Bonjour Planet Earth

Thursday, June 04, 2015

Swiss supermarkets stop sales of glyphosate over health concerns...

Swiss supermarket giants Coop and Migros have announced that they will no longer sell products that contain glyphosate, following the World Health Organization’s report stating that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen. They have also announced that they will be exploring non-toxic alternative weed-killers.

Coop stated last week that “Even if the (Swiss) Federal Office for Agriculture (BLW) judges glyphosate can be continued to be sold without a health hazard for the population, we decided on Monday 18th May to no longer sell any glyphosate-based products in Coop supermarkets and Coop Building & Hobby hardware stores.” It is a preventive measure. “…we don’t sell the concentrate, but only a very diluted form, the ready-made products. These concentrations are up to 48 times lower than the range used in agricultural products.”

Switzerland’s largest retail company Migros will also stop selling products containing glyphosate. A Migros spokesperson said that they would begin as early as this week to remove the products from their shelves.

Coop’s and Migros’s decisions followed German giant retailer REWE Group’s decision, announced in early May, to remove glyphosate herbicides from the shelves of their 350 ‘toom Baumarkt DIY’ starting in September.

The World’s number one herbicide and the chemical that the business model of the Biotech industry is based on – Glyphosate – is now under huge scrutiny worldwide due to the health safety concerns raised by the World Health Organization in March 2015.

If you would like to find out more information on Glyphosate herbicides and the health concerns related to them please visit: www.feedtheworld.info. Source...

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It doesn't pay to insult Lee Kuan Yew, dead or not...

Shortly after the March 23 death of the towering leader Lee Kuan Yew, who had ruled Singapore with an iron hand directly or behind the scenes for much of the 56 years since he took power in 1959, a youth named Amos Yee Pang Sang uploaded a an obscenity-laced nine-minute video onto YouTube criticizing Lee and saying he was glad the patriarch was dead.

The furor over the 16-year-old’s action approximates what might happen if someone delivered a similarly insulting message in North Korea about Kim Jong-Il. The press quoted “experts” who called him mentally deficient and a rabble-rouser. Within hours, at least 22 public complaints had been filed with the Singapore police, demanding an investigation. Although the video was almost immediately taken down from Yee’s YouTube channel, he was arrested and charged with intending to “wound the religious feelings of Christians.” On his way to court, a 49-year-old assailant leapt out of the crowd to beat him in the face.

The incident raises troubling questions about Singapore’s maturity as a culture despite its position as an intensively developed and highly educated society with the third-highest gross domestic product in the world and the second in Asia behind Macau. Yee is not alone by any means. In early May, editors of The Real Singapore were threatened with fines of up to S$200,000 (about US$150,000) and a maximum three years in prison and their website was shut down after authorities deemed it to be offensive. Full story...

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Red Cross spent half a billion dollars to build six homes in Haiti...

The American Red Cross raised more than half a billion dollars to bring relief to Haiti after the devastating 2010 earthquake there, but it grossly overstated what the money bought.

Although the organization claimed to have provided housing to more than 130,000 people, it actually only built six permanent homes, according to a report by ProPublica and NPR.

That year, the Red Cross kicked off a big project to revitalize the neighborhood of Campeche in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. However, it has yet to build any homes in the neighborhood, and its residents still live in shacks without access to clean water, electricity, and basic sanitation.

Much of the Red Cross’s failure stems from passing on the money to other groups with more expertise in building projects, which resulted in less of the funds reaching those in need, ProPublica found.

“Like many humanitarian organizations responding in Haiti, the American Red Cross met complications in relation to government coordination delays, disputes over land ownership, delays at Haitian customs, challenges finding qualified staff who were in short supply and high demand, and the cholera outbreak, among other challenges,” the Red Cross told ProPublica.

This is not the only case of the non-profit being challenged about its response to disasters. It received stinging criticism over its relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina and complaints about its spending of donations on internal expenses. Source...

