Infinite Unknown

A satellite tracking device that will allow parents to plot their child’s location to within 10ft will go on sale in the UK in March, its manufacturer said.

The GPS watch can be securely fastened to a child’s wrist and will trigger an alert if forcibly removed. Photo: PA

Concerned parents will be able to receive text or email updates of their child’s location.

Nu.M8, thought to be the world’s first GPS locator device specifically designed to be worn by children, is concealed within a digital watch.

It can be securely fastened to a child’s wrist and will trigger an alert if forcibly removed.

Parents who text “wru”, or click “where r you” on the secure website, will be able to see the child’s location on Google maps and the street address and postcode will also be displayed.

So-called “safe zones” can also be set up in which children can play safely and an alert will be sent to the parent’s mobile phone and computer if the child strays out of that area.

The watch, which will go on sale in March, is expected to cost £149.99, with a standard monthly subscription fee of £9.99.

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Tags: Children, GPS, Society, Technology

Fury as stop-and-search powers are used to block and confiscate legal pictures

The artist Reuben Powell was arrested and imprisoned for photographing an old government building

Reuben Powell is an unlikely terrorist. A white, middle-aged, middle-class artist, he has been photographing and drawing life around the capital’s Elephant & Castle for 25 years.

With a studio near the 1960s shopping centre at the heart of this area in south London, he is a familiar figure and is regularly seen snapping and sketching the people and buildings around his home - currently the site of Europe’s largest regeneration project. But to the police officers who arrested him last week his photographing of the old HMSO print works close to the local police station posed an unacceptable security risk.

“The car skidded to a halt like something out of Starsky & Hutch and this officer jumped out very dramatically and said ‘what are you doing?’ I told him I was photographing the building and he said he was going to search me under the Anti-Terrorism Act,” he recalled.

For Powell, this brush with the law resulted in five hours in a cell after police seized the lock-blade knife he uses to sharpen his pencils. His release only came after the intervention of the local MP, Simon Hughes, but not before he was handcuffed and his genetic material stored permanently on the DNA database.

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Tags: Civil liberties, Civil rights, Police, Police State, Society, U.K.

Hard-up families are increasingly turning to insurance fraud to help see them through the credit crunch.

Insurers have seen an 80 per cent increase since last year in the number of bogus household and vehicle claims, many of which are being made by middle-class families struggling to pay their bills.

Typical scams include householders hiding their valuables and staging a burglary in an attempt to claim thousands of pounds in cash, or dropping their old television down the stairs so they can claim for a new flatscreen model.

In 2007 the insurance industry detected 91,000 frauds, which is set to rise to more than 160,000, in 2008.

Fraud costs the insurance industry an estimated £1.6 billion every year, adding £40 to the average annual household premium.

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Tags: Credit Crunch, Economy, Fraud, Society, survival, U.K.

Mr. Celente long ago warned of the economic malaise that is gripping the planet - but he does have some good news.

Gerald Celente The Greatest Depression *AUDIO*

To download this audio file to your computer, right click this link and select “save”, “save as” or “save file as” (depending upon your browser).

Source: HoweStreet

Tags: Bailout, Crash, Depression, Dollar, Economy, Education, Food, Gold, Government, Great Depression, Inflation, Meltdown, Politics, Poverty, Riots, Society, U.S., Wall Street

Patrons surfing the web at an internet cafe in Los Angele

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Internet has surpassed newspapers as the main source for national and international news for Americans, according to a new survey.

Television, however, remains the preferred medium for Americans, according to the survey by the Washington-based Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

Seventy percent of the 1,489 people surveyed by Pew said television is their primary source for national and international news.

Forty percent said they get most of their news from the Internet, up from 24 percent in September 2007, and more than the 35 percent who cited newspapers as their main news source.

Only 59 percent of people younger than 30 years old prefer television, Pew said, down from 68 percent in the September 2007 survey.

The latest survey was conducted December 3-7 and released on Tuesday. Pew did not provide the margin of error.

Dec. 24, 08

Source: AFP

Tags: Internet, Society, U.S.

Ameera Ahmad, 25, gave birth to daughter Layan six months ago. Here, she tells of life under siege and of her struggle to bring up a child after 18 months of Israeli blockade

During the months of the blockade, everything in my life has changed. Before, I would wake up and hope that tomorrow would be better than today. But it never happened. The reason is simple. It is because I live in Gaza, where all dreams and hope vanish because of the situation we live in.

