March 29, 2024

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Today's News: April 06, 2018

World News
 
U.S. Targets Allies of Putin in Latest Round of Sanctions
WSJ – The Trump administration levied sanctions Friday against more than three-dozen Russian individuals and entities, targeting senior Russian government officials as well as some of President Vladimir Putin’s closest oligarch allies and the companies they own.
The action, one of the toughest punitive measures taken by the Trump administration to date, is in response to what senior U.S. officials say are Moscow’s subversion of democracy, hostile cyber activities and its intervention in the Syrian war. The steps are likely to ratchet up tensions between Russia and the West, which already are near Cold War levels.
 
Remains of US Flier Shot Down Over Laos in 1968 Return Home
Newsmax – The remains of an Air Force officer lost for almost 50 years at the height of the U.S. war in Southeast Asia are finally coming home to North Carolina.
A container carrying the remains of Col. Edgar F. Davis arrived Thursday at Raleigh-Durham International Airport. His family plans his burial in his native Goldsboro on Friday.
The 32-year-old navigator was shot down over Laos in 1968. The pilot of his Phantom fighter-bomber ejected and was rescued, but Davis was never found until a villager turned over bone fragments in 2015.
 
U.S. News, Politics & Government
 
Federal Judge Upholds Massachusetts’s Assault-Weapons Ban
Bloomberg – Massachusetts’ beefed-up ban on assault weapons doesn’t violate the Second Amendment of the Constitution, a U.S. judge ruled, handing a victory to gun-control advocates seeking to pass such a law nationwide following a spate of deadly mass shootings.
“The AR-15 and its analogs, along with large capacity magazines, are simply not weapons within the original meaning of the individual constitutional rights to ‘bear arms,’” U.S. District Judge William Young wrote in a decision Thursday in Boston, dismissing a lawsuit over the state law.
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey was sued by a gun-rights group in response to her July 2016 enforcement notice that broadened the definition of “copies or duplicates” of AR-15 and AK-47 models that are prohibited under the state’s 1998 assault-weapon bans.
 
Residents of Illinois Village Have 60 Days to Surrender Guns Or Face $1000 a Day Fine
Infowars – Residents of Deerfield, Illinois have 60 days to turn in their “assault weapons” or face fines of up to $1000 dollars a day.
Earlier this week, the The Village Board of Trustees passed an ordinance which banned certain types of “assault weapons” and large capacity magazines, including the the Ruger 10/22, which can accept magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.
Semi-automatic pistols that can hold more than 10 rounds have also been banned. Law enforcement and retired law enforcement members of the community are exempted from the ban.
Residents will have to either sell the weapons, transfer ownership to someone living outside of the town, turn them into police or pay the exorbitant fines, which range from $250 to $1000 per day per gun. The deadline is June 13.
 
San Francisco sues U.S. attorney general over repealed civil rights memos
Reuters – The city of San Francisco filed a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday, asking a federal court to overturn his December decision to revoke legal guidance designed to protect minorities, the indigent and disabled.
 
Lawmakers Finalize Bill to Completely Defund Planned Parenthood
Infowars – The recent omnibus spending bill passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump last month continues the more than $500 million in taxpayer dollars Planned Parenthood receives each year. Lawmakers in Nebraska, however, are working to stop taxpayer-funded abortion in their state.
On Tuesday, Nebraska legislators passed a bill to end funding for government-supported abortion facilities, including Planned Parenthood, as part Nebraska’s budget package, Omaha World-Herald reported.
Approved 38-6, the measure will now head to the desk of Republican Governor Pete Ricketts who introduced the plan to stop taxpayer-funded abortion into the family-planning measure of the budget.
 
Economy & Business

Ford Recalls 350000 SUVs And Trucks, Citing Problems Putting Them In ‘Park’
NPR – Recent models of Ford’s F-150 pickup and Expedition SUV are included in a new recall from the Ford Motor Co., which says gear shift problems could lead drivers to think their vehicle is in park, even if that’s not the case — and that “unintended vehicle movement” could occur.
The recall covers some 350,000 vehicles made for the 2018 model year that have 10-speed and 6-speed automatic transmissions.
Ford says it is “aware of one reported accident and injury related to this condition.”
 
