Today's News: February 12, 2018

World News

Russian passenger plane crashes near Moscow; 71 dead
Yahoo News – Russian passenger plane crashed near Moscow soon after take-off on Sunday, killing all 71 people on board, and investigators said they were looking at all possible causes.

MEDIA: US-LED COALITION AIRSTRIKES MISTAKENLY KILL 300 KURDISH FIGHTERS EN EASTERN SYRIA
What Really Happened – 300 Kurdish fighters have been reportedly killed by US-led coalition airstrikes in the Syrian province of Deir Ezzor, the Iranian news angecy FARS NEWS reported citing the Turkish news paper Daily Sabah on February 12th.

Billionaire Soros Vows to Spend Additional $138,300 on Anti-Brexit Campaign
Sputnik – Hungarian-US billionaire George Soros and his Open Society Foundations (OSF) are set to pledge a new donation of 100,000 pounds, or roughly $138,300, to the campaign to stop Brexit, according to media reports. The latest pledge comes on top of 400,000 pounds that Soros had earlier decided to contribute to Best for Britain campaign, the Telegraph newspaper reported on Sunday.

Putin discusses Israel-Palestine conflict with Trump via phone ahead of Abbas meeting
RT – President Vladimir Putin told Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas he discussed the Arab-Israeli peace process during a telephone conversation with his US counterpart Donald Trump, Russian media reports.

Trump Says Israeli Settlements Complicate Peace Process
Yahoo News – Right now is the “only opportunity” for Israelis and Palestinians to reach a peace agreement, according to President Donald Trump ― but he expressed doubt over whether Israel is up to the task. “I don’t know frankly if we are going to even have talks, we will see what happens,” he said in an interview published Sunday with the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom. “Right now, I would say the Palestinians are not looking to make peace, they are not looking to make peace. And I am not necessarily sure that Israel is looking to make peace.”

Donald Trump: Jerusalem is off negotiating table
Al Jazeera – US President Donald Trump has reiterated that the issue of Jerusalem is off the negotiating table after his decision to declare the city as the capital of Israel and move the US embassy to the holy city from Tel Aviv.
“By taking Jerusalem off the table I wanted to make it clear that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and as for specific boundaries, I would support what both sides agreed to,” Trump told newspaper Israel Hayom on Sunday.

U.S. News, Politics & Government

BREAKING NEWS: Donald Trump Jr’s wife Vanessa hospitalized after opening letter with white powder inside
Daily Mail – Donald Trump Jr’s wife Vanessa Trump was hospitalized Monday morning after opening a letter with a white powder inside.
The former model, 40, was at her parents’ apartment at 405 East 54th street around 10am when she opened the letter addressed to her husband and started coughing and felling nauseous, a source with direct knowledge of the incident told DailyMail.com
She and two other people were decontaminated and taken to New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center as a precaution, New York City Fire Department officials said. They appear to be fine now.

New Federal Bill Targets Patriot Groups and Citizen Militias as Domestic Terrorists
The Free Thought Project – The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2018, introduced this month in the House, is making ‘patriot groups’ and citizen militias uneasy and for good reason. It is specifically targeting them.
To authorize dedicated domestic terrorism offices within the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to analyze and monitor domestic terrorist activity and require the Federal Government to take steps to prevent domestic terrorism.
While on the surface this sounds like a rational idea, when we dig deeper into the bill, we discover just what they mean by “preventing domestic terrorism.”

Chairman Nunes to Investigate Ex-CIA Director John Brennan For His Role in Promoting Hillary’s Phony Dossier ‘Brennan May Have Perjured Himself’
What Really Happened – According to investigative reporter, Paul Sperry, Chairman Nunes is also investigating whether Brennan perjured himself in a public testimony about the dossier.
The aide, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said Nunes will focus on Brennan as well as President Obama’s first CIA director, Leon Panetta, along with the former president’s intelligence czar, James Clapper, and national security adviser, Susan Rice, and security adviser-turned U.N. ambassador Samantha Power, among other intelligence officials.
“John Brennan did more than anyone to promulgate the dirty dossier,” the investigator said. “He politicized and effectively weaponized what was false intelligence against Trump.”