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Former Fifa official Chuck Blazer admits accepting bribes for France and South Africa World Cups...

Former top Fifa official Chuck Blazer has admitted that he and others on the executive committee agreed to accept bribes in conjunction with the choice of South Africa as 2010 World Cup host.

The American said he also helped to arrange bribes over the 1998 event.

The admissions come in a newly released transcript from a 2013 US hearing in which he pleads guilty to 10 charges.

The US has launched a wide-ranging criminal case that engulfed Fifa and led President Sepp Blatter to resign.

The US prosecutors last week indicted 14 people on charges of bribery, racketeering and money laundering. Four others had already been charged, including Mr Blazer.

The US justice department alleges they accepted bribes and kickbacks estimated at more than $150m (£97m) over a 24-year period. Full story...

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Wednesday, June 03, 2015

Aung San Suu Kyi: Where are you?

From the early 1990s until her final release from house arrest in 2010 she was a brave symbol of defiance against what was then a brutal military dictatorship.

Ms Suu Kyi's image was on student walls around the world, Bono even wrote a song about her. She became synonymous with the global struggle for democracy and human rights.

Now at liberty, living in the same Yangon house but in a much-changed country, Aung San Suu Kyi is free to speak her mind. But she's selective about her causes.

In parliament, where she sits as an opposition MP, the 69-year-old frequently criticises the government for the slow pace of reform, and restates her increasingly forlorn demands for constitutional change.

But on the persecution of Myanmar's most famously forgotten minority Ms Suu Kyi is silent. Full story...

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How Ikea uses food to trick you into spending...

HAVE you ever wondered why the food at Ikea is so cheap?

No, it’s not because they want to apologise for making you assemble your own furniture.

A recent discussion on question-and-answer site Quora has revealed some of the best mind tricks restaurants use to get customers to pay more.

Surprisingly, Ikea, which you wouldn’t think of as a traditional restaurant and more of a Swedish relationship minefield, rates at the top for tricky business.

Chris Spear, a chef who previously worked at an Ikea food-service operation, explained that the whole purpose of the quick-service restaurants is to “reinforce their low price profile” on items in the rest of the store, even if it means selling food at a loss.

“You have no idea how much a couch costs. You see one you like for $599. Is that a good price? You have no idea because you’ve never bought a couch before,” he explained. Full story...

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Fears...

Facebook just announced a controversial move that is going to infuriate the police state...

As the dubious provisions of the PATRIOT Act expired last night at midnight, the NSA began rolling up its cords, turned off their computer monitors and took to rewriting their resumes to find new work. Oh wait, sorry, that didn’t happen at all.

No surveillance sites have been shut down, no NSA employees have been laid off, and business as usual went off without a hitch this morning.

If the government has proven anything over the last decade and a half, it’s that they are not afraid of lying. Assange, Manning, and Snowden have all exposed illegal functions of the US government that we were told never existed.

The bottom line is that short of a radical change in the US government, domestic spying will continue; regardless of the public dog and pony shows implying otherwise.

More and more Americans realize the need to keep their information private and companies are responding to this demand. Full story...

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Your entire life is an ILLUSION: New test backs up theory that the world doesn’t exist until we look at it...

The universe doesn't exist if we stop looking at it.

This is according a famous theory in quantum mechanics which argues that a particle's past behaviour changes based on what we see.

Now, scientists have performed a new experiment proving this theory to be true on the scale of atoms.

According to the rules of quantum mechanics, the boundary between the 'world out there' and our own subjective consciousness are blurred.

When physicists look at atoms or particles of light, what they see depends on how they have set up their experiment.

To test this, physicists at the Australian National University recently conducted what is known as the John Wheeler's delayed-choice thought experiment. Full story...

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German public supports World Cup boycott...

Can you imagine a World Cup without the title holders Germany? More than half of Germans can, according to a YouGov poll.

