Real Hero! Teachers Feed Kids Out of Their Own Pockets

Hero Teachers Feed Kids Out of Their Own Pockets

BY MARY MURRAY 

The day's lesson isn't the first thing on Marvin Callahan's mind after the first school bell rings. Instead, the Albuquerque, New Mexico, teacher wonders whether his students have eaten.

His routine begins by asking each one of his first-grade pupils what her or she ate for breakfast that morning.

"I have kids that come to school every day, and they're hungry. They come to school, and they're just unsure," said the Comanche Elementary School teacher. "I have seen it with my own eyes,"

Every day, the 20-year veteran teacher spends a chunk of his own salary to feed hungry kids in his classroom. For the kid who came to school on an empty stomach, Callahan either sends the child to the cafeteria or simply walks over to the supply closet behind his desk for some food. Many teachers use $40 a month of their own cash to buy supplemental food for these hungry children.
http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/making-a-difference/hero-teachers-feed-kids-out-their-own-pockets-n192861

Syrian Refugee Total Passes 3 Million in 'Biggest Humanitarian Emergency of Our Era' 

 

By Liz Fields

August 30, 2014 | 10:45 am The Syrian civil war has caused the displacement of at least a million people in the last year, adding to a total of more than 3 million that have fled the country since the conflict began, according to new figures released by the United Nations agency for refugees (UNHCR).
The figures indicate the mass exodus of one in every eight Syrians, vying to escape the worsening conflict in their home country where reports of atrocities committed by Islamic State extremists — including public executions, staged crucifixions and beheadings — are emerging almost daily.
"The Syria crisis has become the biggest humanitarian emergency of our era, yet the world is failing to meet the needs of refugees and the countries hosting them," the UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said from the agency's headquarters in Geneva.
"A further 6.5 million are displaced within Syria. Over half of those uprooted are children," a UNHCR statement added.
Islamic State militants are waging a deadly jihadist war in the region, which took a sharp turn in June when the group declared an Islamic caliphate over the areas of land it occupies in both Syria and Iraq. Syrian civilians are shouldering the full impact of the brutal civil conflict that began in March 2011 and has left more than 190,000 dead so far.
https://news.vice.com/article/syrian-refugee-total-passes-3-million-in-biggest-humanitarian-emergency-of-our-era

WWW: Wide World Wars

Iraq

US conducts new airstrikes as ISIS kills dozens of Yazidis in Iraq town, officials say

The U.S. military conducted new airstrikes against Islamic militants Friday as sources tell Fox News members of the group killed at least 90 male members of Iraq's Yazidi minority in a northern village and kidnapped "dozens" of women and children.
A senior U.S. defense official told Fox News that U.S. surveillance drones saw evidence of the massacre of dozens of Yazidi men. The U.S. military later struck two militant targets, killing some of those involved in the killings, the source said.

The U.S. military said in a statement Friday that the U.S. forces conducted the airstrikes on Islamic State vehicles in the village of Kawju. The village is located south of the village of Sinjar.
The Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking ethnic and religious group which numbers in the hundreds of thousands in Iraq, has been persecuted in the north by Islamic State militants, with at least 500 killed prior to Friday's news, according to Iraq's human rights minister.
Sources told Fox News it appears residents in the village did not comply with the militants' demands to convert to Islam.
"[Militants] arrived in vehicles and they started their killing this afternoon,'' senior Kurdish official Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters. "We believe it's because of their creed: convert or be killed."
A Yazidi lawmaker and another senior Kurdish official also said the killings had taken place and that the women of the village were kidnapped.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/08/16/isis-massacres-dozens-yazidi-in-northern-iraq-town-say-iraqi-officials/?cmpid=edpick&google_editors_picks=true