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How companies make millions off lead-poisoned, poor blacks - The Washington Post

▻http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/how-companies-make-millions-off-lead-poisoned-poor-blacks/2015/08/25/7460c1de-0d8c-11e5-9726-49d6fa26a8c6_story.html

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BALTIMORE — The letter arrived in April, a mishmash of strange numbers and words. This at first did not alarm Rose. Most letters are that way for her — frustrating puzzles she can’t solve. Rose, who can scarcely read or write, calls herself a “lead kid.” Her childhood home, where lead paint chips blanketed her bedsheets like snowflakes, “affected me really bad,” she says. “In everything I do.”

#pauvreté #richesse #états-unis #racisme

Why I let my children walk to the corner store — and why other parents should, too
▻http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/why-i-let-my-children-walk-to-the-corner-store--and-why-other-parents-should-too/2014/08/25/f28d7dac-2c6b-11e4-9b98-848790384093_story.html

Maternal deaths in childbirth rise in the U.S. - The Washington Post
▻http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/maternal-deaths-in-childbirth-rise-in-the-us/2014/05/02/abf7df96-d229-11e3-9e25-188ebe1fa93b_story.html

Maternal deaths related to childbirth in the United States are nearly at the highest rate in a quarter century, and a woman giving birth in America is now more likely to die than a woman giving birth in China, according to a new study.

The United States is one of just eight countries to see a rise in maternal mortality over the past decade, said researchers for the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in a study published in The Lancet, a weekly medical journal. The others are Afghanistan, Greece, and several countries in Africa and Central America.

The researchers estimated that 18.5 mothers died for every 100,000 births in the U.S. in 2013, a total of almost 800 deaths. That is more than double the maternal mortality rate in Saudi Arabia and Canada, and more than triple the rate in the United Kingdom.

Une partie de la hausse proviendrait de l’amélioration de l’enregistrement des décès… qui resteraient encore sous-déclarés !

The reasons for the rise in the maternal deaths in the U.S. are not entirely clear, but several factors seem to be in play.

One reason for the rise is an improvement in how maternal deaths are reported, though Kassebaum said the numbers are still likely underreported and mischaracterized in the codings included on death certificates.

Serious reading takes a hit from online scanning and skimming, researchers say - The Washington Post
▻http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/serious-reading-takes-a-hit-from-online-scanning-and-skimming-researchers-say/2014/04/06/088028d2-b5d2-11e3-b899-20667de76985_story.html

To cognitive neuroscientists, Handscombe’s experience is the subject of great fascination and growing alarm. Humans, they warn, seem to be developing digital brains with new circuits for skimming through the torrent of information online. This alternative way of reading is competing with traditional deep reading circuitry developed over several millennia.

#lecture

U.S. Army veteran charged with conspiracy to help terrorists in Syria pleads to lesser count: libérable immédiatement…
▻http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/us-army-veteran-charged-with-conspiracy-to-help-terrorists-in-syria-pleads-to-lesser-count/2013/09/19/2e3bc736-216f-11e3-a358-1144dee636dd_story.html

A U.S. Army veteran accused of fighting alongside a Syrian rebel group linked to al-Qaeda and charged with conspiracies that could have landed him in prison for life pleaded guilty Thursday to a less onerous count and was given a sentence of “time served,” court records show.

In Virginia, a Deal for a Man Accused of Aiding Syrian Rebels
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/21/us/in-virginia-a-deal-for-a-man-accused-of-aiding-rebels.html?_r=0

An Army veteran accused of fighting alongside a Qaeda-affiliated group of Syrian rebels is out of jail after a secret plea deal. The veteran, Eric Harroun, 31, of Phoenix, had been charged with providing material support to a terrorist group and faced up to life in prison. But under a deal entered in federal court in Alexandria, Mr. Harroun pleaded guilty to an obscure law regulating munition exports and was sentenced to time served.

Eric Harroun, Phoenix Vet Who Fought Syrian Regime, Suddenly Gets a Sweet Plea Deal
▻http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2013/09/eric_harroun_phoenix_vet_who_f_1.php

Amid doubt about those allegations, Harroun suddenly agreed to a plea deal yesterday, and his sentence is quite a bit shorter than life in prison — he’ll be released from jail, be placed on probation for three years, and has to pay a $100 fine.

Le Washington Post de Jeff Bezos fait le point sur le drame des lingettes
▻http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/flushable-personal-wipes-clogging-sewer-systems-utilities-say/2013/09/06/9efac4e6-157a-11e3-a2ec-b47e45e6f8ef_story.html

Sewer agencies in the Washington area and across the country say the rapidly growing use of pre-moistened “personal” wipes — used most often by potty-training toddlers and people seeking what’s advertised as a more “thorough” cleaning than toilet paper — are clogging pipes and jamming pumps.

