(Mirror Daily, United States) – After discussing and approving the 17 new Sustainable Development Goals, the U.N. was faced with a serious question: Even though they know what needs to be done, is the U.N. capable of doing it?
The Sustainable Development Goals are a set of targets set for a certain period of time regarding the major global issues, such as hunger, poverty, disease and climate change.
However, the most urgent matter that needs universal attention is the massive influx of refugees fleeing from the Syrian civil war and flooding Europe. The U.N. reported that a new record has been reached in the number of refugees around the world, a record previously held by the era following shortly after World War II.
According to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, applying the proposed changes is as important as setting affordable goals. He added that we owe it to “the vulnerable, the oppressed, the displaced and the forgotten people in our world” to make the promises a reality by meeting all the demands.
Some critics, however, argue that new development goals may have reached higher than they can, especially considering the time of global emergencies we live in. Aid groups are already in over their heads trying to cope with all the refugees seeking asylum and with sending help overseas.
Ertharin Cousin, the executive director of the World Food Program – one of U.N.’s agencies – said that there’s no way that the world’s governments can handle the established seventeen goals. Even so, he added, the global community has a duty to eliminate poverty and bring peace, so dropping out of the race is not a choice.
Keeping their eyes on the big picture is what the WFP is trying to focus on right now – making sure that poor countries around the globe can feed their population. But changes need to be made in some parts of the world, where the WFP wasn’t even needed until recently.
Syria, for example, was a net exporting country before the war started, with outstanding agricultural areas and the highest productivity in the area. But as of recently, more than 4 million people need to be fed every month on Syria’s territory. While the work piles up, activists believe that the turmoil shaking today’s world is yet another reason to put more energy and resources in aid groups around the globe.
As Paul O’Brien said, the vice president of policy and campaigns at Oxfam America, it’s important to set the sustainable development goals, because they seek to create proper conditions for people to live decently in their mother countries instead of having to flee.
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(Mirror Daily, United States) – Immigrants. One of the most debated issues during election times, but also the main drive of the U.S. population growth, according to Pew Research Center report.
Released on Monday, the analysis of the American think tank presents some interesting predictions, such as the fact that over the next half century, the U.S. will become such a varied mix of ethnicities and races that not one of them will claim majority.
If the current trends keep up, the Pew estimates that by 2065, immigrants and their descendants will account for roughly 88 percent of the nation’s population growth. There are presently 318 million living in the U.S. Jeff Passel, one of Pew’s demographers who worked on the report, said that the country’s population would decrease dramatically without the immigrants.
The main idea of the report is to emphasize the fact that immigration has been the number one demographic drive in the U.S. over the past 50 years. The report – covering the U.S. immigration for the last century, is based on population projections, census data, and opinion surveys conducted on the American view on immigrants.
According to Pew, the bilingual online survey gathered the results of 3,147 respondents who answered the questionnaire from March 10 to April 6. The figures are rather accurate, with a slight margin of error of plus or minus 2.4 percent.
Thus, 45 percent of the American population thinks that immigrants are making the U.S. society a better place in the long run, while 37 percent said they have a negative impact. There were another 16 percent who thought that immigrants aren’t an important factor with little effect on society.
Roughly half of respondents believe immigrants are bad for the economy and crime rates, but about the same percentage thinks immigrants have a positive effect on food, music and the arts, according to the report. Americans seem to be more welcoming toward Asian and European immigrants, while the tendency is to have a negative view on the Latin American and Middle Eastern immigrants.
Pew predictions see a surge in immigrants, up to 78 million by 2065. Since the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, the foreign-born population in the U.S. has surged to 45 million. Ruling out the post-1965 immigration, the U.S. would now have a very different demographic mix: “75 percent white, 14 percent black, 8 percent Hispanic and less than 1 percent Asian.”
Pew also predicts non-Hispanic whites will account for roughly half of the U.S. population by 2055; even though Hispanics used to hold the title is the largest group of immigrants coming to the U.S., Asians have clearly surpassed them.
Image Source: Huffington Post
Harold, on the left, and his second wife, Toni, on the right.
Attorneys expect Harold Henthorn to face life sentence for first-degree murders, but the trial still continues due to the large amounts of evidence. There is little that the man can do to turn the tables in his favor as all evidence show he is guilty.
In a murder case that appears to have been inspired from a 80s movie, a 59-year-old man in Colorado is now being trialed for killing his two wives. Harold Henthorn first made a display of his criminal traits in 1995 when he killed his first wife, Sandra Lynn.
