Today's News: June 06, 2019

World News
China has ‘serious concerns’ about Taiwan’s request for US tanks, missiles
RT – Beijing says it has “serious concerns” about the proposed sale of missiles and of more than 100 tanks to Taiwan.
On Thursday, Taiwan confirmed it is hoping to buy state-of-the-art tanks and portable missiles from the US, in a proposed deal that drew an angry rebuke from China, AFP reports.
Taipei’s Defense Ministry has formally asked for 108 M1A2 Abrams main battle tanks, more than 1,500 Javelin and TOW anti-tank missiles, and 250 shoulder-fired Stinger anti-aircraft missiles. The request was proceeding “as normal,” according to the ministry.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said on Thursday that Beijing has repeatedly demanded that the US “fully understand the extremely sensitive and damaging nature of their decision to sell arms to Taiwan, and abide by the One China principle.”
Widespread concern after Australian police media raids
Al Jazeera – Police raids against two news outlets renew calls for safeguards for whistle-blowers and freedom of speech protections.
High-profile raids against two separate media outlets by Australian police have been widely condemned by news organisations and rights groups, renewing calls for greater protection of whistle-blowers and journalists in the country.
The Australian Federal Police on Wednesday raided the Sydney offices of the national broadcaster ABC over stories it ran in 2017 exposing alleged war crimes by Australian special forces against civilians in Afghanistan, dubbed The Afghan Files.
David Anderson, the ABC’s managing director, said in a statement that “it is highly unusual for the national broadcaster to be raided in this way”. The search warrant was remarkably wide-reaching, allowing police to “add, copy, delete or alter” material on the ABC’s computer system.
“This is a serious development and raises legitimate concerns over freedom of the press and proper public scrutiny of national security and defence matters,” Anderson said.
YouTube Begins Purging ‘Thousands Of Videos And Channels’ For Advocating ‘Bigoted Ideologies’
Infowars – Google-owned YouTube is planning to purge “thousands of videos and channels” which advocate “bigoted ideologies” or “claim Jews secretly control the world,” deny “that well-documented violent events, like the Holocaust” took place, “say women are intellectually inferior to men and therefore should be denied certain rights,” or “suggest that the white race is superior to another race.”
Multiple channels were banned in the immediate aftermath of the announcement.
From New York Times, “YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views”:
Mexico meets migrants at southern border with armed forces
Reuters – Mexican soldiers, armed police and migration officials blocked hundreds of migrants after they crossed the border from Guatemala in a caravan into southern Mexico on Wednesday, and detained dozens of them, a witness from a migrant aid group and an official said.
Gore Visits Australia to Preach About Global Warming; Snow Falls on Cue
The New American – World-renowned carbon-credit salesman Al Gore is currently down under in Australia to preach the word about disastrous anthropogenic global warming to 1,000 willing future “climate leaders” in Brisbane. Gore is in Australia to “communicate the urgency of the climate crisis.”
That’s right. Al Gore and his team boarded a jet that spews more carbon into the atmosphere than most of us will create in a year in order to sermonize to an audience about why they shouldn’t, among other things, fly on jets.
As if on cue, perhaps to welcome the high priest of climate hysteria, a rare snow fell on Queensland, just west of Brisbane. Winter storms are also battering the state’s east coast. In Australia, Queensland is ironically nicknamed the Sunshine State. The Gore Effect rears its head again.
Though Gore’s visit was set in motion months ago, it comes at an opportune time for Australian climate hysterics, who are still reeling from their defeat in the recent Australian elections. The folks probably need a boost right now and a visit from the world’s foremost climate alarmist just might do the trick. Although polls showed the Labour Party — with fighting climate change as its main agenda — winning easily, the Conservative Party eked out a win against all odds.
U.S. News, Politics & Government
North Carolina Lawmakers Fail to Override Governor’s Veto of “Born Alive” Bill
The New American – The Republican effort to override North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper’s (shown) veto of the “Born Alive Abortion Survivors Act” failed on Wednesday, suggesting once more that the Democratic Party has become the “pro-infanticide” party.
Senate Bill 359 would have ensured babies who are born alive as a result of failed abortions receive life-saving medical care and would have punished medical professionals who failed to provide that care. It protected the mother from legal action in the event a healthcare professional failed to provide adequate care to the baby.
“If an abortion results in the live birth of an infant, the infant is a legal person for all purposes under the laws of North Carolina and entitled to all the protections of such laws,” the bill reads.
