Tuesday, June 30, 2015

US now has more Spanish speakers than Spain – only Mexico has more...

The United States is now the world’s second largest Spanish-speaking country after Mexico, according to a new study published by the prestigious Instituto Cervantes.

The report says there are 41 million native Spanish speakers in the US plus a further 11.6 million who are bilingual, mainly the children of Spanish-speaking immigrants. This puts the US ahead of Colombia (48 million) and Spain (46 million) and second only to Mexico (121 million).

Among the sources cited in the report is the US Census Office which estimates that the US will have 138 million Spanish speakers by 2050, making it the biggest Spanish-speaking nation on Earth, with Spanish the mother tongue of almost a third of its citizens.

By state the highest concentration is in the former Spanish colonies of the south and south-west, with New Mexico top at 47%, followed by California and Texas (both 38%) and Arizona (30%). Some 18% of New Yorkers speak Spanish while only 1.3% of West Virginians do. Perhaps surprisingly, more than 6% of Alaskans are Spanish speakers. Full story...

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Muse - The Handler

Bill Gates’s idiocy (or is it psychopathy?)

Bill Gates was interviewed in the Thursday June 25th Financial Times, about global warming investments, and he said some remarkably stupid things, but explaining what he said requires a lot of intelligence; so, maybe what he said isn’t actually that stupid. Might he be an idiot savant? Perhaps there’s a deeper truth here.

After all, idiot savants should be respected in the areas where they have their gift, but not outside it. Occasionally, distinguishing between an idiot savant and a genius can be hard to do.

For example, at the beginning of the 20th Century, Henry Ford was considered to be a genius of industry and of technology, and he was sometimes America’s wealthiest person, but he was also a bigot, and no one can be stupider than that; so, he was just an idiot savant, after all. He was additionally famous as a philanthropist, having founded the Ford Foundation, but his donations to Hitler’s Nazi Party and his propagandizing in the United States against Jews and for the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” hoax, might have done the world more harm than his Foundation ever did good. It certainly helped to produce World War II, Hitler’s war to exterminate all Jews.

Global warming will do even more harm in the world than anti-Semitism has done; and the only way that it might be prevented from actually destroying the world is if very little of the already-discovered fossil-fuel reserves that are in the ground will ever be sold and burnt — in other words: used. This is the subject that Bill Gates was talking about; so, the key scientific finding about “unburnable reserves” must be stated, as it was clearly expressed in the 25 January 2013 study “Oil and Carbon Revisited: Value at Risk from ‘Unburnable’ Reserves,” from the giant global bank HSBC, Full story...

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Facebook now harvesting the list of all the other websites you visit: total online surveillance is here...

If you're one of the millions of people who have a love/hate relationship with Facebook, there are now even more reasons for hating the immensely successful social media giant.

You probably know that Facebook collects and stores your personal data and preferences to form a profile that it uses to generate advertising content targeted directly at you. But did you know that Facebook also looks at all the other websites you visit and stores that data, too? Facebook also collects your online search data along with some of the details you give to retailers when you purchase something.

Zuckerberg and his Facebook shareholders make huge amounts of money by partnering with what are known as "data brokers."

Bruce Schneier, a data security expert, defines data brokers as entities which:

"collect demographic information: names, addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, gender, age, marital status, presence and ages of children in household, education level, profession, income level, political affiliation, cars driven, and information about homes and other property. They collect lists of things you've purchased, when you've purchased them, and how you paid for them. They keep track of deaths, divorces, and diseases in your family. They collect everything about what you do on the Internet." Full story...

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How football moved the goalposts for girls in rural India...

Kusum Kumari had no great agenda in mind when she started playing football aged nine near her home in rural Jharkhand in India. She just wanted to have fun. Now 15, she is pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved by girls in a state notorious for human trafficking and child marriage.

“People believe girls should fetch water from the well, wash dishes, wash clothes in the pond, work in the field, cut grass for the cows, collect firewood and cook food,” she said at the Girl Power in Play symposium, on the sidelines of the Women’s World Cup, in Ottawa this month. “My team-mates and I know that when we stay together, then our dreams will happen in real life. We see in our family and village that when girls finish the 10th grade, they get married. We don’t want to get married until we can stand on our own feet.”

With the support of Yuwa, an NGO that uses girls’ team sports as a platform for social development, Kumari and her team-mates have challenged the widely held idea that girls belong at home. They have gained recognition in their community and on football pitches abroad.