Energy & Environment
 
Missouri YARD POLICE force woman to plant grass even though she’s allergic to it
NaturalNews – Planting flowers and shrubs in your front yard without any grass is apparently a serious crime if you live in the city of St. Peters, Missouri, located near St. Louis. A local couple who lives there is reportedly facing a sentence of $180,000 in fines and 20 years in prison for breaking this ridiculous ordinance, even though it was passed roughly six years after they had already converted the space on their own property into a colorful dream garden.
According to The Kansas City Star, Janice and Carl Duffner had no idea that failing to maintain at least five percent of their front yard as conventional turf is a punishable offense in St. Peters. They also didn’t realize that not abiding by the city’s arbitrary rules as far as residential grass requirements are concerned would end up snowballing into the equivalent of committing murder, at least in terms of the penalties being levied against them by the local government.
But that’s where the Duffners now find themselves as they press through in an ongoing legal fight to keep their garden completely grass-free. It’s not even that they want to have to fight the city on the matter, except for the fact that Janice Duffner is allergic to grass, which is why the couple decided not to plant or cultivate it after first moving into their home back in 2002.
But nobody in a position of authority seems to care about any of this, nor do they care that the turf ordinance was passed by St. Peters’ Board of Alderman in 2008, long after the Duffners removed all of the grass from their front yard. The saga has since made national headlines after a federal judge recently ruled that the Duffners have no legal recourse and must install at least five percent grass in their front yard.
 
5.3 Magnitude Quake Strikes Southern California
CBS News – An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.3 struck off the coast of Southern California on Thursday, officials at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) say. CBS Los Angeles reports the quake originated near the Channel Islands. It happened around 12:30 p.m. local time about 38 miles southwest of the mainland city of Ventura, according to the USGS.
“A 5.3 is a good jolt,” Dr. Susan Hough of the USGS said Thursday at a press conference with Dr. Jennifer Andrews of Caltech, and that it was no surprise people in Los Angeles felt the quake.
“We would expect aftershocks, and there is the potential for some triggered seismicity,” Andrews said.
 
Science & Technology
 
Colorado mom of twin boys gives birth to rare identical twin girls
Daily Mail  – Doctors told a Colorado mother of twin boys to try her luck at the lottery after revealing she was pregnant with another set of rare identical twin girls against 10-million-to-one odds.
Casey Saunders, 27, thought the doctor was pulling her leg when she said the mother of twin boys was expecting yet another duo, the odds of which are one in 70,000.
On top of the already impossible-seeming odds, the babies had developed inside the same placenta, a condition that only occurs with about one per cent of twin pregnancies and can cause fatal complications in the womb.
After spending the final two months of her pregnancy in the hospital while doctors monitored the twins, Casey and her partner Eugene Goree welcomed baby girls Maya and Laia on December 1.
 
Google Employees Protest Company Involvement in Pentagon Drone Program
Infowars – Thousands of Google employees are demanding an end to the company’s involvement in a Pentagon drone program.
In a letter signed by more than 3,100 staffers, company CEO Sundar Pichai is urged to cut Google’s ties with Project Maven, a program that uses artificial intelligence to analyze military drone footage.
The letter, obtained by The New York Times, argues that Google “should not be in the business of war.”
 
SK University Secretly Developing Killer AI Robot Army
Infowars – A top South Korean university is secretly developing a killer Artificial Intelligence robot army that could destroy humanity, scientists fear.
KAIST university allegedly launched a new AI weapons lab in February, leading dozens of researchers to believe the products will “have the potential to be weapons of terror”.
Toby Walsh, a professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, organized the boycott with 49 other researchers.
 
Humans produce new brain cells throughout their lives, say researchers
The Guardian – Humans continue to produce new neurons in a part of their brain involved in learning, memory and emotion throughout adulthood, scientists have revealed, countering previous theories that production stopped after adolescence. The findings could help in developing treatments for neurological conditions such as dementia.
Many new neurons are produced in the hippocampus in babies, but it has been a matter of hot debate whether this continues into adulthood – and if so, whether this rate drops with age as seen in mice and nonhuman primates.
Although some research had found new neurons in the hippocampus of older humans, a recent study scotched the idea, claiming that new neurons in the hippocampus were at undetectable levels by our late teens.
Now another group of scientists have published research that pushes back, revealing the new neurons are produced in this brain region in human adults and does not drop off with age. The findings, they say, could help in the hunt for ways to treat conditions ranging from Alzheimer’s to psychiatric problems.
 
Health
 
Denver Hospital Patients Possibly Exposed to HIV, Hepatitis
Newsmax – Surgery patients at a Denver hospital may have been exposed to HIV or hepatitis as a result of contaminated surgical instruments, hospital and state health officials said.
An infection-control breach at Porter Adventist Hospital may have put some surgery patients at risk for contracting hepatitis B, hepatitis C or HIV,  the Denver Post reports.
The breach may have affected patients who had orthopedic or spine surgery between July 21, 2016, and Feb. 20. The risk of infection is “very low,” said Larry Wolk, the executive director and chief medical officer for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
Hospital officials and state authorities did not indicate how many patients could have been impacted.
 

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