From the Trenches World Report
Enforce our Bill of Rights
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Grocery stores in Alaska are running low on some foods after a cargo ship was delayed by a mechanical issue.
Tote Maritime Alaska’s North Star, which regularly ships groceries and other goods between Tacoma and Anchorage, was supposed to leave Jan. 14 and arrive on Jan. 17. A problem was discovered shortly before its departure. Continue reading “Groceries run low in Alaska after cargo ship problem”
Collective Evolution – by Josh del Sol
Last night I watched The Big Short — maybe the most important Hollywood film in years. This true story is a powerful and eloquent invitation to wake up to the sheer depravity at the core of the system of commerce.
The fact that the film got nominated for 5 Oscars including Best Picture is a huge sign that there are way more people waking up than we ever thought. The wrongs may not be getting righted as quickly as we’d like, but it is happening. Continue reading “Ontario Pulls Plug on 36,000 Rural ‘Smart’ Meters: Is Big Energy Imploding?”
Waking Times – by Lorraine Chow
It now looks like the catastrophic Porter Ranch gas leak, which has spewed more than 83,000 metric tons of noxious methane for nearly three months, has spread across Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley.
On Wednesday, Los Angeles City Councilman Mitchell Englander called on the Southern California Gas Co. to extend residential relocation assistance to residents in Granada Hills, Chatsworth and Northridge who live near the Aliso Canyon gas leak above Porter Ranch. These residents reported symptoms related to the exposure of natural gas such as nausea, vomiting, headaches and respiratory problems. Continue reading “Porter Ranch Methane Leak Spreads Across LA’s San Fernando Valley”
As anti-Semitic attacks increase throughout Europe, Russian president Vladimir Putin has invited European Jews to immigrate to Russia.
Putin made the offer on Tuesday in a meeting with members of the European Jewish Congress (EJC) that took place in the Kremlin. Moshe Vyacheslav Kantor, EJC president, complained to Putin about the rising anti-Semitism across Europe and the growing number of attacks against Jews. Continue reading “Putin offers European Jews refuge in Russia”
Washington Post – by Andrew Rudalevige
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case assessing the legality of the immigration initiatives announced by President Obama in November 2014.
As you’ll recall, Obama proposed to make it easier for as many as 5.5 million people now living in the U.S. illegally to stay and to work. (There are about 11 million such people in all; these figures are from the 5th Circuit Court decision from November 2015.) Saying that he wanted to deport “felons, not families,” the president announced that he would expand his program of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and create another, larger one: Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA). Continue reading “The Supreme Court asked four questions about Obama’s immigration initiative. The last one is key.”
WEB Notes: All indicators are pointing to a slow down in the global economy. Shipping is down, rail is down and of course China is collapsing. Let me ask you what builds China’s economy? Producing the trash most of us buy in the stores. If their economy is collapsing and no ships are traversing the seas and rails movement is down that should tell you no one is buying the goods from China, at least there is a large reduction in demand.
Union Pacific Corp.’s fourth-quarter profit fell 22 percent as the railroad hauled 9 percent less freight and worked to cut costs to match the reduced demand.Its shares fell almost 5 percent in premarket trading Thursday. Continue reading “Union Pacific 4Q Profit Falls 22 Pct As Freight Volume Slows”
Two men traveling from Nevada to Montana with over 20 pounds of marijuana got so incredibly stoned they handed themselves over to police in a bout of paranoia. The resulting recording obtained by East Idaho News had YouTubers in stitches.
The men – Leland Ayala-Doliente, 22, and Holland Sward, 23 – were driving across the Nevada-Idaho border almost exactly a year ago when fear struck so deep it completely paralyzed their ability to reason. Continue reading “2 young dopes with 20 pounds of weed get so paranoid they call cops on themselves”
CHISINAU, Moldova (AP) — Thousands of people held an anti-government protest Thursday in the Moldovan capital, a day after the legislature approved a new pro-European government.
Protesters gathered outside government offices and Parliament in Chisinau to protest Prime Minister Pavel Filip, the former technology minister and ex-candy factory manager, who presented his Cabinet of politicians and specialists to President Nicolae Timofti late Wednesday. Continue reading “Unrest for 2nd day: 7,000 hold anti-govt protest in Moldova”
BAGHDAD (AP) — Two powerful Shiite militias are top suspects in the abduction of three Americans last weekend in a southern neighborhood of the Iraqi capital, an Iraqi police commander and a Western security official in Baghdad said Thursday.
