The era before air travel, when adventurers sailed the seven seas in search of trade, power, and adventure, has a romantic and exciting quality that’s still portrayed in books and movies, and beloved by so many today.

A common theme in all of those tales is the treasure chest, a wooden strongbox overflowing with gold coins and precious gems. Of course, in reality, most of the valuables carried on the high seas were items for direct trade that wouldn’t be of much value to us today, at least not financially. But whenever we find a shipwreck from that time, it is almost certainly of value to us archeologically…

Former Giant

Portugal is pretty small, being roughly the size of the state of Maine. But a few hundred years ago, it was one of the largest and most powerful empires in the world, with territory including a massive chunk of South America, significant holdings in Sub-Saharan Africa, and colonies established throughout Asia and the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

Naval Might

The Portuguese Empire was established and maintained by the country’s powerful navy, which brought great wealth through trade with distant nations. Though we know much about that period in history, there is always more that can be learned.

Looking Into The Past

For the nearly ten years, the town of Cascais, along with the Portuguese government, navy, and Nova University in Lisbon, have been carrying out an archeological project to look deeper into the time when Portugal was a dominant seafaring force.

Beautiful City

Cascais lies just to the west of the Lisbon, the capital city. It’s a coastal town that lies at the mouth of the Tagus estuary. The southern part of the Iberian peninsula, the body of land that contains Portugal and Spain, is famous for its warm, beautiful weather.

Resort Destination

As such, it’s no surprise that Cascais is now a major resort destination. But in the age of wooden ships, it was an important port for both trade and military purposes. Consequently, it would be one of the best places to look for artifacts of Portugal’s imperial past.

The Place to Look

Luis Mendes, Portugal’s Minister of Culture said the Tagus river was considered a “hotspot” for shipwrecks from the era of wooden ships. When archeologists made an astounding find in September of 2018, “[that] discovery came to prove it,” he said.

Amazing Discovery

Off of the coast, archeologists found the 400-year-old shipwreck of what appeared to be a trade ship. “From a heritage perspective, this is the discovery of the decade,” Jorge Friere, the project’s director, said to Reuters.

Great Importance

“We found the ship on 4 September, using a geophysical survey and divers, and spent four days working on the site,” said Frierie, who is specifically a maritime archeologist. The wreck was remarkably well preserved, making it “the most important find of all time,” for the country, he said.

Unidentified

“We don’t know the name of the ship, but it’s a Portuguese ship from the late 16th or early 17th century,” Freire said. More specifically, the ship sank sometime between 1573 and 1620, as archeologists learned from a certain artifact they found.

Far East

Some of the items in the ship’s hold were porcelain artifacts from China, belonging to the Wanli Period. The Wanli emperor, whose personal name was Zhu Yijun, was the 14th emperor of the Ming Dynasty in China. His 48 year reign – the longest among all Ming dynasty emperors – began in 1572, meaning the Portuguese ship must have ended its journey of several years close to that time.

Spices

That particular period was the height of the spice trade for Portugal, so it came as no surprise when archeologists discovered spices from India, including black pepper, a commodity so valuable in Europe at the time that it was often used as collateral or even currency.

Telltale Shells

One of the darker items found in the wreck were a number of cowrie shells. The cowrie is a type of sea snail, whose shells were used as a currency in the slave trade in some parts of Africa at the time.

Ready For Action

There were also a number of bronze cannons found, a testament to the dangers of sea trade in the era. A ship carrying valuables traveling from one side of the world to the other would make a tempting target for any number of pirates and nations if it didn’t have the means to defend itself.

National Symbols

The cannons were engraved with Portugal’s coat of arms and armillary sphere that are still found on the Portuguese flag, confirming beyond any doubt that it was a Portuguese ship. That cemented it as an important cultural relic for the coastal nation.

Pleased Mayor

“This is one of the most significant archeological discoveries of the century,” said Cascais Mayor Carlos Carreiras. “The recognition from the scientific community that this is the discovery of the decade, the century, in terms of marine archeology, is for us of great satisfaction.”

Long Project Ahead

Some of the objects from the wreck that were most at risk of being lost were removed immediately for safekeeping. The rest of the artifacts would remain there for divers to explore over the coming weeks, months, and possibly years.

Searching For Clues

Divers and researchers would “have to complement the work in the field with research in our historical archives, to find out exactly which ship” it was that they found. The work would be part of a planned ten year project to map the area that began in 2009.

Similar Wreck

According to the survey team that has been working on the project, this particular wreck was in better structural shape than the Nossa Senhora dos Mártires, a wrecked cargo ship that was also found at the mouth of the Tagus river.

Seeking Shelter

The Nossa Senhora dos Mártires was also a trading ship, though it was from an earlier time, having sunk in 1606. It was apparently trying to seek safer anchorage in the Tagus during a wind storm but struck a submerged rock and went down close to the shore.

Lucky People

Lost in that wreck was a massive amount of black pepper, which completely covered the river, and were harvested along with the other cargo by people living in the town at the time. The wreck was discovered in 1993 and subsequently excavated between 1996 and 2001.

The ‘Most Important Find of All Time’ Discovered Off The Portuguese Coast is an article from: LifeDaily

Americans drink a lot of coffee. It’s a safe claim to make, even without the statistical proof to back it up. Many of those caffeine-addicted Americans, get their fix at one of the most recognizable coffee retailers in the entire world: Starbucks.

When Starbucks was in its heyday, you couldn’t walk down a block in New York City without encountering one. Even today, the colossal coffee corporation has 220 stores in Manhattan alone. Today, they have over 13,000 locations across the U.S. but they almost never got off the ground…

Starbucks Today

Starbucks, as it is today, would probably never have survived it’s initial foray into the world of consumer coffee if it weren’t for the intervention of a few well-informed capitalists, including Bill Gates. Now, some readers may be wondering, why they should care about the fate of a monetary monolith like Starbucks?

Simple Delights

The answer is fairly straightforward and is most apparent to the coffee addicts out there who simply can’t get enough of their caramel macchiatos, mocha frappuccinos, and pumpkin spice lattes. Starbucks has become an American institution. They provide a service that just about everyone can partake in and they are located across the country’s roadways, in its airports, and on the streets of nearly every major city.

Founding Roasters

The first Starbucks opened in Seattle, Washington, in 1971. It was the brainchild of college friends and future business partners, Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker. They were an English teacher, a history teacher, and a writer, respectively. All three were inspired to open up their own business involving a shared love: coffee.

What’s in a Name

The three friends spoke to fellow coffee roasting entrepreneur Alfred Peet and learned his unique style of bean roasting. They brought that expertise to their new business. Turns out people liked their coffee enough that they figured they could open up a business. They named it Starbucks, after the chief mate in Herman Melville’s famous novel Moby Dick.

Business is Booming

The business boomed and by 1987, the three original owners had done what they set out to do. So they sold the entire chain of stores to former manager, Howard Schultz. He quoted a number, $3.8 million, a song, in retrospect. Baldwin offered Schultz 90 days to raise the money. Schultz, who was in his early 30’s and owned his own coffee business, was ecstatic.

Milan

Schultz’s own coffee houses, Il Giornale, were inspired both by his trip to Milan and his experience as a former manager of a Starbucks in Washington. He had loved seeing the way Italian coffee houses ran and the way they felt central to the communities themselves. He wanted to bring that the United States.

Sense of Community

“What really caught my attention was the sense of community that existed inside of these coffee bars, and what I began to realize and label as the ‘third place’ between home and work,” said Schultz.

Money Troubles

Schultz knew his expertise as a coffee salesman wasn’t the only reason the founders considered him a potential buyer. They respected him sure, but they were also experiencing some financial troubles from the business as well. They not only wanted to sell Starbucks, but they also needed to. Schultz was thrilled of course, but had his own problems, too.

Raising Capital

Being thrilled was not enough though, he also had to be flush with cash to afford the already booming business. Within two months, Schultz had raised about half the funds, an impressive feat all on its own. Unfortunately, it was not nearly impressive enough, not when the founders were so eager to sell.

Competitive Bid

Baldwin called Schultz to come in for a meeting, he had some disappointing news. He informed him that they had a competitive buyer. Schultz already owned a number of coffee outlets – his Il Giornale chain – and apparently one of his investors had moved to undercut him by offering the founders $4 million in cash with no due diligence.

World Ends

Schultz knew immediately who the competition was. This person was one of the three business titans in Seattle at the time, and he would have the means to buy the founders out without a second thought. Schultz’s dreams were shattered. Luckily, his friend and attorney Scott Greenberg had some good news for him.

Here to Help

Greenberg told Schultz to stop by his office the next day to meet his firm’s senior partner, whom he said might have some interest in the budding coffee business as well. He didn’t know who this fellow was, but if he had the means to bid on Starbucks, he was surely a man worthy of hearing out.

The Whole Story

“I didn’t know who the senior partner was,” Schultz explained to Guy Raz in a recent NPR broadcast. The senior partner turned out to be none other than Bill Gates Senior, father of Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Gates Sr. shook Schultz’s hand and asked for the entire story, which the desperate entrepreneur revealed. When he was finished, Gates invited him on a walk.

Open the Gates

The walk he invited Schultz on was to go see the competitive buyer and see if they could work out an amicable agreement. Bill Gates Sr. is not a small man, nor is he a weakling when it comes to the world of business. At six feet and seven inches tall, and at the prime of his career, he was a force to be reckoned with. So Schultz was glad to have him on his side, but still nervous to meet a titan of industry that was his bidding competitor.

Ashamed

As they walked into the competitor’s office, Gates Sr. went into full wolf mode. He told the man, “You should be ashamed of yourself that you’re going to steal this kid’s dream. It’s not going to happen. You and I both know this is not going to happen.” Minutes later and the two of them walked out of the office, content in the knowledge that the man was going to retract his bid.

Lingering Concerns

There was still one problem, however, Schultz was still about a couple million short of what the founders were looking for. He explained this to Gates Sr., feeling somewhat abashed. The tall man looked down at him and told him in no uncertain terms, “‘We’re going to find the money and my son, and I are going to invest.”

Quite a Sum

True to his word, the competitor dropped the bid and in August of 1987. Howard Schultz bought Starbucks for the agreed-upon $3.8 million. Schultz rebranded his Il Giornale coffee shops as Starbucks and expanded the business from there. He soon moved Starbucks beyond Washington and into the history books.

An Eye to The Future

A few years later and Starbucks had 46 stores all across the Northwest and Midwestern United States. They were roasting over 2,000,000 pounds of coffee a year. It was a fraction of what they roast today, but it was more than enough for Schultz, who saw the business as so much more than it was.

Billionaire Again

Today, Starbucks roasts many more beans and employs about 300,000 people. Schultz became a billionaire three times over and the name Starbucks became a household name – and all of it would never have been possible if it weren’t for the kindness and somewhat aggressive intervention of Bill Gates Sr.

Back In The Seat

Schultz served as CEO from 1987 to 2000 and only stepped down briefly. He returned to take the helm in 2008 and has been there ever since. Starbucks has gone through ups and downs in recent years, but they continue to do that one thing that made them stand out among their competitors, that is, make a great cup of coffee.

How Bill Gates Is Tied to The Success of Starbucks is an article from: LifeDaily

There are all types of thieves out there, but from pickpockets to bank robbers to white collar fraudsters to kidnappers, they all have one thing in common: a desire to steal rather than earn their money. Luckily for the victims, there are almost always protective measures against such crimes, like insurance and heavy security.

But a clever thief found a way to get an easy score – more than once – on a living thing of great value. And he would have gotten away with his crimes, if it weren’t for the sharp eye of one police officer.

Rare Beauty

The Madagascan radiated tortoise is considered to be one of the world’s most beautiful tortoises. They grow to be about 35 pounds with a high domed shell and other features that are typical of most tortoise species. The thing that sets the animal apart is its coloration.

Dazzling Colors

The radiated tortoise gets its name from the brilliant yellow lines radiating from the center of each dark plate of its shell. The “star” pattern of the lines is more intricate and finely detailed than the similar patterns that appear on some species of tortoise. They are remarkably long-lived, even among tortoises, capable of living nearly 200 years.

Dwindling Numbers

For these reasons, the radiated tortoise is a prized animal to keep as a pet. Because they are so highly sought after, they have been over-exploited in the pet trade. On top of that, their natural habitat in their native Madagascar has been rapidly declining and the animals have been poached for food, leaving the species critically endangered.

Promising Conservation

While their numbers are growing so low that they may be on the path to extinction in the wild, there are approximately 330 animals in captivity that are participating in breeding programs, which show great promise in increasing their numbers. But because the illicit sale of radiated tortoises to private collectors can bring big money, there are still setbacks.

Fool Me Twice…

Two of those setbacks came in 2011 in Australia. A Madagascan radiated tortoise was stolen from the Perth Zoo in June of that year and then, in a double whammy, a second tortoise was stolen the following September. Because most of the security in a zoo is focused on keeping the animals in, a clever thief was able to strike twice.

Evasive Criminal

Initially, the police investigation into the missing animals was met with no success. The kidnapper left next to no clues about their identity and were consequently able to evade the authorities for years. But that would all change thanks to a sharp-eyed police officer.

Sharp Eye

While police were responding to a call about a burglary in one of Perth’s northern suburbs in 2018, one of the responding officers spotted something strange in the backyard of a neighboring property. Closer inspection revealed that it was a radiated tortoise.

It’s Our Guy

When police took the animal to a vet, a scan of the animal uncovered a microchip which identified it as one of the Zoo’s missing tortoises. If the zoo was only able to recover that one animal, they would be happy enough. But a subsequent search of the house where the tortoise was found uncovered even more.

Health Worries

“It is believed the second tortoise was taken from the Girrawheen home on the same day police attended,” said a police statement about the incident. “There are concerns for the welfare of that tortoise.”

Special Needs

The concerns about the animal’s welfare came mostly from the fact that Madagascan radiated tortoises have different needs from most common tortoises. “To survive, these tortoises require special diets and living areas, completely different to the needs of a tortoise purchase at a pet store.”

Serious Crime

The 29-year-old man whom the home belonged to was charged with possessing stolen or unlawfully obtained property and would later appear in court to answer for his crimes. In the meantime, the search was on for the second tortoise, who could be in significant danger after being moved.

Tracked Down

It would take nearly three weeks but police were able to track the second animal down to the home of a 35-year-old woman who lived in a suburb of Greenwood. Almost miraculously, it was alive as well, though both animals had experienced some damage to their shells and were showing the effects of improper care.

Unbelievable

According to Perth Zoo senior veterinarian Simone Vitali, the recovery of the two reptiles was “extraordinary.” Because they had been gone for so long, she and her staff had given up hope that they would ever be found. They had simply assumed that the animals, which are now about 22 years old, had died after going seven years without expert care.

Slow In All Things

Now that they’re back where they rightfully belong, it will be a long road to recovery for the radiated tortoises. “They don’t turn on a dime,” Vitali said. “They’re very slow to get sick and they’re very slow to recover from stress. We’ll be looking at them very closely and seeing how they transition back to our diet.”

