Social Issues

New York TImes | Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, responding to the controversy over a breast cancer advocacy group that cut off most of its grants to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screening, said Thursday that he would make up a large part of the missing money.

Torrent Freak | A few moments ago Sweden’s Supreme Court announced its decision not to grant leave to appeal in the long-running Pirate Bay criminal trial. This means that the previously determined jail sentences and fines handed out to Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström will stand.

Yahoo News | Gingrich opened up the possibility of the moon becoming the 51st state, something he believes could happen once a permanent settlement reaches a population of 13,000 Americans. While a 1967 United Nations document says that no one country can claim sovereignty over the moon, the U.S., Russia, and China failed to sign a more recent U.N. treaty to settle the question of who owns the moon.

The Diplomat | Among them is Indonesia, which has enhanced its reputation over recent years through its improved handling of human rights, but has raised more than eyebrows when police arrested a 31-year-old atheist for blasphemy.

New York Times | SOLITUDE is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place. Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in.

Treehugger.com | For decades, the lush Amazon rainforest in Brazil has served as the backdrop to escalating tensions between an indigenous population which calls the region home, and illegal loggers dead-set on exploiting its natural wealth -- though the worst of the resulting atrocities may be at hand. According to a representative from the Guajajara community in northeastern Brazil, a group of illegal loggers recently captured a young indian girl from a neighboring uncontacted tribe and burned her to death.

El Pais | Cardinal Archbishop Antonio Rouco Varela used an open-air gathering in Madrid's Plaza Colón on Friday to attack the policies of the previous Socialist Party government, calling for a repeal of legislation that provides for abortion on demand, as well as same-sex marriage.

Ranker.com | One of the most iconic television shows of all time, as well as one of the most quoted properties in pop culture history, The Simpsons has made hundreds of jokes that we all know, remember and reference on a daily basis. Often times, these jokes revolve around extremely absurd concepts that could only happen in a cartoon or a satire -- according to the writers at the time. Sometimes, these jokes underestimate just how low humanity (and often, America) can go.

CoEd Magazine | You’ve probably seen those “Above The Influence” anti-drug commercials in which they show worst scenario outcomes to people smoking weed. Really depressing sh*t. They always make the person out to be an accidental murderer, or homeless, jobless, friendless. No prospects of anything positive on the horizon. Well, we have a list of the smartest people who ever admitted to smoking pot as a nice complement to the most successful people who owned up to puffin’ dope. Suck it, ATI.

Global Post | If American, Europeans and others stopped buying the drugs, the vast black-market for the trade wouldn't exist. The drug traffickers wouldn't be able to charge huge profits, and they wouldn't be able to afford the massive weaponry and build the network of informants, enforcers, dealers and mules that allow them to sustain their production and distribution supply chain.

BBC | The Red List, drawn up by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), has declared the subspecies extinct.  A subspecies of white rhino in central Africa is also listed as possibly extinct, the organisation says.

The Intel Hub | Two dozen men and women from Occupy Vancouver and the Occupy the Vatican movement, most of them aboriginal, faced assaults and a human blockade from members of the Catholic Knights of Columbus yesterday outside Holy Rosary Cathedral, while trying to peacefully occupy it and enforce a legal eviction order against the Roman Catholic church for its murder of thousands of residential school children.

Amarillo Globe-News | An Amarillo man has been sentenced to five years in federal prison after pleading guilty to one count of copyright infringement, according to court records.  A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced Richard Kevin Gilbert, who confessed to selling pirated DVDs at his home, and ordered him to pay a $2,400 fine, the court’s judgement said.

Think Progress | Texas is now joining over 15 states that have introduced bills to guard against the non-existent threat of Islamic Sharia law. In proposing legislation to ban state courts from considering foreign religious or cultural laws like Sharia, Texas state Rep. Leo Berman (R) — the bill sponsor — said, “We want to prevent it from ever happening in Texas.”

Ian Visits | Just before midnight on the 9th September 1940, sailors up on deck of the cargo sailing ship, Seven Seas were watching an air raid by German bombers over the Charing Cross railway bridge when an explosion hit the river and a large wave struck the ship. A few moments later, a large fountain erupted out of the River Thames that lasted for about half a minute before dying away.

The Independant | They appear to have ended up in the line of fire in 2006, not long after the broadcast of "Trapped in the Closet", a highly controversial episode of the adult cartoon, which attempted to mock the Church's science fiction-based theology. According to an internal memorandum, Scientology's Office of Special Affairs mounted an investigation into Parker and Stone's circle of close friends, seeking "viable strings that can be pulled" to either discredit the duo, or to persuade them to refrain from satirising the Church in future.