The murder was only recently discovered when Harold killed his second wife and tried to pretend she lost her life in a similarly strange incident. According to sources, Sandra Lynn lost her life during a trip on the Rocky Mountain. She accidently slid under the car and got run over by it as Harold was changing the tire.
Lynn’s family stated the man did not even appear to be disturbed by the wife’s death. He announced everyone that Sandra passed away and hurried to cremate her to delete all possible evidence. The ashes were scattered on the Red Mountain and the case was closed as no one managed to prove that the man was guilty.
The 1995 case was re-opened in 2012 when Harold raised new suspicions. The man announced authorities that his second wife, Toni fell off the cliff during a recent mountain trip. Police officers were not convinced, especially since the incident was just as strange as his first wife’s death.
During his official declaration the Colorado man stated that he and his wife decided to make a trip to the Rocky Mountain National Park and enjoy some moments on their own. They stopped multiple times along the trail to take pictures. At a certain point Toni grew to closer to the edge; she lost her balance and fell off the cliff.
Harold told investigators he tried to rescue his wife. He told them he had performed CPR on her, but he could not revive her. The evidence shows the man lied about the CPR maneuvers; the woman’s lipstick was intact and her body showed no sign of cardiopulmonary massage. In addition, the man had previously marked the place of the accident with a red cross on his map.
The motifs behind the two horrendous murders are not missing. Investigators think the man killed his first and his second wife to get the life insurance payouts. The man cashed in $500,000 and $4.7 million from the first wife’s and the second wife’s death, respectively.
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The two girls may be trialed as adults facing even more charges.
Police officer have announced that the girls accused of trying to kill classmate are due in court. The 13-year-old pupils have triggered the entire community’s reaction after trying to kill one of their friends by stabbing her 19 times.
Officials refrain themselves from publishing personal data on the case because the two girls are minors. So far, reports have revealed that the 13-year-old girls slept over at one of their house in Waukesha, Wisconsin. The victim, Payton Leutner, was allured into the woods by the two girls, where she was stubbed multiple times.
The two girls were arrested and asked about the motive of their homicide attempt. They have both stated that they intended to kill Payton Leutner a fictional character from the online show Slender Man has asked them to do so.
The first appearance in court is due to take place on October 15, according to official reports. The girls’ name has not yet been revealed because the case is expected to get to the juvenile court when proceedings are over.
The girls’ legal representatives have asked the Waukesha County judge to delay the trial to a later date, although they failed to provide a valid justification for their request. Recent rumors indicate that the judge has agreed to delay the trial on an indefinite period of time. The decision came after the Court of Appeals suggested that the girls were trialed as adults.
The two girls are facing charges of first-degree intentional homicide.
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Seattle teachers demand bigger wages, less working hours and paid overtime.
Based on official reports, Seattle Schools get a late start in awe of teachers’ strike. Protests started on Wednesday and continued on Thursday, as well, leaving 53,000 students behind their schedules.
Teachers in Seattle are not pleased with their working conditions and wages. They began protesting on Wednesday demanding authorities bigger wages, fewer working hours and accurate evaluations. This is the first school strike that educators are keeping in 30 years’ period. This proves educators feel wronged and would like authorities to pay more attention to their needs.
More than 100 schools in Washington have missed the official starting date as a result of teachers’ recent strike. School will remain closed for an undetermined period as educators will not back up until their demands will be completely fulfilled.
5,000 school members are taking part in the upheaval, according to recent reports. The Seattle Public School department has responded to educators’ demands letting them know that the institution is making all efforts to honor teachers and to give students what is best for them. However, the new measures that the department will take have to be in keeping with all fiscal obligations, the statement further wrote.
The recent ruling of Washington’s court has caused the educators’ strike, school members have explained. Teachers did not agree with the court’s decision of labelling all state charter schools illegal and decided to take their grief to the streets.
The court’s discontent with the current educational system does not stop here; they have recently fined the state $100,000 per day because they did not provide an efficient plan for the funding of education.
Teachers are also complaining of the small increases that the Seattle Public Schools is offering. Their contract included only $62 million increases for teachers’ wages, whereas educators demanded $ 172 million increases.
The union does not accept the district’s decision to prolong teachers’ working day by 30 minutes without being properly remunerated for their overtime. They claim it was time that teachers received a cost-of-living increase, considering that they did not have one in six years.
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After being informed of some allegedly suspicious activity on a teen’s Instagram profile, the police from Fresno, CA arrested him, and then performed a house search that resulted in a stash of guns and ammunition.