The measure passed in both the House and Senate before Cooper vetoed it on April 18.
The Senate voted 30 to 20 to override the veto weeks ago, thanks to the support of lone Democratic Senator Don Davis, but support from Democrats in the House dipped from four who initially voted for the “Born Alive Survivors Protection Act” to just two — Representatives Charles Graham of Robeson County and Garland Pierce of Scotland County — who voted to override the veto, Time.com reports.
Fox News reports that lawmakers in the North Carolina House debated Senate Bill 359 for more than an hour before the vote failed 67-53, falling short of the necessary 72 votes to override the veto.
Christopher Steele ‘to testify FBI lied’
WND – Christopher Steele, the author of the now-debunked anti-Trump dossier that spurred the Russia probe, will tell investigators that the FBI lied to a top-secret court and to Congress regarding the former British spy’s infamous document, says a former U.S. attorney.
Joseph diGenova was commenting Tuesday night on the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” on the Times of London report that Steele has agreed to be questioned in the coming weeks by U.S. officials about his relationship with the FBI.
DiGenova, who served as the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia from 1983 to 1988, said that “obviously been some sort of deal that’s been worked out,” calling it “great news.”
“I assume he’s going to tell the truth now, because this is the big casino now,” said diGenova of Steele.
Pelosi says she wants to see Trump ‘in prison’ but not impeached
Politico – Speaker Nancy Pelosi told senior Democrats that she’d like to see President Donald Trump “in prison” as she clashed with House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler in a meeting on Tuesday night over whether to launch impeachment proceedings.
Pelosi met with Nadler (D-N.Y.) and several other top Democrats who are aggressively pursuing investigations against the president, according to multiple sources. Nadler and other committee leaders have been embroiled in a behind-the-scenes turf battle for weeks over ownership of the Democrats’ sprawling investigation into Trump.
Trump Administration Announces Cuts To Programs For Immigrant Minors In Custody
The Daily Beast- The Trump administration has begun cutting services for unaccompanied migrant children staying at federal shelters across the country. The Office of Refugee Resettlement started discontinuing funding for activities, including English classes, recreational programs like soccer, as well as legal aid. The administration said the cutbacks are due to budget pressures caused by the influx of immigrants at the Mexican border. The discontinued services were deemed “not directly necessary for the protection of life and safety,” Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Mark Weber said. The move could violate a federal court settlement and state requirements that mandate education and recreation for minors in federal custody.
Federal officials say they are facing “a dramatic spike” in unaccompanied minors at the border, and have asked lawmakers for $2.9 billion in emergency funding to meet demand. More than 40,800 unaccompanied children have been placed into federal custody after crossing the southern U.S. border this year, a 57 percent increase from last year. The program could run out of money at the end of June, and the agency is legally obligated to direct funding to essential services, Weber said.
Trump nominates Anti-Gun Advocate to Head the ATF
Off Grid Survival – President Trump has nominated Chuck Canterbury, president of the anti-gun Fraternal Order of Police to be his director at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).
Canterbury has a long track record that should concern gun owners:

He’s testified before Congress to support anti-gunners like Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Attorney General Eric Holder.
Under his watch, the FOP backed Congressional measures to expand the unconstitutional and failing NICS system — which is the same system where 95% of the initial denials are false positives.
And on the state level, the FOP under his watch has supported Universal Background Checks and opposed Constitutional Carry.

Canterbury, in testimony, has expressed his agreement with the FOP’s support of unconstitutional restrictions on gun ownership. While the President and some gun groups who continue to bend over backward to appease anti-gunners may claim the nominee is a pro-second amendment, consider the following letter written by Canterbury and sent to the U.S. Senate in support of a proposed expansion of the restrictions on gun ownership, use, and purchase.
Study: Common Core Had “Significant Negative Effect” on Students
The New American – rom FreedomProject Media:
A barely noticed study on the Obama-backed Common Core scheme revealed that the controversial national “education” standards caused a “significant” decline in student achievement.
Basically, if the Common Core scheme had never existed, students would have been much better off, according to researchers at the federally funded Center on Standards, Alignment, Instruction and Learning (C-SAIL).
Results show that student performance declined in both reading and math as a result of Common Core, the researchers noted.
“Contrary to our expectation, we found that [Common Core] had significant negative effects on 4th graders’ reading achievement during the 7 years after the adoption of the new standards,” the study found.
Indeed, Common Core is packed with quackery such as the “sight-word” method that was first exposed as a dangerous failure over 150 years ago when it was tried in Boston. Even contributors to the Common Core reading section are blowing the whistle!