The Guardian | In December 2010 three of the world's biggest payment providers, Visa, Mastercard and Paypal, cut off funding to WikiLeaks. Ten months later, Julian Assange has announced the whistleblowing site will suspend operations until the blockade is lifted – and warned WikiLeaks does not have the money to continue into 2012 at current levels of funding.

Salon.com | Brazilians have long accepted such malfeasance as the necessary cost of doing business, be it in commerce or public service. Every year, the country loses up to $47.4 billion to undeclared tax revenue, vanished public money and other casualties of widespread corruption, according to an August survey by the Federation of Industries of Sao Paulo.

The Examiner | According to Rev. Kevin Annett, Secretary of the International Tribunal for Crimes of Church and States (www.itccs.org), the Mohawk Institute was “set up by the Anglican Church of England in 1832 to imprison and destroy generations of Mohawk children. This very first Indian [First Nations] residential school in Canada lasted until 1970, and, like in most residential schools, more than half of the children imprisoned there never returned. Many of them are buried all around the school.”

Feature length (95 minute) documentary following the building of a golf resort by Donald Trump on a unique stretch of natural wilderness in Scotland.

Slashdot | Today a court Belgium overruled an earlier judgment and ordered an ISP to block The Pirate Bay. The type of block to be used by the ISP is a simple DNS filter, which is similar to ones used before in Denmark.

MSNBC | The parents of 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer, who was found dead at their home on Sept. 18, indicated in an exclusive interview with TODAY’s Ann Curry on Tuesday that their daughter endured further taunts at a school function immediately after Jamey’s wake. At a homecoming dance she attended shortly after her brother’s death, a potentially poignant moment turned ugly after a song by Lady Gaga, Jamey’s favorite artist, who recently dedicated a song at a concert in his memory.

Science Direct | When and how infants begin to discriminate noxious from innocuous stimuli is a fundamental question in neuroscience. However, little is known about the development of the necessary cortical somatosensory functional prerequisites in the intact human brain. Recent studies of developing brain networks have emphasized the importance of transient spontaneous and evoked neuronal bursting activity in the formation of functional circuits and. These neuronal bursts are present during development and precede the onset of sensory functions and.

Cafety | GAO recently testified before the Committee regarding allegations of death and abuse at residential programs for troubled teens. Recent reports indicate that vulnerable children are being abused in other settings. For example, one report on the use of restraints and seclusions in schools documented cases where students were pinned to the floor for hours at a time, handcuffed, locked in closets, and subjected to other acts of violence

A survivor sent his story to me. I want to preface this by saying isolation is one of the worst forms of torture; even the strongest soldiers start to go insane after just 30 days of isolation. They numbered the kids at Heritage, like Provo Canyon School, he was #12. Having your name taken away must be incredibly dehumanizing.

I ran away from home when I was 15. My father had just died and my mother was going through a midlife, batshit crazy crisis involving a boyfriend in prison for double homicide, a man she actually forced me to develop a relationship with, going so far as to bring me to the jail to visit him. At one point the man alluded to mafia contacts he could call to “take care of me” if I were to give my mother any more trouble. Doesn’t get much more charming than threatening a teenager with gang violence.

On May 10th of 2007 at around 2:30 in the morning two strangers barged into my bedroom. I started screaming and crying, as in my mind I was sure that these two strangers had broken into my house and were going to abduct me, rape me, kill me, or in some way harm me. They immediately told me that if I did not shut up that they would handcuff me.

In May of 1993 I was sent to a girls home called Cross Creek Manor (CCM) in southern Utah where I lived for four and a half months. This facility is owned and operated by a notorious umbrella organization called World Wide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP). While attending I was physically attacked, suffocated, tormented, and put in isolation on a regular basis for three day periods at a time.

From March 23rd, 2004 until July 29th, 2004, I was 'enrolled at Worldwide Association of Specialty Programs Residential Treatment Facility Tranquility Bay in Saint Elizabeth Parish, Jamaica, and from July 30th, 2004 until December 18th, 2005 I was 'enrolled' at Cross Creek Academy in La Verkin, Utah.

Anti-War | “It’s a dangerous time to be dark-skinned in Tripoli,” noted HRW’s Middle East and North Africa Director Sarah Leah Whitson, urging the rebels to stop arresting people unless they have concrete evidence of wrongdoing.  This seems unlikely, however, as the rebels have made it all but official policy to arrest anyone blacker than usual since they took over Tripoli, rounding up African migrants en masse and accusing them of all being “mercenaries” for the Gadhafi regime.

Rock Beyond Belief | Sometimes outsiders may not understand the smokescreen from terms like “Spiritual Fitness”. Some people might not recognize the evangelical creep from a cursory glance. Even a (very) small number of atheists have written to tell me that they had no problem with the questions on the Spiritual Fitness test.

