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.”

This story makes me so so sad.... As someone who also grew up in the system, I can strongly relate. It's sad that America has not figured out a better and more safe system to handle kid's without parents or with parents who are unfit. A lot of the times, the system is no better, or even worse than the situation kids were in before, and I think this story is a good example of that.


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.

What Veterans Want You To Know About PTSD —  For many, this Veterans Day comes with a little extra heaviness. Just days ago, our country elected a new president who has insulted decorated war veterans and suggested that post-traumatic stress disorder is a sign of weakness.    Unfortunately, PTSD myths and stereotypes like this are all too common. An estimated 8 million Americans ― and up to 31 percent of Vietnam War veterans and 20 percent of Iraq veterans ― suffer from PTSD, and rates of the disorder in the U.S. are now higher than ever.    But still, the disorder is poorly understood, stigmatized and often misrepresented, and the negative connotations surrounding PTSD are a major part of what keeps many veterans from seeking help. Increasing understanding around the disorder can only help more veterans to seek help and get better treatment.   In honor of Veterans Day, here are five things vets wish others knew about PTSD. Anyone who refers to veterans with PTSD as “weak” has no idea what those people have seen and experienced in a war zone, or the toll that these experiences can take on an individual ― no matter how “strong” they are.    “War, I believe, dare not be commented on by those who has yet to experience it,” one military veteran told Gawker. “Until you kill other human beings for survival, what could you possibly say about it? It assaults all your scenes, the smell of death and the machines that cause it. Noises so loud you feel like an ant under a lawnmower. It is incomprehensible.”   “On my best days I tell myself I killed to survive,” he added. “On my worst my mind tells me I committed acts of madness so that I didn’t go mad.”   The blog PTSD: A Soldier’s Perspective aims to share stories from and inspiration for veterans struggling with after-effects of their service.   “There is disconnection between everything human and what has to be done in combat,” a vet named Scott Lee wrote on the platform in 2008. “Imagine being in an unimaginable situation and having to do the unthinkable.”   That being said, some veterans say there’s a common misperception that counselors or therapists can’t do anything because they can’t possibly understand. Psychologists can help even if they don’t understand everything about war, according to Jeffrey Denning, the author of Warrior SOS: Military Veterans’ Stories of Faith, Emotional Survival and Living with PTSD.   PTSD isn’t always easy to recognize.   Symptoms of the disorder often go masked and unnoticed. War journalist Sebastian Junger, who spent months embedded with American troops in Afghanistan, wrote a Vanity Fair essay about the experience last June. In it, he highlighted his own struggle to recognize PTSD.    “I had no idea that what I’d just experienced had anything to do with combat; I just thought I was going crazy,” he wrote. “For the next several months I kept having panic attacks whenever I was in a small place with too many people — airplanes, ski gondolas, crowded bars. Gradually the incidents stopped, and I didn’t think about them again until I found myself talking to a woman at a picnic who worked as a psychotherapist. She asked whether I’d been affected by my war experiences, and I said no, I didn’t think so. But for some reason I described my puzzling panic attack in the subway. ‘That’s called post-traumatic stress disorder,’ she said.”   Much of the suffering of PTSD is silent.    PTSD survivors often suffer in silence, trying to present a strong face to the world and not seeking help for fear of being seen as week. A veteran who served in Baghdad in 2007 and 2008 opened up about the struggle to admit to himself that he needed care.    “The few nights a week I’d get drunk and start crying inconsolably, although often silently, I tried to shake off as simple moments of weakness,” he wrote, according to Gawker. “I should be tough, like my grandfather returning from WW2, or all the others who seemed to get on day after day without noticeable problems.”    “Some of the toughest guys I had ended up the worst off” he added. “I simply hope that everyone, at some point, can get the help they need and I hope the VA can get its act together to assist those who so desperately need it.”   PTSD doesn’t make you violent.    A harmful stereotype about PTSD is that it leads to aggressive behavior. But research indicates that the prevalence of violence among individuals with PTSD is only slightly higher than the general population, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.   In a viral blog post published on the website RhinoDen, a veteran named Rob fights back against the dangerous stereotype that veterans with PTSD have violent tendencies.    “I have never committed violence in the workplace, just like the vast majority of those who suffer with me,” he writes. “I have never physically assaulted anyone out of anger or rage. It pains me when I listen to the news and every time a veteran commits a crime (or commits suicide); it is automatically linked to and blamed on PTSD. Yes, there are some who cannot control their actions due to this imbalance in our heads, but don’t put a label on us that we are all incorrigible. Very few of us are bad.”    Recovery is possible.   One of the most damaging stereotypes about PTSD is the idea that people with the disorder are somehow broken or can’t heal.    Roy Webb, a Marine who served in Vietnam and suffered from PTSD and insomnia for four decades, told CBS News about his recovery through yoga and meditation.    “I did feel at total peace, like I hadn’t known in years. You don’t have all those thoughts flying through your mind at night,” he said.   Iraq veteran Gordon Ewell, who has overcome PTSD, sent a message of hope to his fellow veterans: Recovery is always possible, and you’re never alone.    “You may not be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel yet, but I promise it is there,” he said in an interview published in Denning’s book. “I promise you can get through anything. I also promise that there are people willing to walk with you every step of the way.”

I hate hearing stories like this... I feel so bad for veterans, not only for what they have to deal with if they were on the battlefield, but because of the lack of respect for them in this country. Even if you don't agree with the war we are fighting, that is not their fault, don't take it out on them, take it out on their leaders.


