Melbourne women seek to become jihadi brides...

More than a dozen women from Melbourne have joined those with a romantic view of Islamic State making their way to conflict zones, leaving their 'distraught' parents to contact police.

Police say about 12 women from Melbourne, possibly more, have made the journey to Syria.

Five now live in the conflict zone, four were turned back in Turkey, one was stopped in Australia and two are unaccounted for, Victoria police said on Friday.

Assistant Commissioner Tracy Linford says there is a trend of young women forming a 'romantic view' and making the journey to meet IS.

'They think they will be put on a pedestal and treated very well overseas but the reality is that is not the case,' Asst Comm Linford told reporters on Friday. Full story...

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FIFA sponsors threaten to blow whistle on $1.6bn deals...

World football's most powerful sponsors added their voices to the growing chorus of disapproval aimed at Fifa yesterday, as Visa, Coca-Cola and Adidas said they would consider whether to continue their financial support.

McDonald's, Budweiser, Hyundai, and Nike also issued statements appearing to criticise world football's governing body as incumbent president Sepp Blatter faces losing sponsorship deals worth up to $1.6bn (€1.4bn) over the next decade.

Adidas, based in southern Germany, has supplied the official match ball for every Fifa World Cup tournament since 1970, but is now understood to be reconsidering its position.

Coca-Cola, one of Fifa's most recognisable and valuable corporate partners, has bought advertising space at World Cups since 1950, but relations between the two now appear close to breaking point.

Its statement read: "This lengthy controversy has tarnished the mission and ideals of the Fifa World Cup and we have repeatedly expressed our concerns about these serious allegations." Full story...

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Rencontres: meeting in Tamil Nadu...

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Bangladesh bloggers continue to receive death threats in wake of brutal killings of three secular bloggers this year...

Another Bangladeshi blogger has received a death threat as targeted killings of secular bloggers and personalities have left at least three dead in the past three months.

Ananya Azad told Al Jazeera on Thursday that unidentified suspects in a Facebook message had threatened to kill him and dump his body at a national monument.

Azad, whose father Humayun was attacked by members of the banned Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen organisation in 2004, said he would be killed in a "similar manner" in order to silence others like him.

"Since you are the son of the atheist chief, we are tense about you...we will kill you in a similar way, we will cut you to pieces," the threat read.

Three liberal bloggers have been killed this year in Bangladesh, the latest as recent as May 12.

Atheist blogger, Ananta Bijoy Das, was hacked to death by unknown assailants in the Subid Bazar area of Sylhet city, 240km from the capital Dhaka, as he walked to work.

In March, two men were arrested on suspicion of murder after another activist, Waqishur Rahman, was killed in a similar manner in Dhaka. Full story...

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High-tech Dutch trend of 'vertical farming' grows food faster without sunlight...

In their beds, the salad greens enveloped by magenta hues from the lights above hardly seem appetizing. Surprisingly, the unblemished leaves taste pretty good when they come out from under the lamps.

Those who visit Brightbox, a high-tech horticulture lab in the Netherlands' agricultural hub of Venlo are invited to taste what is grown under light-emitting diodes, or LED lights.

The salad greens are raised in such immaculate conditions, there is no need to wash the leaves before sampling, visitors are told.

"We try to stay away from soil," said Gus van der Feltz, global director of City Farming at Philips Horticulture LED Solutions.

He touts climate cells as the future of food production because the method relies on a fraction of the water needed to raise crops in fields or greenhouses. And plants grow faster under red and blue lights than the full spectrum of sunlight. Full story...

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Stop calling the TPP a trade agreement: it isn't...

This is a message to activists trying to fight the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Stop calling the TPP a “trade” agreement. TPP is a corporate/investor rights agreement, not a “trade” agreement. “Trade” is a good thing; TPP is not. Every time you use the word “trade” in association with the TPP, you are helping the other side.

“Trade” is a propaganda word. It short-circuits thinking. People hear “trade” and the brain stops working. People think, “Of course, trade is good.” And that ends the discussion.

