From the Trenches World Report

Washington Post – by William Booth

LONDON — At $1 billion, it is the most expensive embassy ever constructed. But its designers say the new American chancery on the Thames River marks a paradigm shift: The U.S. Embassy here will exude openness while hiding all the clever ways it defends itself from attack.

After decades of building American embassies that look brutalist or bland, like obvious fortresses, the soon-to-be-opened chancery in London is a crystalline cube, plopped down in the middle of a public park, without visible walls.    Continue reading “The new U.S. embassy in London: A crystalline ‘sugar cube’ worth a billion dollars”

RT

Parents of local children, education officials and leading Danish politicians have criticized a primary school after it chose to cancel the traditional Christmas service, due to the presence of students of immigrant backgrounds.

“We took the decision because we have children who are not Protestant,” Marianne Vederso Schmidt, the head of Gribskolen in Graested, a town of fewer than 5,000 people in eastern Denmark, wrote in an intranet posting earlier this month.   Continue reading “Criticism after Danish school cancels Christmas to avoid ‘preaching’ to non-Christian children”

Free Thought Project – by Jack Burns

Big Pharma’s subtle propaganda comes in many forms. Those tuning in to mainstream media programs will be subjected to nightly advertisements, many of which feature highly addictive and dangerous antidepressants. But a recent news story warning that 3-year-olds could be suffering from depression and should be evaluated by doctors shows that the industry will stop at nothing until all Americans are on drugs.

NBC’s feature story on depression used scare tactics in its title to imply and suggest a national depression crisis among toddlers. “Generation at risk: America’s youngest facing mental health crisis,” the title reads. While the nation is facing an opiate crisis caused by Big Pharma’s highly addictive production and distribution of opiates, one would be hard-pressed to find many Americans who believe the nation’s toddlers and children are mentally ill.
Continue reading “Mainstream Media Now Urging Parents to Give 3-Year-Old Kids Dangerous Drugs for Depression”

RT

Turkey’s foreign minister has suggested that his country will consider opening an embassy in East Jerusalem once an independent Palestinian state is internationally recognized.

Speaking on Thursday, Mevlut Cavusoglu said there is a “serious determination” among the international community to recognize Palestine. The diplomat added that, once the world acknowledges the claim, he is confident there will be an influx of embassies and other diplomatic services into what would then be the new state’s capital.  Continue reading “Turkey reveals plan to open embassy in East Jerusalem”

End of the American Dream – by Michael Snyder

You just can’t make this stuff up.  All over America we push our young people to get good grades so that they can get “a college education”, but then once they get through college many of our young people are completely unequipped to deal with the real world.  Personally, I spent eight years at public universities, and I can tell you that the quality of education that our college students are receiving is a complete joke.  Especially on the undergraduate level, almost all testing consists of either true/false, multiple choice or fill in the blank questions.  Students learn very few useful skills at our “institutions of higher learning”, and many of them leave school barely even able to function in society.  Continue reading “Vampires, Zombies And ‘Hooking Up’: 37 Examples Of Real College Courses That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe”

Tech Crunch – by Devin Coldewey

Despite overwhelming opposition from Congress, technical experts, advocacy organizations, and of course the American people, the FCC has voted to eliminate 2015’s Open Internet Order and the net neutrality protections it established.

The order passed today, “Restoring Internet Freedom,” essentially removes the FCC as a regulator of the broadband industry and relegates rules that prevented blocking and throttling content to the honor system. The FTC now ostensibly has that role, but it is far from an expert agency on this topic and cannot make preemptive rules like those that have been in place for the last few years.   Continue reading “The FCC officially votes to kill net neutrality”

Washington Examiner – by Jamie McIntyre

A pair of U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor stealth fighters fired flares to chase two Russian Su-25 fighter jets out of restricted airspace over Syria on Wednesday, a Pentagon official confirmed Thursday.