In 2013, the team finished third in an under-14 tournament in Spain, and last year they travelled to the US to take part in the Schwan’s USA Cup. Full story...

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China's latest stomach-churning food scandal: Frozen meat from the 1970s!!!

Some 800 tonnes of smuggled frozen meat have been seized by Chinese authorities, including one batch dating from the 1970s, state media reported.

The meat was bound for restaurants, retailers and supermarkets in Hunan province, where it was found, and other Chinese provinces and major cities, according to a report from Xinhua, China's state news agency, on Tuesday.

The meat, which included poultry and beef, was confiscated on June 1 and was worth 10 million yuan ($1.6 million), the English-language China Daily said.

Some packages were rotten and others were around 40 years old -- packed and stamped at the height of China's Cultural Revolution.

"The products fully filled an entire compartment. It was really smelly, and I nearly threw up when I opened the door," the China Daily quoted Zhang Tao, a local official, as saying. Full story...

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'Blind agreement' and closed-door deals: Report slams TPP negotiations...

As a trade deal between Australia and its allies edges closer towards completion, leading critics to warn of an impending "attack [on] internet freedoms," a parliamentary committee has slammed the deal-making process saying it lacks adequate "oversight and scrutiny."

The comments come as Australia engages in closed-door negotiations with 11 other countries over the Trans-Pacific Partnership -- a trade agreement that could change the copyright and piracy landscape in Australia and have major ramifications for the way Australians access online content.

A joint-Parliamentary report on the TPP and other trade deals has declaimed that "not is all right with the current process" and that politicians and key stakeholders are being "kept in the dark" on the negotiation process.

The "Blind Agreement" report warns that under the current system, "Parliament is faced with an all-or-nothing choice" on whether or not to approve trade agreements and can only officially review trade laws once they've officially passed.

"This does not provide an adequate level of oversight and scrutiny," the report reads. "Parliament should play a constructive role during negotiations and not merely rubber-stamp agreements that have been negotiated behind closed doors." Full story...

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Monday, June 29, 2015

Greferendum looms: Greeks rush to ATMs, EU saddened, closes door...

School principal beaten to death by mob after 2 students found dead in Bihar, India...

The principal of a school in Bihar's Nalanda district died today after he was thrashed by a mob following the recovery of the bodies of two students from a ditch.

The principal, Devendra Prasad, died while he was being treated at the Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH), Nalanda's Superintendent of Police (SP) Sidharth Mohan Jain told Press Trust of India.

A post-mortem was being carried out to determine the exact cause of the death, he said.

TV footage showed that Mr Prasad was mercilessly beaten up with sticks by a mob who held him responsible for the death of two students of the school.

 Some in the crowd mercilessly beat up Mr Prasad with sticks, while some of them kicked him as he lay on the ground with his face down, the officer said. Full story...

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Bavarian school warns girls should dress ‘modestly,’ due to Syrian refugees nearby...

A school in Bavaria, Germany, has sent a letter to parents, asking them to ensure their daughters refrain from wearing revealing clothes, because refugee accommodation has been set up next to the school’s gym.

Two hundred Syrian refugees have been living for a week near the Wilhelm-Diess-Gymnasium’s gym, Die Welt reported.

The gym was shut down and PE lessons relocated to a primary school in the vicinity.

The head teacher also rushed to inform parents about additional security measures.

"For the refugees, access to the school gardens and buildings is strictly forbidden. The same goes for the school grounds during the day. The number of teachers on duty during breaks has been increased," Martin Thalhammer wrote. Full story...

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U.S. ruling on same-sex marriage likely to affect other countries...

The landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriages has no legal force outside the United States, but gay rights activists in many parts of the world believe the court ruling will help their cause.

In the Philippines, in India, in Australia and elsewhere, gay rights advocates think the U.S. ruling may help change attitudes, just as American activists — and judges, educators and legislators — had earlier been influenced by the easy acceptance of same-sex marriage in some European countries where the laws were changed smoothly without much fuss.

In today’s wired world, political movements cross national boundaries in the blink of an eye, and the trend toward legal acceptance of same-sex marriage is gaining pace, though still rejected outright in some parts of the globe. The U.S. is neither laggard nor leader in this movement, which reflects a fundamental change in public views in many parts of the world, but the ruling of its highest court is expected to have a ripple effect elsewhere.

