News You Can Use

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21 Across U.S. Are Indicted in ‘Modern-Day Sex Slave’ Ring - The New York Times

CHICAGO — The young women, many of them from poor families in Thailand, were promised trips to the United States. They would also receive visas. Life in cities like Chicago would be rosy, they were told, and they would be able to help support their families back home.

But the promises, federal authorities say, came with an enormous toll: The women were required to work as prostitutes in cities all over this country until they could pay off exorbitant “bondage debts,” set as high as $60,000, to the very people who had promised them better lives.

Law enforcement authorities on Thursday announced federal sex-trafficking conspiracy charges against 21 people, part of what they described as one of the most elaborate and extensive sex-trafficking operations they had seen. The operation had gone on for at least eight years, netted tens of millions of dollars, and involved hundreds of women who were shuttled among American cities, sometimes every few weeks, the officials said.

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Mark Zuckerberg calls for universal basic income at Harvard speech

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called on the need to consider universal basic income for Americans during his Harvard Commencement Speech.

Zuckerberg's comments reflect those of other Silicon Valley bigwigs, including Sam Altman, the president of venture capital firm Y Combinator.

"Every generation expands its definition of equality. Now it's time for our generation to define a new social contract," Zuckerberg said during his speech. "We should have a society that measures progress not by economic metrics like GDP but by how many of us have a role we find meaningful. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to make sure everyone has a cushion to try new ideas."

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University hosts training on how to 'reduce the impact of white privilege' - The College Fix

Western Washington University is scheduled to host a workshop today that aims to “reduce the impact of white privilege on social and academic relations,” according to campus officials.

Part of its Campus Equity and Inclusion Forums, the event at the public university is designed for faculty, staff and students, who will use presentations, interactive exercises and facilitated discussions to learn “how to reduce the expression and effects of white privilege,” the university’s website states.

The seminar will be led by history professor Randall Jimerson, who is white.

“I think the harmful effects of ‘white privilege’ are that it can reflect an insensitivity to the subtle effects of both racism and lack of awareness of the differences between how people of color and people called ‘white’ are treated in everyday life,” Jimerson told The College Fix via email. “Not being aware that other people face daily, often subtle, discrimination can make white people insensitive to these debilitating effects.”

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Evergreen State students demand professor resign for failing to participate in 'Day of Absence' - Washington Times

Over the last 72 hours, students have taken over a small liberal arts college in Washington state, and only one adult has tried to stop them.
Students at Evergreen State College in Olympia, who filmed their exploits and posted the videos on social media, have occupied and barricaded the library, shouting down anyone who disagrees with them or shows insufficient passion for racial justice.
Biology professor Bret Weinstein was berated by dozens of students outside of his classroom Tuesday morning for refusing to participate in an event in which white people were invited to leave campus for a day. Now, he says police have told him to hold his classes off campus due to safety concerns.
Things are “out of control at Evergreen,” he said.
“Police told me protesters stopped cars yesterday, demanding information about occupants,” Mr. Weinstein told The Washington Times. “They believe I was being sought. It appears that the campus has been under the effective control of protesters since 9:30 a.m. Tuesday. Police are on lockdown, hamstrung by the college administration. Students, staff and faculty are not safe.”

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Court rebukes NSA over surveillance of U.S. citizens | Miami Herald

WASHINGTON
U.S. intelligence agencies conducted illegal surveillance on American citizens over a five-year period, a practice that earned them a sharp rebuke from a secret court that called the matter a “very serious” constitutional issue.

The criticism is in a lengthy secret ruling that lays bare some of the frictions between the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and U.S. intelligence agencies obligated to obtain the court’s approval for surveillance activities.

The ruling, dated April 26 and bearing the label “top secret,” was obtained and published Thursday by the news site Circa.

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China Charges Activist From Taiwan With ‘Subverting State Power’ - The New York Times

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Lee Ming-cheh, a human rights advocate from Taiwan who was detained in China in March, has been formally arrested on a charge of “subverting state power,” the Chinese government has announced, amid a continuing crackdown on civil society organizations.

His arrest, announced on Friday, marks the first time the Chinese authorities have charged someone from Taiwan with subversion. Many people in Taiwan fear it will not be the last, and it has added a new strain to the tensions between Beijing and Taipei.