Study: lung cancer patients exposed to air pollution may have shorter survival times —  We all know that air pollution is bad, so bad that it kills thousands of people each year. In India alone according to a Washington Post article published last month, about half a million people die every year due to outdoor air pollution.   With that introductory paragraph, here’s a finding of a new study that may not surprise a lot of you readers: people with lung cancer may have shorter survival times when exposed to smog and other air pollutants.   As reported at The Guardian, researchers in the state of California have found that exposure to bad air quality after lung cancer diagnosis can negatively affect survival. The paper was published in the journal Thorax with lead author Sandrah P. Eckel, PhD of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.   The main takeaway of the research is that the length of time that people with lung cancer live after diagnosis varies depending on their exposure to air pollution. Researchers claim that the median survival for people diagnosed with early stage of lung cancers who were in areas with high levels of regional pollution was about three years shorter than people who lived in places with lower pollution levels.   In an interview with the University of Southern California website, Dr. Eckel explains that their research focused on California, and the reason is that the state has a wide range of air pollution levels. It also has one of the largest and longest running air quality monitoring networks and cancer registry system in the country.   Looking at the lung cancer data with over three-hundred and fifty thousand patients registered between the years 1988 to 2009, the team has found that patients in areas with higher levels of fine particulate matter–or, at about 2.5 micrometers in diameter–was only about two point four years, compared to five point seven years in patients in areas with lower levels of fine particulate matter.   It is also worth noting that lung cancer patients whose cancer had spread to other parts of their bodies had shorter survival times overall. They also showed little difference in survival time whether they lived in places with high or low air pollution levels.   And like other research, the team clarifies that additional research is needed to determine the link between air pollution and survival rates of lung cancer patients. However, the findings are intriguing, the team says, and they suggest that newly diagnosed lung cancer patients must consider moving out of places with high levels of air pollution.   Lung Cancer in America   A recently updated page of the CDC–or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention–says that lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in America, and the second most common among both women and men.   The American health institute suggests avoiding smoking and secondhand smoke, and avoid places with radon, a naturally occurring gas from rocks and dirt.

It's sad that humans have the destroyed/damaged the world to the point that it is starting to give us cancer! How crazy sad is that... Why can't we find more enviormentally friendly ways to do things? I'm sure the ways are out there, but theres no money in it so they haven't been discovered yet...  how gross is that


Saudi women file petition to end male guardianship system —  A petition signed by more than 14,000 Saudi women calling for an end to the country's male guardianship system is being handed to the government. Women must have the consent of a male guardian to travel abroad, and often need permission to work or study. Support for the first large-scale campaign on the issue grew online in response to a trending Twitter hashtag. Activist Aziza Al-Yousef told the BBC she felt "very proud" of the campaign, but now needed a response. In the deeply conservative Islamic kingdom, a woman must have permission from her father, brother or other male relative - in the case of a widow, sometimes her son - to obtain a passport, marry or leave the country. Many workplaces and universities also demand a guardian's consent for female employees and students, although it is not legally required.   Renting a flat, undergoing hospital treatment or filing a legal claim often also require a male guardian's permission, and there is very little recourse for women whose guardians abuse them or severely limit their freedom. How much do you know about life as a woman in Saudi Arabia? WATCH: Are Saudi women really that oppressed? The 'Rosa Parks' of Saudi Arabia 'Flabbergasted' In July, an Arabic Twitter hashtag which translates as "Saudi women want to abolish the guardianship system" went viral after a Human Rights Watch reportwas published on the issue. Saudi women tweeted comments, videos and artwork calling for change. Bracelets saying "I Am My Own Guardian" appeared. The women counted on the petition all gave their full names, though more signed anonymously. Hundreds of women - one estimate suggests as many as 2,500 - bombarded the Saudi King's office over the weekend with telegrams containing personal messages backing the campaign. Human Rights Watch researcher Kristine Beckerle, who worked on the report, described the response as "incredible and unprecedented". "I was flabbergasted - not only by the scale, but the creativity with which they've been doing it," she said. "They've made undeniably clear they won't stand to be treated as second-class citizens any longer, and it's high time their government listened."    However, there has been opposition from some Saudi women, with an alternative Arabic hashtag, which translates as #TheGuardianshipIsForHerNotAgainstHer, gaining some traction, and opinion articles, like this one on the Gulf News website, arguing that the system should be reformed and applied better. Ms Yousef, who was stopped by police in 2013 for breaking the country's ban on women driving, said she did not expect any negative consequences from the petition: "I'm not worried, I'm not doing anything wrong," she said. She and another activist took the petition to the Royal Court in person on Monday, but were advised to send it by mail. She said a key demand is that an age between 18 and 21 be designated, above which a woman be "treated like an adult". "In every aspect, the important issue is to treat a woman as a full citizen," she said. She and other activists first raised the issue five years ago. "We never had a problem with campaigning, but the problem is there is no answer. But we always hope - without hope, you cannot work," she said. There has been no official response to the petition yet.

This kind of thing makes me so sad to hear... I can't believe things like this are still happening in todays day and age, after all the advancements that humanity has made as far as technology, racism, sexism, classism, and this kind of thing still is going on... It's awful and it's sad that we don't hear more about it in the media.


Riot police move in on North Dakota pipeline protesters —  Armed police in the US state of North Dakota have arrested 141 Native American protesters and environmental activists during a tense confrontation. They were among several hundred people who occupied private land in the path of a controversial new oil pipeline. Police fired non-lethal rounds and used pepper spray and sound cannon to push protesters back to their main encampment on public land. Skirmishes lasted overnight and continued until early Friday morning. By then, spent bean bag rounds and pepper spray canisters littered the ground as police towed away vehicles that the protesters had burned to create barricades in the road, including several military-grade Humvees. "They used a sonic device and then also they used rubber bullets and we have shots of people who had rubber bullets right to the face. They maced elders right in the face. They dragged people out of sweat lodges. They shot one 15-year-old boy's horse and killed it under him," Jacqueline Keeler from the Sioux tribe told the BBC. She said members of the tribe were protesting because the pipeline threatened the region's water supply went across land never ceded by the tribe. Police said they had fired non-lethal bean bag rounds in response to stone throwing and one woman who fired a pistol three times at police officers without hitting any. Dozens of officers in riot gear, some armed, moved in assisted by trucks and military Humvees. Morton County Sheriff's office said the operation began at 11:15am local time (18:15 GMT) and that protesters had refused to leave voluntarily on Wednesday. Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier said the protesters were a "public safety issue" and their actions had "forced law enforcement to respond". "We cannot have protesters blocking county roads, blocking state highways or trespassing on private property," he said in a statement. But Robert Eder, a 64-year-old Vietnam War veteran from the Standing Rock Reservation, said protesters were not scared. "If they take everybody to jail, there will be twice as many tomorrow, and every day that passes more will come," he said. "If they raze these teepees, tomorrow we will be back." Hundreds of protesters have camped on the federally owned land for months, with more than 260 people arrested before Thursday's police operation. Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the project, has said it will boost the local economy and is safer than transporting oil by rail or road. Members of the Sioux tribe say the Dakota Access pipeline will desecrate sacred land and harm water resources. The pipeline will run almost 1,900km (1,170 miles), carrying oil to Gulf Coast refineries. Native American protesters claim the land as their own, citing a 19th Century treaty with the federal government. The protest has drawn the attention of activists and celebrities, including actress-activist Shailene Woodley and Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein.

