Today's News: April 02, 2018

World News

London murder rate higher than New York’s amid surge in knife crime & police cuts
RT – London’s murder rate has surpassed New York’s for the first time in modern history as knife crime in the British capital hits crisis levels. It comes amid huge police cuts and falling officer numbers.
A total of 37 murders have been committed in London during the last two months, according to a report in the Sunday Times. In February, 15 murders were recorded by the Metropolitan Police compared to 14 in New York, while initial figures for March count 22 killings in London compared to 21 in the US city.
London and New York City have comparable populations of 8.7 million and 8.6 million respectively. NYC’’s murder rate has decreased by around 87 percent since the 1990s, while the number of London murders, excluding victims of terrorism, has risen by almost 40 percent since 2014.
The growing knife crime epidemic facing the UK comes amid eight years of cuts to the police service. Police budgets have been dramatically reduced by the Conservatives since 2010, when Theresa May served as home secretary. May argued that a fall in crime seen since the mid-1990s meant it was not necessary to maintain such a large police force. There are now 21,805 fewer police officers than there were in 2010.

1986 CIA Document Analyzes Possibilities Of “Regime Change” In Syria
Activist Post – While the connections between the plans to destroy Syria and the Obama administration are generally known, what is even less well-known is the fact that there existed a plan to destroy Syria as far back as not only the Bush administration but also the Reagan Administration in 1983.
Documents contained in the U.S. National Archives and drawn up by the CIA reveal a plan to destroy the Syrian government going back decades. One such document entitled, “Bringing Real Muscle To Bear In Syria,” written by CIA officer Graham Fuller, is particularly illuminating. In this document, Fuller wrote,
Syria at present has a hammerlock on US interests both in Lebanon and in the Gulf — through closure of Iraq’s pipeline thereby threatening Iraqi internationalization of the [Iran-Iraq] war. The US should consider sharply escalating the pressures against Assad [Sr.] through covertly orchestrating simultaneous military threats against Syria from three border states hostile to Syria: Iraq, Israel and Turkey.

The Latest: White House among ‘potential venues’ for summit
ABC – The White House has confirmed that U.S. President Donald Trump invited Russia’s Vladimir Putin to Washington.
Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday that the White House was among “a number of potential venues” Putin and Trump discussed during a March 20 telephone conversation.

Israel reaches deal with UN to resettle African migrants
Christian Science Monitor – More than 16,000 African migrants living in Israel will be sent to various Western countries over the next five years through a landmark agreement between Israel and the United Nations.

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela Is Dead at 81; Fought Apartheid
NYT -Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, whose hallowed place in the pantheon of South Africa’s liberators was eroded by scandal over corruption, kidnapping, murder and the implosion of her fabled marriage to Nelson Mandela, died early Monday in Johannesburg. She was 81.

U.S. News, Politics & Government

Teacher rebellion shutters schools across Oklahoma, Kentucky
USA Today – Classes were canceled Monday for hundreds of thousands of students across two states as striking teachers rallied at Capitols in Oklahoma and Kentucky to demand improved funding for education.
The walkouts come less than a month after teachers in West Virginia ended a nine-day strike that shuttered schools there.

White House goes on attack over ex-VA head Shulkin’s claim he was fired
Fox – The White House is hitting back at former Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin for claiming that he was fired from his job and that he was only informed about it shortly before President Donald Trump tweeted about his replacement.
The Trump administration says he left his job willingly amid a bruising ethics scandal and mounting rebellion within the agency. The semantics of whether Shulkin resigned or was fired could be relevant to Trump’s ability to name an acting secretary to temporarily fill his place.
On Sunday, chagrined by Shulkin’s public statements blaming his ouster on unfair “political forces” in the Trump administration, the White House circulated a “talking points” memo to some veterans groups in a bid to discredit him.
Shulkin maintains that he never submitted a resignation letter.
>> Related: Ousted Veterans Affairs Head Warns of Privatization Push
Shulkin has warned that service members and their families could see a decrease in care if the agency goes ahead with plans to broaden its use of the private sector.
In a New York Times op-ed published on March 28, Shulkin said that he was fired after losing a “brutal power struggle” by balking at proposals for privatizing VA care. The effort is being pushed by Trump appointees and a group called Concerned Veterans of America that’s backed by billionaire right-wing Republican donors Charles and David Koch.
Senator Bernie Sanders said Sunday on CNN that Shulkin’s ouster was part of a “massive effort” by the Trump administration to privatize federal government operations. The Independent senator from Vermont, a member of the Senate veterans affairs committee, said he’ll do anything he can to not approve a nominee who plans to privatize the VA.

Trump Says DACA Is ‘Dead,’ and Calls on Mexico to Enforce Border Security
NYT – President Trump declared on Monday that a program shielding a group of young undocumented immigrants from deportation — which he moved to scrap last fall — is “dead,” and then blamed Democrats for failing to salvage the protections.
President Trump declared on Monday that a program shielding a group of young undocumented immigrants from deportation — which he moved to scrap last fall — is “dead,” and then blamed Democrats for failing to salvage the protections.

