World News
Concentration Camp Survivors: China Using Forced Sterilization, Abortion for Genocide
Breitbart – Women who have survived China’s concentration camps for Muslim ethnic minorities reported widespread rape, forced abortions, forced sterilization, and other extreme sexual human rights atrocities in accounts published this weekend.
Speaking to the Washington Post, the women echo the experiences of others who have escaped the estimated thousands of concentration camps built in Xinjiang, China’s largest and westernmost province, to house Uighur, Kazakh, and Kyrgyz ethnic people. While survivors tend to be Kazakh – they can use their dual citizenship to escape to neighboring Kazakhstan – the majority of the 1 to 3 million people trapped in the camps are believed to be Uighurs. Others who have survived have been able to use their marital status to citizens of Pakistan or other neighboring countries to place pressure on Beijing to release them.
The nations themselves have not made any official statements condemning the Communist Party’s attempt to eradicate ethnic minorities in Xinjiang – sometimes actively praising it – but have quietly helped individuals with the influence to get their attention.
Camp survivors have previously testified to extreme torture, killings, live organ harvesting, infanticide, and slavery in the camps. An Associated Press (AP) report published last year revealed that some clothes made in slave facilities in the concentration camps made its way to America.
Turkey begins an offensive against Kurdish fighters in Syria
AP – Turkey launched a military operation Wednesday against Kurdish fighters in northeastern Syria after U.S. forces withdrew from the area, with activists reporting airstrikes on a town on Syria’s northern border.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the start of the campaign, which followed an announcement Sunday by U.S. President Donald Trump that American troops would step aside in a shift in U.S. policy that essentially abandoned the Syrian Kurds. They were longtime U.S. allies in the fight against the Islamic State group.
“Our mission is to prevent the creation of a terror corridor across our southern border, and to bring peace to the area,” Erdogan said in a tweet.
He added that Turkish Armed Forces, together with the Syrian National Army, had launched what they called “Operation Peace Spring” against Kurdish fighters to eradicate what Erdogan called “the threat of terror” against Turkey
TV reports in Turkey said its warplanes had bombed Syrian Kurdish positions across the border.
Turkish airstrikes hit he town of Ras al-Ayn on the Syrian side of the border, activists in Syria said.
Madrid plans ‘ethical cull’ of city’s parakeets
CNN – Madrid’s city council is preparing a plan to clear the city of its pesky parrots — which will include the “ethical slaughter” of the birds and and sterilization of eggs, authorities said Monday.
Argentine parrots — myiopsitta monachus, also known as monk parakeets — are native to South America, but many were kept as pets in Spain before ownership became illegal in 2011.
Many of the parrots escaped, or were released from captivity, and are now prolific in Madrid, as well as number of other areas in Spain. The population of Argentine parrots in Madrid’s parks has risen by 33% in three years, from 9000 in 2016, to 12,000 already accounted for in 2019, according to data from the Spanish Society of Ornithology.
UK University Forces Students to Attend Mandatory Screening of ‘Consent’ Play
Infowars – A university in the UK is forcing students to attend a mandatory screening of a play about “consent.”
Students were sent an email by the University of Essex which stated, “You are invited to a screening of the hit consent play Can’t Touch This.”
Except it wasn’t an ‘invitation’ at all, it was an order.
“Attendance at this screening is MANDATORY,” states the email, before going on to demand that students attend one of the many screenings.
“Those who do not attend will be contacted by our student support team,” threatens the email, asking attendees to “tap in” with their registration card.
Apparently, the University of Essex has such a low opinion of its male students that it thinks they need to be taught not to rape.
Feminists have harped on about the supposed “rape culture” on college campuses for years, but their assertions are based on completely erroneous data.
The claim that “one in five women on college campuses have been sexually assaulted,” which became so widespread it was even once uttered by President Obama, has been debunked.
The stat comes from a 2007 Campus Sexual Assault online study which took samples from just two universities and asked leading questions. The study is widely accepted to be too small and too biased to be of any impartial use.
