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Post by mhbruin on Jan 23, 2023 9:50:18 GMT -8
I can tell people are judgmental, just by looking at them.
I Think Japan's Prime Minister Is Telling People to Have More Sex
Japan's prime minister says his country is on the brink of not being able to function as a society because of its falling birth rate.
Fumio Kishida said it was a case of "now or never."
Japan - population 125 million - is estimated to have had fewer than 800,000 births last year. In the 1970s, that figure was more than two million.
Birth rates are slowing in many countries, including Japan's neighbours.
But the issue is particularly acute in Japan as life expectancy has risen in recent decades, meaning there are a growing number of older people, and a declining numbers of workers to support them.
Japan now has the world's second-highest proportion of people aged 65 and over - about 28% - after the tiny state of Monaco, according to World Bank data.
They Need to Get Busy in Monaco, Too.
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Post by mhbruin on Jan 23, 2023 9:53:15 GMT -8
Can I Get a Witness?
A former Russian paramilitary commander who claimed asylum in Norway earlier this month has been arrested by police.
Andrey Medvedev is being held under the Immigration Act, police spokesperson Jon Andreas Johansen told the BBC.
His lawyer, Brynjulf Risnes, told the BBC that the 26-year-old had been moved to a detention centre in the Oslo area.
Mr Medvedev, who crossed into Norway from Russia's far north two weeks ago, is believed to be the first member of the Wagner Group to defect to the West.
The mercenary group - which is believed to have close ties to the Kremlin - has been used in many Russian operations. UK officials estimate it makes up 10% of Moscow's forces in Ukraine.
The move came after "police concluded his situation was very dangerous," Mr Risnes told the BBC. "This is what everyone wanted to avoid, but we are looking for solutions."
Previously, he had been staying at a safe house.
Mr Medvedev's arrest meant he would be under increased security, the lawyer added. But he emphasised that the former mercenary was still being treated as a witness.
Mr Medvedev claims to have witnessed a host of war crimes - including seeing "deserters being executed" by the Wagner Group's internal security service - while fighting in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region.
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Post by mhbruin on Jan 23, 2023 10:00:09 GMT -8
No Relation to Minerva McGonagall of Hogwarts
A former high-ranking FBI counterintelligence official has been indicted on charges he helped a Russian oligarch, in violation of U.S. sanctions.
Charles McGonigal, the former special agent in charge of the FBI’s counterintelligence division in New York, is accused in an indictment unsealed Monday of working with a former Soviet diplomat-turned-Russian interpreter on behalf of Russian energy magnate Oleg Deripaska.
McGonigal was separately charged in federal court in Washington, D.C. with concealing $225,000 in payments he received from an outside source with whom he traveled to Europe.
McGonigal was required to report to the FBI contacts with foreign officials, but prosecutors allege that he hid that from his employer as he pursued business and foreign travel that created a conflict of interest with his law enforcement duties.
McGonigal, who had supervised investigations of Russian oligarchs, including Deripaska, before retiring in 2018, allegedly worked to have Deripaska’s sanctions lifted in 2019 and took money from him in 2021 to investigate a rival oligarch.
McGonigal, 54, and the interpreter, Sergey Shestakov, 69, were arrested Saturday and are scheduled to appear in court in Manhattan on Monday.
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Post by mhbruin on Jan 23, 2023 10:03:32 GMT -8
Who Let the Leopards Out, Who, Who?
Reuters is among many sources reporting that Poland intends to ask Germany for permission to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine… then send them no matter what Germany says. Sources in Germany seem to indicate that Berlin realizes they’ve lost control over the situation.
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Post by mhbruin on Jan 23, 2023 10:08:25 GMT -8
This Guy Was Admitted to USC? That's Low Standards Even for Them This student, the one far left in the picture above, actually chimed in. Of course, Hinkle’a lame story was bullshit, “They were barely doing introductions. The most obnoxious things he said were he watches Andrew Tate videos and reads the communist manifesto as his hobby. He was also hitting on the TA.”
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Post by mhbruin on Jan 23, 2023 10:09:46 GMT -8
This Guy Is Probably Too Dumb for USC, But Not for the QOP
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Post by mhbruin on Jan 23, 2023 10:12:18 GMT -8
Coming for Kyrsten
Democratic Rep. ComRuben Gallego on Monday became the first major candidate to announce a 2024 campaign for the Arizona Senate seat held by Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat-turned-independent who has yet to reveal her own plans.