KRDO | Getting help processing complicated medical claims will become more inconvenient for many area veterans when the Disabled American Veterans Service Center closes next week. The nearest DAV center then will be in Denver.The center on LaSalle Street in Colorado Springs has operated for about 25 years in two locations, assisting disabled veterans in filing claims for benefits to the Veterans Administration.

Salon | Although it had just finished raining, the air was hot and close. Nobody else was in sight; the only sound other than those from insects and gulls was the staticky low crashing of Caribbean waves. Around me on the sparsely covered red soil was a scatter of rectangles laid out by lines of stones: the outlines of now-vanished buildings, revealed by archaeologists

CNN | Anonymous -- in a news release attributed to the group, and backed up by related Twitter pages -- said it would take down the website of the Bay Area Rapid Transit System, known as BART, between noon and 6 p.m. PT Sunday.

Yahoo Music | Tragic deaths happen every day, but when someone famous dies it sends reverberations throughout the culture. In a small way, the shock of a celebrity death is good, because it makes us reflect on our mortality. Hopefully, this reflection wakes us up to the reality of how short life really is, and in turn, helps us to slow down, enjoy life and make the right decisions.

Neuro Bonkers | In what has to be the feel good story of the week, Nazi rock duo Lamb and Lynx Gaede (“Prussian Blue”) who you may remember for causing a media shitstorm a few years ago for presenting themselves as the cuddly faces of white supremacy have made a political, social and cultural full scale about turm.

Wall Street Journal | Every generation has its life-defining moments. If you want to find out what it was for a member of the Greatest Generation, you ask: "Where were you on D-Day?" For baby boomers, the questions are: "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" or "What were you doing when Nixon resigned?"

Economic Collapse Blog | Is the United States "number one"?  Many Americans take deep pride in their nation and the truth is that the U.S. has a lot going for it.  The United States has the largest economy in the world.  The United States also has the most powerful military on the entire planet.  The United States has produced most of the greatest movies that the world has ever seen.

Independent | Oleg glances furtively around him and, confident that nobody is watching, slips inside the entrance to a decaying Soviet-era block of flats, where Sasha is waiting for him. Ensconced in the dingy kitchen of one of the apartments, they empty the contents of a blue carrier bag that Oleg has brought with him – painkillers, iodine, lighter fluid, industrial cleaning oil, and an array of vials, syringes, and cooking implements.

Huffington Post\AOL | Morton insists all he wanted do was put a blow-up doll in a girl's bathroom as a joke. But when school officials saw surveillance video of a hooded figure wearing latex gloves entering a women's bathroom carrying a suspicious package and leaving empty-handed, they tipped off authorities.

WINK News | Three young girls from Dunbar Middle school videotaped themselves tackling an 11 year old boy and taking off his clothes. The group can be heard laughing at times and mocking the boy as he struggled to break free.

BBC | For Maria Gillespie, the memories of what she endured in a prison in Uruguay, when she was only 15 years old, are almost too much to bear.  She remembers being hooded, interrogated and tortured. Eventually every tooth was wrenched out of her mouth.

MSNBC | Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday in the case of a 15-year-old girl who prosecutors say was raped by a fellow church member and forced to stand before the congregation to apologize for getting pregnant.

CNN | The incident occurred Friday on an Atlantic Southeast Airlines flight from Tennessee to North Carolina and it involved Masudur Rahman and Mohamed Zaghloul were wearing traditional Muslim dress, CNN affiliate WCNC reported.

Jestina Clayton, a college graduate, wife, mother of two and refugee from Sierra Leone's civil war has been braiding hair for most of her life. Now she wants to use her considerable skills to help provide for her family while her husband finishes his education

Chicago Tribune | When the Colorado volunteer firefighter she loved died unexpectedly of liver cancer in 2006, Paula Bonhomme tenderly re-examined his gifts to her: a rubber duck with a firefighter hat, a lock of his hair, a flattened quarter he'd stuck on the train tracks as a kid.

Video | Indian education scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education -- the best teachers and schools don't exist where they're needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching.

The Pelican Post | cademics and business leaders claim that the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA), passed last year, has not corrected the underlying problem within the student loan system. Specifically, lax lending standards and artificially low interest rates for government

Washington Post | In his first television interview since the scandal broke a year ago, Roger Vangheluwe claimed he paid one nephew he abused for years tens of thousands of euros in support, but denied it was meant to keep him silent.  He called 13 years of sexual abuse of one nephew which started at age 5 as no more than “a little piece of intimacy.” He said the abuse of a second nephew was very short.

My Northwest | Jessica, 16, told KIRO Radio's Dori Monson Show that a week before spring break, the students commit to a week-long community service project. She decided to volunteer in a third grade class at a public school, which she would like to remain nameless.