A much more credible study carried out by the DOJ found that the figure was actually one in forty women and that the overall rape rate is in sharp decline.
Tourist Photo of Cloudy Belgian Sky Holds Stunning Similarity to Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’
Good News Network – A Canadian tourist has made quite a good impression on art enthusiasts since he photographed a cloudy sky that looked like something out of a Vincent van Gogh painting.
31-year-old oncologist Doron Berlin was on holiday in Belgium in July when he looked up to see swirling clouds of blue and grey set against the brilliant sun and spires of the Belfry Bell Tower of Bruges.
The scene looked breathtakingly similar to Van Gogh’s 19th-century masterpiece The Starry Night—so he snapped a photo of the “magical and beautiful” sky.
“The clouds were particularly striking, and the effect of the sun shining into the camera created a very interesting vortex-type look,” Berlin mused. “That, mixed with the amazing architecture in Bruges and good lighting all came together for a great oil-on-canvas feel.
“The cloudy sky really did look like a work of Van Gogh, and it makes you wonder if this is the type of thing that inspired him,” he added.
New Peer Reviewed Academic Study Finds Diversity is Not a Strength
Infowars – A new peer reviewed study by Danish academics has found that ethnic diversity has a negative impact on communities because it erodes trust.
It turns out that diversity is not a strength after all.
The study, entitled ‘Ethnic Diversity and Social Trust: A Narrative and Meta-Analytical Review’, was conducted by Peter Thisted Dinesen and Merlin Schaeffer from the University of Copenhagen and Kim Mannemar Sønderskov from Aarhus University.
Seeking to answer whether “continued immigration and corresponding growing ethnic diversity” was having a positive impact on community cohesion, the study found the opposite to be the case.
Studying existing literature and also carrying out a meta-analysis of 1,001 estimates from 87 studies, the researchers concluded, “We find a statistically significant negative relationship between ethnic diversity and social trust across all studies.”
Eric Kaufmann, Professor of Politics at the Birkbeck University of London, also tweeted about the study, commenting, “Higher diversity *is* significantly associated with lower trust in communities, even when controlling for deprivation.”
In other words, mass immigration is eroding community trust and harming society.
“Diversity is a strength” is a glib, onerous, empty aphorism that is shoved down our throats as a piece of received wisdom that only racists would deny.
It may be politically correct, but has no basis in actual reality.
Chinese Citizens Will Be Required To Scan Their Faces To Use The Internet
Activist Post – The Chinese government continues its Orwellian practices with the announcement that citizens will have to use facial recognition technology to access the internet (which is already highly fire-walled.)
This is all a part of China’s social credit system that will take effect on Dec. 1st. After the law is in effect, Chinese citizens who want to have the internet installed at their houses or on their smartphones will be required to undergo a facial recognition process by Chinese authority to prove their identities, according to the new regulation.
This is significant because now the Chinese government will use the internet to rate citizens based on their daily behavior online.
Since 2015, Chinese citizens have been required to show their ID cards while applying for a landline or the internet. This new law is put in place to verify that the ID belongs to the person applying for services.
The new law was published on the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) website and distributed to all Chinese telecom carriers on Sept. 27th, which includes three demands be met, Epoch Times reports.
This comes on the heels of another Chinese pilot program which allows citizens to pay for subway/train travel using just their facial biometrics as Activist Post reported. This new system also compensates elderly Chinese in the city of Shenzhen, China, with a free ride — if they pay with their face — providing incentives for using facial recognition technology.
U.S. News, Politics & Government
CIA Whistleblower ‘Professionally Tied’ To 2020 Candidate; 2nd ‘Whistleblower’ Was First One’s Source
Zerohedge – A CIA employee who lodged a whistleblower complaint over President Trump’s request that Ukraine investigate former Vice President Joe Biden has a “professional relationship with one of the 2020 candidates,” according to the Washington Examiner‘s Byron York – citing a source familiar with last Friday’s impeachment inquiry interview with Inspector General Michael Atkinson.