In the Philippines, activists seeking to win legal recognition for same-sex marriages believe the U.S. ruling will be useful, particularly since the country’s legal setup is largely based on the U.S. system, said Sylvia Estrada Claudio, a gender rights advocate and professor at the University of the Philippines. Full story...

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Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Singapore is to hold Amos Yee for psychiatric tests, defying international calls for his release...

A Singapore court ruled on Tuesday that a teenage blogger who was convicted of obscenity and insulting religious feelings after he posted a video criticizing the late leader Lee Kuan Yew this year should be held for two weeks pending a psychiatric examination.

The teenager, Amos Yee, drew international attention when he was arrested for posting the video shortly after Mr. Lee, the founding father of modern Singapore, died on March 23.

The case has highlighted Singapore’s strict limits on speech and has drawn criticism from human rights groups, which said the treatment of the 16-year-old, including more than a month in detention and the possibility of at least 18 months in reformative training, was unduly harsh.

In Singapore, offenders under 21 can be sentenced to reformative training, in which they are housed separately from adult inmates and given “a structured environment of discipline,” according to the Singapore prosecutor’s office. Full story...

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Google eavesdropping tool installed on computers without permission...

Privacy campaigners and open source developers are up in arms over the secret installing of Google software which is capable of listening in on conversations held in front of a computer.

First spotted by open source developers, the Chromium browser – the open source basis for Google’s Chrome – began remotely installing audio-snooping code that was capable of listening to users.

It was designed to support Chrome’s new “OK, Google” hotword detection – which makes the computer respond when you talk to it – but was installed, and, some users have claimed, it is activated on computers without their permission.

“Without consent, Google’s code had downloaded a black box of code that – according to itself – had turned on the microphone and was actively listening to your room,” said Rick Falkvinge, the Pirate party founder, in a blog post. “Which means that your computer had been stealth configured to send what was being said in your room to somebody else, to a private company in another country, without your consent or knowledge, an audio transmission triggered by … an unknown and unverifiable set of conditions.” Full story...

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Monday, June 22, 2015

Italy: Margherita GALORE! The world's longest pizza is 1.5 km long...

Inside the gaudy world of Romania's wealthiest witches...

Last year, Slovakian photographer Lucia Sekerková travelled to Romania to meet Maria Câmpina, the self-proclaimed queen of the fortune tellers. Locally, fortune tellers are referred to as "witches". Usually of Roma origin, these witches are said to be able to read a person's future in their palm, in grains of wheat or in the stars.

Lucia made friends with Maria and spent time documenting the witches, their houses and their trade – a trade that has been passed down from generation to generation since ancient times. I got in touch with her to find out a bit more about her project.

(...)

I just looked up their addresses and telephone numbers on the internet and in the papers, but it was pretty hard to convince them to let me take their picture. Some of them asked for money, others didn't. Anyway, most of them were willing to bargain. The prices ranged somewhere between 20 (£14) and 50 euros (£36) per session.

I told them I was taking their pictures for a newspaper in Slovakia. They probably wouldn't have let me do it if I told them the truth: that I was working on my final project. Moreover, telling them I work for a newspaper assured them that I could pay the price they asked.

 After days of searching and bargaining, I finally met Maria Campina – the self-proclaimed queen of the witches – and struck a deal with her. In order to take her and her acquaintances' pictures, I had to promise her the newspaper that I was working for would publish a full story about her, as well as give her the front page. This way, I didn't have to pay any money for the photo session. Maria's photo did end up on the front page of SME, a weekly Slovakian newspaper. More + photos...

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Southeast Asia's moment of shame...

For decades, the Southeast Asian region has been hailed for its multicultural diversity, economic miracles that gave birth to tiger cub economies of Malaysia and Singapore, and the almost total absence of inter-state conflict. Next to the industrialised powers of Japan, China, and South Korea, much of Southeast Asia has stood as the embodiment of Asia's growing fortunes.

Perennially underperforming countries like the Philippines and Indonesia are now seen as among the most promising emerging markets. And with regional countries aiming to establish a common market, Southeast Asia is poised to become a major global investment destination. In recent weeks, however, the region has been in the global spotlight - but not for good reasons.

(...)

For long, at least going as far back as the colonial period, Myanmar has been home to the Rohingya, a Muslim minority ethnic group in a majority Buddhist country.

