World News
Millennials are Bringing Back the Milkmen
The Hearty Soul – Home milk deliveries from local dairies and creameries used to be a part of the daily routine for many families up to the 1950s and ’60s. However as it became easier and cheaper to purchase milk from the store, the milkman began to disappear.
However as many Millenials shift to more sustainable ways of living, avoiding unnecessary plastic and waste, the milkmen and women of London UK- are making a come back.
It turns out that many will pay a little more for a service, if it’s better bid to help the environment.
Milk&More and Parker Dairies of London UK have both seen a dramatic increase in their demand for glass bottles since 2018. Claiming that David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II is the catalyst for the uptake.
Protesters erect ‘Lady Liberty’ statue on Hong Kong mountain top
AFP – Pro-democracy protesters hauled a four-metre statue known as “Lady Liberty” to the top of a famous Hong Kong mountain early Sunday, announcing the peak would be its “final resting place”.
The statue depicts a female protester in a gas mask, protective goggles and helmet, an umbrella in one hand and a black flag in the other, proclaiming the protest slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times”.
It was a regular feature at larger, more peaceful rallies this summer, eliciting cheers when it was wheeled in by volunteers and transported around the city on the back of a truck.
But on Sunday organisers said Lady Liberty had made her final journey as they unveiled her at the top of Lion Rock, a 495-metre peak overlooking a forest of skyscrapers, intimately linked to the city’s democracy movement.
Alex, a 32-year-old protester who created the statue, said volunteers used the cover of night to carry the 80 kilogram (180 pound) artwork up the steep path to the summit.
“We had a team of 16 climbing professionals carrying her in two main pieces all the way to the summit while another 16 members carried equipment and supplies,” he told AFP, only giving his first name.
“Lion Rock will be the final resting place of the Lady Liberty of Hong Kong,” the team said in a statement, adding it would be up to authorities to remove it.
Named because its shape resembles the big cat, Lion Rock has been a symbol of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement for years with large banners demanding freedoms or criticising Beijing frequently unfurled by hardy protesters.
34-Year-Old Athlete Just Became the First Human in the World to Finish a Marathon in Under 2 Hours
Good News Network – This 34-year-old Kenyan athlete has just become the first human in history to run a marathon in under two hours.
Eliud Kipchoge finished the INEOS marathon in 1 hour, 59 minutes, and 40.2 seconds today in Austria.
According to a team of pacemakers who kept up with Kipchoge throughout the ordeal, he ran at a pace of 4:33.5 minutes per mile in order to finish the challenge ahead of schedule.
That being said, Kipchoge already holds the world record for the fastest completed marathon after he finished the Berlin Marathon in 2:01:39 last year.
“I want to inspire many people that no human is limited,” Kipchoge told ESPN. “That was the best moment of my life. The pressure was very big on my shoulders. I got a phone call from the president of Kenya. I am the happiest man today.”
U.S. News, Politics & Government
Gen. Keane: Trump must tell Turkey to ‘stop the killing’ in Syria or face retaliation
Fox – Sanctions against Turkey are a positive step, but President Trump must take immediate and forceful action to deter the invasion of northern Syria, retired Gen. Jack Keane said Monday on “America’s Newsroom.”
Keane, a Fox News senior strategic analyst, said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has broken his promise to Trump to set up safe zones in the region and not target homes and civilians.
“Sanctions that the president and Congress are proposing are very good, something we should do and the sooner we do it, the better,” said Keane, adding that, more importantly, Trump must also tell Erdogan to “stop the killing” immediately.
He said Trump should tell Turkey that the U.S. will “put our no-fly zone in place [and] take control of the airspace” and that Turkey will face retaliation if the killing is not “shut down.”
Keane said Erdogan “wants no part” of a military conflict with the United States and would have no choice but to pull back his forces.
“This is what we should have done at the outset, to be frank about it, but we are where we are right now,” he continued.
The war-monitoring group Syrian Observatory of Human Rights said a Turkish airstrike Sunday killed at least nine people – including five civilians – while other reports claimed that the convoy that was targeted included foreign journalists, according to Haaretz.
Beto O’Rourke: Churches That Oppose Same-Sex Marriage Should Lose Tax-Exempt Status
Real Clear Politics – At Thursday’s “LGBTQ Equality” town hall on CNN, presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke called for religious institutions that oppose same-sex marriage to lose tax-exempt status.
“There can be no reward, no benefit, no tax break for anyone … that denies the full human rights and the full civil rights of every single one of us,” he said.