Now we know why House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) won’t release the transcript…
“The IG said [the whistleblower] worked or had some type of professional relationship with one of the Democratic candidates,” said York’s source.
“What [Atkinson] said was that the whistleblower self-disclosed that he was a registered Democrat and that he had a prior working relationship with a current 2020 Democratic presidential candidate,” said a third person with knowledge of the testimony.
All three sources said Atkinson did not identify the Democratic candidate with whom the whistleblower had a connection. It is unclear what the working or professional relationship between the two was.
In the Aug. 26 letter, Atkinson said that even though there was evidence of possible bias on the whistleblower’s part, “such evidence did not change my determination that the complaint relating to the urgent concern ‘appears credible,’ particularly given the other information the ICIG obtained during its preliminary review.”
Democrats are certain to take that position when Republicans allege that the whistleblower acted out of bias. Indeed, the transcript of Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is a public document, for all to see. One can read it regardless of the whistleblower’s purported bias. –Washington Examiner
In short, a registered Democrat on the CIA payroll went to Adam Schiff’s committee, who referred him to a Democratic operative attorney, who helped him file a whistleblower complaint on a form which was altered to allow second-hand information.
Update: Former State Department official Peter Van Buren told Tucker Carlson on Monday that the second ‘whistleblower’ is simply the the source for the original ‘second-hand’ complaint. (h/t Gateway Pundit)
Internal Memo: ESPN Forbids Discussion Of Chinese Politics When Discussing Daryl Morey’s Tweet About Chinese Politics
Deadspin – If you paid attention to ESPN channels yesterday, you saw the network repeatedly attempt to grapple with the story of Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey creating an international incident after tweeting and then deleting his support for pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong. You heard talking head after talking head castigate Morey for sending the tweet, speculation over whether he’d keep his job, speculation about the sincerity of his convictions, discussions about what this meant for the Rockets’ bottom line, the observation that it’s unreasonable to expect for-profit companies like the NBA to act morally, and the non-take that cowing to China is simply the cost of doing business in China.
What you didn’t hear was much discussion about what is actually happening on the ground with protestors in Hong Kong, why they’re protesting, or any other acknowledgment of China’s political situation, past or present.
This could be because Chuck Salituro, the senior news director of ESPN, sent a memo to shows mandating that any discussion of the Daryl Morey story avoid any political discussions about China and Hong Kong, and instead focus on the related basketball issues. The memo, obtained by Deadspin, explicitly discouraged any political discussion about China and Hong Kong. Multiple ESPN sources confirmed to Deadspin that network higher-ups were keeping a close eye on how the topic was discussed on ESPN’s airwaves.
Police Seize Washington Man’s Guns Using Red Flag Laws Over Satirical ‘Joker’ Meme
Information Liberation – A 23-year-old Washington man had all of his guns seized under red flag laws last week over a “one ticket for joker please” meme he shared on Twitter as a joke.
In the run up to the Joker movie’s release, many people shared satirical memes of people holding guns with the text “one ticket to joker please.”
As Know You Meme notes:
Tickets to Joker, Please is a phrasal template used to caption photographs of people the meme’s author believes to be the stereotypical audience for the 2019 comic book film Joker. These images generally showcase men in fedoras, infamous mass shooters and depictions of internet trolls.
From KIRO 7, “Guns seized from Redmond man after ‘concerning Twitter posts’ over new Joker movie”:
Officials seized several guns from a 23-year-old Redmond man after he made “concerning Twitter posts posing with weapons and referencing the Joker movie,” police said.
Six guns, including multiple semiautomatic assault rifles, were removed from his home Oct. 1 as part of an Extreme Risk Protection Order filed by the Redmond Police Department. A protection order allows law enforcement, family members and household members to file petitions to take away gun rights from people who are threats to themselves or others.
