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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
5/21/2017 9:51:11 AM

2 teachers dismissed after student with ADHD receives award for 'Most Likely to Not Pay Attention'

DAVID CAPLAN


2 teachers dismissed after student with ADHD receives award for 'Most Likely to Not Pay Attention' (ABC News)

Two Atlanta-area middle school teachers have been dismissed of their duties after an eighth-grader with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder received the "Most Likely to Not Pay Attention" award earlier this week at a school assembly.

Nicole Edwards' 14-year-old daughter received the award as part of the Spirit Week activities at Memorial Middle School in Conyers, located about 25 miles east of Atlanta, reported ABC affiliate WSB-TV.

Rockdale County Public Schools superintendent Richard Autry was subsequently notified about the award.

The teachers who handed out the award will not be back at Memorial Middle School, or returning to any Rockdale Public School, school officials said.

Edwards said in a statement to WSB-TV, "At this time, I would like to thank the superintendent, Mr. Autry, for taking immediate action regarding this matter. My family appreciates his concerns."

She adds, "My goal is to make sure that this horrible event never happens to another kid again. As a parent, it is my job to protect my child from being humiliated and bullied, especially when the bully is her teacher. Making fun of any disability is not acceptable."

Cindy Ball, the school board's chief of strategy and innovation, said in a statement Friday, "Earlier this week, we learned about an awards ceremony held during spirit week at Memorial Middle School that had insensitive award categories. RCPS will neither condone nor tolerate any activities or insensitive behavior that may cause embarrassment or humiliation to our children."


(Yahoo News)

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
5/21/2017 10:28:18 AM



PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY LYNE LUCIEN/THE DAILY BEAST


Trump Officials: ‘He Looks More and More Like a Complete Moron’

In the wake of yet another Russia-related bombshell, Trump aides despaired because they know President Trump only has himself to blame.

LACHLAN MARKAY, ASAWIN SUEBSAENG, NOAH SHACHTMAN 05.19.17 6:25 PM ET

Donald Trump and his senior staffers were headed across the Atlantic when news broke that the president had trash-talked former FBI Director James Comey in a meeting with Russian government officials—a meeting in which Trump reportedly promised the Kremlin more flexibility in their relationship with “crazy” Comey out of the picture.

“I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Trump told Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador to the United States, according to an official written account of the meeting first reported by The New York Times. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off,” Trump promised.

The White House confirmed that Trump made the remarks in a Friday afternoon statement, but insisted that the president was simply attempting to elicit concessions from the Russians. The administration officials and West Wing aides who were left grounded stateside on Friday late afternoon couldn’t do much more than dodge questions and vent inflamed frustrations at their boss. (Senior staffers who escaped aboard Air Force One included Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, Senior Adviser Jared Kushner, Director of Strategic Communications Hope Hicks, press secretary Sean Spicer, and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster.)

“I’m glad I’m not on the plane so I could be here to answer your Russia questions,” a senior Trump administration official said, sarcastically, before abruptly hanging up.

Trump’s remarks quickly elicited groans, and some harsh words, from senior officials who did speak with The Daily Beast.

“If Donald Trump gets impeached, he will have one person to blame: Donald Trump,” one of those administration officials said.

The official noted a pattern among leaks that have dominated headlines this week: In virtually every case—the president’s request that Comey pledge fealtyto him, a subsequent ask that Comey ease an investigation into his former top national security aide, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, and revelations that he hopes to rehire Flynn when the FBI wraps up its probe—leaked Trump statements have revealed flippance or hostility toward a federal investigation into alleged Russian meddling in 2016’s presidential election.

The resulting clamor of calls for an independent probe into that meddling—the Justice Department appointed a special counsel to lead such a probe this week—and allegations of criminal obstruction and calls for impeachment were entirely avoidable, the official suggested.