California governor signs measure requiring universities to provide abortion meds
Fox – California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday made his state the first to require public universities to offer abortion medication at campus health centers, beginning in 2023.
Newsom contrasted the progressive goals of his new law with restrictions recently enacted in other states.
“As other states and the federal government go backward, restricting reproductive freedom, in California we are moving forward, expanding access and reaffirming a woman’s right [to] choose,” Newsom said, according to The Sacramento Bee. “We’re removing barriers to reproductive health – increasing access on college campuses and using technology to modernize how patients interact with providers.”
A number of states — including Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Mississippi and Georgia — have in recent months enacted such abortion restrictions as banning the procedure after six weeks, when a heartbeat has been detected. A number of the restrictions have been challenged in court.
Newsom’s predecessor, fellow Democrat Jerry Brown, vetoed similar legislation last year, arguing such a requirement wasn’t necessary since abortion services were readily available off-campus.
Ken Cuccinelli floated as likely next DHS chief with McAleenan to step down
Fox – U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Acting Director Ken Cuccinelli is being seen as a likely replacement for outgoing Department of Homeland Security Acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan, sources tell Fox News — a move that would be welcomed by immigration hardliners.
President Trump on Friday announced that McAleenan would be leaving the job to spend more time with his family, and added that the new acting secretary would be announced next week.
Shifty Schiff: ‘There Doesn’t Need to Be a Quid Pro Quo’ to Impeach Trump
Infowars – House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said that there doesn’t need to be a “quid pro quo” for President Trump to be impeached.
During an appearance on CBS’ “Face The Nation” on Sunday, Schiff appeared to move the goal posts once again, asserting that Trump committed an impeachable offense despite lack of evidence of a quid pro quo in Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s president.
“Well, we’re keeping our focus right now on the president’s coercion of an ally, that is Ukraine, to create this sham investigations into his political opponent,” Shiff said.
“We have discovered in very short order not only the contents of that call but also the preparatory work that went into that call. The effort to condition something the Ukrainian president deeply sought, that is, a meeting with the president, to establish this new president to the Ukraine had a powerful patron in the United States that was vital importance to Ukraine, that was being conditioned as digging up dirt on the Bidens.”
“There doesn’t need to be a quid pro quo,” Schiff continued. “But it is clear already from the text messaged that this meeting that the Ukraine president sought was being conditioned on their willingness to interfere in the U.S. to help the president. That is a terrible abuse of the president’s power.”
“Whether that abuse goes further, that is the withholding of military aid as leverage. There is certainly strong indication that’s is true as well. We will get to the bottom of it. Here you have a president of the United States abusing his power to the detriment of our national security. And doing so yet to get another foreign country to intervene in our election. It’s hard to imagine more of a corruption of the office than that.”
The reason for Schiff’s sudden dismissal of a “quid pro quo” is obvious: the transcript of the Ukraine phone call released by Trump directly contradicts Democrats’ assertion that he somehow pressured Ukraine President Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden.
Schiff Says Secret Testimony Aimed at Keeping Trump in the Dark
Bloomberg – House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff defended holding testimony behind closed doors in the impeachment inquiry he’s heading up against President Donald Trump, likening this phase of the investigation to a “grand jury.”
“We want to make sure that we meet the needs of the investigation and not give the president or his legal minions the opportunity to tailor their testimony and in some cases fabricate testimony to suit their interests,” the California Democrat said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Schiff said they may call some or all of the witnesses to return to testify in public later, though that might not include the whistle-blower who triggered the impeachment fight in the first place.
While Trump and some of his Republican allies have hoped to unmask the official and question him or her, Schiff said his priority now is to protect the whistle-blower and said they don’t need the person’s testimony to find out what happened on the phone call between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
“We’re keeping our focus right now on the president’s coercion of an ally, that is Ukraine, to create these sham investigations into his political opponent,” Schiff said.
Bill Barr Flames ‘Unremitting Assault’ On Religion, Traditional Values During Notre Dame Visit
Daily Caller – Concerted attacks on religious liberty have triggered a moral upheaval that contributes to deadly social pathologies, Attorney General William Barr said Friday at the University of Notre Dame.
“The imperative of protecting religious freedom was not just a nod in the direction of piety,” Barr said. “It reflects the framers’ belief that religion was indispensable to sustaining our free system of government.”
The attorney general said numerous measures of social decline are rising as religion recedes from public life, citing higher instances of drug addiction, mental illness, and suicide. Those outcomes are not random, but the fruit of a dedicated campaign against orthodox religious belief, Barr added.
“This is not decay,” Barr said. “This is organized destruction. Secularists and their allies have marshaled all the forces of mass communication, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values.”