This is crazy to me that this sort of stuff is going on right now in the US over oil/money... Shooting a kids horse?? That sounds like something that would have happened in medieval times or the 1800s or something, not 2020. This is so sad... adn this has been going on for far to long. A generation is growing up in this.


Garden ponds 'playing role' in frog disease spread —  Garden ponds are playing a role in the spread of deadly frog diseases across the UK, a study suggests. Ranaviruses can infect amphibians, reptiles and fish. In the UK, they have devastated common frog populations. This research suggests that the introduction of infected animals from aquatic retailers into ponds or moving species between different ponds may be exacerbating the problem. The findings are published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Dr Trent Garner, from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), told BBC News: "The virus seems to be spreading at a rate that exceeds the ability of a frog to hop, and there seems to be human-aided dispersal of the virus." Ranaviruses are a group of viruses found across the world and they affect different species in different ways. In the UK, one type of ranavirus was found to be present in the South East of England in the 1980s, and it has since spread. It can kill common frogs either by causing sores and blisters to form on the animal's skin or by causing their internal organs to bleed. "In a certain proportion of populations, the disease persists. And when it persists, frogs decline by around 85%, and they don't seem to be recovering," said Dr Garner. To analyse the movement of the disease in the UK, scientists looked at two decades of data recorded by a citizen science scheme called the Frog Mortality Project, which is now coordinated through Garden Wildlife Health. Genetic records suggested that ranavirus was not always present in the UK, and had probably been introduced to the UK on two separate occasions. The study also found that while infection is spread by the natural movement of amphibians, garden ponds could also be playing a key role. Dr Garner said: "Potentially garden ponds can act as stepping stones for infected animals to move around and reach new sites." He said that taking frogspawn or frogs from one pond and placing them in another could be helping to spread ranavirus. "There are also other species that could potentially carry ranavirus - ornamental fish for example. So I do think there is a case to be made to investigate their role in infections." Lead author Dr Stephen Price, from University College London, ZSL and Queen Mary University of London, said: "Ranavirus is one of the most serious health threats currently facing the UK's amphibian population. "So our findings that humans seem to have helped move the virus around, facilitating its rapid spread, could be translated into some straightforward ways to manage the risk of disease outbreaks." He added: "We certainly don't want to discourage people from adding ponds to their urban gardens - this remains one of the most positive steps we can all take to support wildlife. "But equally we would strongly urge people to try to limit how much potentially-infectious material they're moving into and out of their gardens in the process."

Poor  animals! But at least it sounds like the government is involved in helping stop the spreading of this thing. I hope people who have ponds or want ponds in their yard will be made aware or make themselves aware of the danger of this, and how to prevent it as well as stop the spread. That is the only way this will get better


The treatment of Calais camp children isn’t just neglectful – it’s abusive —  The Calais camp lies in limbo, with most of its inhabitants long gone. Those who remain face hardship beyond anything the camp has previously known. Before, there was shelter – now hundreds sleep on the fringes of its dirt tracks. Before, there was at least some sense of ease – now shocked and abandoned refugees live in a state of constant tension. Fire is a constant threat, and the bulldozers are coming.   Volunteers grapple not only with the urgency of the situation, but also with the knowledge that it should – and easily could – have been prevented.     When the French authorities began the registration and resettlement of refugees, those of us involved felt an initial sense of relief. But after three days of relatively smooth action the warehouse where the registration took place closed its doors. It did not open them again. This was despite previous assurances that all refugees would be accommodated. Those left behind had no chance of safely reaching asylum centres. Most minors, registered separately, were confined to a fenced-in yard and housed in shipping containers. The rest were left homeless alongside the adult population of the camp.   Despite being provided with up-to-date and detailed census information from my organisation, Help Refugees, and the local charity, l’Auberge des Migrants, the authorities chose not to take heed of these estimates. The 50-person, four-day census operation identified exact numbers of men, women, and children within the camp, and put the total population at 10,188. Though promised over 12,000 spaces in accommodation centres throughout France, almost 2,000 refugees have been abandoned once again by an uncaring government, and are left behind in the ruins of the Calais camp.   Over two weeks ago Help Refugees warned authorities at a local tribunal in Lille that housing minors in the “container camp” would be tantamount to exposing them to fire, violence, and extreme trauma. My colleague’s words went unheeded, and now seem almost prophetic. There are now approximately 1,500 children subjected to these conditions.   Children housed in the containers report choking on the smoke that blows in from their burning former homes. They say there is no drinking water, that the toilets are never cleaned and the showers are not working. Food is served only from 3pm to 5pm, and there is only one meal a day.   There is no drinking water. The toilets are never cleaned. The showers are not working. There is only one meal a day The authorities have utterly failed to safeguard these young people, and show little to no regard for their wellbeing, health, or mental states. The children in this camp are starved of care and attention, and are in constant danger. Their treatment is not just neglectful – it’s abuse.   The lack of organisation has permeated every aspect of these children’s lives. The crippling hunger pangs reported by many are alleviated only when groups of volunteers are allowed to distribute food. Without an identification wristband, children are not permitted to use the few still-working shower facilities – a fact made worse by the decision of the authorities to register some children without providing wristbands.     The stories you need to read, in one handy email  Read more Arbitrary security measures mean that services such as the Refugee Info Bus – founded by long-term volunteers to provide refugees with WiFi and legal services – are barred from approaching the container camp, cutting the children off from means of communication and legal assistance. With this, and the recent banning of human rights lawyers acting as observers from entry into the camp, it is feared that the mistreatment of the camp’s children will go unchecked.   Volunteers are banned from putting up tents to house the homeless adult and child refugees outside the container camps, in yet another example of the restrictions that serve only to further endanger refugees’ lives. With a large portion of the camp in flames, many are sleeping on the dunes surrounding the camp, exposed to the rain, the cold, and the people smugglers.   Despite desperate conditions and daily heartbreak, the volunteers of Help Refugees and other organisations continue to provide food, water, and some comfort to the refugees who are left. Many volunteers are from the UK, and express their devastation that their country is not answering France’s calls and the refugee children it is failing – at present, it seems unlikely that the UK will take in more than the 274 children it already has. Many other volunteers are French, and must bear witness, distraught, to their nation’s mistreatment of refugees already so weakened by months of subsistence in the camp.   On 1 November charities operating within the camp received notice from the French authorities promising that all children in the container camp would be transferred by bus to accommodation centres across France this week. A representative from the UK Home Office on each bus will ensure that any children legally eligible for asylum within the UK are able to apply for transfer to the UK. It is unknown how long this legal process will take.   This is a testament to the work of the volunteers and legal workers in the camp, and presents an opportunity for these children to leave behind the trauma and misery of life in a refugee camp. However, there are no guarantees, and charities must continue to work to ensure that refugees throughout France are given a far better standard of care than was provided for the children of the Calais container camp.