The F.B.I. and the Mystery of the Mummy’s Head
NYT – A museum wasn’t sure whose head they had put on display. That’s when the F.B.I.’s forensic scientists were called in to crack the agency’s oldest case.
In 1915, a team of American archaeologists excavating the ancient Egyptian necropolis of Deir el-Bersha blasted into a hidden tomb. Inside the cramped limestone chamber, they were greeted by a gruesome sight: a mummy’s severed head perched on a cedar coffin.
The archaeologists went on to recover painted coffins and wooden figurines that survived the raid and sent them to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1921. Most of the collection stayed in storage until 2009 when the museum exhibited them. Though the torso remained in Egypt, the decapitated head became the star of the showcase.
The museum staff concluded only a DNA test would determine whether they had put Mr. or Mrs. Djehutynakht on display.
The F.B.I. had never before worked on a specimen so old. If its scientists could extract genetic material from the 4,000-year-old mummy, they would add a powerful DNA collecting technique to their forensics arsenal and also unlock a new way of deciphering Egypt’s ancient past.
“I honestly didn’t expect it to work because at the time there was this belief that it was not possible to get DNA from ancient Egyptian remains,” said Odile Loreille a forensic scientist at the F.B.I. But in the journal Genes in March, Dr. Loreille and her colleagues reported that they had retrieved ancient DNA from the head. And after more than a century of uncertainty, the mystery of the mummy’s identity had been laid to rest.
What lies in Tomb 10A? Governor Djehutynakht and his wife, Lady Djehutynakht, are believed to have lived around 2000 B.C. during Egypt’s Middle Kingdom. They ruled a province of Upper Egypt. Though the walls in their tomb were bare, the coffins were embellished with beautiful hieroglyphics of the afterlife.

Sinclair Broadcasting slammed for forcing anchors to recite anti-fake-news ‘script’
RT – The largest owner of local television stations across the United States is under fire for reportedly forcing anchors to take part in a ‘promotional campaign’ slamming national media outlets for sharing “fake-news” stories.
Anchors were given instructions accompanying the promotional material, including a directive to read the scripts “exactly as they are written” and to run the promotion during news time as frequently as possible to “create maximum reach and frequency.”
President Donald Trump defended Sinclair Broadcasting in a tweet on Monday, saying national broadcasters were “among the most dishonest groups of people I have ever dealt with,” and that Sinclair channels are “far superior” to CNN and MSNBC.

Economy & Business

China raises tariffs on U.S. pork and fruit in trade dispute
LA Times – China raised import duties on pork, fruit and other products from the United States on Monday in an escalating tariff dispute with U.S. President Trump that companies worry might depress global commerce.
The Chinese Finance Ministry said the charges were in response to a U.S. tariff hike on steel and aluminum that took effect March 23. But a bigger dispute looms over Trump’s approval of possible higher duties on nearly $50 billion of Chinese goods in a dispute over technology policy.

Dow Plunges as Wall Street Dragged Down by Amazon, Tech Weakness
Newsmax – A selloff in technology majors deepened on Monday, wiping out the tech-heavy Nasdaq index’s gains for the year and pushing the benchmark S&P 500 below a closely watched technical level for the first time in nearly two months.
All the 11 major S&P sectors were lower, with stocks also coming under pressure over renewed fears of a trade war after China imposed additional tariffs on 128 U.S. products.

Tesla Tumbles After Elon Musk Jokes About Bankruptcy
ZeroHedge – One day after Elon Musk amused his 20 million twitter followers with a Tesla bankruptcy April Fool’s joke…
… this morning shareholders of Tesla are hardly laughing, with Tesla stock tumbling as much as 5%, down to $254, the lowest level since March 2017, and down 15% YTD.

Energy & Environment

Alaska’s permafrost holds the world’s largest deposit of mercury; concern growing over potential dangers such as contamination of food supply, water
Natural News – Mercury is found all over the world — in the soil, water, and air. Very rarely do we associate mercury with ice. Yet, as researchers have discovered, that’s what we have to worry about the most. After all, the world’s largest mercury deposit is present in the Northern Hemisphere’s permafrost.
Between 2004 and 2012, the researchers drilled into 13 permafrost soil cores all over Alaska. They then used statistical analysis to gauge the total ratio of mercury to carbon in each sample. When they were able to gauge the mercury contents of the permafrost soil cores, they came up with an estimate of the amount of mercury contained in permafrost. The number came to around 793 gigagrams. That’s about 15 million gallons of mercury spread across Alaska, Canada, Siberia, and Tibet.
“The amount of mercury in permafrost regions is 10 times higher than mercury introduced to the atmosphere from burning coal over the last 30 years,” said Kevin Schaefer, one of the lead study authors. “It’s a massive amount. We should be very worried about this.”