Barr said state governments and municipal agencies have been at the vanguard of that effort, noting the board of education in Orange County, California, recently decided religious dissenters may not excuse their children from portions of the school curriculum broaching LGBT issues. Schools are the usual forum for attacks on religious liberty, Barr said.
In that connection, the attorney general noted the Department of Justice recently intervened in a dispute between a gay teacher and a Catholic high school near Notre Dame. The case arose when the Archdiocese of Indianapolis directed Cathedral High School to dismiss a teacher in a public, same-sex marriage or forfeit its Catholic affiliation. The high school did so. The teacher, Joshua Payne-Elliott, sued the school in turn.
The Justice Department filed a statement of interest in the case Sept. 27, arguing that the lawsuit suppresses the archdiocese’s First Amendment right to expressive association, and impermissibly asks the court to interfere with internal church matters.
“The First Amendment precludes this court, a state actor, from cooperating in plaintiff’s attempt to stifle the archdiocese’s First Amendment right to expressive association,” the filing reads. “The First Amendment also precludes the court from entangling itself in a quintessentially ecclesiastical question: whether the archdiocese properly interpreted and applied Catholic doctrine. The First Amendment commits that question exclusively to the ecclesiastical tribunals of the church.”
Anti-Barr demonstrators picketed near the Notre Dame campus during the attorney general’s visit, according to the South Bend Tribune. Some protesters blew whistles in reference to a whistleblower complaint from the intelligence community concerning President Donald Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Trump asked Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden’s business interests in Ukraine, and suggested Barr could support that effort. Hunter, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company called Burisma Holdings.
Wolf Resurgence in Washington Point out Tests Limits of Civility
Times of the Middle East- Washington state’s increasing populace of gray wolves is exposing deep divides between people and screening civility among the its top determination makers.
And managing the animals is about to get a lot more complicated, as the state begins drawing up a new wolf-administration plan and weighing whether to create a searching period.
Woman Who Lived Through “Socialism” in China Says Don’t Fall for Lies told by American Socialists
Concertvative Opinion – Helen Raleigh, who grew up in socialist China, warns in a new Op-Ed for Fox News to not fall for lies told by American socialists.
Do you think a girl should eat less than a boy? That may seem like a crazy question. Yet it was the reality for people like me who grew up in socialist China.
Under Chairman Mao’s socialist experiment, we had food stamps for essentials such as rice, cooking oil, meat and eggs. There were shortages of everything and these food stamps helped enforce a strict food ration policy. This policy was gender based, designed under the assumption that a girl should eat less than a boy. A boy would get about four more pounds of rice on a monthly basis than a girl of the same age.
However, my Chinese name happens to be a common boy name; therefore, I received the amount of rice ration meant for a boy. Even with this extra rice, I was always hungry.
One day, a policeman came to our house for an inspection. This kind of unannounced inspection was routine and common. Once he realized I was a girl, he ordered me to pay back the government. For the next couple of years, my entire family had to go on a strict diet in order to save enough food stamps to pay back the government.
This incident had a profound impact on my life. For the first time, I started questioning what kind of society I lived in, if someone else got to decide what and how much I could eat.
Food wasn’t the only thing that was in short supply. As far as I can remember, there were very few things in my life I could call mine. Sharing was an integral part of growing up in a socialist society.
When I was born, my family of five shared one bedroom in a row of low-ceilinged bungalows. My mother made a curtain to separate it into two rooms. She, my sister and I shared one bed; my father and brother shared a smaller bed.
We didn’t have a family kitchen. No one else had one either. Instead, every family had a little cooking area with its own coal-burning stove in a communal kitchen across from the bungalow. Because the ventilation of the communal kitchen was so poor, during dinner time, it would get so smoky we could hardly see.
Power shortages were more than common. Usually, each district would take a “voluntary” turn to have its power shut off for one day per week, in order to guarantee sufficient power for key industries. When there was no power, usually there was no running water either. We often had to store water in any container we could find.
Just a few years ago, when my American husband and I visited my parents in China, we were told that it was our district’s turn to have no electricity for a day. My parents and I were filling up every container in the house with water. My husband, who had never experienced this before, was dumbfounded.
On our way back to the U.S., as soon as the plane touched down on the runway, he started humming “The Star Spangled Banner.” In that moment, he couldn’t have been more proud and grateful to be an American.
I recently met a young couple from Venezuela. We quickly realized that despite living on different continents and speaking different languages, we share many life experiences: “Were you hungry all the time?” “Yes.” “Did you have constant electricity blackouts?” “Of course.”
