Bonjour Planet Earth

Friday, April 06, 2018

Internal memo shows Sinclair threatening employees to keep mouths shut about 'Must-Read' scripts...

Sinclair Broadcast Group really doesn't want its employees talking to the press about the Trumpian "fake news" script it has recently been forcing local news anchors to recite.

This was made clear by a memo warning staff at the Sinclair-owned station KATU in Portland, Oregon that "giving statements to the media or sharing negative information about the company can have huge implications."

First obtained by FTV Live and published on Tuesday, the memo was sent amid outrage over the right-wing media giant's efforts to force local anchors to read propaganda railing against "false" and "fake" media—outrage that grew exponentially after Deadspin published a compilation of anchors reading Sinclair's script in unison. Full story...

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Despite overwhelming opposition from residents, Michigan permits Nestlé to draw more groundwater for bottling...

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) has granted Nestlé Waters a permit to increase groundwater withdrawal from 250 gallons per minute to 400 gallons per minute from its White Pine Springs well for the purpose of bottling drinking water.

The approval comes despite near universal opposition from residents, who cite the Swiss food and beverage giant's nominal $200-a-year fee to pump water from its wells. The fee will not change with the new permit.

Additionally, Nestlé's White Pine Springs well near Evart, Michigan happens to lie approximately 120 miles from the lead-poisoned city of Flint. Bottled water companies have drawn outrage from many communities for privatizing their public water supply in the face of Flint's years-long drinking water crisis, where some residents have been billed hundreds of dollars for water they cannot drink.

"Michiganders know that no private company should be able to generate profits by undermining our state's precious natural resources, which is why an unprecedented number of people spoke up to oppose this permit," State Sen. Rebekah Warren, D-Ann Arbor, who serves on the Senate's Natural Resources Committee, told Detroit Free Press. "Out of 81,862 comments filed by the people of our state, only 75 of them were in favor of the permit." Full story...

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Nestlé: Global water predator...

Meghan Trainor - No Excuses...

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SISTAR 'Shake It' mirrored dance practice...

Spaniard raised by wolves disappointed with human life...

They laugh at me because I don’t know about politics or soccer

Marcos Rodríguez Pantoja was once the “Mowgli” of Spain’s Sierra Morena mountain range, but life has changed a lot since then. Now the 72-year-old lives in a small, cold house in the village of Rante, in the Galician province of Ourense. This past winter has been hard for him, and a violent cough interrupts him often as he speaks.

His last happy memories were of his childhood with the wolves. The wolf cubs accepted him as a brother, while the she-wolf who fed him taught him the meaning of motherhood. He slept in a cave alongside bats, snakes and deer, listening to them as they exchanged squawks and howls. Together they taught him how to survive. Thanks to them, Rodríguez learned which berries and mushrooms were safe to eat.

Today, the former wolf boy, who was 19 when he was discovered by the Civil Guard and ripped away from his natural home, struggles with the coldness of the human world. It’s something that didn’t affect him so much when he was running around barefoot and half-naked with the wolves. “I only wrapped my feet up when they hurt because of the snow,” he remembers. “I had such big calluses on my feet that kicking a rock was like kicking a ball.”

After he was captured, Rodríguez’s world fell apart and he has never been able to fully recover. He’s been cheated and abused, exploited by bosses in the hospitality and construction industries, and never fully reintegrated to the human tribe. But at least his neighbors in Rante accept him as “one of them.” And now, the environmental group Amig@s das Arbores is raising money to insulate Rodríguez’s house and buy him a small pellet boiler – things that his meager pension cannot cover. Full story...

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Did Cambridge Analytica use Filipinos' Facebook data to help Duterte win?

It appears that 6 months before the United States presidential elections in 2016, Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm, also had a hand in the Philippine presidential race.

Facebook data of Filipinos was improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica, according to the social media company itself.

In a post by Facebook's Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer on Wednesday, April 4, he said that about 1,175,870 Filipino users may have had their Facebook information improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.

The Philippines is only behind the United States in terms of the number of people whose data was compromised.

Cambridge Analytica is the communications firm at the center of a global scandal, amid allegations it harvested data of millions of Facebook users for Donald Trump's presidential campaign. The end goal was to create software to predict and influence voters' choices at the ballot box. Full story...

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The myth of the Indian vegetarian nation...

What are the most common myths and stereotypes about what Indians eat?

The biggest myth, of course, is that India is a largely vegetarian country.