“Trump himself hasn’t been implicated in any of these leaks except where he’s implicated himself, where he says something that makes his perhaps less-than-sterling intentions clear,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the controversy candidly. “He keeps saying there’s no collusion, and I think he’s right. So if he would just shut his trap, what would Dems have?

“Okay, he fired Comey,” the official conceded. “With a semi-competent comms operation, that would blow over in 24 hours. And that’s the worst part: he has a competent comms staff. But they can’t do their jobs because he keeps running his mouth.”

Those complaints echo weeks of griping from administration and White House officials who say that Trump, through unscripted tweets and statements to the press, has undermined a White House communications operation that is trying to dig him out of a very deep public relations hole—not to mention the legal bind the president may find himself in.

Trump’s repeated media missteps have frustrated even longtime supporters. “Every day he looks more and more like a complete moron,” said one senior administration official who also worked on Trump’s campaign. “I can’t see Trump resigning or even being impeached, but at this point I wish he’d grow a brain and be the man that he sold himself as on the campaign.”

Asked whether an administration staff change-up would ameliorate this latest crisis, a Republican source formerly involved with a pro-Trump political group told The Daily Beast, “yes, if it comes with a frontal lobotomy for Trump.”

The consequences for Trump could be more dire than a staff shake-up, law enforcement sources suggested, however. Trump’s reported comments to the Russian officials could support allegations that he fired Comey in order to slow or put a stop to an investigation probing his campaign’s contacts with the Russian government—allegations that the White House vehemently denies.

“Absolutely… Looks Like Obstruction”

Asked whether those comments could be construed as intent to interfere in the FBI’s investigation, a Justice Department official told The Daily Beast, “absolutely.”

“Individual acts/comments may not constitute obstruction [of justice], but the whole pattern—starting with the requested loyalty oath, ending with the firing—does look like obstruction,” the official said in an email. “And then the question is, is he obstructing because he knows he is guilty himself, or is he obstructing because he doesn’t know the full extent of [former Trump campaign chief Paul] Manafort, Flynn, and others’ shenanigans, and is terrified of finding out. Both are plausible; we know where I would place my bet.”

David C. Gomez, a former FBI assistant special agent in charge, said Trump’s comments demonstrated a profound inability to grasp the potential consequences of his words.

“In terms of potential criminal activity, it’s amateur night at the White House,” Gomez told The Daily Beast. “These guys—and Trump especially—don’t know how to not implicate themselves.

“On a big case like this, the ideal thing would be a wiretap on your number one subject,” Gomez added. “But in this case, you don’t need a wiretap. He just comes right out and says it.”

with additional reporting by Gideon Resnick


(thedailybeast.com)


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
5/21/2017 11:01:06 AM

Instagram worst social media app for young people's mental health

Updated 2128 GMT (0528 HKT) May 19, 2017





(CNN) Instagram is the most detrimental social networking app for young people's mental health, followed closely by Snapchat, according to a new report by the Royal Society for Public Health in the UK.