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British Airways boss 'tries to gag staff' over IT failure which hit 300,000 passengers after 'inexperienced staff outsourced to India didn't know to launch back up system'

THE British Airways boss is alleged to have tried to “gag staff” over the IT meltdown which hit 300,000 passengers – as inexperienced staff in India didn’t know how to launch the back up system, it has been claimed.

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Islam on Track to Overtake Christianity as World's No. 1 Religion | LifeZette

Based on demographic trends, Pew projects that the Muslim population will grow by 70 percent worldwide between 2015 and 2060, compared with an overall population growth of 32 percent. That far exceeds the projected growth of the second- and third-fastest growing religions, Christianity and Hinduism, respectively.

The reason for the disparity comes down to simple demographics. Muslims are younger and have more babies than Christians and members of other religions. The projected birth rate of Muslim women from 2015 to 2020 is 2.9 babies per woman, compared with a non-Muslim fertility rate of 2.2.

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Flash - Paris black feminist festival 'prohibited' to whites sparks outrage - France 24

PARIS (AFP) - 
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo on Sunday called for a black feminist festival in the French capital to be banned, saying it was "prohibited to white people."

The first edition of the Nyansapo Festival, due to run from July 28 to 30 at a cultural centre in Paris, bills itself as "an event rooted in blackfeminism, activism, and on (a) European scale."

Four-fifths of the festival area will be set aside as a "non-mixed" space "for black women," according to its website in French.

Another space will be a "non-mixed" area "for black people" regardless of gender. Another space would be "open to all."

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EU MADNESS: Catalonia cow to be KILLED as it ‘didn’t have paperwork’ | World | News | Express.co.uk

AN ORPHANED cow who won the hearts of its neighbours has been “sentenced to death” by the European Union because it “did not have the right paperwork”.

[Sunain]

Liberals waste no time playing the anti-Christian card

ANDREW MACDOUGALL - Special to The Globe and Mail
Published Monday, May 29, 2017 12:22PM EDT
Last updated Monday, May 29, 2017 12:22PM EDT

Andrew MacDougall, a former director of communications to Stephen Harper, is a communications consultant based in London.

Well, it didn’t take long for the clouds to roll in.

Conservative leader Andrew Scheer barely had time to try on his new title before the “sunny ways” Liberals deployed two attack dogs to criticize the 38-year old Catholic father of five.

“Make no mistake about it,” warned Toronto Liberal MP Adam Vaughan, “[Scheer] is somebody who has voted against every single civil rights advancement in the last 25 years.”

“At the end of the day,” added Montreal Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez, “it was a contest between the far-right social Conservatives and the far-right economic Conservatives and the far-right social Conservatives won the day.”

Mr. Vaughan’s and Mr. Rodriguez’s comments were in reference to Mr. Scheer’s voting record supporting his Catholic beliefs: pro-traditional marriage and life, and opposition to transgender rights.

Not mentioned by the Liberals was the fact that Mr. Scheer has pledged not to reopen either the marriage or abortion debates. So much for the shinier, happier politics promised by Mr. Trudeau.

This kind of anti-Christian sneer is nothing new for the Liberals, and it comes from the top. It was Justin Trudeau who declared in 2014 that no candidate could run on the Liberal ticket in 2015 if they opposed abortion (existing MPs were exempted from the diktat).

So much for tolerance.

These actions have successfully silenced the Liberals’ own socially-conservative wing, even if it has produced some discord. Long-time Liberal MP John McKay, an opponent of abortion who voted against his own government’s same-sex marriage bill in 2005, even went as far as to label Mr. Trudeau’s stance on abortion a “bozo eruption” before being forced to apologize.

One wonders if Mr. Trudeau was brave enough to scold Pope Francis today in Rome for holding the same beliefs as Mr. Scheer? Of course he wouldn’t have been. Mr. Trudeau is quite happy to stump for Catholic votes so long as none of his MPs are allowed to remain true to Catholic beliefs.

Hypocrisy doesn’t begin to cover it.

Of course, with Liberals, it’s not the beliefs; it’s who holds them, and from what religion. The Liberal position appears to be that you can be a social conservative, as long as you’re not a white, Christian social conservative.