I never really think about immigration outside of the US, but the more I hear and think about it, the more I realize  just what an issue it is globally. People all over the world are being effected by it on both ends. Both ends being the people immigrating, and the other being the people living in the countries that people are immigrating to


Child sex abuse victim recalls horror of being forced to sleep with father and mother —  A woman has recalled the horror of being forced to have sex with both of her parents and being plied with alcohol from the age of 11.   In a particularly heartbreaking episode of The Dr Phil Show, an incestuous child abuse survivor confronted her biological mother two decades on. Victim Amanda divulged her horrific experience, including her parents making her pose for explicit photographs and videotaping their sexual encounters with a view to sell them online.   Mother Justine – who appeared remorseful for her actions – claimed that she "hates" herself for the crimes made against her daughter. She said: "I know I made poor choices."   The daughter told her mother and the audience: "My innocence was stolen from me."   Television host Dr Phil questioned the mother: "In what parallel universe does a mother watch her daughter performing a sex act on her husband and her father?"   Justine and Amanda's biological father Jim were charged with sexual assault and exploitation of their then 13-year-old daughter in 1996. They both pleaded guilty and received sentences of 20 years in prison.   Amanda shocked the audience when she said: "My parents forced me to have sex with them," before revealing that she was given rewards for the sexual acts and that her mother showed her how to "enjoy" sex. "Justine would show me how good sex would feel by having sex in front of me with my father," she added. The young woman also claimed she was forced to have sex with both parents. She said that mother Justine both coached her sexually and was a "willing participant" in the ongoing sexual abuse.   Amanda revealed that Justine photographed and videotaped much of what she refers to as "encounters." After her parents "got what they wanted", family life would resume as normal.   Following the abuse, Amanda gave an account of what would typically happen thereafter. She said: "Afterwards, it was a normal night, dessert, brush my teeth and bedtime."   She also claimed that her parents threatened her if she revealed their dark secret to anyone in a bid for help. "It's been 20 years since that nightmare ended, but it's still hard to grasp the idea that they are out of prison," she said. According to the victim, her mother Justine had allegedly refused "to acknowledge that she had any significant part" in the molestation.   Jim, who has since reached out to his daughter on Facebook before becoming "manipulative," has yet to apologise to Amanda. She said: "I don't think I've ever received a real apology from Jim. Justine claims that her and her husband's behaviour was fuelled by money. She said: "Jim found out how much money could be made from child pornography.   "If I could take it all back I would. I hate myself for what I did," she added, along with claims that Amanda's father made her "join him" in abusing their daughter. She suggested it was all her then-husband's idea and that she had initially fought him for three months, but eventually "gave in". Contrarily, Jim has previously branded his ex-wife a liar, and stated that she was a willing participant in their heinous sex crimes against their own child. He is to appear on The Dr Phil Show today (17 November) and explain why he had sex with his daughter.   Since the episode aired, the official Twitter account for Dr Phil has posted a slew of tweets regarding child abuse and information on paedophiles.   Many viewers have expressed their horror on Amanda's story, with one person writing on the social media sharing site: "This show is a hard one... don't know how I'm going to stomach tomorrow's continuation," as another put: "SO Sad. Her parents are sick and should be ashamed of themselves".

This is truly disgusting. I will never be able to understand how someone, especially a parent, is able to even fathom doing this to their kid. It is disgusting. I can only imagine the daily horrors that this poor women has to live with thanks to her disgusting parents. I can't believe they only for 20 years. they should be in their for life so this poor women does not have to feel scared or worried with them out of prison.


73 killed in tanker explosion in Mozambique —  A fuel tanker exploded in northern Mozambique as residents gathered around to buy fuel from the driver on Thursday, killing 73 people and injuring 110 others, Mozambican media reported.   Dozens of charred bodies were scattered around the blast site in the town of Caphiridzange in Tete province, and government officials believed more bodies might be in surrounding woods, Radio Mozambique reported. Some badly burned people had tried to run into a nearby river, the radio said.   A truck driver from neighboring Malawi had turned off the main road to sell fuel to local residents, who were gathered around the vehicle when the fuel caught fire, according to Radio Mozambique.   Medical teams rushed to the scene of the accident, evacuating the injured in ambulances and other vehicles. Searchers looked for more victims, though their efforts were hampered as night fell.   The cause of the explosion was not immediately clear. Citing Mozambican reports, the Portuguese news agency Lusa said one theory was that a fire near the tanker set off the blast, while another theory pointed to a lightning strike as residents were collecting the fuel.   A national government task force planned to travel to the accident site on Friday.