Further Crimes

As for the two culprits, the woman who was in possession of the second tortoise was also charged for her crime and, after further investigation, police found out that the man involved was also responsible for a third theft of a radiated tortoise from the same Perth Zoo.

Hot Goods

In 2016, a 10-year-old tortoise was stolen but found its way back into possession of the zoo after just a few days. Apparently, the man had sold the animal to a third party who was unaware that it was stolen. When they realized that, they dropped off the tortoise at a local police station in a backpack.

Added Security

The third theft occurred even though the zoo dramatically beefed up its security after the two thefts in 2011. The previously open air enclosure for the radiated tortoises was completely walled off and the Perth Zoo hired a security guard to patrol the premises.

Smooth Criminal

That apparently wasn’t enough to deter the man, who would now be charged a third time. You would think that people who steal animals from the zoo would be a rarity but apparently they aren’t.

Not a Rarity

The return of the second tortoise to the Perth zoo came just days after another heist at the Perth Zoo. Someone had made off with a four-week-old baby meerkat. The animal popped up again a few days later.

Don’t Be a Dummy

Environment Minister Stephen Dawson said that Washington police are helping to take a look at the security of the enclosures across the zoo and emphasized that there are heavy penalties for stealing animals. “Don’t do stupid things, don’t spoil it for the rest of the community,” he said.

Man Arrested For Animal Theft After Sharp-Eyed Police Officer Notices Something Radiant is an article from: LifeDaily

If you’re one of those people who are into Apple, the ‘Find my iPhone’ feature is one you’ll be familiar with and probably love. While the dreaded experience of losing your new iPhone is a worrying prospect, that little green icon that helps you find it means you can live worry free, for the most part.

However, one ex-Apple engineer named Darren Eastman is now suing the tech giant for more than $350,000, claiming that he was the one who invented the unique feature, but received no credit and was later wrongfully fired.

Battery Error Patent

Eastman claims he arrived at his job with Apple with some great ideas, which he felt could make the company a lot of money. But credit where credit is due, and now the disgruntled employee is claiming he got none. His first great idea was his own battery error detection patent which paved the way for Apple’s original MacBook Air, according to him.

MacBook Air

For anyone who owns one (this writer included) there’s nothing quite like the brushed metallic feel and usability of Apple’s MacBook Air, especially when you’re on the go but need to get some work done. No one even disputed the fact that Eastman was awarded that patent, which means the laptop has a non-serviceable battery. But when he lost his iPhone back in 2008, he came up with a way to locate any missing smartphone or computer.

Steve Jobs

The late and great founder of Apple Steve Jobs even met with Eastman about his idea back in 2006. During that meeting, Eastman claims, Jobs said the idea was “huge” and that it was “a killer idea.” When he told Jobs about another idea he had for electronic ticketing, he responded that it was “insanely great” and that it could “break up the monopoly” held by Ticketmaster at the time.

Radar Ticket

To document his phone-finding idea at the time, Eastman opened a radar ticket on Apple’s internal bug tracking system. He also told his work colleagues about the idea. However, Apple’s director of iTunes at the time dismissed the idea, claiming customers “would hate such a feature and feel Apple was spying on them.” But he received mixed responses from his colleagues.

Worth Considering

In early 2009, Eastman took the idea to then VP of iCLoud, Eddy Cue, who was generally positive about the initiative. Cue said the idea was worth considering at the time, so he approached the then VP of iOS, Scott Forstall, who was also a big fan of his revolutionary idea. But his idea, according to him, was stolen by the bigwigs at Apple, despite his numerous emails to try and patent it himself.

Patent Counsel

After taking his idea to Forstall, he asked him if patent protection for the technology should be sought. When Forstall said it was a good idea, he emailed Apple patent counsel Richard von Wohld, but was ignored. Then, two years later, Apple filed four utility patents for the feature, excluding Eastman’s name from them all. But Eastman wasn’t about to take it laying down.

Patent Applications

Eastman got himself some sound legal advice and is now trying to get recognition for his battery error patent (US 7877631B2), as well as five other patents, all of which relate to locating lost phones and the electronic system he devised for tickets. Eastman feels left out and duped by the bosses who he once trusted.

Big Claim

For his part, Eastman simply wants what he feels is due to him. For starters, there are 735 Apple shares that he wants returned to him. There’s also the tidy sum of $326,400 in damages, plus $32,640 in interest and $5,000 in attorney’s fees. He is on solid ground for his claims as he signed an Intellectual Property Agreement, at least for his Passbook technology ideas, before joining Apple in 2006.

Representing Himself

In an email sent to The Register recently, Eastman explained his decision to represent himself in the legal proceedings against his former company. “I’m representing myself because my attorney had a sudden and serious illness, and, has been recovering for some time. We didn’t know if he’d recover quickly enough before statutes of limitations passed from Apple ignoring us for nearly two years. Then, I became financially challenged after not working since 2014,” he wrote.

Showing Loyalty

Eastman claims that he was tight with Jobs before his death and that Jobs was a big fan of him and his work. He claims that the then-CEO appreciated his graduate school work on low-cost computers and assured him more than once that “he’d always work for Apple and indicated that a job would always be available for him.” However, Eastman claims that things went south after Jobs died and Tim Cook took over as CEO.

Quality Issues

As a big fan of the late Steve Jobs, Eastman claims that Apple’s commitment to quality has seen a downturn in recent years. As part of his complaint about his former employer, Eastman wrote, “Many talented employees who’ve given part of their life for Apple were now regularly being disciplined and terminated for reporting issues they were expected to during Mr. Jobs tenure.”

Unsure Future

For Eastman, the very future of Apple is at stake if they continue to allow quality standards to drop further. “Cronyism and a dedicated effort to ignore quality issues in current and future products became the most important projects to perpetuate the goal of ignoring the law and minimizing tax,” he added, asserting that complaints to CEO Cook went unanswered.

Corporate Responsibility

Eastman asserted that the internal culture at Apple is deteriorating: “The executive team’s main focus is eliminating tax liability and bad PR being disseminated about Apple. … No corporate responsibility exists at Apple since Mr. Jobs’ death. There’s no accountability, with attempts at doing the right thing met with swift retaliation.”

More Claims

While there’s no reason to disbelieve Eastman, his claims do veer into the territory of sounding a bit bitter. He also claims that his former manager was fired for criticizing the benefits of a proposed project. He also said that the manager’s daughter was fired shortly after for reporting toxic mold in the Apple building where she worked. While these claims are yet to be substantiated, Apple spokespeople declined to offer any answers or comment when contacted by reporters.

Request Denied

If Eastman’s claims are bonafide, they are certainly worrying. He says that in 2009 he was denied his request to manage a team he’d been working with for four years. Instead, he alleges, Apple employed a manager with no college degree, management or programming experience at all. In 2013, Eastman asked to be moved under a different manager but was denied.

Final Warning

By 2014, Eastman’s position at the company had become untenable. In May of that year, Eastman was issued a final written warning for “discourteous behavior” even though he claims he never received a first or second warning. But claims of retaliation and discrimination were the final straws for Eastman, who says he was unlawfully terminated.

Life-Saving Surgery

Eastman also claims that he acquired seven different disabilities as a result of working in front of a computer for such long hours at Apple. In 2013, he had life-saving neurosurgery and needed to take eight months leave from work. When he returned to work four months earlier than expected, he says he was discriminated against and ultimately terminated.

Inappropriate Communications

Apple felt that dismissing Eastman was the right thing to do at the time. They said as much in a communication email they sent ahead of the firing: “It was explained … that [Eastman’s] fixing a critical quality bug … and attempting to solicit [his manager] to do his job in ensuring the fix was integrated before customer shipment was improper communication.”

Jobs’ Legacy

Darren Eastman put it well when he explained in his statement that he had learned a lot from Steve Jobs before his death. “Steve taught me many things,” Eastman said, “but the most important was that Apple’s greatest strength has always been its employees – many of whom make great sacrifices for Apple and deserve the same ethical treatment as if they were working for any other company.”

Apple’s Future

While Eastman claims that all he wants is what’s due to him, he also spoke about the importance of treating employees with respect – something he claims Jobs supported. “The responsibility which comes with treating your employees correctly will also help Apple fix its management and quality problems,” he said. “Being the most valuable company in the world doesn’t mean anybody’s above the law. I dream of a day when fixing the toughest problems and delighting the customer return to being priorities again at Apple.”

Former Apple Engineer Files Lawsuit Claiming The Company Stole His Ideas Then Fired Him is an article from: LifeDaily

Being a professional athlete isn’t a bad gig. You devote your life to playing a game that you love and, if you reach the upper levels of your sport, you make very good money along the way. It’s no wonder that so many kids dream of being sports superstars when they grow up.

But not every sport compensates its players equally. Even among the most lucrative and popular sports leagues in the world, there are sometimes big differences in the amount of money players earn and the certainty of their earning it…

One of The Greats

You could certainly make the case that Aaron Rodgers is one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history. The career Packers player has led his team to a Super Bowl, twice been the league MVP, and has broken records for his passer rating and interception statistics, making him easily one of the best quarterbacks in the league.

Great Leverage

So when his contract with the Green Bay Packers came to an end in 2017, he was in a prime position to negotiate for an exceptional extension. In fact, he signed a four year extension deal worth $134 million, making him the highest paid NFL player of all time.

Other Differences

While the total cash, roughly $33.5 million per season, was an astronomical sum, it wasn’t the only reason Rodgers’ contract stood out from those offered to his peers. To best understand the biggest difference, it would help to consider the 2010 contract extension of Donovan McNabb.

Great Deal

The six-time Pro Bowl quarterback signed what was at the time one of the best contracts in NFL history after his first year of playing with the Washington Redskins. The five year contract McNabb signed just before his 34th birthday was supposed to give him $78 million, with incentives to increase that to as much as $88 million. But he would never collect a penny from that contract.

Fleeting

It turned out that nothing in the contract beyond the current season was guaranteed. So after McNabb had one of the worst seasons of his career in 2010, the Redskins simply traded him to the Minnesota Vikings where he played the last season of his career, illustrating how fleeting things can be for a football player.

No Guarantees

The big difference between McNabb’s and Rodgers’ extension contracts was that the Packer had a guarantee in place that, no matter what, he would receive over $100 million. Unlike in the four other major American sports, there are almost never contract guarantees in the NFL.

Big Money

That seems strange at first glance, especially considering the NFL is the most lucrative sports league in the world bringing in nearly $14 billion in total revenue in 2017. By contrast, the second and third most lucrative sports leagues were the MLB and NBA, which brought in roughly $9 billion and $7 billion, respectively.

Lower Bar

It’s also strange that Rodgers’ contract, which had him earning an average of $33.5 million per season, was the record high for the NFL, considering that there are five players in the NBA who are making more than that for the 2018-19 season. To understand what’s going on, you have to take a closer look at the nature of the NFL.

Punishing Game

The first thing to take note of is the injury rates of the different sports. Players in the NFL are far more likely to be hurt than players in the other sports. Violent collisions are central to the game, with some players smashing pads as many as 70 times per game, meaning small injuries happen constantly and career ending ones are far from rare.

Higher Risk

Because of the risks, NFL teams are highly reluctant to guarantee players anything. It’s easy to see how a team could be stuck in a situation where they’d be footing the bill for a significant number of players who won’t play another game due to injury, potentially for multiple seasons. Those long-term debilitating injuries are far more uncommon in baseball or basketball.

Simple Division

As for player pay, the lower salaries in the NFL are dictated by simple math. It may seem counter-intuitive considering that the NFL makes nearly twice as much as the NBA, but that money also has to be spread a lot thinner.

Huge Rosters

Each of the NFL’s 32 teams has a 53-man roster compared to the 15 roster spots on each of the 30 NBA teams. That means player pay is split between nearly 1,700 men in the NFL versus just 450 men in the NBA.

Harsh Truth

There’s one more major factor that reduces NFL players pay which is a bit hard to hear for the players or fans of the game. Most players in the NFL are, to a degree, more replaceable than players in the MLB, NBA, or NHL. Before you start typing up some hate mail, that’s not to say that NFL players aren’t some of the most incredible athletes in the world, they absolutely are.

World Class

The faster NFL players have 40 yard dash times that would make them competitive at the Olympic levels of track and field. Receivers and defensive backs also need world-class hand-eye coordination. And linemen combine the brute force of a sumo wrestler with the agility of a dancer.

More Skill Intensive

But being strong, fast, and coordinated are also requirements in the MLB, NBA, and NHL. On top of that, you need to be able to have the acuity and reaction time to pinpoint an 80-mph curveball, dribble a ball while weaving through several defenders, and skate forward and backward while firing a puck past a defender into a tiny net.

‘Walk-Ons’

In football, you have players like Antonio Gates who never played a single college football game and will likely be inducted into the hall of fame one day. There are guys like Julius Thomas and Jimmy Graham, who went from being college basketball players to NFL standouts after playing a single year of college football.

Skill Players

That’s not to say that there aren’t skill positions in Football. Kickers and punters have to rely far more on technique than athletic ability to do their jobs. They are rarely injured and have much longer careers than most other NFL players. As a result, they’re actually the highest paid players in the NFL in terms of the number of dollars they earn per down they play.

Unique Blend

Quarterbacks are generally considered the most skilled players in the league and among the most skilled athletes in the world, with only a couple dozen truly great ones playing professionally at any given time. Their position requires a blend of athleticism, hand-eye coordination, near supernatural field awareness, intelligence, and hard earned skill.

Long-Term Investment

All of those necessary attributes are why Rodgers and other NFL quarterbacks are the only ones in their sport whose pay is on par with those of MLB and NBA players. And while most NFL careers only last around three-and-a-half years, the kickers, punters and quarterbacks regularly have careers that last more than a decade.

Few Signs of Change

For all of those reasons, it’s not likely that the record-breaking pay and baked in guarantees of Aaron Rodgers’ contract extension will become the norm for other players in the NFL. For the rest of the league, the name of the game is to stay as healthy as possible and get as much money as you can in the few years you’ve got.

Aaron Rodgers’ Record-Breaking Contract Highlights NFL Pay Problems is an article from: LifeDaily

According to Pew Research, women in majority-male workplaces report higher rates of gender discrimination. And women are nearly three times as likely as men to say their gender has made it more difficult for them to succeed in their place of work.

The woman in the following story is part of that percentage, as she’s claiming she was unfairly treated at her former job at Spotify. Now, she’s suing the company for gender discrimination and defamation. Here’s her story.

Spotify

Spotify, the popular music streaming service developed by Swedish company Spotify Technology, was publicly launched in 2008. Since then, it has gone on to become a company with more $1 billion in annual revenue. Spotify made its U.S. debut in July 2011 as a Facebook application and has since included heavily integrated social features like shared tracks and messaging between users.

Employees

Unlike physical or download sales, which pay artists a fixed price per song or album sold, Spotify pays royalties to artists based on a proportion of total songs streamed. With their subscription base growing by the day, Spotify has increased its staff from 311 in 2011 to 2,162 in 2016. That number is even higher today.

Spotify Is Being Sued

In a recent lawsuit, Spotify is being sued for gender discrimination. A former employee alleges that the company orchestrated “boys’ trips” full of drugs and strip clubs and partying. The sales executive also admitted that the company regularly passed over women for promotion.

