Locked up in Canada for eight months ‘over name mix-up’ – BBC News
Jeezus….
California woman who knows her rights forces Border Patrol off Greyhound bus at agricultural checkpoint – NY Daily News
“We are being boarded by Border Patrol. Please be prepared to show your documentation upon request,” the driver said, according to her June 7 Facebook post, written a day after the incident.
An unabashed Smalls, who knew her rights, immediately sprang into action, informing other passengers that the agents’ actions were illegal.
“This is a violation of your 4th amendment rights. You don’t have to show them *s- -t*!!! This is illegal,” she said, according to her Facebook post.
…She even used Google translate to help her deliver the same message in Spanish.
Smalls said the woman seated next to her, who didn’t speak English, “looked terrified.”
Smalls loudly accused the agents of harassment and racial profiling, exclaiming they had “no legal right or jurisdiction here,” she wrote in the Facebook post.
Her resistance paid off — the Border Patrol agents allegedly retreated and told the bus driver to “go ahead.”
Go Girl!
National Guard soldiers Trump sent to border are shoveling manure, changing flat tires
The National Guard troops that President Trump sent to the U.S.–Mexico border in April are performing menial tasks to assist U.S. Border Patrol.
A soldier told Politico on Thursday that they have been feeding Border Patrol’s horses and shoveling manure.
Sgt. Jonathan Sanchez, a cook, told the outlet that he often does maintenance on Border Patrol’s vehicles.
…Other tasks include clearing out vegetation, repairing Border Patrol facilities, working as office clerks or operating a complex network of security and remote camera systems.
…In order to keep them safe, National Guard troops are not permitted to patrol or participate in detainment operations for migrants crossing the border, officials told the outlet.
Late last month, the president of the labor union representing Border Patrol agents criticized Trump’s deployment, calling it a “colossal waste of resources.”
Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, said last month that they have “seen no benefit” from the National Guard presence.
Of course.
Rohingya girls face ‘prison-like’ conditions in refugee camps
Adolescent Rohingya girls are being kept in stifling conditions in refugee camps in Bangladesh, unable to go out, deprived of education and facing prospects of early marriage whether they want it or not, according to a report by the charity Plan International launched on World Refugee Day.
…”Many of them have witnessed horrific violence and are in urgent need of assistance, but they cannot access any of the services on offer to help them cope with what they’ve been through. Instead, they spend almost every hour of every day inside their sweltering tents, where the only activities they have to keep themselves occupied are cooking and cleaning. They long to go to school, to go outside, to make new friends, and to rebuild their lives, but none of these things are possible for them under the current conditions in which they live.”
Plan International wants the aid agencies and governments helping the refugees to “urgently address the needs of safety, education, sanitation, food security and healthcare — including mental health services — that Rohingya girls currently lack and have themselves spoken strongly about in the research report.”
…It said girls repeatedly reported that access to clean water was one of the major challenges that they faced in the camps and warned that “as the monsoon season approaches, the temporary shelters will become untenable and the likely destruction of the makeshift sanitation facilities threatens to contaminate water and spread disease.”
Most of the girls interviewed said they still didn’t have enough to eat.
Rohingya girls face ‘prison-like’ conditions in refugee camps – CNN
Sigh….
Tensions escalate between Sanders and reporters
Tensions escalate between Sanders and reporters – POLITICO
Because she had such a cordial relationship with them before this?
One of The Biggest Manta Ray Secrets Has Just Been Discovered by Sheer Chance
It’s off the coast of Texas, in the NOAA’s Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary in the Gulf of Mexico, where marine scientists have observed unprecedented numbers of juvenile manta rays.
…”Identifying this area as a nursery highlights its importance for conservation and management, but it also gives us the opportunity to focus on the juveniles and learn about them.”
…It’s thought that manta rays have one baby every 2 to 3 years, giving them an extraordinarily low fecundity rate compared to other cartilaginous fish.
…This means that their young are very valuable indeed, so it stands to reason that they’d be sequestered somewhere safe while the rest of the squadron swims the open seas. However, known aggregation sites are usually far from coastal areas, which makes these fish hard to study – and juveniles are almost completely absent from manta ray populations.
One of The Biggest Manta Ray Secrets Has Just Been Discovered by Sheer Chance
hmmmm
Trauma inflicted on border kids proves Americans ‘have lost our minds,’ mental-health expert says
The trauma endured by children separated from their parents at the border — many of whom are fleeing chaotic or violent circumstances back home — will devastate them psychologically for years to come, experts say.
…Inside those facilities, children are devastated: an audio clip published by ProPublica captures the sounds of children sobbing for their parents, begging to be allowed to call a family member.