Libyans forced to dig for water in backyards
Al Jazeera – Libya is said to have one of the largest irrigation projects in the world. About 3,000km of an underground pipeline system carrying fossil freshwater is meant to supply water to millions. But many cities are still running dry.
So, many residents are finding alternative ways that include digging deep in their backyards to find water.
Workers say that the drilling process isn’t easy and that water from underground is, in most cases, mixed with harmful chemicals.

Science & Technology

Google snubbed Easter with no doodle for 18th year in a row, Christians say
Fox News – For the 18th year in a row, Google has no doodle to celebrate Easter, and Christians are angry on this holy day.
Paul Joseph Watson, Infowars editor-at-large, tweeted Sunday about Christianity’s most joyful day: ‏”So Google has a doodle for every obscure ‘woke’ person/event imaginable, but nothing for Easter? #EasterSunday”
>> Related: Apple iPhone Search for ‘Easter’ Includes GIF of Crucified Jesus Eating Creme Egg
Breitbart -A GIF of a crucified Jesus Christ eating a Cadbury Creme Egg, allegedly found after searching for “Easter” on Apple’s iPhone messenger, has prompted complaints.

Could enemies target undersea cables that link the world?
VOA – Russian ships are skulking around underwater communications cables, causing the U.S. and its allies to worry the Kremlin might be taking information warfare to new depths.
Is Moscow interested in cutting or tapping the cables? Does it want the West to worry it might? Is there a more innocent explanation? Unsurprisingly, Russia isn’t saying.
But whatever Moscow’s intentions, U.S. and Western officials are increasingly troubled by their rival’s interest in the 400 fiber-optic cables that carry most of world’s calls, emails and texts, as well as $10 trillion worth of daily financial transactions.
“We’ve seen activity in the Russian navy, and particularly undersea in their submarine activity, that we haven’t seen since the ’80s,” General Curtis Scaparrotti, commander of the U.S. European Command, told Congress this month.

New, little-seen report warns the nation’s power infrastructure is increasingly vulnerable to physical attacks
Natural News – It’s looking more and more like it will take a major attack against the U.S. power grid before the government and electric industry come together and get serious about protecting it.
According to a new investigative report that likely won’t get much attention outside of certain circles, the U.S. electric grid is increasingly vulnerable as power companies lag behind in adopting better security measures.
And the result, someday soon, could be catastrophic — as in near-complete societal breakdown.
As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, the report from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, or NERC, says that the grid’s vulnerability is heightened by an unprecedented wave of attacks that threaten to cripple the entire country.

Health

California judge rules that coffee requires cancer warning
VOA – A judge has ruled that coffee sellers in California must warn people that coffee may contain a substance linked to cancer.
The Council for Education and Research on Toxics brought a case against dozens of coffee companies in 2010. The not-for-profit group wanted the coffee industry to either remove the chemical acrylamide from its processing, or warn buyers about it.
Acrylamide has been identified as a possible cancer-causing substance. The chemical is naturally produced during cooking at high temperatures, including during the roasting of coffee beans.
California state law requires warnings to be written on products containing chemicals identified as possible causes of cancer or birth defects.

‘I Can’t Stop’: Schools Struggle With Vaping Explosion
NYT – The student had been caught vaping in school three times before he sat in the vice principal’s office at Cape Elizabeth High School in Maine this winter and shamefacedly admitted what by then was obvious.
“I can’t stop,” he told the vice principal, Nate Carpenter.
E-cigarettes have been touted by their makers and some public health experts as devices to help adult smokers kick the habit. But school officials, struggling to control an explosion of vaping among high school and middle school students across the country, fear that the devices are creating a new generation of nicotine addicts.
In his four years at Cape Elizabeth, Mr. Carpenter says he can’t recall seeing a single student smoke a cigarette. But vaping is suddenly everywhere.
“It’s our demon,” he said. “It’s the one risky thing that you can do in your life — with little consequence, in their mind — to show that you’re a little bit of a rebel.”

Citron Fruit Benefits Immunity, Heart Health & More
Dr. Axe – There’s no doubt that citrus fruits are good for you. Fruits like oranges, lemons, limes and grapefruit top the charts when it comes to their antioxidant content, nutritional profile and natural health-promoting properties. But have you ever heard of citron fruit?
Interestingly, citron fruit is considered one of the original types of citrus fruit through which other types of fruit later developed through hybridization. Even popular fruits like lemons and limes are actually considered hybrids of the citron fruit.
In addition to being widely used in many types of Asian cuisine, citron fruit is also a common ingredient in many fragrances and medicines. Because of the unique flavor of the rind, it is often candied and added to foods like teas, fruitcakes and marmalades.
Like other citrus fruits, citron is high in vitamin C and antioxidants. In particular, citrus fruits and their peels are generally high in antioxidant compounds and bioflavonoids,
Citron is also an excellent source of pectin, a type of soluble fiber that absorbs water and can be easily metabolized by the beneficial bacteria in your gut.
Thanks to the powerful nutrients found in the citron fruit, this unique citrus fruit has been associated with a number of potential health benefits, from a reduced risk of chronic disease to enhanced immunity and beyond.
Citron Fruit Benefits: