Bonjour Planet Earth

Saturday, April 15, 2017

Credit Suisse execs take 40 percent bonus cuts after outcry

Credit Suisse's chief and other top executives offered on Friday to have their bonuses slashed by 40 percent, following investor concern over the size of their proposed compensation packages.

Credit Suisse chief Tidjane Thiam and the bank's executive board proposed that the "long-term incentive awards for 2017 and short-term incentive awards for 2016 ... be reduced by 40 percent each," according to a statement.

The board of directors would also leave its compensation unchanged at the same level as 2015 and 2016, and would not accept a proposed incremental increase, it added.

"My highest priority is to see through the turnaround of Credit Suisse which is under way," Thiam said in a letter to shareholders published on Friday. Full story...

Related posts:

Walk like a camel...

Related posts:

Chewing gum makers 'should help clean up'

Chewing gum makers should help pay for the growing cost of removing their product from the country's streets, councils have said.

Almost all main shopping streets and 64% of all roads and pavements are stained by chewing gum, according to Keep Britain Tidy.

And, while the average piece of gum costs just 3p, it costs councils up to 50 times that to clean up every square metre of pavement.

The Local Government Association has said it is time the chewing gum industry paid its share of the £60m-a-year cost of cleaning up the streets of England and Wales.

They also encouraged gum manufacturers to switch to biodegradable forms of gum which do not require specialist equipment to remove from pavements. Full story...

Related posts:

Clean, green Singapore sticks to chewing gum ban...

Singapore smoker fined $15,000 for throwing cigarette ends out of...

Sweden’s recycling is so revolutionary, the country has run out of

When the State starts to snoop into your rubbish...

Pharmaceutical giant 'plotted to destroy cancer drugs to drive prices up 4000%'

Leaked internal emails appear to show employees at one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies calling for “celebration” over price hikes of cancer drugs, an investigation has revealed.

Staff at Aspen Pharmacare reportedly plotted to destroy stocks of life-saving medicines during a price dispute with the Spanish health service in 2014.

After purchasing five different cancer drugs from British firm GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the company tried to sell the medicines in Europe for up to 40 times their previous price, reported The Times.

In 2013, the price of one pack of a chemotherapy drug called busulfan, used to treat leukaemia, rose from £5.20 to £65.22 in England and Wales, according to the newspaper.

The other four drugs, including leukeran, also used by leukaemia patients, and melphalan, for skin and ovarian cancers, also became up to four times more expensive. Full story...

Related posts:

Friday, April 14, 2017

Flying the bloody skies...

While the videos of security cops dragging a bloodied physician down the aisle of a United Airlines plane clearly shocked the millions of people who viewed them, my guess is that, at some level, it didn’t surprise them. Indeed, the reason the videos were so damaging to United—and at some level, to the entire airline industry—is that everyone who’s flown in coach during the past several decades knows that the welfare of airline passengers, save for those who fly first- or business-class, is the least of the airlines’ concerns.

The systemic abuse of those who fly coach has become the sine qua non of the airlines’ business model, as the incessant shrinkage of the seats and legroom afforded passengers clearly attests. “The roomiest economy seats you can book on the nation’s four largest airlines,” according to Consumer Reports’ Bill McGee, “are narrower than the tightest economy seats offered in the 1990s.” Maverick airlines that try to market themselves as more customer-friendly have been compelled to revert to the industry’s dismal norm.

JetBlue did indeed offer coach passengers more space, partly because many of its planes didn’t devote space to a first-class cabin. When Wall Street analysts condemned company management for being “overly brand-conscious and customer-focused,” however, the airline deposed those executives and in came a new team, eager to install first-class accommodations up front even if it meant squeezing the saps in coach. Full story...

Related posts:

Pilots ‘worked to death’

A Pakistan Airlines delay leads to a near mutiny...

Israeli airline faces calls to stop 'bullying' of female...

Passengers, crew on Australian aircraft exposed to toxic fumes...

Air passenger marched off flight by police because there were not

Rhode Island student kicked out of school for refusing the HPV vaccine...

Schools in Rhode Island’s Coventry District are taking the vaccine mandates to new heights. Recently, three middle school students were quarantined at school until a parent or guardian came to take them home. Why? Because the adolescents had not received the HPV vaccine — a questionable-at-best injection that has proven itself to be capable of grievous harm.

Earlier this year, it was revealed that over 100 women and girls in Japan had launched lawsuits against their government and two HPV vaccine manufacturers — GlaxoSmithKline and Merck — due to the harmful effects the immunizations had on their health. Some of the major health conditions the women developed include chronic pain, impaired mobility and severe menstrual pain. One young woman, Erina Sonoda, reports that while she was perfectly healthy prior to receiving the Cervarix vaccine, by the end of the three rounds of injections, she needed a cane to walk. The 20-year-old says that after the second injection, she developed horrible menstrual pain — and by the third, the pain had spread to her entire body. When Sonoda is not able to walk with a cane, she uses a wheelchair.