Double Standard

According to Variety, a sales executive, Hong Perez, filed a lawsuit in New York Supreme Court. In the lawsuit, Perez claims that she believes Spotify operated under a “double standard,” treating its female employees worse than their male counterparts.  Amidst all of the women’s rights movements, including the #MeToo revelations, Perez’s case comes at a time when many women are speaking out.

Sundance Film Festival

To provide proof that she has a legitimate case, Perez alleges that her boss, Brian Berner, coordinated all-male trips to the Sundance Film Festival in 2016 and 2017. The film festival, held every year in Park City, Utah, is the largest independent film festival in the United States. It showcases new work from American and international independent filmmakers since its inception in 1978, it’s become a hot spot for young adults.

Favoring Men

Perez added that during the trips, employees spoke of “drug use” and some of the men got into a physical altercation during one of them. She claims that these trips included more senior women. She also says that male sales staff were also taken to strips clubs in Atlantic City for boys’ trips.

Unfair to Women

Perez claims that another executive in the company received a promotion even after being warned repeatedly for incidents of sexual harassment. The lawsuit also says that the global head of sales offered better pay packages and benefits to men than women, alleging that men in the sales department received “higher compensation and equity” than their female counterparts.

Quoting The CFO

She even goes as far as quoting the company’s CFO, Barry McCarty, who said at a town hall that “he does not care about diversity at the company,” and that an HR executive told staffers that his favorite curse word was “c***.” As bad as that sounds, Perez took a bigger issue with the reasoning behind her termination.

Why Perez Was Fired

In March, Berner got in hot water with his supervisors for a discounting arrangement with a buyer and his acceptance of free tickets to Madison Square Garden. Perez claims that Berner managed to evade culpability by blaming her for the situation. In response, Berner fired her for purported violations of the company’s Code of Conduct. In addition to suing for gender discrimination, Perez is also suing for defamation.

Sound Up Bootcamp

“Perez’s allegations paint a much different picture of the company that’s actively trying to be seen as a booster for women,” Complex writes. Spotify recently launched a bootcamp to help women of color in the UK break into the world of podcasting. The campaign, called “Sound Up Bootcamp” aims to train women of color on podcasting skills.

Centered Around Social Injustice Issues

As part of the workshops, podcasters will get the chance to learn the craft of podcasting, receive mentoring and advice, and get guidance from podcast industry experts. But this isn’t the only marketing campaign centered around social injustice issues. In July 2017, the company launched a series called, “I’m With The Banned.”

I’m With The Banned

“I’m With the Banned” paired artists from the six countries cited in President Trump’s travel ban with six American counterparts for a musical movement. It highlighted people who have been historically excluded, including immigrants and the LGBTQ community. Its goal was to amplify the voices of people and communities that have been silenced.

Giving Those Excluded a Voice

In a statement given to Billboard, Spotify chief marketing officer Seth Farbman said, “Throughout history, artists have sought to give voices to those who are not being heard. Their music has created understanding and community during times when it has been in short supply – civil rights, unpopular wars, and all too frequent moments of social and personal grief. ‘I’m With the Banned’ is an idea that was born from the culture of our times and one we hope will remind us of the power of music to bring people together and ease our pain.”

What Does The Data Say?

For a company so focused on bringing people together, Perez is claiming that Spotify favors men and excludes women. In July 2018, Spotify published its first public diversity data report that states that 38.7 percent of employees identified as women, with less than 1 percent identifying as non-binary. The number of female board members, senior executives, and women in leadership roles was higher than 30 percent.

Diversity Data Report

In a statement accompanying the data, Spotify wrote, “We’ve been wanting to share this for a long time. We are very pleased to tell the world that our Diversity Data Report is finally in a place where it makes sense for us to publish it. As Spotifiers, we are always striving for transparency and accountability, and we believe this is another step in that direction.”

The Findings

The report highlighted that the number of women in management roles had grown by 3.4 percent to 38.4 percent in the two-year reporting period to 2018. Spotify also explained how important diversity is and a feeling of belonging among staff. In the U.S., where more than half of its global staff is based, 50 percent of staff members are white, 14.8 are Asian, 6.1 percent are black, 5.5 percent are Hispanic, and 2.7 percent are mixed race.

Analyzing The Results

The report showed that only 14.1 percent of staff were above the age of 40, showing an increase of 1.2 percent. Spotify also acknowledged the necessity of more work, “specifically around increasing the share of senior women leaders and focus on female representation in our technology organization, diversifying our racial landscape in the U.S., investing in the intersectional experiences of our employees and ensuring our service is welcoming to all.”

Rise In Subscribers

In July 2018, Spotify noticed a rise of 8 million of subscribers in the second quarter and the number of monthly paying subscribers, which accounted for the bulk of its revenue, rose to 83 million at the end of June. The number of subscribers rose from 75 million in the first three months of 2018, which is more than double Apple’s last reported 40 million paid users.

Public Company

Spotify made its debut as a public company in April 2018, with a direct listing approach. The company’s listing on the New York Stock Exchange gave greater insight into investors’ attitudes to technology companies. Investors trading Spotify’s shares in private transactions have valued the company at around $23 billion.

Spotify Speaks Out

It’s uncertain what will happen with Perez’s case as it’s still ongoing but a Spotify company representative responded to Variety regarding the matter. “At Spotify, we do not tolerate discrimination of any kind at any level. While we cannot comment on the specific details of a pending litigation, these claims are without merit.”

Former Female Spotify Employee Sues Company For Gender Discrimination is an article from: LifeDaily

Most everyone enjoys taking the occasional vacation. It’s a time to get away from work and be with family or friends, or even by yourself. Being out of the office is something everyone can appreciate. But for some, the mindset of being ‘in the office’ stays with them wherever they go…

Luckily, most are able to put their jobs out of their mind while on vacation. But when you’re a U.S. Marine, it’s not a thing you can shut off. Thankfully, one Marine was in the right place at the right time…

Silver Screen Depictions

When you think of the United States Marine Corps, what comes to mind is usually some stalwart, highly trained young man, armed to the teeth, maybe breaching a door and clearing an entrenched position or some other bold and daring act. But the truth of the matter is most things Marines do aren’t nearly that dramatic.

Support Roles

For example, there are a number of Marines who, due to their function, will rarely if ever find themselves in the middle of a firefight. Many of them occupy support roles, doing the very important tasks that never seem to find their way onto TV and movie screens.

Japan Air

One such Marine was Cpl. Diego Marmalejo. He served as an air traffic controller at Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) in Iwakuni, Japan. He had of course gone through extensive training and overcome significant challenges in order to become a Marine, even if his position wasn’t the most romanticized.

Seeing The World

Naturally, one of the perks of being in the service is the opportunity to go places and experience cultures that would otherwise be out of reach. Being stationed in Japan meant that the Far East was easy to get to so, when it was time to take some leave, Cpl. Marmalejo chose Bali as his destination.

Taking The Opportunity

If you wanted to go to Bali from the U.S., it would likely take you over twenty hours of flying to reach the tropical paradise. By contrast, a flight from Japan would take less than eight and would also avoid the heavy jet lag, considering it’s an almost entirely north-south flight path. It would probably the best chance of Cpl. Marmalejo’s life to go there.

Ten Great Days

“We spent ten days in Bali just hanging out there,” said Marmalejo, who traveled with some other Marines. “So, for the most part, we were just at the beach, hanging out and having a good time relaxing.” Coming up on the end of his stay, the trip had been delightfully uneventful.

Terrible Crash

But on the second to last night that Cpl. Marmalejo would be on the island, he was walking toward a beach close to his hostel when he heard a loud smash. A traffic accident had happened not far from where he was and almost immediately, his training and instincts kicked in.

Immediate Focus

“I ran to the accident, and I basically forgot about everybody else,” Marmalejo said. “I was just focused on the accident. You enter a state of panic, at least from what I remember.” As he got closer to the scene, he was able to see that there were two people, a man and a woman, in serious need of help.

Bleeding Out

“The female was screaming at the time,” he said, “ and she was bleeding from her leg. The male was unresponsive so on the surface it appeared that the female needed a lot more medical attention. That was my initial thought. I went to work on her at first.”

Stopping The Flow

The biggest priority was to stop the woman’s blood loss, so Cpl. Marmalejo needed something to tie off the wound. “I was asking [the people around] for a belt because that was the first thing that came to mind for a makeshift tourniquet,” he said.

Dressed For The Beach

“Nobody was wearing a belt because everyone was wearing board shorts so I used a shirt that I found on the street,” he said. “I basically ripped up the shirt and just like we learned in boot camp, I tied it two inches above the wound.”

Ingenuity

When applying a tourniquet, Marines are taught to write the time it is put on the victim in order to let medics know how long it’s been on the person when they arrive. That’s because if tourniquets are left on for too long, they can cause more damage than they prevent. Without a writing implement, Cpl. Marmalejo improvised and wrote the message in blood from the wound.

Best Effort

After stopping the woman’s blood loss, Cpl. Marmalejo turned his attention to the man. He seemed to be fading in and out of consciousness, suggesting that he might have a head injury. “I just looked around for nearby things and found a mug that I put underneath his head,” he said. “That’s honestly the best thing I could do.”

Sticking With Them

The Marine then waited with the two victims until medical professionals arrived, then stayed with them at the hospital until 5 a.m. before returning to the hostel. Once there, he met back up with Sgt. Derrick Usry, another air traffic controller. The two had been separated the night before and Sgt. Usry had been concerned.

What Happened?

“When I first saw Marmalejo I was worried, seeing him walk into our room with blood on his shoes,” Usry said. “He explained what happened and he seemed fine. He was much less worried about his emotions and more about the people he helped save.”

Checking Up

After getting a few hours rest, the Cpl. went back to the hospital to make sure the man and woman were doing alright. Despite having to return to Japan, he kept in contact with their families and got updates on their recoveries until both the man and the woman were out of the hospital and back to their lives.

Proud of You

Naturally, Sgt. Usry was proud to work alongside a Marine who had demonstrated such heroism outside of the usual military situation. “Cpl. Marmalejo has outstanding character and is constantly looking out for others, even if it means putting aside his self-interests,” said Usry.

Rewarding Greatness

He wasn’t the only one who thought his friend’s actions were exemplary. Cpl. Diego Marmalejo’s superiors learned about what he’d done to help save the lives of the two crash victims and they wanted to reward him.

Medal of Achievement

U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Col. Jason Kaufmann, Cpl. Marmalejo’s commanding officer, presented him with a Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal when he returned to the Marine Corps Air Station back in Iwakuni.

True Hero

Cpl. Marmalejo’s quick thinking, unquestioning selflessness, and genuine and continuing concern over the fates of the people he helped serve as a reminder of what true heroism really is: setting aside concerns about yourself so that the greater good can be served.

Marine Corporal Receives Metal Of Achievement For Saving Two Lives While On Leave is an article from: LifeDaily

There is a hidden world right beneath our noses. It’s made up of people, many of them just like ourselves. The people of this world make our beds and replace our towels, they refill our drinks and cook our meals.

They are wage workers, college students, and single mothers; they are, but for a slight change of fate, ourselves. They work harder for their meager wages than one might imagine and they are not happy. Recently, a group of people from this oft-unseen world banded together to do something about it.

Make Ends Meet

Matt Rouse works as a kitchen worker at the Bright Helm Pub in Brighton, England. Like nearly all of his fellow workers, he’s been working for a pittance for the past few years. So when he heard that his co-workers across the country were organizing a demonstration, he jumped at the chance to join them.

Inspiration

Matt was spurred to action by a number of factors. First and foremost was the fact that his co-workers were aiming to get the base pay raised to a much more comfortable and liveable £10 an hour. The second reason was due to the injustices he and his fellow workers had dealt with in the workplace.

Coordinated Strike

Workers at JD Wetherspoon, a chain of pubs in the United Kingdom and Ireland, as well as those from restaurants T.G.I. Fridays and McDonald’s, are all staging coordinated strikes to showcase their dismay at what many would consider “poverty pay.” That is to say, a pay scale that would not be considered a living wage in today’s economy.

Standing Strong

“We are determined to stand together and make our demands for £10 an hour for all, and union recognition heard,” explained Rouse in a recent interview with The Independent. He and other employees are determined to work with other pub, restaurant, and fast food workers to make their position known.

Walk Out

The striking workers organized and decided to walk out of their respective workplaces in October and convene at a rally in Leicester Square. It’s not only restaurant workers like Rouse who will be in attendance either. They will be joined by hospitality workers from across the U.K. and from four other continents as well.

Come Together

Boni Adeliyi works as a waitress at a T.G.I. Fridays in Milton Keynes. Like Rouse and so many others, she believes that the strike shows the strength and solidarity of the working class in the U.K. She also believes that change is coming and that all young workers should begin to unionize.

Unionization

Trade unions or labor unions first came about in 18th century England but gained popularity among the masses in the early 20th century. Labor unions are, by-and-large, good news for workers, who wish to use their unification to fight for better rights, improve wages, and improve safety standards. Though most of the time they are bad news for business owners.

Slowing Down

The increased bargaining power of workers is a bane to businesses who rely on their workforce to maintain production and in the case of many of the striking workers, serve customers. “All young workers should join a union,” explains Boni. “It’s important to know your rights and how to fight for them when they’re being ignored. Together we are stronger.”

Days Numbered

Striking McDonald’s worker Lauren McCourt believes that if the industry as a whole begins to listen to worker concerns, the sector will be better off. She also believes that the days of poverty pay, of insecure contracts, secure hours, and lack of respect for workers are ultimately numbered. She might be right, too.

A Fair Percentage

Looking at the statistics, we can see that the hospitality sector employs about 4.5 million people. For scale, that’s approximately ten percent of the U.K.’s working population. Global organizations such as these have not happened in the industry before now, and the rise in these demonstrations only indicate how believable Lauren’s prediction is.

Growing Movement

The desire for a living wage is nothing new, and has been ramping up in recent years. There is a growing movement amidst low-paid hospitality workers the world over, particularly in the fast-food industry. It is only recently that these workers have come together to organize in a way that those in other industries, those with unions, for example, have done in the past.

Across the Pond

This is especially true in the United States, where fast food workers have been trying to have their own meager wages raised to $15 an hour for a few years now. Looking at the statistics, we can see that approximately 10.5 million Americans are currently defined as “working poor.” Though they hold at least one or more full-time job, they cannot seem to make ends meet.

The Decline

The problem with this might all lay in the idea of minimum wage itself, which has been fairly stagnant for years. This is true regardless of the ever-dropping value of currency the world over. Those at the top are doing fine though. They earn more than ever, while inflation drives the median pay down below the poverty line.

The Widening Line

In 2013, a full-time service industry worker made about $14,500 a year. This is not a lot of money and it’s even less when you think about trying to raise a family on it. Income inequality is widening the gap between the rich and the poor, and that’s a gap that was already perilously wide to begin with.

Slippage

It is worrying that those who work between 40 and 60 hours a week still cannot support their family. And as the middle class slips further down the poverty line, this promises to get worse before it gets better. This is why so many people the world over are doing everything they can to make their lives better.

