Today's News: May 24, 2019

World News
UK PM Theresa May announces resignation amid fury over Brexit handling
Fox – British Prime Minister Theresa May announced Friday that she will resign — ending her months-long struggle to keep her job despite seething anger from her own Conservative Party over her handling of Brexit.
“I believe it was right to persevere even when the odds against success seemed high. But it is now clear to me that it is in the best interests of the country for a new prime minister to lead that effort,” she said outside 10 Downing Street.
UK government may face court action after EU citizens denied vote
The Guardian – The government is facing calls to launch an urgent investigation into the treatment of EU citizens in the European elections after many people reported being denied their democratic right to vote.
Voters across the country told of their devastation at finding their names crossed off the register due to clerical errors by local councils. Experts said the situation was a “scandal we knew was coming” and that the government may have a case to answer in court.
The affected voters said they felt they were being “silenced” as this was the only election they had a right to participate in, being ineligible to vote in the referendum or general elections.
Julian Assange, Wikileaks co-founder, faces 17 new charges in US
BBC – The US justice department has filed 17 new charges against Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange, who is facing extradition from the UK.
The latest charges accuse him of receiving and unlawfully publishing the names of classified sources.
He was previously charged last month with one count of conspiring with ex-intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to gain access to the Pentagon network.
Assange is serving a jail sentence in the UK for jumping bail.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s Strategic Plan For America – Court Document
Clarion Project – The following is the official document from a 1991 meeting which outlines the Muslim Brotherhood’s strategic goals for North America. The document was entered as evidence in the 2008 Holy Land Terror Funding Trial. Federal investigators found the document in the home of Ismael Elbarasse, a founder of the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Virginia, during a 2004 search. Elbarasse was a member of the Palestine Committee, which the Muslim Brotherhood had created to support Hamas in the United States.
The original document in Arabic follows the English translation.
Taiwan holds its largest military drill for five years as country simulates Chinese invasion amid increasing tensions with Beijing
Daily Mail – Taiwan’s military has staged its largest drill in five years, featuring warships and jets, to simulate a Chinese invasion on the east of the island amid increasing tensions with Beijing.
Some 22 naval ships fired their cannons, missiles and depth charges, while 22 fighter jets thundered through the skies letting off missiles and heavy machine guns on Wednesday.
Anti-submarine tactics were employed in the waters close to Suao and Hualien. Chinese submarines are considered one of Beijing’s most potent threats, armed with a vast array of ballistic missiles
Canada Court: Doctors Must Euthanize, Abort, or Refer
Health Impact News – Here’s the story: The Canadian Charter (Constitution) guarantees “freedom of conscience and religion” — a stronger and more explicit protection of religious liberty than our First Amendment.
After the Supreme Court created a right to euthanasia, Ontario passed a law requiring doctors to kill legally eligible patients who want to die or provide an “effective referral” if they have moral objections — i.e., procure a doctor known by the dissenter to be willing to euthanize patients.
Referring Equals Complicity
Catholic and other religious doctors sued to enforce their Charter liberties. Referring equals complicity, the doctors argued, and thus the law forces them to violate their religious beliefs and consciences.
In one of the world’s most important “medical conscience” rulings, a trial judge admitted the doctors’ Charter rights were indeed infringed. But he ruled that a right (nowhere mentioned in the Charter) to “equal and equitable access” to legal and government-funded medical interventions trumped doctors’ freedom of religion.
Now a Court of Appeals has affirmed, ruling that doctors must not only euthanize or refer, but also abort or refer, and provide any other controversial legal service that a patient might want or refer — their religious freedoms or moral consciences be damned.
Iran says it will not surrender even if it is bombed
Reuters – Iran will not surrender to U.S. pressure and will not abandon its goals even if it is bombed, President Hassan Rouhani said on Thursday, stepping up the war of words between the Islamic Republic and the United States.
U.S. News, Politics & Government
Pentagon confirms mulling more troops for Middle East
RT – As US relations with Iran continue to plummet, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan confirmed military planners were weighing a new troop deployment to the Middle East.
“What we’re looking at is: Are there things that we can do to enhance force protection in the Middle East?” Shanahan told reporters at the Pentagon Thursday, adding “It may involve sending additional troops.”
Shanahan dismissed reports that suggested Washington had plans to send 120,000 troops into the region, and declined to discuss specific numbers for the potential deployment.
Arizona prisons ban book on black men in the justice system
ABC – Arizona has banned prisoners from reading a book that discusses the impact of the criminal justice system on black men, drawing outcry from First Amendment advocates who say the move is censorship.
The American Civil Liberties Union called on the Arizona Department of Corrections this week to rescind the ban on “Chokehold: Policing Black Men.” The book by Paul Butler, a former federal prosecutor, examines law enforcement and mass incarceration through its treatment of African American men.
