World News
Trudeau Foundation failed to report largest donation in Foundation’s history contrary to section 230 of the Income Tax Act
Presscore.ca – On September 9, 2016 the Trudeau Foundation reported it had received the largest gift in the Foundation’s history. A record $1 million was donated to the Trudeau Foundation by the Foundation’s Chair McCall MacBain. However, the $1 million donation was never reported in any annual reports, contrary to Canada Revenue Agency requirements.
The Canada Revenue Agency requires a registered charity to keep adequate books and records. A charity’s books and records (annual reports) must allow the Canada Revenue Agency ( CRA ) to verify revenues, including all charitable donations received. Nowhere did the Trudeau Foundation record the $1 million donation reportedly made by the McCall MacBain Foundation to the Trudeau Foundation in September 2016.
An investigation would find that the Trudeau Foundation engaged in prohibited “Conduct that is illegal or contrary to public policy”. Investigation could result in revocation of Trudeau Foundation registered charity status if investigators found the Trudeau Foundation issued improper donation receipts contrary to the Income Tax Act or the $1 million was criminally fraudulent, or violated federal or provincial statutes governing charitable donations.
Under section 230 of the Income Tax Act, registered charities are required to keep books and records to allow amounts deductible, or subject to be collected, to be determined, and to verify donations to the charity for amounts eligible for deductions or credits under the Income Tax Act.
Registered charities, or third parties acting on their behalf, are not permitted to engage in conduct that is contrary to public policy. Fundraising activities can be contrary to public policy if they result in incontestable harm to the public interest or if they do not comply with government rules, directives, and regulations.
The courts have held that fundraising contracts can be harmful to the public interest if they result in misrepresentation to the public about whether donated amounts go to the charity or to pay the fundraising company collecting them (Ontario Public Guardian and Trustee) v. Aids Society for Children (Ontario), [2001] O.J. No. 2170 (QL).
Liberal gun bill passes, firearm owners turn to assault rifle ban
Ipolitics.ca – A government bill repealing contentious Conservative changes to Canada’s firearm law cleared its final hurdle in Parliament Tuesday, paving the way for an even tougher battle over guns as the October election approaches.
Bill C-71, strongly opposed by gun lobbies and firearm owners since Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale tabled it in the House of Commons on March 20, 2018, sailed through its final Senate vote with Independent and Liberal senators outnumbering Conservatives and a handful of other opponents 55-33.
Former Conservative Senators Mike Duffy and Pam Wallin, now members of the Independent Senators Group caucus, voted with the Conservatives to oppose the bill.
After the Independent Senate Group used its overwhelming Senate majority to defeat amendments Conservative senators managed to get through in committee study, the legislation now requires only Royal Assent to become law.
The bill primarily covers non-restricted rifles and shotguns, with renewed requirements for validation of licences before the sale or transfer of long guns and mandatory record keeping for gun dealers and retailers.
Bill C-71 also extends background checks for licence applications and renewals — which could extend back for a lifetime instead of a five-year check under the previous law.
Israel to Hold New Elections After Netanyahu Fails to Form Government
WSJ – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political future entered a treacherous new period Wednesday after he narrowly failed to form a coalition government and Israel’s parliament voted to dissolve and call a new election.
‘We fell short’: Boeing finally admits safety flaws in implementing 737 MAX software
RT – oeing chief Dennis Muilenburg said his company failed to properly implement a safety alert feature on its 737 MAX aircraft, grounded globally in wake of two deadly plane crashes.
“We clearly fell short … The implementation of that software, we did not do it correctly,” Muilenburg told CBS News Tuesday.
“Our engineers discovered that,” he said, adding that the company was working to resolve the issue.
Tehran will ‘quickly’ restart nuclear program if EU fails to negotiate with Iran – Russian deputy FM
RT – Tehran can easily restore its nuclear potential if the EU succumbs to the US pressure to reinstall sanctions against Iran, which were lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal (also known as the JCPOA), a top Russian diplomat has said.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Thursday that Iran hadn’t yet violated its commitments under the nuclear accord with world powers. Tehran still stores less than 130 tons of heavy water – material used as the neutron moderator in the reactors.
However, it will exceed the limits if JCPOA members won’t find solutions “first of all to ensure the legitimate economic interests of the Islamic republic,” the deputy FM said after a meeting with his Iranian counterpart in Tehran.
Julian Assange ‘too ill’ to appear for court hearing, says lawyer
BBC – ulian Assange was too ill to appear at his court hearing in London on Thursday, his lawyer said.
The WikiLeaks founder, 47, is fighting against being extradited to the United States over charges related to leaking US government secrets.
He had been due to appear at his case management hearing via video link from Belmarsh Prison but lawyer Gareth Peirce said he was “not very well”.
According to WikiLeaks, Assange has been moved to the medical ward in jail.
