Month: May 2019

RT

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been moved to the hospital wing of the Belmarsh prison in the UK, prompting concerns about his health pending the hearing on his extradition to the US.

Assange’s health had already “significantly deteriorated” during the nearly seven years he spent inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and has continued to get worse over the seven weeks he has spent in Belmarsh, WikiLeaks said in a statement on Wednesday.  Continue reading “‘Grave concerns’: Assange can barely talk, moved to prison hospital, says WikiLeaks”

Oddity Central

There’s no question that artificial intelligence has come a long way in the last few years, but apparently it’s not yet advanced enough to tell the difference between someone using a mobile phone and someone scratching their face.

Chinese media recently reported the case of a man in Jinan, eastern Shandong province, who received a notification that he had broken the law by talking on the phone while driving. The letter also had a surveillance picture of his so-called offence attached, which showed him holding his right hand to his cheek. Continue reading “Man Gets Fined for Scratching His Face While Driving”

MEHR News Agency

TEHRAN, May 27 (MNA) – Tara Sharifi, 11, has scored 162 points – the highest number possible – on the Mensa IQ test, two points higher than the estimated IQs of physicist Albert Einstein and cosmologist Professor Stephen Hawking.

Scoring 162 points means that Tara is well above the so-called ‘genius benchmark’ of 140.  Continue reading “11-year old Iranian girl scores highest possible mark in Mensa IQ test”

Daily Mail

Putting your faith in high-tech navigation aids could harm your brain and even increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s, it was claimed yesterday.

Over thousands of years, humans have developed an acute sense of their surroundings but this is being lost as satnavs take over, navigation expert David Barrie warned.  Continue reading “Relying on satnavs and map-reading apps could lead to an increased risk of Alzheimer’s, expert fears”

There will be no broadcast of The Word From the Trenches today, I will not make it back from my dentist appointment in time.

I will be back up tomorrow.

Chicago Tribune

At least 43 people were shot, seven fatally, in Chicago over the Memorial Day weekend even as severe storms kept people indoors and 1,200 extra officers patrolled the streets.

The toll was slightly higher than last year’s Memorial Day weekend, when 39 people were shot, seven of them fatally, according to shooting data kept by the Tribune. In 2017, 45 people were shot, seven of them killed. And in 2016, 71 people shot, six of them fatally, in one of the most violent Memorial Day weekends in recent years.  Continue reading “At least 43 people shot in Chicago over Memorial Day weekend. ‘Unacceptable state of affairs,’ new mayor says”

Middle East Eye

A US governor has blamed Palestinians for Israel’s ongoing occupation of their land, just weeks before the United States plans to unveil the economic portion of its “deal of the century” peace plan.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a longtime supporter of Israel and a member of Donald Trump’s Republican Party, made his comments during a trade delegation visit to Israel this week.  Continue reading “US governor blames Palestinians for ongoing Israeli occupation”

Middle East Monitor

Palestinian school textbooks are once again under public scrutiny, this time after a report published by Israel’s Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) claimed that material was “more radical than previously published”. The EU has since confirmed that it will be funding an assessment to be carried out “by an independent and internationally recognised research institute.”  Continue reading “The EU should be calling out Israeli colonialism for its violence and incitement”

RT

The Israeli military wants the International Criminal Court to butt out of its affairs, its top military prosecutor has declared in response to efforts to hold it to account for its use of live fire against Palestinian protesters.

“Israel is a law-abiding country, with an independent and strong judicial system, and there is no reason for its actions to be scrutinized by the ICC,” Brig. Gen. Sharon Afek, Israel’s military advocate, declared at an international conference on warfare laws in Herzliya. “The position of Israel is that the International Criminal Court does not have jurisdiction to discuss the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”  Continue reading “Top IDF lawyer tells The Hague to back off, says Israel can probe own alleged war crimes”

Insider

Venezuela’s crippling economic spiral is having a negative impact on an unlikely group in society: criminals, who are struggling to afford bullets, and unable to find things to steal as the country’s wealth declines rapidly.

The Associated Press (AP) spoke with two gangsters in Petare, a notorious slum in the outskirts of Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, who said they now struggle to make a living off muggings, a previously lucrative source of income.  Continue reading “Venezuela’s economic crisis is now so bad that criminals can’t afford to buy bullets”

Houston Chronicle – by James Osborne

WASHINGTON – With growing volumes of natural gas from Texas and the rest of the United States sold abroad, developers are rushing to build new pipelines connecting oil and gas fields with border crossings and shipping ports.

But a growing number of landowners and environmentalists are fighting those projects at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and in federal courts, challenging the notion that pipeline projects carrying gas destined for export are entitled to the same privileges granted infrastructure projects serving American customers.  Continue reading “Export pipelines new front in eminent domain fights”

150Sec – by Sophie Foggin

Reading a Wikipedia entry about Wikipedia itself seems strange. But where else on the web would an average internet user go for digestible, encyclopedia-style content?

With its entries almost always topping Google search results, Wikipedia receives around 33 billion page views per month, according to studies carried out by thinktank Pew Research in 2016. In line with statistics from the website itself, it also changes at a rate of 1.8 edits per second and the number of new articles per day averages 578.  Continue reading ““Wikipedia is a broken system,” says co-founder Larry Sanger”

McClatchy – by David Lightman

Democrats say immigrants who entered the country illegally as children, commonly called “Dreamers,” and were caught driving drunk long ago should be shown the same consideration as members of Congress with a similar record.

The House will consider sweeping legislation next month to create a path to permanent residency for the “Dreamers,” and part of the bill details how and when a driving under the influence (DUI) conviction would disqualify them from that process.  Continue reading “Should ‘Dreamers’ with DUIs get the same break as a member of Congress?”

International Man – by Jeff Thomas

Left-wing activists have recently been increasingly active in seeking to limit opposing political viewpoints, in order to create a more ubiquitous “groupthink.” One effort in accomplishing this has been to propose the creation of a “Human Rights Committee” in order to monitor the economic transactions of “white supremacist groups and anti-Islam activists.”

This should not be surprising, as, throughout the former Free World, collectivists are, increasingly, coming out of the closet and seeking to eliminate any and all opposition to their cause.  Continue reading “Eliminating Free Speech The Smart Way”