Sunday, July 30, 2017

Brazilian pianist, Eliane Rodrigues, LITERALLY taking the performance below the stage!

We are all made of stars: half our bodies' atoms 'formed beyond the Milky Way'

Nearly half of the atoms that make up our bodies may have formed beyond the Milky Way and travelled to the solar system on intergalactic winds driven by giant exploding stars, astronomers claim.

The dramatic conclusion emerges from computer simulations that reveal how galaxies grow over aeons by absorbing huge amounts of material that is blasted out of neighbouring galaxies when stars explode at the end of their lives.

Powerful supernova explosions can fling trillions of tonnes of atoms into space with such ferocity that they escape their home galaxy’s gravitational pull and fall towards larger neighbours in enormous clouds that travel at hundreds of kilometres per second.

Astronomers have long known that elements forged in stars can travel from one galaxy to another, but the latest research is the first to reveal that up to half of the material in the Milky Way and similar-sized galaxies can arrive from smaller galactic neighbours. Full story...

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New Netanyahu “peace” plan is straight out of apartheid South Africa...

Benjamin Netanyahu is proposing that Palestinian citizens of Israel be stripped of their citizenship under a “peace” deal that would place them in a future Palestinian entity.

The Israeli prime minister recently told American officials, according to a report in Haaretz, that “Israeli-Arab communities could move under Palestinian control” as part of a final status agreement.

“In exchange,” the Tel Aviv newspaper wrote, “Israel would annex some West Bank settlements.”

Commonly referred to as “transfer,” this proposal amounts to ethnic cleansing. It is not a new idea, but Netanyahu’s broaching it represents a further step in the Israeli government formally adopting policies once considered taboo even by many Israelis.

The area Netanyahu has in mind – at least initially – is Wadi Ara, a region in the north, including the major town of Umm al-Fahm. Full story...

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Outrage at Najib plan to give Indian Muslims the same status as Malays...

Questions over what makes a person a bona fide Malay has been thrust into the limelight in Singapore ahead of an upcoming presidential election reserved specially for candidates from the minority community. In neighbouring Malaysia, where Malays are in the majority and are accorded special privileges as part of decades-old affirmative action policies, the question of “Malayness” is not just an occasional hot button issue – it is at the heart of national politics.

Malays and tribespeople on the island of Borneo, who together make up two thirds of the country’s 31 million people, enjoy privileges in business and education on account of the fact that they are indigenous to the country, or bumiputra (sons of the soil).

Just last week, the prickly issue surfaced to the top of national consciousness after Prime Minister Najib Razak suggested the country’s one million Indian Muslims could be granted bumiputra status. That triggered considerable consternation online. With bumiputra status deeply intertwined with Malay identity, many ethnic Malays took to social media to complain that the inclusion of Indian Muslims under the affirmative action policy would erode the bangsa Melayu (the Malay race).

And while the bitter griping over the “Malayness” of the presidential hopefuls in Singapore has taken the Lion City by surprise, such discussions have been a mainstay in Malaysian politics. Full story...

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Honolulu bans pedestrians from checking phones while crossing streets...



Pedestrians have been banned from looking at their mobile phones while crossing the street in Honolulu.

Hawaiian authorities say the aim is to reduce injuries and deaths from "distracted walking".

Anyone found looking at their phone faces a fine of between £11 and £75 depending on how many times police catch them.

Mayor Kirk Caldwell said: "We hold the unfortunate distinction of being a major city with more pedestrians being hit in crosswalks, particularly our seniors, than almost any other city in the country."

Anyone making calls for emergency services will be exempt from the fine. Full story...

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Male rape: Men 'forced into sex with threats, lies and blackmail' by women, survey finds...

A survey of men who say they have been forced to have sex by a woman claims blackmail and threats were the most common methods used.

A research project of 154 men who said they were “compelled to penetrate” a woman found more than a fifth of them were forced into it by threats and blackmail.

Telling lies, threats to end a relationship, warnings of rumour-spreading and verbal abuse were cited by 22 per cent of men in the survey.

The research project, led by Dr Siobhan Weare, from Lancaster University Law School, and supported by charity Survivors Manchester, also found the use of force, such as pinning down with bodyweight or having a weapon, was reported by 14 per cent of men who completed the survey.

The project aimed to explore one of the “last taboos” - sexual violence by women against men. Full story...

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Baltimore prosecutor tosses 34 cases after officer seen planting evidence...

