The Raw Story

A non-profit news blog, focused on providing independent journalism.

Tuesday, 28 April 2015

Bumble Bee worker cooked to death with tuna batch

© Image from bumblebee.com      Los Angeles prosecutors charged Bumble Bee Foods and two managers on Monday with violating safety regulations when a worker was cooked to death in an industrial oven with 12,000 pounds of tuna. Both managers could face serve jail sentences and the company could be charged with a maximum fine of $1.5 million. Jose Melena, 62, was performing maintenance work in 35-foot-long industrial oven at Bumble...

Whitewashing WWII: Europeans think the US liberated their ancestors from Nazi Germany

© RIA Novosti / Haldei The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. Banner of Victory over Berlin, 1945      As little as 13 percent of Europeans think the Soviet Army played the leading role in liberating Europe from Nazism during WW2, a recent poll targeting over 3,000 people in France, Germany and the UK reveals. The majority of respondents - 43 percent - said the US Army played the main role in liberating Europe. The survey, carried...

Kilauea Volcano lava lake reaches rim, threatens to overflow

© GB Hajim, COO HawaiiCon      The lava lake at the summit of Kilauea volcano reached the rim of the Overlook crater vent this morning, "during a period when all spattering stopped, but did not get quite high enough to overflow onto the Halemaʻumaʻu Crater floor," scientists report. The USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory says there was no significant change in tilt recorded at Kīlauea's summit over the past day. This week's rise...

Prepping is just common sense!

     Just how much damage can result from one severed wire? One crashed circuit board? A few errant keystrokes or transposed digits? It might surprise you to learn the magnitude of the impact of such a seemingly minor glitch. With the incredible reliance we have on electronic communications, we are very vulnerable to system failures that could erupt in the event of a catastrophic interruption in telephone, data, or wireless...

Useful idiots and the limits of propaganda

© John Breed Flim Flam      As Paul Craig Roberts has recently reported, the US government is in the process of launching an all-out war on truth. Those who express views contrary to the party line out of Washington will be labeled a threat. Eventually they may find themselves carted to one of the concentration camps which Halliburton (Dick Cheney's old company) has constructed for $385 million. But that may take a while. In...

Bullied Michigan teen defies school officials, reposts video about struggle with bullying, lack of support from administration

© Screen capture Dana Hamrick on You Tube      A Michigan teen who posted a video to Facebook complaining about lack of support from administrators at her high school who had failed to protect her from bullying, has reposted the video to YouTube after being told to take it down. According to MyFoxDetroit, 16-year-old Dana Hamrick originally posted the video - where she tearfully explained that she is bullied on a daily basis...

Did Nepal earthquake change Mount Everest's height?

© Andy Bardon, National Geographic Creative Mount Everest (left) and Mount Nuptse (right) might have shifted in the recent Nepal earthquake, but by how much?      The massive earthquake that struck Nepal Saturday likely caused permanent changes in the Earth's surface and may have made Everest a little taller - or shorter, scientists say. A team of geologists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is working on the problem now,...

Bullied Michigan teen defies school officials, reposts video about strugglea with bullying, lack of support from administration

© Screen capture Dana Hamrick on You Tube      A Michigan teen who posted a video to Facebook complaining about lack of support from administrators at her high school who had failed to protect her from bullying, has reposted the video to YouTube after being told to take it down. According to MyFoxDetroit, 16-year-old Dana Hamrick originally posted the video - where she tearfully explained that she is bullied on a daily basis...

While everyone watches California debate, Vermont sneaks bill eliminating vaccine exemptions into law

     With the public focused on the lobbyist-driven California Senate Bill 277 (SB-277), the Vermont Senate quietly eliminated vaccine exemptions Thursday with an 18-11 vote. Missing the starting gun, communities across America are now facing the political push to remove the barrier between their bodies and a private company's medical product. Attempting to squeeze every last drop of credibility from the "safe and effective"...

The Ukraine I knew is dead and gone

What will appear in its place?      There may be some kind of Ukraine, but it will be far, far different from the Ukraine we knew and which has sadly ended Hard as it is to say, sad as it is for those of us who liked Ukraine, as I liked Ukraine - over 2 years living there pre-war, it was a country I was very fond of - but post-Euromaidan, Ukraine is dead. Here's why - 1. If there's no law, it's not a country, it's a failed...

Muslim girl banned from school for wearing long skirt in France

     The case of a 15-year-old Muslim girl who was banned from class twice for wearing a long black skirt seen as too openly religious for secular France has sparked an outcry. The girl was stopped from going to class earlier this month by the head teacher who reportedly felt the long skirt -- popular among some Muslim women who cover their whole body -- "conspicuously" showed religious affiliation, which is banned in schools...

82-year old South Carolina woman dies of neglect; left to sit in chair for 6-months by 'care-giver' relatives

© WYFF4.com Barbara Beam's home      The caregivers of an 82-year-old woman allowed her to sit in the same chair, not moving for six months, until she died earlier this year in a home that smelled so bad that some of the first firefighters on the scene set up a fan by the door, authorities said. Prosecutors are deciding whether to charge Barbara Beam's caregivers in her Jan. 2 death at her house in Greenville after the coroner's...

Man refused medical care, left in Arkansas jail with his 'colon hanging out' for four days

© Reuters/Lucy Nicholson      An Arkansas man is suing officials in Saline County after he said he was refused medical care while in their custody for four days, despite having a prolapsed colon "literally hanging outside of his body," according to court documents. The suit, filed last week in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, alleges that law enforcement officials in Saline knowingly and purposely...

What makes Brussels more equal than others

© Wikipedia      Dutch daily ran a little article recently that we're surprised no other news organization picked up. It concerned a proposal in the European Parliament in which the parliamentarians got to vote on raising their own paycheck (always a good idea). The best thing about the story is that not everyone voted in favor. Most did though. It much amused me to see that apparently it was Angela Merkel's party, the German...

Voice Profiling Software Dehumanizes Hiring Decisions

Imagine that you’re a contestant in an audition round of The Voice, where you belt out your best “I Will Always Love You”. A minute passes. No reaction from the celebrity judges. You keep singing. Another minute, still no encouraging smile or nod. You strain to hit your highest note, pleading with your performance: “Please, please accept me! I am doing my best!” The song ends. No one wants you. Your family bow their heads in shame. Your mom cries....

It is a crime to be poor in America - punishable by further impoverishment

© WLRN.com      The criminalization of America's poor has been quietly gaining steam for years, but a recent study, "The Poor Get Prison," co-authored by Karen Dolan and Jodi L. Carr, reveals the startling extent to which American municipalities are fining and jailing the country's most vulnerable people, not just punishing them for being poor, but driving them deeper into poverty. "In the last ten years," Barbara Ehrenreich...

Charting the American Oligarchy – How 0.01% of the Population Contributes 42% of All Campaign Cash

This is an economic fight, but this is also a political fight. The biggest financial institutions aren’t just big – they wield enormous political power. Last December, Citibank lobbyists wrote an amendment to Dodd-Frank and persuaded their friends in Washington to attach it to a bill that had to pass or the government would have been shut down. And when there was pushback over the amendment, the CEO of JPMorgan, Jamie Dimon, personally got on the...
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