Clearly, the Rhode Island girls have good reasons to abstain from the HPV vaccine, even if their school system disagrees with them. Gardasil, the other HPV vaccine, has been attributed to a number of ill effects, including paralysis and brain damage. Full story...

Related posts:

Simon's cat: Easter Eggstravaganza...

Related posts:

10 ways to lower your risk of heart disease...

Our planet is becoming increasingly urbanized and industrialized, to the extent that it’s hard to imagine that there are still places in the world where people lead a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. But those people do exist.

Have you ever heard about the Tsimane tribe? An ancient Amazonian people residing in lowland Bolivia, the Tsimanes live a simple lifestyle, surviving on subsistence agriculture along with some hunting and fishing. Over the last 15 years, the tribe has drawn the attention of scientists and longevity experts all over the world, and for a good reason: they have the healthiest arteries of any population studied.

You read that right. Nine out of ten Tsimane people have clear arteries, and their risk of heart disease is practically non-existent. They maintain incredibly good health well into their old age, with two-thirds of their senior population over 75 being completely free of any heart risk. One 80-year-old Tsimane had arteries similar to the arteries of a 50-year-old American. (You can easily reduce the risk of heart disease.)

What’s their secret? While the contemporary western lifestyle promotes heart disease and atherosclerosis, the hunter-gatherer way of living seems to be the ultimate recipe for cardiovascular health. The Tsimane South Americans spend most of their day farming, fishing, hunting, and gathering fruits and nuts. Full story...

Related posts:

Pakistani student accused of blasphemy beaten to death on campus...

A mob beat a Pakistani student to death at his university campus on Thursday after he was accused of sharing blasphemous content on social media, university and police officials said.

A group of about 10 students shouted "Allahu Akbar" during the attack on fellow student Mashal Khan, who was stripped naked and beaten with planks until his skull caved in as other students looked on, video obtained by Reuters showed.

Blasphemy is a highly sensitive topic in Muslim-majority Pakistan, where insulting the Prophet Mohammed is a capital crime that has dozens languishing on death row and where even an accusation can lead to violence.

In recent months, Pakistan's government has been vocal about the issue, with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif issuing an order last month for removal of blasphemous content online and saying anyone who posted such content should face "strict punishment under the law". Full story...

Related posts:

She gets lectured for not believing in God...

Russian faces up to year in prison for denying existence of God. WTF!

Saudi man gets 10 years, 2,000 lashes over atheist tweets...

Veena Malik and the modern witch-hunt of Pakistani blasphemy laws...

Pakistani mob kills two children including a baby and their grandmother...

Bashar al Assad: Syria chemical attack is '100 per cent fabrication'

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has reiterated that his government had nothing to do with the chemical gas incident in a rebel-held village last week that killed more than 80 people.

Allegations that his forces had deliberately poisoned civilians were ''100 per cent fabrication'', the president said on Thursday, adding that the Syrian government gave up its chemical weapons stocks as part of a 2013 agreement.

“Our impression is that the West, mainly the United States, is hand-in-glove with the terrorists. They fabricated the whole story in order to have a pretext for the attack,” he said.

Mr Assad made the comments in an interview broadcast by AFP, his first since the US struck a Syrian airbase with missiles in retaliation for the events in Idlib province.

The international community has condemned the deaths in the village of Khan Sheikhoun, which most Western intelligence services believe occurred thanks to a deliberate attack carried out by the Syrian government. Full story...

Related posts:

‘Look at Syria & Yemen. Who’s next?’

Bomb the usual Arabs...

Syria's war: Who is fighting and why...

US says countries must punish UN troops for sexual abuse...

U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley on Thursday urged all countries that provide troops for U.N. peacekeeping missions to hold soldiers accountable for sexual abuse and exploitation, an appeal that came after she cited an Associated Press investigation into a child sex ring in Haiti involving Sri Lankan peacekeepers.

She also warned that "countries that refuse to hold their soldiers accountable must recognize that this either stops or their troops will go home and their financial compensation will end."

Haley was speaking after the Security Council voted unanimously to end the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti in mid-October, sending a strong signal that the international community believes the impoverished Caribbean nation is stabilizing after successful elections.

But the peacekeepers will leave with a tarnished legacy. U.N. troops from Nepal are widely blamed for introducing cholera that has killed at least 9,500 people in Haiti since 2010 and some troops have been implicated in sexual abuse.