Thirty-four criminal cases have been dismissed in Baltimore amid an investigation into the alleged planting of evidence by a Baltimore City police officer.

Twelve of the cases thrown out, according to Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, involved defendants who are now serving time for convictions.

In all, 123 cases are being reviewed by prosecutors in light of police body camera footage released by the public defender’s office.

Defense attorney’s claim the body-camera footage shows an officer planting a can with drugs at a crime scene before activating his camera. He’s then seen returning to the can and pulling out a baggie with white capsules.

The officer wearing the camera has been suspended by the police department. Two other officers heard and seen in the video have been placed on administrative duty. Full story...

Silicone Sally: Japan men find true love with sex dolls...

When the spark went out of Masayuki Ozaki's marriage, he found an unusual outlet to plug the romantic void -- a silicone sex doll he swears is the love of his life.

The life-size dummy, called Mayu, shares his bed under the same roof as Ozaki's wife and teenage daughter in Tokyo, an arrangement that triggered angry rows before a delicate truce was finally declared.

"After my wife gave birth we stopped having sex and I felt a deep sense of loneliness," the 45-year-old physiotherapist told AFP in an interview.

"But the moment I saw Mayu in the showroom, it was love at first sight," blushed Ozaki, who takes his doll on dates in a wheelchair and dresses her in wigs, sexy clothes and jewellery.

"My wife was furious when I first brought Mayu home. These days she puts up with it, reluctantly," he added. Full story...

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Saturday, July 29, 2017

‘Like living in hell’: Calais police abuse migrants on daily basis, HRW claims...

Woman in Sweden calls out mountain rescue helicopter because she was tired...

An air ambulance and rescue personnel called out to help a mountain climber in Sweden discovered when they arrived at the scene that the only thing the woman was suffering from was tiredness.

The alarm was raised by the woman and her husband from an area near a hill cottage in Jokkmokk. According to information given to the police she had problems walking and was unable to get down from the mountain.

An air ambulance and mountain rescue workers were sent to the scene, but when they arrived they discovered that she was simply tired and looking for a ride down.

 As tiredness is not considered a serious threat to life by the mountain rescue service, the couple were then offered the choice of trying to get down from the mountain themselves, or to pay for the helicopter journey. Full story...

Experts warn robots are growing in consciousness and should be classified as an “invasive species”

Should humanity become extinct in the immediate future, it won’t be by our own hands or through the wrath of nature. A number of experts has claimed that our demise shall be brought on by super-strong robots. What was once created to make our lives easier could very well “threaten our existence” in the span of a few years.

This grim warning comes from the experts featured in the two-episode documentary series “Hyper Evolution: Rise of the Robots”. Presented by teaching fellow at Anglia Ruskin University and evolutionary biologist Dr. Ben Garrod and University of Manchester electronics engineer Danielle George, the documentary aims to the answer the question whether or not automation could one day become our greatest enemy. Though according to Garrod himself, that could very well be the case.

“What concerns me is that the impact of robots will be so monumental, they could threaten humanity,” Garrod told DailyMail.co.uk. “We’ve evolved over hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years. These things are just bulldozing their way through. At what point have we got to stop? They’re like an invasive species.” Full story...

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Eat curry: turmeric is good for you!

A WOMAN diagnosed with blood cancer has beaten the disease with the help of turmeric.

Dieneke Ferguson, 57, was diagnosed with myeloma in 2007 after complaining of high blood pressure, according to a report in the British Medical Journal.

Within 15 months of her diagnosis her cancer had progressed to stage three.

Dieneke underwent several rounds of chemotherapy and in October 2009 had stem cell transplant, but the treatments didn't work.

In 2011 she began taking daily doses of curcumin, a key component of the spice turmeric, after another two rounds of stem cell therapy failed.

Dieneke took eight grams each night on an empty stomach. Full story...

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Forget Jeff Bezos, Putin is the world's richest man...

Amazon boss Jeff Bezos made headlines this week when he was declared the richest person in the world with a net worth of $90 billion. But a U.S. financier told senators Thursday that he believed the title belonged to someone else, and it is not Bill Gates.

According to Bill Browder, CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, Russian President Vladimir Putin is richer than both Bezos and Gates combined.