But that's not the case at all. Past "non-serious" estimates have suggested that more than a third of Indians ate vegetarian food.

If you go by three large-scale government surveys, 23%-37% of Indians are estimated to be vegetarian. By itself this is nothing remarkably revelatory.

But new research by US-based anthropologist Balmurli Natrajan and India-based economist Suraj Jacob, points to a heap of evidence that even these are inflated estimations because of "cultural and political pressures". So people under-report eating meat - particularly beef - and over-report eating vegetarian food.

Taking all this into account, say the researchers, only about 20% of Indians are actually vegetarian - much lower than common claims and stereotypes suggest. Full story...

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Thursday, April 05, 2018

Producer claims 'very powerful people' tried to stop his movie about Chappaquiddick scandal...

The chief executive from the film studio behind a movie about the Chappaquiddick scandal has said he was pressured to dump the project.

Byron Allen, the CEO of Entertainment Studios and the executive producer of Chappaquiddick, says ‘some very powerful people…tried to put pressure’ on him ‘not to release this movie.’

‘They went out of their way to try and influence me in a negative way,’ he told Variety.

‘I made it very clear that I’m not about the right, I’m not about the left.

‘I’m about the truth.’ Full story...

The Israel massacre forces...

The shooting on the Gaza border shows once again that the killing of Palestinians is accepted in Israel more lightly than the killing of mosquitoes

The death counter ticked away wildly. One death every 30 minutes. Again. Another one. One more. Israel was busy preparing for the seder night. TV stations continued broadcasting their nonsense.

It’s not hard to imagine what would have happened if a settler had been stabbed – on-site broadcasts, throw open the studios. But in Gaza the Israel Defense Forces continued to massacre mercilessly, with a horrific rhythm, as Israel celebrated Passover.

If there was any concern, it was because soldiers couldn’t celebrate the seder. By nightfall the body count had reached at least 15, all of them by live fire, with more than 750 wounded. Tanks and sharpshooters against unarmed civilians. That’s called a massacre. There’s no other word for it.

Comic relief was provided by the army spokesman, who announced in the evening: “A shooting attack was foiled. Two terrorists approached the fence and fired at our soldiers.” This came after the 12th Palestinian fatality and who knows how many wounded. Full story...

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This is what fake news looks like...

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Facebook scandal 'hit 87 million users'

Facebook believes the data of up to 87 million people was improperly shared with the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica - many more than previously disclosed.

The BBC has been told that about 1.1 million of them are UK-based.

The overall figure had been previously quoted as being 50 million by the whistleblower Christopher Wylie.

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg said "clearly we should have done more, and we will going forward".

During a press conference he said that he had previously assumed that if Facebook gave people tools, it was largely their responsibility to decide how to use them.

But he added that it was "wrong in retrospect" to have had such a limited view. Full story...

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Wednesday, April 04, 2018

'Being cash-free puts us at risk of attack'

It is hard to argue that you cannot trust the government when the government isn’t really all that bad. This is the problem facing the small but growing number of Swedes anxious about their country’s rush to embrace a cash-free society.

Most consumers already say they manage without cash altogether, while shops and cafes increasingly refuse to accept notes and coins because of the costs and risk involved. Until recently, however, it has been hard for critics to find a hearing.

“The Swedish government is a rather nice one, we have been lucky enough to have mostly nice ones for the past 100 years,” says Christian Engström, a former MEP for the Pirate Party and an early opponent of the cashless economy.

“In other countries there is much more awareness that you cannot trust the government all the time. In Sweden it is hard to get people mobilised.”

There are signs this might be changing. In February, the head of Sweden’s central bank warned that Sweden could soon face a situation where all payments were controlled by private sector banks. Full story...

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Australia seeks to remove $100 note from circulation...

Monday, April 02, 2018

China aims for near-total surveillance, including in people's homes...

By 2020, China will have completed its nationwide facial recognition and surveillance network, achieving near-total surveillance of urban residents, including in their homes via smart TVs and smartphones.

According to the official Legal Daily newspaper, the 13th Five Year Plan requires 100 percent surveillance and facial recognition coverage and total unification of its existing databases across the country.

Authorities in the southwestern province of Sichuan reported in December that they had completed the installation of more than 40,000 surveillance cameras across more than 14,000 villages as part of the "Sharp Eyes" nationwide surveillance network, the paper said.

