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Post by mhbruin on Mar 9, 2023 8:51:44 GMT -8
In democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes.
Is Ukraine Hoping For More Latvian Drunk Drivers?
Cars confiscated from drunk drivers in Latvia are being sent to Ukraine, under a new scheme designed to help the war effort there.
Eight seized vehicles left a car pound in the capital, Riga, on Wednesday and are to due to cross the border soon.
It is the first convoy to be sent under the plan, approved by the Latvian parliament last month.
MPs agreed to allow the transfer of state-owned cars to the Ukrainian military and hospitals.
Late last year, Latvia changed the law so that drivers found with 1.5mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood - three times the legal limit - could have their vehicles seized and sold by the government.
Latvia has among the worst rates of drinking and driving in Europe, according to public broadcaster LSM, with an estimated 3,500 cases a year.
The change in the law led to a surge in confiscations that filled state pounds in Latvia in a matter of weeks.
As a result, authorities pledged to hand over two dozen cars a week to Twitter Convoy, a Latvian charity that sends donated vehicles to Ukraine.
"No-one expected that people are drunk-driving so many vehicles," the NGO's founder, Reinis Poznaks, told Reuters news agency. "They can't sell them as fast as people are drinking. So that's why I came with the idea - send them to Ukraine."
It Would Help Even More if a Drunk Was Driving a Tank
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 9, 2023 8:53:51 GMT -8
Long COVID ... Short of Money
Up to 4 million full-time workers are out of the labor force due to long Covid, according to research from the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank.
NBC News has asked insurance providers for comment.
For some, the care they need to manage their chronic illness has left them in medical debt, which can easily balloon into the thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars, experts say. It's unclear how many are being denied coverage, but a paper published in May in JAMA Health Forum estimated that the individual medical costs of long Covid could come to roughly $9,000 a year.
Part of the problem, experts say, is the ambiguity of long Covid symptoms, which can range from extreme fatigue to loss of taste and smell to debilitating heart palpitations. There's no official test to diagnose the condition, nor is there any specific recommended treatment. That makes it more difficult for doctors to come up with a proper treatment.
Before they pay, insurance companies often want to know if the treatment is proven to work.
Long Covid patients can fight the denied claims through appeals or going to court — a time-consuming and draining approach for any patient, let alone those who may suffer from fatigue and brain fog, said Michele Johnson, the executive director of the Tennessee Justice Center, a legal aid group that has helped long Covid patients get health coverage.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 9, 2023 8:56:16 GMT -8
Pintrest Is For Pedophiles
Aggregating individually innocuous images of minors into potentially sexually suggestive collections is a practice experts describe as awful, but in many cases, lawful, meaning platforms have no legal obligation to take action.
Yet Pinterest isn’t just allowing this to happen on its website — its recommendation engine is making it easy. The company is inadvertently curating this content for adults who seek it out and potentially exposing the girls to pedophiles, an NBC News investigation found.
Over a one-month period, NBC News created a Pinterest account and reviewed hundreds of girls’ Pinterest accounts as well as their followers’ pages, many of whom appeared to be men. (The majority of the girls’ profiles were algorithmically surfaced by Pinterest itself during the course of the reporting.) The review showed that the site’s recommendation engine serves up photos and videos of visibly underage girls, including toddlers, in large quantities to a user seeking out this type of imagery. The children are typically seen bending over, doing the splits, sticking their tongues out and dancing in their bedrooms while dressed in outfits like pajama shorts, bathing suits and leotards.
“This is material that is innocently posted and is now being used to drive sexual interest in children,” said Stephen Sauer of the nonprofit Canadian Centre for Child Protection, which works to stop child exploitation.
Sauer conducted an independent review of the site at the request of NBC News, using a similar methodology. Upon doing an initial search for images of kids, he said, his homepage “almost immediately” filled with images of children often dressed in similarly revealing attire, several of which had received sexually suggestive comments.
Spokesperson Crystal Espinosa said in a statement that Pinterest has “a strict zero-tolerance policy for any content that may exploit or endanger minors,” and noted that when sexually suggestive boards containing “otherwise innocuous or non-sexual images” are detected, the company immediately takes them down and bans the creators.
Pinterest removed pages whose links NBC News shared as part of its requests for comment from the company.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 9, 2023 9:16:20 GMT -8
Michigan Could be Making Progress on Helping Unions
The legislation — House Bill 4004 and House Bill 4005 — both passed by a one-vote margin with all Democrats sticking together to support the measures.
HB 4004 would repeal right-to-work for public sector workers. A U.S. Supreme Court decision barring public sector unions from requiring employees covered by collective bargaining agreements to pay union dues renders HB 4004 unenforceable. But proponents of the bill want to change Michigan’s labor laws for public employees in the event the court overturns the decision.
HB 4005, meanwhile, would repeal Michigan's right-to-work law for workers in the private sector.