How sad and awful of a tragedy is this. I know accidents happen but surely there were steps in place, or steps that could have been put in place to prevent this. How horrifying of a sight it must have been to see charred bodies tossed in the air like that and being thrown all over the ground. That is something that will haunt whoever survived it for the rest of their lives.


At least 10 hurt after massive Arizona apartment complex fire caught on video —  Ten people were hurt when a fire tore through a small apartment complex in Payson. Fire Chief David Staub says the fourplex is a total loss after an explosion ignited the blaze Saturday evening. The fire was reported after sundown and fire crews arrived to find the building completely engulfed.   Staub says eight people inside all suffered minor injuries except one person who was transported to a Maricopa County burn center. That person remains hospitalized in stable condition.   Two people who were outside the apartments also sustained minor injuries. They were treated at the scene.   It took crews about 10 minutes to get the fire under control after the gas company shut off gas in the neighborhood.   Staub says the cause remains under investigation.

These kind of stories make me sad, but it sounds like it could have been so much worse!! Of all the people that could have been in an apartment complex, for no one to die and for only ten to be injured, that seems like pretty good luck all in all to me. Especially considering only 2 were hurt bad enough to go to the hospital.


Rescuers say all 33 miners trapped in China mine found dead —  BEIJING — All 33 coal miners trapped underground in a gas explosion earlier this week have been found dead, state media reported Wednesday, as work safety officials vowed to punish those responsible. Two miners survived Monday’s explosion but rescuers working around the clock found no others alive. All bodies have been recovered and rescuers were shown bowing their heads in memorial for the dead. Gas explosions inside mines are often caused when a flame or electrical spark ignites gas leaking from the coal seam. Ventilation systems are supposed to prevent gas from becoming trapped. The State Administration of Work Safety ordered an investigation into the blast, “adding that those responsible must be strictly punished.” Local officials in Chongqing also ordered smaller mines to shut down temporarily, Xinhua said. China’s mining industry has long been among the world’s deadliest. The head of the State Administration of Work Safety said earlier this year that struggling coal mines might be likely to overlook maintenance. China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of coal but plans to shutter more than 1,000 outdated mines as part of a broader plan to reduce overproduction.

This makes me so sad.... Especially because it totally could have been prevented if the right safety precautions would have just been taken. 23 lives. That's a lot. That's 23 families who will never be the same. All because it sounds like the heads in charge were lazy and taking the easy shortcuts out.


UW-Madison student charged in alleged attacks on 5 women —  (CNN)One woman's allegations of sexual assault against a University of Wisconsin student led to multiple charges based on claims from five women. Alec Cook, 20, appeared Thursday in Dane County Circuit Court to hear the charges against him. He faces 14 felony counts, including second- and third-degree sexual assault, strangulation and false imprisonment, and one misdemeanor count of fourth-degree sexual assault. The court entered a not guilty plea on his behalf to the misdemeanor charge. Under Wisconsin law he will not enter a plea to the felony counts until after his arraignment. He is being held on $200,000 bail in Dane County Jail. Cook's name and face spread through social media and local news reports after his October 17 arrest based on allegations from another UW-Madison student. She told police that Cook sexually assaulted her October 12 in a nearly three-hour ordeal, grabbing her by the hair and neck so tightly that, she told police, her "vision started to go." Cook was charged with four counts of sexual assault, strangulation and false imprisonment stemming from the allegations. Within a week, police said "dozens" more women came forward with potential information about Cook. CNN reached out to Cook's lawyers about the additional allegations but they declined to comment on the new charges. March 2015 The earliest count goes back to March 2015, when Cook allegedly invited a woman back to his apartment about two weeks after meeting her at a party. She told police that kissing turned to unwanted touching despite her attempts to push him away. When she tried to leave he grabbed her and pinned her to the futon and resumed kissing and touching her, according to a criminal complaint. She told investigators that after he assaulted her, she again tried to leave but that Cook pinned her to the futon again, wrapping his arms around her neck and torso. The detective asked what she thought would happen if she tried to leave she said she didn't know. "That's what I was afraid of. I didn't know." When she saw his face on the news in connection with his arrest she told police she "knew immediately" it was him, according to the complaint. Cook was charged with sexual assault and false imprisonment based on her allegations. January to May 2016 Two women who took ballroom dance classes with Cook reported to police being groped by him during the class. One woman told police the behavior continued even after she told him to stop. Their complaints led to the misdemeanor count of fourth-degree sexual assault. February 2016 Another woman described to police a similar scenario of a February 2016 encounter that started with consensual kissing and quickly escalated to sexual assault. She told police she repeatedly said no as forceful touching turned into forced oral sex and then vaginal rape. She had smoked marijuana earlier that night and drank a beverage she could not identify, and as the evening progressed she began feeling "fuzzy" and out of it, she told police, according to complaint. When she awoke the next morning he tried to have sex with her again, she told police, according to the complaint. Her allegations formed the basis of three counts of felony sexual assault. August 2016 Another woman to come forward said she took a psychology class with Cook, according to the complaint. He sent her a Facebook message and they began corresponding. She told police that she went to his apartment and they started kissing and having consensual sex. She rebuffed his efforts to choke her, though, and eventually he relented. About 45 minutes passed before he forced himself on her, hitting her backside with an open palm as he raped her. She told police she went along with it so he would not force her to have oral sex, according to the complaint. Sexual assault: Changing the conversation before college Defense lawyers: Wait for the facts When questioned by police on October 17, Cook said the encounter that triggered his arrest was consensual and that he did not recall grabbing the woman by the neck. He acknowledged pulling the woman's hair. Cook's lawyers called on the public "to wait for the facts before condemning" him, and railed against a "politically correct" culture that leads to "blind acceptance of mere accusations." "Alec, a 20-year-old business major with no criminal history, has seemingly been charged, tried, and convicted," read the statement from attorneys Christopher T. Van Wagner and Jessa Nicholson. "The rapid-fire news cycle, combined with the viral nature of social media, has resulted in modern-day character assassination that is very real and very wrong." How to help survivors of sexual assault CNN's Jamiel Lynch contributed to this report.