Besides the afflictions that we are more than familiar with, we have a shared concern for the increasing popularity of socialism in the U.S., especially among so many Democratic presidential candidates who are embracing socialist policies like “Medicare-for-all” so overtly and brazenly.
Read more here.
NFL player won’t have to pay fine for ‘Man of God’ headband, so he’s donating the money instead
WKRN – Saints linebacker Demario Davis says being fined for wearing his “Man of God” headband helped his cause in the long run.
Davis says he’d worn the headband expressing his faith for several games before the NFL took note of the uniform violation and fined him about $7,000.
The New Orleans defensive captain was able to successfully appeal the fine by arguing that he was not aware that expressing his faith in that way violated NFL policies against using uniforms to convey personal messages on game day.
The linebacker also emphasized that he intended to sell the headbands to raise money for a hospital in his home state of Mississippi that needs emergency room upgrades and he agreed not to wear it again during games.
Davis says the appeals process helped promote his charitable efforts and his faith. As for the fine he no longer has to pay, Davis says that’s all going to his charitable efforts, too.
Reader’s Digest Names the ‘Nicest Place in America’ For 2019, A Town Where Nobody Gets Left Behind
Good News Network – A baker who donates freely to support causes of every kind, the real-estate developer who offers a year rent-free to promising entrepreneurs who may not have the resources to get started on their own, the local philanthropist who returned to his hometown to donate $500,000 to rebuild the town’s beloved Firestone Park.
These are just some of the examples of people giving back to the community of Columbiana, which was just named by Reader’s Digest as the 2019-designated Nicest Place in America.
Nestled in the green, rolling hills of eastern Ohio, about halfway between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, Columbiana is a small town that’s been going through some changes. Downtown, restaurants now outnumber antique shops. There’s a new development that offers housing, golfing, and shopping on the land where Firestone Farm once stood. Men who used to gather for coffee in the morning outside of a place called Newtons now do it at McDonald’s.
But one thing hasn’t changed: Nobody gets left behind, from blue-collar workers, to retirees, to folks who sometimes need a little extra accommodation. In Columbiana, giving back without wanting anything in return is a way of life.
A spirit of community infuses this town, just as it has for the better part of a century, ever since tire magnate Harvey Firestone donated 52 acres of land to create the sprawling Firestone Park. Time and again, residents come together to boost their neighbors, whether it’s volunteering with Project MKC to deliver diapers to needy moms or donating money to help the Columbiana Community Foundation offer more service grants.
Clinton-Appointed Judge Rules Trump’s Emergency Funding For Border Wall Unlawful
Daily Caller – A Texas federal judge ruled President Donald Trump’s emergency funding for a southern border wall to be unlawful, the latest roadblock in the administration’s attempt to build hundreds of miles of barrier.
Judge David Briones, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, ruled Friday that Congress clearly tried to limit how much money Trump could spend on border wall construction, and his emergency declaration that provided billions more in funding was illegal.
Paul: Investigate Democrats Over Ukraine Letter
“If you’re going to condemn Trump, you need to condemn the Democratic senators.”
Infowars – Senator Rand Paul has called for an investigation into Democrat Senators who wrote a letter last year to officials in Ukraine requesting information on Trump campaign officials.
“If anything’s consistent here, both parties have tried to involve themselves in Ukraine,” Paul said on Meet The Press.
“If you’re going to condemn Trump, you need to condemn the Democratic senators,” he added. “It shouldn’t just be one-sided.”
The Democratic Senators, Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Dick Durbin of Illinois, and Patrick Leahy of Vermont, wrote to Ukraine’s prosecutor general in 2018 seeking assistance from the country in the Mueller investigation.
Paul noted that reports suggest the Senators threatened to withhold aid to Ukraine should they not cooperate.
“Everybody is going after President Trump. Someone needs to actually, in an objective way, evaluate a letter from four Democrats that said to Ukraine, if you don’t keep investigating Trump, we will reconsider our bipartisan support for aid.” Paul stated.
“That’s a threat and that’s the same kind of stuff they’re accusing Trump of,” Paul urged.
On the Eve of the CNN Insider blowing the whistle on his own network…
Project Veritas – “It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.” – Samuel Adams.
This week, a CNN insider will blow the whistle and through Project Veritas will release dozens of recordings made of officials at the highest levels of CNN, revealing a political agenda, bias and misconduct hidden from public view.
This series of tapes — which we think will be the biggest story of the year for Project Veritas — blends two extraordinary series of events; a brave insider secretly recording at work and a hard-hitting piece of hidden camera muckraking into one of the supposed “most trusted names in news.”