He does have a concealed permit license issued in May for two handguns, but his license has since been revoked.
The man claimed that the posts were a joke, but police still plan to seek a full protection order which if approved, would keep guns out of his hands for a full year.
Police became aware of the posts last week when notified by the Seattle Police Department’s Criminal Intelligence Unit.
Police searched his entire Twitter history and found a few posts from 2017 devoid of context with him incel-posting about hating women and used that to bolster their case.
Officials found other posts where the man claimed to be an incel, which is short for involuntary celibate, and posts that illustrated a “history of violent and disturbing social media threats directed towards women,” documents said.
“[The man’s] threats of recent mass violence coupled with a history of prior threats to harm and kill women, demonstrate that [he] is a risk to public safety if he is allowed to continue to purchase, possess or access firearms,” the ERPO petition read.
Every indicator suggests those posts were also jokes.
‘Don’t Tempt Me’: Hillary Clinton Fires Back at Trump Daring Her to Run With Eyebrow-Raising Tweet
Mediate – Tuesday morning, President Donald Trump mockingly invited Hillary Clinton to run for president again in 2020, remarking, “Only one condition. The Crooked one must explain all of her high crimes and misdemeanors including how & why she deleted 33,000 Emails AFTER getting ‘C’ Subpoena!”
Clinton responded in a brief tweet this afternoon remarking, “Don’t tempt me. Do your job.”
Clinton said back in March she’s not running for president. Her likely trolling is still going to set off a great deal of speculation, in addition to the many curious reactions on Twitter this afternoon.
Clinton recently said she supports impeachment, tweeting that “The president of the United States has betrayed our country” and that he “is a clear and present danger to the things that keep us strong and free.”
New polling in the Democratic race today shows Elizabeth Warren ahead of Joe Biden 29-26, followed by Bernie Sanders at 16. The poll shows all three beating Trump in head-to-head match-ups.
Economy & Business
US dips in competitiveness index as Singapore takes top spot
AP – The United States is less competitive than it was a year ago and the global economy remains hobbled by low productivity despite a decade of cheap money from central banks, the World Economic Forum said Wednesday.
In its latest assessment of the factors behind productivity and long-term economic growth, the organization best-known for its annual gathering of the elites in the Swiss ski resort of Davos found Singapore overtaking the United States as the most competitive country, aided in no small part by its state-of-the-art infrastructure and strong cooperation between labor and management.
The Global Competitiveness Report, which is now in its 40th year, said the U.S. is losing ground in measures such as “healthy life expectancy” and preparedness for the future skills needed in the 21st century.
Hong Kong, the Netherlands and Switzerland rounded out the top five places in the rankings.
The report’s index maps out the competitive landscape of 141 economies based on more than 100 indicators in a dozen categories.
Those categories include headings like health, financial system, market size, business dynamism and capacity to innovate.
The U.S. did remain “an innovation powerhouse” and the world’s most competitive large economy, and despite the prospects of a future skills gap, the U.S. still ranks highly for “ease of finding skilled employees” today.
WEF founder Klaus Schwab called the index a “compass for thriving in the new economy where innovation becomes the key factor of competitiveness.”
Authors say it’s too early to fully assess the impact of some of the operative factors in the world economy over the last year, notably rising trade tensions between the U.S. and China that’s led to tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of goods imposed.
They found signs that the trade tiff has led some economies to benefit as businesses look for alternatives to China.
GE is freezing its pension plan for 20,000 US workers
CNN – General Electric announced Monday it will freeze its US pension plan for about 20,000 workers to help clean up the company’s beleaguered balance sheet.
Years of inattention, low interest rates and shrinking profits have left GE with one of the largest pension shortfalls in Corporate America.
GE (GE) said it will pre-fund $4 billion to $5 billion of its pension obligations for 2021 and 2022 and offer lump-sum payouts to 100,000 former employees who have not started their monthly payments yet. GE is also freezing supplementary pension benefits for about 700 employees who became executives prior to 2011. To fund the pensions through 2022, the company said it will use a portion of the $38 billion of cash it plans to raise from asset sales.