Calling TPP a “trade” agreement lets the pro-TPP people argue that TPP is about trade instead of what it is really about. It diverts attention from the real problem. It enables advocates to say things like, “95 percent of the world lives outside the U.S.” as if that has anything to do with TPP. It lets them say, “We know that exports support American jobs” to sell a corporate rights agreement. It enables them to say nonsense like this about a corporate rights agreement designed to send American jobs to Vietnam so a few “investors” can pocket the wage difference: “Exports of U.S. goods and services supported an estimated 9.8 million American jobs, including 25 percent of all manufacturing jobs … and those export-supported jobs pay 13 to 18 percent higher than the national average wage.”

Trade is good. Opening up the border so you can get bananas and they can get fertilizer is trade because they have a climate that lets them grow bananas and you already have a fertilizer plant. Enabling companies to move $30/hour jobs to countries with $.60/hour wages so a few billionaires can pocket the difference is not trade. Full story...

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Secret meeting in London to “end cash”

Economist Martin Armstrong claims there is a “secret meeting to end cash” set to take place in London before the end of the month involving representatives from the ECB and the Federal Reserve.

Armstrong, who is known for successfully predicting the 1987 Black Monday crash as well as the 1998 Russian financial collapse, expressed his shock that no news outlet has reported on this upcoming conference.

“I find it extremely perplexing that I have been the only one to report of the secret meeting in London. Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University, and Willem Buiter, the Chief Economist at Citigroup, will address the central banks to advocate the elimination of all cash to bring to fruition the day when you cannot buy or sell anything without government approval,” writes Armstrong.

“When I googled the issue to see who else has picked it up, to my surprise, Armstrong Economics comes up first. Others are quoting me, and I even find it spreading as far as the Central Bank of Nigeria, but I have yet to find any reports on the meeting taking place in London, when my sources are direct.”

Armstrong first brought attention to the alleged meeting earlier this month when he revealed that representatives from the Federal Reserve, the ECB as well as participants from the Swiss and Danish central banks would all be attending a “major conference in London” at which Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University, and Willem Buiter, the Chief Economist at Citigroup, would give presentations. Full story...

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Google and Whatsapp will be forced to hand messages to MI5...

Google, Facebook and other internet giants will be forced to give British spies access to encrypted conversations of suspected terrorists and criminals under plans to bolster surveillance powers.

New laws will require Whatsapp, which is owned by Facebook, Snapchat and other popular apps to hand messages sent by their users to MI5, MI6 and GCHQ about suspects under investigation.

The new power is to be included in a new Investigatory Powers Bill which will overhaul the ability of the spy agencies to monitorsuspects and intercept their communications.

The bill, announced in the Queen’s Speech, will revive the so-called “snoopers charter” but is much wider than previous planned.

 The Conservatives are pushing ahead with the legislation after it was previously blocked by their former Coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats. Full story...

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FIFA, Sepp Blatter and Qatar...

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The human toll of Fifa’s corruption...

In the end, it only took a $150 million scandal to make Americans care about soccer.

Fifa, the notoriously corrupt and yet seemingly invincible governing body of world soccer, has finally landed itself an indictment that some would say is worthy of its reputation. The charges against a handful of senior Fifa officials include money laundering, racketeering, bribery and fraud. In short, the federal lawsuit alleges what millions of soccer fans have suspected all along: that Fifa officials have been using the organization's massive influence to line their pocketbooks.

On the surface, it's just another white collar crime story: rich, powerful men making themselves richer and more powerful. But a closer look suggests that there is a lot of real-world suffering and misery happening as a direct result of Fifa executive malfeasance.

For the most obvious example of this, look to Qatar. The decision to award the 2022 World Cup to the rich Gulf state with a terrible human rights record was a controversial one right out of the gate. There have been extensive allegations of bribery: why else, some figured, award the Cup to a tiny country with sweltering summer heat and no soccer culture to speak of? Full story...