Living Wages

Some believe that $15 an hour in the U.S. or £10 an hour in the U.K. is a bit much for someone operating a McDonald’s cash register. Opponents cite that businesses, unable to pay their workers and their rent, would be forced to close. Others say that human workers would be replaced by self-service kiosks – some of which McDonald’s restaurants have already begun using.

McDonald’s Speaks

McDonald’s has of course spoken out in response to the October strike. As far as they are concerned, the numbers of people involved in the demonstration represent an “extremely small proportion” of its 120,000-strong workforce. The McDonald’s spokesperson even cited that dispute the purportedly low pay, many have joined their corporation in the past year.

Statistics

They aren’t wrong either. McDonald’s isn’t exactly floundering these days. The fast-food giant has restaurants in 120 countries and territories around the world. They have 38,699 restaurants which serve an average of 68 million customers each day. That’s a heck of a lot of jobs too, more than 375,000 people as of 2016.

The Right Direction

“We are putting up the rate of pay,” explained Wetherspoon spokesperson Eddie Gershon. “In the last financial year, we paid record monthly bonuses and free shares of £43 million, equivalent to about 50 percent of our net profits.” Like McDonald’s, Wetherspoon also cited company growth in the past year.

Fighting For All

Rouse, Boni, and the others don’t know if the demonstration will ultimately change things, but they all agree that this rally is only the first step in eliminating the working poor in their industry. “This is only the beginning, we will keep fighting for everyone, for better wages and rights for hospitality workers across the country,” said Rouse.

McDonald’s Workers And Others Plan Strike In UK Over Minimum Wage is an article from: LifeDaily

From music to sports to theater, there’s nothing quite like going to a live show. It’s convenient to enjoy these pastimes from the comfort of our homes, but it just doesn’t compare to being there in person.

If you’re planning on buying a ticket for such an event, you generally have a few options: buying one at the box office, which has been made difficult by the second option, that is, buying through online services like Ticketmaster, or you can try your luck with a scalper (though we don’t recommend that as it’s illegal). But as it turns out, buying from Ticketmaster and buying from a scalper may not be as different as they appear…

Two Kinds

Ticket scalping — reselling a ticket for an event — generally comes in two varieties. The innocuous version is when someone finds themselves with an extra ticket for an event that they can’t use so, in an effort to make their money back, they’ll try to sell the ticket off so some other person can enjoy the event and they can get their money back.

profiteer

The more sinister form of ticket resale comes from people who are in it to make a quick buck. The idea is simple: buy some tickets for a show that you know will be sold out, then sell those tickets for a higher price than you bought them for.

In The Past

It used to be a very minor part of ticket sales, considering that if you wanted to be a ticket scalper, you would actually have to go down to the box office, wait in line for the tickets, then stand around trying to sell them on the day of the event, with no guarantees that you would even break even for your efforts.

Things Change

But over the years, technology has drastically changed the way ticket scalping is done. As ticket sales migrated onto the internet — mostly through Ticketmaster — it got rid of some of the hassle of obtaining the tickets but online sales’ biggest advantage was that scalpers didn’t have to wait for the day of the event to sell off the ticket. Instead, they could post the ticket for sale online immediately after buying it, all but guaranteeing a sale if the event sold out.

Bigger Rackets

As the risk of taking a hit on unsold tickets was cut down significantly, the profit margins of ticket scalping soared, meaning sophisticated groups got involved on the action. Instead of clicking and typing furiously to buy as many tickets as possible in the opening minutes that they were available, some people started employing bots — little computer programs that could buy up tickets much faster than any person could.

Game Changer

After bots were introduced into the game, events that would have sold out in hours online sold out in minutes and the only way for most people to get a ticket was from the secondary market. A lot of scalpers started making a lot of money and a lot of people were priced out of going to live events.

Disservice

Seeing this kind of behavior that’s horrible for the consumer, ticket vendors could have taken steps to reduce abusive buying and reselling practices but aside from some token efforts, they didn’t do much. After all, they get paid the same if a ticket is bought by a fan or someone trying to make a buck. But what was even worse is that apparently, some ticket vendors were getting in on the scalping.

Collaboration

According to a report by CBC News and the Toronto Star, the box office giant “Ticketmaster [was] recruiting professional scalpers who cheat its own system to expand its resale business and squeeze more money out of fans.”

Undercover

They sent in reporters posing as scalpers and equipped with hidden cameras who were pitched on Ticketmaster’s professional reseller program at a 2018 live entertainment convention in Las Vegas. A company representative told the “scalpers” that Ticketmaster’s resale division turns a blind eye to the use of ticket-buying bots and fake ids used to get around per-customer limits and rapidly buy bulk tickets before selling them at an insane markup.

We Won’t Stop You

In fact, Ticketmaster was incentivized to allow such behavior since, when a scalper resold a ticket through their website, the pricey resale tickets came along with extra fees for Ticketmaster, which actually pay the company more than the initial sale. “I have brokers that have literally a couple of hundred accounts,” a sales rep said. “It’s not something that we look at or report.”

180 Degrees

If true, this policy would be a complete reversal from Ticketmaster’s stance just a few short years ago when Former CEO Irving Azoff said before US legislators “I believe that scalping and resales should be illegal.”

Helping Out

Even beyond turning a blind eye to big-time scalpers’ actions, it seemed Ticketmaster was doing its best to make things easier for them. At that same convention, Ticketmaster’s Resale director Casey Klein held a closed door session just for scalpers outlining why they should choose them over other vendors.

Streamlining

Klein told the audience that Ticketmaster had developed a professional reseller program that included TradeDesk, an online inventory management system for scalpers, bragging that it was “the most powerful ticket sales tool. Ever.” TradeDesk allowed scalpers to upload bulk quantities of tickets purchased from Ticketmaster’s site and list them for resale within minutes.

Have No Fear

Another presenter explained that while Ticketmaster has a “buyer abuse” division that looks out for blatant suspicious activity, the resale division doesn’t regulate TradeDesk users. “We don’t share reports, we don’t share names, we don’t share account information with the primary site. Period,” he said.

Natural Reaciton

After news of Ticketmaster’s alleged abusive behavior became public, it seemed like it was only a matter of time before there was intense backlash. In addition to the obvious anger from customers, the box office company would be facing a class action lawsuit.

Bad Practices

The law firm Hagens Berman filed a suit against Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation Entertainment for “unlawful and unfair business practices” that have “unjustly deprived live events fans and enriched scalpers.

Black Market Buddies

Steve Berman, a partner of the firm representing the suit called Ticketmaster’s program to allegedly aid scalpers a “highly controlled black market scheme.” They proposed class for the suit included anyone in the US who had purchased a ticket from a professional reseller associated with Ticketmaster’s secondary market.

We Want Answers

Even lawmakers were piling on the ticket company, with Senators Jerry Moran and Richard Blumenthal sending a letter to the Live Nation CEO, demanding that he clarify the specifics of Ticketmaster’s resale program. They noted in the letter that the “allegations of harm to consumers” were “serious and deserve immediate attention.”

Predatory Seller

“When you think of ticket buyers being swindled by scalpers,” Berman said in a press release, “you likely imagine last minute sales outside venue doors. You certainly wouldn’t assume the company selling the tickets — Ticketmaster — to be the ringleader behind massive price hikes spanning millions of tickets.”

Totally Untrue

For their part, Ticketmaster denied any wrongdoing whatsoever. They issued a statement to CBC News after the story broke saying it was “categorically untrue that Ticketmaster has any program in place to enable resellers to acquire large volumes of tickets.”

Ticktmaster Faces Lawsuit Over Allegations of Collaboration With Scalpers is an article from: LifeDaily

An employee who puts in years of hard work into one company can only expect to be treated with respect by their employer. Being a “company man” (or woman, in this case) isn’t something you see much of anymore in today’s workforce. So when one Fresno woman was treated unfairly by her employer of 14 years, she decided to take legal action.

Chipotle Mexican Grill is known for a spectrum of things – tasty menu items, numerous locations, and oddly, in a few stores, rodents frolicking around the dining area – but treating their employees unfairly wasn’t one of them… until a few years ago.

Terminated

Jeanette Ortiz had given a lot to her career – 40 hours a week for nearly 14 years. She served as a general manager and worked the counter before that. And in response to all that, Chipotle Mexican Grill had seen fit to fire her.

Complications

Jeanette couldn’t believe that they had done it. The 42-year-old mother had nine children at home to support and Chipotle, the company that had always been there for her, had accused her of stealing and saw fit to terminate her because of it.

Thievery

Chipotle Mexican Grill of Fresno, California claimed that Jeanette, who had been a model employee up until this point, had allegedly stolen $636 from the company safe. They even claimed to have a video of it on the restaurant surveillance cameras. It apparently showed her taking the money from the safe, fanning it, and looking back to ensure no one was watching.

False Claims

As far as Jeanette was concerned, the restaurant owners had to be lying. After all, she knew she didn’t take the money. What’s more, she had already had some pretty unwelcome interactions with the higher-ups at Chipotle over a number of spurious claims over the years. The first of which involved a worker’s compensation claim.

Worker’s Comp

Not long before being so unceremoniously dismissed and accused of theft, Jeanette had filed a worker’s compensation claim for a job-related wrist injury. It had caused the company a bit of trouble and the way Jeanette saw it, the wrongful termination and accusation was their way of defaming her and getting rid of the problem all in one go.

Show Me

Before she left work, Jeanette demanded to see the aforementioned tape of her stealing the money. Chipotle countered by telling her that they didn’t need to show it to her. When Jeanette ended up taking them to court, however, they had no choice but to show the tape to everyone in the courtroom. They had a problem, though.

Lost Footage

When the time came to show the video, Chipotle was forced to admit that they had lost the footage of Jeanette stealing the $636 dollars. Apparently, someone had accidentally taped over it. The judge also wanted to see any messages or notes pertaining to Jeanette’s termination, but Chipotle had lost all of those as well.

Settling for Less

Prior to the trial, Chipotle had attempted to offer Jeanette a mere $1,000 to settle the case. Knowing that there was more to be had, her lawyers suggested that she press for more and countered with $10 million. This would cover lost wages, legal fees, and a fair bit of emotional distress.

Outstanding Performance

Jeanette’s lawyers’ main argument was that Chipotle’s claim of theft was made utterly ridiculous by the myriad proof in her employment record of 14 years of outstanding work. She had positive performance reviews every year, was making $70,000 a year, and was on her way to a promotion that would see her making upwards of $100,000. Why would she risk that for $636?

Hard Times

Of course, Chipotle’s counter-argument was that they didn’t know why Jeanette would have taken the funds, but that the mother-of-nine had fallen on some pretty hard times of late. She’d had to move out of her home and into a smaller apartment and had to get a $1,700 loan to pay an old electric bill. She’d even gotten a second job to make some extra money.

Desperation

That said, just because a person is living paycheck to paycheck does not make them a thief. It might, however, make them desperate, which was exactly what Chipotle was claiming. So desperate in fact that they might steal a relatively small amount comparatively if it meant they could keep theirs and their children’s heads above water for another month.

Credibility in Question

There was reasonable doubt in Chipotle’s argument, a reasonable amount in fact. But when it came to closing arguments, that was not what Jeanette’s lawyers focused on. Instead, they questioned the credibility of Chipotle’s notoriously unscrupulous upper management. In this case, specifically Ben Castillo and Janelle Schrader.

No Animosity

Schrader is Jeanett’s immediate supervisor and Castillo is the fellow who oversees about 70 Chipotle restaurants between Fresno and down the coast to Southern California. Their lawyer closed out by re-affirming that prior to stealing the money, Jeanette Ortiz was a trusted, well-liked employee but that this trust was violated by her taking the money. It was now down to the jury.

Didn’t Bite

Ultimately, the evidence or rather lack of evidence won out over Chipotle’s questionable accusations. The jury deliberated for only about four hours before they came back with a verdict. They accepted her claims that she had been framed because she had refused to lie about her workplace injuries as Schrader had instructed her to do.

Damages

It had taken almost three years of litigation before the jury had finally gotten the chance to meet and discuss the verdict. In addition to damning Chipotle for the fabricated theft and unwarranted termination, they had also decided to award Jeanette nearly $8 million in damages. There also might be additional punitive damages considered in a subsequent hearing.

By Comparison

The $8 million on its own amounts to about as much as Jeanette would have made working at Chipotle and making just her $70,000 a year salary for 14 years. By comparison, that amount is also only a few million less than Chipotle’s founder and CEO Steve Ells took home just last year. It’s also a significant fraction of the company’s profits in 2016.

Mass Appeal

Punitive damages are generally awarded to deter individuals or corporations from committing reprehensible acts, which the jury determined was exactly what Chipotle did to Jeanette. Chipotle is, of course, appealing the verdict and will be doing so when they meet to discuss those punitive damages. There are lessons to be learned from all this though.

Important Lessons

One important lesson to take away from all this falls specifically on the part of Chipotle. It’s exceptionally important for businesses to retain important documents and video that might be used in any sort of court case. Given that the company stands to lose about 0.2 percent of their annual revenue in paying off Jeanette, this is a costly lesson to be sure.

High Cost

Additionally, it must be discussed that juries almost always support the side of the individual in cases like this and strong evidence is the only way to change that inherent bias against “big business.” The cost of not doing so is fairly high and can affect future cases against large corporations as well as their bottom line.

Big Business

There are still some folks who believe that Jeanette is the liar in this case, but the question of who was telling the truth does seem a bit moot at this point. The courts have made their decision but unfortunately, the remaining question of how much she should receive in damages may continue the case for several years in appeals.

Fresno Woman Wins Wrongful Termination Lawsuit Against Chipotle Mexican Grill is an article from: LifeDaily

Having grown up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Swedish-born Saga Vanecek was no stranger to colder climates. So when her family moved back to Småland in Sweden in 2017, she was prepared.

Saga loved growing up in America, but Sweden, where her mother’s family lived, was a new adventure just waiting to be had. Little did she know that the adventure she was about to have would put her more in touch with her Viking roots than she had ever anticipated.

Visiting the Lake

Eight-year-old Saga and her father Andy Vanecek were enjoying a fun summer day down at Vidöstern lake in Tånnö, Småland. It was a rare warm day and Saga had wanted to take advantage of it by swimming in the lake that was nearest to their property. Andy agreed and decided to relax on the bank to keep an eye on things.

Swimming Assignment

The water levels had been low that day and Andy had asked her to move one of the buoys they’d released a bit further out. He needed to make sure to warn boats about the underwater slab of concrete in the lake. Saga did as she was bid, but as she dragged out the buoys and enjoying the sunshine and taking her time.

Impatience

From Andy’s perspective, waiting on the shore, his daughter seemed distracted at the very least. He was getting impatient though and wanted her to finish up soon. The World Cup game was about to start and as much as he was glad to see her having fun in their new home, he really wanted to see how it turned out.

Some Stick

Working quickly, Saga finished her task but decided to stand on the shore for a while and skip stones into the lake water. When she ran out of stones, she picked up sticks and threw them in as well. Suddenly, she noticed something on the shores of the dwindling lake. It was some kind of stick, but unlike any that she’s seen before.