Together, the moves are aimed at slashing GE’s pension deficit by between $5 billion and $8 billion, helping reduce the struggling company’s mountain of liabilities.
The maker of light bulbs, MRI machines and jet engines said the steps will not impact GE retirees who are already collecting pensions. It also will not affect employees with production benefits.
GE closed its pension to new hires in 2012. The pension freeze for salaried workers will go into effect January 1, 2021, meaning those workers will not earn additional pension benefits, though they will keep what they have already earned.
GE said that starting in early 2021, it will contribute 3% of eligible compensation to the company’s 401(k) plan and provide matching contributions of 50% on up to 8% of eligible compensation. For the first two years, GE will provide an extra 2% to the 401(k) plans.
Ron Paul: Federal Reserve’s Latest Bailouts More Proof Bad Times Ahead
Infowars- Since September 17, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has pumped billions of dollars into the repurchasing (repo) market, the first such intervention since 2009. The Fed has announced that it will continue to inject as much as 75 billion dollars a day into the repo market until November 4.
The repo market provides a means for banks that are temporarily short of cash to obtain short-term (usually one day) loans from other banks. The Fed’s interventions were a response to a sudden cash shortage that caused interest rates for these short-term loans to climb to 10 percent, far above the Fed’s target rate.
One of the factors blamed for the repo market’s cash shortage is the Federal Reserve’s sale of assets it acquired via the Quantitative Easing programs. Since launching its effort to “unwind” its balance sheet, the Fed had reduced its holdings by over 700 billion dollars. This seems like a large amount, but, given the Fed’s balance sheet was over four trillion dollars, the Fed only reduced its holdings by approximately 18 percent! If such a relatively small reduction in the Fed’s assets contributed to the cash shortage in the repo market, causing a panicked Fed to pump billions into the market, it is unlikely the Fed will be continuing selling assets and “normalizing” its balance sheet.
Fed Says It Will Offer $310 Billion More in Term Loans to Wall Street as Over 68,000 Job Cuts Planned at Mega Banks
Wall Street on Parade – One or more U.S. or foreign banks that are primary dealers to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is in need of longer-term loans that they are unable to get anywhere else – at least at an affordable rate of interest. That’s the only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from the Fed’s announcement on Friday that it is extending its money pumping program to Wall Street until at least November 4 and will be offering an additional $310 billion cumulatively in term loans (most for 14-days at a time) as well as offering at least $75 billion daily in overnight loans.
The Fed’s money sluicing operation that began abruptly on September 17 is taking on the distinct appearance of its machinations during the early days of the 2008 crash – a time when it also refused to name the banks that were receiving the money until a multi-year court battle and congressional legislation forced its hand.
The open money spigot at the Fed comes at a time when global banks, including many that are among the Fed’s 24 primary dealer banks that are able to borrow from the New York Fed under its current repo (repurchase agreement) operations, have announced large job cuts. The most recent news came from the Financial Times over the weekend in a report that says HSBC is planning another 10,000 job cuts on top of the 4,700 it had previously announced.
Another European bank that is heavily interlinked via derivatives with Wall Street, Germany’s biggest lender, Deutsche Bank, has seen its stock set new historic lows all year. (See Lordy, Deutsche Bank Is Having a Helluva Bad Month.) In July, it confirmed plans to cut 18,000 jobs.
According to a chart published by Bloomberg News on September 24, job cuts planned by global banks at that point tallied up to 58,200. That was before the Financial Times reported this past weekend another 10,000 job cuts at HSBC. Securities units at both HSBC and Deutsche Bank are among the Fed’s primary dealers that are eligible to participate in its current repo loan program.
Congressman: FISA report on ‘spying on Trump’ coming in 2 weeks
WND – Could the Democrats’ frantic push for impeachment have anything to do with the imminent release of the Justice Department inspector general’s report on the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion investigation?