"I believe he is worth $200 billion," Browder told the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

And Browder should know. The financier, whose company was once the largest portfolio investor in Russia, famously retained Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky to investigate corruption, and in 2008 the lawyer uncovered a $230 million tax fraud that implicated Russian officials in a cover up. Russian authorities jailed Magnitsky shortly after the discovery and he died in prison a year later. Full story...

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Panama Papers lead to Pakistan prime minister's condemnation and resignation...

On Friday, the Supreme Court of Pakistan disqualified Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for not disclosing his employment with FZE Capital, in a landmark decision in the Panamagate case.

Full text of Panama case verdict released by Supreme Court

The 5-o verdict was announced by a five-judge bench, headed by Justice Asif Saeed Khosa – the same judge who had commenced his dissenting note in the April 20 judgment with a quote from The Godfather, a novel by Mario Puzo about a mafia family in Italy. The verdict declared Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ‘disqualified’ for concealing his employment.

“Following the verdict, Nawaz Sharif has resigned from his responsibilities as prime minister,” a spokesman for PM’s office said in a statement. Full story...

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Friday, July 28, 2017

A familiar WhatsApp scam has reappeared in order to try and trick people ...

A familiar WhatsApp scam has reappeared in order to try and trick people into supplying their bank details to cyber criminals.

The scam takes the form of an official-looking message that warns people their "trial service" of the popular instant messaging app is coming to an end.

“Our records indicate that your WhatsApp trial service is exceeding the one-year period,” it reads.

“At the completion of your trial period your WhatsApp will no longer be able to send or receive message [sic]. To continue using WhatsApp without interuption [sic], we need you to subscribe for any of our subscription periods.” Full story...

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Philippine police 'dumping bodies' of drug war victims...

Philippine fishermen have revealed that they have been dumping bodies of drug suspects, killed as part of the country's so-called war on drugs, on the orders of the police.

The bodies, called "trash" by authorities, have been thrown on the sides of highways and in Manila Bay over the past year.

"Police are the ones coming to my house ordering me to take out trash," said Manuel, a local fisherman who has personally disposed off 20 bodies.

"We usually throw them out in Manila Bay," he told Al Jazeera. "Sometimes we put weights on it, so it doesn't float up." Full story...

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Calling your husband by name for the first time...

What's in a name? A lot, if you're an Indian wife and the name in question is your husband's. I learned this early on in life.

My parents were married for 73 years until my father died last year. At the time of their wedding, my mother was less than 11 and he had just turned 15.

In the decades they were together, first in a tiny village in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and later in Kolkata (then Calcutta), she never called him by his name.

When speaking to us children, she always referred to him as "babuji" - the Hindi word for "father" that we used. When addressing him directly, she always said "Hey ho", which means roughly "Hey you".

As teenagers when we became aware of the fact, we made fun of her. We tried to trick her into saying his name just once. But she never did. Full story...

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Thursday, July 27, 2017

Doctors are prescribing DEADLY fentanyl for cash and lavish dinners, reveals report..

An opioid that is 50 times stronger than pure heroin (and 100 times more potent than morphine) is being over-prescribed by physicians nationwide as the delineation between medical ethics and personal gain fades even further. Fentanyl, a powerful prescription pain medication, is an entirely synthetic opioid initially meant to ease cancer patients to death. Even with its intended purpose, health regulation groups repeatedly warn of the drug’s deadly side effects and caution doctors to only prescribe it as a last resort. That being said, recent data reveals that more doctors are prescribing fentanyl to their patients, even for cases such as tonsillitis.

An explosive report on NJ.com showed that the number of fentanyl dispensed in the state since late 2011 is enough to allow every person who has died of cancer in New Jersey to fill a prescription for the drug eight times. Similarly, between 2013 and 2015, the number of fentanyl-related deaths in New Jersey rose from 42 to 417.

Nationwide awareness on the dangers of this prescription drug began last year, when pop music icon, Prince, died of a fentanyl overdose. Unlike other opioids listed under the same category (such as oxycodone, morphine, and hydrocodonne), fentanyl is highly-addictive and easier to source (the drug is supposedly a favorite in the black market trade other than it being readily available as a prescription). This has led to a worrisome trend of fentanyl-related deaths increasing nationwide. The latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data showed that from 2014 to 2015, fentanyl-related death shot up by around 73 percent. In the same period, deaths related to other legal prescription drugs rose by only four percent. Full story...

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The carers who do not care: From biting and spraying deodorant in the face of dementia patients to stealing their savings, sickening gallery reveals bullies guilty of abusing the elderly...