“In order for them to ban a book, they have to show the restriction is related to a legitimate prison interest,” said Emerson Sykes, an ACLU attorney. “There’s no interest to keep inmates from learning about the criminal justice system and policing.”
Butler, a criminal law professor at Georgetown University, said his publisher was notified by email in March that his book had “unauthorized content.” The notice did not specify what led to the decision but warned that some aspect of the 2017 book was “detrimental to the safe, secure, and orderly operation of the facility.”
Why the Air Force is investigating a cyber attack from the Navy
Air Force Times – The Air Force is investigating the Navy for a cyber intrusion into its network, according to a memo obtained by Military Times.
The bizarre turn of events stems from a decision by a Navy prosecutor to embed hidden tracking software into emails sent to defense attorneys, including one Air Force lawyer, involved in a high-profile war-crimes case of a Navy SEAL in San Diego.
The tracking device was an attempt to find out who was leaking information to the editor of Navy Times, a sister publication. A similar tracking device was also sent to Carl Prine, the Navy Times editor, who has written numerous stories about the case.
Navy Capt. David Wilson, chief of staff for the Navy’s Defense Service Offices, wrote in the May 19 memo that an Air Force attorney was among the defense lawyers who had received emails with the hidden tracking software, which he described as “malware.”
The Air Force defense lawyer reported the tracking device to his information security manager, who concluded the malware was a “splunk tool,” which allowed the sender of the malware to gain “full access to his computer and all files on his computer,” Wilson wrote in the memo, which he sent to the chief of staff for the Navy’s Region Legal Service Offices.
DARPA Wants to Create Mind-Controlled Weapons of War
Activist Post – Last year, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced that it was seeking noninvasive ways “to achieve high levels of brain-system communications without surgery.” The techniques would “allow precise, high-quality connections to specific neurons or groups of neurons.”
The agency wants to create mind-controlled weapons of war, as it (vaguely) explained in two recent press releases.
To achieve this goal, DARPA recently formed a program called Next-Generation Nonsurgical Neurotechnology (N3).
Trump Administration Proposes Rollback of Transgender Protections
NY Times – The Trump administration has formally proposed to revise Obama-era civil rights for transgender people in the nation’s health care system, eliminating “gender identity” as a factor in health care and leaning government policy toward recognizing only characteristics of sex at birth.
The Department of Health and Human Services published its proposed regulation Friday, which eliminates a 2016 regulation inserted by the Obama administration that redefined discrimination “on the basis of sex” to include gender identity.
Trump moves to escalate the investigation of intel agencies
NBC – He has directed the U.S. intelligence community to “quickly and fully cooperate” with Attorney General William Barr’s investigation of the origins of the Russia probe.
In California, Agreement On New Rules For When Police Can Use Deadly Force
NPR – Civil rights advocates and law enforcement groups have reached an agreement in the California legislature on new rules for when police can use deadly force.
The issue has been a focus for many social justice advocates in California this spring after Sacramento’s district attorney declined to prosecute the officers who fatally shot Stephon Clark, an unarmed black man whose death sparked headlines and demonstrations across the country.
Under the agreement made public Thursday, officers will be able to use lethal force only when it is “necessary” and if there are no other options.
That’s widely viewed as higher than the existing legal standard: that the use of deadly force is legal if a “reasonable” officer would have acted similarly in that situation.
But the bill language leaves out a specific definition of “necessary,” which would leave interpretation up to the legal system to figure out case by case.
The measure is now expected to pass the assembly before next week.
Congress reaches deal on disaster aid
The Hill – Congress has reached a deal on a “clean” disaster aid bill, after President Trump told lawmakers he would sign legislation even if money tied to the U.S.-Mexico border was dropped from the package.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said on Thursday afternoon that they had reached an agreement on the long-stalled legislation to respond to a recent spate of wildfires, hurricanes and storms.
“We’ve proposed … that we come forth with a clean disaster package, a lot of things off including border security stuff, just disaster, basically. And the president said OK,” Shelby told reporters after a closed-door GOP lunch.
GOP Sens. James Lankford (Okla.), Roger Wicker (Miss.) and Rick Scott (Fla.) also confirmed that it was their understanding Trump would sign a bill that included only disaster money.
Trump administration preparing executive order on health-cost disclosure, regional hospital monopolies
Market Watch – President Trump is expected to release an executive order as early as next week to mandate the disclosure of prices in the health-care industry, according to people familiar with the discussion.
The order could direct federal agencies to pursue actions to force a host of players in the industry to divulge cost data, the people said. The administration is also looking at using agencies such as the Justice Department to tackle regional monopolies of hospitals and health-insurance plans over concerns they are driving up the cost of care, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
Judge who upheld Trump subpoena donated to Dems on committee seeking the records
Fox – The New York federal judge who ruled on Wednesday that the Trump administration must comply with two subpoenas from the House Financial Services and Intelligence Committees has donated in the past to a slew of big-name Democrats — including two who currently sit on those committees, according to federal election filings.