There are an estimated 1.3 million of them in Myanmar, but they have struggled to gain recognition as citizens in their own country. They were even excluded from the latest national census in Myanmar. For decades, they have suffered various forms of persecution and marginalisation, but recent years have seen a spike in inter-ethnic strife in the state of Rakhine, which has been a home to many from the Rohingya minority group.

Up to 140,000 Rohingyas are reported to have left their homes in search of safety in neighbouring countries. The refugee crisis has been compounded by the simultaneous waves of Bangladeshi citizens escaping crushing poverty at home in search of greener pastures in the relatively more prosperous states of Southeast Asia. Full story...

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Watch more cat videos on internet to be happy ...

Enjoy watching clips with Grumpy cat or Colonel Meow? Or do you feel “positive” just looking at Snoopy the Cat? Then don’t stop browsing YouTube for more adorable felines, as a recent study shows these videos are a form of low-cost pet therapy.

At least 7,000 cat-lovers were questioned by assistant professor Jessica Gall Myrick from Indiana University Media School for her study entitled, “Emotion regulation, procrastination, and watching cat videos online: Who watches Internet cats, why, and to what effect?”

Myrick tested the motivations of participants “for consuming cat-related content,” be it for killing time or for treating a depression.

The study has been posted on ScienceDirect.com, a website for scientific, technical, and medical research. It is to be published in Computers in Human Behavior journal in November.

“Some people may think watching online cat videos isn’t a serious enough topic for academic research, but the fact is that it’s one of the most popular uses of the Internet today,” Myrick said. More + videos...

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Sunday, June 21, 2015

How phones are tearing us apart...

It’s a busy crosswalk. Cars are rushing by and pedestrians are hurrying across the street—except for one. A middle-aged woman stands in the middle of the road, selfie stick out, presumably snapping a pic with some bright orange traffic cones. If the scene hadn’t been so comical, I probably would’ve started crying. Has our society become so self-obsessed and engrossed by technology that people can’t even cross the street without whipping out their iPhones?

We see these little, glowing electronic blocks everywhere—in restaurants, on the subway, in the airport. While some people are constantly checking text messages and work emails, others are posting mundane images of their pets (“look at Sparky’s new leash! #bark”) on social networking sites like Instagram and Facebook.

Besides the blatant narcissism and negative self-comparison that goes hand-in-hand with selfies and newsfeeds, research suggests that smartphones may also decrease our trust in one another, lower the quality of our relationships, and degrade the quality of our conversations.

In a study (link is external) published in the Journal of
Social and Personal Relationships, researchers found that the mere presence of a mobile phone is enough to diminish relationship quality. Strangers engaged in a brief conversation about interesting personal events that occurred in the prior month with a nondescript mobile phone either present (resting on a book nearby) or absent (replaced by a pocket notebook). Participants in the presence of a phone reported lower relationship quality with their conversational partner than those in the phone absent condition, as measured using a seven-item version of the connectedness subscale of the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory. They also perceived less empathy from their partner and trusted them less. Full story...

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Kenya Volleyball girls sexy dance after clinching African title...

Charles's heir miles bill soars over £1million: Cost of 'green' Prince's globetrotting has risen by £100,000 a year... thanks to 28-seat luxury jet...

His environmental credentials are well known – but then so is his taste for some of the finer things in life.

So Prince Charles will be braced for scrutiny when figures released this week reveal he has spent more than £1million of public money on air travel in the past year, thanks in part to his use of a luxury French jet named Head of State.

Boasting a double bed, shower room, ‘presidential’ area and an array of plush, clubman-style recliner seats, the converted Airbus A320-232 has been hired for three of the Prince’s foreign trips. One of these alone – to America – cost almost a quarter of a million pounds.

Charles and Camilla used the lavish jet, based at Le Bourget airport outside Paris, for their tours of Mexico and Colombia in October last year, the Middle East in February and America in March.

For their four-day trip to the US, the aircraft was flown to RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire before travelling to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. Full story...

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750,000 UK men want child sex, say crime chiefs: Astonishing figures from UK's 'FBI' reveal that 'one in 35 men may be child abuser'

Up to 750,000 men living in Britain may have an interest in having sex with children, the Government has been warned.

A shocking analysis by the National Crime Agency reveals that about one in 35 adult males poses a potential risk of being a child abuser or of seeking out child sex images online.