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Dalai Lama urges Suu Kyi to speak out on Burma's persecuted Rohingya people...

The Dalai Lama has urged fellow Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to do more to help Burma’s persecuted Muslim Rohingya minority in a worsening migration crisis.

Despite thousands of Rohingya fleeing on harrowing boat journeys to south-east Asia to escape poverty and discriminatory treatment by the country’s Buddhist majority, opposition leader Suu Kyi is yet to comment.

Observers have attributed this to fears about alienating voters ahead of elections expected in November.

The Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader said Suu Kyi must speak up, adding that he had already appealed twice to her in person since 2012, when deadly sectarian violence in Burma’s Rakhine state pitted the Rohingya against local Buddhists, to do more on their behalf.

“It’s very sad. In the Burmese case I hope Aung San Suu Kyi, as a Nobel laureate, can do something,” he told The Australian’s Thursday paper in an interview before a visit to Australia next week. Full story...

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The fight for rights as an Asian domestic worker...

Suay Ing was nine when she was first employed as a domestic worker, cleaning for a family and sleeping in their laundry room in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai for $10 a month.

The eldest of four children of migrant construction workers from Myanmar, Ing was 14 when she was trafficked to Bangkok by a broker who promised her a job and abandoned her.

Hungry and with no identification papers or money, the unkempt child finally found a noodle shop owner willing to hire her for 3,000 baht ($100) a month in exchange for working 12-hour shifts with three days off a month.

Over the next 14 years, he taught her to manage the shop, but also beat her, docked her pay, and even denied her food.

"Even if my staff did anything wrong, I had to take responsibility for it. He would say, 'How do you want to be punished? Do you want to be slapped? Do you want me to take your salary?'" recalled Ing, now 31. Full story...

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Mother arrested and jailed for failure to circumcise 4-year old son...

A Florida mother was recently arrested, jailed, and released after spending more than a week behind bars during an ongoing dispute over circumcising her son.

“Heather Hironimus, 31, posted bond and was released Saturday night, authorities said.

Hironimus had been taken into custody May 14 after she went missing for several months with her 4-year-old son, allegedly to avoid a court order to circumcise him, according to court records. She was taken to jail on charges including interference with custody, according to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office.” [1]

Let’s face it, the medical headlines can’t get any more scary than this one about the jailed Florida mom. When a county judge imprisons a mother,who is only looking to protect her son from male genital mutilation, something is very wrong. The mother, having no recourse, was forced to obey the court if she was to be released form the county jail.

It looks like the medical mafia had a lot to do with this frightening judicial decision process. How else do hospitals all over America get away with performing male genital mutilation, also known as circumcision, on virtually every newborn male. This blind compliance with an antiquated and barbaric ‘biblical’ mandate simply makes no sense, not that it ever did. Full story...

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Bangladesh moves persecuted Rohingya to 'out of sight' island camps...

Bangladesh is to relocate thousands of Rohingya refugees to an island camp, raising concerns that the persecuted community is being moved further out of sight against its will.

The announcement comes as a new report describes the brutality of the people smuggling trade moving an exodus of Bangladeshi and Rohingya refugees towards Malaysia, with traffickers forcing girls as young as thirteen onto their crowded boats.

Bangladesh is home to 32,000 registered Rohingya refugees, mostly sheltering in two camps in the southeastern district of Cox's Bazar.

On Wednesday, Amit Kumar Baul, a government official, said preparations are underway to relocate the inhabitants to Hatiya island in the Bay of Bengal.

 The plan, which dates back to November, is partly prompted by concerns that the camps have held back tourism in Cox's Bazar, where locals flock to beach hotels and resorts. Full story...

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Taking the plunge...

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South Africa paid $10million in bribes to FIFA to secure the 2010 world cup...

South African officials paid more than $10 million (R120 million) in bribes to host the 2010 World Cup and handed over a briefcase stuffed with $10 000 stacks of banknotes in Paris, a US indictment alleged on Wednesday.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch said executives from soccer's governing body FIFA took bribes in exchange for voting for South Africa to become the first African nation to host the tournament.