Unless FIFA makes efforts to fight corruption by reforming itself, 53 percent of Germans would support a boycott by their national team of the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

Back in December this proportion was 40 percent, which shows how trust is seriously waning trust in football's highest authority.

88 percent of the people surveyed said that corruption probably exists in the international organization, and 81 percent are convinced that Sepp Blatter is personally involved.

Last week seven senior FIFA figures were arrested by Swiss police in their Zurich hotel of their presidential election. The election continued as normal and Sepp Blatter was re-elected as president, despite widespread calls for him to step down. Full story...

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Qatar World Cup: Campaign to boycott the 2022 World Cup underway...

India: Man beheaded in ritual sacrifice for a better harvest...

The Indian police are investigating the death of a 55-year-old man beheaded in what is thought to be a ritual sacrifice intended to conjure up a better harvest.

The headless corpse of Thepa Kharia was found in his house in a remote village in the state of Jharkhand, eastern India.

Kharia's brother told police that a group of occultists, known as Orkas, decapitated the man after breaking in his house in order to carry out a sacrifice calling for more rain and better crop yields.

The Hindustan Times quoted Khana's brother as saying: "Orkas can be anyone, from farmers to tantriks. They bury the head in the field and expect that the sacrifice will yield good harvest for the community."

Ajay Kumar Thakur, the officer investigating the murder, told news agency AFP: "The family says the occultists killed him for the ritual. His head is still missing." Full story...

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Life with a $100 smartphone: How low-cost phones are rapidly changing lives in India

Bharath Kumar has the husky build of a rugby player, which comes in handy as he lugs around a large backpack filled with packages to deliver on his patch of Bangalore. That and ownership of a good scooter or motorcycle were among prerequisites the 25-year-old met about a year back when he switched jobs so he could motor around town, sometimes listening to music, delivering packages from Amazon.com’s Indian unit.

“In my spare time, I like to check the Internet,” he said. He has a 3G data connection and likes to use it.

Accessing the mobile Web would have been unthinkable for Kumar just a few years ago when feature phones dominated the Indian market. But now, Chinese mobile phone manufacturers like Lenovo, Xiaomi and Huawei, and Indian manufacturers like Micromax, Intex and Lava are flooding the market with mostly Android-compatible smartphones that cost a little more than $100, a price point that makes it affordable for a vast swath of the Indian public.

Kumar has the equivalent of a high school diploma, but street smarts and familiarity with smartphones, picked up among friends and through innate curiosity, opened up opportunities. As India’s online shopping scene grew, and the supply chain needed thousands of able-bodied youth, Kumar got a job with the staffing firm that hires out “delivery associates” to the country’s rising e-commerce giants and their American competitor Amazon.com Inc.

Such associates typically take home about $200 a month. They also get money to cover their gasoline expenses, with a little bit left over. That means even a $100 smartphone can cost upwards of half the associate’s salary, but the returns are well worth it. With diligence, some can expect to rise up the chain. Internet access means easier job searches. Full story...

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279 migrant Indian workers died in Qatar last year, Amnesty report says...

As many as 279 migrant workers from India, one of the largest migrant worker sending countries, died in 2014 in Qatar - the host of 2022 Fifa World Cup, Amnesty International said in its latest report.

Titled "Promising Little, Delivering Less: Qatar and Migrant Abuse ahead of the 2022 Football World Cup", the report cites official statistics of the government of India.

According to figures released by the London-based human rights body, 279 Indian migrant workers died in Qatar in 2014. These figures are of migrant worker deaths from all causes, including fatalities not directly related to labour conditions.

"441 number of migrant workers from India and Nepal, the largest migrant worker sending countries, who died in Qatar in 2014," says the report, that puts the number of Nepalese deaths at 162.

At the heart of Qatar's construction boom and the unprecedented global scrutiny on the country is the 2022 Fifa Football World Cup. Three issues have dominated global media coverage of the World Cup in Qatar: allegations of corruption in the tournament bidding process; concerns about the summer temperatures in Qatar; and the exploitation of migrant construction workers. Full story...