Rep. John Ratcliffe, a member of the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees, said in an interview with Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” he expects Michael Horowitz’s report to be released in a week or two.
Horowitz is examining the Obama Justice Department’s use of a bogus, anti-Trump dossier funded by the Democrats to obtain warrants to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in 2016
Anchor Maria Bartiromo asked about unreleased transcript material that Republicans investigators contend was exculpatory evidence not given to the FISA court in applications to spy on Page.
“Well, if there is a transcript, I think everyone would agree, based on what you just said, if there is a transcript of what you just related, that absolutely should have been provided to the FISA court,” Ratcliffe responded.
“And the good news is, we’ll get a definitive answer from the inspector general when this report gets issued in the next week or two about whether or not that was done.”
The Washington Examiner explained Republicans have criticized the presentations to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for the Page warrants. The FBI relied on the dossier compiled by British ex-spy Christopher Steele even though it was unverified and funded by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee through Fusion GPS via the Perkins Coie law firm.
Ratcliffe said he has asked the president to declassify documents regarding recorded conversations between FBI informants and former Trump campaign associate George Papadopoulos.
The documents, he insisted, would “expose” the Obama Justice Department and FBI.
Energy & Environment
Fracking-induced earthquakes in Central and Eastern America are on the rise, caution researchers
NaturalNews – It’s getting harder for fracking proponents to defend the practice as new studies show that it can be linked to a rise in earthquakes throughout the United States, particularly in areas where seismic events are not historically common – and this is true even when wastewater disposal, which often takes the blame for fracking-related seismicity, isn’t involved.
Researchers shared their findings at the Seismological Society of America 2019 Annual Meeting. They identified more than 600 earthquakes in states like Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma and West Virginia that were linked to the practice, ranging in magnitude from 2.0 to 3.8.
Michael Brudzinski of Miami University of Ohio said that the earthquakes caused directly by fracking are “underappreciated” when compared to those linked to wastewater disposal because they happen less frequently. However, they should not be underestimated as they pose a real threat.
Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, sees pressurized liquids being used to create cracks in rock formations through which natural gas and petroleum can flow to facilitate extraction. This process causes earthquakes to occur that are usually so tiny they cannot be detected without instrumentation.
Many times, the resultant wastewater is then injected back into the layers of rock. This increases the pore pressure in the rock and can stress fault lines, triggering even more earthquakes. These earthquakes are often larger as the fluid pressure moves away from the well toward deeper faults.
Some areas in the Appalachian Basin have seen a sharp increase in the production of natural gas in the last few decades, and it’s not surprising that there is increased seismic activity there.
Science & Technology
Legacy Systems Held DHS’ Biometrics Programs Back. Not Anymore.
Nextgov – The cloud-based HART system, which will house data on hundreds of millions of people, promises to significantly expand the department’s use of facial recognition and other biometric software, as well as its partnerships with external agencies.
The Homeland Security Department is retiring the decades-old system officials use to analyze biometric data, and its replacement is poised to both refine and significantly expand the agency’s application of the controversial technology.
The new cloud-based platform, called the Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology System, or HART, is expected to bring more processing power, new analytics capabilities and increased accuracy to the department’s biometrics operations. It will also allow the agency to look beyond the three types of biometric data it uses today—face, iris and fingerprint—to identify people through a variety of other characteristics, like palm prints, scars, tattoos, physical markings and even their voices.
And by freeing the agency from the limitations of its legacy system, HART could also let officials grow the network of external partners with whom they share biometric data and analytics capabilities, according to Patrick Nemeth, director of identity operations within Homeland Security’s Office of Biometric Identity Management.
“When we get to HART, we will be better, faster, stronger,” Nemeth said in an interview with Nextgov. “We’ll be relieved of a lot of the capacity issues that we have now … and then going forward from there we’ll be able to add [capabilities].”