Their study, #StatusofMind, surveyed almost 1,500 young people aged 14 to 24 on how certain social media platforms impact health and well-being issues such as anxiety, depression, self-identity and body image.
YouTube was found to have the most positive impact, while Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter all demonstrated negative affects overall on young people's mental health.
Instagram -- the image-saturated app with over 700 million users worldwide -- topped the list in terms of negative impact, most notably among young women, stated the report, published Friday.
Instagram draws young women to "compare themselves against unrealistic, largely curated, filtered and Photoshopped versions of reality," said Matt Keracher, author of the report.
"Instagram easily makes girls and women feel as if their bodies aren't good enough as people add filters and edit their pictures in order for them to look 'perfect,' " an anonymous female respondent said in the report.
To tackle the problem, the Royal Society for Public Health has called for social media platforms to take action in order to help combat young users' feelings of inadequacy and anxiety by placing a warning on images that have been digitally manipulated.
"We're not asking these platforms to ban Photoshop or filters but rather to let people know when images have been altered so that users don't take the images on face value as real," Keracher said.
"We really want to equip young people with the tools and the knowledge to be able to navigate social media platforms not only in a positive way but in a way that promotes good mental health," he added.
The survey concluded that while Instagram negatively affected body image, sleep patterns and added to a sense of "FOMO" -- the fear of missing out -- the image app was also a positive outlet for self-expression and self-identity for many of its young users.
Professional YouTuber Laci Green, a health vlogger with 1.5 million subscribers, said that education surrounding mental health issues in a digital age is an educational imperative for young people.
"Because platforms like Instagram and Facebook present highly curated versions of the people we know and the world around us. It is easy for our perspective of reality to become distorted," she said. "Socializing from behind a screen can also be uniquely isolating, obscuring mental health challenges even more than usual."
Green added that it is important we lay the groundwork now to minimize potential harm as the first generation of social media users become adults.
YouTube was the only social media platform that demonstrated an overall positive impact on young people's mental health in the study.
The report also found that it's not just what young people are engaging with on social media but also how long they are engaging with it.
Young people who spend more than two hours per day connecting on social networking sites are more likely to report poor mental health, including psychological distress, according to the report.
"Platforms that are supposed to help young people connect with each other may actually be fueling a mental health crisis," Shirley Cramer, chief executive of the royal society, noted in the report.
To address this, the society has also recommended the introduction of a pop-up warning to alert users that they have been online for too long.
Seven in 10 young people surveyed supported the recommendation, but with experts describing social media use as more addictive than cigarettes and alcohol, it's not clear whether a "heavy usage" pop-up would be enough to break through that barrier.
Sir Simon Wessely, president of the UK's Royal College of Psychiatrists, supports an education-based approach and warns that demonizing social media is not the answer.
"I am sure that social media plays a role in unhappiness, but it has as many benefits as it does negatives," he said. "We need to teach children how to cope with all aspects of social media -- good and bad -- to prepare them for an increasingly digitized world. There is real danger in blaming the medium for the message."



(cnn.com)

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
5/21/2017 11:29:14 AM

Trump in Saudi Arabia signs $110B arms deal with Persian Gulf ally




President Trump formally greeted in Saudi Arabia


President Trump in Saudi Arabia on Saturday signed a nearly $110 billion arms deal to help the Persian Gulf ally with its military-defense system.

"That was a tremendous day," Trump said after signing the deal with Saudi leader King Salman. "Tremendous investments in the United States. Hundreds of billions of dollars of investments into the United States and jobs, jobs, jobs."

The White House says the package includes defense equipment and other support to help the Arab nation and the rest of the Gulf region fight again terrorism and the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, according to the White House.

Trump during his winning presidential campaign and in the first several months of his presidency has argued the United States can no longer be the world’s police officer and that other nations must become more self-sufficient in efforts to combat terrorism and in protecting themselves against rogue nations like Iran and North Korea.

Trump arrived in Saudi Arabia early Saturday as the start to his nine-day, overseas tour that will also take him to Israel and Europe. The international trip is Trump’s first since taking office in January.

“Great to be in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia,” Trump tweeted upon landing in Air Force One. “Looking forward to the afternoon and evening ahead.”

Trump is expected to pledge his respect and support to Saudi leaders and to the region, after months of harsh anti-Muslim rhetoric.

Trump greeted at the Saudi airport with an elaborate ceremony, punctuated by a military flyover and a handshake from Saudi King Salman.

First lady Melania Trump wore a black pantsuit with a golden belt and did not cover her head for the arrival, consistent with custom for foreign dignitaries visiting Saudi Arabia.

In 2015, her husband had, in a tweet, criticized former first lady Michelle Obama for not wearing a headscarf during a visit to the kingdom.

After two days of meetings in Riyadh, Trump will travel to Israel, have an audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican, then meet with allies at a NATO summit in Brussels and the Group of 7 wealthy nations in Sicily.