Guangdong-based Bell New Vision Co. is developing the nationwide "Sharp Eyes" platform that can link up public surveillance cameras and those installed in smart devices in the home, to a nationwide network for viewing in real time by anyone who is given access. Full story...

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Never mind Facebook, Google is the all-seeing ‘Big Brother’ you should know about...

The Cambridge Analytica scandal put Facebook through the wringer in recent weeks, losing the company $100 billion in stock value and prompting a global debate on internet privacy.

The social media giant was forced to apologize and overhaul its privacy and data sharing practices, but it still remains in the media spotlight and in the crosshairs of the Federal Trade Commission, which says it may be liable for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of fines.

But amid all the furor, one monolithic entity has continued to harvest data from billions of people worldwide. The data gathered includes a precise log of your every move and every internet search you’ve ever made, every email you’ve ever sent, your workout routine, your favourite food, and every photo you’ve ever taken. And you have allowed it to happen to yourself, for the sake of better service and more relevant advertising.

Google is a ‘Big Brother’ with capabilities beyond George Orwell’s wildest nightmares. These capabilities are all the more chilling after Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., cut its famous “don’t be evil” line from its code of conduct in 2015.

Everything you’ve ever searched for on any of your devices is recorded and stored by Google. It’s done to better predict your future searches and speed up and streamline your browsing. You can clear your search history, but it only works for that particular device. Google still keeps a record of everything. Click here to see everything you’ve ever searched on a Google device. Full story...

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Assemblage of crooks, weirdos, wife beaters ...

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Every week gets more Orwellian...

Stephen Hawking a victim of polio from a vaccine?

(...)

And it may have been a virus that confined Hawking to a wheelchair rather than that motor neuron disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, aka Lou Gehrig’s disease) that befell him, beginning at age 21. He lived too long (76 years) for him to have ALS, which has a 2-year survival rate.

Stephen Hawking may have been misdiagnosed and was actually a victim of polio, a US medical expert has suggested.

Christopher B Cooper, Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, says the likelihood the physicist’s debilitating condition was in fact amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) was “low.” Hawking’s young age at diagnosis and 55-year survival is not typical of ALS.

There is speculation that Hawking may have developed his nerve paralysis as a side effect from a genetically engineered virus which “possesses significant unpredictability and a number of inherent harmful potential hazards,” says a published report.

He may actually have been a victim of vaccines. Full story...

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Pakistan arrests parents for refusing polio vaccine...

Bill Gates' polio vaccine programme eradicates children, not polio...

78 percent of Pakistani children with polio were given polio vaccines...

Quitting Facebook leads to drop in cortisol levels...

According to Statista, Facebook currently has more than 2 billion active monthly users, which makes it the most popular social network by a large margin. The much-discussed Cambridge Analytica scandal may have damaged Facebook’s reputation, as well as its shares — which have, as Timenoted, posted their steepest drop since 2015 — but how does Facebook affect our mental health and well-being?

Eric Vanman and Rosemary Baker from the University of Queensland, and Stephanie Tobin from the Australian Catholic University have attempted to answer this question. In a study recently published in the Journal of Social Psychology, titled “The Burden of Online Friends,” the authors explore the effects of giving up Facebook on stress and well-being.

For the experiment, Vanman, Baker and Tobin recruited 138 active Facebook users. Participants were then separated into two groups, which the authors have decided to refer to as “Facebook Normal” and “No Facebook.” Sixty participants were instructed to quit Facebook for five days, and 78 of them were instructed to continue using it as normal. Each individual was surveyed prior and after the experiment. Vanman and his colleagues measured salivary cortisol, perceived stress, and well-being, and asked each participant a series of questions regarding mood, loneliness, and life satisfaction. Full story...

The day I picked up a Cuban hitchhiker...

The hitchhikers were the first thing we noticed when we left Havana, bound for Viñales. Dozens of people were waiting on the side of the highway: men on their way home from work; schoolchildren in pristine white-and-red uniforms; families with toddlers in tow. The early-afternoon sun shone bright, slicing through the mosquito-thick humidity. Yet the hitchhikers stood and waited, seeking respite from the heat under bridges or in the shade of a lone tree between the tobacco and sugarcane fields.

Every now and then a vehicle would stop and pick up some people. There seemed to be a system in place; there was never a fight over who would get a lift first. We saw a group of eight climb into a banged-up orange Plymouth Belvedere, and crowds of 50 or more packed into the back of a truck, hanging on for dear life as the driver swerved to avoid one of the numerous potholes.