"What do we say to these kids? Did these peacekeepers keep them safe?" Haley asked, citing the AP's investigation detailing how at least 134 Sri Lankan peacekeepers sexually abused and exploited nine Haitian children between 2004 and 2007. Full story...

Related posts:

UN peacekeepers caught running massive child sex ring — not one...

Thursday, April 13, 2017

Jimmy Kimmel on passenger dragged off United flight...

Related posts:

UN peacekeepers caught running massive child sex ring — not one person jailed...

In the ruins of a tropical hideaway where jetsetters once sipped rum under the Caribbean sun, the abandoned children tried to make a life for themselves. They begged and scavenged for food, but they never could scrape together enough to beat back the hunger, until the U.N. peacekeepers moved in a few blocks away.

The men who came from a far-away place and spoke a strange language offered the Haitian children cookies and other snacks. Sometimes they gave them a few dollars. But the price was high: The Sri Lankan peacekeepers wanted sex from girls and boys as young as 12.

"I did not even have breasts," said a girl, known as V01 — Victim No. 1. She told U.N. investigators that over the next three years, from ages 12 to 15, she had sex with nearly 50 peacekeepers, including a "Commandant" who gave her 75 cents. Sometimes she slept in U.N. trucks on the base next to the decaying resort, whose once-glamorous buildings were being overtaken by jungle.

Justice for victims like V01 is rare. An Associated Press investigation of U.N. missions during the past 12 years found nearly 2,000 allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers and other personnel around the world — signaling the crisis is much larger than previously known. More than 300 of the allegations involved children, the AP found, but only a fraction of the alleged perpetrators served jail time.

Legally, the U.N. is in a bind. It has no jurisdiction over peacekeepers, leaving punishment to the countries that contribute the troops. Full story...

Related posts:

Intelligence and Military Sources Who Warned About Weapons Lies Before Iraq War Now Say that Assad Did Not Launch Chemical Weapon Attack...

(...)

No one disputes the fact that a Syrian air force SU-22 fighter-bomber conducted a bombing mission against a target in Khan Sheikhoun on the morning of April 4, 2017. The anti-regime activists in Khan Sheikhoun, however, have painted a narrative that has the Syrian air force dropping chemical bombs on a sleeping civilian population.

A critical piece of information that has largely escaped the reporting in the mainstream media is that Khan Sheikhoun is ground zero for the Islamic jihadists who have been at the center of the anti-Assad movement in Syria since 2011. Up until February 2017, Khan Sheikhoun was occupied by a pro-ISIS group known as Liwa al-Aqsa that was engaged in an oftentimes-violent struggle with its competitor organization, Al Nusra Front (which later morphed into Tahrir al-Sham, but under any name functioning as Al Qaeda’s arm in Syria) for resources and political influence among the local population.

Al Nusra has a long history of manufacturing and employing crude chemical weapons; the 2013 chemical attack on Ghouta made use of low-grade Sarin nerve agent locally synthesized, while attacks in and around Aleppo in 2016 made use of a chlorine/white phosphorous blend. Full story...

Related posts:

‘Look at Syria & Yemen. Who’s next?’

Bomb the usual Arabs...

Syria's war: Who is fighting and why...

United Airlines just tried to forcibly remove another Passenger from its plane...

If the latest public relations snafu wasn’t enough, United Airlines is already back at it again. This time threatening another passenger with forcible removal from its plane, and he was actually a first class passenger.

The company is in hot water after a video of police and airline staff physically dragging a doctor off an overbooked flight a few days ago went insanely viral, and the company has lost over $1 billion in stock value so far.

In this new incident, a first class passenger named Geoff Fearns paid over $1000 for his ticket from Hawaii to California and was seated and awaiting the long journey.

That’s when he received the shock of a lifetime when United Airlines personnel informed him that he needs to get off the plane for a higher status member. According to LA Times: More + photos...

Related posts:

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Zimbabwe Central Bank to accept goats, cows, TVs, fridges as collateral...

Commercial banks in Zimbabwe will soon be compelled to accept livestock such as cattle, goats and sheep as collateral for cash loans to informal businesses under a new law presented to Parliament Tuesday, reports Bloomberg.

Under the Movable Property Security Interests Bill tabled for debate by Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa in the House of Assembly, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe will compile and administer a collateral-security register in which small-business operators and individuals can register their movable assets as security for credit.

Vehicles, television sets, refrigerators, computers and other household appliances will also become acceptable as collateral once they are evaluated and registered in the central bank’s register, according to Chinamasa.

“As minister in charge of financial institutions, I feel there is need for a change of attitude by our banks to reflect of our economic realities,” he said. Banks are “stuck in the old ways of doing things and failing to respond to the needs of our highly informalized economy,” he said. Full story...

Related posts:

How to make a living in cash-poor Zimbabwe...