A major aspect of this story is the heroic actions of an insider.
By far, the most often asked question (and most important) is “What can I do?” There is a new genre of answer—you can wear a hidden camera and blow the whistle on your employer through Project Veritas. This new movement, which we are calling “Be Brave. Do Something” is enabling citizens to become catalysts for reform. It is the modern incarnation of what Jack Anderson once described as “the sirens of Greek mythology, who, by their seductive singing, enticed unknowing wayfarers to abandon the cramped boredom of safe passage for a hazardous try at strange excitements and gratifications.”
If Project Veritas is the siren, the wayfarers this year have included two Google employees, a Facebook subcontractor and a Pinterest engineer who gave up their salaries and careers for the public’s right to know. We’ve had the privilege to entice these angels, knowing full well an army of grateful citizens are behind them. Project Veritas supporters have their backs no matter what as long as they stand up for what is true and important for the public to know.
“This was an act of atonement. An attempt to make my conscience clear,” said Zach Vorhies, who leaked us the “Algorithmic Unfairness’ document inside Google.
“Are we going to just let the biggest tech companies decide who wins every election from now on?” said Greg Coppola, who lost his job inside Google speaking out.
“I felt the public had a right to know,” said the Facebook insider who was fired for taking screenshots of them “Deboosting” videos for political reasons.
“For me there was no other option. I could go through the comforts of life, but what are we saving our ammo for,” said Eric Cochran, the Pinterest engineer, who was escorted out the building. “They can stop one man, but they can’t stop all of us.
And so it was destiny that the CNN wayfarer met me in the Spring by a happenstance, inspired by the actions of the others who came before him, I received a simple answer as to why: “I started at CNN with a dream to work in media, but my dream had become a nightmare,” With that, a hidden camera began to record…well…everything.
JANE FONDA: I’ve been ‘a climate scientist for decades and decades’
The American Mirror – Liberals like to say that 97 percent of scientists agree that “humans are causing global warming and climate change.”
It’s easy to see how they get to that number, when people like geriatric actress Jane Fonda self-identify as a “climate scientist.”
Fonda was arrested outside the Capitol on Friday, and somehow appeared on television a short time later. (It’s as if the whole arrest thing was a farce…?)
“The student climate strikers have really inspired me to do more than I’ve been doing,” Fonda told ABC News, “and so I said I’m going to get out of my comfort zone. I’m going to do something that, you know, is not easy for me right now, but I’m moving here,” she said, referring to Washington, DC.
“I’m going to be here through Thanksgiving, and Christmas, sleep, rain, whatever it is.”
Fonda said she’s going to protest at the Capitol every Friday at 11am. She didn’t say whether she plans to get arrested each time.
Economy & Business
US-China ‘partial’ trade deal sees tariff rise halted, progress on technology transfers
SCMP – As negotiators from China and the United States wrapped up two days of talks in Washington on Friday, US President Donald Trump said the two sides had reached a “substantial” partial trade deal that would delay the imposition of additional tariffs on Chinese goods. The announcement of the “phase one ” agreement – which Trump said would take three to five weeks to draw up and provide a catalyst for a second stage – was well received by US stock markets, all of which ended the day up more than 1 per cent.
Central Bank Issues Stunning Warning: “If The Entire System Collapses, Gold Will Be Needed To Start Over”
ZeroHedge – It’s not just “tinfoil blogs” who (for the past 11 years) have been warning that a monetary reset is inevitable and the only viable fallback option once trust and faith in fiat is lost is a gold standard (something which even Mark Carney hinted at recently): central banks are joining the doom parade now too.
An article published by the De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), or Dutch Central Bank, has shocked many with its claim that
if the system collapses, the gold stock can serve as a basis to build it up again. Gold bolsters confidence in the stability of the central bank’s balance sheet and creates a sense of security.
While gloomy predictions of a monetary reset are hardly new, they have traditionally been relegated to the fringe of mainstream financial thought – after all, as Mario Draghi stated on several occasions in recent years, the mere contemplation of a “doomsday scenario” is enough to create the self-fulfilling prophecy which materializes it. As such, it is stunning to see a mainstream financial institution open up about the superior value of limited supply, non-fiat, sound money assets. It is also hypocritical given the diametrically opposed Keynesian practices regularly engaged in by central banks and official institutions worldwide: after all, just a few months back, the IMF published a paper bashing Germany’s adoption of the gold standard in the 1870s as the catalyst for instability in the global monetary system.Fast forward to today, when the Dutch Central Bank is admitting not only did gold not destabilize the monetary system, but it will be its only savior when everything crashes.