Both bills were modified late Wednesday to include a $1 million appropriation to the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity to respond to public questions about the legislation and implement it.
The appropriation means that the legislation is not subject to a public referendum in which voters could reject the law. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in her first term issued an executive directive promising to veto any legislation "that circumvents the right to a referendum."
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 9, 2023 9:17:39 GMT -8
In Russia, Could the Tail Be Wagnering the Dog?
Wagner’s rise mirrors the Iranian-backed Islamist terror group Hezbollah. Once a faction of disaffected Shia Muslims in Lebanon’s Civil War, Hezbollah has become a shadow state with international capabilities. How Wagner evolves in the coming years has major implications for international security. Studying Hezbollah helps us understand what factors may work in Wagner’s favour and will help develop a countering strategy.
The first essential factor is state backing. Originally, Hezbollah was a fringe umbrella movement, whose name “Party of God” was considered a joke by locals. Within a year of Tehran’s agents establishing contact, the group conducted the 1983 Beirut Barracks Bombing, which led to the US withdrawal from Lebanon. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has acknowledged the importance of Tehran to the group’s longevity, but the relationship is symbiotic. Tehran gains influence in Lebanon and globally through Hezbollah’s networks, allowing it to threaten Israeli interests.
Wagner possessed state support even before the invasion of Ukraine. Key members have Russian Military Intelligence backgrounds – a profession that Putin claims no member leaves. Prighozhin states that his directives come from “Papa” (Putin); defectors divulge the intelligence and logistical support they received from the Kremlin. In return, the Kremlin gains influence across Africa and the Middle East; this translates into diplomatic and narrative clout for minimal investment. The fact that Wagner’s influence has been cited as a factor in some states’ positions on Ukraine indicates that the Kremlin is almost certain to continue these operations.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 9, 2023 9:20:36 GMT -8
Previous Guy Would Have Given Away the Store .. and the Schools ... and the Homes ... and the Entire Country
Donald Trump revealed today the way he would have reached a deal with Vladimir Putin to keep him from invading Ukraine… by giving Putin parts of Ukraine.
Would He Have Then Proclaimes "Peace in Out Time"?
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 9, 2023 9:21:52 GMT -8
I Think She Means that Russian Troops Are Reduced to Eating Squirrels.
It may sound strange that even a propaganda show on Russia’s all propaganda network would blithely pretend the people of the U.K. are forced to eat rodents to keep up their support for the Ukrainian government. However, this is part of the ongoing narrative; one that says Germany is facing economic disaster, the European Union is about to splinter, the United States is on the brink of civil war, and only Russia is really capable of ruling—sorry, make that saving—the world.
But if there’s anything fragile and prone to breakage at the moment, it’s the fantasy Russia has woven to hold its own people in check. How tattered that illusion is becoming was very visible overnight in the first place that Russia dragged its army in the post-Soviet era.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 9, 2023 9:25:23 GMT -8
What Did They Expect? You Go to Work For the Devil ... You Will Get Stuck By Pitchforks
Many Fox News employees are reeling in the wake of stunning court filings released as part of the defamation lawsuit against the network by Dominion Voting Systems, according to The Daily Beast.
Court documents released in recent weeks have included bombshell revelations about the inner workings of the right-wing network, including text transcripts appearing to show that star hosts and network executives sought to mollify former President Donald Trump and his supporters by giving airtime to lies about the 2020 presidential election despite knowing the stories were bogus. Meanwhile, journalists in the network’s news side appeared to have caught flak for pushing back against those narratives.
The Daily Beast reported that it spoke to nine network staffers and insiders who felt that the court filings further damaged the reputation of the network’s news division and made it appear as though the network made decisions based on keeping viewers rather than disseminating the truth.
“We are not happy,” a Fox News reporter told The Daily Beast. Another employee, a news producer, said it was a “really bad time to be working here.”
One reporter told the news outlet that “it’s pretty damn clear the motivation is the money-based machine on the opinion side that drives all their business decisions, that drives a lot of their programming decisions.”
Another veteran journalist reportedly said he felt “incredibly angry” that the reputations of legitimate news people were being “dragged through the mud because of the buffoonish and dangerous actions of a few during that election.”
To make matters worse, it seems Fox News may be preventing its journalists from reporting on the lawsuit. According to “Mediabuzz” host Howard Kurtz, the network forbade him from covering the Dominion suit, a decision he said he strongly disagreed with.
One of the producers interviewed by The Daily Beast said she felt the news division was being censored.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 9, 2023 9:27:08 GMT -8
He's the Luckiest Guy in the World. But Was His Mother?
A bill that would have prohibited minors from getting married in West Virginia was defeated Wednesday night in a legislative committee.
The Republican-dominated Senate Judiciary Committee rejected the bill on a 9-8 vote, a week after it passed the House of Delegates.