It’s hard to imagine the Liberals would be so aggressive in criticizing the new Conservative leader had that person been a Muslim or Orthodox Jew who shared the same social beliefs as Mr. Scheer. If you were to survey these communities, you would find much more support for Mr. Scheer’s social beliefs than you would the Liberal Party’s.

This was one of Stephen Harper’s great insights into so-called “new” Canadian communities; they are often socially conservative and could be made comfortable in a political movement that rewarded family, hard work, and a role for faith in life, if not state-sanctioned society.

It wasn’t a perfect fit.

The Conservatives suffered the reverse blindness exhibited by Liberals; the Tories were happy to have faith-based socially-conservative voters unless they were Muslim.

Will one party ever be able to unify socially-conservative voters? Not likely. The Liberals don’t like the beliefs and the Conservatives don’t like some of the believers. That’s not likely to change. It’s also simplistic to assume voters only cast ballots based on their religion, or that all adhere to all tenets of their faith.

But in this existing battle of blindness, it’s advantage Liberals.

For in today’s Canada – and in most Western democracies, for that matter – you can get away with criticizing a Christian far more readily than you can for criticizing a Muslim, even if you’re talking about the same social beliefs.

As the gleeful Liberal attacks on Mr. Scheer prove, that’s not likely to change either.

Christian values are almost completely gone from Canadian society now and the government is in the process of making some Christian values a hate crime. It's shaping up that the main 2019 election issue here in Canada will be abortion rights. Abortion is legal at all stages of pregnancy in Canada, it is governed by the Canada Health Act and all the provinces offer the service for free as part of the universal healthcare plan. It appears that the conservative agenda will be to try to retract that 'right' which will go over like a 10ton brick with most the populous of Canada.

If the last election here is any indication, the conservatives don't have a hope. The conservative religious right is a very small minority of the voters now. There really isn't a bible belt here in Canada. The last two pockets of Christian religious groups are Catholic French in Quebec which are closing down to the point that one church is closing a week there and the other pocket is Alberta with LDS membership. I was in Calgary 2 months ago and attended a ward there for sacrament meeting. The bishopric was almost begging temple recommend holders to attend the Calgary temple because there was low turnout. The LDS members in Canada on the roles is about 200000. Even if they all voted, it wouldn't be a blip in the election results.

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This dystopian device warns you when AI is trying to impersonate actual humans - ScienceAlert

Scared of a future where you can no longer discern if you're dealing with a human or a computer? A team of Australian researchers have come up with what they call the Anti-AI AI.

The wearable prototype device is designed to identify synthetic speech and alert the user that the voice they're listening doesn't belong to a flesh-and-blood individual. Developed as a proof of concept in just five days, the prototype makes use of a neural network powered by Google's Tensorflow machine learning software.

As artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic technology rapidly evolve, we're facing an uncertain future where machines can seemingly do all sorts of things better than people can – from mastering games to working our jobs, and even making new, more powerful forms of AI.

[Joel]

[Sunain]

Russia's Highest Religious Authority Just Compared Gay Marriage to Nazi Germany

The head of Russia’s Orthodox church has likened marriage equality to Nazism, the latest in a spate of controversies from the country’s highest religious authority.

The Moscow Times reports that Patriarch Kirill made the comments during a visit to Kyrgyzstan where he was promoting a new translation of a book he authored.

Citing Russian-language media, the Times reports that Kirill referred to “so-called homosexual marriages” as a threat to family values. “When laws are detached from morality they cease being laws people can accept,” he was quoted as saying, comparing such laws to those enacted in Nazi Germany.

According to the Times, the Patriarch has made similar comparisons between marriage equality and authoritarianism in the past; Kirill said in a 2016 interview with Russia Today that homosexual unions were a form of “Soviet totalitarianism” that threaten humanity.

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Media Yawn at Venezuela's Spiraling, Socialist Nightmare | LifeZette

Study finds ABC, CBS, NBC barely cover left-wing catastrophe, avoid word 'socialism'

Out of approximately 50,000 total evening news stories on ABC, CBS and NBC combined in the last four years, just 25 have covered the ongoing crisis in socialist Venezuela, according to a Media Research Center study published Tuesday.

