Thursday, August 31, 2017

For Today

A lot going on ...




American bombers fly over the Korean Peninsula in a show of force:

South Korean and Japanese jets joined exercises with two supersonic U.S. B-1B bombers above and near the Korean peninsula on Thursday, two days after North Korea sharply raised tension by firing a missile over Japan. 

The drills, involving four U.S. stealth F-35B jets as well as South Korean and Japanese fighter jets, came at the end of annual U.S.-South Korea military exercises focused mainly on computer simulations. 

”North Korea’s actions are a threat to our allies, partners and homeland, and their destabilizing actions will be met accordingly,” said General Terrence J. O’Shaughnessy, Pacific Air Forces Commander, who made an unscheduled visit to Japan. 

“This complex mission clearly demonstrates our solidarity with our allies and underscores the broadening cooperation to defend against this common regional threat.” 

North Korea has been working to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the United States and has recently threatened to land missiles near the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam. 

On Monday, North Korea, which sees the exercises as preparations for invasion, raised the stakes in its stand-off with the United States and its allies by firing an intermediate-range missile over Japan.


 
I don't even know why Wynne bothers to blame anyone. The unions will always vote her back in:

How much longer can Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne blame former Premier Mike Harris for everything? ...

Wynne was on Newstalk 1010 radio’s Moore In the Morning show Thursday.

Host John Moore said to her, “Whenever you announce a program I might think that it looks great, but how do we afford it?”

Wynne said, “I would argue to you that the deficit that was in place when we came in to office under the previous premier in 2003, we were dealing with billions and billions of dollars of deficit and that was slowing us down in terms of our economic growth. That was not allowing us to make the best of our municipalities, our communities.”

So how bad was it when both Mike Harris and his brief replacement Ernie Eves left office?

In October, 2003 the CBC reported that Ontario’s former Conservative government left the province with a $5.6-billion deficit, according to a retired provincial auditor, Erik Peters.

The Liberals claim today they will soon balance the budget but PC Leader Patrick Brown says the Liberals are hiding their deficit.

As the Sun's Lorrie Goldstein reported earlier this year, “Brown said despite Wynne’s claim of a balanced budget – the first since 2008 – the Liberals are actually hiding a $5-billion operating deficit. 

He said they’re covering it up with one-time sales of government assets valued at $1 billion, $2 billion from cap-and-trade, $1.5 billion in federal “Trudeau trust fund” cash and by counting $500 million in pension assets as revenue, an accounting trick rejected by Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk.”

So how is it that a $5-billion deficit Wynne says they were saddled with 14 years ago has not improved under the Liberal’s wise leadership, while debt has increased from about $133 billion in 2003 to over $300 billion today?

Is there anyone holding the Liberals to account?

No.

Small businesses can complain about the Liberals' obvious hatred of their existence, so much so that backbenchers need to discuss strategies for ignoring their constituents when they ask about taxes, but until they take to the streets and, even more importantly, reduce the Liberal vote substantially, their noise means nothing.




Political correctness is the reason why we can't have nice things:

A judge has called for "culturally matched" foster placements for children after a five-year-old Christian girl was sent to live with a Muslim family. Judge Khatun Sapnara has also ordered the council to look into the circumstances of the case.

The Times reported how the child was taken into care in March, spending four months in a foster home where the family had encouraged her to speak Arabic.

After that, she was looked after by a second Muslim couple, with the paper reporting that the carers veiled their face in public.

There were also claims that a cross the girl had been wearing had been taken off her and that she was not allowed to eat pork.

Judge Sapnara told lawyers for Tower Hamlets council that her overriding concern was the welfare of the little girl.

"You would presumably accept that the priority should be an appropriate, culturally matched placement that meets the needs of the child in terms of ethnicity, culture and religion?" she asked lawyers for Tower Hamlets at a family court in east London.

Kevin Gordon, counsel for the local authority, said no white British foster carers were available at the time the girl had to be placed.

Judge Sapnara said her decision to order the child's removal from foster care was taken "because of the evidence available to the court today, that the grandmother is an appropriate carer for the child," she said in a move which was supported by the council. The child is now being looked after at her grandmother's home.



South Korean schools see a 2.5 percent drop in students:

South Korea saw a 2.5 percent on-year drop in the number of students enrolled in kindergarten, elementary, middle and high schools last year, government data showed Thursday. 

As of April, 6.46 million children are attending school, according to data compiled by the Ministry of Education.

Middle school students reported the steepest decline of 5.2 percent, or 76,156 fewer students, compared to the previous year’s survey. There were 4.7 percent, or 82,758, fewer high school students. The number of students attending kindergartens declined 1.4 percent.

However, the number of elementary school students rose 0.1 percent, growing by 1,384 students. The ministry attributed an increase in this year’s first graders to a higher birthrate in 2010.

By region, Sejong was the only city in South Korea that saw an increase in all four categories. The number of high school students in Sejong grew a whopping 18.2 percent this year. All other cities and provinces surveyed suffered a decline in the numbers of kindergarten, middle and high school students.

The number of students from multicultural families increased by 10.3 percent to 109,837, surpassing the 100,000 mark for the first time since the government began tracking the number in 2012. That accounted for 1.9 percent of all students here.

In elementary school alone, the number of multicultural students went up by 11.8 percent to hit 82,733, which the ministry attributed to an increased number of international marriages.
 



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