Graphic Humor 237 (Children , Obama, Putin)

This section of Graphic Humor in political-economic, national or international issues, are very ingenious in describing what happened, is happening or will happen. It also extends to various other local issues or passing around the world. There are also other non-political humor that ranges from reflective or just to get us a smile when we see them. Anyone with basic education and to stay informed of important news happening in our local and global world may understand and enjoy them. Farewell!. (CTsT)

 

Graphic Humor 236

This section of Graphic Humor in political-economic, national or international issues, are very ingenious in describing what happened, is happening or will happen. It also extends to various other local issues or passing around the world. There are also other non-political humor that ranges from reflective or just to get us a smile when we see them. Anyone with basic education and to stay informed of important news happening in our local and global world may understand and enjoy them. Farewell!. (CTsT)

 

‘I want my father, bring me my father’

A photo of a desperate young Palestinian boy, badly wounded and screaming for his father as he clutches at the shirt of a paramedic in a hospital, has captured the tragic and bloody tension of the Gazan conflict.

Shirtless and with cuts to his face, torso, arms and legs, the child clings to the hospital worker who is attempting to lay him flat on a girdle.

The Electronic Intifada, a pro-Palestinian publication, reports the photo, taken at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City last Thursday, was captioned with the boy’s desperate cry: ‘I want my father, bring me my father’, according to Fairfax.

The Palestinian paper claims the young boy was one of four siblings brought to the hospital wounded, two of them just three years old.

 

It comes as grinning Israeli tank commanders were pictured flashing the victory signs as they blast their way through Gaza in the bloodiest day of the offensive so far – as one resident of the troubled region said: ‘The gate of hell has opened.’

At least 65 people have been killed since this yesterday’s dawn strike on Gaza City’s Shijaiyah neighbourhood – including the son, daughter-in-law and two small grandchildren of a senior Hamas leader.

Hamas says it has captured an Israeli soldier – a scenario that has proven to be fraught with difficulties for the country in the past – but Israel’s U.N. Ambassador has denied the claims.

The neighbourhood has come under heavy tank fire as Israel widened its ground offensive against Hamas, causing hundreds of residents to flee.

The dead and wounded – including dozens of women and children – have reportedly been left in streets, with ambulances unable to approach.

Source: (July 21, 2014)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2699772/This-desperate-little-boy-face-tragedy-Palestinian-toddler-clutches-shirt-hospital-worker-screaming-I-want-father-bring-father.html?ito=social-facebook

 

Millions Lack Power in Philippines After Typhoon

Millions of people in the Philippine capital and its neighboring provinces remained without electricity late Thursday in the wake of Typhoon Rammasun, which has killed at least 40 people.

“We may have to check in a hotel tonight. My wife and son both have asthma, and it’s tough for them to sleep without air conditioning,” said Rey Infante, a currency dealer with a local bank who lives in the capital’s neighboring town of Taytay.

“We’ve been without power for two days now. Surely, our food will go stale,” he added.

Manila Electric Co. MER.PH -1.18% said Thursday that a third of its 5.3 million customers—equivalent to roughly 25 million people—had no power as of late Thursday but that almost all would get it by late Friday. The company distributes electricity to Manila and other provinces that together account for half of the country’s gross domestic product. (Watch Typhoon Rammasun’s movements and forecast.).

Rammasun was the strongest typhoon to hit the Philippines since Typhoon Haiyan last November, which killed more than 6,000 people.

Rammasun made landfall in Albay province Tuesday evening before crossing several provinces south of Manila on Wednesday and out to the South China Sea. More than half a million people fled to government shelters, though authorities said most had returned home by Thursday.

Energy Secretary Jericho Petilla said damaged transmission lines in the southern provinces in the Luzon island group, where Rammasun first made landfall, had isolated major power plants, starving the Luzon grid of 55% of its electricity-generation capacity.

“The distribution lines may be OK, but the supply may not come (until late Friday) because southern plants cannot bring power to Metro Manila,” Mr. Petilla told a news conference.

Rammasun, which in Thai means “thunder god,” barreled through metropolitan Manila, the southern provinces of Luzon island group and parts of central Philippines with howling winds that gusted up to 185 kilometers an hour, toppling electric poles, uprooting trees and destroying concrete walls.

The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said Thursday the death toll from Rammasun is at least 40, while the injured and missing number 17 and four, respectively.

In Albay and Quezon, two of the southern provinces hardest hit by the typhoon, government officials told The Wall Street Journal that nearly all their evacuation centers had emptied. Authorities have proceeded to the relief and rehabilitation phase.

“People were eager to leave the evacuation centers so they could start repairing their damaged homes,” said Matt Florido, an executive assistant to Quezon Gov. David Suarez.

Mr. Florido and other officials have been in Quezon’s capitol building since Tuesday, when Rammasun unleashed its full wrath.

“We were cringing in fear. We composed ourselves with the thought that there are people out there who need our help,” he said.

He said preliminary reports showed 19 people were killed in Quezon.

Cedric Daep, head of Albay’s public safety and emergency management office, said early estimates of damaged coconut, rice, corn and other agricultural crops totaled $36 million, and losses to households and infrastructure reached $69 million.

Mr. Daep said all the major roads in the province have been cleared of debris and fallen trees.

“But we still have no power,” he said.

Khristine Cabayanan, who works in a multinational pharmaceutical firm and lives in the town of Imus, said she and her family were awakened at dawn Wednesday by Rammasun’s strong winds.

“It felt like the roof of our house would be torn off. But I was more concerned with the rain,” said Ms. Cabayanan, who is pregnant with her third child. “I feared our house will be flooded again, just like last year (at the height of the Northwest monsoon). Thankfully, it didn’t.”

The Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration spotted another weather disturbance in the Pacific Ocean, west of the southern region of Mindanao. Weather experts said there is a high probability the disturbance will develop into a storm when it enters Philippine waters late Friday.

 

* Text by Cris Larano and Josephine Cuneta , wsj , July 17, 2014

 

Number of Families in Shelters Rises

For a few hours at the mall here this month, Nick Griffith, his wife, Lacey Lennon, and their two young children got to feel like a regular family again.

Never mind that they were just killing time away from the homeless shelter where they are staying, or that they had to take two city buses to get to the shopping center because they pawned one car earlier this year and had another repossessed, or that the debit card Ms. Lennon inserted into the A.T.M. was courtesy of the state’s welfare program.
They ate lunch at the food court, browsed for clothes and just strolled, blending in with everyone else out on a scorching hot summer day. “It’s exactly why we come here,” Ms. Lennon said. “It reminds us of our old life.”

For millions who have lost jobs or faced eviction in the economic downturn, homelessness is perhaps the darkest fear of all. In the end, though, for all the devastation wrought by the recession, a vast majority of people who have faced the possibility have somehow managed to avoid it.
Nevertheless, from 2007 through 2009, the number of families in homeless shelters — households with at least one adult and one minor child — leapt to 170,000 from 131,000, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
With long-term unemployment ballooning, those numbers could easily climb this year. Late in 2009, however, states began distributing $1.5 billion that has been made available over three years by the federal government as part of the stimulus package for the Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program, which provides financial assistance to keep people in their homes or get them back in one quickly if they lose them.

More than 550,000 people have received aid, including more than 1,800 in Rhode Island, with just over a quarter of the money for the program spent so far nationally, state and federal officials said.
Even so, it remains to be seen whether the program is keeping pace with the continuing economic hardship.
On Aug. 9, Mr. Griffith, 40, Ms. Lennon, 26, and their two children, Ava, 3, and Ethan, 16 months, staggered into Crossroads Rhode Island, a shelter that functions as a kind of processing and triage center for homeless families, after a three-day bus journey from Florida.
“It hit me when we got off the bus and walked up and saw the Crossroads building,” Ms. Lennon said. “We had all our stuff. We were tired. We’d already had enough, and it was just starting.”
The number of families who have sought help this year at Crossroads has already surpassed the total for all of 2009. Through July, 324 families had come needing shelter, compared with 278 all of last year.
National data on current shelter populations are not yet available, but checks with other major family shelters across the country found similar increases.
The Y.W.C.A. Family Center in Columbus, Ohio, one of the largest family shelters in the state, has seen an occupancy increase of more than 20 percent over the last three months compared with the same period last year. The UMOM New Day Center in Phoenix, the largest family shelter in Arizona, has had a more than 30 percent increase in families calling for shelter over the last few months.
Without national data, it is impossible to say for certain whether these are anomalies. Clearly, however, many families are still being sucked into the swirling financial drain that leads to homelessness.
The Griffith family moved from Rhode Island to Florida two years ago after Mr. Griffith, who was working as a waiter at an Applebee’s restaurant, asked to be transferred to one opening in Spring Hill, an hour north of Tampa, where he figured the cost of living would be lower.
He did well at first, earning as much as $25 an hour, including tips. He also got a job as a line cook at another restaurant, where he made $12 an hour.
The family eventually moved into a three-bedroom condominium and lived the typical suburban life, with a sport-utility vehicle and a minivan to cart around their growing family.
In January, however, the restaurant where Mr. Griffith was cooking closed. Then his hours began drying up at Applebee’s. The couple had savings, but squandered some of it figuring he would quickly find another job. When he did not, they were evicted from their condo.
They lived with Ms. Lennon’s mother at first in her one-bedroom house in Port Richey, Fla., but she made it clear after two months that the arrangement was no longer feasible. The family moved to an R.V. park, paying $186 a week plus utilities. By late July, however, they had mostly run out of options.
They called some 100 shelters in Florida and found that most were full; others would not allow them to stay together.
They considered returning to Rhode Island. An Applebee’s in Smithfield agreed to hire Mr. Griffith. They found Crossroads on the Internet and were assured of a spot. Using some emergency money they had left and $150 lent by relatives, they bought bus tickets to Providence.
Now, the family is crammed into a single room at Crossroads’ 15-room family shelter, which used to be a funeral home. All four sleep on a pair of single beds pushed together. There is a crib for Ethan, but with all the turmoil, he can now fall asleep only when next to his parents. A lone framed photograph of the couple, dressed up for a night out, sits atop a shelf.
The living conditions are only part of the adjustment; there is also the shelter’s long list of rules. No one can be in the living quarters from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The news is even off-limits as television programming in the common area. Residents were recently barred from congregating around the bench outside.
Infractions bring write-ups; three write-ups bring expulsion.
The changes have taken a toll on the family in small and large ways. Ethan has taken to screaming for no reason. Ava had been on the verge of being potty-trained, but is now back to diapers. Their nap schedules and diets are a mess. Their parents are squabbling more and have started smoking again.
Mr. Griffith found that he could work only limited hours at his new job because of the bus schedule. The family did qualify last week for transitional housing, but that usually takes a month to finalize. They are still pursuing rapid rehousing assistance.
Others at the shelter with no job prospects face a steeper climb meeting the requirements.
Every few days, new families arrive. A few hours after the Griffiths got back from the mall, a young woman pushing a stroller with a toddler rang the shelter doorbell, quietly weeping.

By MICHAEL LUO, (NYT),PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Set.2010