Demovictory9
Demovictory9's Journalall the Harvard Law students got up & left in solidarity with Palestine
https://twitter.com/_SJPeace_/status/1222286022261792769Maryland cop was charged with murder after a man was shot 7 times inside his police cruiser
https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/28/us/maryland-police-shooting/index.htmlMaryland cop was charged with murder after a man was shot 7 times inside his police cruiser
Monday, Owen and another officer responded to reports of a car slamming into parked vehicles, CNN affiliate WJLA reported,
The officers found Green -- the car's driver -- and handcuffed him. They believed he was "under the influence of a substance" and called for "drug recognition expert," police said in a statement.
They took Green to the front seat of Owen's police cruiser to wait for the expert, police said.
The officer then got into the driver's seat of his cruiser and some time later, police say, "Green was shot seven times by the officer's duty weapon."
After the shooting, Owen and the other officer took Green out of the cruiser and offered him aid. He was then taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead, police said.
It's unclear what led to the shooting. Authorities did not discuss what the other officer was doing during the incident.
Owen was arrested Tuesday afternoon and is awaiting a bond hearing. He has been with the police department for 10 years and was assigned patrol duties.
Details emerge in FBI's case against SF Director of Public Works, Lefty O'Doul's owner
San Francisco's Director of Public Works Mohammed Nuru, 58, and Lefty O’Doul’s owner Nick Bovis, 57, were charged in a criminal complaint with honest services wire fraud in connection with an alleged scheme to attempt to bribe a San Francisco Airport Commissioner, United States Attorney David Anderson announced at a press conference.
“The complaint describes a web of corruption involving bribery, kickbacks, and side deals by one of San Francisco’s highest-ranking city employees,” Anderson said in a statement. "The public is entitled to honest work from public officials, free from manipulation for the official’s own personal benefit and profit.”
The defendants both appeared in federal court today and were arraigned and released, each on a $2 million bond. If convicted, they face a maximum statutory sentence of 20 years in prison.
Nuru was initially arrested on this charge on Jan. 21, and said he would cooperate with FBI officials and agreed to not tamper with or disclose the investigation. He was arrested again yesterday for violating those terms.
The main scheme described by the FBI involves the attempted alleged bribery of an unnamed SFO commissioner in exchange for a restaurant contract at the airport. According to the complaint, Nuru and Bovis schemed to give the unnamed commissioner $5,000 and free travel so that she would vote to approve a contract for Bovis' restaurant Spinnerie. The complaint records multiple conversations between Bovis and an undercover FBI employee who was posing as a friend of a lender. The criminal complaint against Nuru states the unnamed commissioner declined the money, and the contract was never awarded to Bovis.
There is at least one indication Bovis was getting suspicious of this "friend."
"Well, in my brain, what if this is some sort of FBI sting or something?" Bovis reportedly said to the undercover FBI employee.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/FBI-SF-Director-of-Public-Works-Nuro-Mohammed-15010530.php
CBO projects a decade of trillion-dollar deficits and soaring US debt
https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/28/politics/cbo-us-record-federal-deficits/index.htmlWashington (CNN)The federal deficit is projected to keep rising over the coming decade, driving US debt to the highest level since World War II over the next 10 years, according to a Congressional Budget Office report released Tuesday.
The annual congressional report projects that the US budget deficit is likely to blast through the symbolic threshold of $1 trillion this year despite a healthy economy with record low unemployment.
And that number is expected to widen each year over the next decade through 2030. As a result of the rising deficits, US government debt held by the public will soar from nearly $18 trillion at the end of 2020 to $31.4 trillion by the end of 2030.
Over that same period, that debt held by the public as a share of the economy will grow from 81% of GDP this year to 98% by 2030 -- the highest percentage since 1946.
The CBO warned that rising federal debt would likely reduce national savings and income, boost the government's interest payments, limit policymakers' ability to respond to unforeseen events and increase the likelihood of a fiscal crisis.
"Today's CBO report shows 10 straight years of trillion-dollar deficits," said Michael Peterson, CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. "That's a sad reflection of our nation's poor fiscal health, and it adds insult to injury that we're piling on all this debt in a growing economy."
The widening gap comes despite 2016 campaign promises by President Donald Trump to shrink or even eliminate the nation's deficit. But it has continued to climb upwards due in part to the 2017 tax cuts and a two-year budget deal that included increases in federal spending.
Big budget deficits typically grow during economic downturns -- but the US economy is expanding and unemployment is at a 50-year low.
Ingenious Villages rescue elephant from hole ...then run like heck!
https://nypost.com/video/ingenious-elephant-rescue-uses-water-to-save-the-day/Ingenious elephant rescue uses water to save the day
January 28, 2020
These villagers were no Dumbos. Watch the dramatic rescue of an elephant that had fallen into a 25-foot well in the state of Jharkhand, India. The team of workers used motorized pumps to fill the pit with water, which allowed the pachyderm to float to the top and return to the forest uninjured.
Advertisers are showing womanhood in all its bloody, hairy glory
In new advertisements for women’s products, companies are increasingly depicting women with more accurate detail.
We all bleed red, even from the vagina. But for the longest time, advertisers of tampons and sanitary pads have shown the ability of their products to absorb menstrual blood using unspecified blue liquids.
So, when a Kotex ad for Ultra-Thin Pads on Instagram showed red simulated blood being poured on both their pad and a competitor's — it was revolutionary.
Users commented their excitement and gratitude over an ad accurately portraying menstrual bleeding and destigmatizing the monthly cycle experienced by about half the female population in the world. Globally, menstruation can be highly stigmatized, leading to poor menstrual hygiene that can cause long-term health issues.
In a response to a user's comment, Kotex said, “We believe in challenging the negative perceptions of periods and being real with how our products work is part of that.”
