Today's News: March 25, 2018

World News
Israeli military begins striking Hamas targets in Gaza
Al Jazeera – The Israeli military action came after a rocket, allegedly fired from the Gaza Strip, struck a home in central Israel.
Insane video shows Viking Sky cruise ship thrown into chaos at sea NY Post – Wild photos and videos show the Viking Sky cruise ship tilting nearly 45 degrees in choppy waters, sending passengers and furniture sliding across rooms and tiles falling from the ceiling.
The stricken cruise ship finally reached the Norwegian shore Sunday afternoon, nearly 24 hours after it issued a mayday call when it suffered engine trouble at sea.
Photos show the ship rocking along Norway’s rough, frigid western waters as it tried to avoid colliding with the rocky coast Saturday.
New Zealand bans terror suspect’s racist manifesto; citizens told to ‘destroy any copies’
USA Today – New Zealand’s government on Saturday banned a racist, angry manifesto written by the suspected gunman of two recent mosque shootings in Christchurch that killed 50 people, arguing that the 74-page document “promotes murder and terrorism.”
New Zealand’s Office of Film and Literature Classification issued a statement officially classifying the manifesto – titled “The Great Replacement” and authored by the alleged 28-year-old shooter – “objectionable” under the country’s law.
“There is an important distinction to be made between ‘hate speech’, which may be rejected by many right-thinking people but which is legal to express, and this type of publication, which is deliberately constructed to inspire further murder and terrorism,” New Zealand’s Chief Censor David Shanks said in a statement.
“It crosses the line.”
The alleged gunman, a self-described white supremacist, is accused of fatally shooting 50 people on March 15 in a rampage in two mosques that he live video-recorded on a helmet he wore. He linked the manifesto on his Twitter account and mailed a copy to the office of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
Russian Navy holds military drills off the coast of Syria
AMN – The Russian Black Sea Fleet’s frigate Admiral Essen has practiced counter-measures to repel a massive missile attack by a hypothetical enemy in an exercise in the Mediterranean, the fleet’s press-service told the media on Thursday.
“The air defense crews of the Black Sea frigate Admiral Essen practiced measures to protect a base facility from a massive missile and air strike of a hypothetical enemy in the Mediterranean. The virtual targets were identified and classified and successfully eliminated as a result of simulated electronic launches,” the statement says.
Russia Sends “Peacekeeping” Troops to Venezuela. Joint Military Exercises.
Global Research – According to Reuters on Sunday, Russia sent around 100 troops to Caracas, saying the following:
“A flight-tracking website showed that two planes left from a Russian military airport bound for Caracas on Friday, and another flight-tracking site showed that one plane left Caracas on Sunday.”
“That comes three months after the two nations held military exercises on Venezuelan soil that President Nicolas Maduro called a sign of strengthening relations, but which Washington criticized as Russian encroachment in the region.”
Reportedly Colonel General Vasily Tonkoshkurov, Main Command of Russian Land Forces chief, is leading whatever purpose lies behind its Defense Ministry’s mission.
Tonkoshkurov is a senior military figure. From October 2013 to May 2018, he was General Staff of Russia’s Armed Forces subcommander – currently head of Russian ground forces.
Reportedly he was onboard one of two military aircraft sent to Caracas with other Russian forces. The second aircraft carried equipment for their mission.
Reuters: “An Ilyushin IL-62 passenger jet and an Antonov AN-124 military cargo plane left for Caracas on Friday from Russian military airport Chkalovsky, stopping along the way in Syria, according to flight-tracking website Flightradar24.”
“The cargo plane left Caracas on Sunday afternoon, according to Adsbexchange, another flight-tracking site.”
U.S. News, Politics & Government
Mueller finds no Trump collusion, leaves obstruction open
AP – Special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence President Donald Trump’s campaign “conspired or coordinated” with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election but reached no conclusion on whether Trump obstructed justice. That brought a hearty claim of vindication from Trump but set the stage for new rounds of political and legal fighting.
The battle began Monday as White House aides and allies blanketed television news broadcasts to trumpet the findings and claim that Trump has been the victim in a probe that never should have started.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Trump will let Attorney General William Barr decide whether the special counsel’s Russia report should be publicly released, though she adds that “he’s more than happy for any of this stuff to come out.”
The Latest: Graham eyes FBI use of dossier in Russia probe
Star Tribune – The Latest on the conclusion of the special counsel’s Russia investigation (all times local):