This man is truly disgusting.... My heart breaks for these poor girls and what they went through and what they will have to continue to go through as victims and survivors. I hope they know that this is not their fault and it is all on him. He made the choice. I'm sure the media will portray it how they usually do and try to put some blame on them, but it is not their fault at all.


China: Boy trapped in well found dead after 4 days —  A young boy stuck in a well in northern China since Sunday has been found dead, according to local media.   Rescue crews found the boy's body Thursday in a narrow, abandoned well in the province of Hebei, bringing an end to an almost five-day search involving more than 500 responders. He fell down the well -- just one foot (30 centimeters) wide -- while helping his father harvest vegetables, state news agency Xinhua reported. Too narrow for adults to climb into, rescuers began digging out the 40-meter deep well. Aerial shots of the scene showed excavators working on soft sandy soil around the dry well. Xinhua said the earth was prone to collapse and measures had been taken to support the shaft.

This story is so sad! I can't imagine the horror and pain that the boy suffered in his last moments of life... It must have been so scary to be there all alone, proibably knowing or feeling that you are going to die. And then I also feel bad for the workers trying to get to him... how devastating must it have been to find him dead.


The World Economic Forum's annual gender gap report is out and it doesn't look good —  The World Economic Forum (WEF) revealed its annual global gender gap report today, and the results are depressing.   The US slipped down to 45th on their ranking of countries by gender equality, behind four African countries and all major European countries (all of which are in the top 20), and down from 28th last year.    This dramatic fall is partly because women's participation in the labor force has declined over the past year and the number of women in senior positions is shrinking.   On a more positive note, the US closed its education gender gap in 2016. This means there is a large pool of educated female talent, even though fewer women are actually working, as can be seen in the table showing the United States' scores below. The annual report looks at progress towards equality between men and women in four key areas: educational attainment, health and survival, economic opportunity, and political empowerment.   Progress towards economic equality in 2016 has slowed globally, with the economic participation and opportunity sub-index dipping to 59% — worse than any point since 2008.  According to the report, the global economic gender gap is not forecasted to close until the year 2196.    That slowdown is partly due to imbalances in salaries, with women around the world on average earning just half of what men earn despite working longer hours, as well as a drop in women's labor force participation, with the global average for women standing at 54% compared to 81% for men. This is  despite the fact that women attend university in equal or higher numbers than men in 95 countries.    The number of women in senior positions also continues to be low, with only four countries in the world having equal numbers of male and female legislators, senior officials and managers.    "The world is facing an acute misuse of talent by not acting faster to tackle gender inequality, which could put economic growth at risk and deprive economies of the opportunity to develop," according to a statement issued by the WEF.   More progress has been made in the education sub-index, with the gender gap there having closed 95%. Similarly, the health and survival sub-index has also improved, with that gap having closed 96%.   The slow rate of economic progress for women poses a particular risk because many of the jobs that usually employ women are "likely to be hit the hardest by the coming age of technological disruption" says the report.   "This 'hollowing out' of female livelihoods could deprive economies further of women’s talents and increases the urgency for more women to enter high-growth fields such as those demanding STEM skills." STEM refers to a high education skill set consisting of science, technology, engineering and math.    The top four nations that lead the WEF's report are all Scandinavian countries, with Iceland taking the lead, followed by Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The next highest are Rwanda, Ireland, the Philippines, Slovenia and new Zealand. Rounding out the top 10 is Nicaragua.    The Global Gender Gap Index ranks 144 countries to understand whether countries are distributing their resources equally between women and men, irrespective of their overall income levels. The variables used to create the index come from publicly available data from international organizations like the International Labor Organization, the United Nations Development Programme and the World Health Organization among others, and from perception surveys conducted by the WEF.

This story is just depressing. Why can a country as advanced as the US be advanced in gender equality as well. As a women in the workforce it just is depressing to even think about. Why can't equal wages be discovered and demanded? It can't be that hard. And why can't more opportunity be given to women?


I hate reading these kinds of articles!! The unfair pay for women is so annoying. It's crazy that it is even still a thing with how much attention has been brought to it over the last couple of years. It's like people just dont care. Or at least the people in charge don't care. Probably because it would effect their paycheck


Flamingo Dead After Busch Gardens Visitor Allegedly Threw Her To The Ground —  A beloved flamingo at Busch Gardens in Tampa, Florida, had to be euthanized Tuesday after police say a park visitor attacked her. Pinky, a female Chilean flamingo known for a distinctive style of walking that became known as the “Flamingo Flamenco,” was 19 years old, the Orlando Sentinel reports. Joseph Anthony Corrao was at the park with his family around 6:45 p.m. Tuesday when he allegedly reached into Pinky’s pen, grabbed her and threw her to the ground. The zoo had to euthanize her because of her injuries, according to a Busch Gardens statement.  “Pinky was a beloved member of the Busch Gardens Tampa Bay family and made many appearances on behalf of the park’s conservation and education efforts,” the statement read. “She will be sorely missed.” Witnesses said that before picking up Pinky, Corrao picked up a different flamingo but put it down unharmed, according to local news station WFLA. Zoo personnel say they never trained Pinky to perform her circular dance, but that she just started doing it on her own. “While making an appearance with Jack Hanna, the team noticed that she was dancing on her own to get attention,” Busch Gardens spokeswoman Karen Varga-Sinka told the Orlando Sentinel. “Since then, she has danced for countless guests, school groups, media appearances and national television shows.” Corrao was charged with animal cruelty and jailed on $2,000 bond. At his first court appearance on Wednesday, Judge John Conrad said that the act “borders on depraved,” ABC Action News reports. “I don’t know if you have other issues, but I don’t know who does that,” Conrad said.

I hate reading stories like this... Poor animals made to suffer the abuse of stupid people. I'll never get where people get off hurting a defenseless animal for no reason. Like what did this flamingo ever do to that dude? Why does he think this is ok? I'm sure he suffered some sort of trauma as a child.


