Month: July 2017

Bloomberg – by Caroline Chen

A giant technology company will release up to 20 million bacteria-filled, buzzing mosquitoes this summer in Fresno, California.

That’s supposed to be a good thing.

The bug campaign, which starts Friday, is part of a plan by Alphabet Inc.’s Verily Life Sciences unit. Reared by machines, the male mosquitoes are infected with a bacteria that, while harmless to humans, creates nonhatching dead eggs when they mate with wild females — hopefully cutting the mosquito population and the transmission of the diseases they carry.   Continue reading “20 Million Mosquitoes to Hit Fresno; That’s a Good Thing, Really”

Fox 13

LAND O’ LAKES (FOX 13) – A 220-foot sinkhole that swallowed two homes and emptied a Pasco County neighborhood this morning is still growing, officials warned, and may reach all the way to a nearby lake.

The home at 21835 Ocean Pines Drive in Land O’ Lakes fell into the watery hole this morning and the muddy pit has now claimed much of a neighboring home. Firefighters said they got a 911 call just after 7 a.m. and the hole grew within minutes after that.   Continue reading “Sinkhole swallows homes in Land O’ Lakes”

Bloomberg

The Brazilian judge who ordered the imprisonment of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva set off a seismic event in a culture accustomed to impunity for its rich and powerful, and battered the resurgent left.

Judge Sergio Moro on Wednesday gave the man universally known as Lula nine and half years for taking 3.7 million reais ($1.1 million) worth of benefits from a construction company in exchange for favors. The three-year Carwash probe swept scythe-like through Brazil’s ruling class, and came to focus on the former factory worker who once was the nation’s most popular politician — and a strong contender to regain office.   Continue reading “Lula Sentenced to Prison and Tension Mounts Again in Brazil”

AOL

What would you do for free wifi? Would you clean toilets for a thousand hours?

Well, 22,000 people agreed to do just that!

Purple is a public wifi provider that decided to do an experiment with their terms and conditions.

In the long agreement, they included a paragraph that stated: The user may be required, at Purple’s discretion, to carry out 1,000 hours of community service.   Continue reading “Thousands agree to clean toilets for free wi-fi”

Anti-War – by Jason Ditz

The Pentagon has announced today that a unit of about 500 US ground troops, National Guardsmen, are to be deployed to the Kosovo region to join a NATO “peacekeeping” operation (KFOR) that has proven the longest in the alliance’s history.

The operation is the remnant of the 1999 NATO attack on Serbia, which ended with NATO announcing that Kosovo, which had been part of Serbia since the Middle Ages, would secede from Serbia. The ethnic Albanian population approved of this. The Serbian population in North Kosovo continues to oppose it.   Continue reading “US to Send Ground Troops to Kosovo to Join NATO Operation”

Breitbart – by Bob Price

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions told a conference attended by state and local law enforcement officers that criminal aliens are drawn to sanctuary cities. He blamed politicians, not the cops for refusing to cooperate with immigration officials–making their communities less safe.

“When cities like Philadelphia, Boston or San Francisco advertise that they have these policies, the criminals take notice,” AG Sessions told the police officers gathered at a Las Vegas conference center. “According to a recent study from the University of California Riverside, cities with these policies have more violent crime on average than those that don’t.”   Continue reading “Criminal Aliens Drawn to Sanctuary Cities, Says AG Sessions”

ABC News

Three Palestinian assailants opened fire on Israeli police from inside a major Jerusalem holy site on Friday, gravely wounding two officers before being shot dead, police said. The officers later died.

The rare attack from within the contested site, revered by both Muslims and Jews, raised new concerns about an escalation of violence. Police identified the attackers as Arab citizens of Israel.

The sacred compound sits at the fault line of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and has triggered major confrontations in the past.   Continue reading “Palestinian gunmen kill 2 Israeli police at Jerusalem shrine”

The Harvard Crimson

A faculty committee has recommended that the College forbid students from joining all “fraternities, sororities, and similar organizations”—including co-ed groups—with the goal of phasing out the organizations entirely by May 2022.

In a 22-page report released Wednesday morning, the committee proposed that the policy—which would replace existing penalties for members of the social groups that are set to go into place in the fall—apply to students entering in the fall of 2018.   Continue reading “Faculty Committee Recommends Social Groups Be ‘Phased Out’”

Institute for Historical Review

The Washington, D.C., transit system has rejected an innocuous IHR advertisement that simply proclaims “History Matters!,” absurdly claiming it violates guidelines that prohibit ads “intended to influence members of the public regarding an issue on which there are varying opinions,” and that “are intended to influence public policy.”   Continue reading “Washington Metro Rejects Simple IHR Ad, Absurdly Citing Irrelevant Guidelines”

Red Flag News

WALL STREET JOURNAL reports:

In my neighborhood, I frequently walk past “shop local” signs in the windows of struggling stores. Yet I don’t feel guilty ordering most of my family’s household goods on Amazon. In a world of fair competition, there will be winners and losers.