‘Don’t pick up hitchhikers’ was the mantra repeated time and time again whenever my husband Nick and I told people we planned to hire a car in Havana and drive west to Viñales and onto Maria la Gorda, a windswept beach on Cuba’s westernmost point. The man at the car-hire shop had even told us that it was forbidden for foreigners to pick up hitchhikers. Full story...

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Sunday, April 01, 2018

Young man in China applies to women’s college to improve chances of finding a girlfriend...

An 18-year-old male teen in China recently became a social media sensation after applying to the Women’s University in Beijing and admitting that one of the main reasons for that was to improve his chances of finding a girlfriend.

Due to a preference for boys during the time that the one-child population planning policy was enforced in China (1979 – 2015), the Asian country now has the world’s second most distorted sex ratio. In some of its provinces, there are as many as 130 boys for every 100 girls, and some specialists estimate that tens of millions of Chinese men will be unable to find a wife in the coming decades. Unable to deal with those odds, an 18-year-old teen decided to improve his chances of finding a female romantic partner by applying to a women’s college.

In a video shot before the young man’s admission interview and posted online with the permission of the Women’s University in Beijing, he candidly admits that one of the reasons he wanted to study there was to make it easier for himself to find a girlfriend.

“This school has many girls – if I can study here, there won’t be a problem finding a companion,” the unnamed 18-year-old can be heard saying. Full story...

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"Gasolina" (Daddy Yankee) — Caribbean Cover by Robyn Adele Anderson...

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Homeless people are moving tombstones and sleeping inside graves at cemetery...

Mill Road cemetery, in Cambridge, is a notorious haunt for drug users and is set to be targeted to tackle illegal camps, drug taking and dirty needles.

Passers-by have also spotted homeless people sitting in the graves while injecting themselves and drinking, and so far there has been 213 needles found at the site.

The council’s team of litter pickers regularly target the cemetery – and volunteers are clearing up vegetation so there is nowhere to camp.

A city council spokesman said: ‘Council officers have been working with the Friends of Mill Road Cemetery group to identify hotspots for anti-social behaviour in the cemetery, such as littering, rough sleeping and drug taking, and to draw up an action plan to tackle them. Full story...

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"Happy coffins" in Singapore to overcome taboo about death...

No room for the dead in Singapore...

Millions of Egyptians live in cemeteries...

Inside the Philippines' cemetery slum...

UN chief calls for independent investigation after 16 Palestinians killed near Gaza's border with Israel...

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Friday for an independent investigation into deadly clashes in Gaza between Palestinians and Israeli troops, while Security Council members urged restraint on both sides.

The council didn't decide on any action or joint message after an emergency meeting. Kuwait convened it hours after the bloodiest day in Gaza since the 2014 cross-border war between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic militant group that rules the coastal strip.

At least 15 Palestinian protesters were killed and more than 750 injured in clashes with Israeli forces on the Gaza border.

Thousands of Palestinians marched towards the Israeli fence around Gaza as part of large-scale demonstrations supported by Hamas, the militant Islamist group that controls the enclave.

Israel’s military said that some of the demonstrators turned violent and hurled firebombs and burning tyres at Israeli troops on the other side of the fence. Soldiers fired live ammunition as well rubber bullets and lashes of tear gas dropped by drones. Full story...

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Facebook employees are reportedly deleting controversial internal messages...

Facebook employees are deleting potentially controversial comments and messages from the company’s internal communications systems, after the leak of a 2016 memo in which Vice President Andrew Bosworth appeared to place growth priorities ahead of public safety concerns.

According to Facebook employees who spoke with the New York Times, staffers are also urging the company to hunt down the leakers who released the Bosworth memo.

If the report is accurate, the deletion of internal communications could have legal implications, including in an ongoing Federal Trade Commission investigation into the company’s data-handling practices. Destruction of internal documents was a partial focus of the FTC’s recent investigation of Volkswagen.

Bosworth’s memo continued catastrophic PR fallout following findings that the Facebook data of as many as 50 million users was wrongly harvested by the election consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. In the memo leaked Thursday, Bosworth wrote that “connecting people” should be the company’s driving goal, even if “it costs someone a life by exposing someone to bullies” or “someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools.” Full story...

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Donald Trump steps up attacks on Amazon...

President Donald Trump has stepped up his attacks on Amazon, suggesting the online retail giant is ripping off the US Postal Service.