The day before the search, the teen – whose name was kept private during the ongoing police investigation – had posted some lyrics from an Eminem song called “I’m Back,” which might indeed offer cause for worry used outside context.
The rapper says “I take seven kids from Columbine, stand ’em all in a line / Add an AK-47, a revolver, a nine / A MAC-11 and it oughtta solve the problem of mine / And that’s a whole school of bullies shot up all at one time / I’m just like Shady and just as crazy as the world was over this whole Y2K thing.”
At the press conference that happened after the arrest, the police revealed they had apparently mistaken the teen’s post for lyrics from another song by Eminem, “Rap God,” which only contain the first two verses, “I take seven kids from Columbine, stand ’em all in a line / Add an AK-47, a revolver, a nine.”
It turns out that the police thought, initially, that the teen had made up the next two lines, which had caused concern. Fresno Police chief Jerry Dyer later retracted his statement in which he said the Instagram post contained lyrics from the track “Rap God.”
As explained in the Fresno Bee, the police followed through on their first assessment of the situation, considering that the Instagram post was still evidence that the teen was guilty of making terrorist threats, a felony, and of attempting to disrupt school activity.
Even though the teen has allegedly taken down the post since, the police said some of the comments written under did nothing but increase concern, because another teen wrote, “Bring me with man. I got some stuff [to] settle.” To which the arrested 15-year-old San Joaquin Memorial High student replied, “Ill text you when. I got a couple idiots’ blocks I could knock off.”
The police was first contacted by the school’s vice president; the teen claims he was not behind the posts and blamed them on an alleged hacking.
However, in spite of his statements, there’s no denying that the warranted house search performed with the father’s consent revealed “a replica AK-47 Airsoft rifle, a handgun, a .357 Magnum revolver, a 12-gauge shotgun, ammunition, and a bulletproof vest.”
School was canceled on Tuesday for both San Joaquin Memorial High and St. Anthony’s Catholic School, the teen’s actual and former school. The principals of both institutions made the decision considering the perceived threat, but after the teen was arrested, they reopened on Wednesday.
Image Source: Fresno Bee
Fourth graders will thus experience the benefits of outdoor activities and learn the beauty of our National Parks.
Thanks to a new federal program national parks welcome fourth-graders and their families for free. The project aims to prove the importance of national parks for American citizens and to contribute to pupils’ education, the press release has explained.
The National Park Service is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2016. The administration has decided to come up with an attractive program for fourth graders and their families. These pupils will receive free yearly passes by simply completing an activity on the online platform www.everykidinapark.gov. The pass will be valid until August 31, 2016.
The announcement wrote that the decision to start this new project came to them after realizing that they had the power to shape the second century of the National Park Service. In addition, this initiative helps people pass down some of nation’s values to the young generations.
According to the Service’s declaration, the program has been developed in collaboration with the National Park Foundation. The non-profit organization is offering transportation grants to children who may not afford to travel to national parks on the U.S. territory.
Many attractive activities have been prepared for children to keep them entertained during their visit in national parks. While a simple geographic tour may not entirely capture their attention, organizers think the Junior Secret Service at the FDR home and the Junior Ranger challenge from Val-Kill will definitely do.
Moreover, fourth-graders will carry out many physically challenging activities, according to White House officials. They will be asked to hike glaciers in the region, take boat tours of the river and perform many similar activities that will keep them fit and entertained, at the same time.
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell declared herself extremely pleased with the new project that the National Park Service is developing. She believes engaging children this way will most certainly contribute to their education, will improve their trip planning skills and will provide them with sufficient packing and safety tips.
The service hopes many more children will be convinced to spend time in the outdoor once they get to know the natural beauties of our national parks.
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Many more voices suggest something needs to be done to prevent university shootings.
Based on police authorities’ reports, a student was deadly shot in Savannah State University fire exchange which took place on Thursday evening at around 10 p.m. The first declarations indicated that the boy was a member of the Student Union and was killed at the campus’ cafeteria.
Christopher Starks, from Atlanta was at the Savannah State University cafeteria when an altercation break out. Unlike other students in the room, Christopher did not make it in time to hide himself from the attackers and was fatally shot during the altercation. He was later on pronounced dead by medical experts at the local hospital.
Police authorities arrived at the scene as soon as they were notified. They placed the campus under lockdown for approximately one hour, from 10 p.m. to 11:45 p.m. Nobody was allowed to enter or leave the campus during the lockdown because police officials wanted to gather as much evidence on the incident as possible.
