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mes5464
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Brazilian town embraces universal income experiment
Maricá (Brazil) (AFP) - Does being handed money every month -- no strings attached -- sound attractive? The residents of a small town in Brazil are finding out.

Governments and think-tanks around the world are increasingly fascinated by the idea of a universal basic income, where citizens are given cash to spend as they want.

In Marica, a seaside town of about 150,000 people near Rio de Janeiro, the left-wing municipal government has spent the last year finding out how it works.

"We are a laboratory for the Brazilian left," says Washington Quaqua, who introduced the experiment as mayor in December 2015 before stepping down. He was replaced by another candidate from the leftist Workers' Party, Fabiano Horta.

The idea of a universal basic income isn't new, but long-considered as a potential tool for social equality and redistribution of wealth.

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Republican Lawmaker Pushes to Abolish Income Taxes | Fox Business
While America awaits details on President Trump’s tax cut plan, one Republican lawmaker from California is proposing to fundamentally change the tax code.

“We are getting rid of the income tax. We are doing something that hasn’t been done in 100 years. We are moving towards a consumption system, to a cash flow system,” Rep. Devin Nunes told the FOX Business Network’s Stuart Varney.

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Sheriff outraged after being forced to disarm before entering hockey arena | Fox News
In one Washington state arena, a sheriff effectively had to toss his gun in the penalty box.

Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich said he was outraged Saturday night when he was prevented from entering the Spokane Arena to promote a charity hockey game, because he was carrying his gun -- even though he was on duty.

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Big Brother is watching you: Jim Rogers prophesizes death of cash & total govt control of spending — RT Business
“Governments are always looking out for themselves first, and it's the same old thing that has been going on for hundreds of years. The Indians recently did the same thing. They withdrew 86 percent of the currency in circulation, and they have now made it illegal to spend more than, I think it's about $4,000 in any cash transaction. In France you cannot use more than, I think it's a €1,000,”said Rogers in an interview with MacroVoices Podcast.

“Many countries are already doing this. Some states in the US you cannot make cash transactions above a certain amount. Governments love it. Then they can control you. If you want to go and buy a cup of coffee, they know how many you drink, where you buy them, etc., if they can all put it into electronic formats and they will. The world is all going electronic,” the investor said.

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St. Louis Passes Bill to Become Abortion Sanctuary City
The city of St. Louis added abortion protections to its non-discrimination ordinance, a move religious organizations claim could violate their religious liberty.

On Friday, the St. Louis City Board of Aldermen voted 17-10 to add abortion and contraceptive use to existing non-discrimination laws that are generally used to prevent discrimination based on race, religion, or sex. Board Bill 203 bans employers or housing providers from turning down prospective employees or tenants because they are pregnant, are having or had an abortion, or use contraception.

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Russian Jets Buzzed U.S. Destroyer
Four Russian military aircraft conducted low passes against a U.S. destroyer in the Black Sea last week, the first such military provocation since the new Trump administration took office.

The incident took place Feb. 10 and involved the USS Porter, a guided missile destroyer, fending off low flights by what the commander of the ship regarded as potentially dangerous flybys.

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PARIS ERUPTS IN VIOLENCE: streets are NO-GO ZONES | World | News | Express.co.uk
Five large areas have been reduced to no go areas for the past five nights as masked men cause mayhem on the streets.

Now there are fears the fall out from allegations of police brutality could spread all over the country as unrest in the city grows.

Residents have been on lockdown as armed police tried to tackle the rioters who have caused millions of pounds of damage.

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Monopolies Are Worse Than We Thought - Bloomberg View
Economists are increasingly turning their attention to the problem of monopoly. This doesn’t mean literal monopoly, like when one utility company provides all the power in a city. It refers to market concentration in general -- when an industry goes from having 20 players to having only 10, or when the four biggest companies in an industry start taking a bigger and bigger share of sales. This sort of creeping oligopoly acts much like a literal monopoly -- it raises prices, limits market size and tends to make the economy less efficient.