The agency’s existing platform, the Automated Biometric Identification System, or IDENT, was stood up in 1994 to help federal law enforcement officials collect and process fingerprints, but in recent years officials retrofitted the system with facial and iris recognition tools. Today, IDENT houses identity data on more than 250 million different people, and it serves as the “workhorse” for the department’s expanding biometric identification regime, according to Nemeth.
But as the agency rolls out facial recognition technology across U.S. airports and increases the use of biometrics at the border, officials are finding themselves constrained by their legacy tech.
Health
Americans Who Drink This Much Water a Day Are More Likely to Report Feeling ‘Very Happy’
Good News Network – Is drinking water the secret to feeling happy? Probably not, but this new survey says that it may be indicative of a person’s happiness.
A new survey of 2,000 Americans that asked how much water they consumed on average, found that they were three times more likely to feel “very happy” if they reported drinking enough water.
The results showed that 67% of respondents who drank “more than enough” water evaluated themselves as “very happy,” whereas only 21% of those who said they “didn’t drink enough water” said they’re “very happy.”
The statistics emerged in a poll conducted by OnePoll on behalf of O. Vine. It also revealed that the average American drinks almost five glasses of water per day, with the average respondent believing the “recommended amount” of water per day is only five eight-ounce glasses (most experts believe you should drink eight).
Sulforaphane, a compound in cruciferous vegetables, found to kill colon cancer cells
NaturalNews – An increasing number of studies have recently emerged promoting the benefits of eating cruciferous vegetables. These vegetables are not only rich in dietary fiber that supports digestive health, but they are also good sources of phytonutrients that can reduce the risk of cancer. For instance, isothiocyanates, which are formed through the breakdown of glucosinolates found in cruciferous vegetables, exhibit anti-tumor activities, according to literature. In a recent study published in The American Journal of Chinese Medicine, researchers from China Medical University in Taiwan investigated the anticancer activity of sulforaphane (SFN), an organic isothiocyanate present in abundance in cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli, cabbages, cauliflower, and kale. They found that SFN is an effective anti-cancer agent that can induce cell cycle arrest and apoptosis of cancer cells in vitro.
Good News
High School Football Team Without a Band Invites High School Band Without a Team to Play at Their Games
Good News Network – These exuberant high school band members were “so happy” to play their hearts out at a Michigan football game earlier this week—but it’s not because they were cheering for their own team.
When the Forest Area Schools didn’t have enough students for a football team, they found themselves with a high school band, but no football teams to play for.
As fate would have it, the neighboring Glen Lake school district football team had the opposite problem: they had a football team, but no student band.
The Glen Lake team then invited the Forest Area band to play at their game—and even though the young musicians had to drive an hour to attend the gig, they jumped at the opportunity.
“I absolutely flipped. I was so happy,” a Forest Area senior student band member told UpNorth Live. “Since it’s my last year after playing for six years, it’s the most important thing to me to be able to be out here and show people what we can do.”
Despite being forced to play their instruments in the rain, they nailed the performance—and Glen Lake said that the band was more than welcome to come back and play for more games in the future.
Entertainment
Adam Silver reacts as Chinese TV cancels NBA game broadcasts
ESPN – NBA commissioner Adam Silver said he’s still planning to go to China on Wednesday in advance of preseason games there between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Brooklyn Nets later in the week, even after China’s state broadcaster canceled plans to air the games.
Silver went so far as to say that he and the league are “apologetic” over the outcome and reaction that followed Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey’s tweet showing support for protesters in Hong Kong, but he noted that “we are not apologizing for Daryl exercising his freedom of expression.”
“Daryl Morey, as general manager of the Houston Rockets, enjoys that right as one of our employees,” Silver said. “What I also tried to suggest is that I understand there are consequences from his freedom of speech and we will have to live with those consequences.”
He added that he “regrets” how so many Chinese people and NBA fans were upset by the now-deleted tweet.
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