An indictment unsealed in New York alleges that former FIFA vice-president Jack Warner, 72, diverted a "substantial portion" of the funds for his personal use.

The document claims that Warner and his family cultivated ties with South African soccer officials dating back to the early 2000s and the country's first and thwarted bid to host the World Cup in 2006.

"At one point," the indictment alleges, Warner ordered an intermediary to fly to Paris and "accept a briefcase containing bundles of US currency in $10 000 stacks in a hotel room" from a high-ranking South African bid committee official. Full story...

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Popular radio host Bonnie Faulkner and guest Gary Null censored by radio station over vaccines...

Gary Null has been a popular, longtime radio host with the longest running health talk show which airs on Progressive Radio Network. He has authored and directed dozens upon dozens of books and documentaries.

A few weeks ago, he was asked as an honored guest on Bonnie Faulkner’s show, Guns and Butter which talks about the politics of economics and airs on Pacifica KPFA public radio stations. In the spirit of truth, Bonnie wanted listeners to hear the other side of the vaccine talk, not the “case closed” version. What you’re not being told about vaccines. And specifically SB277, the California bill to mandate vaccines for virtually all Californian school children. Who better to ask then Null, an alternative health expert, medical activist and Pacifica veteran?

When it came time to air, however, they were told they weren’t allowed – or rather, they were outright censored and the show was cut – the first time for Guns and Butter in over 11 years. But Bonnie could not let this breach of truth rest…

Bonnie went on the Gary Null Show and they did a “reverse interview.” Bonnie then interviewed Gary and they both shared the Sound Cloud file to their listeners. Listen to the banned talk with updated information on SB277 and the censorship here, while you read what happened next… Full story...

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Sick of seeing an underage fake nude of herself on the internet, Canadian woman took matters into her own hands...

Andrea Ng was 16 years old when she uploaded a selfie she took getting ready for a high school dance to Facebook. It was innocent enough; she and her friends were having fun putting on makeup and posing in front of the bathroom mirror.

The girl from Richmond, British Columbia, didn't think much of the photo at the time and had forgotten all about it until three years later, when it came back to haunt her. She has since spent two years of her life fighting to have it removed from the internet.

The whole thing started in May 2013 when Andrea's friend sent her a link to a Facebook account that was using her name and the school dance selfie. Except the photo had been doctored to make it look like she was topless. The pink dress she was wearing in the original image was erased and breasts had been superimposed onto her chest.

And to make matters worse, the impostor was on a mission to add as many of her friends and family as possible.

"Whenever it happened, I was so upset I couldn't sleep. I didn't even know how to make it stop," Andrea told me recently. "I kept waking up in the morning, worried it could happen again."

 Andrea, now 21 and a public relations student at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, has been trying to stop her unidentified cyberstalker, who has since circulated that photo on social media using multiple fake accounts. Full story...

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89 in 5 months: Saudi Arabia continues executions...

A man was beheaded in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, with the convicted murderer's execution becoming the 89th case this year, according to an AFP count. The death toll has already overtaken the total for all of 2014.

Fahd bin Hussein Daghriri was found guilty in participating in the murder of a fellow Saudi citizen, AFP reported on Wednesday, citing an interior ministry statement published by the official Saudi Press Agency. Authorities executed the convicted criminal in the southern region of Jazan.

The man was sentenced to death according to the nation's strict version of Islamic sharia law, under which such crimes as murder, rape, armed robbery and drug trafficking are punishable by death. Executions are mostly conducted by decapitating the accused with a sword in public.

The Gulf kingdom had already executed 88 people across 2015 before the newest case, both locals and foreigners. This month, five foreigners were executed in Saudi Arabia, causing international outcry, with human rights groups having condemned the country. Full story...

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FIFA corruption arrests: Two separate investigations sparks biggest crisis in history of the sport...