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'Snowden could come to Norway to collect prize'

Norwegian Academy of Literature and Freedom of Expression on Monday sent a letter to Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg and Justice Minister Anders Anundsen asking them to grant assurances to the NSA whistleblower that he would not be extradited to the US, where he is accused of spying, if he entered Norwegian territory.

“We have asked to have a meeting with them, so that we can look together constructively at how we can achieve this,” the academy’s Kristenn Einarson told Norway’s NRK channel.

Snorre Valen and Bård Vegar Solhjell, from Norway’s Socialist Left Party, called on their colleagues in parliament to find a way for Snowden to enter .

“I would challenge all members of parliament, from all parties, to take a stand,” Solhjell, who nominated Snowden last for the Nobel Peace Prize last year, said. Full story...

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Fifa's Sepp Blatter 'under investigation in US'

Fifa president Sepp Blatter is being investigated by US officials as part of their inquiry into corruption at the world football body, US media say.

The news came hours after Mr Blatter announced that he was stepping down from his role.

US prosecutors launched a criminal inquiry last week, with seven Fifa officials arrested in Switzerland, part of a group of 14 people indicted.

Two days after the arrests, Mr Blatter was re-elected president of Fifa.

However, he said on Tuesday that it appeared the mandate he had been given "does not seem to be supported by everyone in the world". Full story...

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Tuesday, June 02, 2015

Reforming Fifa will be an even more messy job than exposing it...

There he was, doing his lovable leader act: the little father of all the world, humble and slightly dishevelled. The great suit was back before the world: but this time the clothes have no emperor. It was time for farewell.

Sepp Blatter has resigned as president of Fifa. He was able to keep on for 17 years on a mixture of dazzling effrontery and the fact that so many people in Fifa were actually in favour of a corrupt system. It’s so much easier to deal with people when you can price their degree of self-interest with complete precision.

Many, many people had been happy with the corrupt system of running world football: but drew the line when everyone could plainly see that it was stinking. I remember seeing a hippo carcass two days old, its surface visibly moving with maggots and its scent discernible from long range. That’s Fifa.

They re-elected Nixon after Watergate and it took two more years to get him out. They re-elected Blatter, but he lasted only a few more days before announcing that a new candidate would be chosen at an extraordinary congress to be held as soon as possible. Full story...

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International doctors call for immediate ban on Monsanto's cancer-causing glyphosate herbicide...

In response to a recent International Agency for Research on Cancer report, which found that the Monsanto herbicide glyphosate "probably" causes cancer in humans, a cohort of international doctors is now petitioning the European Union Parliament, the EU Commission, and several other health and food safety authorities to take action by banning the use of this prolific chemical.

A letter written on May 14, 2015, by the International Society of Doctors for the Environment, or ISDE, contends that a growing body of evidence shows that glyphosate, as well as dozens of other commonly used crop chemicals, is dangerous to both people and the environment. Signed by the group's president, it calls on glyphosate in particular to be outlawed with no exceptions.

"The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), belonging to the World Health Organization (WHO), has recently published an assessment of carcinogenicity of the following organophosphate agrochemicals: glyphosate, tetrachlorvinphos, parathion, malathion, [and] diazinon," the letter reads.

"Converging sources of evidence show that chronic exposure to insecticides and herbicides has to be considered a major source of environmental deterioration and health hazard at population level." Full story...

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Forget credit cards, now you can pay with your eyes...

In a spy movie, the protagonist or the villain, sneaking in to a secure facility, might trick an eye scanner into letting him or her through a locked door. But over in Japan, the dystopian-sounding iris scan is now being used for more pedestrian purposes: to pay for a new pair of socks or the latest manga.

A new phone, released this month by Japanese telecommunications giant NTT Docomo, comes with iris recognition technology. Fujitsu’s Arrows NX F-04G phone allows users to unlock websites and access stored information using only their eyes, scanned by the phone’s front-facing camera. This means users can store credit card information and then pay for online purchases simply by staring into the screen.

