Today's News: May 15, 2018

World News

Japanese banks trying to hold on to savings of dead clients
RT – In an attempt to keep billions in funds left by deceased customers, Japanese regional banks are using special trusts to enter into banking relationships with the heirs of the departed.
The step comes as the country’s local lenders have been losing 60 percent of funds that are subject to inheritance, Bloomberg reports, citing estimates by Fidelity Investor Education Institute. Smaller banks across Japan have to say goodbye not only to millions of clients dying each year, but also to their savings after heirs opt to move to bigger cities where bigger banking institutions are dominating.

‘Hallmark of police state’: Australian PM slammed over move to have random ID checks at airports
RT – Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull wants to counter terrorism by conducting random ID checks at airports. The move has been slammed by political opponents and social media users as “slow march of authoritarianism”.

Soros foundation quits Hungary under pressure
AFP – The announcement Tuesday that a foundation run by US-Hungarian liberal billionaire George Soros will quit Hungary puts the spotlight once again on the favourite whipping boy of Western nationalists.
Over three decades since it began, Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF) threw in the towel, citing Hungary’s “increasingly repressive political and legal environment”.

White House blames Hamas for Gaza protester deaths
WND – It wasn’t surprising that Hamas blamed Israel for the deaths Monday of more than 50 Palestinians protesting the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. What was unusual was a White House spokesman defending Israel in such clashes.

U.S. News, Politics & Government

Trump calls for mandatory death penalty for cop killers
Daily Caller – President Donald Trump suggested Tuesday a mandatory death penalty for criminals who kill police officers.
Trump, speaking at the 37th Annual National Peace Officers’ Memorial Service, called for an immediate end to “the attacks on our police, and we must end them right now.”
“We believe criminals who kill our police should get the death penalty,” POTUS stated. “Bring it forth.”

Bill O’Reilly in talks to return to cable news
Page Six – Bill O’Reilly is in talks to head back to cable news in his old 8 p.m. slot, but this time at Newsmax TV, sources exclusively tell Page Six.

Mueller doesn’t want to explore grand jury leaks
Bloomberg – Special Counsel Robert Mueller urged a federal judge to reject a request by Paul Manafort, the indicted former Trump campaign chairman, for a hearing to determine whether government officials improperly leaked secret grand-jury information to the news media.

Trump blasts White House leakers as ‘traitors’
The Hill – President Trump blasted so-called White House “leakers” as “traitors” and vowed to hunt them down, even as he denied the West Wing has a problem with leaks.
“The so-called leaks coming out of the White House are a massive over exaggeration put out by the Fake News Media in order to make us look as bad as possible,” Trump tweeted Monday afternoon

Woman: Hospital fired me for pumping breast milk
New Haven Register – A woman who was fired from her job at Yale New Haven Hospital claims she was let go because she was insisting on pumping breast milk in her office.
Jill Grewcock, who worked as a clinical bed manager, has sued the hospital’s parent corporation for wrongful termination. In addition, Grewcock claims her First Amendment and state constitutional free-speech rights were violated.
While the hospital claimed Grewcock was terminated because she violated the federal medical privacy law known as HIPAA, Grewcock’s complaint, filed in state Superior Court, details a pattern of alleged harassment because she believed she needed to express milk in her office in order to fulfill her duties. Her suit also claims that hospital supervisors gave misinformation at a federal trial and that the accusation of a HIPAA violation was invalid.

Science & Technology

Twitter amps up censorship: Hides bad tweets
The Verge – Twitter will begin using a wider range of signals to rank tweets in conversations and searches, hiding more replies that are likely to be abusive, the company said today. Comments from users that have often been blocked, muted, or reported for abuse will be less visible throughout the service, CEO Jack Dorsey told a group of reporters. “We are making progress as we go,” Dorsey said.

Assange hacked embassy comms, set up own internet
Talking Points Memo – As Ecuador funded a multi-million dollar effort to protect Wikileaks founder Julian Assange during his stay in the country’s London embassy, Assange returned the favor by hacking into the embassy’s communications system, the Guardian reported Tuesday.

Google workers quit in protest over A.I. work on weaponized drones
WND – As many as a dozen Google employees quit their jobs Monday in protest over the company’s agreement to provide artificial intelligence technology to the Pentagon for use in improving weaponized drone strikes.
The U.S. Department of Defense initiative is known as Project Maven, and the resigning Google employees are concerned the company is helping the federal government use artificial intelligence to automate the process of classifying images of objects and people captured by drones. The project uses computer vision to autonomously extract objects from photos and video. The technology could be used to better identify human targets for strikes.

Now Mueller linked to Russian contacts
WND – Now, Special Counsel Robert Mueller also has been revealed to have had Russian contacts.
It was the Hill that reported even Mueller’s “comrades” believe the relationships might be a conflict of interest.
“In 2009, when Mueller ran the FBI, the bureau asked Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to spend millions of his own dollars funding an FBI-supervised operation to rescue a retired FBI agent, Robert Levinson, captured in Iran while working for the CIA in 2007,” the report said.
“Yes, that’s the same Deripaska who has surfaced in Mueller’s current investigation and who was recently sanctioned by the Trump administration.”
The Levinson mission was confirmed by “more than a dozen participants inside and outside the FBI, including Deripaska, his lawyer, the Levinson family and a retired agent who supervised the case,” the Hill said.

Entertainment

Disney selling gay-themed Mickey Mouse ears
WND – Disney has stirred controversy in recent years with its depictions of homosexuality in animated features for children, and now the iconic Mickey Mouse ears are available in a gay theme.
Exclusive to Disney World and Disneyland shops, “Mickey Mouse Rainbow Love,” selling for $17.99, can be customized with the wearer’s name in rainbow embroidery at an additional cost, according to the website Hornet, reported Christian News.

‘Puppy’ bought by family turns out to be a big bear
WND – A Chinese family who brought a brand new puppy into their home two years ago noticed something strange happening with their fuzzy family member.
The little guy seemed ravenous.
In fact, he never stopped eating. Or growing.
The puppy would have “a box of fruits and two buckets of fruit a day,” Su Yun told China News.
Soon, the family’s “fur baby” weighed a whopping 250 pounds.
And he developed a curious talent for walking upright, on two legs

Health

New chemical compound ‘stops common cold in its tracks’
Guardian – Scientists working on human cells in a dish find new way to tackle rhinovirus – though a cure is a long way off.

Surgeons developing method to transplant human head
CNBC – talian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero wants to carry out the first human head transplant operation and believes it could help people who have been paralyzed from the neck down to walk again.

25% of Americans Suffer When Exposed to Common Chemicals. Adding WiFi Radiation and Electromagnetic Fields (EMFs) = Bigger Toxic Nightmare
Activist Post – On March 14, 2018, University of Melbourne research revealed that 1 in 4 Americans report sensitivity to common chemicals such as inspect spray, paint, cleaning supplies, fragrances, and gas fumes. Almost ½ of this group was also medically diagnosed with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS).
Within the past decade, chemical sensitivity and diagnosed MCS has increased significantly with an estimated 55 million American adults who now have MCS.