The Americans were abducted in Dora, a mixed neighborhood that is home to both Shiites and Sunnis, on Saturday. It was the latest in a series of brazen high-profile kidnappings undermining confidence in the Iraqi government’s ability to control state-sanctioned Shiite militias, which have grown in strength as Iraqi security forces battle the Islamic State group. Continue reading “Officials name top suspects in Iraq abductions of Americans”
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A former Oklahoma City police officer is set to find out whether he will spend the rest of his life in prison for raping and sexually victimizing eight women on his beat.
Daniel Holtzclaw, 29, will be sentenced Thursday. He faces up to 263 years in prison after last month’s convictions on 18 counts — four counts of first-degree rape, plus additional counts of forcible oral sodomy, sexual battery, procuring lewd exhibition and second-degree rape. He was acquitted on 18 other counts. Continue reading “Ex-Oklahoma officer to be sentenced for rape, sex crimes”
CLEVELAND — David Ayers says he feared for his life during the nearly 12 years he spent in a prison for a murder that evidence showed he did not commit.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit voided Mr. Ayers’s conviction in 2010, and he was freed nearly a year later. A federal jury in 2013 awarded him $13.2 million, a verdict upheld by the appeals court. Continue reading “Cleveland Is Accused of ‘Blatant Dodge’ for Not Paying After Verdicts”
ArsTechnica – by David Kravets
As body cams continue to flourish in police departments across the nation, an ongoing debate has ensued about how much, if any, of that footage should be made public under state open-access laws.
An overlooked twist to that debate, however, has now become front and center: How much should the public have to pay for the footage if the police agree to release it? News network NY1, a Time Warner Cable News operation, was billed $36,000 by the NYPD for roughly 190 hours of footage it requested under the state’s Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). Continue reading “Police department charging TV news network $36,000 for body cam footage”
Southern California Gas Co.’s effort to plug its leaking natural gas well involves higher stakes than simply stopping the fumes that have sickened many residents of Porter Ranch.
The company also is trying to avoid a blowout, which state regulators said is now a significant concern after a seventh attempt to plug the well created more precarious conditions at the site. Continue reading “Efforts to plug Porter Ranch-area gas leak worsened blowout risk, regulators say”
Graffiti slogans in Hebrew at the Dormition Abbey read ‘Death to the heathen Christians, the enemies of Israel,’ among other slanderous writings marking the ancient structures.
Police suspect Israeli right-wing religious extremists as being behind the anti-Christian vandalism, Associated Press reported over the weekend. Continue reading “Hate Crime: Extremist Jews Vandalize Key Christian Church in Jerusalem”
It’s blizzard time on the East Coast, and this week’s storm could wind up being one for the ages. But lost in all the discussion of snow looms a coastal flood threat that could rival some of the strongest storms ever to hit the Northeast.
Weather models continue to go all-in on what may wind up being Washington, D.C.’s snowiest snowstorm in history, besting a 28-inch snowfall back in 1922. At the moment, the Washington area is in the bull’s-eye, with potential for anywhere from 20 to 36 inches, according to the latest models. The storm is currently forecast to be a Top 10 snowstorm for Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City, too. On Wednesday morning, the National Weather Service issued a blizzard watch for the Washington area, warning of “life threatening conditions.” The NWS will also begin launching weather balloons twice as frequently for the next few days at each of its offices east of the Rocky Mountains in an attempt to gather more data to improve its blizzard forecast.
Continue reading “Blizzard Storm Surge Could Rival an East Coast Hurricane Landfall”
The solar system appears to have a new ninth planet. Today, two scientists announced evidence that a body nearly the size of Neptune—but as yet unseen—orbits the sun every 15,000 years. During the solar system’s infancy 4.5 billion years ago, they say, the giant planet was knocked out of the planet-forming region near the sun. Slowed down by gas, the planet settled into a distant elliptical orbit, where it still lurks today. Continue reading “Astronomers say a Neptune-sized planet lurks beyond Pluto”
