Today's News: July 12, 2018

World News

Trump says NATO withdrawal is ‘unnecessary’ after allies agree to increase spending
CNBC – President Donald Trump said NATO allies had committed to raising their defense spending beyond 2 percent on Thursday morning, following a flurry of public diatribes against key members of the 29-nation bloc.
“NATO is much stronger now than it was two days ago,” Trump told reporters in Brussels, shortly after he had prompted an unscheduled crisis meeting among the group’s members.

Venezuelans are starving, but the country still sends crude to Cuba
Miami Herald – Venezuelan oil production is dropping rapidly and the government has no money to buy food, medicines or consumer goods, but there is one item that the socialist regime of President Nicolás Maduro seems unwilling to sacrifice under any circumstances: oil subsidies to Cuba.
News reports that a shipment of 500,000 barrels of crude was on its way this week to the port of Matanzas in northwestern Cuba sparked indignation among many in Venezuela, a country suffering under the worst economic crisis of its history.

U.S. News, Politics & Government

Strzok Swears: My work never tainted by political bias
AP – An FBI agent whose anti-Trump text messages fueled suspicions of partisan bias said at a bitterly contentious and occasionally chaotic hearing in Congress on Thursday that his work has never been tainted by politics, angrily rejecting Republican allegations that he set out to stop Donald Trump from becoming president.
Peter Strzok testified publicly for the first time since being removed from special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, telling lawmakers that texts he traded with an FBI lawyer in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election reflected personal views that he never once acted on.

Trump admin says all eligible immigrant children reunited with families, but some still held for safety concerns
FOX – All eligible small children who were separated from their families under the “zero-tolerance” immigration policy have been reunited with their loved ones, the Trump administration has said.
However nearly half of the children under the age of five still remain in government custody due to safety concerns, the deportation of their family members or another reason, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Axios: Trump Wants to Repaint Air Force One for ‘More American’ Look
Axios – President Donald Trump wants to repaint Air Force One and change the color from white and robin’s egg blue to something “more American,” Axios reports.

The Justice Department Is Reinvestigating the 1955 Slaying of Black Teenager Emmett Till
Time – The federal government has reopened its investigation into the slaying of Emmett Till, the black teenager whose brutal killing in Mississippi shocked the world and helped inspire the civil rights movement more than 60 years ago.

Pardoned Ranchers Arrive Home, Plan Lots of ‘Decompressing’
Newsmax – Father and son ranchers, who were the focus of a battle about public lands and were freed from prison after receiving a presidential pardon, were welcomed home Wednesday in Oregon by relatives and horseback riders carrying American flags

California Gun Groups Sue over Faulty Registration System
Newsmax – Gun owners’ rights groups sued Wednesday over a California firearms registration system they claim puts law-abiding gun owners at risk of criminal charges.
The lawsuit against state Attorney General Xavier Becerra and his Department of Justice alleges that the system for registering so-called bullet-button assault weapons was unavailable for most of the week before the July 1 deadline.

CNN LOBBIES FACEBOOK TO SHUT DOWN ALEX JONES
Infowars – After failing in its efforts to have YouTube shut down the Alex Jones Channel, CNN is now lobbying Facebook to shut down Infowars.
In an article for CNN, senior media reporter Oliver Darcy explains how he tried to convince Facebook top brass to terminate our Facebook presence.
“Facebook invited me to an event today where the company aimed to tout its commitment to fighting fake news and misinformation. I asked them why InfoWars is still allowed on the platform. I didn’t get a good answer,” tweeted Darcy.

Economy & Business

China Has Been Preparing For A Trade War For Over A Decade
SIlver Doctors – The trade wars may seem like they’ve began out of nowhere this year, but China has actually been preparing for trade wars for years. Here’s the details…

World oil supply risks being ‘stretched to limit’
AFP – Rising global oil supply, driven by crude giants Saudi Arabia and Russia, may come under pressure as key producers face disruptions, the International Energy Agency said Thursday.