The controversial standards also “had a significant negative effect on 8th graders’ math achievement 7 years after adoption based on analyses of [National Assessment of Educational Progress] composite scores,” according to the analysis.
Veteran News
June 6th, 1944: D-Day Landings in Pictures
Associated Press – The D-Day invasion that helped change the course of World War II was unprecedented in scale and audacity.
As veterans and world leaders commemorate the 75th anniversary of the operation, here’s a look at some details of D-Day:
WHO TOOK PART
Nearly 160,000 Allied troops landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944. Of those 73,000 were from the United States, 83,000 from Britain, and Canada.
They faced some 50,000 German forces.
More than 2 million Allied soldiers, sailors, pilots, medics and other people from a dozen countries were involved in the overall Operation Overlord, the battle to wrest western France from Nazi control that started on D-Day.
97-year-old former paratrooper makes another jump 75 years after D-Day
CBS – Tom Rice, 97, has been to Normandy before, but the reception then was a lot less welcoming. Seventy-five years ago, he was part of the vanguard of the D-Day invasion, and he was among the 18,000 paratroopers who would be dropped behind enemy lines.
Their job was to prevent German reinforcements from reaching the front as the main invasion force stormed the beaches.
“Chase ’em out, run ’em across fields, through cemeteries, jumping over tombstones, chase ’em all the way back to the German border as fast as we can,” Rice said.
He has come back to the field where he landed that night. The story he now tells to current soldiers is of a mission that didn’t start well.
“It was dark, dark, dark. Apart from all the hurricane of all that fire coming up real bad. I’m glad they moved away from that,” he said.
Rice could have just accepted the thanks of the French nation here. But he had other ideas. He came back to jump again.
“I got a replacement left knee and the right knee is a little sore. But we’re going to ignore that,” Rice said. “I do this because I like to and it’s an extended dimension of maybe my personality.”
The plan was to jump in tandem, harnessed along with Art Shaffer.
“He’s jumped at a lot of these events over the years, so it’s not his first one,” Shaffer said. “Not his first rodeo, that’s correct.”
There aren’t too many 97-year-old rodeo riders. But there is one 97-year-old parachute jumper, arriving in daylight and waving the flag this time, a different kind of jump requiring a different kind of bravery.
“They weren’t shooting at me,” Rice said.
Economy & Business
Trump threatens to expand tariffs on China by another $300 billion
RT – US President Donald Trump has warned Beijing that he may hit Chinese goods with another $300 billion in tariffs if necessary, but added that he still hopes for a deal. The levies would target China’s remaining exports to the US.
“Our talks with China, a lot of interesting things are happening. We’ll see what happens… I could go up another at least $300 billion and I’ll do that at the right time,” Trump told reporters on Thursday, as cited by Reuters. The president did not elaborate on what goods could be targeted by the hikes.
However, Trump says he thinks that China and another country embroiled in a trade row with Washington, Mexico, wants to make a deal. Earlier, Trump threatened to impose a five-percent duty on all Mexican goods starting next week.
“I think China wants to make a deal and I think Mexico wants to make a deal badly,” he said before boarding Air Force One on his way to France for D-Day commemorations.
Energy & Environment
US to label nuclear waste as less dangerous to quicken cleanup
The Guardian – The US government plans to reclassify some of the nation’s most dangerous radioactive waste to lower its threat level, outraging critics who say the move would make it cheaper and easier to walk away from cleaning up nuclear weapons production sites in Washington state, Idaho and South Carolina.
The Department of Energy said on Wednesday that labeling some high-level waste as low level will save $40bn in cleanup costs across the nation’s entire nuclear weapons complex. The material that has languished for decades in the three states would be taken to low-level disposal facilities in Utah or Texas, the agency said.
Science & Technology
New AI tool can tell parents what their newborn’s cries mean
RT – A team of US researchers claim to have created the Holy Grail for parents, nurses and pediatricians alike: a device which can decipher baby talk or, more specifically, their cries.
New parents can often be brought to their wits’ end trying to figure out whether their newborn is sick, tired, hungry, in need of a hug, or perhaps something more serious.
Thankfully, a team of US researchers has developed a new artificial intelligence method that can distinguish babies’ cries from one another, as well as differentiate an individual baby’s critical and non-critical cries from each other e.g. whether the child is in distress or just hungry.
Using a proprietary cry language algorithm, based on automatic speech recognition, the researchers can detect hidden patterns in the infant’s cry using a compressed sensing technique which reconstructs the initial raw cry signal based on sparse data input.