Horrifically, as many as 250,000 men may be sexually attracted to pre-pubescent children – defined as those under 12 – according to the findings disclosed exclusively to The Mail on Sunday.


Phil Gormley, the deputy director general of the National Crime Agency (NCA), said: ‘We are starting to get a real sense of the scale.’

He also warned that paedophiles are so numerous that ‘the reality is that we are all living not far away from one’.

Calling for an urgent new approach to safeguard children from potential abusers before they strike, he said: ‘If all we have is arrest and incarceration that will not help them come forward.’ Full story...

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Los Angeles police shoot unarmed man in head – and then handcuff him...

An unarmed man was shot in the head and critically wounded by Los Angeles police officers on Friday night, after he appeared to be flagging them down for assistance.

A passerby recorded graphic video of the incident from a car, and then posted it on Twitter. The video showed officers turning over the man, who appeared to be unconscious and lying on his face, and handcuffing his hands behind his back as his head bled profusely.

The Los Angeles police department said the man, who was not immediately named, had a towel wrapped around his hand and the two officers believed he was concealing a weapon.

The man reportedly waved over the officers in their patrol car in the quiet Los Feliz area of LA, north-east of Hollywood, at about 6.30pm. The officers got out of their vehicle and one ordered the man to “drop the gun”, LAPD lieutenant John Jenal told local television news on Friday night.

Jenal said the man “extended his arm towards the officers”. The man did not respond to the police order and he was shot, Jenal said. Full story...

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The last Maggi: The hysteria and hypocrisy of India’s noodle ban...

A few days back I consumed the last packet of Maggi noodles, allegedly infused with lead and MSG, as per tests conducted by our food authorities, many of whom we hear are quite serious about their work. Given their diligence, maybe, someday in the distant future poor and underfed children across India will not die or be frequently hospitalised due to acute food poisoning in school meals that are managed by the government.

Maybe someday in the distant future the street food I often consume on the streets of Delhi and anywhere else in India will be free of faecal matter, pesticides, insecticides, contaminated water and bacteria. My guess is that such food safety standards will not be witnessed either by me or Prime Minister Narendra Modi in our lifetimes, unless we decide to settle down in Europe.

Given all the dirty food circulating around us, it was a bit of shock, as it must have been for countless others, when Maggi noodles were banned. After all, Maggi can easily be added to the list of things that Indians, rich and poor, obsess about – Bollywood, cricket and politics, to name a few. It has a cultural, historical, traditional zing to it.

I recall my college days, more than two decades ago: I owned a second hand scooter and ate Maggi. I could afford both without begging my parents for more pocket money. The contamination issue was a shocker too. It was unexpected. It would perhaps have been more apt to ban the noodles and also Cola, French Fries, potato chips and MacDonald burgers for causing obesity among countless children addicted to junk. Full story...

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The town that banned Wi-Fi...

Up and up the roads to Green Bank went, winding into the West Virginian hills as four lanes thinned to one. It was early March and snow was still spattered on the leaf mould between the firs and larches. Hip-hop and classic rock radio stations were gradually replaced by grave pastors and bawdy men twanging banjos and, eventually, they too faded to crackling white noise. The signal pips on my phone hollowed out. I was nearly there.

Over a crest in the road was the cause of the electronic silence: the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), an array of radio telescopes set against the indigo vastness of the Blue Ridge Mountains. These giant white ears are cocked to interstellar whispers: the formation of stars, nebulae and supernovae. So sensitive are the devices, and what they are listening for so faint, that even tiny signals nearby can be disruptive: a badly fitted microwave or a faulty electric blanket. It’s like trying to eavesdrop across a room while listening to heavy metal in your earphones.

In the same zone is another telescope, run by the National Security Agency (NSA), and there is a chance some of your Facebook messages may have passed this way. But if that scheme caused international outrage, then the Green Bank telescope has been more controversial locally. Thanks to the unusual lack of interference, the town has become a haven for those looking to escape electromagnetic radiation and over the past decade, as many as 40 people have moved here. Full story...

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Japanese schoolgirl fights the demons...

Fortean phenomenon: Fish rains down from the skies in Andhra Pradesh village...