Zimbabwe pupils locked in cage over unpaid fees...

To understand your future, study Zimbabwe...

Kenyan offers 40 goats and 20 cows for Chelsea Clinton...

In a land without clean water, corruption is bleeding Zimbabwe dry...

Italian man granted divorce after claiming wife 'possessed by devil'

An Italian man has been granted a divorce after claiming that his wife was "possessed by the devil".

The woman had exhibited "inexplicable behaviour" since 2007, including fits, stiffening, and other "unusual phenomena", a Milan court heard. Her husband attributed the episodes to "demonic possession".

Her sister, as well as a priest and a Capuchin monk confirmed the strange behaviour, testifying that the woman - a devout Catholic - had at one point knocked over a church pew, hurling it towards the altar using just one hand.

Witnesses even claimed to have seen her levitate, before falling to the ground. Full story...

Related posts:

What the Hell? Satan worship on rise in America...

Satanic pedophilia network exposed in Australia ...

Satanists rule the world, not politicians, bankers or military heads...

Rise of the exorcists in Catholic Church...

United Airlines is a disaster...

Related posts:

Idlib ‘chemical attack’ was false flag to set Assad up, more may come – Putin...

Russia has information of a potential incident similar to the alleged chemical attack in Idlib province, possibly targeting a Damascus suburb, President Vladimir Putin said. The goal is to discredit the government of Syrian President Assad, he added.

“We have reports from multiple sources that false flags like this one – and I cannot call it otherwise – are being prepared in other parts of Syria, including the southern suburbs of Damascus. They plan to plant some chemical there and accuse the Syrian government of an attack,” he said at a joint press conference with Italian President Sergio Mattarella in Moscow.

Damascus denied the allegations, noting that the targeted area may have been hosting chemical weapons stockpiles belonging to Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) or Al-Nusra Front jihadists.

The incident has not been properly investigated as yet, but the US fired dozens of cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase in a demonstration of force over what it labeled a chemical attack by Damascus. Full story...

Related posts:

Trump owns shares in company firing missiles into Syria...

‘Look at Syria & Yemen. Who’s next?’

Bomb the usual Arabs...

Syria's war: Who is fighting and why...

A missing pastor and the disappearances chilling Malaysia...

It all began with the case of the missing pastor.

On the morning of 13 February, Raymond Koh was exiting a highway in the leafy suburb of Kelana Jaya just outside of the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.

A widely circulated CCTV clip appears to show what happened next. A convoy of black SUVs and motorcycles is seen swooping down on his car and boxing it in by the side of the road.

Then, several men jump out and run to Mr Koh. There is a flurry of activity, and the convoy moves off - along with his car. It is allegedly the last time anyone sees him.

At first, it appeared to be an isolated case of a possible kidnapping.

But as the weeks wore on, more reports of missing Malaysians began to surface. Full story...

Related posts:

Mongolian Beauty’s Murder Remains Unexplained in Malaysia...

Malaysia: Crackdown on free speech intensifies...

Malaysian rapper Namewee held for 'insulting Islam'

Najib’s spectacular carnival of thievery...

Panama Papers investigation wins Pulitzer prize...

The Panama Papers investigation into the offshore secrets of the rich and famous has been awarded a prestigious Pulitzer prize.

The prize was given to the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), together with two US titles, McClatchy and the Miami Herald.

The judges cited a series of stories from the Panama Papers and the “collaboration of more than 300 reporters on six continents to expose the hidden infrastructure and global scale of offshore tax havens”.

The consortium included Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung – which received 11.5m documents from a whistleblower – the Guardian, the BBC and about 100 other international media organisations. The project is believed to have been the largest journalistic cooperation ever.

The investigation was originally entered into the international reporting category where it was a shortlisted finalist. It was moved to the 2016 explanatory reporting category, which it won. Full story...

Related posts:

Man filmed being dragged off United flight causes outrage in China...

A public relations disaster for United Airlines is transforming into an international incident in one of its most important markets.

Video of a passenger being dragged off a Chicago-Louisville flight, bloodying his nose and leaving him dazed in the process, has gone viral online in China, attracting tens of thousands of outraged posts.

The man, who has not yet been identified, was overheard saying he was being profiled for being Chinese, a passenger told CNN, before police officers forcibly removed him from his seat on the overbooked flight.

The incident, which unfolded on Sunday, was the number one trending topic Tuesday on Weibo, China's answer to Twitter, attracting more than 100 million views.
Many commenters called for a boycott of United, accusing the airline of discriminating against the passenger because he is Chinese.

"It's straight up discrimination," one widely shared post said, while another commenter said they would never "fly with United again in my lifetime." Full story...