A spokesman for the whistleblowing website said it had “grave concerns” about Assange’s health.
US Vows to Respond With Military Force if Iran ‘Attacks American Interest
Sputnik – The development comes just a few weeks after the United States deployed an aircraft carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the Persian Gulf in what White House National Security Adviser John Bolton described as a “clear and unmistakable message” to Iran.
US Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook said on Thursday that Washington would retaliate with military force if Iran “attacks” American interests in the Middle East.
“If we are attacked we will respond with military force. We have redeployed our forces in the region. We think that this redeployment has a deterrent effect on possible erroneous calculations of the regime”, he said.
Hook also said that the US is waiting for the results of an investigation into alleged attacks on four vessels, including two Saudi oil tankers, off the UAE’s coast earlier this month, which have been blamed on Iran by Washington and its allies, before discussing a proper response.
U.S. News, Politics & Government
The Worst 2020 Election Interference Will Be Perfectly Legal
ZeroHedge – Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,
“After the Mueller report was released, our president called Vladimir Putin, spent an hour on the phone with him,” Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke said on CBS’s Face The Nation yesterday. “Described the report as a hoax, giving Putin a green light to further interfere in our democracy.”
“Russia interfered in the 2016 election,” tweeted presidential candidate Kamala Harris the other day. “If we don’t do anything to upgrade our election infrastructure, we will leave our nation vulnerable to future attacks.”
We’ve been seeing many such hysterical warnings about Russian interference in the upcoming 2020 elections, and as the election gets nearer we are 100 percent guaranteed to see a lot more.
Another concern people have been voicing, which has far more legitimacy, is the fear of election tampering from domestic actors. An article published the other day by Roll Call reports that experts are warning America’s 2020 elections “will be held on voting machines that are woefully outdated and that any tampering by adversaries could lead to disputed results.” An article published last month by the Guardian warns that new voting machines aren’t necessarily an improvement.
Initiatives are sprouting up to bring more election security and reliability to the United States, which is currently ranked dead last in election integrity among all western democracies. Support for paper ballots is picking up steam with support from Senate Democrats and multiple presidential candidates, and rightly so; hand-counted paper ballots is considered the gold standard for election integrity, and every nation should want that for their voting systems.
But neither foreign interference nor domestic vote tampering will be the most egregious form of election meddling that we will see in America’s 2020 presidential elections.
n 2016, at the single hottest and most contested moment of the Democratic presidential primaries, the Washington Post published no less than sixteen smear pieces against Bernie Sanders in the span of sixteen hours. This campaign by a newspaper which is solely owned by the richest man in the world (who also happens to be a CIA contractor and Pentagon advisory board member) was plainly geared at manipulating the 2016 presidential primary results. And, along with similar campaigns by the rest of the plutocrat-owned media which ranged from blacking out coverage on Sanders to deliberately manipulating narratives about him to circulating outright lies, it succeeded. We are already seeing this same pattern repeated today, arguably in an even more egregious way.
The US Navy is planning to equip a destroyer with a laser system by 2021
The Verge – The US military is increasingly looking to use lasers on the battlefield, and a new report suggests that the Navy is planning to equip an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer with a HELIOS laser defense system in 2021.
The Navy’s director of surface warfare, Rear Admiral Ron Boxall, told Defense News that the service is planning to install the High Energy Laser and Integrated Optical-dazzler with Surveillance system on the USS Preble by 2021. It will replace an existing defensive platform called the Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) system, which was designed to intercept and destroy incoming missiles and other threats before they reach a ship.
The Navy began testing a precursor laser system, the AN/SEQ-3, back in 2013 as a proof-of-concept that could be used against small drones or boats that was later put into operation onboard the USS Ponce from 2014 until the ship was decommissioned last year. The Navy awarded a $150 million contract to Lockheed Martin to design, build, and deliver a successor system by 2020 — two laser systems, one of which would be installed onboard a ship, while the other would be used for testing at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Lockheed Martin is expected to deliver the system sometime next year.
Police To Use TSA-Style Scanners To Spy On People In Public Places
Activist Post – TSA-style body scanners are coming to public spaces, and that should scare the hell out of everyone.
If you thought the NYPD’s Z-Backscatter vans and police mini-Z’s were intrusive, you have not seen anything yet.
Soon, nowhere will be safe from Big Brother’s prying eyes, as police prepare to use HEXWAVE to spy on people in public spaces.
Last week, the Salt Lake Tribune revealed that the Utah Attorney General and law enforcement are partnering with Liberty Defense, a 3D image scanning company that makes its money from scanning the public in real-time. (3D means capturing rich information [size, shape, depth] about the detection space. It can detect any material that has a physical form.)
As Fox Now 13 reported, police will use Liberty Defense’s HEXWAVE to spy on people at mass gatherings like concerts, malls, stadiums, public transit stops and government buildings.
