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Post by mhbruin on Sept 20, 2022 8:30:00 GMT -8
My relationship with whiskey is on the rocks.
While You Read This Headline, Two People Will Die of Hunger
One person is estimated to be dying of hunger every four seconds, more than 200 NGOs have warned, urging decisive international action to “end the spiralling global hunger crisis”.
In an open letter addressing world leaders gathering in New York for the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, 238 organisations from 75 countries – including Oxfam, Save the Children, and Plan International – expressed outrage at skyrocketing hunger levels.
“A staggering 345 million people are now experiencing acute hunger, a number that has more than doubled since 2019,” they said in a statement.
“Despite promises from world leaders to never allow famine again in the 21st century, famine is once more imminent in Somalia. Around the world, 50 million people are on the brink of starvation in 45 countries,” they said.
Pointing out that as many as 19,700 people are estimated to be dying of hunger every day, the NGOs said that this translates to one person dying of hunger every four seconds.
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 20, 2022 8:31:42 GMT -8
They Asked for a Special Master. They Nominated the Guy. Now They Are Saying "F You" to Him
Donald Trump’s attorneys said in a filing Monday night that they don’t want to disclose to a court-appointed special master which Mar-a-Lago documents they assert the former president may or may not have declassified.
In a four-page letter to the special master, Trump's attorneys pushed back against Senior U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie's apparent proposal that they submit “specific information regarding declassification” to him in the course of his review.
Dearie issued an order Friday summoning both parties to the federal courthouse in Brooklyn, New York, for a preliminary conference Tuesday.
Trump's attorneys have claimed that until or unless they decide to fight the FBI search warrant or if they decide to offer it as a defense following any potential indictment, they shouldn't have to disclose details about declassification that would also be shared with the Justice Department.
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 20, 2022 8:38:35 GMT -8
Here a Storm, There a Storm, Everywhere a Storm, Storm
Powerful storms battered three disparate, far-flung corners of the planet over the weekend, but they had one thing in common: They were made stronger and wetter by climate change.
From Hurricane Fiona barreling over Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic to Typhoon Nanmadol pounding Japan, to the remnants of Typhoon Merbok wreaking havoc in Alaska, the past 72 hours have demonstrated the devastating effects of heavy rain and flooding.
The three weekend storms add to a trend of wetter storms in a warmer future, said Michael Wehner, a senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
“The worst storms will get worse,” he said.
With climate change making storms rainier and more intense, the weekend's extreme weather events offer a glimpse of what could become more common in the future, according to experts.
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 20, 2022 8:52:52 GMT -8
Is Lyman Free?
Multiple sources are reporting that Lyman has been liberated. Awaiting confirmation.  Meanwhile Russia Wastes More MenThere is just one big question for Russia at the moment as we approach the end of the seventh month of this illegal, unprovoked invasion: What the hell do they think they are doing? No, seriously. Russia is continuing to make multiple attacks every day around the town of Bakhmut, scrambling to gain a single street, or a single meter, with a high cost in both men and materiel for each gain. If they get Bakhmut, then what? Months of fighting will have carried them an entire 15 kilometers from territory they occupied at the outset of the invasion. And they’ll still be 40 km from the well-defended cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk at the heart of Donetsk Oblast. A sensible move by Russia at this point would be to figure out if there is any portion of Ukraine it seriously needs to retain, then do everything possible to hold that territory. It’s not clear what they can do. It is clear that wasting more men at Bakhmut only makes Russia’s situation worse. It’s baffling. It would almost be amusing … if it weren’t real human beings losing their lives, homes, and everything for absolutely no reason.
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 20, 2022 8:57:00 GMT -8
It's Not a Stunt, It's a Crime
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 20, 2022 8:59:56 GMT -8
Speaking of Crimes, Lying in a Deposition Qualifies
On Jan. 7, 2021, a group of forensics experts working for lawyers allied with President Donald Trump spent eight hours at a county elections office in southern Georgia, copying sensitive software and data from its voting machines.
Under questioning last month for a civil lawsuit, a former Georgia Republican Party official named Cathy Latham said in sworn testimony that she briefly stopped by the office in Coffee County that afternoon. She said she stayed in the foyer and spoke with a junior official about an unrelated matter at the front desk. “I didn’t go into the office,” Latham said, according to a transcript of her deposition filed in court.
Surveillance video footage reviewed by The Washington Post shows that Latham visited the elections office twice that day, staying for more than four hours in total. [...]
A Post examination found that elements of the account Latham gave in her deposition on the events of Jan. 6 and 7, 2021, appear to diverge from the footage and other evidence, including depositions and text messages.
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 20, 2022 9:12:03 GMT -8
Want Some Good News? Five patients, aged 18-24, with the autoimmune disorder SLE (systemic lupus erythematosus) enrolled in a last-ditch, “compassionate-use” trial because they had not responded to conventional treatments and likely were headed for multiple organ failure and possibly death. Each was given a single dose of their own re-engineered T cells. Within three months, all five patients had essentially no symptoms of lupus and continued this way even after immunosuppressive drugs were stopped. As of now, they’re all still living normal lives again and have suffered no significant side effects. It’s hard to imagine a better trial outcome than that! In a 1st, scientists use designer immune cells to send an autoimmune disease into remission
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 20, 2022 9:52:34 GMT -8
The Things They Do for Orange Previous Guy
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 20, 2022 9:57:49 GMT -8
What Do You Do When You Are Losing the War?
Russian-controlled regions of eastern and southern Ukraine announced plans Tuesday to start voting this week to become integral parts of Russia. The concerted and quickening Kremlin-backed efforts to swallow up four regions could set the stage for Moscow to escalate the war following Ukrainian successes on the battlefield.