Energy & Environment

New ‘exotic’ tick clones self; ‘Aggressive biter’
Charlotte Observer – An invasive species of “exotic” tick native to east Asia has been discovered in North Carolina, and it’s an “aggressive biter,” says the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The Longhorned tick was found recently on an opossum in Polk County, in western North Carolina along the South Carolina border. It’s about 90 minutes west of Charlotte.
Details of the discovery were not released, but a warning was issued Wednesday for the state’s veterinarians to be on the lookout for a rapid spread.

Trash piles up in USA as China closes door to recycling
AFP – For months, a major recycling facility for the greater Baltimore-Washington area has been facing a big problem: it has to pay to get rid of huge amounts of paper and plastic it would normally sell to China.
Beijing is no longer buying, claiming the recycled materials are “contaminated.”

Science & Technology

Ex-Apple Worker Charged with Stealing Self-Driving Car Trade Secrets
Newsmax- U.S. authorities charged a former Apple Inc employee with stealing trade secrets on Monday, accusing him of downloading a blueprint related to a self-driving car to a personal laptop before trying to flee the country for China, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court.
The complaint said the former employee, Xiaolang Zhang, disclosed intentions to work for a Chinese self-driving car startup and booked a last-minute flight to China after downloading the plan for a circuit board for the self-driving car. Authorities arrested Zhang on July 7 at the San Jose airport after he passed through a security checkpoint.

First-ever color X-ray on human
AP – New Zealand scientists have performed the first-ever 3-D, colour X-ray on a human, using a technique that promises to improve the field of medical diagnostics, said Europe’s CERN physics lab which contributed imaging technology.
The new device, based on the traditional black-and-white X-ray, incorporates particle-tracking technology developed for CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, which in 2012 discovered the elusive Higgs Boson particle.

Health

Legionnaires’ outbreak sickens 8 in NYC
Fox – An outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease has hit Washington Heights, with eight residents sickened by the bacteria-borne illness over the past week, officials reported Wednesday.
Seven of the eight patients have been hospitalized, and one has been discharged, officials said.

7 Ways to Increase Your Serotonin Levels Naturally
Care 2 – Serotonin is a neurotransmitter produced in the gut and brain. It is popularly known as the “feel-good chemical”. Low levels of serotonin can lead to anxiety, depression, and low energy. High levels can boost your mood and ease depression.
How to Increase Serotonin Naturally:

Eat serotonin-boosting foods.
Get a massage.
Exercise regularly.
Get some sunlight.
Keep your gut healthy.
Cut back on alcohol.
Be optimistic.

Is Your Smartphone Prematurely Aging Your Skin?
Care 2 – All of our screens emit primarily blue light—televisions, computers, smartphones, all of them. We already know that blue light at night can mess with our circadian rhythms by destroying deep sleep and suppressing melatonin production. It’s just not a good idea to look at screens anywhere near your bedtime, if you want a restful, restorative night.
Blue light is a natural component of the light spectrum. Shine any prism outside (or even indoors) and you’ll see a splash of blue spill out the other side. But our addiction to tech is completely flooding our systems with a dull blue glow, and that much blue light may actually be damaging more than your sleep cycles.
Some doctors are convinced that the blue light emitted from our screens can potentially contribute to signs of accelerated aging like increased pigmentation, prematurature wrinkles, and general skin inflammation.
Current research is pretty thin, but over the short-term, excessive blue light does subtly change the way the skin behaves, even it’s not directly related to accelerated aging. But in real life, we are looking at screens long term, and the lack of research makes blue light’s effect on skin health uncharted territory.
Let’s be clear—blue light is not as dangerous as UV rays. No need to pile on spf 45 every time you tune into Netflix. While blue light is generally recognized as safe, it does penetrate deeper into the skin than UVA or UVB rays.
In that deep tissue, it promotes the production of free radicals. Free radicals break down wrinkle-thwarting collagen and elastin while increasing inflammation, oxidation, and hyperpigmentation. Blue light even damages mitochondrial DNA, meaning it accelerates skin aging on a cellular level. Odds are, that’s not something you want to promote when you’re zoning out in front of your t.v. or computer screen after a long day.