The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee says his panel will “unpack the other side of the story” of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into President Donald Trump and his campaign.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, who spent the weekend with Trump in Florida, said his committee will investigate the actions of the Justice Department in the Russia investigation, including the FBI’s use of a dossier compiled by British spy Christopher Steele.
Graham spoke Monday after Attorney General William Barr reported to Congress on Mueller’s findings. Barr said Mueller found no evidence that Trump or his associates conspired with Russia. Mueller did not make a determination on whether Trump obstructed justice.
Graham said he will be speaking with Barr at noon and wants him to testify before his committee.
Kellyanne Conway: Adam Schiff Needs to Resign over Russia Collusion Hoax
Breitbart – President Donald Trump’s adviser and former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told Fox & Friends Monday morning that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, needed to resign after Special Counsel Robert Mueller found that the Trump campaign had not colluded with the Russian government.
Donald Trump: Time to Investigate the Left for ‘Treasonous Things’
Breitbart – President Donald Trump told reporters that it was time to investigate leftist Democrats for pushing the ongoing hoax that his campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election.
Shock Claim: Clinton Team Hatched ‘Blame Russia’ Plan Within 24 Hours Of Loss – Resulted In 675 Day Mueller Investigation
Economic Collapse – The narrative that eventually spawned the Mueller investigation was concocted in a gloomy room littered with discarded Shake Shack containers in November 2016. Even though Hillary Clinton had delivered a concession speech the day before, Clinton and her team were not ready to give up yet, and so they needed a strategy to de-legitimize the election results. They eventually decided on a plan to “blame Russia” for Hillary’s loss, and that included really pushing a narrative that the Trump campaign had colluded with the Russians to defeat Clinton. As this plan was rolled out, this narrative was eagerly embraced by pro-Clinton members of federal law enforcement agencies, and it ultimately resulted in the 675 day Mueller investigation. Robert Mueller issued nearly 2,800 subpoenas and conducted 500 witness interviews, and in the end he found that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians…
“The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” Mueller wrote in the report, according to Barr’s letter, which he sent to the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees.
Barr also said that the special counsel, which consisted of 19 lawyers, found no evidence “that any U.S. person or Trump campaign official or associate” conspired or “knowingly coordinated” with Russian efforts to use social media platforms to spread disinformation during the 2016 campaign. Nor did Trump associates conspire with Russians in the efforts to hack Democrats’ emails and disseminate them online.
Of course there wasn’t any collusion, because it was just a made up story by the Clinton campaign team that snowballed out of control.
Needless to say, President Trump is absolutely thrilled by the outcome of the investigation, and now he is calling on law enforcement to “look at the other side”…
“It’s a shame that our country had to go through this. To be honest it’s a shame that your president had to go through this for – before I even got elected, it began. And it began illegally. And hopefully somebody is gonna look at the other side. This was an illegal takedown that failed, and hopefully somebody is going to be looking at the other side.“
In an interview with Fox News, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani went even further. He called for “a full and complete investigation” to figure out where the charges that sparked the Mueller investigation originally came from in the first place…
“There has to be a full and complete investigation, with at least as much enthusiasm as this one, to figure out where did this charge emanate, who started it, who paid for it.”
But we don’t need an investigation to figure this out.
In a book entitled “Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign”, two Clinton insiders revealed that the “blame Russia” narrative was invented during a post-election campaign meeting that had been called by John Podesta and Robby Mook…
That strategy had been set within twenty-four hours of her concession speech. Mook and Podesta assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case that the election wasn’t entirely on the up-and-up. For a couple of hours, with Shake Shack containers littering the room, they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.
Obviously they were looking for a way to steal the election from Trump, but that didn’t work.
Stormy Daniels’ ex-lawyer Michael Avenatti arrested for alleged $20 million extortion scheme against Nike, embezzling client’s money, defrauding bank
CNBC – Celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti was arrested Monday in New York City on charges of trying to extort up to $25 million from Nike by threatening to reveal claims that company employees had authorized payments to the families of top high school basketball players.
Avenatti also was separately charged in a second federal case in Los Angeles with embezzling a client’s money “in order to pay his own expenses and debts” and those of his law firm and coffee company, and of “defrauding a bank in Mississippi,” prosecutors said.