At 55,728 Japanese yen (about $450), Arrows is the first commercially available phone to use this technology. Iris scanning is not new, but the technology has long been prohibitively expensive. The Arrows iris scanner meets standards set by the FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance, an industry consortium dedicated to developing technical specifications for password-less online authentication. FIDO offers a protocol companies can follow to make sure their technology can interact with others. Members include Google, PayPal, Mastercard and Visa. Full story...

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Three boys murdered by VIP and MP paedophile ring operating out of luxury flats near Westminster...

Three boys were murdered by members of a VIP paedophile gang operating from the luxury Dolphin Square flats complex frequented by MPs and other dignitaries, it has been claimed.

It was said one lad aged 10 or 11 had been deliberately mown down with a car while another was said to have been strangled by a Tory MP.

A witness, named only Nick, made the allegations to London’s Metropolitan Police last year - sparking a murder inquiry named Operation Midland.

The Westminster-based gang including high ranking perverts is said to have carried out a decade long campaign of abuse across London and the Home Counties, including on military bases. Full story...

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Google makes it easier to understand what data you're giving it...

We give Google a lot of personal information, sometimes without realizing it. On Tuesday, fulfilling a promise that it made during last week's Google I/O, the search giant redesigned its My Account page to show users what data they surrender and what the company does with it.

"According to a recent Pew study, 93 percent of people think it’s important to control access to their personal information, and 90 percent care about the type of information that’s collected about them," Account Controls and Settings Product Manager Guemmy Kim wrote in a blog post. ""But only 9 percent feel they have 'a lot' of control over it. We want to change that."

The new My Account page displays the information Google services collect and provides context for how it is used. Among the page's new features are two step-by-step guides, Privacy Checkup and Security Checkup, that walk users through their current settings and suggest tweaks to improve privacy and security.

My Account also gives users more control over what information can be used in Google products like Search, Maps, and YouTube. If you want to turn off location settings or Web activity, you can—although Google slyly warns you that doing so will make your browsing experience less convenient. Full story...

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A modest proposal to end dating anarchy and regulate the dating market...

Dating and sex, as the means to procreate, are our biological imperative. How can we leave something so critically important to the very future of humanity up to the free market? How can we stand by while so many people are unhappy with the quality and quantity of romance in their lives? How can we justify the veritable anarchy that is the dating world when we accept government regulation in so many other areas of our lives that are deeply personal and important?

We all recognize the importance of, for example, occupational safety regulations, food safety regulations, and regulation over the substances that people choose to put in their bodies. And we all acknowledge that without these regulations, suffering would be far more widespread.

That’s why government regulation of the dating market is long overdue. Few “industries” have been as responsible for such a massive scale of suffering as the anarchy that is the dating world. Chances are, you’ve experienced some of it yourself.

It would be impossible to calculate the full cost of dating anarchy, because the damages that come from it are often long-standing and can have wide-ranging social effects. Let’s look at just a few of the problems that are a direct consequence of this unconscionable lack of regulation. Full story...

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

An Indian LBGT organisation has said that parents are trying to turn their gay children straight by encouraging family members to rape them.

The organisation reports that there have been 15 instances of 'corrective' rapes' which were reported to them in the last five years - but that number could be much higher.

Corrective rape is a hate crime in which people are raped because of their perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.

"We are sure there are many more cases, but they go unreported, Vyjayanti Mogli, a member of crisis intervention told the Times of India.

"We came across such cases not because they reported the rape, but because they sought help to flee their homes. Full story...

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Facebook targeted by 'real name' policy protest...

Facebook's rule that people use their "real names" on the social network came under fire again Monday when drag queens, Native Americans, domestic violence survivors and others protested outside the company's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, saying they are still being harmed by the policy.

About 100 people turned out for the protest, according to Lil Miss Hot Mess, a drag queen from San Francisco.

