Category: News

Desdemona Despair

By Joseph Serna
12 September 2014

(Los Angeles Times) – The first eight months of 2014 were the warmest on average in California’s history since record-keeping began in 1895, federal scientists announced this week.

The average temperature was 62.6 degrees in California over the time period, coming in at 1.1 degrees hotter than the previous high and more than 4 degrees warmer than the 20^th century average, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported. Continue reading “California breaks all-time heat record – Heat alerts declared; cooling centers to open”

Natural Society – by Christina Sarich

It is well known that smoking marijuana leads individuals to experience something called ‘the munchies,’ where users tend to eat a lot more than normal. While you would think that this affect would lead marijuana-smokers to be more obese than non-smokers, there are now multiple studies which suggest that moderate use of marijuana can actually lessen the probability that someone will be obese (though it is possible that thinner individuals simply smoke more often than overweight individuals).   Continue reading “Report: Marijuana Users 3 Times Less Likely to be Obese”

Natural Society – by Christina Sarich

A vaccine for this, a vaccine for that – vaccines all around! If it isn’t a pharmaceutical drug, Western medicine seems to find a vaccine for everything. A possible ‘cure’ for Alzheimer’s disease is being offered in as little as five years if all 14,000,000-plus of the people who currently suffer from the disease (and oh, yes, their family members too) just subject themselves to a vaccine.   Continue reading “Drug Companies Begin Push for Alzheimer’s Vaccine on Millions”

RT

All 200 trucks in Russia’s 2nd convoy carrying humanitarian aid for devastated areas of eastern Ukraine have arrived in the city of Lugansk after weeks of delays that occurred despite an agreement on relief corridors in the Minsk ceasefire deal.

Six of the nine trucks carrying medicines have been unloaded, RIA Novosti reports.

Lugansk residents will start receiving the aid on Monday.   Continue reading “Russia’s 2nd Ukraine aid convoy of 200 trucks arrives in Lugansk”

RT

US lawmakers are keen to prevent the fast food giant Burger King from taking advantage of lower tax rates in Canada, arguing that it is unpatriotically moving its operations there after “profiting” from taxpayer-funded benefits in the US.

In August, the Whopper-maker announced its plans to buy Tim Hortons, Inc. – a Canadian coffee and donut chain – and move its operations to take advantage of Canada’s lower tax rates. The additional benefit of the Canadian tax system is that companies do not pay extra taxes on income earned abroad.   Continue reading “US Senators urge ‘unpatriotic’ Burger King to ditch move to Canada”

RT

Bringing Nazi comparisons into discussions is usually reserved for internet arguments, not middle school classrooms. But one US teacher may have missed that lesson when she assigned her sixth graders homework comparing Adolf Hitler and George W. Bush.

The students of McKinley Tech Middle School in Washington, DC were working on a unit about war and peace this week, when, as if proving the Godwin’s law, the unnamed teacher handed out a worksheet that related to two of their readings.   Continue reading “US 6th-graders told to compare ‘power abusers’ Hitler and Bush”

Mail.com

GWER, Iraq (AP) — Misspelled graffiti on walls pockmarked by bullets and torn up propaganda stickers make up the few remaining traces of the Islamic State group in this northern Iraqi ghost town after Kurdish forces finally managed to free it from militant control.

Also missing are as many as 20,000 residents who once lived in the town and are now too scared to return after Kurdish peshmerga forces reclaimed Gwer from militants last month with the help of American airstrikes.   Continue reading “After Iraqi battles, residents choose displacement”

IMEMC News – by Celine Hagbard, Sept, 3, 2014

New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, the co-author of a July Resolution (Senate Resolution 498) that offered full and complete support for Israel’s actions in Gaza, was one of the targets of the protest.

The other was New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, the top recipient of campaign and other contributions from the Zionist lobbying group known as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Booker also faced protests when he traveled to Oregon last week to speak at a fundraising dinner for Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, also an unquestioning supporter of Israeli policies.   Continue reading “13 US Activists Arrested for Protesting US Senators’ Unquestioning Support of Israel”

American Everyman – by Scott Creighton

Would you like to know who owns the majority of  ISIS’s weapons? You do. The U.S. taxpayer.

A report is out this morning making the rounds on various news sites from Conflict Armament Research, an organization that tracks small arms and munitions through various conflict zones, which shows a good percentage of arms captured from “ISIS” fighters are actually the property of the U.S. government.   Continue reading “ISIS™ Weapons “Property of the U.S. Government””

Mail.com

LUHANSK, Ukraine (AP) — A convoy of more than 200 white trucks crossed the Russian border to deliver humanitarian aid to a battered Ukrainian city on Saturday, a move made without Kiev’s consent yet met with silence by Ukraine’s top leaders.