2 U.S. troops killed fighting Taliban in Afghanistan; civilians hit by airstrike —  KABUL — At least 26 Afghan civilians were killed and many others injured in airstrikes early Thursday while NATO and Afghan forces were battling Taliban fighters in northern Kunduz province, Afghan officials and witnesses said. Two American service members also died in ground clashes there, U.S. military officials confirmed. Details of the incidents were murky, with conflicting reports on the number of casualties and no official account of the airstrikes. Some local officials claimed that up to 100 civilians were killed or wounded in a series of airstrikes around Kunduz city. [NATO and government forces are increasingly responsible for Afghan civilian deaths] A portion of the strategic provincial capital was briefly overrun by insurgents last month, and Afghan troops assisted by U.S. forces have been trying to clear them from the area. The confusing and deadly drama recalled the tragic events in Kunduz just over a year ago, when the Taliban overran the city and Afghan and NATO forces were trying to beat them back. In the chaos, a U.S. airstrike mistakenly targeted an emergency hospital operated by Doctors Without Borders, killing 42 patients and staff members.  As of late Thursday, NATO officials had not confirmed or commented on the reported deaths of the civilians, who were said to be members of several families living in a neighborhood near the city. Photographs published on the Internet showed the bodies of small children crumpled on a blanket and being carried in a cart by weeping adults.  Angry relatives of the victims attempted to parade their bodies through the city to the provincial governor’s residence in a protest caravan, but they were stopped by security forces, Amruddin Wali, a member of the provincial council, said in a telephone interview.  A security official in Kunduz said an “operation against the opponents” resulted in the deaths of more than 20 civilians from “various families.” Ghulam Rabbani, another provincial council member, said 36 people were killed. Other officials said homes in various locations were destroyed by the strikes. [Kabul not spared Taliban strikes] U.S. military officials in Kabul confirmed that two U.S. service members were killed and two others wounded when they came under insurgent fire. “Despite today’s tragic event, we are steadfast in our commitment to help our Afghan partners defend their nation,” said Gen. John W. Nicholson, the senior U.S. military commander here, referring to the deaths of the U.S. troops.  Late Thursday afternoon, Brig. Gen. Charles Cleveland, the chief spokesman for Resolute Support, the U.S.-led NATO mission in Afghanistan, issued a statement that referred to airstrikes by “friendly forces” but did not confirm any civilian casualties. It said all information on that matter should come from Afghan officials. The NATO mission’s mandate is to assist, advise and train Afghan defense forces in their war against insurgents. Almost all foreign combat troops withdrew at the end of 2014, leaving Afghan troops facing an aggressive Taliban militia. “As part of an Afghan operation, friendly forces received direct fire and airstrikes were conducted to defend themselves,” Cleveland’s statement said. “We take all allegations of civilian casualties very seriously. As this was an Afghan operation, we’ll work with our partners to investigate but refer you to them for additional details in the near term. We’ll provide updates as we have them.” The senior Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman, Brig. Gen. Dawlat Waziri, said three Afghan special forces members were killed in fighting with the Taliban. He said he had no information on civilian deaths.  A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid, said three Taliban fighters were targeted by the Afghan and foreign forces and were then killed in a firefight in which Afghan and American troops also died. He said a large number of civilians also were killed. Pajhwok Afghan News quoted a farmer in Kunduz named Taza Gul as saying: “I was working on my farm when the bombardment started. On coming home, I saw seven members of my family, including women and children, killed in the raids.”  After the deadly 2015 airstrike in Kunduz, a U.S. military investigation led to the disciplining of 16 military members who were said to have made mistakes leading to the strike. Doctors Without Borders called the attack a war crime.

IS this was ever going to end? It seems like it has been going on forever and we have tried and tried to help them, to fix this or to end it even but nothing is working. It seems like two steps forward one step back. I can only imagine the trauma the people/soilders around this event felt. It's disgusting and I wish it would end/


13 civilians killed by cross-border shelling in Kashmir, say India, Pakistan —  India and Pakistan say 13 civilians have been killed in cross-border shelling from both sides of the Line of Control, the de facto border between the two countries in the disputed region of Kashmir.   At least seven civilians on the Indian side of the Line of Control (LoC) were killed Tuesday and 15 others injured in shelling that came from the Pakistani side, according to local Indian authorities. Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that six civilians on the Pakistani side had been killed by shelling from India Monday, and eight injured. Could India and Pakistan go to war? Women killed 'inside their homes' The casualties on the Pakistani side were in the Nikial and Jandrot areas, the statement said, adding that Pakistan's Director General had summoned India's Deputy High Chief Commissioner on Tuesday to strongly condemn the "unprovoked ceasefire violations." Of the Indian casualties, five civilians were killed in heavy shelling in the Ramgrah sector of India's Samba district, Sheetal Nanda, Samba's district magistrate, told CNN. Nine others were injured in the area. Two women were also killed in shelling in the Manjakote area of Rajouri district, according to Johnny Williams, deputy inspector general of police in the district. "The two ladies were inside their homes when shells landed there. They died on the spot," he said, adding that three others were injured in the strikes. Three civilians were also injured in India's Poonch district, police chief J.S. Johar told CNN. Neither side has responded to the allegations of ceasefire violations. The latest clashes come at a time of heightened tension between the neighbors over Kashmir, a Muslim-majority region that has been disputed territory between India and Pakistan for the past 70 years. Both of the nuclear-armed countries hold separate parts of the region and have fought two wars, in 1947 and 1965, over their claims. They came close to a third, in 1999. Tensions have flared since 19 Indian soldiers were killed in September in an attack by armed militants on an army base in Uri, about 63 miles (102 kilometers) from Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. In the aftermath, India launched what it described as a "surgical strike" across the Line of Control to attack what it said was a terrorist launching pad. Pakistan denied that the target was a terrorist base, pointing out that two of its soldiers were killed. Amid the continuing fallout, India has relocated more than 10,000 people from around the disputed border area, and a top Bollywood director has refused to hire Pakistani actors.

I hate reading things about nuclear war and stuff! It's so scary... That kind of thing could literally destroy humanity. I would never want to think about what that could mean if this is really starting to happen or if this is a real option that people/countries are considering. I just wish that they had never been invented!