Jupiter will get so close to Earth this month its largest moons will be visible with binoculars
Wink News – NASA has a message for space lovers this month: Look up. The largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter, will be clearly visible June 10 — and to see its biggest moons you’ll only need to grab a pair of binoculars.
NASA said the gas giant is at its “biggest and brightest this month” and will be visible all night. The planet will reach opposition, the annual occurrence when the Jupiter, Earth and the Sun are arranged in a straight line, with Earth in the center. So, mark your calendars for Monday, as it will be the best time of the year to see it.
New Surveillance Tool Is Coming to US Skies
Newsmax – An Arizona company developing a new type of high-altitude, long-range surveillance platform just completed a 16-day mission during which massive balloons floated over four western U.S. states, all part of an effort to someday keep them aloft for months at a time.
World View Enterprises Inc. builds what it calls Stratollites, a system designed to offer the type of coverage satellites afford but without the need to launch incredibly expensive rockets into space. Effectively unmanned balloons, the platforms operate with surveillance equipment payloads of as much as 220 pounds (100 kg) at altitudes of 50,000 feet to 75,000 feet, far above commercial air traffic.
They will be able to monitor mines, pipelines, transit infrastructure—and perhaps the contents of your fenced-off backyard—in hyper-accurate detail.
The company plans to start selling its commercial product early next year and has spoken with several potential commercial and military customers, Chief Executive Officer Ryan Hartman said Tuesday in an interview. World View sees its customer base as companies that operate critical industrial and commercial infrastructure.
Health
Study: 99% of Canadian Honey Analyzed Contaminated with Herbicide Glyphosate
Health Impact News – A recent study published in the journal Food Additives & Contaminants analyzed 200 random samples of honey in Canada. The study was conducted by the Agri-Food Laboratories, Alberta Agriculture and Forestry, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Their analysis found that almost 99% of the honey samples analyzed were contaminated with the herbicide glyphosate, the active ingredient in RoundUp that has been linked to cancer.
Two hundred randomly chosen honey samples, which were submitted to our laboratory for other testing, were analysed using the online SPE-LCMS/MS method to obtain information regarding baseline levels of glyphosate, its main degradation product AMPA, and the other acidic herbicide, glufosinate.
Glyphosate was detected in almost all honey samples analysed with 197 out of 200 samples (98.5%) having residues… (Source.)
Canada is not the Only Place with Glyphosate-Contaminated Honey
In a study published in 2014 in the Journal of Environmental & Analytical Toxicology titled “Survey of Glyphosate Residues in Honey, Corn and Soy Products,” researchers analyzed food samples purchased in stores in the Philadelphia area, including honey, both organic honey and non-organic honey.
Heartburn Drugs Tied to Deaths
Newsmax – People who use common heartburn drugs for months to years may face heightened risks of dying from heart disease, kidney failure, or stomach cancer, a new study suggests.
The study included more than 200,000 U.S. veterans. It’s the latest to raise concerns over drugs called proton pump inhibitors (PPIs). They include prescription and over-the-counter drugs like Prilosec (omeprazole), Prevacid (lansoprazole) and Nexium (esomeprazole). And they rank among the top-selling medications in the United States.
Research in recent years has linked prolonged PPI use to increased risks of various diseases and premature death.
These latest findings point to the specific causes of death tied to the drugs, said lead researcher Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly.
Artemisia capillaris (wormwood) found to stimulate mineralization of bone, prevent bone loss
NaturalNews – Researchers at the Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine looked at the effect of capillary wormwood (Artemisia capillaris) to prevent bone loss. They published in their results in The American Journal of Chinese Medicine.

For the study, the researchers administered a water extract from capillary wormwood to the receptor activator of nuclear factor kappa-B ligand (RANKL)-induced bone loss model.
This resulted in significantly preventing osteoporotic bone loss.
Bone volume and trabecular number were increased, while trabecular separation was increased.
In addition, capillary wormwood water extract also stimulated osteoblast mineralization from primary osteoblasts.
Moreover, capillary wormwood water extract treatment significantly suppressed osteoclast formation from bone marrow macrophages.
These results suggested that water extract from capillary wormwood has a beneficial effect on bone loss as it regulated osteoblast mineralization, osteoclast formation, and bone resorption.

In conclusion, the researchers concluded that capillary wormwood may be a promising herbal medicine used to treat or prevent osteoporotic bone diseases.