Blade in the Lake

“I picked it up and was going to drop it back in the water, but it had a handle, and I saw that it was a little bit pointy at the end and all rusty,” she explained to The Local. Holding the sword up, she called to her father saying, “Daddy, I found a sword!” Like a living Arthurian legend, she had indeed pulled an ancient sword from amongst the stones.

Just a Plaything

At first glance, Andy Vanecek didn’t know exactly what his daughter was holding up. If it was a branch or a stick of some kind, it certainly looked strange from a distance. Upon closer inspection, he quickly realized that it was bent like a sword. Could it have been an old toy some child had left by the lake?

Rusty Blade

Andy came over and took the sword from his daughter’s hands to examine it closer. He felt the heft in his hands, saw the powdered rust it left on Saga’s hands and realized that the object she was holding was indeed a real weapon. He was surprised to say the least, but very curious where the obviously ancient sword had come from.

Second Opinion

They brought the sword home and then proceeded to ask one of Andy’s colleagues, who has an interest in history and archaeology, about the relic. The friend took one look at the rusted blade and informed them that it was most likely an authentic relic, though he didn’t want to hazard a guess as to when it hailed from.

Significant Find

Archaeologists and historians quickly jumped on the find, including Mikael Nordström from Jönköpings Läns Museum. He explained that the reason Saga even saw the sword at all was due to the fact that the lake water at the family’s summer house was so low due to drought. Still, he admits the find is significant and that it’s not every day one steps on a sword in the lake.

How Old?

Mikael Nordström took the sword and examined it. His initial findings indicated that the blade was at least 1,000 years old, though further examination soon revealed that it might be even older than that. It could be from the 5th or 6th century, which actually puts it before the age of Vikings.

Keen Blade

“It’s 85 centimeters long, and there is also preserved wood and metal around it,” Nordström explained. “We are very keen to see the conservation staff do their work and see more of the details of the sword.” This restoration process will of course take time but will be worth that time in the end.

Second Searches

Saga’s finding of the sword has prompted others, including some other members of the museum staff, to carry out other searches of the area near Vidöstern lake. None of the initial searches resulted in any other important finds from that era, though they did find an 18th-century coin. Then, one of the teams uncovered something significant.

Why There?

Museum officials discovered a brooch which they believe to be from the same prehistoric era as Saga’s sword. When asked what that meant, Nordström explained that the results were as yet inconclusive. He did admit that it might indicate the place could be a place of sacrifice or that graves might be nearby.

Keep it Secret

At the same time though, Nordström and the museum staff asked that Saga and her family not tell anyone about the sword. The fear was that if the find went public before they were ready, people might head down to the scene on their own to find the delicate artifacts before the archeological team could and inadvertently destroy them.

Telling Everyone

Saga kept her word…sort of. The only person she ended up telling was her best friend and she told her before she had been given the directive not to go blabbing it about. Recently, the museum gave her permission to spill the beans and she did so by having a party in school to celebrate; complete with ice cream.

Sparking Interest

Saga’s teacher and her class were excited to hear about the find but it seems that no one was more excited about it than Saga herself. Nevertheless, the eight-year-old’s experience hasn’t changed her that much. Her goals are still to become a doctor, a vet, or a Parisian actress someday, not an archaeologist.

Viking Fan

That said, she seems to enjoy learning about “old stuff” more than she had before finding the sword. Andy Vanecek, on the other hand, loved the idea of his daughter finding what appeared at first to be a Viking Sword. Originally hails from Minneapolis, Minnesota, Andy is a diehard Minnesota Vikings fan.

Tough Secret

“I think maybe I found it harder to keep secret than she did,” Andy explained in a recent interview. “It’s cool that it will be in a museum and it might even say ‘Saga’s sword’ and it might be there for thousands of years. We didn’t put it on Facebook or anything until yesterday, and now it’s really blowing up!”

Reward and Recognition

The National Archives of Sweden, who has since taken over control of the sword, have not yet revealed whether Saga will be involved in any future projects or even receive a reward for the discovery, of the sword. But there is hope that she’ll at least get credited for finding the ancient blade by the lake that day.

Taking Time

Anyone hoping to catch a glimpse of Saga’s sword is going to have to wait a while. The process of cleaning, refurbishing, and conserving the blade is a lengthy one and it can be very complicated because of the wood and leather elements on the weapon. The important thing is preserving it properly so that even future generations will be able to view it.

8-Year-Old Minnesotan Girl Finds Ancient Relic Near Swedish Lake is an article from: LifeDaily

One of the greatest traumas imaginable is when parents have to deal with the disappearance of a child. Statistics show that the first 48 hours after a child’s disappearance are the most critical for finding them alive. After the 48 hour window, chances of finding the child alive become gravely slim…

In the quaint, rural village of Goas al Ladu, France, the mysterious disappearance of a 2-year-old girl, and the inexplicable events that followed, has made it one of that country’s most bizarre stories.

A French Village

Goas al Ludu, a rural town in the outskirts of France, boasts breathtaking views of one of the world’s most beautiful country landscapes. The picturesque town is the epitome of old French culture, with its’ vintage shops and cafes dating back hundreds of years.

Historic Town

Citizens of the historic town have family lineage that also stretches back hundreds of years. In an increasingly populated world, Goas al Ladu is a place unlike any other, where citizens know one another on a first name basis. A sort of place where a neighbor is treated like family.

Far From Perfect

However, when taking a deeper look into the perfect town, you will see that it is, in reality, far from perfect. It is a town that holds a deep, dark secret in the tragic disappearance of a little girl – a disappearance that has left a permanent stain on its beauty.

Perfect Day to Play

It was a gorgeous spring day in the outskirts of France. Blooming flowers boasting every color of the rainbow and endless green hills painted the countryside. It was a perfect day for Pauline to play underneath the sun on her family farm.

Safe to Play

It was a quiet and safe area, and the family never worried about letting her children play on the farm. Pauline’s mother, like the rest of the residents, were grateful to live in a place where crime was unheard of. But one evening in April of 1922, tragic circumstances would permanently shatter the very core of the town.

No Response

When she called little Pauline to supper, she was horrified when the little girl didn’t respond. Pauline’s mother frantically ran outside, desperately searching for her daughter, shouting her name as loud as she could, but to no avail. In a small town, with everything nearby, the distressed mother ran to the police for help.

The Search

Shocked by the little girl’s disappearance, police and townspeople banded together to comb the landscape for her, but they came up empty-handed. The little girl’s mysterious disappearance quickly gained media attention.  “La Petite Pauline Picard,” as the media dubbed her, had vanished without a trace.

What Happened to Little Pauline?

Many people offered different versions of what they speculated had happened to Little Pauline. She was widely assumed to have been eaten by a boar or taken by roaming gypsies. But, one thing was for sure, the little girl was nowhere to be found, leaving her family utterly devastated.

Miraculous News

Unexpected news from Cherbourg, a town 250 miles away of a little girl matching Pauline’s description having been found by police seemed miraculous. When an officer showed a photo of the child to Pauline’s mother, Le Matin, she burst into tears, crying, “That’s my daughter! My poor little Pauline!” Overcome with joy, the couple drove to Cherbourg to take their daughter home.

Bittersweet Reunion

Pauline’s parents could not believe their eyes when just a few feet away, their daughter stood. Endless nights of worrying and tears seemed like a distant nightmare once they had found their daughter. But the story of little Pauline was far from over. Their daughter’s reaction, or lack thereof, raised endless questions that quickly grew into a heartbreaking paranoia for the Picards.

Unanswered Questions

How had their toddler wandered 250 miles? And if she did, without succumbing to the elements? And most importantly, why did their precious daughter not seem to recognize her parents or her brothers and sisters? And, most worrisome, they couldn’t understand how she had forgotten the unique Breton dialect she had spoken.

Possible Trauma

The only explanation that seemed plausible is that their little girl was experiencing memory loss brought on by post-traumatic stress. Pauline’s parents and family formulated the idea that Pauline had possibly been abducted and abused by her kidnapper. While the girl didn’t seem to recognize her family, they, including her brothers, sisters and even their neighbors, all recognized her. But, the mystery to Pauline’s disappearance would soon become even more bizarre.

A Mysterious Lady

People were coming forward claiming that Little Pauline was with an enigmatic woman dressed in rags before she was taken by Cherbourg police. The involvement of the media was immense, considering the circumstances of the case. They maintained that this woman was the key to unraveling the mystery of Pauline’s disappearance.

She Is Not Our Daughter

Though newspapers from Paris to New York delighted over the miraculous return of little Pauline, the Picards were consumed with continuous suspicions that the child living in their house was not theirs. After all, they were her parents, and had realized the girl they had found was completely different than Pauline. She was much more quiet, reclusive, and had no desire to bond with her family.

A Confession

These worries were confirmed when a local farmer, Yves Martin, seemingly made a disturbing confession to the Picards. He showed up to their farm in an erratic manner, claiming that he had killed their beloved child. Utterly shocked and devastated, the Picards did not know what to believe anymore.

Deranged Man

Yves Martin shakily asked the Picards whether they thought the little girl in the house was their daughter before screaming, “God help me, I’m guilty!” and running off (he was later admitted to an asylum). But, the deranged man’s confession had not been taken seriously with the lack of details and his obvious mental instability. However, ironically, soon after, a discovery was made that would terrify a nation.

A Grisly Scene

On May 26, one month after Pauline was discovered in Cherbourg, a cyclist made a gruesome discovery. He found the lifeless, naked body of a small girl not far from the Picard farm. The head, feet and hands had been removed, preventing positive identification, but next to it was a neatly folded pile of children’s clothes, among which were the black-and-white checkered dress, navy blue jacket and black tights little Pauline had been wearing the day she disappeared.

A Second Victim

Next to the dismembered body of the child, the body of fully grown man was found, introducing the idea of a second victim. Also, the police and search team insisted that they had been over the area where the body was found countless times. “So careful was the search made at the time of Pauline’s disappearance that the body would have been discovered had it been lying where it was found,” The New York Times reported. All of which suggested that the body had been moved there recently because the killer wanted it to be found.

What Happened To Little Girl?

The Picards could no longer bear anymore heartache. Sadly, after the body was found, the Picards determined that the girl found in Cherbourg could not be their Pauline, and she was sent to live in an orphanage. But unanswered questions have remained over the last century as to how the Picards could have been so certain  that the little girl found 250 miles away was theirs.

Mystery Remains Unsolved

Experts point out that parents often suffer from a very confusing psychological state after a child’s death. It is possible that in a state of extreme grief, the Picards had mistaken another child as their own. But lacking DNA evidence to confirm whether the dismembered body found in the woods was indeed little Pauline, this tragic mystery sadly remains unsolved, robbing the Picards of their precious daughter and the closure they desperately needed.

The Mysterious and Bizarre Disappearance of Little Pauline Picard Is One of France’s Most Tragic Stories is an article from: LifeDaily

In this day and age, you’d think that you’d be hard-pressed to find a business that directly abuses their employees in the same way that some business owners did less than a century ago. Yet though we’ve come a long way from children working 18-hour days in textile mills, there are plenty of abusive business owners taking advantage of workers all over the world.

Fortunately, there are plenty of organizations out there who have taken it upon themselves to fight against such abuses of power and manage regulation of bad business practices. Then again, sometimes people still manage to get away with some of the most deplorable treatment imaginable.

Helpful Organization

The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom which helps to regulate the supply of workers to the agricultural, horticultural and shellfish industries. In other words, the GLAA is a helpful labor union that helps to protect exploited and vulnerable workers.

Calling in Assistance

The GLAA also happens to have a confidential tip line designed so that anyone with something to report can contact them and inform them as to abuses happening in their part of the country. Recently, the GLAA helpline received an anonymous call about a property located close to Carlisle in Cumbria and the suspicious activity taking place thereabouts.

Quiet Neighborhood

The GLAA inspectors were sent out to what appeared to be a quiet, residential area close to Carlisle in Cumbria. It was the type of place that, despite all outward evidence to the contrary, often contains dirtier secrets than any of the nosey neighbors would care to admit out loud. Though that some may talk about in hushed tones.

Nosey Neighbors

There are a number of movies and television shows out there that teach us you never really know exactly what your neighbors are up to. When GLAA senior investigating officer Martin Plimmer came to the aforementioned “peaceful neighborhood,” he would soon find out exactly what those types of movies alluded to.

Shocking Intel

Martin Plimmer had been in the business for years. He’d seen terrible things, heard disheartening stories of abuse, and stopped some of it when he could. Yet the description of what was going on in Carlisle was fixing to be something for the history books. Apparently, the poor soul in trouble had been living that way for over four decades.

The Shed

Plimmer and his team began the raid right after dawn. They knew that the earlier they arrived, the better the chance of catching the abuser unawares. Making their way to the back garden, they happened upon the shed the caller had mentioned in the anonymous tip. They opened the shed and inside found a very confused elderly man.

Filthy and Scared

The old man looked to Plimmer like a rabbit in headlights. He wore rags, clothes that hadn’t been changed or repaired for what looked like years. He was 58 years old, trapped in a six-foot shed. The caller had been right, this man was little more than a prisoner. As it happens, he was also the victim of a serious example of modern slavery.

As Expected

The man’s “owner” had made sure to include a number of basic amenities to his six-foot wooden prison of course. He’d provided the elderly slave with a soiled, makeshift mattress, a garden chair, and a television. Though none of these things could have offered the slightest bit of comfort for a man who had been held against his will for the past 40 years.

Deplorable Conditions

The dirty duvet on the floor was barely a bed and the shed had not been outfitted with any sort of heat. It was freezing. This was no place for a human being to live. Conditions like that wouldn’t have even been enough for a dog, let alone a person. Little did Plimmer know, the revelations about the man’s life there would prove even more disturbing.

Never Before

Plimmer, who had worked with the GLAA for quite a few years himself, had never come across someone who had been held in slavery for potentially as much as 40 years. It was a grim accomplishment for sorts though, the longest period of captivity the GLAA has ever encountered. Now they had to get the man some help.

Forced Servitude

Plimmer and his GLAA allies soon learned that the man had been forced to work without pay since he was between 16 and 17 years of age. That meant that for the last 40 years, he had lived a life of servitude and solitude. As they moved to take him to a local hospital, they mused over what effects that sort of treatment might have on a person.

Severe Trauma

It was not clear if the man had ever tried to escape from his dire predicament, but Plimmer’s assumption was that if he did, he would have been severely punished to dissuade him from doing so again. He had been traumatized for so long that even winning his trust enough to pull him out was a long, slow process.

Special Care is Needed

Eventually, Plimmer and his team were able to convince the man that they were there to help. He was taken for a thorough medical examination and would follow-up with a mental health specialist to assess his mental state. As for his captor, a 79-year-old man who owned the house, he is also being dealt with.

Other Organizations

The GLAA didn’t just go onto the property by themselves. They enlisted the aid of the Cumbria Housing Department and Cumbria Police Department to come down and raid the shed with them. Specialist officers from the National Crime Agency were also invited to help out and are investigating deeper into the case.