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Tags: Economy, Food, Gaza, Government, Hamas, Israel, Politics, Society, water

Afghan parents are selling their sons to wealthy women unable to have their own.


Channel 4 footage shows eight-year-old Qassem saying goodbye to his family Photo: CHANNEL 4 NEWS

The trade in children is spurred by the battered country’s economy and the failure of foreign aid to reach beyond the coffers of central government in the capital Kabul.

While girls are are rarely traded, boys can fetch substantial sums - at least in the eyes of the poor couples who give up a child simply to allow the rest of the family to survive.

A cameraman working for Channel 4 News, Mehran Bozorgnia, witnessed the sale of an eight-year-old boy, Qassem, to Sadiqa, a wealthy woman from Kabul, outside the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

As the meeting began, the boy’s father, Nek Mohammed, knew he only had a final few moments with his son. Sadiqa was business-like. “Kiss your father and mother goodbye now - it is time,” she said, before handing over $1,500 (£1,000). Mr Mohammed began to weep.

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Tags: Afghanistan, Children, Economy, Society

Compare a modern soccer and baseball stadium to the Colosseum. Nothing has really changed. The entire society is built around ‘Panem et circenses’ (’Bread and Circuses’ or ‘Bread and Games’)…and religion.

The crowning achievements to entertain and program you are TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, cellphone towers, cell phones, subliminals, frequencies etc.

If an expert puts electrodes at certain places to your head and measures your brain waves - modified EEG using the Fourier-Transformation - this facts can be proven.

Not even a Faraday cage is safe because they are also using scalar waves that cannot be shielded.

In order to keep you frozen like a rabbit in front of a snake the elite uses to this day ‘Divide et impera’ (’Divide and Rule’ or ‘Divide and Conquer’).

But it’s just for mock fights, organisers emphasised.

Council officials say the proposed plan would not be a ‘carnival’ but a very serious affair.

Maximus come alive: Russel Crowe in ‘Gladiator’

Umberto Broccoli, Rome’s archaeology councillor and TV presenter, said: ‘We need to bring museums alive and speak to the public. We will recreate the atmosphere as it was then.’

Mr Broccoli added: ‘We need to recreate the sights, smells and sounds that were there at the time on the streets.

‘This is the only way to create an atmosphere in a museum that will not be forgotten in a hurry.’

Rome has several modern day gladiator schools were ’students’ can train as a real life Russell Crowe and pretend to be his hero character Maximus.

Whether Russell Crowe himself could be tempted to make an appearance remains to be seen.

Ready for action again: The Colosseum in Italy will see gladiator fights for the first time in 2,000 years

Mr Broccoli added that the proposal would not be tacky - although it had not yet been established whether the mock fights would take place on a purpose-built stage in the centre of the arena or outside.

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Tags: Italy, Rome, Society

Grooms take part in a mass wedding ceremony in Riyadh in June. Governor of Riyadh Prince Salman and a local group organized a mass wedding for about 1600 couples to help people unable to afford expensive ceremonies

A Saudi court has rejected a plea to divorce an eight-year-old girl married off by her father to a man who is 58, saying the case should wait until the girl reaches puberty.

The divorce plea was filed in August by the girl’s divorced mother with a court at Unayzah, 135 miles north of Riyadh just after the marriage contract was signed by the father and the groom.

Lawyer Abdullar Jtili said:”The judge has dismissed the plea, filed by the mother, because she does not have the right to file such a case, and ordered that the plea should be filed by the girl herself when she reaches puberty.”

“She doesn’t know yet that she has been married,” Jtili said then of the girl who was about to begin her fourth year at primary school.

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Tags: Children, Society

(12-20) 22:32 PST SAN FRANCISCO — A band of demonstrators, many wearing black masks, stormed a bustling San Francisco mall Saturday evening, upending garbage cans and foliage and damaging crystal merchandise at one kiosk.

An estimated 50 to 75 people were involved in the disruption at Westfield San Francisco Centre, police said.

“It felt like random, vague anarchy,” said Sam Cantrell, who sells sunglasses at a kiosk near the escalators on the street level where the protesters gathered.

“Everyone’s yelling,” he said. “Some people started running up the escalator the wrong way. People were grabbing their babies and running away in fear.”

The disruption began around 6:30 p.m. as holiday shoppers crowded the mall on the last Saturday before Christmas.

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Tags: Protesters, San Francisco, Society, U.S.