Barack and Michelle Obama’s official portraits expand beyond usual format
The Guardian – The pictures, painted by Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, are vivid depictions by African American artists and will hang at the Smithsonian
Related: Michelle Obama’s New Portrait Looks Nothing Like Her
Well, that’s certainly a nice sentiment. But the actual portrait, on the other hand, looks nothing like Michelle. At all. That makes it almost a wasted effort. Folks on Twitter were dumbfounded by the portrait.

Military rushed to add people to gun ban list
CNN – Since an ex-US airman shot more than two dozen people in a Texas church in November, the US military has added more than 4,000 names to the nation’s list of dishonorably discharged military personnel banned from owning firearms — a sign of what has been a massive hole in the nation’s gun buying background check system.
The gunman in the Sutherland Springs massacre had been kicked out of the military for assaulting his wife. By federal law, that should have prevented the shooter from purchasing his semiautomatic rifle, but the US Air Force later admitted it had not submitted his records to the FBI’s background check system.
In the months since, the US Department of Defense has scrambled to ensure all of its branches have properly updated the FBI’s system to track personnel kicked out of the military who are barred from owning firearms.
That push, a CNN review has found, has uncovered a backlog so significant that the FBI’s tally of dishonorably discharged former service members has ballooned by 4,284 names in just three months, a 38% leap.

New York sues Harvey Weinstein over sexual misconduct
Al Jazeera – New York’s attorney general has filed a lawsuit against scandal-hit Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, his brother and his former company, alleging that their film studio failed to protect its employees against its cofounder.
Weinstein, 65, was fired from The Weinstein Company last October, after more than 70 women accused him of sexual misconduct, including rape. He has denied all allegations of “non-consensual sex”.
The case was brought forward by Eric Schneiderman on Sunday, following an investigation into accusations against the prominent film producer of sexual harassment by dozens of women in the film industry.

Veteran News

City Fines Landlord $2 Million Because They Offered Homeless & Disabled Veterans Cheap Rent
The Free Thought Project – San Francisco, CA – In the land of the free, government and law enforcement not only wage war on the poor and homeless through various unscrupulous means designed to extract revenue and attack the right to exist but those who try to help the homeless—by feeding, clothing, or sheltering them—also face the wrath of the state. As the following case illustrates, even those who’ve laid down their lives for the state—veterans—and the ones who help them are now being targeted.
Judy Wu, a landlord in San Francisco has converted 12 properties she owns into 49 housing units over the last decade which she and her husband, Trent Zhu, rent to homeless, low-income and disabled veterans.
Because they’ve split the units into much smaller ones, the couple is able to provide these veterans with very cheap housing. The contribution to society hasn’t gone unnoticed by the city, however, who couldn’t care less about the dozens of previously homeless veterans now off the streets thanks to the couple.
According to Reason, Wu’s problems stem from a zoning law as the couple’s property was only zoned for 15 dwellings.
Sadly, however, it appears that the state has won. Wu fought the lawsuit in a trial this week and was facing upwards of $8 million in fines for providing cheap rent to veterans. On Tuesday, she settled with the city.
“The basic reason for settling is it’s too expensive to fight city hall,” said Ryan Patterson, an attorney that represented Wu, according to Reason. “This will allow the owners to move forward and focus on legalizing these properties and working to ensure that as many of these veterans as possible can remain in their homes.”
According to Reason, the city’s lawsuit notably came before the administrative process that would allow Wu to maintain her current units had run its course, and yesterday’s settlement does nothing to settle their legal status.

Police Dept. Now Having Parents Label Their Autistic Kids So Cops Don’t Kill Them
The Free Thought Project – Olathe, KS – Police officers are making an attempt to keep from murdering innocent individuals who suffer from autism, by putting the burden on family members to ensure that their loved one with special needs is accompanied with a sticker.
The car stickers, which were created by the Take Me Home Program, are free for local residents. They help to warn officers that they are dealing with a “special needs person” who “may not respond to verbal commands.” The new initiative was announced in a Facebook post from the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office:
“These clings were designed for placement inside of vehicles or residences where the occupant could be non-verbal due to disability. It is our hope these can provide peace of mind to families and minimize the stress involved in an emergency situation by better preparing first responders when they interact with your loved one or client.”
Four days later, the department posted that the response was so positive, they now have to order more stickers. “We are thrilled to see the positive response regarding our Take Me Home window clings. The response has been so positive, we are already having to restock!” the statement said.