Charges

The 79-year-old man who had been holding the victim in slavery has since been arrested on a number of charges, including that of modern slavery. Once the Housing and Police departments finish investigating though, charges of slavery might only be the tip of the iceberg. The property was not exactly pristine and there may be a number of public health offenses added as well.

Modern Slavery

For those who don’t know, modern slavery isn’t exactly the urban legend that many people believe it to be. Yes, even in 2018, slavery exists in many parts of the world, and not just in poor third-world countries either. It’s a problem in the United States as well as the United Kingdom and it is even more dangerous now than it was back then.

Slavery in the UK

The Guardian has recently reported on the many cases of modern slavery in the United Kingdom in recent years. They have been quoted as saying that “cases involving the suspected practice have increased from a 2013 figure of 13,000 to as many as 136,000 cases in 2018.” That’s an astonishing number and many agencies across the world think so as well.

An Evolving Threat

Agencies across the globe recognize this growing number of cases as an evolving threat. Nevertheless, policing the illegal practice has proven difficult due to the understandably clandestine nature of those perpetrating it. The GLAA is now helping to root it out in England, but many countries don’t have such organizations.

Other Cases

As unusual as this case may seem, there have been similar cases of imprisonment and slavery in recent years. Take for instance the case of Kala Brown, a missing woman who was discovered chained up inside a shipping container on a patch of half-cleared American farmland. She and her boyfriend had allegedly been kidnapped by someone they knew, someone they trusted.

Kala Enslaved

Like the man in the Cumbria shed, Kala had been given all manner of things to occupy her time. A flashlight, books, a bed, and clothing, but had been forced into sexual servitude. She would have remained there as well or ended up dead like her boyfriend, if not for the exhaustive search efforts of the local police.

Man Forced to Live And Work In 6-Foot-Tall Shed For 40 Years Finally Set Free is an article from: LifeDaily

There are few companies in the world like Amazon, and even fewer that are as valuable. They sell practically anything, and you don’t even have to leave your house to buy from them. It’s no wonder Amazon has reached the popularity that it has.

The incredible service Amazon provides has made it one of the biggest and most influential companies in the world. So when things change within the company, the world hears about it.

Bringing It Back

After the terrible housing crash of 2008, the American economy began its recovery, slowly climbing back to pre-crash levels of growth by 2011, then exceeding those levels. If there’s one thing about the economy that people were hearing in 2018, it’s that it was doing great.

Setting Records

Those touting the strength of the economy liked to point toward two major elements of a strong economy: unemployment was at record lows and corporate profits were at record highs. If that’s all there was to an economy, no one would have any cause for complaints.

Uneven Recovery

But for many people, the “booming” economy didn’t feel all that booming. Yes unemployment was low, but many Americans were still struggling to get by. Some prominent figures, like Senator Bernie Sanders, said that a major part of the problem was that wages were too low.

The Culprit

For years, Sanders had been saying that it was unacceptable that there are many people working full time jobs and still struggling with poverty. For him, the cause of this was a federal minimum wage that was too low and the major corporations that took advantage of that to increase their bottom line.

Biggest Fish

In particular, he singled out Amazon, the online retailer that sells everything and made Jeff Bezos the richest man in the world while many of its employees were depending on public assistance programs to make ends meet.

Getting Rich

“While Mr. Bezos is the most egregious example, the Walton family of Walmart and many other billionaire-owned profitable corporations also enrich themselves off taxpayer assistance while paying their workers poverty-level wages,” Sanders said.

Making a Point

Sanders even introduced the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act, or Stop BEZOS, which would levy a tax against large corporations equal to the amount of money that their employees got in public benefits. The bill had little chance of becoming law but that wasn’t its intent. The bill was intended to shine a light on just how dire the economic situation was for people, despite their working full time jobs.

From Both Sides

And the criticism of Amazon wasn’t just coming from the left. President Trump was also critical of the company and its owner, saying that it didn’t pay its fair share of taxes and benefits from an unfair arrangement with the U.S. Postal Service.

Making a Change

The criticism and pressure coming from both sides wasn’t the sort of thing that even a gigantic corporation like Amazon could withstand forever. On October 1, 2018, the company announced that it was going to raise its hourly pay rate.

Significant Raise

Starting in November, Amazon would begin paying all of its workers a minimum of $15 per hour and for anyone already making $15 or more, they would give a $1 per hour raise. The pay raise would cover the roughly 250,000 permanent Amazon employees as well as the roughly 100,000 temporary employees the company hired for the holiday season.

Credit Due

Because of that radical shift in compensation for its employees, some former critics changed their tune. “It is no secret that I have been a harsh critic of the wage and employment practices of Amazon and its owner Jeff Bezos,” Senator Sanders said at a news conference. “Today, I want to give credit where credit is due. And I want to congratulate Mr. Bezos for doing exactly the right thing.”

Not All Good

But there was one aspect of the change in pay that didn’t get as much attention as the pay increase. As part of the change, Amazon would also be eliminating monthly bonuses and stock awards for the warehouse workers and other hourly employees of the company, blunting or even cancelling the effect of the raise for some.

Incentives

That’s because for some warehouse workers that were already making more than $15 per hour, some incentives that depended on good attendance and hitting productivity targets would get them an eight percent monthly bonus, which would increase to 16 percent during the holiday season.

Big Stocks

The changes to the stock incentives were a bit more complex. Warehouse workers in the past would get two shares of Amazon stock when they were hired, then another at the end of each year. When Amazon made their announcement, the stock was worth a little less than $2,000 per share.

Purchasing Plan

Amazon would be replacing the old stock system with something new by the end of 2019. The new system would be a direct stock purchase plan, which would likely allow for purchasing the stock without a broker. Some similar programs also offer shares at a discount.

Pay Cut

Many Amazon warehouse workers criticized the change in their compensation, claiming it would effectively be a loss of money for them. Without the monthly bonuses and stock options, some claimed they would be making roughly three to six thousand less dollars each year.

Optics

Some said that the pay raise was more a publicity move and a political play, a way to get rid of the incentive based pay without losing face. But in its defense, the majority of the workers affected would be seeing a total increase in pay and the stock options would be completely meaningless to the temporary workers who wouldn’t work for the company long enough to exercise them.

Making It Up

Amazon disagreed with those saying that the changes would leave some of its workers worse off. “The significant increase in hourly cash wages more than compensates for the phase out of incentive pay and RSUs [restricted stock units].” a spokesperson said.

Success For Some

“In addition, because it’s no longer incentive-based, the compensation will be more immediate and predictable,” they continued. Whether the move proves to be good or bad for workers in the long run, it is a success for people like Senator Sanders who would like to see the federal minimum wage raised.

Different Tune

The federal minimum wage has been at $7.25 an hour since 2009, despite the fact that the cost of living has increased by nearly 20% in that time. Amazon seems to have entirely reversed their wage policy, now saying their public policy team will begin lobbying for an increase in the federal minimum wage.

Some Employees ‘Worse Off’ After Amazon’s $15 Minimum Wage Increase is an article from: LifeDaily

This story begins in 1946. Walter Keane, a young American artist, had come to Europe to learn how to be a painter. On his trip to Berlin, Keane found himself wandering the streets one afternoon only to encounter a group of big-eyed street urchins fighting over scraps of food amidst the refuse.

Heartbroken by the experience, Keane soon found himself sketching those ragged, desperate children. The big-eyed urchins were the victims of World War II, the remnants of a once-proud city ravaged by conflict. It was through these children, through their skinny frames, matted hair, and runny noses that Keane’s life as a painter truly began.

An Art Sensation

Within the next fifteen years, Keane had become something of a sensation in the art world. It was the age of the Nuclear family, of the American suburb, and plenty of people were looking for an outlet for their lingering melancholy and for something to fill up the walls in their homes; Keane’s big-eyed children filled both niches.

Big-Eyed Kids

Keane’s big-eyed children came in many varieties. Some of them held similar big-eyed puppies in their arms. Others were dressed up in strange costumes, still, more of them sat in fields of flowers, sitting alone and forlorn. The important thing was that all of them looked innocent and sorrowful, and for that, people loved them.

Loving Life

As for Walter Keane himself, he was not the melancholic soul his soulful children might have led people to believe him to be. On the contrary, Keane was anything but innocent. He was an unabashed narcissist who loved wine and women almost as much as he loved himself. One of those women, the one who would become his wife, was named Margaret.

Memories of Margaret

In Keane’s memoir, he describes his meeting with Margaret as something kismet. She was a fan, and the two met at an art exhibition in San Francisco in 1955. According to Keane, Margaret believed him to be the greatest artists she’d ever seen and once they had become intimate, she also described him as the greatest lover she had ever known as well. That’s not how Margaret remembers it though.

Selling Paintings

Margaret’s memory of she and her husband’s first meeting was a fair bit different than his memoir would have you believe. Nevertheless, Keane’s first foray into the art world saw him selling his big-eyed children paintings out the front of the Hungry I, a San Francisco beatnik club. The problem was, the paintings he was selling weren’t his, they were Margaret’s.

Attending the Club

That’s right, the entire story of Keane’s inspiration in Berlin was nothing but a cleverly-conceived fabrication. Margaret was the artist. It had been she who had first conceived of the children and it wasn’t until she attended the club with her husband that she learned the truth, that he had been taking the credit for all of her work. She could hardly believe it.

A Liar

The truth of the matter was, while Keane might well have seen sad children in postwar Berlin, he hadn’t painted a single one of them; Keane couldn’t paint to save his life. Furious at his lies, Margaret confronted her husband and told him to stop. He didn’t. Instead, Keane convinced his wife to simply go along with the ruse and allow him to take the credit. Which she did, for the next decade.

Charming Argument

Why, you might ask, would Margaret go along with such a thing? Why allow someone else, even her husband to take the credit? The answer is fairly simple: money. It was no secret that the Keane’s needed money and “Walter’s Big-Eyed Children” were gaining in popularity which each painting sold. The fact was, people were more likely to buy a painting if they thought they were speaking with the artist.

Money Troubles

The guaranteed money they’d be making from the paintings, coupled with Keane’s implausible charm, was more than enough to sway her. They also didn’t want to confuse patrons by revealing that he had been lying about the paintings. He even offered another solution, he asked her to teach him to paint the big-eyed children.

Teach Me

Margaret did try, but it was useless. Her husband may have had charm, but he didn’t have an eye for art. He became increasingly frustrated and blamed his inability on her teaching style. She felt guilty and even worse, she felt trapped. She knew she couldn’t just leave and support her and their daughter on her own, not with him having taken the credit for her life’s work. So she stayed and went along with the ruse.

Cultural Icon

Within the decade, Walter Keane’s prints and postcards of big-eyed children were selling in the millions. Prints and copies were in department stores worldwide and Hollywood legends like Natalie Wood, Joan Crawford, Dean Martin, and Jerry Lewis were buying the original paintings for insane prices.

Living the Life

Of course, the Keane’s did end up moving to a nicer house because of the money, complete with swimming pool, but Margaret never saw a dime. Nor did she even get to enjoy the pool. Instead, she was forced to remain inside and paint for up to 16 hours a day. In the meantime, Walter was living the high life, sleeping around, and bringing strange women into their marriage bed.

Secrets and Lies

Those closest to the couple knew that something was going on between them, but many of them chose to keep the affairs and the credit that Keane had stolen a secret. If the truth came out, collectors would feel misled, and the empire they had build would come crashing down. At the same time, Keane continued to abuse and belittle his wife.

Domineering

He was also exceptionally jealous and domineering. He forbade her from going out or seeing friends and would follow her if she did. He threatened to have her killed by his mafia connections if she told anyone. Still, he only ever tried to hit her once, so she continued to accept the abuse and the money the paintings

brought in.

Always in Charge

Keane would come home from a night of partying and schmoozing to demand that his wife show him what she had painted for the day. As the years wore on, he demanded more and more specific paintings, including a giant hundred-person one to hang in a government building. Margaret no longer had any control over what artwork she created.

Parting Ways

Finally, after 10 years of marriage, the Keanes went their separate ways. Remarkably, Margaret agreed to continue to secretly paint the big-eyes for her ex-husband, but after 20 or 30 of them, she realized she’d had enough. In October of 1970, Margaret came clean to a reporter about the whole sordid affair.

Life Afterwards

Margaret became a Jehovah’s Witness after that and moved to Hawaii where she could paint all the big-eyed children she wanted. The strange thing is, the sad children she had previously painted soon began to have small, cautious smiles upon their faces. Margaret was happy and so, it seemed, were her big-eyed children.

Sad Man

Walter Keane’s life was not quite as happy. His drinking intensified and he moved into a fisherman’s shack in La Jolla, California. He became paranoid and tried his best to discredit his ex-wife as trying to defraud him and the American public by taking credit for the big-eyed children. In response to these allegations, Margaret took him to court.

Revelations

The presiding judge had a simple method for determining who was lying, he challenged them both to paint a child with big eyes, right in the courtroom. Margaret was done painting hers in 53 minutes, Keane simply gave an excuse that he couldn’t because of a sore shoulder. Credit was finally given where credit was due, as was a whole lot of money.

Biopic

Walter died in 2000, having given up drinking but bitterly regretting the loss of the lavish life he’d lived while riding his wife’s coattails. A Tim Burton biopic, Big Eyes, was released in 2014. It starred Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz. Margaret herself even has a cameo in the film as a little old lady on a park bench.

Famous Artist’s Wife Reveals Dark Secrets Behind His Prolific Career is an article from: LifeDaily

We’ve come a long way in this country when it comes to civil rights. Not as far as we’d like to have come by 2018, mind you, but a damn sight farther than we were in the 1960s. That said, there are still plenty of people fighting for a proper degree of civil rights in the United States and that fight has claimed plenty of lives along the way.

One of those lives, possibly one of the first to have been claimed in this decades’ old conflict, belonged to a Tennessee man who was doing what he could to encourage his fellow African Americans to make use of their God-given right to vote. Unfortunately, there were plenty in the 1940s who took umbrage with this.

A Body

It was a cool June evening in 1940 when they discovered the body of 32-year-old Elbert Williams, a native Brownsville resident and member of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), had been killed and whoever had done it had dumped his body in the Hatchie River, six miles from Brownsville, Tennessee.

Murder Most Foul

Not many were terribly surprised at the time of the discovery. Williams had been causing quite a stir in the area with his NAACP chapter and the locals were not too happy about it. It was easy for the Haywood County coroner to rule out any sort of accidental death. They titled the official cause of death to be “foul means by parties unknown.” They just needed to find out who’d done it.

NAACP

As previously stated, Elbert Williams was a member of the Brownsville chapter of the NAACP, an organization that was developed as a way to ensure equal rights for people of color in a time when such rights were hardly the norm. Prior to his death, he and his fellow NAACP members were doing their best to fight for and ultimately register black voters.

Rumors Fly

The county coroner had also ordered that Williams be buried immediately following a brief cursory examination. No official autopsy was held. Theories about the manner of Williams’ murder were bandied about and all of them led back to the night of June 20th, the night he disappeared from the local jail and was never seen again.