Read also: United Airlines CEO sorry for 'horrific' passenger removal

Related posts:

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

'My Airbnb flat was turned into a pop-up brothel'

I feel like I've been conned. I feel like I've been deceived and forced into doing something that I wouldn't ordinarily have done.

I lived here for six years, then I moved away, so I'm letting it out.

You could get four people in here, so [£85 per night] is pretty good compared to a hotel rate.

They made a booking through the Airbnb website. They messaged and said that they wanted to pay cash, which I was a little bit suspicious of, and I refused that.

It's not only against the rules, but also if anything goes wrong then it's a booking that's outside of the website and not covered by any of the guarantees. You might as well just get someone in off the street.

So when they checked in I was a little bit suspicious, but I thought little else of it. Full story...

Related posts:

United Airlines Forcibly Drags Doctor Off Plane After Overbooking

Related posts:

Canadian singer's revenge on guitar-breaking airline...

Blind passengers sue United Airlines for inaccessible information...

Teen sues United Airlines over masturbating passenger...

Migrants from west Africa being ‘sold in Libyan slave markets’

West African migrants are being bought and sold openly in modern-day slave markets in Libya, survivors have told a UN agency helping them return home.

Trafficked people passing through Libya have previously reported violence, extortion and slave labour. But the new testimony from the International Organization for Migration suggests that the trade in human beings has become so normalised that people are being traded in public.

“The latest reports of ‘slave markets’ for migrants can be added to a long list of outrages [in Libya],” said Mohammed Abdiker, IOM’s head of operation and emergencies. “The situation is dire. The more IOM engages inside Libya, the more we learn that it is a vale of tears for all too many migrants.”

The north African nation is a major exit point for refugees from Africa trying to take boats to Europe. But since the overthrow of autocratic leader Muammar Gaddafi, the vast, sparsely populated country has slid into violent chaos and migrants with little cash and usually no papers are particularly vulnerable.

One 34-year-old survivor from Senegal said he was taken to a dusty lot in the south Libyan city of Sabha after crossing the desert from Niger in a bus organised by people smugglers. The group had paid to be taken to the coast, where they planned to risk a boat trip to Europe, but their driver suddenly said middlemen had not passed on his fees and put his passengers up for sale. Full story...

Related posts:

Libya in utter chaos...

Nestlé admits slave labour risk on Brazil coffee plantations...

South Asia's 'disposable women'

Hopeless Afghan struggle to save boy sex slaves...

Sold for ransom: On the trail of Thailand's human traffickers...

Asian women are being trafficked into Syria as servants and slaves...

Chechnya opens world's first concentration camp for gays since Hitler...

Chechyna has opened the first concentration camp for homosexuals since Hitler, where campaigners say gay men are being tortured with electric shocks and beaten to death.

It comes after it was claimed 100 gay men had been detained and three killed in Chechnya last week, the Daily Mail reported.

A report by Novoya Gazeta said authorities had set up several camps where homosexuals are killed or forced to promise to leave the republic.

One of the camps is reportedly at the former military headquarters in the town of Argun.

Svetlana Zakharova, from the Russian LGBT Network, told MailOnline: 'Gay people have been detained and rounded up and we are working to evacuate people from the camps and some have now left the region. Full story...

Related posts:

Ugandan police arrest 8-year-old girl for “lesbianism”

Bangladesh LGBT editor hacked to death...

Irish voters back gay marriage in 'social revolution'

India: Parents use 'corrective rape' to cure their gay children...

Monday, April 10, 2017

Greece investigates Swiss pharma Novartis for bribery...

Greece's justice minister on Friday said Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis had likely bribed "thousands" of doctors and civil servants to promote its products, amid an ongoing probe.
"A great number of state officials are implicated... from what I'm beginning to realise from reports, it must be thousands who were directly bribed from Switzerland," Stavros Kontonis told state agency ANA radio.

"National health service doctors and state officials were bribed to promote drugs in an illegal and anti-scientific manner," Kontonis said.

Scores of people have been questioned in a probe ongoing since last year, with anti-corruption prosecutors also visiting Novartis's premises near Athens earlier this year to gather evidence.

The case gained attention following a suicide attempt in Athens on New Year's Day, by a Novartis manager. Full story...

Related posts:

Drugs giant GlaxoSmithKline bribed doctors to boost sales...

Top Novartis senior managers quit in Japan fraud scandal...

Japan to file criminal action against Novartis...

Novartis eye care unit hit by China bribery claims...

Trump owns shares in company firing missiles into Syria, making $1.5b in one day for Raytheon...

(...)

However, some may not be familiar with the fact that according to the President’s most recent FEC disclosure, the Trumps actual own or have owned stock in Raytheon. That’s right, the 59 missiles, that Trump hurled at Syria — which cost taxpayers somewhere between $47 million and $82 million — could’ve actually turned a profit for the president.

