From the Trenches World Report
Enforce our Bill of Rights
New York Post – by Jamie Schram, Kevin Fasick, Yaron Steinbuch and Daniel Prendergast
A 47-year-old financial company executive was killed Wednesday when he jumped from a luxury apartment building on the Upper West Side, authorities said.
Kevin Bell jumped from a ninth-floor kitchen window at the famed Apthorp building on West End Avenue near West 79th Street around 7:20 a.m., a source told The Post. Continue reading “‘Depressed’ Wall Street exec jumps to his death”
The Guardian – by Carol Rosenburg
Hundreds of U.S. forces are rehearsing a migrant crisis this week at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a massive multimillion dollar drill that envisions the United States capturing huge numbers of people in the Caribbean bound for the United States — and how the military, State Department and Homeland Security would collaborate on handling it.
At the Southern Command, Army Col. Lisa Garcia said the military was contributing 400 troops and spending $2.5 million on its portion of the month-long exercise, to include transportation and airlift. It ends Friday. Continue reading “It’s only a drill: Guantánamo rehearses Caribbean migrant crisis”
President Donald Trump wants to pass an immigration reform bill that could grant legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants living in the US.
“The time is right for an immigration bill as long as there is compromise on both sides,” Trump told reporters Tuesday at the White House. Continue reading “Trump envisions bill allowing many immigrants to stay in US”
Two people have been shot during a speech by French President Francois Hollande when a sniper’s pistol malfunctioned.
The French leader was talking at the opening of the Paris to Bordeaux high-speed rail at Villognon when the gunshots interrupted him.
The soldier shot two civilians when the safety catch on his gun is said to have failed, causing a bullet to hit a cocktail waiter in the calf as well as a railway worker. Continue reading “Sharpshooter on roof during speech by French President Hollande injures two people with a single bullet from 300ft away as his gun goes off by accident”
WASHINGTON – In January, Lt. Col. Khallid Shabazz received the call every Army chaplain dreams of, the call that validates years of intense study and hard work toward keeping the U.S. military in good spiritual health.
He was offered the job of chaplain for an entire division, an honor for anyone in his field but a milestone in his case. After a ceremony this summer, Shabazz will become the first Muslim division-level chaplain in the history of the U.S. military – a Muslim spiritual leader for more than 14,000 mostly Christian soldiers.
Continue reading “Army makes history by putting Muslim in charge of 14,000 US soldiers’ spiritual needs”
Washington (AFP) – US President Donald Trump’s senior adviser Kellyanne Conway has come under fire after a picture of her casually kneeling on a couch in the Oval Office was widely shared on social media.
In an image captured by an AFP photographer, Conway appears on the couch with her shoes on as Trump poses for a photo with leaders of historically black colleges and universities. Continue reading “Trump aide Conway draws ire for kneeling on White House sofa”
Most taxpayers will never pay $10,000 in flights for an overseas trip, but in the year prior to the 2016 election, taxpayers paid for 557 such trips that each cost more than $10,000 for a member of Congress or a staffer.
Those five-digit global itineraries made up 40% of all individual congressional trips for which travel costs were publicly reported. By comparison, less than 0.2% of tickets purchased by the general public through U.S. travel agencies in 2015 and 2016 were more than $10,000, according to the Airlines Reporting Corp. Continue reading “Taxpayers fund a first-class congressional foreign travel boom”
The Guardian – by Olivia Solon
I didn’t become a software engineer to be trying to make ends meet,” said a Twitter employee in his early 40s who earns a base salary of $160,000. It is, he added, a “pretty bad” income for raising a family in the Bay Area.