After an hour of oral arguments, Barack Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos ruled the subpoenas to Deutsche Bank and Capital One have “a legitimate legislative purpose,” and that Trump was unlikely to prevail in a lawsuit to quash the requests. Judges have the option to recuse themselves if there is an appearance of bias.
Federal election records show that, when he was a partner at the law firm Day Pitney LLP and before he was appointed to the bench in 2011, Ramos sent $350 to Connecticut Democrat Rep. Jim Himes from 2007 to 2008, as well as $500 to elect New York Rep. Nydia Velazquez in 2010.
Himes sits on both the Intelligence and Financial Services Committees, while Velazquez sits on Financial Services.
Economy & Business
Trump set to send $16 billion to bailout farmers hurt by China trade war
CNN – The federal government will spend an additional $16 billion to help farmers hurt by the US-China trade war, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue announced Thursday.
US farmers have been among the hardest hit by the escalating trade war between the two countries, and both sides are bracing for additional pain resulting from the latest volley of tariffs announced earlier this month.
Perdue said President Donald Trump approved the farmer aid to undermine China’s efforts to retaliate against US tariffs.
“Well, President Trump feels what they’re trying to do is really outlast him and that’s not gonna work. Their economy has hurt a lot more than our agricultural economy and that’s why President Trump has authorized a $16 billion facilitation program,” Perdue said Thursday morning on Fox Business.
Patriot games: Chinese dump iPhones & switch to domestic Huawei devices amid US crackdown
RT – A growing number of former Apple devotees in China have started switching from iPhones to domestic Huawei smartphones as trade and technology tensions escalate between Washington and Beijing.
The South China Morning Post reported that consumers were spurred by a rising “nationalist sentiment” to support the Chinese tech giant which has been blacklisted by the US.
According to the newspaper, “nationalist rhetoric of ‘switch to Huawei’ has gained increasing traction as trade tensions escalate.”
Social media campaigns have been urging citizens to support Huawei at Apple’s expense in response to US-China trade disputes, it said.
Energy & Environment
Floods Swamp U.S. Farm Belt
WSJ – The wettest One year on sage is elevating costs for the nation’s finest agricultural companies, stalling farmers’ fieldwork and slowing shipments throughout the U.S. Farm Belt.
“It’s got to be the worst ever that we’ve considered,” stated Jim Collins, head of Corteva Agriscience, the agricultural division of seed and pesticide maker DowDuPont Inc. Corteva’s sales fell 11% for basically the most latest quarter it reported this month, partly attributable to of Midwestern floods.
Science & Technology
Google engineer goes public, spills beans on ‘hunt’ for Christians
WND – In an open letter distributed Tuesday, a Google software engineer described a company culture of left-wing “outrage mobs” who use the tech giant’s anonymous bias-reporting channels to shut down conservative social and political thought.
Mike Wacker, writing on Medium, warned that if “left unchecked, these outrage mobs will hunt down any conservative, any Christian, and any independent free thinker at Google who does not bow down to their agenda.”
He claimed that in March, the company offered him a severance package to leave, with an implied threat that it would find a pretext to fire him if he refused.
In 2017, Google employee James Damore was fired after writing a memo accusing the tech giant of “alienating conservatives” at its Bay Area headquarters.
Wacker offered as an example an incident in which a fellow Republican was confronted for expressing admiration for University of Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson and his protest of the Canadian government forcing people to use transgender pronouns.
The concerned employee said that this support for Peterson caused other employees to feel unsafe at work.
Wacker himself was reported twice through Google’s anonymous reporting channels.
Scientists Modify Viruses With CRISPR To Create New Weapon Against Superbugs
KUER – Bladder infections, like many others, are increasingly becoming resistant to antibiotics.
“We are getting to the point where there are organisms that are resistant to every known antibiotic,” says Michael Priebe, a doctor who heads the spinal cord injury service at the VA medical center.
“My fear is that as we are in this arms race, there gets to the point where we are not able to keep up with the enemy — the resistant bacteria. The superbugs take over, and we have nothing to defend against it,” Priebe says.
So Priebe enlisted Evans to help develop a different way to fight superbugs. It’s a new kind of antibiotic made out of viruses that have been genetically modified using the gene-editing tool CRISPR.
“What CRISPR is able to do is something that we’ve not been able to do before. And that is, very selectively modify genes in the viruses to target the bacteria,” Priebe says.
SpaceX puts up 60 internet satellites
BBC – The SpaceX company has begun the roll-out of its orbiting broadband system.
A Falcon-9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida late on Thursday, packed with 60 satellites capable of giving users on the ground high-speed connections to the internet.