Trump defends request to hide ship named John McCain
BBC – US President Donald Trump has defended a reported White House request to hide a warship named for his late critic, John McCain, during his trip to Japan.
At the White House, Mr Trump denied having prior knowledge of the request, but said whoever did it was “well meaning” in their intention.
The call to move the USS John S McCain out of view was ultimately torpedoed by senior Navy officials.
The Navy Chief of Information also posted to say it “was not obscured”.
The tweet – its first in five years – added that “the Navy is proud of that ship, its crew, its namesake and its heritage”.
Mr Trump denied to reporters on Thursday morning that he was behind the request to obscure the ship.
Health Officials: 59 Confirmed Flu Cases Among the Hundreds of Border Illegals Relocated to San Diego
Breitbart – U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports that an average of 4,500 people are detained at the United States border with Mexico each day, and according to a Wednesday report from county health officials, many of them are bringing diseases with them.
Hundreds of the detained migrants are being relocated to San Diego, California, and the County of San Diego Communications Office has confirmed that, as of Wednesday, there have been 59 cases of flu among these migrants since May 19, 2019; and 82 people (33 families) have been quarantined at local hotels.
The sick migrants came from a federal facility in McAllen, Texas, where some 8,000 are being held — “two times the agency’s maximum capacity in the area,” according to Fox 5.
Economy & Business
Oil prices rise after bigger-than-expected fall in U.S. inventories
Reuters – Oil prices climbed on Thursday after an industry report showed a decline in U.S. crude inventories that exceeded analyst expectations.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were up 19 cents, or 0.3%, at $59 a barrel by 0023 GMT. They closed down 0.6% on Wednesday after hitting their lowest since March 12 at $56.88.
Brexit shutdown slashes UK car production by 45%
BBC – Factory shutdowns designed to cope with disruption from a 29 March Brexit, slashed UK car production in April by almost a half.
Even though Brexit is delayed the factories still closed and production fell 44.5% according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).
In what it called “an extraordinary month”, the SMMT said only 70,971 cars rolled off production lines.
That was 56,999 fewer than in April a year ago.
Production for both home and overseas markets fell by 43.7% and 44.7% respectively.
The SMMT said car firms had brought forward their annual stoppages normally scheduled for the summer holidays.
It said the shutting of factories was part of a raft of costly measures, including stockpiling, training for new customs procedures and rerouting of logistics. It said the factories would not be able to repeat the process for the new 31 October Brexit deadline set by the European Union.
Dollar beware: Serbia & Philippines join global gold hunt
RT – Two more nations, Serbia and the Philippines, have boosted their national gold reserves. They follow a global trend of other central banks accumulating bullion in a move seen as a shift away from the US dollar standard.
Energy & Environment
Federal court deals decisive blow to Obama water rule
Washington Examiner – A federal court dealt a decisive blow against the Obama administration’s Waters of the U.S. rule this week, bolstering the Trump administration’s deregulation agenda.
The U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Texas issued the strongly worded ruling late Tuesday, stating that the Environmental Protection Agency broke the law in issuing the landmark regulation governing waterways.
“The court finds that the final rule violated the notice-and-comment requirements of the [Administrative Procedure Act] and therefore grants summary judgment in favor of the plaintiffs on this ground,” the court ruled, siding with the American Farm Bureau Federation in opposing the rule.
The court said that EPA did not allow for appropriate notice for public comment on changes it made to the final regulations. Tuesday’s ruling orders the EPA to open a new public comment period on reports and analyses used in developing the final 2015 regulation, which will help the ongoing efforts by the Trump EPA to repeal it.
Science & Technology
CrossFit DELETES its Instagram and Facebook accounts over privacy concerns and denounces Mark Zuckerberg’s social media empire as ‘utopian socialists’
Daily Mail – CrossFit quit their Facebook and Instagram pages this week, citing a long list of grievances surrounding censorship and privacy.
In an impassioned Thursday press release, the branded fitness regimen described itself as being a ‘contrarian physiological and nutrition prescription for improving fitness and health.’
The release stated that its goal was to fight against the ‘tsunami of chronic disease’ and added that it would step in to help allies for the cause in the case that there were ‘overreaching governments, malicious competitors, and corrupt academic organizations’ present.
CrossFit stated that the final straw came when Facebook removed Banting7DayMealPlan – an unrelated diet plan that follows a similar ‘low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet’ approach – from its platforms ‘without warning or explanation.’
Notorious Jihadist group banned after it was linked to 7/7 bombings which killed 52 people ‘is active once again and grooming new terrorists online’
Daily Mail – Members of a notorious jihadist group, banned after the 7/7 bombings, are active online again and feared to be grooming a new generation of terrorists, a Mail on Sunday investigation reveals.