Gallego, who would be the Grand Canyon State’s first Latino senator, uses his kickoff video to talk about how his single mother struggled to raise her four children. The congressman goes on to describe his experience serving with the Marines in Iraq, where his unit suffered heavy casualties.
“You never fully come back from the war,” said Gallego, “Fighting through PTSD. There were some very low moments in my life. But I still didn’t give up hope and pushed forward.” He finishes by going after Sinema and her extensive ties to special interests, declaring, “If you’re more likely to be meeting with the powerful than the powerless, you’re doing this job incorrectly.”
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Post by mhbruin on Jan 23, 2023 10:14:52 GMT -8
Is the Debt Ceiling Illegal? Unconstitutional?On one hand: the law supporting the “Debt Ceiling” derives from the 1917 “Liberty Bond” Act, passed to facilitate and control payment for US entry into World War 1, but ignored until Newt Gingrich resurrected it for blackmail purposes in the 1990s. On the other hand: The 14th Amendment to the Constitution states: "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law ... shall not be questioned." All appropriations laws now in effect direct Congress to incur public debt to purchase and pay for everything the federal government does. So the 1917 law conflicts with both the Constitution and scores of laws passed in the 2010s and 2020s directing payment of everything appropriated by the federal government (social security, defense, infrastructure, minor stuff like that). So No. 1 — the 1917 Law is unconstitutional because it questions to validity of US public debt as prohibited by the 14th Amendment. But even if that were not so, if the 1917 law prohibits payment for Congressionally appropriated programs, it conflicts with every law authorizing those programs. What do you do when two laws conflict? This article by the great Robert Hockett, Stop the Charade: The Federal Budget Is Its Own ‘Debt-Ceiling’ lists a bunch of reasons why the appropriations laws must prevail over the 1917 law. Here are just two: Stopping payment for spending already incurred under current law based on a supposed 1917 Law leads to an absurd result: Under fundamental law, if “there is literally no possible rational interpretation, the putative ‘law’ in question [i.e., the 1917 Act] is treated as a nullity.” In conflicts of laws, the more recently passed laws take precedence: “where two legislative enactments appear to conflict, the later enactment will be read as implicitly repealing the earlier one – at least as applied in any manner that yields conflict.” Stop the Charade: The Federal Budget Is Its Own ‘Debt-Ceiling’
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Post by mhbruin on Jan 23, 2023 10:22:34 GMT -8
California! We're #7!
California has a reputation as a tough place to buy a gun.
It’s home to mandatory waiting periods and background checks for firearms purchases. It bans so-called military-style assault weapons, one of just eight states, plus D.C., with such a law. And in 2016, it became one of the first states to enact a red-flag law, which allows authorities to remove firearms from someone believed to be a danger to themselves or others.
California’s patchwork of gun laws has been judged the strongest in the nation by the gun-control advocacy group Giffords.
But Saturday night’s horrific mass killing at a Monterey Park dance hall shows how the state’s strict gun laws are incapable of fully preventing gun violence in a country where gun ownership is widely considered a constitutionally protected right, firearms move freely between states with vastly different regulations and gun-control measures are dotted with exceptions.
Yet California’s problem with gun violence does remain significantly smaller than in most other states, which advocates credit to the rules that are on the books.
With its restrictive state laws, California has among the lowest firearms mortality rates in the nation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It ranked seventh lowest nationwide with 8.5 deaths per 100,000 people in 2020 — well below the nationwide average of 13.7. Texas posted a rate of 14.2. Georgia had a rate of 17.7. The highest rate was in Mississippi, at 28.6 deaths per 100,000 people.
The Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan organization that studies the state’s policies and politics, found the state’s death rate from large-scale shooting incidents from 2019 to 2021 was below the national average.
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Post by mhbruin on Jan 23, 2023 10:27:52 GMT -8
This Seems Reasonable
The U.S. health regulator on Monday proposed one dose of the latest updated COVID-19 shot annually for healthy adults, similar to the influenza immunization campaign, as it aims to simplify the country's COVID-vaccine strategy.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration also asked its panel of external advisers to consider the usage of two COVID vaccine shots a year for some young children, older adults and persons with compromised immunity.The regulator proposed the need for routine selection of variants for updating the vaccine, similar to the way strains for flu vaccines are changed annually, in briefing documents ahead of a meeting of its panel on Thursday.
The FDA hopes annual immunization schedules may contribute to less complicated vaccine deployment and fewer vaccine administration errors, leading to improved vaccine coverage rates.The agency's proposal was on expected lines, following its announcement of its intention for the update last month.
Right Now Around 565 Deaths Per Day or 200,000 Per Year.
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