At first glance they have little in common: men and women of disparate ages and racial backgrounds, from all four corners of the country.

But they share one utterly shameful bond; they have all mistreated vulnerable elderly people in their care, with a depravity that is truly sickening.

Two weeks ago, a Mail investigation highlighted shocking levels of abuse of the elderly by so-called carers in Britain, as well as the derisory sentences handed down to those who are caught.

The charity Action on Elder Abuse (elderabuse.org.uk; 080 8808 8141) is campaigning for a change in the law so that crimes against senior citizens are recognised as aggravated offences. Full story...

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Yemen grappling with ‘vicious’ combination of worst crises: UN

The United Nations has warned that the catastrophic situation in Yemen is turning into a combination of the world’s worst humanitarian crises amid almost daily Saudi bombardment of the impoverished Arab nation.

In a joint statement on Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Program (WFP) said Yemen is grappling with “the world’s worst cholera outbreak in the midst of the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.”

“In the last three months alone, 400,000 cases of suspected cholera and nearly 1,900 associated deaths have been recorded. Vital health, water and sanitation facilities have been crippled by more than 2 years of hostilities, and created the ideal conditions for diseases to spread,” the statement said.

“The country is on the brink of famine, with over 60 per cent of the population not knowing where their next meal will come from. Nearly 2 million Yemeni children are acutely malnourished. Malnutrition makes them more susceptible to cholera; diseases create more malnutrition. A vicious combination,” the statement added.


The executive directors of the WHO, UNICEF and the WFP arrived in Yemen on Monday, visiting the southern province of Aden and the country’s capital, Sana’a. Full story...

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‘Sell your wife if you can’t afford toilet’: Indian official goes viral after insulting villager...

An Indian magistrate trying to promote cleanliness is under fire after telling a man to “sell his wife” if he can’t afford to pay for a toilet in his house.

Kanwal Tanuj, a magistrate from the district of Bihar, made the comments during an event in Jamhor Block last Friday, which was aimed at promoting the country's nationwide cleanliness campaign.

The Clean India Mission (Swachh Bharat Abhiyan) is a scheme launched by the Indian government which is aiming to raise the standards of cleanliness in cities and towns across the country.

The Indian Express reported that Tanuj opened his speech by calling on the crowd to obey the campaign’s sanitation standards in order to safeguard the dignity of women. Full story...

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Albert Einstein in Lincoln University, 1946...


The 16 years' war and its cost...

Every night on American TV you can see repeating commercials to raise money for young people who’ve had limbs blown off. It might be cruel to ask the following question in the presence of these veterans, but millions of other people have been forced to pay for all of this, and they need to be protected as well.

And so, with condolences to the young people who signed up for these wars believing they were actually defending the good, we must ask this question: What was the payoff?

Some people will evade this question by maintaining that “freedom was preserved,” but that statement rests on a nebulous and self-serving definition of freedom… a definition that boils down to, “What we have is freedom.” Or it’s variant: “It’s worse in North Korea; therefore we’re free.” These lines of reasoning, of course, are fallacious.

So, with apologies where due, I must assert that the payoff from all the bloodshed in Afghanistan and Iraq has been negligible. Both places are still a mess, and both places will likely remain a mess for a long, long time.

Almost 16 years of war have gone by in Afghanistan and more than 14 in Iraq. I think we should admit that any possibility of a “respectable win” is long past. Full story...

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The older generations are now more tech savvy and were the secret weapon behind Donald Trump’s campaign...

Yesterday I had to go to the AT&T store to activate my phone. Why? Because since the AT&T merger with DirecTV their website has become a cluttered cesspool of junk. That speaks volumes considering their website has always been bogged down with useless information. It took multiple search engine alterations to navigate their website to find the sim card activation page. After a few attempts of trying to enter my information I finally resigned myself to trudging to their store.

The only reason I even tolerate AT&T’s website is because I hate going to their store and dealing with my own age group. It might come as a surprise to many, but I can’t be bothered with Millennials working in tech stores. There’s too many haphazard sales pitches and bullshit techno worship from my own generation related to technology. I don’t care about the latest model of the exact same phone I already own because it’s a bit thinner or the screen is slightly wider.

But, this trip was different…

The AT&T store I went to was employed with middle aged women. After a quick scan I realized nobody behind the counter was under the age of fifty. The woman who entered my information was quick and efficient. There wasn’t any finger pecking on her tablet as I would’ve expected. She knew all the plans and the best way to set up my new account. I was out of the store in five minutes with no problems. Full story...