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#toilettes

Md. Rep. Chris Van Hollen speaks from 1988 Iraq gas experience in backing Syrian strike - The Washington Post

▻http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-rep-chris-van-hollen-speaks-from-1988-iraq-gas-experience-in-backing-syrian-strike/2013/09/07/1544cb92-174c-11e3-804b-d3a1a3a18f2c_story.html?hpid=z2

“I have always found it cruelly ironic that the United States and the world did nothing when Saddam Hussein actually used chemical weapons against his people, and then wrongly went to war more than 15 years later when Saddam Hussein did not even have any chemical weapons,” Van Hollen said.

Today, Van Hollen wants to make sure Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad doesn’t escape punishment as Saddam did in 1988. He is helping to lead the effort to round up congressional support to authorize President Obama to carry out air and missile strikes to deter Syria — and others — from using poison gas again.

(...)

Even Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler refrained from using chemical weapons on the battlefield.

“I’m well aware of the argument that this was a bloody civil war in which over 100,000 people have already been killed. Some people ask, ‘What’s the difference?’ ” Van Hollen said.

“But there is a reason that the international community for almost 90 years has banned the use of poison gas. That’s because it’s a weapon of mass destruction that kills indiscriminately,” he said.

He noted that last month’s gas attack killed more people at one time than any other assaults during the Syrian fighting.

(...)

“I strongly believe that if the United States and the international community had taken some action [in 1988], then it would have reined in Saddam Hussein early on, that the failure to act emboldened Saddam Hussein to take reckless action, including the invasion of Kuwait,” Van Hollen said.

#WMD #gas #ADM #Syrie #Irak #Saddam

Long-ago wiretap inspires a battle with the CIA for more information
▻http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/long-ago-wiretap-inspires-a-battle-with-the-cia-for-more-information/2013/03/02/8ebaa924-77b0-11e2-aa12-e6cf1d31106b_story.html

Paul Scott, the late syndicated columnist, was so paranoid about the CIA wiretapping his Prince George’s County home in the 1960s that he’d make important calls from his neighbor’s house. His teenage son Jim Scott figured his dad was either a shrewd reporter or totally nuts.

Not until nearly 45 years later did the son learn that his father’s worries were justified. The insight came in 2007 when the CIA declassified a trove of documents popularly called “the family jewels.” The papers detailed the agency’s unlawful activities from long ago, including wiretapping the Scott home in District Heights. The operation even had a code name: “Project Mockingbird.”

#surveillance

Our Romance With Guns
►http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/sep/27/our-romance-guns

Like so much else in the United States, the costs of our infatuation with guns are not evenly distributed. In 2008 and 2009, gun homicide was the leading cause of death for young black men. They die from gun violence—mainly at the hands of other black males—at a rate eight times that of young white males.2 From 2000 to 2007, the overall national homicide rate remained steady, at about 5.5 per 100,000 persons. But over the same period the homicide rate for black men rose 40 percent for fourteen- to seventeen-year-olds, 18 percent for eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds, and 27 percent for those twenty-five and up. In 1995, the national homicide rate was about 10 per 100,000; the rate for Boston gang members, mainly black and Hispanic, was 1,539 per 100,000. In short, it is not the typical NRA member, but young black and Hispanic men in the inner city, who bear the burden of America’s gun romance.

#armes

Woman, 83, attacked by rabid beaver at Lake Barcroft in Fairfax County
►http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/woman-83-attacked-by-rabid-beaver-at-lake-barcroft-in-fairfax-county/2012/09/05/e778ec02-f794-11e1-8253-3f495ae70650_story.html

The creature knocked Lillian Peterson off her feet as she was climbing out of Lake Barcroft after a swim. The 83-year-old woman twisted around to see what attacked her and noticed one thing: large, orange teeth.

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Police want to stay out of Occupy story - The Washington Post
►http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/police-want-to-stay-out-of-occupy-story/2011/11/22/gIQAjy8MzN_story.html?wprss=rss_national

The videos have been viewed millions of times: protesters on a California campus sidewalk being pepper-sprayed by police as they sit motionless, onlookers chanting “the whole world is watching.”

Those images and sounds are now iconic symbols of the relationship between Occupy Wall Street-related protesters and those charged with protecting public safety around them, something law enforcement officials say they want to avoid.

‘Ritual whiplash’ ahead ? Catholics’ Mass liturgy changing. - The Washington Post
►http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/ritual-whiplash-ahead-catholics-mass-liturgy-changing/2011/10/25/gIQAzcNRNM_story.html?wprss=rss_on-faith

The new translation changes the majority of sentences in the Mass. The prayers and call-and-response dialogue between the priest and the congregation are different, transforming the dialogue that Catholics under 40 have used in church their entire lives. Some leaders warn that the shift could cause “ritual whiplash” among those accustomed to a worship script so familiar that most recite it from memory.

#religion