Lil Miss Hot Mess, who declined to provide her legal name, said she and others are trying to draw attention to how Facebook users target and bully others by reporting others for using fake names on the social network.

The reporting process for "fake names" is rife with abuse, she said.

Lil Miss Hot Mess and others who had had their Facebook accounts shut down formed the #MyNameIs campaign last fall. The campaign, which has led to some concessions by Facebook, includes women who are survivors of domestic violence and Native Americans who used tribal names different than those on their driver's licenses. Full story...

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Brazil becomes 24th country to recognize Armenian genocide...

The Federal Senate of Brazil has passed a resolution condemning the Armenian Genocide.

“Brazil has become the 24th country to recognize the Armenian Genocide,” the head of Armenian President’s Chief of Staff, Vigen Sargsyan, said in a Facebook post.

According to the RA Foreign Ministry, the resolution adopted unanimously says that the “Federal Senate recognizes the Armenian Genocide, the centennial of which was marked on April 24, 2015. The Senate honors the memory of Genocide victims and highly appreciates the contribution to the economy and culture by the Genocide survivors and their heirs, who found shelter in Brazil,” the document says.

It also emphasizes that no genocide should be forgotten.

Commenting on the decision, RA Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian said that “the irreversible process of the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide continues. Brazil made its contribution to the prevention of crimes against humanity.” Full story...

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Monday, June 01, 2015

Saina Nehwal: Indian badminton's success story...

Twenty-five year old Saina Nehwal is one of the most iconic athletes in India.

Nehwal became the first Indian to reach the top of the women’s singles badminton rankings earlier this year.

Prior to that, she became a pioneer for India, flying the national flag high before anyone.

She is first and only Indian badminton player to win an Olympic medal, first to win Commonwealth Gold in women’s singles, first to win the World Junior and Commonwealth Youth titles, and was also the first Indian to win the Indian Super series title.

All this in addition to the record 16 international singles titles at the Super Series and Grand Prix Gold level. This resulted in her being called the "darling daughter of India" by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Nehwal's achievements, her focus on winning for India and her simplicity has endeared her to millions of sports fans, not only in India but abroad as well. Full story...

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Woman accused of witchcraft axed to death in Papua New Guinea...

Police in Papua New Guinea vowed to find the men who axed to death a woman accused of using witchcraft to spark a measles outbreak in the country's remote jungle highlands, a missionary said on Wednesday after meeting authorities.

The woman, Mifila, was one of four women accused with 13 of their family members of using sorcery to cause measles deaths last November in the village of Fiyawena, in Enga province, said Lutheran missionary Anton Lutz.

Women are often accused and killed in witch hunts even though laws passed in 2013 make revenge killings over black magic punishable by death. Human Rights Watch earlier this year named Papua New Guinea as one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman due to gender based violence.

Lutz, an American who grew up in the South Pacific nation, led a group of about 20 missionaries and local police to Fiyawena in January to intervene and save the women's lives. Full story...

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TPP, the secret corporate takeover...

The United States and the world are engaged in a great debate about new trade agreements. Such pacts used to be called “free-trade agreements”; in fact, they were managed trade agreements, tailored to corporate interests, largely in the US and the European Union. Today, such deals are more often referred to as “partnerships,”as in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). But they are not partnerships of equals: the US effectively dictates the terms. Fortunately, America’s “partners” are becoming increasingly resistant.

It is not hard to see why. These agreements go well beyond trade, governing investment and intellectual property as well, imposing fundamental changes to countries’ legal, judicial, and regulatory frameworks, without input or accountability through democratic institutions.

Perhaps the most invidious – and most dishonest – part of such agreements concerns investor protection. Of course, investors have to be protected against the risk that rogue governments will seize their property. But that is not what these provisions are about. There have been very few expropriations in recent decades, and investors who want to protect themselves can buy insurance from the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, a World Bank affiliate (the US and other governments provide similar insurance). Nonetheless, the US is demanding such provisions in the TPP, even though many of its “partners” have property protections and judicial systems that are as good as its own. Full story...