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Pakistan village council orders 'revenge rape' of girl...

Some 20 people from Multan, Pakistan, have been arrested for ordering the rape of a teenage girl, in revenge for a rape her brother allegedly committed.

Police said the families of the two girls are related.

Members of both had joined forces to decide what should be done.

"A jirga [village council] had ordered the rape of a 16-year-old girl as punishment, as her brother had raped a 12-year-old," police official Allah Baksh told AFP.

He said the village council was approached earlier this month by a man who said his 12-year-old sister had been raped by their cousin. Full story...

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Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Homeschool is booming, new study shows...

A report issued this week by The Pioneer Institute, a Boston-based a public policy think tank, sheds light on the rapid growth and diversity of the U.S. homeschooling population.

Co-authored by William Heuer and William Donovan, the comprehensive white paper explains that despite a paucity of support from government officials--and outright opposition by the nation's largest teachers’ union--homeschooling has gained in both popularity and reach over the past several decades.

According to the latest 2012 National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data, there are over 1.8 million homeschoolers nationwide, representing 3.4 percent of the overall U.S. K-12 school-age population. More recent data place the number of homeschoolers at well over 2 million children, placing it on par with the number of children currently enrolled in U.S. public charter schools.

The report highlights that "there is no typical homeschooler or homeschooling family," as the "one size fits all" prototype of conventional public schools does not apply to homeschooling families who tailor their educational approach to the needs and values of their family and their children. The report states: Full story...

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French police blasted for 'routinely' using pepper spray on migrants...

French police are regularly using pepper spray against migrants in Calais, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Wednesday, an accusation denied by authorities.

In a report entitled "Like living in hell" the use of pepper spray against migrants massed in the northern coastal city is described as "routine".

"Police use of pepper spray in Calais is so common that many asylum seekers and migrants had difficulty recalling precisely how many times they had been sprayed," the report said.

Of 61 migrants questioned by the prominent international human rights group between the end of June and the beginning of July, 55 said they had been sprayed during the two weeks before the interview, and some said they had been sprayed every day, the author of the report, Michael Garcia Bochenek, told AFP. Full story...

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Did antidepressants help make this man a mass-murderer?

He slumps wild-eyed across the desk from detectives, with a mess of badly dyed red hair, his clothes hanging off him.

James Holmes looks every inch the monster who coldly executed 12 innocent people and injured dozens more at a midnight screening of the Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises.

Holmes had carried out the killings with an arsenal of weaponry he had accumulated in the preceding weeks. He had planned the shootings down to the tiniest detail, even booby-trapping his own apartment with home-made bombs to divert police resources while he launched the attack.

Watching a recording of his interview at the police station, conducted just hours after he carried out one of the worst mass shootings in recent US history, who could feel anything but loathing for this callous 24-year-old graduate student? When asked how to spell his surname, Holmes cockily replies, “Like Sherlock”. Full story...

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Coffee leads to longer life...

What would you find if you followed three quarters of a million people and took notes on their longevity in light of their coffee drinking habits? That was the premise of two huge studies that lasted nearly 16 years in 10 European countries. What they concluded at the end — that a “moderate” three cups a day is perfectly fine — should be encouraging to people who’ve decided they don’t really care about the outcome; that’s just how dedicated they are to that cup of liquid energy.

But the outcome was this: Coffee may not keep you from dying, but it may impact how soon it occurs. As Reuters reported, men were about 12 percent less likely to die during the follow-up period if they were coffee drinkers compared to men who didn’t indulge at all. Similarly, coffee-drinking women were about 7 percent less likely to die during the same period.1

So the next logical question is, what’s the reason? Well, researchers found that while people differ in numerous ways in those 10 countries, they had one thing in common: For all the participants, coffee was associated with a decreased rate of death from digestive diseases.2,3 For women there was a lower risk of death from circulatory and cerebrovascular diseases. Medical News Today noted: Full story...

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Amazon accused of raising prices on Prime Day deals to dupe customers into bogus bargains...

A manufacturer says Amazon has been raising prices of products to double their actual recommended retail price, before artificially "lowering" the cost to create a fake "discount" during its Prime Day promotion.