The report showed that Trump also owns or has owned stock in many well-known companies including Apple, Nike, Whole Foods, Google, Philip Morris, McDonald’s, Facebook, and Morgan Stanley, among many others — including many other defense contractors who stand to make billions off Trump’s aggression.

It is important to note that in December of 2016, Trump spokesman, Jason Miller told The Post that Trump liquidated all of his assets. However, we’ve yet to see any proof of this and will not see any proof until at least 2018.

“We need to know, has he put them in conflict free assets … or has he bought other stocks or assets that would create new conflicts?” Norm Eisen, who served as ethics counselor to President Obama asked. “It’s all the more reason that we need a prompt and full financial disclosure. If he did liquidate all his stocks, what did he do with the money? What bank is the money in? What did he buy? It’s a lot of money.” Full story...

Related posts:

229 House Republicans just voted to keep Trump’s tax returns secret...

War takes money from the American people and gives it to the...

The video the US military does not want you to see...

Iraq veteran makes powerful speech against war...

Military - industrial journalism...

How the American taxpayer is filling the pockets of despots in Middle East...

Spending $102 billion a year on 800 worldwide military bases is bankrupting the country...

‘Look at Syria & Yemen. Who’s next?’

Most terrorist groups today are a product of political, financial, and military efforts from the outside of the country where they operate, Russian Deputy Defense Minister, Aleksandr Fomin, told RT ahead of the VI Moscow Conference on International Security.

With terrorist attacks looming large, Fomin said the world is currently witnessing some kind of a hybrid political and military phenomenon, gaining momentum.

“These are some new techniques, and revolutions are exported to different states that are supposedly suffering under undemocratic regimes. So-called democratic regimes are being planted in these countries from the outside,” Fomin said.

“Because of this policy, some states ceased to exist; others are on the verge of disappearing. Look at Syria now, and Yemen. We can ask ourselves - who's next?”

The deputy defense minister spoke to RT ahead of the Sixth Moscow Conference on International Security, scheduled to take place on April 26-27, where the topic of international terrorism will be high on agenda. Full story...

Related posts...

Terror junkies: the West's addiction to funding radical groups...

Vladimir Putin accuses US of backing terrorism in Middle East...

Where was Meryl Streep when Obama was prosecuting whistleblowers...

Turkey's weasel problem...

The hypocrisy address: when violent people preach to you about violence ...

"One word says it all. Asian"

Related posts:

Why Airbnb is not worth it anymore...

'This is Singapore' is no excuse for racist behaviour...

Row as Air China warns of London's 'Indian, Pakistani and black'

Osaka train driver apologizes to Japanese passengers for ‘having many foreigners’ on board...

UK tourists to US may get asked to hand in passwords or be denied entry...

British travellers to the United States face the uncomfortable choice of handing over personal information, including social media passwords and mobile phone contacts, or running the risk of being denied entry to the country, under a new “extreme vetting” policy being considered by the Trump administration.

Tourists from the UK and other US allies including Germany and France, could be forced to reveal personal data, as well as disclose financial information and face detailed ideological questioning, according to Trump administration officials quoted by the Wall Street Journal. While US citizens have established rights against unlawful searches at the border, the extent to which foreign travellers can resist requests to hand over personal information is unclear.

The US customs and border patrol told the Guardian: “All international travellers arriving to the US are subject to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) inspection. This inspection may include electronic devices such as computers, disks, drives, tapes, mobile phones and other communication devices, cameras, music and other media players and any other electronic or digital devices.

“Keeping America safe and enforcing our nation’s laws in an increasingly digital world depends on our ability to lawfully examine all materials entering the US,” it added. The CBP said it strives to process arriving travellers as efficiently and securely as possible while ensuring compliance with laws and regulations governing the international arrival process. It did not answer specific questions about social media accounts and devices. Full story...

Related posts:

US forbids any device larger than cellphone on airlines from...

Feds use search warrant to make everyone in building unlock their...

Canadian faces $20k fine, jail time for refusing to unlock phone during...

Israel airport security demands access to tourists' private email accounts...

U.S. customs agents are coercing for mobile passwords...

Egypt declares state of emergency after deadly church attacks...

Egypt's President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi has announced a three-month state of emergency after attacks on two Coptic churches that left at least 44 dead.

The measure allows authorities to make arrests without warrants and search people's homes. It needs to be approved by parliament before it is implemented.

So-called Islamic State (IS) said it was behind the blasts in Tanta and Alexandria on Palm Sunday.

The group has targeted Copts in Egypt recently and warns of more attacks.

Mr Sisi made a defiant speech at the presidential palace after a meeting of the national defence council to discuss the explosions. Full story...