The famously aggressive litigator gained widespread notoriety in the past year for representing porn star Stormy Daniels in lawsuits against President Donald Trump and his former lawyer Michael Cohen related to a nondisclosure agreement she signed on the eve of the 2016 presidential election to keep quiet about her alleged affair with Trump in exchange for a $130,000 payment. Last year, Avenatti announced that he was considering running for president.
Daniels replaced Avenatti as her lawyer earlier this month after a fallout with him.
Public University Suspends Prof. for Advising Foreign Student to Learn English
Judicial Watch – In a bothersome case of political correctness gone amok, a professor at a highly ranked public university in the United States has been suspended for suggesting a foreign student “learn English.” The egregious incident occurred this month at the University of Kansas (UK), a taxpayer-funded institution with an enrollment of 28,500 that ranks among the nation’s top public universities. Situated in the northeast Kansas town of Lawrence, the school is the state’s flagship university and a premier research institution.
The “offending” professor, Gary Minden, teaches electrical engineering and computer science in the highly regarded school of engineering. Minden, an acclaimed academic, is a UK alum who received undergraduate and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering at the school. In the 1990s he served as information technology program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a Pentagon agency with a $3 billion budget dedicated to developing technologies for the military. “DARPA goes to great lengths to identify, recruit and support excellent program managers—extraordinary individuals who are at the top of their fields and are hungry for the opportunity to push the limits of their disciplines,” according to the agency’s website. “These leaders, who are at the very heart of DARPA’s history of success, come from academia, industry and government agencies for limited stints, generally three to five years.”
During a recent class, Minden told a foreign student who was using an online translation system on a cell phone that the student should “learn English,” according to a local newspaper report. The unidentified student evidently was not bothered over the suggestion, but others in the class were offended and an “hourlong discussion” ensued in the engineering class which focuses on embedded systems. During the discussion things apparently got heated and many students in the class became very upset. The professor told the local newspaper that he’s “frustrated” over the incident but refused to comment further for obvious reasons. In the article a university spokeswoman said “a number of students have raised concerns about events that occurred in their engineering class. In response to these concerns, the university has assigned a different instructor to teach the course while the matter is reviewed.”
This is hardly an isolated case of political correctness at taxpayer-funded schools in the United States. Public elementary, middle and high schools as well as colleges have taken an extreme leftist turn on several issues over the years and Judicial Watch has reported or taken legal action in several of the cases. This includes exposing a Mexican separatist school that pushes Marxism and Anti-Americanism in Los Angeles, pervasive corruption in Chicago public schools and an after school Satan club in Washington State that received speedy tax-exempt approval from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Judicial Watch is currently embroiled in a legal battle with the Berkeley Unified School District in California to obtain the records of a middle school teacher who is a national organizer for a radical leftist group. The teacher, Yvette Felarca, works at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School and is a prominent figure in By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), an organized militant group founded by the Marxist Revolutionary Workers League that uses raucous militant tactics to protest conservative speaking engagements. Felarca has been charged with several crimes, including felony assault, for inciting a riot in Sacramento.
Economy & Business
UPS eyes in-home health services with US vaccine project
Fox – UPS CEO David Abney on the outlook for global shipping, the state of the economy, Amazon’s impact on shipping and the impact of Trump administration trade negotiations on U.S. retailers.
United Parcel Service Opens a New Window. Inc wants to get beyond U.S. doorsteps with a new push into healthcare. Opens a New Window.
The world’s largest package delivery firm is preparing to test a U.S. service that dispatches nurses to vaccinate adults in their homes, Reuters has learned, as the company and its healthcare clients work to fend off cost pressures and competitive threats from Amazon.com.
Government Warns Of Historic, Widespread Flooding “Through May” – Food Prices To Skyrocket As 1000s Of Farms Are Destroyed