Remodeez is a startup based in Charlotte, North Carolina that has invented non-toxic, odourless foot and bag deodorisers. The recommended retail price of one of its deodoriser products is $9.99 (£7.67), as agreed between Remodeez's founder Jason Jacobs and Amazon since 2015.

However, according to Jacobs, during the recent Prime Day event held on 10-11 July, Amazon said that the product usually retails at $15.42, but that it had been dropped down to the bargain price of "$9.99 for Amazon Prime Day".

Even worse, by the end of the 30-hour-long promotion, Remodeez says that the recommended retail price of the deodoriser product had for some reason been bumped up to $18.44. Full story...

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Tuesday, July 25, 2017

The trolls on Sunny Leone’s photo with adopted child show exactly how prejudiced we are...

Sunny Leone posted a photo on Facebook with her husband Daniel Weber and the little girl they adopted. The family looks happy with Nisha, the newest addition, and Sunny would have posted the picture to share the news with her fans.

A lot of fans congratulated her, but things took an ugly turn when some people proved they just could not go past their prejudice.

If you see the post now, most of the comments are overwhelmingly positive, supportive and congratulatory. But do a little digging in the comments section and it’s not difficult to find people making fun of Nisha’s dark complexion and even slut shaming Sunny.

Take a look at this man’s comments, who took to reiterating multiple times how Sunny should have her own children so she can pass on her ‘beauty’. Some people even suggest that the child should be ‘returned’ because she is dark skinned, and hence, ugly. Full story...

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Gaza in context...

The billion-dollar palaces of Apple, Facebook and Google...

We know by now that the internet is a giant playpen, a landscape of toys, distractions and instant gratification, of chirps and squeaks and bright, shiny things – plus, to be sure, ugly, horrid beasties lurking in all the softness – apparently without horizon. Graphics – rounded corners, lower case, Google’s primary colours, Twitter’s birdie, Facebook’s shades of blue – enhance the innocence and infantilism. It is a world, as Jonathan Franzen once said, “so responsive to our wishes as to be, effectively, a mere extension of the self”. Until we chance on the bars of the playpen and find that there are places we can’t go and that it is in the gift of the grown-ups on the other side to set or move the limits to our freedom.

We’re talking here of virtual space. But those grown-ups, the tech giants, Apple, Facebook, Google and the rest, are also in the business of building physical billion-dollar enclaves for their thousands of employees. Here too they create calibrated lands of fun, wherein staff offer their lives, body and soul, day and night, in return for gyms, Olympic-sized swimming pools, climbing walls, basketball courts, running tracks and hiking trails, indoor football pitches, massage rooms and hanging gardens, performance venues, amiable art and lovable graphics. They have been doing this for a while – what is changing is the sheer scale and extravagance of these places.

For the tech giants are now in the same position as great powers in the past – the bankers of the Italian Renaissance, the skyscraper-builders of the 20th century, the Emperor Augustus, Victorian railway companies – whereby, whether they want to or not, their size and wealth find expression in spectacular architecture. As Deyan Sudjic, formerly of this parish and now director of the Design Museum, wrote in his book The Edifice Complex, the execution of architecture “has always been at the discretion of those with their hands on the levers of power”. Having as much sense of their own importance as those previous powers, tech companies probably don’t mind commissioning structures that define their time. Full story...

Can pills for depression turn you into a killer?

David Carmichael, 59, calmly and methodically describes the events leading up to the day he killed his 11‑year-old son Ian.

He maintains his composure right up to the point when he describes his boy: ‘Oh man, he was the most loving child.’

His face clouds and he rocks with pain. ‘We spent so much time together and we got along great. He was a beautiful boy, a beautiful gift. I miss him so much.’

Ian had epilepsy and very mild dyslexia, but had no problems other than being a little behind with his reading. David was a nurturing and devoted dad, a sports coach from Toronto, Canada, who’d spent his entire professional life working with children.

But when David took Ian’s life during a psychotic episode, he was convinced that his wife Beth and daughter Gillian would thank him for getting rid of the ‘intolerable’ burden Ian had become. Full story...

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Amnesty calls on Saudi Arabia to halt execution of 14 dissenters...

Human rights group Amnesty International has called on Saudi Arabia to halt the executions of 14 individuals who were sentenced to death following a “grossly unfair mass trial” as part of the kingdom’s “bloody execution spree.”