The vote came shortly after the bill’s main sponsor, Democratic Del. Kayla Young of Kanawha County, testified briefly before the committee. She said that since 2000 there have been more than 3,600 marriages in the state involving one or more children.
Currently, children can marry as young as 16 in West Virginia with parental consent. Anyone younger than that also must get a judge’s waiver.
“For now, there will be no floor for the age of marriage in WV, endangering our kids,” Young wrote on Twitter after the vote.
In a rebuke, Cabell County Democratic Sen. Mike Woelfel reminded the committee after the vote that Wednesday was International Women’s Day.
Some of the bill’s opponents have argued that teenage marriages are a part of life in West Virginia.
Kanawha County Republican Sen. Mike Stuart, a former federal prosecutor who sided with the majority, said his vote “wasn’t a vote against women.” He said his mother was married when she was 16, and “six months later, I came along. I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 9, 2023 9:30:14 GMT -8
Math, science, history, unraveling the mystery, That all started with the big blunder
A clueless mistake led to “Jeopardy!” revealing the outcome of the game on-air Wednesday before it even started. (Watch the video below.)
Host Mayim Bialik was congratulating finalists in the High School Reunion Tournament and wishing them good luck when the game show cut to a scene of the contestants with their final tallies showing.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 9, 2023 9:31:38 GMT -8
This Will Give You Nightmares
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 9, 2023 9:34:07 GMT -8
We Don't Need No Education
Hundreds of thousands of young people who came of age during the pandemic but didn’t go to college. Many have turned to hourly jobs or careers that don’t require a degree, while others have been deterred by high tuition and the prospect of student debt.
What first looked like a pandemic blip has turned into a crisis. Nationwide, undergraduate college enrollment dropped 8% from 2019 to 2022, with declines even after returning to in-person classes, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse. The slide in the college-going rate since 2018 is the steepest on record, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Economists say the impact could be dire.
At worst, it could signal a new generation with little faith in the value of a college degree. At minimum, it appears those who passed on college during the pandemic are opting out for good. Predictions that they would enroll after a year or two haven’t borne out.
Fewer college graduates could worsen labor shortages in fields from health care to information technology. For those who forgo college, it usually means lower lifetime earnings — 75% less compared with those who get bachelor’s degrees, according to Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. And when the economy sours, those without degrees are more likely to lose jobs.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 9, 2023 9:37:57 GMT -8
Raise Your Hand if You Believe that a Six-Year-Old Climbed to the Top Shelf of a Closet, Took Down a Gun, and Removed the Trigger Lock
A six-year-old boy who shot his teacher in January will not face criminal charges, a prosecutor in Newport News, Virginia, said on Wednesday night.
On 6 January, the first grader shot Abigail Zwerner while she was teaching class at Richneck elementary school, leaving her seriously injured.
According to a lawsuit on Zwerner’s behalf against the Newport News school district, school officials had given the child a one-day suspension for breaking the teacher’s cellphone, and teachers alerted administrators about the child’s behavior, noting they believed he had a gun.
The district superintendent was replaced “without cause” and the school assistant principal resigned.
The Newport News commonwealth’s attorney, Howard Gwynn, has yet to decide whether adults including the child’s parents, who owned the gun, will be held liable for the child’s actions.
Speaking to an NBC affiliate on Wednesday, he questioned whether there were legal grounds to charge the child, noting that the “prospect that a six-year-old can stand trial is problematic”.
“We don’t believe the law supports charging a six-year-old with a criminal offense as serious as this one,” Gwynn told 13NewsNow.
Police say the child’s mother legally purchased the gun. James Ellenson, an attorney for the child’s family, has said the gun was “secured” with a trigger lock on the top shelf of a closet, adding that the parents did not know how the child accessed the gun. The child was sent for mental health treatment.
The family have said the child has an acute disability, adding that they were “always been committed to responsible gun ownership and keeping firearms out of the reach of children”. Under Virginia law, the parents could be charged with a misdemeanor over access to the gun.
The city’s police chief, Steve Drew, said last month prosecutors were interviewing people surrounding the situation. Of 16 to 20 students in the classroom, none were injured. Zwerner escorted them out as a school employee restrained the child.
Zwerner’s attorney, Diane Toscano, has said the shooting was “entirely preventable”, had administrators taken action when “they had knowledge of imminent danger”.
“Instead, they failed to act and Abby was shot,” Toscano said.
Gwynn said: “Our objective is not just to do something as quickly as possible. Once we analyze all the facts, we will charge any person or persons that we believe we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt committed a crime.”
So far this year there have been seven shootings at US schools, leaving three people injured, according to the Washington Post. Last year, there were 46 school shootings, the most since 1999.
Shootings by a child on campus remain extremely rare. David Riedman, the founder of the K-12 School Shooting Database, told NBC News there had been just 17 shootings by a child under 10 years old since 1970.
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