Generations of top-ranking Fifa officials have engaged in “rampant, systemic, and deep-rooted” corruption which has poisoned world football for decades, it was claimed, as two separate criminal investigations sparked the biggest crisis in the history of the sport.

Nine officials at football’s powerful governing body accepted bribes and kickbacks totalling hundreds of millions of dollars over more than 20 years, in return for awarding lucrative tournaments to certain countries and rigging Fifa’s own presidential elections, US prosecutors said.

On the same day, Swiss authorities announced a separate investigation into “criminal mismanagement” and money laundering surrounding the allocation of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups in Russia and Qatar, throwing the future of both tournaments into doubt.

With only 48 hours to go until Fifa’s latest presidential elections, a 47-count charge sheet filed in a New York federal court detailed 12 separate corrupt schemes allegedly carried out by the officials. In total, they are alleged to have accepted bribes amounting to more than $150m over a 24-year period beginning in 1991.

One of the schemes allegedly involved the soliciting of a $10 million bribe from the South African government ahead of its successful bid for the 2010 World Cup. Another involved the alleged rigging of Fifa’s 2011 presidential elections by Jack Warner, the body’s former vice president. Full story...

Read also: Fifa officials pocketed $150m from 'World Cup of fraud'

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UK police image: 'Trust building ads won't work'

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Dalit groom forced to wear helmet as upper caste villagers stone procession...

Arguing that lower-caste grooms were not supposed to ride a horse and take out a procession in the village, upper caste villagers had told the family of Pawan Malviya to abide by their illegal diktat.

The groom’s father had expressed an apprehension that the procession could be stoned and sought police protection.

“The administration had called the two sides for a meeting in which the upper caste villagers agreed to keep their doors closed so that they would be spared the sight of a Dalit groom atop a horse,’’ SDOP R R Bansal told The Indian Express over phone.

Though the upper-caste villagers kept their doors closed, the procession was heavily stoned when it reached the panchayat chowk. More than half a dozen people sustained injuries. Full story...

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Woman saved from suspected ... mermaid???

A woman from Mandalay Farm has been saved by her mother and other fisher men after she was dragged into water by a suspected mermaid while fishing at the Mandalay Dam.

This was reported by the Berina Community Radio which described the incident as strange than fiction."In a stranger than fiction case, a woman was allegedly rescued from a mermaid today at Mandalay Farm Dam popularly known as KwaHeya," reported the radio.

"The young woman Trish Mantle aged 18 of Sabonabona was fishing and having a big catch while her mother was washing clothes just a few metres away.

There suddenly started strong waves, the women claimed, in no time the woman was pulled into the water amidst some whistling sounds.

"The radio reported that Mantle then screamed alerting the mother and some other men who were fishing who rushed and pulled her out of the water by which time she was unconscious. Full story...

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India's Modi ignores the press...

Social media is awash today with messages marking the first anniversary of Narendra Modi’s swearing in as prime minister. Modi himself is celebrating with tweets to his on-line followers and others that make exaggerated claims about his government’s successes.

Amid all the trending, it is worth noting that the prime minister’s communications with his electorate, and the wider world, are a one-way street where he speaks and others receive the message. People can of course reply through tweeting or other statements, but Modi has avoided on-the record questions from the media, and amazingly has not dared to hold a press conference that would be attended by Indian and foreign journalists to mark his first year in office today. Nor has he done a television interview.

This lack of a willingness to expose himself to media questions has been widely criticised, but Modi might be surprised by the fact that even Lance Price, the British writer who he personally selected to be the chronicler of last year’s election victory, says he should open up.

“I believe it is a fundamental principle of a democracy that an elected prime minister should be accountable through the media,” says Price, whose book The Modi Effect: Inside Narendra Modi’s Campaign to Transform India, was published in March. “That means answering legitimate questions put freely by journalists on a fairly regular basis.”