Fateful Night

On the evening of June 20, 1940, Williams was led from his home by a group of men, along with Brownsville police officer Tip Hunter, to the Brownsville city jail. There, he was allegedly locked up and interrogated about his work with the NAACP. His wife came out to the jail that same night to find him, but Williams was not there when she arrived.

Two Months

Two months later, long after Williams had already been buried, Haywood County convened a special grand jury to investigate his death. The jury ruled that Williams’ death was a homicide by parties unknown. The next year, the Justice Department determined the death was also a violation of existing civil rights criminal statutes. Yet there was still a problem.

The First Martyr

Elbert Williams’ murder had been resigned to the stack of cold cases but his efforts on behalf of civil rights were not forgotten. The NAACP would coin Williams as “the first martyr of the NAACP.” He would not be their last. In 1963, NAACP leader Medgar Evers was shot and killed by a member of the Ku Klux Klan outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi.

Open Then Closed

Eventually, despite evidence gathered by then NAACP special counsel member Thurgood Marshall, federal officials closed their investigation. Marshall would later go on to become the U.S. first African-American Supreme Court Justice, but Elbert Williams’ death would continue to be a lingering, unsolved hate crime. Until very recently, that is.

Unmarked and Forgotten

The important thing to remember is that no one was ever charged in the case. In addition to that, Williams’ had been buried rather unceremoniously in an unmarked grave likely near the church cemetery. Almost 80 years later, a former district attorney has moved to re-open the case to find out what really happened.

Dedication

Jim Emison retired from his position with the district attorney’s office some time ago. But that didn’t mean he was done fighting for justice. Having heard of the Williams’ case many years ago, he’s dedicated almost all of his time to trying to determine who killed the civil rights activist. Unfortunately, getting the local, state, and federal agencies involved to re-open the case has been difficult, to say the least.

Much Research

Emison has spent the better part of the past five years obsessing over the case details and has accumulated binders full of information to finding any sort of relevant information previously ignored by law enforcement. Emison went through some trouble to obtain many of these documents, going as far as to procure them from the National Archives and local police.

Threats of Violence

The Brownsville police had been much less accommodating when he asked for the documents and Emison believes he knows why. At the time of Williams’ murder, they had been upset with the local NAACP branch for registering blacks to vote. This led many in the department to attempt to force NAACP members out of town via threats of violence.

Federal Understanding

One of Emison’s documents indicates that the federal government was aware of this. At the time, Wendell Berge had been the U.S. Assistant Attorney General and had written to U.S. District Attorney William Clanahan about the “obvious purpose” of the Brownsville police officers’ behavior. Their goal was to frighten the town’s black population and prevent them from voting.

Relevant Leads

The local effort against Williams and the NAACP might not have been isolated. In fact, in 1947, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover believed that the FBI’s conduct and execution of its investigation into the murder had been purposely mismanaged. He even ordered an internal investigation of it to be sure. Clearly, the government knew it might be a conspiracy but ultimately did nothing.

Statute of Limitations

In February of 2017, former U.S. Attorney Edward Stanton III wrote about the case in a letter he sent to the Williams family. He apologized but said that the investigation could not be re-opened because more than 75 years had passed, and therefore so too had the statute of limitations. Emison agrees that revisiting the case may be difficult without any potential living witness to interview, but he doesn’t think it’s impossible.

Other Elberts

There is evidence that the federal government is on the verge of investigating many of these supposedly cold civil right cases. They even recently renewed the investigation into the 1955 murder of 14-year-old African-American boy Emmett Till. There’s even a bipartisan bill in the works for cases just like this.

Bipartisan Bill

The bill, which is the first of its kind in this country, will set up a hotline for cold case tips and a center for research of unsolved civil rights crimes in the state of Tennessee. The hope is that other states will follow suit and dedicate themselves to solving cold cases just like these. “It will start a trend, I hope. As Dr. King would say, ‘let the justice flow like a river, let it flow.'” says Emison.

Seeking Justice

“We owe it to ourselves to do that,” Emison continued while speaking to WMC5. “We cannot do all in 2018 that should have been done in 1940, but justice and historic truth demand that questions about the cause of Elbert Williams’ death and the identity of his killer(s) that should have been answered long ago be answered now if possible.”

Forensic Evidence

Investigators assigned to the case will work with a University of Tennessee forensic scientist to look for Williams’ actual grave, examine his body properly, and reinter them with the honor and dignity befitting a civil rights hero afterward. The belief is also that some of the witnesses in the case might still be alive as well.

A Measure of Justice

Gary Brown, 28th Judicial District attorney made a statement about the soon-to-be-reopened case, stating. “We will do what we can. We believe the Williams’ family and this community will benefit from knowing as much of the truth as we can today determine and in that truth find a measure of justice.”

80-Year-Old Civil Rights Cold Case Spurs Statute of Limitations Legislation is an article from: LifeDaily

When Polly stood in line at her local McDonald’s in the early hours one Sunday morning, she couldn’t afford a sandwich or even a cup of coffee. Having been homeless for years all Polly wanted was a glass of hot water to give her some respite from the cold.

When Polly was refused the glass of water and asked to leave the store, another customer stepped in as he felt “heartbroken” for poor Polly. He also thought it was “disgusting” that McDonald’s had refused Polly her “basic human right.”

Late Nights

We’ve all been there. After a night of drinking and partying one often inevitably ends up at a late-night McDonald’s outlet wanting something to eat or just a hot cup of coffee. Homeless people also often find themselves at McDonald’s, if only to escape the cold of the streets and to get a glass of water.

Water Please

Polly, who was living rough for many years, entered the McDonald’s branch in Cardiff, U.K., to escape the cold and get a hot glass of water. But when she approached the counter she was refused. Jonathon Pengelly, who was standing behind her in line at the time, decided to take action to help Polly when McDonald’s staff wouldn’t.

Saturday Night

Pengelly, who had been out drinking with a group of his friends that Saturday night felt bad for Polly. He felt so bad that he decided on the spot to ask her if he could buy her something to eat as she looked hungry and weak. When he asked her what she wanted, Polly asked for a cheeseburger, which he then promptlybought for her. But Polly had a friend sitting outside who was also hungry and cold.

Loving Kindness

Pengelly was so taken by the situation that he encouraged his friends to make a large order from the McDonald’s to give to Polly and her homeless friend. Pengelly and his friends took as much food and drink as they could carry out to the street for Polly and her friend. He then took to Facebook to talk about the incident, sparking a viral post that was shared and liked by thousands of people.

Generous Guy

Pengelly felt so bad for Polly and her friend that he made the decision to invite these perfect strangers back to his house then and there. Once they arrived, the two women showered and brushed their teeth while their host cooked them up a bunch of food which would last them for days. He even boxed the food up in neat little portions and wrapped them in a plastic bags for convenience.

Some Bedding

Pengelly’s generosity didn’t stop there, however, as he proceeded to give the two homeless women blankets and pillows that he had spare as well as the packed lunches for days. But Pengelly was still upset about how Polly had been treated by McDonald’s staff and took to Facebook to complain about it.

New Friends

Pengelly explained the full story to his Facebook friends as well as others who were bound to see his post. He added a selfie he took with Polly along with the caption: “I couldn’t help but notice the lady in front me, all she asked for was a cup of hot water,” he wrote. He took issue with a “multi-billion pound company” refusing a homeless woman water.

Disgusting Behavior

The post continued: “The member of staff told her no. I don’t know what was going through their mind but a lady, clearly homeless was asking for a basic human right, and for a multi-billion pound company, for them to say no is disgusting!”

Heart Shattered

Pengelly didn’t stop there though as he went on to explain how his heart was “shattered” by the incident he had just witnessed. “My heart was shattered! So I spoke to her and told her to order what she wanted, expecting her to order everything,” he wrote. But he was also in shock at Polly’s humility in the face of adversity on a cold Sunday morning in Cardiff.

In Shock

As Pengelly explained: “I was so shocked. She asked for a single cheeseburger and that was it. We bought as much as we could carry so I knew she wasn’t going to be hungry.” He also admitted that meeting Polly affected him deeply and that he was even brought to tears by her, but in a good way. He wasn’t shy to admit that even as a grown man, he was moved to tears.

So Lovely

“I couldn’t just leave this lady go, she was so warming and so lovely,” Pengelly wrote. “So I sat with her, on the cold hard floor, in the middle of winter and you know what I did? I cried my eyes out,” he admitted. He also took issue with all the people who walked past Polly and friend and ignored their plight. But Pengelly was even more upset at the people who had mocked them.

Reaching Out

“You know if people of Cardiff walked passed them and didn’t do anything because, financially, they weren’t in the position, I would understand,” Pengelly wrote. However, “people walked passed and laughed at them. I don’t care who you are, if this was you, and you’re reading this I hate you!” As soon as he got talking with Polly and her friend he was also shocked at how well-spoken and educated the two women were.

Full of Life

Pengelly explained, according to a report in The Sun, that these homeless women were highly educated and full of life. “When I got to speak to them I was genuinely shocked at their story and how educated they were! So full of life and enthusiasm and they literally have nothing!” he explained. But Polly and her friend were also touched and moved by this stranger’s random act of kindness to them.

Selfless Act

Pengelly didn’t think about himself or his own wallet for a moment as he was so taken with Polly and her friend. “I invited Polly and her mate back to my house and we all cooked enough food to feed them and their friends for the next few nights. We boxed them up and packed them in their bags,” he explained. The fact that the whole thing only cost Pengelly around $25 made him feel like others should be more helpful to homeless people.

No Saint

As he explained on Facebook, Pengelly hasn’t done anything like this before but as was in the right place at the right time he felt compelled to do so. “I’m no saint, but this small act of kindness cost me about £20. I know 90 percent of people reading this will earn about 10 times that a day.”

Raising Awareness

As Pengelly explained: “It costs nothing to be kind, and I genuinely hope people share this to raise awareness of homelessness throughout the UK!” But meeting Polly was so special for Pengelly that he has even stayed in touch with her and speaks to her regularly on the phone. He even made her a solemn promise that she will never be hungry or cold again.

Helping People

Pengelly clearly feels strongly about what happened to Polly as well as the plight of those living rough on the streets. “If you see someone on the streets, don’t look down on them like they’re nothing. You don’t know what they’ve been through! Spare a little thought!” Adding that in many ways he is a changed man thanks to Polly.

McDonald’s Response

When McDonald’s head office was contacted by reporters for a response to the incident, a spokeswoman spoke to Mirror Online. “There is no McDonald’s policy to ban homeless people from our stores and the vast majority of such requests are granted by our restaurant teams,” she claimed. But she also claimed there was a reason why Polly had been refused water by McDonald’s staff.

Antisocial Behavior

The McDonald’s spokeswoman went onto explain: “Working with the local police, our Cardiff stores have had to ban a number of individuals due to illegal and anti-social behavior which is why this individual was refused service.” According to her, Polly had been engaging in some antisocial behavior. “This incident is as a result of illegal activity taking place in our store requiring a police-sanctioned ban of a number of people.”

Good People

While McDonald’s has come under fire for this incident, it goes to prove that there are some good people left in the world. No human being should be refused water, especially from a multi-billion dollar enterprise like McDonald’s. The fact that there are people like Pengelly who are prepared to take a stand and stick up for people that are less fortunate, is a testimony that it only takes a few good people in the world to make a difference.

Homeless Woman’s Story Goes Viral After McDonald’s Refuses to Serve Her Water is an article from: LifeDaily

In the days before advanced DNA technology, it was a lot harder for law enforcement to bring criminals and murderers to justice as they often lacked the evidence to do so. That’s why many cold cases where DNA was preserved running back decades are solved years later.

When Linda Reed went on her lunch break in December 1983, she assumed she would catch a quick sandwich and perhaps a coffee before she headed back to her job. However, Reed was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and for that, she paid with her life.

Pacific Fair Shopping Centre

The Pacific Fair Shopping Centre is situated in Broadbeach Waters on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia. Until 2006, it was Queensland’s largest shopping mall and was developed in 1977 on swampland. Featuring 96 retail outlets at the time, it has grown to more than 300 stores and was redeveloped in 2014. Reed loved her job as a retail assistant and was known to be friendly and warm to customers and colleagues alike.

Just 21

Back in 1983, Reed was just 21 years old. She enjoyed her job as a retail assistant at a jewelry store and even had aspirations to become the manager of the store one day. She worked hard, was seldom late for work, and always took her lunch break at around the same time every day. She would often escape the hustle and bustle of the shopping mall and eat a sandwich in her car while she listened to the radio.

Wrong Place

While Reed had no enemies that she knew of, she did have some bad luck on that day in December. While the precise details were unclear for decades, what is known is that she was abducted that day and never returned to work. Tragically, Linda Reed would never be seen again, and she was found bound, half-naked and dead near to her Mazda sedan in the nearby Gaven Forest Estate three days after she went missing.

Cold Case

In 1986, three years after her brutal abduction and murder, Craig Andrew McConnell was arrested and charged with the crime but was later acquitted due to insufficient evidence. During his trial, pathologist Tony Ansford testified that Reed had been drowned in the creek where her body was found after being sexually abused. But the police reopened the case in 2009 after receiving a tip-off.

Baby Face

Numerous witnesses contacted Crime Stoppers and claimed they had seen a “baby-faced teenager” in the Pacific Fair Center car park on the day Reed was abducted. And while the case had been under scrutiny for many years, most of the investigations had been carried out outside the public domain. The main development here was DNA that was found in Reed’s car at the time.

Wrong Man

It may have happened retroactively, but Australian police surmised that McConnell should never have been arrested or charged with the murder of Reed. Detective Senior Sergeant Chris Knight, who headed up the fresh investigation, spoke to reporters about the case, explaining that the new investigation doesn’t veer into the legal minefield of double jeopardy as it is a fresh investigation in its own right.

New Process

As Sgt. Knight explained, according to a report in The Australian: “This is definitely not a double jeopardy or any exercise of double jeopardy legislation. This is a new court process which we will be commencing today.” He added, “During the initial investigation, as you can imagine for the early 80s there was a significant amount of investigation surrounding Linda’s homicide. The gentleman that’s in custody at the moment was not subject of those early investigations.”

Recent Years

Due to numerous tip-offs from Crime Stoppers and elsewhere, the new suspect in the cold case has been known to police for a good few years. “His name did not come up in the earlier investigation. It’s been relatively recent past when it’s come up,” explained Knight. “I’m not talking in the last six months or anything; I’m talking in recent years.” Nevertheless, police found no connection between the alleged killer and Reed before her abduction suggesting it was an opportunistic and random act.

Popular Case

Knight explained that there likely isn’t a cop on the Gold Coast who wasn’t familiar with the tragic case of Linda Reed. “If you talk to any police that have worked on the Gold Coast in the past 30 years they all have knowledge of this investigation,” he said. But Knight also pointed to the fact that it was only thanks to advanced DNA technology that Reed’s killer was eventually brought to justice.

Advanced Technology

There are a large number of decades-old cold cases which have been revisited thanks to advances in DNA technology. As Sgt. Knight explained: “In the early 80s DNA was not being used. It was simply not available to investigators.” However, “Conventional DNA became available in the mid to late 90s and started becoming important in criminal trials. But since then DNA testing has increased significantly in terms of its capacity and ability to detect and find DNA profiles that perhaps even in the early DNA stages were simply not available.”