The multi-billion dollar defense deal “in the clearest terms possible” shows the United States’ commitment to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf partners and expands economic opportunities, the White House said. The deal will also supporting tens-of-thousands of new jobs in the U.S. defense industrial base, the White House also said.

The package includes tanks, combat ships, missile defense systems, radar and communications and cybersecurity technology.

The 81-year-old King Salman greeted Trump at the airport. The two leaders exchanged pleasantries and Trump said it was "a great honor" to be there.

Several jets then flew overhead leaving a red, white and blue trail.

Saudi Arabia offered Trump the elaborate welcome ahead of his two-day stay. Billboards featuring images of Trump and the king dotted the highways of Riyadh, emblazoned with the motto "Together we prevail."

Trump's luxury hotel was bathed in red, white and blue lights and, at times, an image of the president's face.

Trump and the king met briefly in the airport terminal for a coffee ceremony before the president headed to his hotel before the day's other meetings.

White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus told reporters on Air Force One that Trump spent the flight meeting with staff, working on his upcoming speech to the Muslim world and getting a little sleep.

White House officials hope the trip gives Trump the opportunity to recalibrate after one of the most difficult stretches of his young presidency. The White House badly bungled the president's stunning firing of FBI Director James Comey, who was overseeing the federal investigation into possible ties between Trump's campaign and Russia. On Wednesday, the Justice Department relented to calls from Democrats to name a special counsel, tapping former FBI chief Robert Mueller to lead the probe.

After spending much of Saturday meeting with King Salman and other members of the royal family, Trump was to end the day at a banquet dinner at the Murabba Palace. On Sunday, he'll hold meetings with more than 50 Arab and Muslim leaders converging on Riyadh for a regional summit focused largely on combating the Islamic State and other extremist groups.

Trump dodged one potential land mine when Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who has been indicted on war crime and genocide charges, announced that he would not attend the summit for personal reasons.

The centerpiece of Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia will be a speech Sunday at the Arab-Islamic-American summit. White House aides view the address as a counter to Obama's 2009 speech to the Muslim world, which Trump criticized as too apologetic for U.S. actions in the region.

Trump will call for unity in the fight against radicalism in the Muslim world, casting the challenge as a "battle between good and evil" and urging Arab leaders to "drive out the terrorists from your places of worship," according to a draft of the speech obtained by The Associated Press. The draft notably refrains from mentioning democracy and human rights — topics Arab leaders often view as U.S. moralizing — in favor of the more limited goals of peace and stability.

It also abandons some of the harsh anti-Muslim rhetoric that defined Trump's presidential campaign and does not contain the words "radical Islamic terror," a phrase Trump repeatedly criticized Hillary Clinton for not using during last year's campaign.

(foxnews.com)


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
5/21/2017 4:39:57 PM

Number of young girls admitted to hospital for self-harming quadruples in last five years

THE number of girls aged 12 and below hospitalised for self-harming has increased almost fourfold in the last five years – with cases of cutting and hanging among youngsters at record levels.


nhs girl

GETTY

The number of girls aged 12 and below hospitalised for self-harming has increased almost fourfold

Figures from Digital also show almost 30,000 teenage boys and girls were hospitalised for carrying out acts of selfharm – a rise of more than 70 per cent in the last five years.

–– ADVERTISEMENT ––

Lucy Lyus, information manager at mental health charity Mind, said: “It is worrying that people are reaching crisis point and it indicates that many people aren’t getting the help and treatment they need earlier on.

"People who self-harm need understanding, help and support, rather than being stigmatised or blamed, which only serves to worsen their mental health and increase the likelihood of self-harming again.

“That’s why, among other things, we’re calling on whoever forms the next government to prioritise tackling the stigma surrounding mental health.














Young girlGETTY

Lucy Lyus from the charity Mind said: 'It is worrying that people are reaching crisis point'

“This would help ensure anyone experiencing a mental health problem received the help and support they need, when they need it, in the same way they would if they had a physical health problem.”


(express.co.uk)


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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