The biggest cost is his $3,000 rent – which he said was “ultra cheap” for the area – for a two-bedroom house in San Francisco, where he lives with his wife and two kids. He’d like a slightly bigger property, but finds himself competing with groups of twentysomethings happy to share accommodation while paying up to $2,000 for a single room. Continue reading “Scraping by on six figures? Tech workers feel poor in Silicon Valley’s wealth bubble”
The recent changes in Washington do not seem to bode well for fact-driven, scientific points of view on many issues. But there are already a number of sensitive areas of science where important research is stalling due to outside pressures or serious questions asked by the scientists themselves.
A yearly conference organized by the MIT Media Lab tackles “forbidden research”, the science that is constrained by ethical, cultural and institutional restrictions. The purpose of the conference is to give scientists a forum to consider these ideas and questions and to discuss the viability and necessity of studying topics like the rights of AI and machines, genetic engineering, climate change and others. Continue reading “5 Topics That Are “Forbidden” to Science”
Inside President Trump’s otherwise “standard Trump stump speech” at CPAC was nestled what might be a most intriguing observation:
Global cooperation, dealing with other countries, getting along with other countries is good, it’s very important. But there is no such thing as a global anthem, a global currency or a global flag. This is the United States of America that I’m representing.
Miami Herald – by Julie K Brown
When they brought William “Ryan” Owens home, the Navy SEAL was carried from a C-17 military plane in a flag-draped casket, onto the tarmac at Dover Air Force Base, as President Donald Trump, his daughter, Ivanka, and Owens’ family paid their respects.
It was a private transfer, as the family had requested. No media and no bystanders, except for some military dignitaries. Continue reading “Slain SEAL’s dad wants answers: ‘Don’t hide behind my son’s death’”
Small numbers of Chinese arrived in Mexico centuries ago as servants of Spanish merchants. A far larger number, perhaps 60,000, came at the end of the 19th and beginning of the early 20th century, fleeing poverty and hardship in southern China’s Canton region. They called Mexico “Big Lusong,” in contrast to “Little Lusong,” which was the Philippines.
The U.S. government barred Chinese immigration in 1882, so many of the Chinese migrants aimed to use Mexico as a springboard, but in the end most stayed in Mexico despite hardships. Continue reading “Chinese in Mexico: A little-known history”
Encyclopedia.com – by Diana H. Yoon and Gabriel J. Chin
Whereas, in the opinion of the Government of the United States the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities within the territory thereof: Therefore—
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that … until the expiration of ten years next after the passage of this act, the coming of Chinese laborers to the United States be, and the same is hereby, suspended; and during such suspension it shall not be lawful for any Chinese laborer to come, or, having so come, … to remain within the United States. Continue reading “Chinese Exclusion Acts”
OLATHE, Kan. — Kansas reeled on Friday as a shooting at a bar, which left one Indian engineer dead and another injured, escalated into an international incident amid fears that the attack was motivated by bias and hate.
The authorities in the United States, including F.B.I. agents, are investigating the shooting as a possible hate crime, and India’s government expressed shock over the episode in suburban Kansas City.
Continue reading “Hate Crime Is Feared as 2 Indian Engineers Are Shot in Kansas”
Many people believe that Earth is closer to the sun in the summer and that is why it is hotter. And, likewise, they think Earth is farthest from the sun in the winter.
Although this idea makes sense, it is incorrect.
It is true that Earth’s orbit is not a perfect circle. It is a bit lop-sided. During part of the year, Earth is closer to the sun than at other times. However, in the Northern Hemisphere, we are having winter when Earth is closest to the sun and summer when it is farthest away! Compared with how far away the sun is, this change in Earth’s distance throughout the year does not make much difference to our weather. Continue reading “It’s all about Earth’s tilt!”
As French voters look set to make a massive swing to the right in their upcoming presidential election (see our notes on the topic here and here), a group of frightened liberal protesters have decided to back a relatively surprising, if impossible, presidential candidate in 2017, Barack Obama.
And, lest you thing this is a joke, a quick walk around Paris even reveals campaign posters for “Obama17” plastered all around the city. Continue reading “French Voters Call On Obama To Run For President To “Give French People Hope””