Economic Collapse Blog – We have never seen catastrophic flooding like this, and the NOAA is now telling us that there will be more major flooding for at least two more months. On Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned that “historic, widespread flooding” would “continue through May”. More than 90 percent of the upper Midwest and Great Plains is currently covered by an average of 10.7 inches of snow, and all of that snow is starting to melt. That means that we are going to transition from one of the worst winters in modern history to a flood season that has already taken an apocalyptic turn for farmers all across America. At this moment, millions of acres of farmland are already underwater. Thousands of farmers are not going to be able to plant crops this year, and thousands of other farmers that have been financially ruined by the floods will never return to farming again. This is already the worst agricultural disaster in modern American history, and it is going to get a whole lot worse.
I posted an article about this crisis yesterday, and I am troubled by the fact that most Americans don’t seem to understand the gravity of what we are facing.
Millions of bushels of wheat, corn and soybeans have been destroyed by flood waters, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of livestock have been lost, and all of us will soon be feeling a lot more pain at the grocery store.
And this would be a complete and utter national nightmare even if the flooding was all over, but the NOAA just told us that we should expect more catastrophic flooding for the next two months…
Energy & Environment
‘The toads are taking over’: Thousands of poisonous toads which can cause harm to children and pets are filling swimming pools and blocking drains in Palm Beach
Daily Mail – Thousands of poisonous toads are invading Palm Beach, Florida homes like an Old Testament plague this weekend.
Experts say the amphibians are bufo toads, also known as cane toads.
Residents in the infested Palm Beach Gardens neighborhood worry toxins secreted by the toads will harm their pets and children.
‘With the warmer winter and then we had a rain two to three weeks ago, a torrential rain, that caused them to go into a breeding cycle,’ Mark Holladay, a lead technician with the extermination company known as Toad Busters, told WPTV.
Who keeps buying California’s scarce water? Saudi Arabia
The Guardian – Saudi-based Almarai owns 15,000 acres of an irrigated valley – but what business does a foreign food production company have drawing resources from a US desert?
Four hours east of Los Angeles, in a drought-stricken area of a drought-afflicted state, is a small town called Blythe where alfalfa is king. More than half of the town’s 94,000 acres are bushy blue-green fields growing the crop.
Massive industrial storehouses line the southern end of town, packed with thousands upon thousands of stacks of alfalfa bales ready to be fed to dairy cows – but not cows in California’s Central Valley or Montana’s rangelands.
Instead, the alfalfa will be fed to cows in Saudi Arabia.
The storehouses belong to Fondomonte Farms, a subsidiary of the Saudi Arabia-based company Almarai – one of the largest food production companies in the world. The company sells milk, powdered milk and packaged items such as croissants, strudels and cupcakes in supermarkets and corner stores throughout the Middle East and North Africa, and in specialty grocers throughout the US.
Each month, Fondomonte Farms loads the alfalfa on to hulking metal shipping containers destined to arrive 24 days later at a massive port stationed on the Red Sea, just outside King Abdullah City in Saudi Arabia.
With the Saudi Arabian landscape there being mostly desert and alfalfa being a water-intensive crop, growing it there has always been expensive and draining on scarce water resources, to the point that the Saudi government finally outlawed the practice in 2016. In the wake of the ban, Almarai decided to purchase land wherever it is cheap and has favorable water conditions to produce enough feed for its 93,000 cows.
In 2012, they acquired 30,000 acres of land in Argentina, and in 2014, they bought their first swath of land in Arizona. Then, in 2015, they bought 1,700 acres in Blythe – a vast, loamy, agricultural metropolis abutting the Colorado river, where everything but the alfalfa seems cast in the hue of sand. Four years later, the company owns 15,000 acres – 16% of the entire irrigated valley.
But what business does a foreign company have drawing precious resources from a US desert to offset a lack of resources halfway around the globe?
What Fondomonte Farms is doing is merely a chapter in the long story of water management in the west, one that pierces the veil on the inanities of the global supply chain – how easy it is to move a commodity like alfalfa, or for that matter lettuce or clementines or iPhones, across more than 13,000 miles of land and sea, how much we rely on these crisscrossing supply lines, and at what cost to our own natural resources.
Science & Technology
Identical Twins Get to the Bottom of Why They Received Completely Different DNA Ancestry Test Results
Tip Hero – Have you seen the commercials for those companies that say they can tell you what parts of the world your ancestors are from just by looking at your DNA? Many of the tests involve sending in a tube of spit that will later be analyzed by the company.
The commercials sound so factual and interesting. People claim that they had no idea they were from a certain part of the world. It can make you curious if you really know where your family is from or not.