But when a mail truck pulls up filled to the top with Amazon boxes for my neighbors and me, I do feel some guilt. Like many close observers of the shipping business, I know a secret about the federal government’s relationship with Amazon: The U.S. Postal Service delivers the company’s boxes well below its own costs. Like an accelerant added to a fire, this subsidy is speeding up the collapse of traditional retailers in the U.S. and providing an unfair advantage for Amazon.   Continue reading “EACH box mailed by AMAZON gets $1.46 govt subsidy…”

Reuters – by Liz Hampton

HOUSTON (Reuters) – A Magellan Midstream Partners oil pipeline leaked some 1,200 barrels of crude on Thursday, triggering the evacuation of nearby homes while cleanup operations were underway, the company said in a statement.

Magellan’s 275,000 barrel per day (bpd) Longhorn Pipeline, which transports crude oil from Crane, Texas to Houston, ruptured about four miles (6 km) southwest of Bastrop, a town not far from the state capital of Austin. The company shut the pipeline and isolated the affected segment, it said.   Continue reading “Magellan Midstream Partners pipeline ruptures in Texas”

Las Vegas Review-Journal – by Jenny Wilson

Updated July 12, 2017 – 8:09 pm

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions made a brief reference to the ongoing Bunkerville standoff trial Wednesday when he offered praise to the lead prosecutor, but he declined to take a side in the case that his Justice Department is prosecuting.

“I’ve got to tell you, it’s impressive when you have a tough case, a controversial case, and you’ve got the top guy leading the battle, going to court, standing up and defending the office and the principles of the law,” Sessions said of Nevada Acting U.S. Attorney Steven Myhre.
Continue reading “AG Sessions: ‘I’m not taking sides’ in Bundy case”

Jon Rappoport

I’m reprinting my article from 2013 below. But first, a quick bit of recent history concerning two little known Israeli companies, Narus and Verint. They have helped the NSA spy on the planet.

Narus, in 2010, was folded into Boeing, one of the largest defense contractors in the world. Then, in 2014, Boeing sold Narus to Symantec. In 2016, Symantec sold half of itself to the Carlyle Group. So Narus, a little engine that could, has been keeping very high-priced company.   Continue reading “Two Israeli companies: spying on the world”

Reason – by Jacob Sullum

Yesterday the House Judiciary Committee approved a bill that would expand the attorney general’s unilateral authority to ban psychoactive substances in a vain effort to keep up with inventive underground chemists. The Stop the Importation and Trafficking of Synthetic Analogues Act of 2017, a.k.a. the SITSA Act, would create a new category under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) known as Schedule A to facilitate the administrative prohibition of new drugs that resemble those in the law’s other schedules. The bill, introduced by Rep. John Katco (R-N.Y.) in the House (H.R. 2851) and by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) in the Senate (S. 1327), is both an alarming expansion of bureaucratic power and a vivid illustration of prohibition’s absurdity.   Continue reading “House Advances Bill That Would Expand the DEA’s Power to Make Legal Highs Illegal”

Fox News

The defense attorney for the lone person of interest connected to the search for four missing men in Pennsylvania said his client admitted Thursday to killing the four, and told authorities the location of the bodies.

Lawyer Paul Lang told reporters his client, Cosmo DiNardo, 20, confessed to “the four murders,” and is ready to plead guilty to four counts of first-degree murder.

“I’m sorry,” a shackled DiNardo said as he left the courthouse.   Continue reading “Cosmo DiNardo confesses to murders of 4 missing Pennsylvania men, will be spared death penalty, lawyer says”

Prison Legal News – by Alex Friedmann

The nation’s two largest for-profit prison companies, Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and Florida-based GEO Group (GEO), are publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Other private prison firms, including Management & Training Corporation (MTC), Community Education Centers (CEC), LaSalle Southwest Corrections and Emerald Correctional Management, are privately-held and thus do not have public stock.

As of July 2015, CCA had issued approximately 117 million shares of stock with a market cap of $4.05 billion, while GEO had issued around 75 million shares with a market cap of $2.76 billion. So who owns the vast majority of stock in these two companies? The answer is not everyday people or individual investors, but rather other corporations – banks, mutual fund management companies and private equity firms – as well as public employee retirement systems.   Continue reading “Who Owns Private Prison Stock?”