On Friday morning, a mysterious rain of fish from the skies over Gollamudi village in Nandigama mandal situated in Andhra Pradesh, surprised its residents. There have been incidences of animals falling from the heavens over the decades and this is not the first instance of fish falling from the sky. What’s more, spiders, frogs, jellyfish, toads and worms have also been reported to have rained over various places across the world.

Duggaraju Srinivas, environmentalist and retired professor of Marine Biology, was quoted as saying that similar phenomena occurred in the districts of Srikakulam and Vizianagaram in the 1970s too. Fish do not actually fall from the sky, but have been observed to rain down along with water after being caught in tornadoes or violent winds in general. However, never have scientists ever been able to record the first part of the affair of animals getting picked up by winds in the first place.

The AP villagers of Gollamudi claim that the strange rain poured hundreds of fish into their fields. A lot of people are reported to have rush to the waterlogged fields in the area in order to gather the fish which have been identified as Vallaga. They were between 4 inches to 6 inches in size, according to a post on Deccan Chronicle. The windy conditions preceding the downpour on Friday could have displaced the creatures along with water from rivers, breeding grounds or canals in the vicinity.

But such rain and violent winds do not necessarily carry off only animals living in water, as can be seen from stories of worms, toads, spiders and what not, falling from the skies. The rain of fish in Gollamudi apparently fell in the fields on the outskirts of the village. Source...

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MoD confirms Britain is arming Saudi Arabia in Yemen conflict...

Britain’s Ministry of Defence has confirmed it is providing technical support and arming Saudi Arabia in its ongoing war against Yemen, RT has learned.

An MoD spokesperson said the UK’s assistance to Saudi Arabia includes providing “precision guided weapons,” but added the British government had been assured they will be used in compliance with international law.

Anti-arms trade campaigners condemned Britain’s support for the Gulf monarchy, claiming the UK cares more about arms sales than human rights and democracy.

RT contacted the MoD to ask if British weapons are being used in Saudi airstrikes on Yemen and if the UK is providing assistance to the Saudi-led coalition.

 An MoD spokesperson replied: “The UK is not participating directly in Saudi military operations. We are providing support to the Saudi Arabian Armed Forces and as part of pre-existing arrangements are providing precision guided weapons to assist the Saudi Air Force. Full story...

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Saturday, June 20, 2015

75% of Canadians have ‘never heard of TPP’

The majority of Canadians don’t know that their government is negotiating with 11 other countries in one of the biggest international free trade deals known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a recent poll suggests.

The poll was conducted by the Environics Research Group for Trade Justice Network (TJN) has found that 75 percent of respondents have not heard of the TTP – a major deal which aims to link 40 percent of the world's economy.

Three out of four respondents said that they were concerned that Canada’s participation in TPP is being negotiated in secret with no input, according to the poll. Eighty-three per cent of respondents were concerned that the deal could include a provision allowing multinational corporations to sue Canadian government under trade tribunals which would lead to a loss of profits, it said.

 A total of 1,002 Canadians took part in the poll conducted by telephone June 3-12 according to TJN, which put the accuracy of the results within 3.2 percentage points - 19 times out of 20. Full story...

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How MPs spend hundreds of thousands of pounds of YOUR money on jollies to little-known summits in glamour hotspots around the world...

MPs and peers are lavishing hundreds of thousands of pounds a year attending little-known summits in glamorous locations across the world, figures released under freedom of information have revealed.

Politicians from all parties have run up huge bills attending 'parliamentary assemblies' for organisations including the Council of Europe and Nato held in locations such as New York, Helsinki, Vienna, Madrid, Paris and Brussels.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe meets four times a year to 'debate current social problems and aspects of international politics'. There are also 10 committees that 'prepare' for these sessions.

A British delegation is appointed by the Prime Minister – with 18 full members picked from the House of Commons and the House of Lords and another 18 'alternates' who can fill in when required.

According to material released by the Commons today, the delegation's travel and subsistence costs came to £298,000 in 2013-14. The bill for the first nine months of 2014-15 alone was more than £220,000. Full story...

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A guy and his real doll bride...

Dirk and Jenny were wed in their apartment, dressed in their finest attire. Dirk gifted Jenny with a heart-shaped pendant, and the slow melodies of Neil Young’s Such a Woman could be heard in the background. Dirk officiated the ceremony himself. Unlike most blushing brides, Jenny was and is a “real doll,” designed to look closely like a human woman although she is made of silicone. As Germany-based photographer Sandra Hoyn learned throughout her time documenting Dirk’s marriage to Jenny, their bond cuts deeper than that between a man and his sex doll; for Dirk, Jenny is a life partner.