Related posts:

Egypt:Nearly 40 churches burned,while 23 others attacked...

Churches torched across Egypt in anti-Coptic violence...

How Christians are treated in Egypt...

Riots in Egypt after six Coptic Christians murdered...

Christians face fresh attacks in Egypt...

Zabaleen,the garbage collectors of Egypt...

Christian father arrested in Egypt for freeing kidnapped daughter...

School 'confiscates Xboxes and PS4s from pupils' homes' in effort to improve exam results...

One of England’s best performing academy schools has taken to confiscating Xboxes and PlayStations from pupils’ homes in order to improve exam results.

According to King Solomon Academy (KSA) principal, Max Haimendorf, mobile phones and games consoles were taken away by the school on occasions with parental consent.

The measure was introduced to encourage good behaviour and improve grades, he said.

“What has happened more than once is that the parent has come into the school and said, ‘I do not want my child using this. I want you to keep it until are better behaved,” he told The Sunday Times.

Parents would then either agree to a “symbolic” confiscation by the school or bring in the device to hand it over to staff. Full story...

Related posts:

Utah school creates 'texting lane' for phone-focused walkers...

Singapore grapples with smartphone addiction...

Dumbed down Japanese students...

Nearly half of children 'addicted to smartphones and tablets'

Japanese university tells students: 'Give up smartphones or quit'

Coca-Cola produces over 100 billion plastic bottles that can't be recycled...

Coca-Cola is failing to combat the environmental damage caused by it producing over 100 billion throwaway plastic bottles each year, a new analysis by Greenpeace has revealed.

Last March the fizzy drinks company came under fire for refusing to disclose how much plastic it produces in a survey of the top six global drinks manufacturers, conducted by Greenpeace.

However, the environment group now claims it has uncovered what it calls the company’s “eye-popping” use of throwaway plastic.

The charity looked at Coca-Cola’s annual sales figures of certain product lines and the proportion that they have represented in the company’s overall packaging mix since 2012. Full story...

Related posts:

Indian traders boycott Coca-Cola for 'straining water resources'

Saturday, April 08, 2017

Bomb the usual Arabs...

It seems that every new US president has to prove his machismo…or make his bones, as wiseguys say…by bombing the usual Arabs. By now, it’s almost a rite of passage. The American public loves it.

So we just saw the US launch 59 or 60 $1.5million apiece cruise missiles at a western Syrian airfield to express President Trump’s outrage caused by seeing injured children allegedly caused by a Syrian government toxic gas attack.

But what, Mr. President, about all those Iraqi, Syrian and Afghan babies killed by US B-52 and B-1 heavy bombers? Or the destruction of the defiant Iraqi city of Fallujah where the US used forbidden white phosphorus that burns right to the bone?

Washington claimed its radar had conclusively identified Syrian warplanes dropping chemical weapons. This sounds to me to be unlikely. Where was the US radar? Hundreds of miles away aboard ships? Was the info from Israel or Turkey, both with axes to grind? Is US radar so sharp that it can tell the difference between a chemical and high explosive bomb at great distance? Sounds highly fishy to me. Full story...

Syria's war: Who is fighting and why...

Related posts:

'I wouldn't rent to you if you were the last person on Earth': Trump-supporting Airbnb host cancels woman's booking during snowstorm because she is Asian...

A woman was left stranded and in tears after she was denied an Airbnb by a Trump-supporting host during a snowstorm because she was Asian.

Dyne Suh, of Riverside, California, was traveling with friends to ski trip near Big Bear Lake, California, over Presidents' Day weekend when they were suddenly left without accommodation on February 18.

The 25-year-old law student said her reservation was canceled just three minutes before her group would arrive, with the host saying: 'I wouldn't rent to you if you were the last person on Earth'.

The Airbnb host then reportedly added: 'One word says it all Asian. Want something for nothing.'

Since the incident, Airbnb has banned the host from its site for her 'abhorrent and unacceptable' behavior, it was reported on Wednesday. Full story...

Related posts:

How AirBnB is risky for everyone involved...

Why Airbnb is not worth it anymore...

'This is Singapore' is no excuse for racist behaviour...

Row as Air China warns of London's 'Indian, Pakistani and black'

Osaka train driver apologizes to Japanese passengers for ‘having many foreigners’ on board...

Is Singapore really the world’s most expensive city?

Retail clerks in Singapore have a habit of forcing receipts into your hand whether you want them or not. As a result, every Singapore resident occasionally cleans out their wallet or purse, only to discover a horrifying stack of receipts where once there was money. There’s no doubt this can be a very expensive city.

But is it the most expensive? Well, that’s debatable.

Last month, the Lion City hit the headlines again when The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) placed it atop its Worldwide Cost of Living index. However, this index was set up for a specific purpose. It’s designed for human resources departments to figure out the cost of sending employees on business trips or to work overseas, often in a high-paying job.