There’s now evidence that market concentration could also be hurting workers, by decreasing the share of national income that they receive. It’s probably making inequality worse. I also suspect that creeping monopoly will prove to be one of the main reasons for decreasing business dynamism.  And it could even be a contributor to slow productivity growth. In other words, many of the diseases in our economy can probably be traced, at least in part, to the problem of market concentration. And it's getting worse:

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We will not pay: the Americans withholding their taxes to fight Trump | US news | The Guardian
Andrew Newman always pays his taxes, even if he hates what the government is doing with them. But not this year. For him, Donald Trump is the dealbreaker. He’ll pay his city and state taxes but will refuse to pay federal income tax as a cry of civil disobedience against the president and his new administration.

Newman is not alone. A nascent movement has been detected to revive the popularity of tax resistance – last seen en masse in America during the Vietnam war but which has been, sporadically, a tradition in the US and beyond going back many centuries.

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Russian spy ship spotted closer to US, near Navy submarine base | Fox News
The Russian spy ship Viktor Leonov on Wednesday morning was spotted 40 miles closer to the U.S. -- and not far from a Navy submarine base in Connecticut, a U.S. official told Fox News.

The ship was spotted 30 miles south of Groton, Conn., but it remained in international waters. The U.S. territorial boundary extends 12 miles from the coast.

The Russian spy ship was currently “loitering” in the water, the U.S. official said. 

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Doubts grow that GOP can repeal Obamacare - POLITICO
Republicans have reached a gut check moment: After spending more than six years vowing to fix the flagging patient that is Obamacare, it’s the GOP’s own repeal effort that’s on life support.

Undoing the health care law despised by conservatives seemed to be a straightforward proposition for the party after it won the White House and retained control of both chambers of Congress. Instead, Republicans are sniping over how much of the law to scrap, what to replace it with and when. At this moment, it's far from a sure thing any plan could get through Congress.

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Why US Economic Freedom Is at a Historic Low
One critical underlying factor for this lack of economic dynamism has been the startling decline of America’s economic freedom, an unfortunate legacy of Barack Obama’s eight-year presidency.

The Heritage Foundation’s 2017 Index of Economic Freedom—an annual global study that compares countries’ entrepreneurial environments—highlights the urgent need for the U.S. to change course. For the ninth time in the past 10 years since 2008, America has lost ground.

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Coming Soon To A City Near You: The US Military's Plan To Take Over America | Zero Hedge
According to “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” a Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command, the U.S. military plans to use armed forces to solve future domestic political and social problems.

What they’re really talking about is martial law, packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security.

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Former NSA Analyst: Intel Community Vows Trump Will "Die in Jail" » Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!
According to former NSA analyst John Schindler, elements of the intelligence community have gone “nuclear” against President Donald Trump and are now vowing “he will die in jail”.
Schindler, a former professor at the Naval War College, is known to be provocative with his tweets, but what he revealed earlier today is still raising eyebrows.
Schindler was asked by another Twitter user, “What do you think is going on inside NatSec right now after Trump’s “intelligence” tweet this morning?”
That was a reference to Trump tweeting that information was being illegally leaked by members of the CIA and NSA to the Washington Post and the New York Times.
Schindler responded, “Now we go nuclear. IC war going to new levels. Just got an EM fm senior IC friend, it began: “He will die in jail.”

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Schools Cut Meat/Cheese From Lunch To Fight Global Warming | The Daily Caller
Oakland schools partnered with the environmental group Friends of the Earth (FOE) to fight global warming by making student lunches climate-friendly.

FOE gave kids a lunch menu designed to eliminate foods it says are “unsustainable for our planet.” The new menu features far less meat and more plant-based food. Any meat or cheese the school did use came from “pastured, organic dairy cows.” The student’s lunch menu went from beef hot dogs and pepperoni pizza to vegan stir fry tofu and vegan tostadas. The new FOE-approved menu served meat and cheese less frequently and reduced the portion sizes.

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OCC student suspended after filming teacher saying Trump's election was 'an act of terrorism' - The Orange County Register
COSTA MESA – An Orange Coast College student who secretly videotaped his instructor making anti-Trump statements was suspended from school and told to write a letter of apology as well as a three-page essay about the incident.

The college suspended Caleb O’Neil for the current semester and the summer term, saying he violated a Coast Community College District policy prohibiting recording someone on district property without that person’s consent.