“By confirming these sentences Saudi Arabia’s authorities have displayed their ruthless commitment to the use of the death penalty as a weapon to crush dissent and neutralize political opponents,” said Amnesty’s director of campaigns for the Middle-East, Samah Hadid, on Monday.

The 14 individuals were convicted over charges of “armed rebellion against the ruler” by, among other things, “participating in shooting at security personnel, security vehicles," “preparing and using Molotov Cocktail bombs," “theft and armed robbery” and “inciting chaos, organizing and participating in riots."

Legal documents show that the men were subjected to lengthy pre-trial imprisonment and had been tortured and ill-treated during their interrogation in which they confessed. Full story...

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The real John McCain..

As soon as John McCain had been diagnosed with brain cancer, Democrats and Republicans in Washington and the press spared no opportunity to lavish praise upon this lifelong government employee.

The truth, though, is that in exchange for the billions and billions of dollars that McCain has confiscated from them for well over three decades, taxpayers have received an ever-burgeoning administrative state, relentless illegal immigration from the Third World, and, of course, war—and all while McCain has pretended to be a “conservative.”

Thanks to his labors, hundreds of thousands of human beings, both foreign and American alike, are now dead.

And hundreds of thousands more are traumatized, orphaned, homeless, maimed, and continually besieged by those murderous terrorist organizations, like ISIS, that have taken over their countries after McCain’s policies prevailed. Full story...

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Ants among Elephants: The defiance of an 'untouchable' New York subway worker...

In Sanskrit, the main language used by scholars in ancient India and sometimes referred to as the language of gods, her first name means one of noble birth.

The irony is laid bare by Sujatha Gidla whose recent memoir speaks of her life and her family and the plight of 300 millions Dalits ("oppressed" in Sanskrit), formerly known as untouchables in India.

An expressive personal examination of her life, her parents, especially her mother, grandparents and Satyamurthy, a Maoist uncle who hoped revolution would help improve the caste discrimination his people suffered, Ants Among Elephants has quickly become the toast of critics and readers in America.

The New York Times said the "unsentimental, deeply poignant book" gives "readers an unsettling and visceral understanding of how discrimination, segregation and stereotypes have endured throughout the second half of the 20th Century and today".

Reviewer Michiko Kakutani wrote that Gidla's family stories reveal how "ancient prejudices persist in contemporary India, and how those prejudices are being challenged by the disenfranchised". Full story...

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Couple jailed total of 124 months for talisman scam in Singapore...

An elderly couple who swindled victims of more than S$800,000 (RM2,512,467) over 10 years, by selling talismans touted to have “special powers”, was sentenced to jail yesterday by a district court judge.

Ng Kim Yew, 62, was sentenced to 69 months’ jail, while her husband Ong Choon Lin, 67, was sentenced to 55 months’ jail.

They were each convicted of 20 charges, involving three victims, of abetment by conspiring to cheat from 2005 to October 2015.

The judge took into consideration 23 charges in sentencing Ng and 18 charges in sentencing Ong.

The total amount involved in Ng’s case was S$816,868, while that for Ong was S$734,068.

 During the 23-day trial, the court heard that the couple cheated three victims, who cannot be identified, of S$486, 268. Full story...

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Madness in the Med: how charity rescue boats exacerbate the refugee crisis...

Following the EU’s deal with Turkey over people smuggling, the issue of migrants trying to cross, and quite often drowning in, the Mediterranean has largely disappeared from the British media. There have been no more images like that of three-year-old Alan Kurdi, washed up on a Turkish beach after the rubber dinghy in which his family were trying to reach the Greek island of Kos capsized in August 2015.

Now, people smugglers and migrants know there is little point in trying to make the crossing from Turkey to Greece because they will only be sent back, in return for the EU taking refugees directly from camps in Turkey. The deal has successfully curtailed the activities of criminal gangs operating in the eastern Mediterranean: in the first six months of this year arrivals in Greece had fallen by 93 per cent compared with a year earlier.

But the problem hasn’t gone away; it has shifted westwards to Italy, where things just go from bad to worse. Last year a record 181,000 migrants arrived there by sea, nearly all from Libya, and this year there are sure to be many more: over 90,000 have so far been ferried across the Mediterranean from near the Libyan coast to Sicily, 300 miles away, according to the latest figures from IOM, the UN migration agency. Earlier this week IOM reported that 2,359 migrants have died trying to cross the Mediterranean already this year, on top of 5,083 deaths last year and 2,777 in 2015. Full story...

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