Four major US cities are seeing a surge in homicides — but not for the reasons you might think

Four major US cities are experiencing a surge in homicide rates and have neared or exceeded the numbers from the 1990s, according to a study from The Wall Street Journal.

The publication looked at homicide data stretching back to 1985 and found that murder rates in Chicago, Baltimore, Milwaukee, and Memphis now look like numbers from the 1990s: an era wrought with gang violence and drug-trafficking.

The current spikes, however, were attributed in part to other factors — like poverty and unemployment, and diminishing police-community relations.

Here are a few facts from The Journal's analysis (emphasis ours):

The Era of Digital Anxiety ( smart phone addiction)

When David Erickson leaves his home in Long Beach, California to spend several days on Panama’s southern coast, he also reluctantly gives up his smartphone.

There’s no wireless internet where he’s going, and the phone’s data capabilities don’t work there, so there’ll be no checking social media or emails. He even has to walk to a certain spot on the property to make or receive calls. “My phone just becomes a clock,” says Erickson, the founder of a digital conference calling company.

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Russian Instagram queen who risked her life dangling from 1,000ft-high Dubai skyscraper for the perfect shot is dragged before police to vow never to do it again

A Russian Instagram model, who risked her life dangling from a 1,000ft-high Dubair skyscraper for a photoshoot, has been forced to sign a statement vowing to never do it again.
Viki Odintcova, 23, was held up only by the hand of a male assistant as she leaned out into thin air from the 1,004-foot tall Cayan Tower in Dubai in a bid to get the perfect Instagram shot.
The Russian model first tilted backwards over the huge drop, before dangling high above the ground from the arm of her bearded helper.


Her video and photos went viral and was brought to the attention of the local police, who dragged her into custody.
Shocking moment a model poses on the ledge of very tall skyscraper Major General Halil Ibragim Al-Mansuri, of the Dubai Police, told The Sun: 'The actions of the Russian woman put her life at risk.'
Despite the telling off, Ms Odintcova said the police should have thanked her for highlighting safety issues at the Cayan Tower.
The Instagram queen, who has more than three million followers on social media, admitted that she was a bit nervous before the stunt.

Agony of an Oxford Prof in Lagos

ALL the way from Oxford University where he is a Professor of Economics, Paul Collier, bearded like one of my favourite English writers D.H. Lawrence, had flown down to Lagos to give a lecture on how to develop Lagos into a modern city, as part of the annual birthday lecture series of Prof Pat Utomi’s Centre for Values in Leadership held on February 6, 2017. It was a lecture greeted with a standing ovation at the Muson Centre, Lagos. Governor Ambode of Lagos State was there, furiously taking down notes totaling four pages. Among the guests was the Ooni of Ife who came with his sizeable entourage, dressed in white.

At the end of the lecture, the exhausted Prof Collier carrying a heavy bag was mobbed by autograph-seeking youths who had some questions for him. As the English professor was leaving the hall, a rogue whom he mistook for one of the Ooni’s people asked to assist him with carrying the bag. He handed it to him trustingly and like magic, the thief vanished into the thin air in a twinkle of an eye, with everything gone—money, passport, air ticket and most painful of all, a laptop filled with the professor’s writings. “My soul is missing,” a distraught Prof. Collier told me, a day after. I had gone to interview Prof Utomi for a book I am writing on one of the icons of African business when I stumbled on this piece of shaming story about Nigeria. It is really, really shameful and embarrassing to think of how Nigerians have totally lost their sense of dignity. As he sat there moping and waiting for a miracle to happen, Collier initially didn’t want to talk.

60,000-year-old microbes found in Mexican mine: NASA scientist

NASA scientists have discovered living microorganisms trapped inside crystals for as long as 60,000 years in a mine in Mexico.

These strange ancient microbes have apparently evolved so they can survive on a diet of sulfite, manganese and copper oxide, said Penelope Boston of NASA’s Astrobiology Institute in a presentation over the weekend at a conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

“This has profound effects on how we try to understand the evolutionary history of microbial life on this planet,” she said.

They were discovered in the Naica mine, a working lead, zinc and silver mine in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua.

The mine is famous for its huge crystals, some as long as 50 feet (15 meters).

ex-England footballer Phil Neville's daughter was born severely disabled, doctors wrote her off. Now she's a model - thanks to her iron will

Watching helplessly as her newborn daughter gasped for breath in the hospital incubator, her tiny chest rising and falling in frantic bursts, Julie Neville raised her eyes to the ceiling and prayed.

Little Isabella had been born ten weeks prematurely after suffering a stroke in the womb and was on 95 per cent life support to help her breathe and pump blood to her fragile heart and lungs. Five per cent more and she would have been legally pronounced dead.

Tubes criss-crossed her stomach, carrying life-saving medicine to her organs and limbs. Her tiny eyes were squeezed shut, her fists — no bigger than a fingernail — clenched in pain.

As a neonatal nurse searched for a patch of skin to put yet another line into her daughter’s frail body, Julie turned to her and asked: ‘How on earth do you do this job?’

‘Her reply has stuck with me ever since,’ says Julie. ‘She told me: “I used to work in an adult intensive care ward before I came here. If these babies were adults, they would have given up by now. But babies keep fighting. They never give up.” ’

Thirteen years later, Julie’s baby has proved that nurse right — time and time again.

From those dark early days when they feared the worst and a diagnosis of cerebral palsy when Isabella was 18 months old, she has grown into a happy, confident teenager — an inspiring feat, especially as Julie and her husband Phil, the former Manchester United and England footballer, were told their daughter would never walk, talk or lead a normal life.

Not only can Isabella walk, run, dance and play sports, she has just achieved another dream: to be signed by a top modelling agency.