers to each other. After decades of personal limbo between foster homes, juvenile institutions, and bouts of incarcerations, the three lost touch. While Shelton and David struggled to create lives they could be proud of, William, who had gone to the special foster program for gifted children, found success. Shelton says that William was “older, wiser, more settled, not having behavior issues.” He got a job and a car. He visited his younger brothers when he could. Once William surprised Shelton by bringing a young girl along with him on a prison visit; she was their youngest sibling, a child their mother had had after being released from prison herself.     William tried to be there for his brothers. He hired an attorney for Shelton and paid the legal fees. But the circumstances would prove overwhelming, even for a committed older brother. “He really became very dismayed,” Shelton says. “He gave up, because he tried so hard.” But it’s hard to help someone when they won’t help themselves. “The pressure was always on Will to be some kind of father figure,” Shelton says. “He never could do it to the level that he put on himself and maybe even the level we put on him.” Shelton recalled his brother trying to offer support to David and himself while also attempting to get close to the new sister who had appeared in their lives. “It was just too much for him,” Shelton says. “He’s this guy trying to weave all of these things together.”   William ended up leaving the United States for a while. He lived in multiple places, including the Netherlands and London. “Him traveling internationally and getting away from it all was, for him, probably the best thing he could have done, because we were real selfish,” Shelton says. Even from across an ocean, William’s brothers still demanded much from him. “My letters to him were all about ‘I need money for this, I need money for that,’ with no idea what I was asking a young man to provide. I really wanted him to be my father. I wanted him to provide just as if a father or my mother would provide to me.”   Today, William is a music producer and entrepreneur with his own business. Both David and Shelton are fathers, but David struggles with addiction. Maybe the good behavior in prison and the conversion to Islam were not enough to fill the void that a troubled life had left him with. “Now the roles have changed,” Shelton says. “He actually tells relatives of mine that he’s younger than me. The role has turned into me being this older brother to him.” He worries about David constantly. “He’s stuck. He’s stuck. My brother will reference what happened in 1983 as if that’s justification for why he’s at the hospital witnessing the birth of his baby six months early and yet he’s asking me for $5 for gas money.” David seems to be “not healing, not overcoming, not being able to rewrite the narrative of his story, and really being stuck in his resentful, bitter state,” Shelton says. That wisdom has been hard to come by for Shelton. After cycling through the foster-care system from the time he was 4, and then rotating through the correctional system from age 18 to 27, Shelton was left with a fractured existence, knowing little about the world beyond those institutions. His experiences cemented his belief in the interconnectivity of the foster system and the penal system in the United States. “A lot of my concern is about how that system perpetuates and helps to contribute to the prison-industrial complex,” Shelton says. “How the foster-care system has done that in a really insidious way.”   “I’d been running away from foster homes and trying to get to Louisville my whole life,” he says, looking for a family that didn’t exist—not the way he needed it to. Usually when Shelton ran away as a teenager, he’d be found within three days and be sent back to foster care, back to the system. But during those furtive days of freedom he’d search for his extended family. “I would get a phone book and look up ‘McElroy,’” he says. “I would say, ‘Are you a McElroy?’” Nine times out of 10, he heard a stranger on the other end of the line say, “Nope, don’t know you.” But once in a while, he’d stumble on a cousin or older relative. When the topic turned to his mother, there was little variation to the answers: “We don’t know where your mom’s at.”   His mother’s drug addition and mental-health complications contributed to an untenable situation that led to the brothers’ removal. But it didn’t have to be an irrevocable severing. Through William, Shelton saw his mother again while she was raising his half-sister. His mother was receiving appropriate help and had become functional, even successful, and was leading her life instead of falling prey to it. What if they had reconnected earlier? “We don’t have a system that’s set up that helps people that struggle with mental health. The only way our system knows how to do it is to take their children and not even to look at familial alternatives,” Shelton says. “In Europe, they never terminate the parents’ rights, never. In the U.S., they terminate the rights.” As a result, he says, there’s a lot of unnecessary hurt, and “every foster child at 18 is looking for their biological family.” In his late 20s, Shelton recognized that to become a man, he’d have to go it alone. “I started this introspection, this external experience of rebuilding who I was without foster care as the dominating factor, without being a child who had no mother or father—becoming a man who didn’t have that as the catalyst of his life,” he says. “The only way you do that and you move forward is turning it into some way to help others heal. The pain is there, but as long as you’re healing others in that nexus, you don’t suffer from it. It becomes almost like gold in your hands when you walk toward another person who suffered any atrocity—molestation, incarceration. You just go to them in this genuine way, and you say, ‘Let me tell you just a snippet about me, so that you identify, and you know that I come from a very similar, horrific background.’”   At age 39, Shelton now has a master’s degree and is a trained counselor. Today, he works at an alcohol-counseling program for recently released inmates. He also does pro bono work with families who “have lost their children to the system” to help them navigate their cases until they are reunited with their kids. He has also worked in the foster-care system itself, helping children redefine the narratives of their lives. His own experiences, of course, are central to his work. “I can connect with you from my pain and also show you my change and make it so that you realize that it’s possible,” Shelton says. “That’s what my life has been about.”