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Fast food ditches unhealthy ingredients…So what WERE they feeding us before?

Recently, a multitude of fast food chains and other food companies have announced their transition toward healthier ingredients. However, it is immensely disturbing to learn about the ingredients being removed before making a switch to cleaner food.

Food giants such as Chipotle, Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonald’s, Coke, and more have been boasting about their transition to natural ingredients, (Chipotle even went completely non-GMO). Although the switch to healthier alternatives is a highly admirable gesture, it makes us wonder, well… what were we eating in the first place?!

To answer that question — we’ve basically been eating flame retardant, paint, sunscreen, and other common household items. Yup.

No, we kid. Or do we?

Surprisingly — and quite disturbingly — we actually HAVE been eating ingredients that can, indeed, be found in the aforementioned items. Full story...

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FIFA is corrupt (just like everything else in sports)

Jon Stewart, as he often does, captured the moment brilliantly. When FIFA’s international officials were indicted in Brooklyn on a flurry of bribery charges, Stewart announced, “Soccer is getting its perp walk.”

But then he asked: “What if they were bankers?” Americans know what he meant. Prosecutors would explain that in banking there is crime without criminals. Yes, the leading banks were rigging the international financial market to reap gorgeous profits for themselves, but it was impossible to identify the culprits. High finance is simply too complex to pin blame on human beings.

Lawyers would then negotiate a very large fine, the big banks would pay it off and everyone could get on with business as usual. That is the way the world works now. Everything for sale, as Bob Kuttner titled his book years ago. Mere mortals cannot buy their way out of trouble, but the big boys can.

Only sports were supposed to be different. It felt like one of the few remaining venues where extraordinary talent can still compete in heroic contests and fans worldwide can invest faith and loyalty in the honest competition of human endeavors. But the rumors have been around for years, and investigators finally nailed down enough evidence to make the charges. Full story...

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FIFA crisis: South Africa 'admits $10m football payout'

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Midwives in New Zealand warned against "bad" vaccine advice...

Midwives who give bad vaccine advice to expectant parents will be held to account, the group's governing body warns.

The warning followed reports of anti-vaccine material being circulated to pregnant women by some antenatal teachers and midwives.

Midwifery Council chief executive Sharron Cole said they were concerned some midwives were undermining a health push to increase vaccination rates.

"If midwives do not give women balanced, accurate and current information, we will hold them accountable as they are falling short of the high professional standards that we apply to all practitioners."

The Council had not received any complaints but called on women to speak up if they were given misleading advice on vaccines.

"No midwife may give out information that is not factually correct. If they do, we will not hesitate to take appropriate action to hold them accountable." Full story...

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US: Fatal police shootings in 2015 approaching 400 nationwide...

In an alley in Denver, police gunned down a 17-year-old girl joyriding in a stolen car. In the backwoods of North Carolina, police opened fire on a gun-wielding moonshiner. And in a high-rise apartment in Birmingham, Ala., police shot an elderly man after his son asked them to make sure he was okay. Douglas Harris, 77, answered the door with a gun.

The three are among at least 385 people shot and killed by police nationwide during the first five months of this year, more than two a day, according to a Washington Post analysis. That is more than twice the rate of fatal police shootings tallied by the federal government over the past decade, a count that officials concede is incomplete.

“These shootings are grossly underreported,” said Jim Bueermann, a former police chief and president of the Washington-based Police Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving law enforcement. “We are never going to reduce the number of police shootings if we don’t begin to accurately track this information.”

A national debate is raging about police use of deadly force, especially against minorities. To understand why and how often these shootings occur, The Washington Post is compiling a database of every fatal shooting by police in 2015, as well as of every officer killed by gunfire in the line of duty. The Post looked exclusively at shootings, not killings by other means, such as stun guns and deaths in police custody. Full story...

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Women watch football to stare at men's thighs, says Saudi cleric in fatwa...