“Early in the morning, we entered Ukraine to bring aid to Luhansk,” said Yury Stepanov, a Russian who was overseeing the convoy. “We came in around 215 vehicles,” he added, as workers unloaded boxes into a local warehouse.   Continue reading “Ukraine government repels rebel attack on airport”

Mail.com

BRITAL, Lebanon (AP) — Syrian refugee Ibrahim Abbas Ali and his family awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of gunfire outside their tent in Lebanon, and for a second time they raced off into the fields, fleeing a war that now seems to have followed them across the border.

The gunmen who attacked the makeshift camp housing around 200 refugees set fire to several of the tents, including the two used by Ali, his two wives and 15 children, destroying the few belongings they had managed to bring with them from Syria, including their official documents and U.N. refugee cards.   Continue reading “Syrians attacked in Lebanon after soldiers killed”

KSBW 8 News – by Felix Cortez

SALINAS, Calif. —Ten cents for every minute I’m late to class! Janitorial bathroom duty for misbehaving? Twenty-five cents to borrow a pencil?

Alisal High School students in Salinas were shocked the moment their social studies teacher, Steven Munoz, passed out copies of a letter written by their principal on Thursday.

Principal Ernesto Garcia wrote, “Parents/Students, There have been some very severe cuts in the school budget due to the nationwide cuts in educational spending. All teachers have been directed by the principal to enforce the following rules.”   Continue reading “Alisal High students shocked in social studies class”

Contra Corner – by Wolf Richter

Stock market volume is a sadly drooping southward curve, interrupted by violent spikes. Volumes and turnover rates are now back to levels of the late 1990s. If high-frequency trades and ETF-arbitrage are taken out of the equation, turnover might well be back to where it was in the 1980s. So algorithmic trading – for example, an instant burst of computer-generated buy orders based on a headline that hit a fraction of a millisecond earlier – can have a big impact on the market overall.   Continue reading “When The Algos Hit The “Sell” Key: Look Out Below!”

Mail.com

BLACKSTONE, Mass. (AP) — A woman who lived in a squalid, vermin-infested home where the bodies of three infants were found was charged Friday with covering up the deaths, while neighbors said they wish they had acted themselves to call attention to the house with the foul smell and the shades that were always drawn.

Erika Murray, 31, was arraigned on charges including fetal death concealment, witness intimidation and permitting substantial injury to a child. But basic facts remain a mystery or aren’t being explained by authorities.   Continue reading “Charges in dead babies case; neighbors soul-search”

Yahoo News

BLOOMING GROVE, Pa. (AP) — Two troopers were ambushed outside a state police barracks in northeastern Pennsylvania during a late-night shift change, leaving one dead and another injured, and authorities were searching Saturday for the suspect or suspects, state police said.

One trooper was leaving the barracks in Pike County’s Blooming Grove and another was arrived when shots were fired just before 11 p.m. Friday, State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan said. He confirmed that one trooper was killed and the other was injured and taken to Geisinger Medical Center in Scranton, where he was in stable condition.   Continue reading “State police: Trooper shot dead outside barracks”

My San Antonio – by Kolten Parker

SAN ANTONIO – Eight 55-foot balloons with military-grade surveillance cameras are providing U.S. Border Patrol agents an eye in the sky along the Texas-Mexico border.

The blimp-like aerostats, which fly about 3,500 feet above the ground and are tethered to the ground, have 360-degree, infrared surveillance capability that can read a license plate from miles away, according to the Valley Morning Star.   Continue reading “Surveillance balloons help agents along Texas-Mexico border”

The Hill – by Julian Hattem

With a surveillance reform bill stuck in the Senate, the federal court overseeing spy agencies on Friday reauthorized the National Security Agency’s controversial bulk collection of Americans’ phone records.

Reauthorization from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) allows the NSA to continue to warrantlessly collect “metadata” in bulk about people’s phone calls. The records contain information about which numbers people called, when and how long they talked, but not the actual content of their conversations.   Continue reading “Spy court renews NSA metadata program”

Natural News – by Mike Adams

In response to the severity of the global Ebola outbreak, we’ve just launched BioDefense.com, a site that exclusively hosts a FREE online audio course that shares lifesaving pandemic preparedness secrets. I’m the author of the multi-part audio course, and in it I share the most urgent and lifesaving information about pandemic preparedness that no government, conventional media outlet or health authority will dare discuss.   Continue reading “Health Ranger launches FREE online pandemic preparedness audio course at BioDefense.com – listen NOW”