The article, titled “DNB’s Gold Stock” states:
“A bar of gold retains its value, even in times of crisis. This makes it the opposite of “shares, bonds and other securities” all of which have inherent risk and prices can go down.
A Global Gold Rush Is IMMINENT!
SFTPlan – Whether you believe it or not, a global gold rush is imminent! While the American corporate-owned (and state-backed) mainstream media has been completely ignoring it, one country after another has been taking steps to divest themselves of their U.S. dollar.
Examining it more closely, we might even start to connect the dots and conclude that there’s a coordinated effort among these nations to dethrone the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. –James Davis, Future Money Trends
Davis believes that the government and the mainstream media have no intention of keeping anyone informed.
As we would expect, the government and the U.S. Federal Reserve have no interest in keeping the citizens informed of this phenomenon, and they’ll do everything in their power to maintain the narrative that the dollar (and therefore the economy) will be just fine. Richly compensated corporate media outlets will all fall in line, spinning a tale of dollar strength and longevity.- James Davis, Future Money Trends
Over the next 6 to 18 months, a gold rush is imminent, according to Davis.
China isn’t particularly interested in throwing the world into a financial crisis, but they’re gladly relieving themselves of American dollars, starting with a plan to replace the petrodollar with the Petro-yuan. China already launched its yuan-denominated oil futures contracts last year, and now they’re sweetening the pot by offering swap facilities to local countries to promote the use of the yuan.
Last year, we also witnessed the European Union’s plans to switch payments from the U.S. dollar to the euro for its oil purchases from Iran.
Meanwhile, India recently made its own move towards independence from dollar dominance when it was announced that a contract between Moscow and New Delhi for supplies of Russian S-400 air defense systems would be settled in rubles.
In addition to the deal with India, Russia has taken a number of measures to reduce its dependence on the U.S. dollar, including cutting its U.S. bond holdings down to $14.4 billion from $96.1 billion in September; also, in late November, the Russian Finance Ministry reported that it had issued 1 billion euros’ (equivalent to $1.13 billion) worth of seven-year bonds with a yield of 3%.
Reserve currency status does not last forever either. Big changes are coming, as the almighty dollar won’t be mighty for much longer.
Hunter Biden To Step Down From Board Of Chinese Firm
Daily Caller – Hunter Biden, son of former Vice President Joe Biden, announced he will resign from the board of a Chinese private equity firm that has been a target of President Donald Trump’s criticism in a Sunday statement from his lawyer.
Joe Biden had no part in his son’s foreign business dealings, and Hunter Biden has also vowed not to take part in any such business if his father is elected as president in 2020, according to the statement published by attorney George Mesires to Medium.
“To date, Hunter has not received any compensation for being on BHR’s board of directors. He has not received any return on his investment; there have been no distributions to BHR shareholders since Hunter obtained his equity interest. Moreover, Hunter played no role in directing or making BHR’s investments. Hunter intends to resign from the BHR board of directors on or by October 31, 2019,” the statement reads.
SHIP SAILED? Colleges NATIONWIDE ditch Columbus Day
Campus Reform – Colleges and Universities across the country are scrapping Columbus Day in favor of “Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” but what actually is involved in these celebrations?
Campus Reform took a look at how exactly these schools are changing the face of the holiday traditionally meant to honor explorer Christopher Columbus.
Kansas State University students are invited to an all-day lecture event called “Asserting Sovereignty: Innovations and Battlegrounds” where they will hear from various professors on topics relating to the rights and sovereignty of Native Americans. The university webpage advertising the event openly rejects Columbus Day with a title, reading, “Columbus Day Indigenous Peoples Day 2019.”
In recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, USC just announced that it is planning a large scale conference for the next school year which will “challenge traditional views about the concept and definition of genocide.” The event, titled “Mass Violence and Its Lasting Impact on Indigenous Peoples – The Case of the Americas and Australia” will last three days and will include “musical and dance performances” in addition to lectures.
[RELATED: UCSF ‘celebrates’ illegal Alcatraz occupation on the wrong day—for ‘Indigenous People’s Day’]
Tufts University Arts and Sciences and Engineering faculty passed a resolution in 2016 officially replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day for all Arts and Science and Engineering academic Calendars. A student coalition is continuing to push for the same change to be made campuswide, in an effort to force the university to “acknowledge the pain it has inflicted on Indigenous peoples who occupied this land for centuries.”
Harvard University’s events calendar recognizes Indigenous People’s Day with no mention of Columbus Day. Students are invited to a celebratory event during which they will listen to an “evocative playlist of contemporary poems by Native American authors.”