The information in the commercials and on the websites where you would order the tests looks so scientific and sounds like it’s 100% accurate. Many people assume that the results they get back will tell them without a doubt where their ancestors used to live.
Before you spring for one of these tests, you deserve to know the truth.
Identical twin sisters decided to put five popular DNA tests to the test. They both took the following tests: Ancestry DNA, 23andMe, Living DNA, MyHeritage DNA, and FamilyTree DNA.
Considering that they’re identical twins, we would assume that their results would be identical. We would also assume that their results from each company would be identical or at least very, very similar.
That’s not what happened. The twins were shocked that not only did they receive different results from different companies, they received different results from each other. They were left feeling more confused about their ancestry than they were before they even took the tests.
They decided to dig in deeper to see if there was a rational explanation for why tests that are advertised as being so accurate could have such different results.
According to Simon Gravelle Ph.D., a Population Geneticist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, these tests are not 100% accurate. “It is a statistical guess. It’s an informed guess.”
Really? A guess? How can DNA be a guess?
Timothy Caulfield, a Health Policy Professor at the University of Alberta, says, “Don’t take it too seriously, but know that you’re just getting some information that’s an approximation of how your DNA compares to other people. It’s not tracing back your heritage.”
Health
Physician groups call for taxes and regulations on kids’ access to sugary drinks
Fox – Physicians’ groups have long taken a stand against high consumption of sugary drinks in the United States — and now they are calling for several policies to limit access to sugar-sweetened beverages among children and teens.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Heart Association released policy recommendations on Monday targeted at federal, state and local lawmakers, encouraging them to implement policies that would reduce children’s intake of sugary drinks, such as sodas, sports drinks and juice.
The policy statement is the first time AAP has recommended taxes on sugary drinks, it said.
“I talk with my patients and their families all the time about the health harms of sugary drinks and the advantage of drinking primarily water and milk. But still, sugary drinks are a mainstay in many children’s diets. They are inexpensive, easy to find, heavily marketed, and taste sweet, so children like them,” said Dr. Natalie Muth, a practicing pediatrician and registered dietitian in Carlsbad, California, who was lead author of the policy statement, published in the journal Pediatrics.
“At the same time, pediatricians are diagnosing type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease, and high cholesterol in our young patients. These are health problems that we rarely saw in children in the past. These are health problems associated with high sugar intake,” Muth said.
Avocados recalled in 6 states over listeria concerns
Fox – A California-based company announced Saturday it is voluntarily recalling California-grown whole avocados over fears of possible listeria contamination.
Henry Avocado Corporation said in news release it announced the recall as part of a precaution after positive test results for Listeria monocytogenes were discovered on environmental samples taken during a routine government inspection at its California packing facility.
“We are voluntarily recalling our products and taking every action possible to ensure the safety of consumers who eat our avocados,” said Phil Henry, president of Henry Avocado.
As of now, there are no reported illnesses associated with this recall.
Pennies Worth of Magnesium Daily Puts Antidepressant Drugs To Shame in Clinical Trial
GreenMedInfo – A powerful clinical study shows that pennies worth of magnesium a day provides an effective, safe, affordable alternative to dangerous and relatively ineffective pharmaceutical antidepressants.
While research into natural alternatives for depression is growing daily — GreenMedInfo.com’s Depression database contains 647 studies on over 100 natural substances that have been studied to prevent or treat depression — it is rare to find quality human clinical research on the topic published in well-respected journals. That’s why a powerful study published in PLOS One titled, “Role of magnesium supplementation in the treatment of depression: A randomized clinical trial,” is so promising. Not only is magnesium safe, affordable, and easily accessible, but according to this recent study, effective in treating mild-to moderate symptoms of depression.
8 Natural Ways to Control Pain
Care2 – If you’ve ever struggled with acute or chronic pain, you know how disruptive it can be to your life and well-being. And taking pain-relieving drugs can come with many side effects, including potential addiction. The current opioid crisis in many countries has been largely fueled by an increase in prescriptions to opioid medications for pain control.
With this in mind, it’s more important than ever to find alternative ways to relieve pain. The good news is that many different techniques are available to help combat pain — including therapies performed by professionals, as well as practices you can learn on your own.