The US Post Office would lose $1.50 (£1.07) "on average for each package it delivers for Amazon", he tweeted, but supporters of Amazon dispute this.

Mr Trump also said the Washington Post newspaper was a "lobbyist" for Amazon.

Amazon owner Jeff Bezos also owns the Washington Post, which publishes stories unpalatable to the president.

Like most mainstream media, the Post has reported on stories including Special Counsel Robert Mueller's continuing investigation into links between the Trump election campaign and Russia, as well has his alleged relationship with porn star Stormy Daniels. Full story...

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Saturday, March 31, 2018

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh: Sex, drugs and the Rolls Royce guru...

Every day at 2pm on a dusty road through the mountains of Oregon, hundreds of young people dressed head to toe in various 'sunrise' hues of red and orange would gather to wait solemnly for a car to go past.

It was always a Rolls-Royce, although a different one each day, and it would glide slowly past as they bowed and threw roses on the bonnet.

Inside, wearing robes, a tea cosy-style woolly hat, flowing grey beard and beatific smile, was the object of their devotion, the guru and mystic Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

Once he had passed by, the crowds would return to toiling in the fields — or 'finding their true selves' in group sex sessions.

Rajneesh — not to be confused with the far tamer Maharishi, who was the Beatles' Indian guru — presided over a New Age sex cult that was second to none in its embrace of 'free love', unorthodox meditation techniques and sheer outrageousness. Full story...

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I get bound and whipped by rich British men for a living...

How having too much sex almost destroyed my life...

The petrol pump attendant...

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Virginity auctions: Brit teens sell sex online as one offer fetches $1.5million...

British teenagers are being encouraged to auction their virginity online after a woman from the UK broke the record for selling her first experience of sex.

A website which is used as a platform to broker deals between virgins and those seeking sex with them has bragged of the huge sum collected by the 26-year-old. The woman, “Jasmine”, fetched a staggering €1.2 million ($1.5 million) for the sale of her first time. A Hollywood actor purchased it, according to the agency.

Jasmin says she got to audition three men via dates, before their final bids were placed. In a statement, the student wrote that she had no regrets.

“This was an amazing expirience! (sic). After I got public attention it took some months but finally I sold my virginity! Last week I dated three guys for Dinner here in London. A football player from Manchester United, who really want (sic) super nice to me. Also I've had a date with a business-man from Munich. He was a real Gentleman and we really liked each other. But to be honest he was finally to (sic) old for me. Full story...

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Chinese court awards woman £3,000 after man 'violated her right to virginity'

Friday, March 30, 2018

U.S. to seek social media details from all visa applicants...

The State Department wants to require all U.S. visa applicants to submit their social media usernames, previous email addresses and phone numbers, vastly expanding the Trump administration's enhanced vetting of potential immigrants and visitors.

In documents to be published in Friday's Federal Register, the department said it wants the public to comment on the proposed new requirements, which will affect nearly 15 million foreigners who apply for visas to enter the U.S. each year. Previously, social media, email and phone number histories were only sought from applicants identified for extra scrutiny, such as those who have traveled to areas controlled by terrorist organizations. An estimated 65,000 people per year are in that category.

The new rules would apply to virtually all applicants for immigrant and non-immigrant visas. The department estimates it would affect 710,000 immigrant visa applicants and 14 million non-immigrant visa applicants, including those who want to come to the U.S. for business or education, according to the documents.

The documents were posted on the Federal Register's website on Thursday but the 60-day public comment period won't begin until Friday's edition is published. Full story...

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Every week gets more Orwellian...

Thursday, March 29, 2018

More lies from the presstitutes...

The shameless liars that comprise the US media intentionally exaggerated the marchers against “gun violance” by four times the acutal number.

Why?

Why are the media presstitutes involved in advocacy of agendas and not in reporting factual news?

Recent polls show that a majority of Americans believe that gun ownership makes people safer. Americans do not believe that people should be denied safety because of an occasional nutcase or a staged shooting to advance the gun control agenda. Indeed, they wonder who is behind the gun control agenda. They wonder about the dumbshits who are protesting the Second Amendment instead of Washington’s rush into conflict with Russia.

I have no doubt that gun control groups are organized by agents of the police state. The United States is falling apart. All of the increase in income and wealth is going to the One Percent. Everyone else is hurting more each day. See Chris Hedges, for example: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49082.htm

The vast majority of Americans are being ground into the dirt by government at all levels. There is no democracy. There is only looting. The One Percent fear that sooner or later even insouciant Americans might rise up. But they can’t if they are disarmed. That is all gun control is about. Full story...