There is no mention of Columbus Day on the Northwestern University events calendar either. Students do have the option, however of attending an “Indigenous Tour of Northwestern” on that day, where they will learn about “Native people, places, and initiatives that connect to Northwestern University.”
[RELATED: Vanderbilt marks ‘Indigenous People’s Day’ with ‘WHITE CANNIBALS’ talk]
The University of Oregon is hosting a three-hour event at a university amphitheater including a retiring and dedication ceremony of flags representing the nine federally recognized Native American tribes. The same event will include a separate ceremony for a “blessing” of the university’s “Kalapuya Ilihi” residence hall, which was named for the indigenous people of the area and has been open since 2017.
A strategically timed conference on the “climate crisis” begins Oct. 14 at Santa Clara University, the event, which features a lecture from Standing Rock Activist Chase Iron Eyes. The event is timed to begin on the holiday “in an effort to affirm indigenous sovereignty” and to “honor, affirm, support, listen and learn from Native Peoples.”
Oklahoma City University has a day of festivities planned, complete with a drum and dance performance and a panel discussion relating the native concept of “two-spirit” individuals who take on roles or identities of the opposite sex, to modern LGBTQ issues.
[POLL: Majority of college students support DITCHING Columbus Day]
Washington State University will be setting up a full-size tipi display in addition to serving Native American food and hosting a group Rounddance for those looking to get festive in support of Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
Posters submitted by students at Idaho State University will be put on display to address the theme of “Indigenous Education: Acknowledging the past, looking to the future.” The poster display session will be followed by a number of other activities including a cultural drum performance. In a rare acknowledgment of Christopher Columbus on Columbus Day, the event will also feature a screening of Columbus in America, a film addressing the “controversy” surrounding the explorer. Films Media Group describes the film as one that “explores how the man who first brutalized indigenous people in the New World became a hero, and questions his place in American culture.”
Science & Technology
The “Safe Drivers Act” Is A Real-Time National Driver Surveillance Program
ZeorHedge – Via MassPrivateI blog,
A new Senate bill would create a real-time national driver surveillance program that would allow law enforcement to know anything and everything about a driver at the click of a button.
A recent article in WCVB Channel 5 revealed that the “Safe Drivers Act” is designed for one purpose and that is to share everything a motorist has ever done with law enforcement nationwide.
Outside the Danvers branch of the Registry of Motor Vehicles on Tuesday, Congressman Seth Moulton publicly announced legislation he’s filed in hopes of making it easier for traffic safety officials to share information about drivers across state lines.
How Moulton plans to make it easier to share drivers’ personal information with law enforcement across the country is frightening.
The ultimate goal of the bill is to help lead to the creation of a national, real-time data sharing program, Moulton’s office said.
Apparently, knowing a driver’s Social Security Number, address, date of birth, checking their driving record and running their name against a national criminal database is not enough.
How big a task is giving everyone on Earth a digital identity?
Siliconerepublic – Millions of people around the world are ‘invisible’ with no form of identity, but blockchain and other technologies could help solve this.
There are more than 1bn people across the globe who have no form of identity, and this is a massive problem.
Imagine trying to flee a war-torn land and making it to another country, only to be told that there was no record of you existing, so giving you asylum will be difficult, if not impossible. Or perhaps your child needs to receive a life-saving vaccine, but the charities that hold records on children in the country don’t have any record of their birth.
This latter case was what drove Dakota Gruener to take her work with NGOs and join ID2020, an alliance of governments, NGOs and the private sector – particularly the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) – to use technology to give 1.1bn people on the planet a digital identity.
Now serving as its executive director, Gruener continues to work also with Gavi, an organisation founded by Bill Gates and others in 2000, to bring underused vaccines to some of the most vulnerable people on Earth.
Is blockchain the answer?
So, how does ID2020 plan to use technology to give these people digital identities? One of the solutions may lie in blockchain, the distributed ledger technology taking the financial world – along with nearly every major industry – by storm.
As a participant of the recent Accenture Blockchain for Good Hackathon, ID2020 has an interest in the technology that would provide a traceable digital identity, which, in theory, cannot be edited by third parties.
But, as Gruener points out, Gavi considers itself “technologically agnostic”, meaning it is wary of the pace of change, so it will be unlikely that it goes with just one facet of it.
“We’ve gone with [blockchain] because there’s clearly appetite for it but, to some extent, I think there will be life cycles to lots of different [technologies] and this truly does present elements that we believe are really important,” she said.