“It is a form of child abuse,” Dr. Colleen Kraft, head of the American Academy of Pediatrics, told CBS News after she’d spent time in a Texas facility where kids under 12 are being held.
Kraft said she was told staff members there weren’t allowed to hug or hold crying children at the facility to comfort them.
…Every interaction a child has with adults lays the groundwork for their identity and sense of self, so that doesn’t bode well for children in a setting where they’re reportedly not even allowed to be hugged, Kinder said.
“What we say to them, what we do, how we look at them, how we interact with them — all of those interactions add up to a sense of self,” she said. “I can promise you that these interactions are laying neural pathways that are not positive.”
hmmm
Anthony Bourdain, Kate Spade ignite concern about rising suicide rate
Suicide rates in the U.S. have risen nearly 30% since 1999, according to a report released Thursday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Suicides increased in both men and women, in all ethnic groups and in both urban and rural areas.
Anthony Bourdain, Kate Spade ignite concern about rising suicide rate
hmmmm
Fat dogs teach humans new tricks about obesity: Hungarian study
“We expected the overweight dog to do anything to get food, but in this test, we saw the opposite. The overweight dogs took a negative view,” test leader Orsolya Torda said.
“If a situation is uncertain and they cannot find food, the obese dogs are unwilling to invest energy to search for food – for them the main thing is to find the right food with least energy involved.”
The behavior had possible parallels with overweight people who see food as a reward, said the paper published in the Royal Society Open Science journal.
Fat dogs teach humans new tricks about obesity: Hungarian study
hmmmm
Migrants Are Stranded on a U.S. Warship With Nowhere to Go
On Tuesday, the Trenton, a Spearhead-class high-speed transport that is part of ongoing 6th Fleet military operations off the coast of Libya, came upon a migrant boat in distress and disintegrating. People were in the water. Several corpses were floating nearby. The Trenton called for help and, along with the German non-governmental organization Sea Watch whose ship was patrolling nearby, the American crew carried out the rescue of 40 African migrants and observed what appeared to be 12 people in the water who had died. The living are all on the American ship. The anonymous dead were left to the mercy of the elements.
A spokesperson for the U.S. 6th Fleet says that the rescue boats deployed apparently could not find the bodies that had been seen at first, but if they had, the ship would have had enough refrigerated space to store them.
“On June 12, 2018 USNS Trenton, in accordance with its obligations under international law, rendered assistance to mariners in distress that it encountered while conducting routine operations in the Mediterranean Sea,” the Sixth Fleet said in an earlier statement. “Forty people have been recovered and are being provided food, water, and medical care on board Trenton. U.S. authorities are coordinating with our international partners to determine their ultimate disposition.”
…On Wednesday, Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini made it very clear that Italy’s ports would remain closed to all but Italian-flagged ships if they carry rescued migrants.
The political wrangling puts the Trenton in a particularly problematic situation. The German-flagged NGO that helped with the rescue is worried that if it agrees to take the migrants off the Americans’ hands, it could end up in a standoff like the Aquarius.
…On Thursday, the Trenton got tired of waiting for the Italian Coast Guard central command to tell it what to do with the survivors and it left the area. The fate of the 40 survivors on board remains undetermined.
This week Spain is seen as a savior for taking in the people aboard the Aquarius, but only a year ago it was condemned because it used armed force to keep migrants off its shores. And Italy, which has taken in far more African migrants than any other European country, is now seen as the bad guy for saying, “No more.”
But none of that political posturing helps the human beings afloat on the Mediterranean. Some will make it to safety in Europe. Some will be returned to Africa. Many will die, pawns sacrificed in a global game.
Migrants Are Stranded on a U.S. Warship With Nowhere to Go
the (in)humanity….
Inside the Former Walmart That is Now a Shelter for Almost 1,500 Migrant Children
At least 13 deficiency citations have been filed against the shelter at the former Walmart in Brownsville, which seemingly overnight became a symbol of the housing scramble after a Democratic lawmaker, Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, showed up unannounced to take a tour but was turned away by police escort. Mr. Merkley’s attempt to gain entry this month, captured on Facebook Live by a member of his staff, put national attention on the shelter, which is run by a nonprofit group that contracts with a federal agency.
…The shelter, called Casa Padre, is a world all its own, much of it invisible to outsiders. The few windows are covered in black mesh; in the parking lot, yellow-painted wooden barricades read, “Keep Out.”
…The industry for sheltering young migrants had run into trouble here even before the latest boom. Hundreds of shelter workers in the Rio Grande Valley were laid off at the end of March, after several sites run on contract to the federal government by a private organization, International Educational Services, suddenly shut down. The organization, known as I.E.S., lost its federal financing and shuttered its shelters and other facilities, for reasons that federal officials have yet to publicly explain.
hmmmm
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