At least 11 extremists linked to the outlawed Al-Muhajiroun (ALM) network have been using social media in recent weeks.
Terror experts believe they are ‘testing the waters’ in their renewed activity to avoid falling foul of the law and may also be holding meetings in secret.
The group has been linked with the London 7/7 bombings in 2005 which killed 52 people, the slaying of soldier Lee Rigby in 2013 and the London Bridge attack two years ago which killed eight.
Justin Trudeau Threatens ‘Consequences’ If Social Media Sites Don’t Ban All ‘Hate Speech’
Information Liberation – Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau treatened social media platforms with “consequences” and “meaningful penalties” if they don’t “step up” and ban everything his regime feels is “hate speech” or “disinformation.”
Social media platforms must be held accountable for the hate speech & disinformation we see online – and if they don’t step up, there will be consequences. We launched Canada’s new Digital Charter today to guide our decisions, learn more about it here: https://t.co/SH7mpyojsj pic.twitter.com/V2C0TmR49b
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) May 21, 2019
Health
‘Ultraprocessed’ foods linked to higher risk of heart disease, death
NBC – The case against so-called ultraprocessed foods just got a lot stronger, with the release of two large studies linking the products to an increased risk of heart disease and premature death.
Ultraprocessed foods are typically ready-to-eat or to pop into a microwave — think frozen meals, canned foods, sugary cereals, reconstituted meats and packaged baked goods. They generally contain high levels of fat, added sugars, salt and various additives.
The two new studies, from France and Spain, do not prove that ultraprocessed foods harm health, but do add to the mounting circumstantial evidence linking the products to a host of health problems. Both studies were published Wednesday in The BMJ, a medical journal.
Compound found in human breast milk has the potential to fight cancer
Science Focus – Professor Catharina Svanborg, a professor of immunology at Lund University in Sweden, speaks to BBC Science Focus commissioning editor Jason Goodyer about a molecule from breast milk with remarkable tumour killing properties dubbed ‘HAMLET’ – short for human alpha-lactalbumin – undergoing its first human trials.
How did you find HAMLET?
We were looking for natural antibacterial molecules in body fluids. We threw some lung cancer cells into the test tube with human milk and noticed that the tumour cells died. We had to repeat it a few times before we could believe our eyes.
Was it just raw human milk?
No, it wasn’t actually. Human milk is a source for all sorts of molecules – obviously, it’s a wonderful mix of molecular protection for babies. But we were using different fractions of it, because either you have antibodies, or you have small molecules, or you have sugars, or lipids. Depending on which fraction you’re using, you can get very different results. It turned out that one of these fractions was causing the tumours to die, but not whole milk as it comes out of the breast. It has to be treated a little to bring out the HAMLET molecule.
LEDs Have Damaging Health Effects, French Assessment Says
Mercola – Energy-saving light-emitting diode (LED) lights typically emit blue light that can generate high amounts of oxidative stress that contributes to visual deterioration if viewed at the wrong time of the day.
Excessive blue light, especially at night, can prevent the priming of your retinal cells for repair and regeneration, thereby raising your risk of vision problems, including age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a leading cause of blindness.
The risks of LEDs to your vision in particular are highlighted in a 282-page report issued in 2010 by the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety (ANSES), which recommends limiting exposure to LEDs and avoiding LED screens before bedtime.
ANSES also recommends limiting household use to “warm white” LEDs and calls for reducing the luminosity of car headlights.
Children are at high risk for damage from LEDs due to the transparency of the lenses in their eyes
Catnip – Uses for People and Cats
Common Sense Home – Cats love catnip, but did you know humans can use it too? We’ll share catnip identification, uses and benefits, plus tips on safe and fun use for kitty.
Uses and Benefits
Although most commonly grown for cats’ enjoyment, catnip has a long history of medicinal use. The tea is soothing, cooling and relaxing. The leaves are safe to eat, but strong in flavor. Large amounts may induce vomiting.
To make catnip tea, place about a tablespoon of fresh or dried leaves in a cup and cover with hot water. Steep (covered is best) for 10-20 minutes for medicinal use.
Edible & Medicinal Wild Plants of Minnesota & Wisconsin notes the following medicinal uses of catnip:
- Calms tension headaches
- Relieves indigestion induced by nervousness
- Sleep inducer
- Sleep extender
- Fever reducer
- Decongestant
- Eases menstrual cramps
- Promotes menstrual flow
- Eases Tremors/convulsions
- Infant colic and diarrhea
- Relieves bull hives
- Calms restless, agitated kids
- Soothes teething pain and nightmares
Do not use Nepeta cataria during pregnancy. For infant use, all particles must be carefully screened out of the tea with a coffee filter or similar filter. Always consult your health provider if you are on any medications or for specific medical conditions.
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