A cleric in Saudi Arabia has become a subject of much ridicule on social media after a fatwa in which he banned women from watching football stating that they watched the game only to stare at men's thighs.

In the fatwa, the Saudi cleric reportedly said that women "do not care who wins the match, all they care about is watching the player's thighs". The Saudi social media users were quick to point out the imam's ridiculous fatwa with a trending hashtag in Arabic which translates to: #women_love_football_because_of_players'_thighs, the Al Arabiya reported.

The local cleric, who was discussing on the permissibility of women watching football matches on TV as per Islam, asked the Saudi husbands from forbidding their wives from watching football. "Threaten them with divorce," the Imam advised.

"..Woman seeing a foreign man is sinful, so what about seeing his thighs and tight kit," he asked.

The Saudi cleric went on to claim that it was impermissible for women to look at men who are unrelated to them and it was "extremely haram to look at players' thighs, many of whom are dressed in tight clothing". Full story...

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Tim Berners-Lee urges Britain to fight 'snooper's charter'

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, has urged Britons to fight the government’s plans to extend the country’s surveillance powers, and act as a worldwide leader for promoting good governance on the web.

Berners-Lee said Britain had “lost the moral leadership” on privacy and surveillance, following the revelations of the former National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden.

Speaking before the Web We Want Festival in London’s Southbank Centre, which starts on Saturday, Berners-Lee expressed concern about the UK government’s decision to reintroduce a beefed-up version of the “snooper’s charter”.

In an unexpected move announced in the Queen’s Speech earlier this week, the government is to introduce an investigatory powers bill far more wide-ranging than expected. The legislation will include not only the expected snooper’s charter, enabling the tracking of everyone’s web and social media use, but also moves to strengthen the security services’ warranted powers for the bulk interception of the content of communications.

“The discussion [in the Queen’s Speech] of increased monitoring powers is something which is a red flag … this discussion is a global one, it’s a big one, it’s something that people are very engaged with, they think it’s very important, and they’re right, because it is very important for democracy, and it’s very important for business. Full story...

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FIFA’s impossible, corrupt Qatar math: How FIFA had to have known forced labor was needed for 2022’s Qatari World Cup...

Sepp Blatter’s FIFA presidential campaign, at least in public, consisted of a single statement—that he would run on his record as a FIFA executive of over 40 years and his record as president over the past 17. To watch him spin his Friday re-election as a mandate for change—only days after a significant number of his executives had been arrested on criminal corruption charges—may seem both hypocritical and surreal to observers. But to football fans, it is nothing new. That’s FIFA.

But there was one moment where even we, the fans, were caught off-guard by the sheer absurdity of the body that was governing our sport. It was a decision that has since come to personify the greed, arrogance and corruption surrounding FIFA: the awarding of the hosting rights for the 2022 World Cup Finals to Qatar.

Qatar is a tiny wealthy state with a population of just over 2 million people protruding out of the Arabian Peninsula into the Persian Gulf. It is one of only a half-dozen remaining absolute monarchies in the world, ruled as a theocratic state under a very conservative Wahhabi form of Sharia Law. Lashings for crimes such as adultery or consuming alcohol are common, while for Muslims homosexuality is punishable by death. The rights of women have not progressed beyond the 19th century. There are no political parties, let alone an opposition movement. There are no unions or student organizations and—perhaps not surprisingly—no elections.

(...)

Of Qatar’s population of 2.2 million, some 90 percent are foreign workers—the highest proportion of any nation in the world. They carry out the tasks that the local citizenry of 250,000 would not otherwise be capable of fulfilling (or would not want to). It is estimated by the ITUC that more than 4,000 such workers will die on construction projects leading up to the Qatar World Cup in 2022.

How does such an unlikely host for a World Cup tournament get selected despite being unable to meet most requirements? How does it happen, even against the advice of its own internal committee report and despite requiring forced labor and the deaths of so many workers? That’s FIFA. Full story...

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