Exercise

Exercise may not be at the top of your list when you’re dealing with pain, but research has shown that physical activity can improve your ability to cope with pain.
A 2014 study examined the pain tolerance levels of volunteers who used a stationary bicycle for 30 minutes, three times a week, for six weeks. Their ability to withstand pain had increased substantially by the end of the study. But, interestingly, their pain thresholds had not changed. They still felt the pain, but it didn’t bother them as much.

Massage

Science is unclear on exactly how massage works to relieve pain, but a 2016 scientific review found such compelling evidence to support massage in pain treatment that researchers concluded massage therapy “should be strongly recommended as a pain management option.”

Meditation

Evidence has revealed that practicing meditation and mindfulness activates unique pathways in your brain that help reduce pain. And you don’t even need much meditation experience to see benefits. Participants in one study had significant reductions in pain intensity after meditating for only four days, for 20 minutes per day. The participants had never meditated at all prior to learning the technique for the study.
A 2012 scientific review found that meditation or mindfulness practices that focus on the present moment are the most beneficial for pain control.

Heat and Cold Therapy

Heat or cold therapy can provide effective pain relief, as long as you use the right therapy for the pain you’re experiencing.
Cold therapy restricts blood flow and is typically used to reduce immediate swelling and inflammation. You can use an ice pack on a bruise, muscle strain or an arthritic joint that feels inflamed or hot. A cold pack should only be applied for a short time to prevent any skin damage.
On the other hand, heat therapy helps get blood moving and improves circulation. It can reduce pain from stiff, sore, or tense muscles and joints. Heat therapy works better over a longer period, so try using a hot pack for at least 15 to 20 minutes. Having a long bath or session in a sauna can also soothe pain.

Guided Imagery

Guided imagery involves generating specific images in your mind that are meant to evoke certain physiologic changes, such as promoting relaxation or relieving pain. It can be done with a therapist or on your own. That said, it’s recommended to at least learn the technique from a trained therapist before using it alone to get the most out of your practice.
Research has shown that guided imagery can be very effective against pain. It can also improve movement and function, as well as reduce the need for pharmaceutical pain medications.

Acupuncture

A 2012 scientific review investigated the use of acupuncture for pain treatment. The review examined 82 current studies that looked at acupuncture’s effect on various types of chronic pain, such as headache and osteoarthritis pain.
The review concluded that acupuncture is an effective treatment for chronic pain. It also found that the pain-relieving effects of acupuncture persist over time, and these benefits are not simply due to the placebo effect.

Chiropractic Therapy

Chiropractic treatment is becoming more recognized as a pain reduction strategy. The American College of Physicians even recommends it as an alternative to pharmaceutical drugs for low back pain. Chiropractic care can also help relieve other musculoskeletal-related pains.

Diet

Inflammation itself can cause pain, as well as make some painful conditions worse. Eating a diet that reduces inflammation will naturally combat pain.
An anti-inflammatory diet typically includes lots of fruits and vegetables, whole grains and other whole foods, while limiting processed and refined foods. A few studies have also shown a reduction in pain and inflammation when participants followed vegan or vegetarian diets.
Whether you eat a plant-based diet or not, you can’t go wrong by including some of these 16 foods that fight inflammation and pain in your daily meals and avoiding processed foods.