This is what Modi has resolutely refused to do since becoming prime minister, preferring to tweet one-liners that do not lead to journalists’ questions. He has also relied on his considerable skills at oratory to mass audiences where no journalist can question him, and on his able all-purpose finance and information minister, Arun Jaitley, to face the press. Full story...

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Barclays facing explosive allegations it engineered computer systems to rig financial markets...

Barclays is facing explosive allegations it engineered its computer systems to rig financial markets.

The bank was fined £1.5bn last week after rogue traders were caught manipulating foreign currency rates.

But this bill could spiral amid fears raised by US regulators that the abuse was systemic rather than the result of a few corrupt staff.

Barclays is among a host of global lenders being investigated by the New York banking regulator for tweaking computer programmes on its foreign exchange trading platform to rig markets.

The probe into Barclays and Germany’s Deutsche Bank has been going on since last year, with monitors installed by the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) to gather evidence.

But the investigation has gathered momentum, and now includes a collection of the world’s biggest banks including Goldman Sachs, BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse, and Societe Generale. Full story...

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FIFA rocked by US racketeering charges...

Zurich cantonal police arrested six Fifa officials at the Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich on the same day as the US justice department issued its 47-count indictment, which also includes charges against five corporate executives.

The shock arrests came only two days before Fifa president Sepp Blatter seeks reelection in a campaign overshadowed by scandal.

The US indictment outlines charges against 14 defendants of racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies in a “24-year scheme to enrich themselves through the corruption of international soccer”.

Those charged include high-ranking officials of Fifa as well as leading officials of other football governing bodies that operate under the Fifa umbrella, the justice department said.

Jeffrey Webb and Jack Warner – the current and former presidents of Concacaf, the continental confederation under Fifa headquartered in Miami – are among the officials charged with racketeering and bribery offences, the department said.

 Webb was among those arrested in Zurich. Full story...

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Glenn Greenwald: how to keep your data safe...

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Mushrooms: Magical youth elixir?

Magic mushrooms can do some amazing things. No, not just those kind of things! Some do contain natural psychedelic chemicals, but there are many mushrooms whose botanical magic lies in the amazing things they can do for your health. Even celebrities are using mushrooms as an anti-aging secret weapon in creams and facial peels.

Sound far-fetched? Not really, once you get to know more about the special health benefits of mushrooms.

There are about 150,000 different kinds of mushrooms. They are a unique species – neither animal nor plant, these fungi basically exist on decomposing matter and funnel nutrients back into the earth. Pretty much ever since humans have be hunting and gathering, mushrooms have been on the menu.

Mushrooms have been linked to medicine and healing since ancient times. And recently, more and more scientific studies are uncovering the benefits of mushrooms. It turns out that they just may be up there with the other “superfoods” that we hear about, like kale and quinoa.

Portobello mushrooms and shiitake mushrooms are ingredients in many different kinds of dishes. You can look for these next time you are eating out at a restaurant or try them in mushroom recipes at home. There are more mushrooms in your diet than you might think. Full story...

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India gets its first transgender college principal...

India, probably the world, will get its first transgender college principal when Manabi Bandopadhyay takes charge of Krishnagar Women's College in West Bengal on June 9. Manabi is currently associate professor in Bengali at Vivekananda Satobarshiki Mahavidyalaya.

"This decision was taken by the College Service Commission. I don't interfere in their decisions. They are aware of our open mind. I am happy with this decision," state education minister Partha Chatterjee said on Tuesday.

Technical education minister Ujjal Biswas, who is chairman of the college governing body, said: "We were in need of a principal with a strong personality to run the college smoothly."

 Welcoming the decision, Rattan Lal Hangloo, vice-chancellor of the Kalyani University to which Krishnagar Women's College is affiliated, said, "Manabi is a fine human being, a good academician and an able administrator. We are hopeful her appointment will empower other members of the transgender community." Full story...

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Singapore's foreign maids exploited by agents, employers...

The promise of a salary five times what she could make at home prompted Nabila to leave Indonesia and her family for a job as a domestic worker in Singapore.