Arguably, people with expense accounts don’t spend like the rest of us. When Singapore first topped the list in 2014, the city-state’s Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam suggested that the index wasn’t so much an indication of high prices as a reflection of pretentious expat living. The basket of goods on which the index was based included “imported cheese, filet mignon, Burberry-type raincoats, four best seats in a theatre, three-course high-end dinners for four people,” he said. Full story...

Related posts:

Is Australia the world’s biggest rip off?

Does Singapore deserve its 'miserable' tag?

Sky-high prices are pushing locals to the edge of...

Singapore named the world's most expensive city...

Uttar Pradesh police rescue ‘Mowgli girl’ brought up by monkeys...

A ten-year-old girl, now known as the ‘Mowgli girl’, has been brought to a hospital in Bahraich district after she was found living in the Katraniaghat forest area in the company of monkeys. The girl, who has apparently been brought up by monkeys, does not speak or behave like humans.

The girl was first spotted two months ago by some villagers who had gone to collect firewood in the forest. The girl, without any clothes, was seen scampering around with a group of monkeys. When a villager tried to get close to the girl, the monkeys surrounded him and forced him to beat a retreat.

The villager returned and informed the local people but each time the locals went to rescue the girl, who was apparently injured, the monkeys would attack them. Gradually the number of monkeys guarding the girl also increased.

A police team also ventured into the jungle but could not find the girl. Later, a team of UP 100 service was passing through the forest area when they spotted the girl. Full story...

Related posts:

Doctor who disappeared 20 years ago found living as a hermit in...

Saturday, April 01, 2017

Latest WikiLeaks release shows how the CIA uses computer code to hide the origins of its hacking attacks and 'disguise them as Russian or Chinese activity'

WikiLeaks has published hundreds more files today which it claims show the CIA went to great lengths to disguise its own hacking attacks and point the finger at Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.

The 676 files released today are part of WikiLeaks' Vault 7 tranche of files and they claim to give an insight into the CIA's Marble software, which can forensically disguise viruses, trojans and hacking attacks.

WikiLeaks says the source code suggests Marble has test examples in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi (the Iranian language).

It says: 'This would permit a forensic attribution double game, for example by pretending that the spoken language of the malware creator was not American English, but Chinese.'

This could lead forensic investigators into wrongly concluding that CIA hacks were carried out by the Kremlin, the Chinese government, Iran, North Korea or Arabic-speaking terror groups such as ISIS. Full story...

Facial Recognition Tech Could Ensnare Millions of Innocent Americans for Crimes They Didn’t Commit...

It’s often the case that new technologies arrive on the scene faster than our society and its legal code can keep up. Sometimes this can be a good thing. For instance, 3D printing allows people to print out unregulated gun parts, thus allowing gun owners to circumvent the onerous laws of our government, which has struggled to come up with new laws to restrict the technology.

When technology advances at a breakneck pace however, it can also be quite dangerous for our liberties. This is especially true in regards to privacy. If a new technology makes it easy for the government to track us, you can bet that the government is going to take its sweet time updating the legal code in a way that will protect us from surveillance.

(...)

All told, law enforcement agencies around the country have access to 400 million photos in facial recognition databases, which are connected to roughly 50% of American adults. Most of these people have never committed a crime, and obviously haven’t given any consent to this.

At first glance it may sound harmless to be in one of these databases. Movies and TV shows make it sound like this technology can help law enforcement swiftly and precisely nab suspects. So what do you have to fear if you haven’t committed a crime? It turns out that in real life, facial recognition is far from perfect. Full story...

Related posts:

NSA collecting millions of faces from web images...

Facial recognition: is the technology taking away your identity?

Face-recognition software: Is this the end of anonymity for all of us?

There'll be no escape from the FBI's new facial recognition system...

India's village of female boxers...

Related posts:

Russian President Vladimir Putin says humans not responsible for climate change...

One day after visiting the Franz Josef Land archipelago in the Arctic, Putin claimed that icebergs had been melting for decades and suggested that global warming was not mankind’s fault.
“The warming, it had already started by the 1930s,” Putin said in comments broadcast from an Arctic forum held in the northern Russian city of Arkhangelsk.

“That’s when there were no such anthropological factors, such emissions, and the warming had already started.”

The Kremlin strongman added: “The issue is not stopping it... because that’s impossible, since it could be tied to some global cycles on Earth or even of planetary significance. The issue is to somehow adapt to it.”

The declaration came as the White House said Trump would make his pronouncement on the Paris Agreement before a meeting of G7 leaders in Sicily that is scheduled to begin May 26. Full story...

Related posts:

What they haven't told you about climate change...