The scheduling of referendums starting Friday in the Luhansk, Kherson and partly Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions came after a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin said the votes are needed and as Moscow is losing ground in the invasion it began nearly seven months ago, increasing pressure on the Kremlin for a stiff response.
Former President Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council chaired by Putin, said referendums that fold regions into Russia itself would make redrawn frontiers “irreversible” and enable Moscow to use “any means” to defend them.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba denounced the votes as a sham and tweeted that “Ukraine has every right to liberate its territories and will keep liberating them whatever Russia has to say.”
The votes, in territory Russia already controls, are all but certain to go Moscow’s way but are unlikely to be recognized by Western governments who are backing Ukraine with military and other support that has helped its forces seize momentum on battlefields in the east and south.
This could lead to full Russian Mobilization
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 20, 2022 10:01:42 GMT -8
He Just Wanted a Nose-Burger
An executive of a popular plant-based meat company has been arrested for allegedly biting another man’s nose.
Doug Ramsey, 53, the COO of Beyond Meat, was arrested Saturday in Fayetteville, Arkansas, after a man said Ramsey bit him in the nose in a parking garage after a college football game, according to local news station KNWA.
A responding police officer said he found “two males with bloody faces” at the scene, one of whom was later identified as Ramsey.
According to KNWA, citing a police report, Ramsey was attempting to leave the garage in a Bronco when a Subaru inched its way in front of his vehicle.
After the Subaru reportedly touched the Bronco’s front passenger-side tire, Ramsey got out of the vehicle and “punched through the back windshield of the Subaru,” KNWA reported.
The Subaru’s owner told police that when he got out of the car, Ramsey “pulled him in close and started punching his body.” Ramsey is also accused of biting the other man’s nose, “ripping the flesh on the tip of the nose,” and threatening to kill him, according to the man and witnesses who spoke to police.
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 20, 2022 10:03:12 GMT -8
Firearms for Felons
A federal law prohibiting people under felony indictment from buying firearms is unconstitutional, a federal judge in Texas has concluded, citing a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that significantly expanded gun rights.
U.S. District Judge David Counts, an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump, reached that conclusion on Monday in dismissing a federal indictment against Jose Gomez Quiroz, who had been charged under the decades-old ban.
Counts cited the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in June declaring for the first time that the right to "keep and bear arms" under the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment protects a person's right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense.
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 20, 2022 10:05:04 GMT -8
You Couldn't Pay Me Enough To Go to Russia
Brittney Griner’s highly publicized legal woes in Russia and the country’s invasion of Ukraine has the top WNBA players opting to take their talents elsewhere this offseason.
For the past few decades, Russia has been the preferred offseason destination for WNBA players to compete because of the high salaries that can exceed $1 million and the resources and amenities teams offered them.
That all has come to an abrupt end.
“Honestly my time in Russia has been wonderful, but especially with BG still wrongfully detained there, nobody’s going to go there until she’s home,” said Breanna Stewart, a Griner teammate on the Russian team that paid the duo millions. “I think that, you know, now, people want to go overseas and if the money is not much different, they want to be in a better place.”
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 20, 2022 10:06:49 GMT -8
Shocking!! DeathSentence Lied!
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis defended sending planeloads of migrants to Martha's Vineyard, amid accusation the political stunt may have violated anti-trafficking laws.
In an interview on Fox News Monday, DeSantis explained to host Sean Hannity why he sent two chartered flights with mostly Venezuelan migrants from Texas to Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.
The island is well-known as a vacation destination for wealthy liberals, and DeSantis said via spokespeople he was seeking to force the burdern of migration on liberal communities far from the border.
DeSantis pushed back at claims the migrants were persuaded to board the planes on the basis of misleading information, and said all had done so voluntarily.
"Not only that, they all signed consent forms to go. And then the vendor that is doing this for Florida provided them with a packet that had a map of Martha's Vineyard," said DeSantis.
"It had the numbers for different services on Martha's Vineyard. And then it had numbers for the overall agencies in Massachusetts that handle things involving immigration and refugees. So it was clearly voluntary."
NPR reported last week that some migrants were told they were being flown to Boston, not Martha's Vineyard.
The website Popular Information obtained the brochures given to the migrants, and found that they described a range of benefits it claimed the migrants were entitled to in Massachusetts.
But Matt Cameron, a Boston-based immigration attorney, told the outlet the information was false or misleading.
He said it described resettlement benefits available to refugees who have been referred by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and who are authorized to live in the United States. These benefits are not available to the migrants who arrived at Martha's Vineyard, he said.
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 20, 2022 10:08:42 GMT -8
Guess Who Can't "Stand Your Ground"
William “Marc” Wilson was recently convicted of involuntary manslaughter for a shooting that he says was in self-defense against a racist attack on a Georgia highway, and his family and lawyers say the case reveals a racial double standard for “stand your ground” laws.
“If you put me in Marc’s shoes, there’s no way that I would've been prosecuted,” Wilson’s cousin, Chance Pridgen, who is white, told Yahoo News. “Odds are I would've been given a medal — probably gotten a parade in my name. It’s unreal how he was treated just because he’s a little bit more tan than I am.”
Wilson, a biracial Black man, 21 years old at the time of the shooting on June 14, 2020, fired his legal handgun at a pickup truck of white teens who he says were yelling racial slurs at him and trying to run him and his white girlfriend off the road near Statesboro, Ga. One of those bullets struck and killed 17-year-old Haley Hutcheson, who was in the back seat of the truck.
After an emotional seven-day trial late last month in Bulloch County Superior Court, a jury found Wilson guilty of felony-level involuntary manslaughter. Wilson was acquitted on the other charges, including felony murder, which carried with it a potential life prison sentence. He is set to be sentenced Tuesday.
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