Today's News: April 03, 2018

World News

Trump: ‘We’re going to be guarding our border with military’ (video)
BBC – President Donald Trump says he plans to deploy troops at the US border, as he threatens to scrap a deal on the North American Free Trade Agreement unless Mexico prevents “caravans” of migrants heading for the US.

Mexican Government Moves to Break Up Migrant Caravan
Newsmax – The Mexican government moved Monday evening to break up a migrant caravan that was moving through southern Mexico.
Immigration officials were registering the travelers, and providing suggestions that some could get humanitarian visas, while others would have to exit Mexico, The Washington Post reported.

Israel cancelling deal with UN on African migrants: Netanyahu
Yahoo – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday he was cancelling an agreement with the UN refugee agency on resettling thousands of African migrants after facing mounting pressure from his right-wing base.
Netanyahu had himself announced the agreement in a televised address on Monday afternoon, drawing immediate anger from right-wing politicians, including allies, and many of his traditional supporters.
He said in a late-night Facebook post on Monday he was suspending the agreement that would have allowed thousands of the migrants to remain in Israel at least temporarily.
On Tuesday, he said the deal was being cancelled after having held discussions on it.

U.S. News, Politics & Government

Hawaii lawmakers approve bill to legalize physician-assisted suicide
Infowars – Hawaii’s state Senate on Thursday passed a measure that would allow terminally ill patients to seek the help of their doctors in obtaining life-ending medicine.
The bill, which was sent to the governor’s desk for signing, would make Hawaii the seventh state to legalize physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients, Reuters reported.

Judge Tosses PragerU Lawsuit Accusing Google, YouTube of Censoring Conservative Content
Infowars – A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit filed by conservative nonprofit PragerU against Google, arguing that subsidiary YouTube did not violate First Amendment rights by partially censoring or limiting the organization’s YouTube videos.
Presiding U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh ruled Monday that, inherently serving as a privacy company, Google has no obligation to equally apply its services, or in this case, its ostensible penalties.

After 15,000 March on Capitol, Oklahoma Teachers’ Strike Enters Second Day
Global Research – Some 15,000 Oklahoma teachers, support staff, students and public employees marched and rallied at the state capitol in Oklahoma City on Monday, the first day of a statewide strike by as many as 40,000 teachers in the southwestern US state. The walkout—the first in Oklahoma since a four-day strike in 1990—is part of a growing rebellion of educators across the United States in the aftermath of the nine-day strike by West Virginia teachers.
The same day teachers were striking and protesting in Oklahoma, thousands of Kentucky teachers, including many who had taken part in wildcat sickouts, descended on the capitol in Frankfort to oppose the slashing of teacher pension benefits. Protests and demands for a statewide strike are also taking place in Arizona, where Republican Governor Douglas Ducey has rejected teacher demands for a 20 percent raise. On Monday, Ducey was booed loudly by the crowd after he was introduced at the opening day ceremony for the Cincinnati Reds baseball team.

Attorney Alex van der Zwaan, first person sentenced in Mueller probe, gets 30 days in prison
CNBC – The first sentencing in special counsel Robert Mueller‘s Russia probe has been handed down.
A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced Dutch lawyer Alex van der Zwaan to 30 days in prison and $20,000 in fines. He will voluntarily surrender, and will be held to two months of supervised release.
Van der Zwaan had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI as part of Mueller’s investigation.

DOJ Slaps Quotas On Immigration Judges To Speed Deportations
HuffPost – The Justice Department will rate the performance of its immigration judges based on how many cases they complete in a push to reduce a backlog clogged with deportation arrests.
Beginning Oct. 1, immigration judges will be required to process a minimum of 700 cases annually in order to receive a top rating of satisfactory, according to a memo first obtained by The Wall Street Journal. A satisfactory rating also requires judges to complete 85 percent of removal cases within three days of a merit hearing.

Fla. Mayors Sue State for Right to Enact Their Own Gun Laws
Newsmax – Ten South Florida mayors are joining together to sue the state for the right to make their own gun laws, ABC’s Local 10 News reports.
Right now, the state prevents cities and counties from imposing their own gun laws. Local officials face a $5,000 fine if they violate the state law, according to Local 10.