The aerial encounter occurred when the Russian jets strayed into airspace east of the Euphrates River, putting them on the wrong side of a “deconfliction zone” established between Moscow and Washington to avoid confrontation in the skies over Syria.  Continue reading “US F-22 Raptors fire flares, chase Russian fighters out of deconfliction zone over Syria”

Fox News

The Argentinian submarine that vanished last month was being chased by a British helicopter and Chilean ship shortly before disappearing, one of the doomed vessel’s sailors told his sister in a “strange” message that was one of the last sent from the sub.

The sister’s account, made public Wednesday, was immediately blasted by Argentinian military officials as “completely untrue.” But Jessica Medina, whose brother Roberto Daniel Medina served aboard the sub, told Argentina’s La Gaceta newspaper in an exclusive interview that she received the message on WhatsApp just days before the vessel vanished Nov. 15.   Continue reading “Argentina submarine chased by British helicopter before vanishing, sailor’s sister claims”

RT

A registered child sex offender from Illinois has been given two-years’ probation for playing Santa Claus at a Christmas event. The man was banned from activities involving young kids, with dressing as Santa specifically mentioned.

On Wednesday, McHenry County Court imposed the sentence on 33-year-old Taylor Blaul from Crystal Lake for violating sex-offender laws. It’s after he sported a Santa Claus costume at a Christmas fundraiser at a local animal shelter, the Chicago Tribune reports.  Continue reading “Bad Santa: Illinois child molester sentenced again for playing Santa and posing with children”

RT

Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) has threatened attacks in the United States in retaliation for Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, according to one of the terrorist group’s social media accounts.

The message was relayed on an account on the Telegram instant message service. In that message, IS said it would carry out operations in the US, showing photos of New York’s Times Square and what appeared to be an explosive belt and detonator.   Continue reading “ISIS threatens attacks on US soil over Trump’s Jerusalem decision”

Mail.com

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — More than a half-century after a Louisiana teen was sent to prison for killing a sheriff’s deputy and nearly a year after the nation’s highest court ruled in his favor, the now 71-year-old inmate will have to wait up to two months longer for his first chance at parole.

Louisiana’s parole board on Thursday postponed its scheduled hearing for Henry Montgomery, who was 17 when he shot and killed East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff’s deputy Charles Hurt in 1963. Jim Wise, vice-chairman of the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole, said the board needs a legal opinion from Louisiana’s attorney general to resolve an apparent conflict between two laws governing parole hearings: One says a three-member panel must decide parole for juvenile offenders, while another says anyone convicted of crimes against a law enforcement officer must face a panel of five members or more.   Continue reading “Louisiana delays parole hearing for 71-year-old inmate”

Mail.com

CHICAGO (AP) — The question of whether federal agents display racial bias by staging phony drug stash-house stings overwhelmingly in black neighborhoods is the focus of hearings in Chicago that could determine whether agencies curtail or even abandon their use nationwide.

A first-of-its-kind panel of federal trial judges on Thursday began two days of hearings on the stings. The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives oversees the stings that typically involve agents posing as cartel couriers who talk suspects into agreeing to rob drugs that don’t exist from what they are told are guarded stash houses that are also fictitious.   Continue reading “Judges consider if racial bias in drug stash-house stings”

Daily Mail

Nasa is set to make a major announcement about a breakthrough in its alien-planet-hunting project.

The space agency is holding a live-stream event today at 1:00pm ET (6:00pm GMT) to reveal a discovery about potentially habitable worlds made by its Kepler telescope.

The satellite has been searching the stars for distant worlds using Google‘s AI system, which is helping Nasa find planets that may host alien life.   Continue reading “Has Nasa found alien life? Space agency to make a ‘major’ announcement TODAY after teaming up with Google’s AI in the search for habitable planets”

Fox 2 News

ST. LOUIS, MO — Two police officers were shot at Thursday around 7:30am in north St. Louis County. They were hit in the chest. Their bulletproof vest may have saved their lives.  The officers are conscious and speaking.

The incident occurred in Bellefontaine Neighbors at the intersection of Chambers and Bellefontaine roads.  One suspect is barricaded in a home in the 10100 block of Bellefontaine.  He may be armed with an AR-15 rifle.  Police appear to be negotiating with him.   Continue reading “Two police officers shot in north St. Louis County; Suspect barricaded”