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‘I want to see facts’

The UK must provide solid evidence of Russia's alleged involvement in the Skripal case, the Czech president has said. While he did not oppose the country’s move to expel Russian diplomats, he believes it to be “a bit superfluous.”

“I want to see the facts. I will certainly welcome if the United Kingdom presents some evidence that the Russians wanted to kill the double agent Skripal,” Czech President Milos Zeman told the Blesk news outlet on Tuesday.

The Czech government has expelled three Russian diplomats, joining the UK, which made the move in order to “punish” Moscow over the Skripal case. The former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned on March 4 in the British town of Salisbury. Without any evidence, top UK officials promptly pinned the blame on Moscow, claiming that a military-grade nerve agent of Russian origins was used in the attack.

While Zeman did not oppose the government’s decision to expel Russian diplomats, he said it was “it's a bit superfluous.” Full story...

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Just some people having fun in Russia...

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Tensions high in Sacramento as city mourns unarmed man killed by police...

Family, friends and strangers, some expressing anger and frustration, gathered in Sacramento on Wednesday for a public wake for 22-year-old Stephon Clark, an unarmed man shot by police in his grandparents' backyard.

Some attendees wore black shirts calling for justice, while one woman held up a clenched fist as she exited the Bayside of South Sacramento church. The wake was largely quiet until Clark's brother, Stevante Clark, shouted at the media to leave before being picked up and carried away.

The outburst came a day after he disrupted a Sacramento City Council meeting and chanted his brother's name at Mayor Darrell Steinberg.

Some said the two police officers who shot Clark should be criminally charged, while other mourners said they could envision their own families in Clark's family's place.

"This feels like the '60s, it doesn't feel like 2018. We've definitely regressed," said Cynthia Brown, a friend of Clark's grandfather who brought her 10- and 15-year-old grandsons to the wake. "To me, (they) could be Stephon Clark." Full story...

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Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Switzerland’s invisible linguistic borders...

It was one of the shortest train rides I had ever taken: just seven minutes and one stop from the Swiss city of Neuchâtel. Yet when I disembarked in the small town of Erlach, everything seemed, somehow, different. At first, I couldn’t put my finger on it. Something about the architecture perhaps? People’s body language? Even the air, crisp and ridiculously fresh in that distinctively Swiss way, felt somehow changed.

I walked for a while, befuddled. I was still in Switzerland, that much I knew. I had not crossed any international border. Then I glanced at a street sign, and I knew. I had unknowingly crossed the Röstigraben, the amusing term for the invisible line separating German- and French-speaking Switzerland.

Röstigraben means literally ‘rösti ditch’ or ‘rösti trench’ (in French, it’s rideau de rösti, or rösti curtain). The term dates to World War I, when Switzerland’s loyalties were divided along linguistic lines. Rösti is a traditional Swiss-German meal consisting of pan-fried potatoes, and, well, more potatoes, sometimes with bacon, onion and cheese. Geographically, the Röstigraben roughly follows the Saane river (Sarine in French). You won’t find it on any map, though. It is a border of the mind, albeit one imprinted on the Swiss mind from a young age. Full story...

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In the late 1960s, Singapore was gripped by a genital panic!

At the very end of the Malay peninsula sits the city state of Singapore, which was once plagued with retracting penises. In 1967, in one of the best-documented epidemics of koro, (or genital retraction syndrome) ever, hundreds of people rushed to hospitals, deathly afraid that if they loosened their grip they would die.

Today Singapore is one of the wealthiest and most successful countries on earth, and much of its old character seems to have been washed away by a tide of modernization. An international crossroads for hundreds of years, the city is now clean and safe and has everything most countries aspire to. You can walk along the street and be sure none of your body parts will disappear. But this wasn’t always the case.

The mass genital shrinking epidemic began in October of 1967. In one case, a 16-year-old male rushed into the General Hospital’s outdoor clinic with his parents close behind. “The boy looked frightened and pale,” as one report described it, “and he was pulling hard on his penis to prevent the organ from disappearing into his abdomen.”

The boy’s parents shouted for the doctors to help because the boy had suo yang (the Chinese word for koro, which we consider a culturally-related “genital retraction syndrome”) and if the retraction didn’t stop, he would die. The doctors reassured the family and gave the boy ten milligrams of chlordiazepoxide, after which he improved. Full story...