The University Police is now working with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to find out who the suspects were and what might have caused them to start shooting in the cafeteria. The University’s spokeswoman, Loretta Heyward, published a press release on the official website informing people about the incident. She also expressed her deepest regrets for the loss that Christopher Starks’ family has suffered.
In spite of the recent incident, the spokeswoman has reassured students that academic activities will be resumed on Friday. Students, who felt they needed counseling for the grief they have suffered, were advised to seek medical support.
The news has caused much hype among Internet users, particularly members of social communities. Many Twitter users expressed their deepest concerns in relation to the frequent fire exchanges occurring within university campuses. They hope something will be done to prevent similar events from taking place again in the future.
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More and more of the citizens enrolled for the Obamacare – the Affordable Care Act – have expressed their deep dissatisfaction with their health insurance coverage, which prompts them to turn to private health insurance plans.
One of the most sought-after, AgileHealthInsurance.com, has reaped the effects of said dissatisfaction, as millions of people realize that term health insurance plans might be – ironically – a more affordable option than Obamacare.
Dissatisfaction among Obamacare subscribers has been recorded by a recent study conducted by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, an organization that set out to take the pulse of the nation on the matter. According to their report, only 30 percent of citizens enrolled in Obamacare have expressed contentment with their current health plans.
Compared with satisfaction levels reported by enrollees in other health insurance coverage – including Medicare and Medicaid – the nation’s reaction to Obamacare has been going from bad to worse.
One of the key dissatisfaction drivers when it comes to Obamacare plans is the price. More than 35 percent of responders in the Deloitte survey reported they felt they were paying too much for their health plan.
Besides having to make premium payments, Obamacare subscribers are also prone to paying high deductibles, with the exception of those who qualify for cost-sharing subsidies or those who pay for a platinum or high-end gold plan.
Consumers are also unhappy with the limited range of provider networks included in the plan. As discovered by study from Avalere, Obamacare plans turned out to offer 34 percent fewer providers than other commercial health plans. In other words, chances were a lot higher that patients would have to pay full price if they preferred doctors or hospitals out of network.
Consequent to the increase dissatisfaction with Obamacare, more people prefer term health insurance plans, which sometimes turn out to be up to 70 percent less expensive on average than the Obamacare plans. Additionally, they tend to include a broader offer of provider networks, and they are open for enrollment throughout the year, rather than just on predefined periods.
The rise in costumers experienced by AgileHealthInsurance.com, among other providers, is easier to explain in such a context. According to CEO Bruce Telkamp, consumer awareness of the cost advantages of term health insurance is one of the drivers that increased the popularity of term health plans.
AgileHealthInsurance.com is the first dedicated site that aims to help consumers understand how term health insurance works and what are the benefits. Accessing the site allows users to compare review plans and costs online, in addition to all-year-round enrollment period in case they find a plan that meets their needs.
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The girl was found in Steven Sheerer’s home.
According to the most recent police records, a man was arrested in Rosie O’Donnell missing daughter case on Friday evening. Steven Sheerer was taken to jail after police officers found evidence of inappropriate communication between him and O’Donnell’s 17-year-old daughter.
Chelsea O’Donnell has been reported missing on Tuesday after her mother declared that the girl had left home on August 11. Hours later, police officers discovered the 17-year-old girl in the home of 25-year-old Steven Sheerer.
According to officials’ declaration, the girl voluntarily moved to the boy’s house, even though she is still minor. Chelsea initially refused to respond to officers’ request of accompanying them, but eventually agreed to come out of the house when police officers threatened that they would use the force to get inside the house.
Rosie O’Donnell consented police officers to investigate the content of her daughter’s mobile phone in order to determine the latter’s connection to Sheerer. The discovered evidence indicates that there has been inappropriate sexual communication between the two within the past weeks; therefore, the suspect was arrested on Friday evening and taken to the jail.
Police officers have also seized a personal computer and other equipment from the man’s house in Barnegat as they have reasons to believe that they contain useful material for the upcoming trial.
A $40,000 bond was set for the 25-year-old man’s bail out. He is also facing a 10-year conviction for having endangered the welfare of a child and engaging in obscene conduct towards a minor. The man has had other convictions in the past, according to police officers’ declaration. He was arrested in 2012 and 2013 for drug possession and DUI charges.
Rosie O’Donnell’s spokeswoman has told the press that the comedienne has always been interested in the wellbeing of her daughter. She expressed the actress’ appreciation for all the work that authorities have made to find and bring her daughter back home safely.
Steven Sheerer’s arraignment is due to take place next week, but the official date of the court trial has not yet been established, the press release further wrote.
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