When Hoyn met Dirk via an internet forum in the fall of last year, she was surprised at how quickly he invited her into his private life with Jenny. He was wary of press and photographers—and fearful that his relationship would be pre-judged as aberrant—but the desire to share his and Jenny’s story won out over any hesitation he might have had. With the agreement that Hoyn would change his name and avoid releasing images in which his face was visible, the photographer set about candidly chronicling the day-to-day rituals of the couple. Dirk, who is approximately forty years of age, works from home beside Jenny. He bathes her on Sundays, and sometimes they watch football.

Before he purchased Jenny, Dirk suffered from a psychological breakdown. The doll, he says, helped him to heal. He talks to her and cares for her, and he believes that she can speak back. Hoyn titles the series Jenny’s Soul after the spirit Dirk says he recognizes when he looks at his wife. Dirk acknowledges that it seems far-fetched that Jenny reciprocates his love for her, and he has his moments of doubt. Ultimately, though, he concludes that Jenny has descended from another planet, an undiscovered realm wherein minds are disconnected from the corporeal body and the five senses available to humankind. More + photos...

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Obama women's cultural tour of Italy and the UK will cost US taxpayers at least $547,000 – and rental cars, meals, Secret Service, and 'advance' trips could push the cost to $700,000...

The Obama women's goodwill tour of Italy and England is costing taxpayers in excess of $547,000, government records and estimates indicate.

That amount includes the cost of flying first lady Michelle Obama, her mother and her two daughters to London, Milan, Vicenza and Venice, and the lodging costs incurred throughout the six-day trip.

It doesn't including rental vehicles for the first family's females, their staffers, and their security details.

It also doesn't include the cost of Secret Service protection and the 'advance' trips the White House authorized ahead of time to lay the journey's groundwork and scout secure locations for the VIPs to visit and stay.

The Obamas – minus the president – landed in Venice on Friday for a two-night hotel stay at a total cost to taxpayers of $128,781 for the whole traveling party, according to a State Department contract issued this month.

Assuming the lodging costs in Milan and London were comparable, the accommodations for five of the six overnights will come to $321,952. Full story...

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Guards at Nauru paid for and taped sex with refugees ...

Guards at the Nauru detention centre may have paid for sex with refugees in the community and circulated sex tapes of their encounters, a former case manager on the island has alleged.

The shocking allegations are contained in a submission by Charlotte Wilson, a former Save the Children case manager at the Nauru detention centre from January 2014 to February 2015.

A Senate inquiry is investigating conditions and serious allegations at the Australian-run facility on the island.

Wilson alleged that both Australian and Nauruan guards on the island – who work for the company Wilson Security, subcontracted by Transfield Services – “frequently abused their positions of power” at the centre. She said it was “common knowledge” there was “bartering and trading, including of sexual favours, within the camp”. Full story...

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What yoga record attempt tells us about India...

India is in the grip of yoga fever, thanks to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Mr Modi coaxed the United Nations into declaring 21 June International Yoga Day and announced a grand event to be held in Delhi on that day. His government plans to get tens of thousands of people to perform yoga in the heart of the capital on Sunday.

Mr Modi is an enthusiast himself - he told a biographer he tries to do yoga for an hour after waking up in the morning.

So what does Sunday's mass yoga session tell us about India?

(...)

More seriously, Sunday's gathering is a timely reminder that urban Indians need to get fitter.

Doctors say India's cities are riding a diabetes and heart disease epidemic. India's diabetes rate jumped an alarming 123% between 1990 and 2013, compared to 45% worldwide, a new study found. One in four Indians die of heart disease. Obesity is on the rise. Full story...

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‘Erratic and secretive dictatorship’: WikiLeaks releases thousands of ‘top secret’ Saudi govt docs...

WikiLeaks has begun publishing around half a million ‘Saudi Cables’ documents, which include communiques from the Saudi Foreign Ministry, as well as ‘top secret’ reports from the kingdom’s intelligence agency and Ministry of Interior.

On Friday, the whistleblowing website released the first tranche of around 70,000 documents.

According to the group’s statement, the ‘Saudi cables’ provide an insight into the kingdom’s interior and foreign policies explaining “how it has managed its alliances and consolidated its position as a regional Middle East superpower, including through bribing and co-opting key individuals and institutions.”