“It is my hope that this experience will lead you to truly think through your actions and the consequences of those actions when making decisions in the future,” Victoria Lugo, interim dean of students, wrote in a Feb. 9 letter to O’Neil, whose video clips of instructor Olga Perez Stable Cox in December went viral.

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Bipartisan bill seeks warrants for police use of 'stingray' cell trackers
A bipartisan group of House and Senate lawmakers introduced legislation Wednesday requiring police agencies to get a search warrant before they can deploy powerful cellphone surveillance technology known as "stingrays" that sweep up information about the movements of innocent Americans while tracking suspected criminals.

“Owning a smartphone or fitness tracker shouldn’t give the government a blank check to track your movements," said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who introduced the bill with Reps. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and John Conyers, D-Mich. "Law enforcement should be able to use GPS data, but they need to get a warrant. This bill sets out clear rules to make sure our laws keep up with the times."

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Google's Artificial Intelligence Is Becoming 'Human-Like' — and That Might Be a Bad Thing
(ANTIMEDIA) Will artificial intelligence get more aggressive and selfish the more intelligent it becomes? A new report out of Google’s DeepMind AI division suggests this is possible based on the outcome of millions of video game sessions it monitored. The results of the two games indicate that as artificial intelligence becomes more complex, it is more likely to take extreme measures to ensure victory, including sabotage and greed.

The first game, Gathering, is a simple one that involves gathering digital fruit. Two DeepMind AI agents were pitted against each other after being trained in the ways of deep reinforcement learning. After 40 million turns, the researchers began to notice something curious. Everything was ok as long as there were enough apples, but when scarcity set in, the agents used their laser beams to knock each other out and seize all the apples.

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Ex-CIA Agent Evan McMullin: Donald Trump is a "Domestic Enemy" » Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!
After Trump criticized the FBI and the NSA for leaking information to the Washington Post and the New York Times, McMullin tweeted, “By oath, intelligence officials’ first duty is to “defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
By oath, intelligence officials' first duty is to "defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.." https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/sta ... 2281699331" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; …
So, the real scandal isn't that the President of the United States of America appears to have been co-opted by America's greatest adversary? https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/sta ... 2281699331" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; …

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Paris riots latest - Violence approaches Eurostar hub and police attacked | World | News | Express.co.uk
WIDESPREAD suburban rioting spilled into central Paris last night as hundreds went on the rampage over the alleged rape of a young black man by French police.

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Mother Of 4 Defies Deportation Order, Takes Sanctuary In Church « CBS Denver
DENVER (CBS4) – A mother of four is defying a deportation order by taking sanctuary at a church in Denver.

Jeanette Vizguerra came to the United States illegally 14 years ago. She declined to meet with immigration officials in Centennial on Wednesday because of fears that she would be deported.

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WISCONSIN STUDENTS DEMAND FREE TUITION FOR BLACK STUDENTS
MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- Black students should be offered free tuition and housing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison because blacks were legally barred from education during slavery and UW-Madison remains out of reach for black students today, the student government said Wednesday.

The Associated Students of Madison said in a resolution that students from suburban high schools are overrepresented and that the consideration of ACT and SAT scores in applications restricts opportunities for the poor and thus upholds "white supremacy." Race relations have been a contentious issue at the Wisconsin's flagship campus for months and the university has proposed some measures aimed at improving diversity.

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Richland florist discriminated against gay couple by refusing service, state’s highest court rules | The Seattle Times
A Richland florist who refused to provide flowers to a gay couple for their wedding violated anti-discrimination law, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

The court ruled unanimously that Barronelle Stutzman discriminated against longtime customers Rob Ingersoll and Curt Freed when she refused to do the flowers for their 2013 wedding because of her religious opposition to same-sex marriage. Instead, Stutzman suggested several other florists in the area who would help them.

“We’re thrilled that the Washington Supreme Court has ruled in our favor. The court affirmed that we are on the right side of the law and the right side of history,” Ingersoll and Freed said in a statement.

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I just marvel. It's like we're all just watching a sick movie, but no, it's real. Thanks for sharing all this news in one place, mes; I appreciate it.

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Tech billionaire issues stark warning saying artificial intellIgence could DESTROY human race and people already 'part cyborgs' thanks to dependence on smartphones
The creative genius added people will have to depend on a ‘universal income’ because robots will do everything

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