Its amazing how people facing the toughest hardships can turn their life around and really make something of yourself if you put your mind to it. His brother converted to Islam that probably helps people in Jail when you need some structure to really get yourself in a place where you can learn about yourself


I guess I feel bad whenever these stories involve the depiction of children struggling.  Putting kids into foster homes where they must feel so confused and alone and scared makes me feel for them.  On the other hand, there's a reality to these situations that can't be ignored.  The real germ of these childrens' problem was their mother going to jail.  That's the germ.  After that they have to be raised by someone.  And then the children compound their problem by being delinquents.  I knew a boy who'd been adopted after growing up in a very violent environment.  The damage had already been done.  He tore apart the adoptive family and ruined his own life.  He's in jail in China now, for 20 years.  These situations are horrendous, but the fault lies with the parents, not the state.


This article really maes you think about the foster care system in america. We are one of the richest and advanced nations but yet our foster care system is low and bad. Compared to europes who keep the parental rights kids are left to wonder here. Children like this situation who have no structure get put in foster care and seen as bad ids when in reality they just need more love affection and direction.There should be more care done for these children as there life is just bad from the time there put in care. I feel so sorry these brothers had to grow up like this but happy he turned his life around got an education and is now in a career to help others and foster care children.


The person is male. Racially, the person is white. The person is 29 years old. The person has a went to college but did not get a degree. The person earns 39000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 6.5 in openness, 6.0 in conscientiousness, 1.0 in extraversion, 6.0 in agreeableness, and 5.5 in stability.

I just read an article about a few siblings who went through the foster system in Kentucky and all ended up in prison for different reasons. Eventually, one of them went on to attain a masters degree and work with people who have to deal with similar circumstances. Unfortunately, I think this story is all too common with children who go through the foster system.


This kind of stuff makes me sad to hear... I'm glad that it seems that he rose above it, but a kids life should never be this hard or sad. Kids should not have to worry about where their going to live or who their going to live with. They should just have to be kids, and focus on learning and growing.


The person is male. Racially, the person is black / african american. The person is 37 years old. The person has a college or university degree. The person earns 40000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 5.5 in openness, 7.0 in conscientiousness, 1.0 in extraversion, 6.5 in agreeableness, and 6.0 in stability.