Entrepreneur Elon Musk’s firm aims eventually to loft nearly 12,000 spacecraft for its “Starlink” network.
SpaceX is one of several commercial outfits with permission to fly an internet mega-constellation.
Others include the UK-based start-up OneWeb, which began its roll-out in February with six operational spacecraft.
Online retailer Amazon also has ambitions in this market. It’s working on a 3,200-satellite proposal known as Project Kuiper.
London Underground to start tracking all phones using Wi-Fi starting in July
The Verge -Starting on July 8th, Transport for London (TfL) will start tracking passengers’ phones on the London Underground by default. Wi-Fi access points across 260 of the capital’s stations will track customers using their phones’ MAC addresses, which will allow TfL to see the routes they take through the network as well as through individual stations as they move from platform to platform.
Since the system relies on MAC addresses that phones automatically send to Wi-Fi access points when they try to connect, the only way to opt out of this system is to turn your phone’s Wi-Fi off entirely. However, as Wired notes, TfL will anonymize the data it collects. MAC addresses will be tokenized, meaning they will be replaced with an identifier that can’t be traced back to a smartphone or the customer who owns it. The transport authority says it will not collect any browsing or historical data from devices.
The purpose of the tracking is to better understand how people use the Tube network and to provide better real-time information about crowding levels in stations.
Health
SPERM COUNTS DECLINE; PLASTICS TO BLAME?
The Guardian – Surprising new research into dog sperm has reproductive biologists concerned about the fate of their own species. In a March study, scientists at Nottingham University found that two chemicals common in home environments damage the quality of sperm in both men and dogs.
The culprits implicated are diethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP), used to make new plastics more pliable, and polychlorinated biphenyl 153 (PCB153), found in older plastics and electrical equipment. Companies stopped producing PCBs in the late 1970s due to their health risks – including a possible increased risk of cancer, hormone disruption, liver damage and behavioral or cognitive deficits in children exposed to the chemical in utero – but the chemical persists in the environment.
The Nottingham study is just one in a mounting pile of research indicating that the quality and quantity of men’s sperm is on the decline. Research suggests that sperm counts have dropped by half in the last 50 years or so and that a higher percentage are poor swimmers – slow, ungainly or beset by genetic flaws.
The exact cause of that decline is not well understood. One culprit may be increasingly unhealthy lifestyles. The same factors that affect general health – being overweight or obese, smoking, stress and alcohol or recreational drug use – also affect the quality of sperm. But many researchers suspect chemical residues in the environment may be partly to blame.
Supplementing with vitamin D found to help reduce insulin resistance in adults
NaturalNews – Researchers at Waseda University in Japan and Shanghai University of Sport in China assessed the effect of one-year vitamin D supplementation on insulin resistance. The researchers published their findings in the journal Nutrition Research.

In this study, which was a secondary analysis of a clinical trial, the researchers hypothesized that increased 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25[OH]D) status after vitamin D supplementation for one year would significantly improve insulin resistance.
Higher circulating 25(OH)D has been associated with a lower prevalence of insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes.
To test their hypothesis, they recruited 96 healthy Japanese adults, but only 81 of them finished the study.
The participants randomly received either 420 international units (IU) of vitamin D3 or placebo every day for one year.
The researchers measured the participants’ fasting insulin, glucose, and other parameters at the beginning of the study and end of the treatment.
They also measured participants’ visceral fat area and physical activity.
Results showed that supplementing with vitamin D for a year significantly increased the participants’ 25(OH)D and 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 (1,25(OH)2D3).
After vitamin D supplementation, fasting glucose levels and values of homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance index significantly declined, and the results were independent of physical activity and visceral fat accumulation.

Overall, these findings indicated that one-year vitamin D supplementation effectively improves fasting glucose level and insulin resistance.
Read more studies on the benefits of vitamin D supplementation at VitaminD.news.
Eat more zucchini: Health benefits offered by this nutrient-rich vegetable
NaturalNews – A type of summer squash and a member of the gourd family, zucchini originates in Central America but can now be found around the world. A good rule of thumb when picking zucchini is that the darker the fruit, the more nutrients it contains.
Zucchini has plenty of dietary fiber and water, but not a single ounce of fat. It also contains high levels of vitamin B6, riboflavin, folate, vitamin C, and vitamin K. In terms of minerals, it has significant amounts of manganese and potassium.
The phytonutrients found in zucchini have antioxidant and inflammation-fighting properties. The combination of zero fat and high nutrient content makes the summer squash a nutrient-dense food

Zucchini improves digestion, slows down aging, and controls blood sugar
An energy booster that also improves cardiovascular health and supports healthy visio
Helps weight loss, supports adrenal and thyroid health, fights inflammation, and improves cognition