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.


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.”

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 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.

It's so sad to read this kind of story... Poor animals that can't really do much to defend themselves being destroyed, for what? Money? Greed? It's awfully sad. And in a country like India, it doesn't seem like the government is too interested in doing anything to fix or remedy this, so I bet it will just continue to get worse and worse.


Iraqi Christians, scarred by Islamic State’s cruelty, doubt they will return to Mosul —  IRBIL, Iraq — At the evening service, the priest counseled forgiveness to a congregation with little reason to forgive. They were Christians from Mosul, brutalized by the Islamic State and betrayed, in some cases, by neighbors, and nothing — not the priest’s pleas, not his invocation of Cain and Abel — seemed likely to heal those scars. Khalid Ramzi, a congregant, seemed to choke on the sermon. “We can’t fall into the same hole twice. We don’t want our children to be raised in violence and fear,” he said, standing outside the church in Irbil. “Only in our dreams can we go back to Mosul.” When the militants swept into the city two years ago, Christians were ordered to convert, pay a tax or die. As the Islamic State pushed beyond the city, onto the plains of Nineveh, its advance scattered the rich patchwork of religious and ethnic minorities — Yazidis and Assyrians, Kurds and Shabaks — that made the area a microcosm of diverse Iraq and a place unlike perhaps any in the world. Churches were torched. Yazidis were massacred or enslaved. Villages emptied as hundreds of thousands of people fled. Iraqi forces advancing toward Mosul have recaptured some of the villages, raising the possibility of return for the minorities. But it is difficult to imagine the villages whole again, with their emptied streets and houses lying in ruin or despoiled by the militants. A new order in Mosul and the surrounding region already has begun to take shape, before troops even have entered the city. With competing visions, powerful players including Turkey, Iran, the Kurds and the U.S.-backed Iraqi government are jostling for influence. The battle will forge its own reality, with the violence possibly sending hundreds of thousands of people searching for shelter away from their homes. And the future of the region will be defined, in many ways, by who decides to return. [Islamic State is kidnapping thousands of people to use as human shields] In Shaqouli, an ethnically mixed village about 12 miles east of Mosul, a few villagers drove back two weeks ago, with one, Asem Hussein, making a forceful case that his neighbors will eventually follow. Some sort of munition had caved in his living room, leaving a tangle of concrete and rebar, and all he had been able to recover was a few blankets and an air conditioner that somehow had survived. “I am going to rebuild it and stay, and we will rebuild all ruined Iraqi villages,” he insisted. Shaqouli, he added, “will remain as mixed as it used to be — a mini-Iraq.” But the mayor, Mamel Qassim, who is Kurdish, had written off the place as lost. It was partly personal: During the Islamic State occupation, the militants had used his house as their headquarters. As a result, it had been crushed by an airstrike, the debris littered with copies of a weekly paper that the militants distributed. It was more than that, though. The Iraqi government — part of the sectarian political order that took hold after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 — was as weak as it ever had been, Qassim reckoned, and ill-equipped to protect minorities. Sunni Arabs from the village had fled or been forced to retreat toward Mosul along with the Islamic State, and the Kurds, like the mayor, had mostly moved to Irbil, in the semiautonomous Kurdish region. Only the members of the Shabak minority, who were without any powerful patron or a region to call their own, seemed inclined to move back. “It will never be good here,” said Qassim, adding that he intended to resign as mayor. “It will only get worse.” [Concerns about ‘collective punishment’ after Sunni Arabs flee Kirkuk] Iraq’s news media has been awash with photos and videos in recent days showing soldiers recapturing churches desecrated by the militants — with the implicit message that it will soon be safe for Christians to return. In some of the Christian villages around Mosul, residents said they did intend to move back, but they portrayed the move as more a responsibility than a choice. “We want to bring back the beauty of this area,” said Benham Shamani, a writer from Bartella, a majority-Christian town east of Mosul, invoking more than a thousand years of Christian heritage in the area. “Only the original people of the area can return this beauty. Only the people of this area can rebuild it,” Shamani said. In reality, though, Christians have been leaving Iraq for years, an exodus that began in earnest after the U.S.-led invasion. At the time, the country had around 1.5 million Christians; by the time of the Islamic State’s takeover of Mosul, they were believed to be fewer than 500,000. Now community leaders say at least a third of those who remained have left. In 2014, France said it would grant asylum to Christians forced to flee Mosul. Some community leaders criticized the move, saying it would devastate what remains of Iraq’s Christians. But even the community’s leaders concede it will be difficult to go back to Mosul. To return to the city would be to “remember all the pain, all the threats, all the killing, all the letters with bullets inside. We’ll remember the looks on the street,” said another priest at the Irbil church, the Rev. Zakareya Ewas, as families milled about after the service. The problems for Christians started before the Islamic State takeover, as the group’s predecessor, al-Qaeda, extended its grip in the city. Ewas said he received threatening phone calls and attempts at extortion. He stopped wearing his black robes and collar on the street. His wife covered her hair in an effort to blend in. Priests were murdered as Christians were targeted for their religion but also their perceived wealth, with many kidnapped for ransom. Ewas, a Syriac Orthodox priest, fled Mosul as the militants took over in 2014. The cross in his old church has been pulled down, he said, and the building now is used as a shelter for the militants’ livestock. His brother moved to Jordan two weeks ago after struggling to find work in Irbil — and after hearing several months ago that his yogurt factory in the city had been wiped out in a coalition airstrike. “Now there’s nothing for him to go back to,” Ewas said, adding that there were many others like his brother. If the Christians of Mosul did return, he said, “it will be just to sell their houses and leave.” Kareem Fahim reported from Shaqouli, Iraq. Mustafa Salim in Irbil and Aaso Ameen Shwan in Shaqouli also contributed to this report.

I think that this sounds like a kind of story that should not be happening anymore.... It seems so outdated and I don't get, with how far advanced we are, why this kind of stuff is still happening. Why are people still basing things on the Bible? Why aren't we actually studying things and using real stuff to develop as humans.