What she did not realise was that it would be eight months before she earned a cent because of deductions made by the employment agency that brought her to Singapore.

With a 17-hour working day that started at 5 a.m., a "very demanding" employer and dinners that consisted of leftovers, the 30-year-old said she was driven to despair.

"I was desperate when I realised that I wouldn't get paid for such a long time," said Nabila, whose monthly salary was S560 ($424). "I came to Singapore because I need money for my two children so that they can go to school. I need every cent."

Employment agencies are part of a complex web spun across Southeast Asia by brokers and agents that allow the domestic workers virtually no say in their working conditions. Full story...

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FIFA officials arrested on corruption charges; face extradition to U.S.

Swiss authorities began an extraordinary early-morning operation here Wednesday to arrest several top soccer officials and extradite them to the United States on federal corruption charges.

As leaders of FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, gathered for their annual meeting, more than a dozen plain-clothed Swiss law enforcement officials arrived unannounced at the Baur au Lac hotel, an elegant five-star property with views of the Alps and Lake Zurich.

The officers went to the registration desk to get keys, then headed upstairs toward the hotel rooms.

The charges allege widespread corruption in FIFA over the past two decades, involving bids for World Cups as well as marketing and broadcast deals, according to three law enforcement officials with direct knowledge of the case. The charges include wire fraud, racketeering and money laundering, and officials said they targeted members of FIFA’s powerful executive committee, which wields enormous power and does its business largely in secret. Full story...

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Steve Wozniak: Edward Snowden is 'a hero to me'

Apple co-founder says the NSA whistleblower “gave up his own life . . . to help the rest of us”

Steve Wozniak reaffirmed his staunch support for digital privacy in an interview over the weekend in which the Apple co-founder called National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden “a hero.”

Wozniak, who helped build Apple ( AAPL -2.07% ) with
Steve Jobs before leaving the tech giant in the mid-1980’s, has expressed an affinity for Snowden in the past. Over the weekend, Wozniak reiterated his admiration for Snowden in an interview with ArabianBusiness.com in which the inventor said Snowden “gave up his own life . . . to help the rest of us.”

Wozniak went on to tell the publication more on his feelings about Snowden:

“‘Total hero to me; total hero,’ he gushes. ‘Not necessarily [for] what he exposed, but the fact that he internally came from his own heart, his own belief in the United States Constitution, what democracy and freedom was about. And now a federal judge has said that NSA data collection was unconstitutional.'”

Two years ago, Wozniak favorably compared Snowden to Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg. Last year, Wozniak also told reporters that he briefly met Snowden at a small event in Moscow, where the former NSA employee is currently living.

Wozniak has expressed some regret in the past for the role technology has played in allowing the government to expand its surveillance efforts. “We didn’t realize that in the digital world there were a lot of ways to use the digital technology to control us, to snoop on us, to make things possible that weren’t,” Wozniak told CNN in 2013. Source...

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Evolution of the bikini...

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Bernie Sanders exposes 18 CEOs who took trillions in bailouts, evaded taxes and outsourced jobs...

Sen. Bernie Sanders fired back at 80 CEOs who wrote a letter lecturing America about deficit reduction by released a report detailing how 18 of these CEOs have wrecked the economy by evading taxes and outsourcing jobs. 

There really is no shame. The Wall Street leaders whose recklessness and illegal behavior caused this terrible recession are now lecturing the American people on the need for courage to deal with the nation’s finances and deficit crisis. Before telling us why we should cut Social Security, Medicare and other vitally important programs, these CEOs might want to take a hard look at their responsibility for causing the deficit and this terrible recession.

Our Wall Street friends might also want to show some courage of their own by suggesting that the wealthiest people in this country, like them, start paying their fair share of taxes. They might work to end the outrageous corporate loopholes, tax havens and outsourcing provisions that their lobbyists have littered throughout the tax code – contributing greatly to our deficit.