Economy & Business

Honda to recall roughly 350,000 cars in China over engine issue
Reuters – Honda Motor Co Ltd will recall roughly 350,000 vehicles in China to resolve a cold-climate engine issue and quell a barrage of customer complaints that has hit the Japanese automaker over the past month.
The recall involves the CR-V sport utility vehicle and the Civic car, Honda’s joint venture with Dongfeng Motor Group Co Ltd said in a statement on Monday.
The company is calling back those cars to resolve a problem caused by an unusual amount of un-combusted petrol collecting in the engine’s lubricant oil pan.

Science & Technology

Medical monstrosity: Doctors creating “three-parent” babies to be carried to term by female volunteers
NaturalNews – With all the Frankenstein-like science that we’ve been seeing in recent years, it was only a matter of time before scientists found a way to create babies using three parents. Now, doctors in the UK have been given the green light to create three-parent babies.
The country’s fertility regulator is allowing doctors at Newcastle Fertility Centre to create healthy embryos for two women who have a risk of passing on a genetic disease to their children. The identity of the women is protected by patient privacy laws, but they are said to have gene mutations that cause a rare condition called Merff syndrome, which worsens over time and can lead to early death. The procedure will be carried out using fertilized eggs made with standard IVF along with DNA from female donors. These women will undergo a radical IVF procedure known as mitochondrial donation. The procedure entails creating fertilized eggs with IVF, but instead of letting them develop into embryos, the parents’ chromosomes are then removed and put into a donor egg with its own genetic material removed. The resultant embryo has all of the chromosomes of the parents but the damaged mitochondria from the mother are replaced with healthy ones from the donor. Under normal circumstances, the mitochondria would have been passed from the mother to the child, who would have inherited the Merff mutation.

Feds to give all your health data to researchers
WND – The federal government has just launched a 10-year, $1.5 billion project for which researchers want your information. All of it. Medical records, mental-health records, lifestyle details, personal habits, physical measurements, blood pressure, height, weight, blood and urine samples, details on health-care visits, procedures, medications, and electronic health records, among others. Oh, and DNA, too. It’s called All of Us and scientists say they want at least one million people to be under observation on an ongoing basis. Explains one federal report, the effort by the NIH has the goal of developing “a 1,000,000 person-plus cohort of individuals across the country willing to share their biology, lifestyle, and environmental data for the purpose of research.”

Health

Better, safer, less expensive than drugs: Scientists say vitamin D could replace your meds, prevent and even reverse disease
NaturalNews – When it comes to heart health, there are a few factors that commonly spring to mind, like eating a healthy diet and getting plenty of exercise. However, it turns out that one of the less-obvious approaches to heart health could be the best one: getting more sunlight.
According to a study carried out by scientists from Ohio University, vitamin D3 can significantly restore cardiovascular system damage. Their findings were published in the International Journal of Nanomedicine.
Vitamin D3 has long been associated with bone health, but doctors and researchers have noticed that many heart attack patients have D3 deficiencies. While this is not necessarily causing the heart attack, it is raising people’s risks. Therefore, the researchers set out to use nanosensors to uncover the mechanism through which D3 could be beneficial to cardiovascular health.

Why 80% of Us Are Deficient In Magnesium
Green Med Info- Magnesium deficiency is often misdiagnosed because it does not show up in blood tests – only 1% of the body’s magnesium is stored in the blood.
Most doctors and laboratories don’t even include magnesium status in routine blood tests. Thus, most doctors don’t know when their patients are deficient in magnesium, even though studies show that the majority of Americans are deficient in magnesium.
Consider Dr. Norman Shealy’s statements, “Every known illness is associated with a magnesium deficiency” and that, “magnesium is the most critical mineral required for electrical stability of every cell in the body. A magnesium deficiency may be responsible for more diseases than any other nutrient.” The truth he states exposes a gapping hole in modern medicine that explains a good deal about iatrogenic death and disease. Because magnesium deficiency is largely overlooked, millions of Americans suffer needlessly or are having their symptoms treated with expensive drugs when they could be cured with magnesium supplementation.