The human and animal costs of India's unregulated coal industry —  India is one of the largest producers of coal in the world and more than half of its commercial energy needs are met by coal. But unregulated mining has caused serious health and environmental issues, and led to growing conflicts between elephants and humans. In the coal-rich central state of Chhattisgarh, for example, fly ash has caused respiratory problems and serious illnesses like tuberculosis among people, but their troubles don't end there. Forests are being cleared for coal mining and wild elephants are entering villages in search of food and attacking people. Photojournalist Subrata Biswas has documented the fallout of India's dependence on coal. "As thousands of acres of forest land are destroyed to mining, foraging elephants attracted by the crops in the fields often enter villages, resulting in an alarmingly high number of human-elephant conflict situations," says Biswas. Officials estimate elephants have been responsible for 8,657 incidents of property damage and 99,152 incidents of crop damage in Chhattisgarh between 2005 and 2014. "We were sleeping when the elephants broke into our room. Somehow we managed to escape but I fractured my left leg when a large part of the wall fell on my leg. My husband saved my life," says Rujri Khalkho, 70, whose home was damaged by a herd of wild elephants almost a year ago. A compensation of 10,000 rupees ($149; £114) has not been enough to repair her house or pay for her medical care. Deaths of elephants due to electrocution have become common in the state. In Dharamjaigarh, the most affected area, officials have recorded 30 elephant and 75 human deaths so far. In 2009, Kanti Bai Sau, 40, lost her home and farm to an open-cast coal mine. She was promised compensation of 200,000 rupees ($2,980; £2,290) and a job to a family member, but received neither. Her son died last year of respiratory complications. "There is no fresh air to breath, fresh water to drink. Coal has usurped everything here." "We lived next to this mine for almost 10 years and watched helplessly as our wells went dry, forests disappeared and fields become unproductive," says Girja Bai Chauhan. "We have lost almost eight acres of our fields to the mine and authorities haven't fulfilled a single promise they made while acquiring land. They sent us into a dark future and unhealthy environment to live and breathe in." Pipelines carry fly ash slurry from a local thermal power power plant in Korba to a fly ash pond. Environment activists say that every year approximately 50 million tonnes of fly ash is generated by power plants in Chhattishgarh but not even the half of this amount have been reutilized to reduce the pollution from fly ash. Fly ash is known to contain trace elements such as arsenic, barium and mercury among others, and unlined ponds like this could be polluting groundwater by leaching. "The ash is everywhere. When the wind blows, everything is coated with a layer of white grey ash. The road, ponds, our houses, sometimes even our spectacles get coated with a fine layer of the ash," says Biswas. Rohit Rathia, 55, suffers from tuberculosis. He lives in a village next to an open cast mine where lung diseases such as coal workers' pneumoconiosis (CWP), silicosis and tuberculosis have become common ailments.

India is being effected by a capitalist mindset. The money and power generated by the coal mines seems to be more important than human life along with the lives of local animals. Humans and elephants are suffering because of the coal mines. The lost of habitat for the elephants is driving them into local villages in search for food. Human are being compensated very little for the lost of land. It sad all around.


The person is male. Racially, the person is white. The person is 40 years old. The person has a two year associate degree. The person earns 25000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 7.0 in openness, 7.0 in conscientiousness, 7.0 in extraversion, 7.0 in agreeableness, and 7.0 in stability.

The government of India makes a lot of money from coal production, but they do not take into account who this is affecting the most. Both the people and the elephants are being hit the hardest, not to mention the forests that are being destroyed. There have been 75 deaths of people and 30 deaths of elephants. People are having respiratory problems. Just imagine the children being affected. It's a travesty. People need clean air and water to live and it's like the government doesn't care. Someone needs to step up and do something.


The person is female. Racially, the person is hispanic / latino. The person is 28 years old. The person has a college or university degree. The person earns 35000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 5.0 in openness, 4.5 in conscientiousness, 1.5 in extraversion, 5.5 in agreeableness, and 5.5 in stability.

The people in India are in a dilemma that's based on greed, like most things. The poorer population is suffering heavily by the country's dependence on coal. The impact of it is already severed. I'm really surprise that there is even enough of an elephant population that can cause so much trouble, but in the end it isn't their fault either.