The trend of more accurately portraying women’s bodies and their bodily processes is new for companies that sell women’s products. Ads for razors often show women running a blade over already shaved legs. Recently, Billie, a shaving company for women, started Project Body Hair, and began airing ads online showing body hair on women to market their products.
“Everyone has short stubble, long strands, or something in between. What you do with yours is up to you - grow it, get rid of it, or comb it. It's your hair, after all,” the company says on their website.
The company has even started an image library and encourages people to upload photos of body hair online. Research shows that less millennial women are shaving their legs and even fewer are shaving their underarms.
https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/arts-culture/479821-advertisers-are-showing-womanhood-in-all-its-bloody
U.S. HITS NEW LOW IN GLOBAL CORRUPTION INDEX
https://www.transparency.org/news/pressrelease/2019_CPI_US_hits_new_lowRead the report
Gary Kalman, Director of the new U.S. office of Transparency International, said the following:
“Weaknesses in our laws are being exploited by a growing list of bad actors at home and abroad. From foreign despots to terror networks, drug cartels to human traffickers, some of the world’s most destructive forces are benefitting from gaps in U.S. law. Multiple corruption scandals in the last year alone have shown that transnational corruption is often facilitated, enabled, or perpetuated by countries toward the top of the Index, including the United States. Fortunately, bipartisan legislation currently before Congress, the ILLICIT CASH Act and the Corporate Transparency Act, would go a long way toward stopping these interests from using the U.S. as a laundromat for their dirty cash.”
Mom of 2 missing kids found in Hawaii with new husband
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Police say the mother of two missing kids has been found in Hawaii along with her new husband, but there's still no sign of the children in the cross-country investigation that includes several mysterious deaths.
Police in Kauai pulled over Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell near a beachside resort on Saturday, later searching them and their car for any evidence. But authorities in Idaho say there's no sign that 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow and 17-year-old Tylee Ryan ever made it to Hawaii, and federal, state and local law enforcement agencies are still searching for the kids who haven't been seen since September.
They also served Vallow with a court order from Idaho, directing her to bring her kids to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare by Thursday or face legal action. Still, neither Lori Vallow nor Chad Daybell have been charged or arrested in connection with the matter, Kauai police said Sunday in a prepared statement.
The strange case began last July, after Vallow's estranged husband Charles Vallow was shot and killed by her brother, Alex Cox, in an altercation at their home in Phoenix. At the time, Cox said the shooting was in self-defense, but the case remains under investigation. In December, Cox also died of unknown causes, and police in Gilbert, Arizona, are still waiting for toxicology test results in his death investigation.
Lori Vallow moved to eastern Idaho with the kids about a month after Charles Vallow's death. Extended family members grew concerned as their contact with the kids tapered and then stopped completely, and police in Rexburg, Idaho, say the children were last seen in late September, though Vallow never reported them missing..
In November, responding to concerns from extended family that they hadn't heard from the children, Rexburg police paid a visit to Vallow to ask her and Daybell about the kids. The couple told officers the kids had gone to live with relatives in Arizona, police said — a claim they quickly discovered wasn't true. When investigators returned to Vallow's home the next day, the couple was gone.
The Fremont County Sheriff's office began to question the circumstances surrounding Tammy Daybell's death. They worked with authorities in Utah, where she was buried, to have her body exhumed for an autopsy and additional testing in December.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/mom-of-2-missing-kids-found-in-hawaii-with-new-husband/ar-BBZn88e
Trump Targets a New Group of Immigrants ---African immigrants appear to be in the president's sights
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/african-immigrants-may-be-trumps-next-target/605506/Trump Targets a New Group of Immigrants
He previously trained his nativist ire on Muslims and Latinos. Now African immigrants appear to be in the president’s sights.
Last week, Politico reported that the Trump administration was considering adding seven new countries to its travel ban. A majority of them—Eritrea, Sudan, Tanzania, and Nigeria, which is by far the most populous of the seven—are in Africa. The rationalization appears to involve terrorism. In the “counterterrorism” section of a January 17 speech, Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, declared, “We’re establishing criteria that all foreign governments must satisfy to assist DHS in vetting foreign nationals seeking to enter our country … For a small number of countries that lack either the will or the capability to adhere to these criteria, travel restrictions may become necessary to mitigate threats.”
Because the Supreme Court upheld Donald Trump’s travel ban in 2018 on national-security grounds, it’s not surprising that administration officials would cite that same rationale to expand the ban now. But the argument is weak. According to numbers crunched by the Cato Institute’s Alex Nowrasteh when Trump first imposed the ban three years ago, not a single person born in Eritrea, Tanzania, Nigeria, or Sudan killed a single American in a terrorist attack on American soil from 1975 to 2016. (The same is true of Belarus and Myanmar, two of the other three countries Trump may add to the travel-ban roster. Two people from Kyrgyzstan, the final country, were implicated in deadly anti-American terrorism incidents during the period, according to Nowrasteh’s tally.)
White House is reportedly worried that House Democrats will continue to dig up damaging information
White House is reportedly worried that House Democrats will continue to dig up damaging information on Trump after the impeachment trial
White House officials are concerned that House Democrats will continue investigations into President Donald Trump even after the impeachment trial into Trump concludes, Politico reported on Saturday.
Trump is currently facing trial on two articles of impeachment alleging abuse of office and obstructing Congress over a campaign to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate his political rivals.
Since Trump was impeached by the House on December 18, a steady stream of new, incriminating information about the Ukraine scandal has continued to come to light.
Even though Trump is likely to be acquitted, Republicans expect House Democrats to continue investigating Trump, and they worry it could jeopardize the president's re-election prospects.
https://news.yahoo.com/white-house-reportedly-worried-house-213922551.html?soc_src=hl-viewer&soc_trk=tw
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