 The leaked documents also illustrate a “highly centralized bureaucratic structure” where even the simplest issues are addressed by the most senior officials, it said. Full story...

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Friday, June 19, 2015

Jon Stewart drops the comedy to talk Charleston: ‘We still won’t do jackshit’

10 million 'left-behind children' in China go a full year without seeing their parents...

Ten million children in rural China go a full year without seeing their parents as adults leave for the nation's boomtowns in search of work, a report into the country's "left behind" generation has found.

The ‘White Paper on Left Behind Children’, published on Thursday by the Beijing Children's Mental Health Care Centre, said children of economic migrants left alone or with elderly relatives can suffer serious psychological problems.

"We may not be able to help the children directly, but through the impact of the media, the community and by mobilising resources, we can bring about indirect change," said Li Yifei, professor of psychology at Beijing Normal University and report author, in The Beijing Times. "These children need mental nourishment just as much as material donations."

The problem is particularly prevalent in China's poorest regions. Families in China's north-west were identified by the report as being most at risk followed by the south-west. The economically prosperous eastern coastal region was least affected.

 The reports followed the tragic deaths of four siblings, aged between 5-13 years old, in the south-western province of Guizhou last Tuesday, which sparked widespread sympathy and outrage across China. Full story...

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Germans waste 18m tonnes of food yearly...

Germans throw away 18 million tonnes of perfectly good food every year, a report showed on Thursday.

The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) study showed that "on average we throw away 313 kilos of usable food every second," WWF expert Tanja Dräger said in Berlin on Thursday.

More than 2.6 million hectares of farmland are being used to produce food "for the bin“, the environementalists say.

"At the moment, it's as if we turned Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Saarland into giant fields and then just threw away the harvest," WWF chief Christoph Heinrich said.

 Most of the waste could be avoided if consumers were smarter about shopping and preparing their meals for the week, Dräger said. Full story...

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Paramjeet Singh Pumma, India's 'most outraged man', speaks out...

A Sikh man, described on social media as "the most outraged man of India", has told BBC Hindi's Parul Agrawal about his life as the "face of street protests in Delhi".

The 43-year-old has been photographed protesting against all sorts of issues over the past few years. On Thursday, BuzzFeed India published a piece asking who the man was and what drove him.

Paramjeet Singh Pumma said he began agitating early in life.

Mr Pumma said he was introduced to the world of protests by his father. At the age of 16, he was already "a fierce protestor" and "leading the crowd" was his passion.

He dropped out of school at the age of 14, which limited his formal education to middle school.

But this has never deterred him from forming an opinion on any global or local issue and he has been expressing himself on almost everything around him.

"I am a common man and I get angry when a common man suffers," he says. More + photos...


How Singapore's airport is making its economy fly...

It already contains a butterfly garden, swimming pool and cinema, but for Changi airport in Singapore the sky appears to be the limit -- with new terminals and complexes in construction and planning for the next decade.

The airport has long set the precedent for others worldwide -- ranking at number one in the World Airport Awards for three consecutive years.

With a current capacity of 66 million passengers a year, the opening of terminal four in 2017 will see this number rise to 82 million.

And it doesn't stop there.

Developers want Changi to eventually handle at least 130 million people a year.

"We think we are sitting in a sweet spot in Changi," says Poh Li San, Vice President of the Terminal 4 Program Management Office at Changi Airport Group. "We are looking at the growth of the whole region with China, India, and Indonesia growing rapidly," he says. Full story...

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Finns urged to eat on their feet to stay healthy...

Finland's health ministry on Wednesday urged Finns to occasionally eat their meals standing up in a bid to combat health problems linked to a sedentary lifestyle.

"Many things can be done in a standing position or walking around instead of sitting down. Standing up also works for reading a newspaper, eating, taking a coffee break and watching television," the ministry recommended in a new publication entitled "Sit Less, Feel Better".

Public health officials have become concerned with Finns' increasingly sedentary lifestyle. Excessive sitting is associated with musculoskeletal disorders, cardiovascular disease and obesity.

"Among those who sit more than seven hours a day, every additional hour spent sitting down increases the risk of death by five per cent," the ministry warned.

Studies cited in the publication show that adult Finns sit, lie down or stand still for more than three-quarters of their time awake. Full story...

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