Other Opportunities

Knight went on to explain that advancements in DNA forensic technology are opening many new avenues of investigation for cold cases. “There has been a progressive evolution of technology. I’ve no doubt it will only get better in the future,” he said. “We are looking for these opportunities in a whole range of other unsolved homicides. We hope that that passage of time is no comfort to anybody. If anything the next knock on their door could be from a police officer.”

Suspect Caught

It may have taken more than three decades, but Queensland police were finally able to locate Reed’s killer and offer some closure to her poor family who has suffered through years of not knowing. When Linda’s husband Robert Reed was told that a man whose DNA was found on the victim at the time, he was emotional but thrilled.

The Hearing

51-Year-old Troy James O’Meara was led into court to be tried for the murder of Linda Reed 35 years ago. He wore a green tracksuit and sported long grey hair and a goatee beard to match. His preliminary hearing lasted only two minutes before O’Meara was remanded in custody pending his trial.

Just 17

At the time when O’Meary was accused of abducting and murdering Reed, he was just a 17-year-old, baby-faced lad. To date, no one even knows why he did what he did on that December afternoon, nor the circumstances surrounding Reed’s murder. But the DNA evidence is so compelling that it almost guarantees a conviction against this man.

Appeal for Witnesses

For now, cold case detectives in Queensland have appealed for witnesses. They want to hear from anyone who recalls seeing a man behaving suspiciously at that shopping center between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. that day. They also want to hear from people who may have seen the new suspect on Gaven Way, now called the Pacific Highway, to come forward with information.

Thanking Police

Reed’s husband was thankful for all the authorities’ hard work. Speaking at a media conference held at Brisbane’s police headquarters, Reed said, “It’s been 35 years since my wife was taken from me, from Nancy and Oscar, her parents, from Philip, her brother,” he said. “We just want to thank the police for never giving up in trying to find Linda’s murderer. We cannot thank the Queensland police enough.”

Random Attack

Detective Senior Sergeant Chris Knight also spoke to the press at the event, saying: “Linda’s abduction and murder is a completely random attack that has had devastating effects, not only on Linda’s family but on the Gold Coast community generally.” He also confirmed that his officers had been backed up by a “broad spectrum of forensic officers who have played a significant role in the advancement of this investigation.”

More Thanks

Sgt. Knight also commended the officers who worked this difficult cold case. “I commend the work of the officers who were involved in this case from the outset and thank the detectives and forensic officers who worked so diligently to bring this case to a resolution.” He also thanked the Reed family for their support and understanding over the years. “We thank the family for their support throughout the investigation, and it is our privilege to bring them the answers they deserve after all this time.”

More Cases

It’s DNA testing advances, like the ones that were used in this cold case, which help put more and more criminals and murderers behind bars. However, it’s also noteworthy that the determination and persistence of law enforcement is another factor here. There’s also shows like Crime Stoppers that receive hundreds of tips and leads on cold cases.

Hope Remains

New advancements in DNA testing means that families like the Reeds can have closure in their lives, even if it comes many years later. For murderers, the long arm of the law has never been so far-reaching as it is today, and even if they do find a way to live with themselves for what they did, they will never stop looking over their shoulder for fear of being caught one day.

Gold Coast Cold Case Mystery Finally Closed 35 Years Later is an article from: LifeDaily

The decision to start a family is not something to take lightly, though many people do so anyway. Nevertheless, it is one that many would-be parents struggle with. There are also some people who take the ability to get pregnant for granted, while many others struggle for years to conceive.

This is a story about one unfortunate couple’s disappointing journey to parenthood and the revelation that finally aided them. It is also a lesson in the importance of education, especially in places where the pursuit of knowledge isn’t always a high priority.

No Such Luck

The story begins with a young Chinese man and woman, ages 26 and 24, respectively, whose identities have been kept anonymous. The two were married, in love, but unable to conceive of a child. Despite having sexual relations on a fairly regular basis, the young couple couldn’t seem to get pregnant.

Seeking Professionals

They worried that perhaps something might be wrong internally, but living in rural China, it wasn’t easy to get a diagnosis. Eventually, they got in contact with obstetrician Liu Hongmei, who they were certain could provide them with some sort of answers; even if that answer turned out to be bad news.

Under Pressure

Doctor Liu found out that though the two had been trying consistently for more than four years, they still couldn’t conceive of a child. It didn’t help that both of their families were pressuring them pretty hard to have a child. The doctor surmised that the stress of wanting to honor their family’s wishes might have been contributing to their lack of conception.

A Painful Enterprise

During the course of their consultation, Doctor Liu also learned that sex between the loving couple was, as they put it, “usually painful.” He wondered if perhaps there might be something physically wrong with one or either of them to make intercourse painful, but would need to perform a thorough gynecological exam to be sure.

Possible Sickness

The woman’s symptoms led Doctor Liu to believe that she might perhaps be afflicted by a gynecological disease. Though, what sort of disease she might be afflicted with, he did not know for sure. What he discovered during the examination, however, was even more shocking than he could have predicted.

Fibbing

Doctor Liu had the wife get dressed and lead the man and women back to his office. It was there he revealed the alarming news he had discovered, the wife was still a virgin. As far as he could tell, either the couple had been lying about having sex for the past four years, or they were doing something very wrong.

The Wrong Way

Liu dug a little deeper. He knew that the next series of questions would be uncomfortable, but necessary. The couple, which hailed from China’s south-western rural Guizhou province, had little in the way of sexual education and had apparently been mistakenly having anal intercourse rather than vaginal in a fruitless attempt to conceive.

Lacking Knowledge

It seemed that even after four years of marriage and more than two decades on the planet had done little to prepare the couple for having safe sexual intercourse. Doctor Liu admits that couples lacking in that sort of general knowledge are rare, but it is not uncommon for some people to have misconceptions about sexual intercourse.

Taboo Subject

This is not necessarily all their fault, either. Though frankly, common sense should have told them at some point that if it keeps hurting, don’t do it. The doctor says the couple’s alleged lack of sexual knowledge of the fact that China has an alarming lack of special education. It’s still a largely taboo subject in most Chinese schools.

University Courses

Doctor Liu did admit that there have been some strides in recent years when it comes to sexual education, but that it still faces great challenges. Jing Jun, a professor of sociology at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, spoke to CNN and agreed. “At Tsinghua, students take sex education classes where they learn basic knowledge about sex safety, condom use, etc.”

New Knowledge

Jing Jun continued by saying that as far as he knew, the sex education classes offered at Tsinghua are the first opportunity that any of his students have ever had to take such a class. That said, not all students are so lucky. In many parts of China, other keenly-interested students have to fight for their right to such classes.

Student Protests

Recently, a group of Chinese students at Beijing Normal University held a demonstration where they demanded that the government provide better sex education for its youth. Their point was made by way of signs that said things like “Adult videos can’t be our sex education, universities must say yes to sex education,” or “We want to enjoy safe sex lives.”

STDs

Part of the reason that so many Chinese students are fighting for sex education is that of the serious increase in cases of HIV in mainland China in recent years. In 2015 alone, China’s National Center for STD/AIDS prevention confirmed 115,000 new cases of HIV on the mainland. Of those cases, 14.7 percent of them were found in people between 15 and 24 years of age.

Vending Machines

If the number weren’t worrying enough to bring the point across, consider that a select number of universities now possess vending machines on campus that dispense home HIV testing kits. The solution to all this is not testing to find out that you’ve contracted HIV or an STD, but to be educated prior to intercourse so you know how to avoid such things.

Chicken or The Egg?

Doctor Liu informed the couple of what they were doing wrong and even gave them a free sex education handbook. Within a few short months, the woman was pregnant. To show their appreciation, they sent Doctor Liu a live hen and 100 eggs. It may not seem like much to us in the West, but the sentiment meant a great deal to the doctor.

Identical Tale

A seemingly identical story from 2001 discusses the marital issues of a Romanian couple who discovered that the reason they were childless was that they too had been having sex the wrong way.

Natural Instincts

Both stories strain credulity a bit. Deep down, we’re all physical creatures with physical responses to stimuli. When men and women engage in physical contact with one another, our bodies respond accordingly. Our body parts, the ones that intend to be used for sex, respond in such a way as to lead us towards proper sexual intercourse.

A Fair Warning

There is a reason that this story seems somewhat unlikely. Indeed, much about the tale sounds like the punchline to a dirty joke about sexual ignorance. Therefore, it wouldn’t be unheard of for readers to doubt the story’s credibility. After all, even people from rural parts of the world aren’t that ignorant of the ways of the world – especially if they have any access to the Internet.

Important Distinction

Nevertheless, the purpose of the story is not to denigrate or make light of such ignorance, but to inform people about the state of sexual education in other parts of the world. Knowledge about safe sex is something that we take seriously in this country, but if this story teaches us anything, it’s that not everyone is fortunate enough to have access to the facts.

Fake News, Real Lessons

In the end, it doesn’t really matter whether or not the story is true or false. It’s a humorous, anecdotal lesson in the ways of the world. It’s indicative of the problems that exist elsewhere and how important education, sexual or otherwise, truly is.

Story Of Chinese Couple’s Inability to Conceive Highlights Value Of Sex Ed is an article from: LifeDaily

Normally, the police encourage suspects to take responsibility for their actions instead of blaming others for the mistakes that got them in trouble. Though, this isn’t always the case.

In September 2018, police arrested a woman after she endangered her own life and the lives of everyone on the road. Tragically, her choice ended in a fatal accident that took the life of an innocent young man. Instead of blaming the woman, however, police are claiming two bartenders are actually responsible…

An Evening Bike Ride

On the night of June 4, 2018, Marco Antonio Pena Beltran was riding his bike to Walmart with his colleagues. The 23-year-old was originally from Columbia but had come to the United States just a few weeks prior. He and several others had come as part of a visa program that allowed them to work for the summer and learn the culture.

A Lifeguard In Training

While in the United States, Beltran had been training at a lifeguard academy. Once his training was complete, he planned to work as a lifeguard for the Galveston Beach Patrol in Galveston, Texas. Sadly, he never got to spend the summer saving lives.

Eager to Work

According to authorities, Beltran had been really excited about his time in Texas. He was eager to work hard, save money, and experience a new culture. However, while he and his colleagues were riding to Walmart just after 10 p.m. that night, the lifeguard ended up having to fight for his own life.

The Accident

As the group cycled on the shoulder of the street, a car came out of nowhere and mowed Beltran and another 23-year-old down. According to the police, the car, which was driven by 50-year-old Gerilyn Weberlein, was going about 45 mph when it collided with the bikers.

Hit From Behind

Authorities explained that Weberlein hit the cyclists from behind. During the collision, Beltran went through the windshield of the car. When responding officers arrived at the scene of the crash, Beltran was in bad shape and was rushed to the hospital right away.

The Other Victim

Another cyclist from the group was also struck during the accident and was also taken to the hospital. Thankfully, however, he wasn’t as hurt as Beltran. After being rushed to the John Sealy Emergency Room at the University of Texas, doctors did their best to treat both of the young men and all their injuries.

The Accident Report

Meanwhile, police were still back at the scene of the accident, which authorities explained occurred near the intersection of 69th Street and Weiss Drive. While at the scene, the officers were trying to figure out what exactly happened and how the 50-year-old didn’t see the group of cyclists.

Signs of Intoxication

Officers took statements from everyone at the scene. However, while speaking to Weberlein, they got a good idea of what had just happened. According to the Galveston police officers at the scene, Weberlein showed signs of being intoxicated. They could even smell alcohol on her breath.

Just One Beer

When asked if she had anything to drink that night, Weberlein told the police that she had only had one beer. Yet based on her condition at the time, the officers thought that was highly unlikely. As a result, they had her do a few different field sobriety tests.

The Tests

According to the report filed by the responding officers, Weberlein failed every single field sobriety test that they gave her. As a result, the officers took Weberlein into custody and tested her blood-alcohol content. The results showed that Weberlein was well above the state’s legal limit.

Well Above The Limit

According to the police report, Weberlein had a blood-alcohol content of 0.103 several hours after the accident. Since the legal limit in Texas is 0.08, they arrested her for driving drunk. Meanwhile, doctors in the emergency room were still hard at work trying to save Beltran’s life. Sadly, his injuries were too severe.

The Next Morning

While the other young man who had been hit only suffered cuts and a broken arm, Beltran was in critical condition. Despite doctors doing everything in their power to save the 23-year-old, he passed away in the hospital the following morning from injuries he suffered during the crash.

Tragic News

When police notified Beltran’s family in Columbia about what happened, they were completely shocked and devastated. This was supposed to be such an exciting time for Beltran, and it ended in tragedy. “It’s sad. So sad because the people came here to achieve his goals, to make money, meet the culture. He was a really happy person,” Beltran’s friend Diego Castellanos told KTRK.

The Charges

After Beltran’s passing, police charged Weberlein with third-degree felony intoxication assault and second-degree felony intoxication manslaughter. After her arrest, she was held on $100,000 bond. Shortly after, she posted bond and was released from Galveston County Jail on June 5.

Retracing Her Steps

For the police, however, the case wasn’t quite finished. While investigating what happened that night, investigators learned that Weberlein had been drinking at Island Pier Club earlier that night. So investigators started working to retrace her steps before the accident.

A Selfish Decision

According to the police, the 50-year-old had been drinking at the local bar for a few hours before the accident. Just before 10 p.m., Weberlein left the bar, got in her car, and started driving. That decision ended up injuring a young man and taking the life of another.

The Surveillance Footage

Just 15 minutes after leaving the bar and driving off, Weberlein plowed into the cyclists. Investigators then obtained footage from the surveillance cameras at the bar to see how much Weberlein drank that evening. However, while watching the footage, the officers noticed something else alarming.

Irresponsible Bartenders

The bartenders working that night, Shafay Look, 34, and Jon Ward, 56, continued to serve Weberlein all night even though she was clearly very drunk. In the footage, the 50-year-old can be seen spilling drunks and stumbling around the bar. She also struggled to stand up without another customer’s help.

Additional Charges

As a result, the police charged both the bartenders with “selling an alcoholic beverage to an intoxicated person.” They claim they should have refused to serve her since she was extremely drunk. “Bartenders have a duty to make sure people aren’t over-served, and in this case, police feel they may be able to convict based on the surveillance video,” Beltran’s lawyer, Sean O’Rourke, told Yahoo Lifestyle. “If you serve a person who is slurring her speech and stumbling, you’re compounding a dangerous situation.”

A Bartender’s Responsibility

If found guilty, Look and Ward both face a fine of $500 and a year in jail for their part in the fatal accident since there is a statue in Texas that requires responsibly serving alcohol. Weberlein, on the other hand, hasn’t faced a jury yet and is due back in court on October 17 for a status conference. “Marco’s family in Galveston is happy to see there’s been an effort to look at all the causes that go into how these incidents occur,” O’Rourke told Yahoo Lifestyle.

Texas Bartenders Face Charges After Drunk Patron Gets Behind The Wheel is an article from: LifeDaily