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Afghan mum cradling baby during university exam goes viral...

Afghan farmer Jahantab Ahmadi sits on the ground, her baby resting in her lap, as she focuses on the university entrance exam she hopes will help her fulfil her dreams.

The powerful photo, taken by a professor at Nasir Khusraw private university in central Afghanistan, has gone viral after striking a chord in a country where most women are illiterate and treated as second-class citizens.

The picture has sparked an outpouring of admiration and offers of financial help for the 25-year-old mother of three.

“I don’t want to be deprived of my studies,” said Ahmadi, who comes from a remote farming village in Daikundi province where wheat, corn and potatoes provide a meagre income. “I want to work outside the house. I want to become a doctor, someone who serves women in my community or society.”

Ahmadi passed the exam after undertaking an arduous journey to reach the provincial capital Nili — two hours on foot through mountains and nine hours in public transport on a bumpy road. Full story...

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Facebook data misuse scandal affects "substantially" more than 50 million...

Chris Wylie, the former Cambridge Analytica employee turned whistleblower whose revelations about Facebook data being misused for political campaigning has wiped billions off the share price of the company in recent days and led to the FTC opening a fresh investigation, has suggested the scale of the data leak is substantially larger than has been reported so far.

Giving evidence today, to a UK parliamentary select committee that's investigating the use of disinformation in political campaigning, Wylie said: "The 50 million number is what the media has felt safest to report -- because of the documentation that they can rely on -- but my recollection is that it was substantially higher than that. So my own view is it was much more than 50M."

We've reached out to Facebook about Wylie's claim -- but at the time of writing the company had not provided a response. Full story...

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Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Facebook and Google can sway elections...

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World famous psychiatrist warns that increased use of psychiatric drugs will translate to more mass shootings...

The psychiatric/pharmaceutical drug industry is worth a staggering $80 billion a year in sales alone, and Washington is literally crawling with lobbyists who have seemingly bottomless pots of cash to smooth the regulatory path for drug manufacturers. This has led to a situation in which the politicians tasked with protecting some of the most vulnerable people in the nation – those with mental health issues – have adopted a “see no evil, hear no evil approach.” They happily look the other way as doctors and psychiatrists continue to prescribe antidepressant and anti-anxiety drugs despite their dangerous side effects, which include mania, violence, psychosis and homicidal ideation (the desire to commit murder).

While many politicians focus on the gun debate when discussing the issue of mass shootings, what virtually none of them ever mention is the clearly established link between such mass homicides and psychiatric drugs. The mental health watchdog organization, CCHR International, recently reported that at least 36 school shootings or other school-related acts of violence were committed by people who were either on psychiatric drugs or withdrawing from them – which can be just as dangerous.

These acts of violence resulted in the deaths of 80 people and the wounding of a further 172. In addition, there have been many similar incidents where information regarding the mental health and psychiatric drug use of the killer/s was not made public, so the problem is likely far worse. Full story...

Read also: Why I took a gun to school...

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Like nearly all other mass shooters, ex-Navy shooter Aaron Alexis was

The scare about global warming is overdone, according to more than 40 scientific papers...

The scare about global warming is overdone, according to more than 40 scientific papers published in just the first three months of 2018.

What their charts clearly show is that “nothing climatically unusual is happening.”

In the chart below from a study by Polovodova et al, we see that 20th century warming is perfectly normal in a long-term historical context. It was no warmer – indeed, is slightly cooler – than either the Roman Warm Period or the Medieval Warming Period.

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In further bad news for climate alarmists, it seems that two of their favorite bellwethers of global warming doom – Greenland and the South Pole, are cooling not warming. More + charts...
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Indian man carves road through hills so children can attend school...

A man in a remote eastern Indian village has single-handedly carved a five-mile (8km) road through hilly terrain to help his children attend school.

It had been taking Jalandhar Nayak’s three sons about three hours each way to navigate the narrow, rocky route to class. So two years ago the vegetable seller from Odisha state picked up a chisel, a garden hoe and pickaxe and began building a shorter route.

His efforts came to the attention of government officials this week when he was featured in a local media bulletin.

“My children found it hard to walk on the narrow and stony path while going to their school. I often saw them stumbling against the rocks and decided to carve a road through the mountain so that they can walk more easily,” he told News World Odisha. Full story...

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