Parkland students return from spring break to clear backpacks and TSA-style checkpoints
Yahoo – Students returning from spring break to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Monday were greeted with metal barriers and clear backpacks — new safety measures put in place in the wake of February’s mass shooting at the school.

Economy & Business

Wall Street higher as financials rise, techs struggle
Reuters – Wall Street’s main indexes were slightly higher in volatile trading on Tuesday, supported by gains in financials, while technology stocks came under pressure again.

Energy & Environment

Farmers reshape land along Columbia River to bring salmon back
Christian Science Monitor – The southern banks along Svensen Slough, a side channel of the Columbia River, have transformed over time from historic spruce swamp into fields diked off by European settlers for farming.
Clatsop County and three private property owners along Bear, Mary’s, and Ferris creeks, all tributaries of the slough, have partnered with the Columbia River Estuary Study Taskforce and Bonneville Power Administration to bring more than 60 acres of the swamp back for salmon and wildlife habitat.
Nearly 80 percent of estuarine habitat along the Lower Columbia has been lost to development, said Jason Smith, a habitat restoration project manager with the task force. Salmon depend on the habitat as they move from fresh to salty water.

Science & Technology

Apple Watch provides murder case clues
BBC – Police in Australia have presented data gathered from an Apple Watch as evidence in a murder trial.
Grandmother Myrna Nilsson was wearing the device when she was killed in 2016.
Her daughter-in-law Caroline Nilsson is accused of staging an ambush, after claiming she was tied up by a group of men who entered the house.
But data from the victim’s smartwatch suggests that she was ambushed as she arrived home, and died hours earlier than Ms Nilsson claims.

Artificial Embryo Created: No Egg, No Sperm, No Problem
Infowars – MIT Technology Review has the story: “In a breakthrough that redefines how life can be created, embryologists working at the University of Cambridge in the UK have grown realistic-looking mouse embryos using only stem cells. No egg. No sperm. Just cells plucked from another embryo.”
“The researchers placed the cells carefully in a three-dimensional scaffold and watched, fascinated, as they [the cells] started communicating and lining up into the distinctive bullet shape of a mouse embryo several days old.”
“’We know that stem cells are magical in their powerful potential of what they can do. We did not realize they could self-organize so beautifully or perfectly,’ Magdelena Zernicka¬-Goetz, who headed the team, told an interviewer at the time.”
Zernicka-Goetz says her ‘synthetic’ embryos probably couldn’t have grown into mice. Nonetheless, they’re a hint that soon we could have mammals born without an egg [or sperm] at all.”

U.S. regulator approves SpaceX plan for broadband satellite services
Infowars – The top U.S. telecommunications regulator on Thursday gave formal approval to a plan by Elon Musk’s SpaceX to build a global broadband network using satellites.
“This is the first approval of a U.S.-licensed satellite constellation to provide broadband services using a new generation of low-Earth orbit satellite technologies,” the Federal Communications Commission said in a statement.

Health

Study Warns Eating Out Can Increase Phthalates, Lead To Disease
Infowars – Eating out at restaurants and fast food chains may be convenient but a new study suggests it comes with risks, including increased exposure to a potentially harmful chemical called phthalates.
Researchers looked at data collected between 2005 and 2014 as part of the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) and discovered that subjects who had recently eaten food from a fast food restaurant had levels of phthalates 35 percent higher than those who ate at home.
In total, the scientists examined the results of 10,253 participants. Sixty-one percent of the group replied in the survey that they had eaten out within the previous 24 hours, and the majority of those respondents showed an increased level of phthalate biomarkers when their urine was tested.
The results showed a strong association between phthalate exposure and dining out for all groups regardless of age or gender, but the strongest correlation was seen in young people, according to the researchers. Young children who frequently ate at fast food restaurants reported phthalates levels 55 percent higher than those who ate at home.

Global Health: Bologna Blamed in Worst Listeria Outbreak in History
NYT – The world’s largest known listeria outbreak has spread throughout South Africa for 15 months, killing 189 people. Health officials believe they have identified the source: bologna.
Since January last year, 982 confirmed cases of listeriosis had been recorded, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in South Africa reported on Thursday. The infection, caused by food that has been contaminated with the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes, is often lethal.