“There’s a particular blockchain that seems logical now but we have no reason to believe that it will be the only one relevant in the years to come. The same goes for biometric technology or any other supportive technology.”
She continued: “Our perspective is that, at the end of the day, this isn’t about an election of a single facet of technology, but creating the institutions and government infrastructure to create a collective community as technology continues to evolve.”
>> Related: 2018 ID2020 Summit – Towards “Good” Digital Identity
The UN Refugee Agency – We are very excited to announce that the ID2020 Alliance will host its annual Summit on September 14 in New York City at Convene and the United Nations. The focus of this year’s Summit will be on defining a “good” digital identity, including the complementarity between government-issued and user-centric identity solutions and the technical and non-technical requirements to bring the Alliance’s vision to scale.
The event will be sponsored by UN Office of Information Communications Technology (OICT), the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the Consulate General of Denmark in New York and will host more than 20 distinguished panelists and speakers, including technology innovators, policy leaders, humanitarians and development specialists.
During the Summit, ID2020 will also present a manifesto of principles jointly written by partners in the ID2020 Alliance and in consultation with UNHCR. First and foremost among those principles is the fundamental belief that identity is a universal human right, and that all individuals must have the ability to prove and assert who they are, without reliance on any single government or institution.
The conference will also announce ID2020’s first two pilot projects, to be launched later this year, with leading implementing partners.
Scientists Develop New Test That Can Diagnose Lyme Disease in Just 15 Minutes
GoodNews Network – 300,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with Lyme disease every year, but current testing methods require days or weeks—sometimes even more—devoted to lab work and processing.
Finally, a team of scientists have developed a rapid microfluidic test that can detect Lyme disease in just 15 minutes.
Caused by the bacterial species Borrelia burgdorferi and transmitted by the bite of infected Ixodes ticks, the disease can cause serious neurologic, cardiac, and/or rheumatologic complications if left untreated.
Current testing for Lyme disease, called the standard 2-tiered approach (STT) involves running two complex assays (ELISA and western blot) to detect antibodies against the bacterium, and requires experienced personnel in a lab, as well as a few hours to carry out and interpret.
Now, a research team led by Sam Sia, professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia Engineering, has developed a rapid microfluidic test that can detect Lyme disease with similar performance as the STT in a much shorter time.
Health
Vitamin A Can Save Your Skin
Mercola – Recent data demonstrate that those who eat foods rich in vitamin A, the equivalent of two large carrots a day, experience a reduced risk of developing squamous cell skin cancer. Vitamin A affects cell growth and differentiation, which plays a role in the development of cancer.
Vitamin B3 has been shown to reduce the risk of recurring nonmelanoma skin cancer in those who had at least two skin cancers diagnosed. Vitamin D, produced in your skin with sensible sun exposure, is associated with a reduced risk of several cancers, including melanoma, an aggressive form of skin cancer.
Sunburns, especially in youth, are associated with a greater risk of developing skin cancer; however, chemical sunscreens contain many toxic ingredients and may not provide the level of UV protection printed on the label.
Astaxanthin is a carotenoid produced by microalgae to protect the algae from UV rays of the sun. It may be one of the most potent antioxidants and helps protect your skin against UV light from the inside out, while allowing your skin to produce vitamin D
Entertainment
Vietnam pulls DreamWorks’ ‘Abominable’ film over South China Sea map
Reuters – Vietnam has pulled DreamWorks’ animated film “Abominable” from cinemas over a scene featuring a map which shows China’s unilaterally declared “nine-dash line” in the South China Sea, state media reported on Monday.
The U-shaped line is a feature used on Chinese maps to illustrate its claims over vast expanses of the resource-rich South China Sea, including large swathes of what Vietnam regards as its continental shelf, where it has awarded oil concessions.
Last week, sports network ESPN faced criticism of its coverage of a row between the National Basketball Association (NBA) and China after using a map that featured the line.
China and Vietnam have been locked in a standoff since China dispatched a vessel to conduct an energy survey in waters controlled by Vietnam in early July.
“We will revoke (the film’s licence),” Ta Quang Dong, deputy minister of culture, sports and tourism, was quoted as saying by the Thanh Nien newspaper.
The ministry is in charge of licensing and censoring foreign films.
“Abominable”, about a Chinese girl who discovers a yeti living on her roof, was jointly produced by Shanghai-based Pearl Studio and Comcast-owned DreamWorks Animation and was first shown in Vietnamese cinemas on Oct. 4.
The film, which was being marketed in Vietnam as “Everest: The Little Yeti” was removed from cinemas on Sunday after images of the scene with the offending map were shared widely on social media.
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