Many of the CEO’s who signed the deficit-reduction letter run corporations that evaded at least $34.5 billion in taxes by setting up more than 600 subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands and other offshore tax havens since 2008. As a result, at least a dozen of the companies avoided paying any federal income taxes in recent years, and even received more than $6.4 billion in tax refunds from the IRS since 2008.

Several of the companies received a total taxpayer bailout of more than $2.5 trillion from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department.

Many of the companies also have outsourced hundreds of thousands of American jobs to China and other low wage countries, forcing their workers to receive unemployment insurance and other federal benefits. In other words, these are some of the same people who have significantly caused the deficit to explode over the last four years. Full story...

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Kenyan lawyer offers Obama 50 cows, 70 sheep, 30 goats to marry his daughter Malia...

A Kenyan lawyer has offered US President Barrack Obama 50 cows, 70 sheep and 30 goats for his daughter’s hand in marriage.

Speaking to The Nairobian, Felix Kiprono said his dream is to marry one of Obama’s daughters, Malia, and he is ready to meet Obama to discuss the matter when he visits Kenya in July.

“I got interested in her in 2008. As a matter of fact, I haven’t dated anyone since and promise to be faithful to her. I have shared this with my family and they are willing to help me raise the bride price,” he said.

The young lawyer claims his love for Malia is real and not infatuation. He claims Malia has Kenyan blood since his father Obama has Kenyan roots.

Kiprono said he is not after the family’s money, adding that his love is real. Full story...

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From Jayalalithaa to Amma: Genesis of a political brand...

Barely a year into her first term as chief minister, Jayalalithaa had to tackle a student agitation against her decision to hike bus fares. As students across Chennai colleges went on strike and organized a rally, they were told that the chief minister was like a mother and she was advising them not to take to the streets. Partially rolling back the hike, the "motherly" Jayalalithaa asked the students to focus on their studies.

Jayalalithaa was in her early forties then, and it was likely the first time that the mother concept was invoked in reference to her. Brand Amma had been set in motion, it would seem.

Just around that time the cradle baby scheme was launched so poor parents could leave their newborn girls in the care of the government. For these parents in villages, a girl child was a burden. Female infanticide - even foeticide - was common. Many infant girls were saved from the clutches of death by the scheme and eventually given for adoption. This was among the earliest Amma initiatives of Jayalalithaa.

 The idea of a motherly leader is novel in the state despite Tamil Nadu having a tradition of giving nicknames to leaders. E V Ramaswamy was Periyar, Annadurai was Anna, Karunanidhi became Kalaignar and M G Ramachandran became an abbreviation. Among the younger leaders, Stalin is Thalapathi and Anbumani is Chinnaiyya.While for the others the nicknames were titles that bestowed respect and identity or were simply terms of endearment, in the case of Amma, the purpose is much bigger. If one observes and follows the rise of Brand Amma, it would be evident that personal branding strategies have been carefully used over the years. Full story...

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“The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control.”

We now have a fourth branch of government.

As I document in my new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this fourth branch came into being without any electoral mandate or constitutional referendum, and yet it possesses superpowers, above and beyond those of any other government agency save the military. It is all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful. It operates beyond the reach of the president, Congress and the courts, and it marches in lockstep with the corporate elite who really call the shots in Washington, DC.

You might know this branch of government as Surveillance, but I prefer “technotyranny,” a term coined by investigative journalist James Bamford to refer to an age of technological tyranny made possible by government secrets, government lies, government spies and their corporate ties.

Beware of what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, and with whom you communicate, because it will all be recorded, stored and used against you eventually, at a time and place of the government’s choosing. Privacy, as we have known it, is dead.

The police state is about to pass off the baton to the surveillance state.

Having already transformed local police into extensions of the military, the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the FBI are preparing to turn the nation’s soldier cops into techno-warriors, complete with iris scanners, body scanners, thermal imaging Doppler radar devices, facial recognition programs, license plate readers, cell phone Stingray devices and so much more.

This is about to be the new face of policing in America. Full story...

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