After Venezuela’s former socialist president, Hugo Chávez, passed away in March 2013, the country has spiraled into economic disaster and civil chaos. So far in 2017, more than 50 Venezuelans have been killed during protests against current Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his socialist policies. Many Venezuelans are starving due to shortages of food and other essentials. The country’s inflation rate is set to surpass 700 percent and 25 percent of Venezuelans will be unemployed.

“Yet the Big Three evening newscasts have tried to pretend this crisis does not exist, offering virtually no coverage as the situation has deteriorated over the past four years,” MRC Research Analyst Mike Ciandella wrote.

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Should they be able to demand he give them the passcode? Shouldn't they be responsible to hack it? That is like arresting someone for not decryption a handwritten note.

Hollywood man gets 180 days in jail for not giving cops his iPhone code | Miami Herald

A Hollywood man must serve 180 days in jail for refusing to give up his iPhone password to police, a Broward judge ruled Tuesday — the latest salvo in intensifying legal battles over law-enforcement access to smart phones.

Christopher Wheeler, 41, was taken into custody in a Broward Circuit Court, insisting he had already provided the pass code to police investigating him for child abuse, although the number did not work.

“I swear, under oath, I’ve given them the password,” a distraught Wheeler, his hands handcuffed behind his back, told Circuit Judge Michael Rothschild, who earlier in May found the man guilty of contempt of court.

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Per Capita Taxes Have More Than Doubled Since JFK

Real federal taxes per capita have more than doubled since John F. Kennedy served as president — and argued for lower taxes.

In 1961, the fiscal year Kennedy was elected, the federal government collected about $94.388 billion in taxes, according to the Office of Management and Budget. The population that year was about 183,691,481, according to the Census Bureau. That meant federal tax revenues equaled about $514 per capita — or $4,121 in 2016 dollars.

By 1965, the fiscal year Lyndon Johnson beat Barry Goldwater, the federal government collected about $116.817 billion in taxes from a population of about 194,302,963. That year federal taxes equaled about $601 per capita — or $4,578 in 2016 dollars.

In fiscal 2016, according to OMB, the federal government collected about $3.268 trillion in taxes. That equaled about $10,114 for each of the 323,127,513 people in the country.

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The purpose of this is exaltation without Christ and without repentance. It is the "other plan" offered by Satan.

Godlike 'Homo Deus' Could Replace Humans as Tech Evolves

Evolution is a slow affair, taking some 5 million years to turn a chimpanzee-like creature into us. But what happens when we push down the accelerator and take command of our bodies and brains instead of leaving it to nature? What happens when biotechnology and artificial intelligence merge, allowing us to re-design our species to meet our whims and desires?

Historian Yuval Noah Harari explores these questions in his runaway bestseller, "Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow," a kind of sequel to his 2014 book, "Sapiens." The title of his new book suggests a startling stage in our evolution: Homo sapiens (“wise man”), far from being the pinnacle of creation, is a temporary creature, one soon to be replaced by Homo deus (“god man”).

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Bilderberg 2017: secret meeting of global leaders could prove a problem for Trump | US news | The Guardian

Perched ominously at the top of the conference agenda this year are these words: “The Trump Administration: A progress report”. Is the president going to be put in detention for tweeting in class? Held back a year? Or told to empty his locker and leave? If ever there’s a place where a president could hear the words “you’re fired!”, it’s Bilderberg.

The White House is taking no chances, sending along some big hitters from Team Trump to defend their boss: the national security adviser, HR McMaster; the commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross; and Trump’s new strategist, Chris Liddell. Could the president himself show up to receive his report card in person?

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Justice Department Sued over FBI-Trained Geek Squad Spies

The Justice Department was sued Wednesday by a privacy group seeking information on the FBI’s alleged recruitment of Best Buy employees to search consumer computers for child pornography during repairs.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Trump administration’s Justice Department, demanding access to records about any FBI training and payment to Geek Squad workers to search customer computers without a court warrant.

At issue isn’t the criminality of child pornography or efforts to stop the exploitation of children by sexual predators. EFF is concerned that the FBI may be violating the constitutional requirement that law enforcement agencies obtain judge-approved search warrants, based on evidence there is probable cause of a crime, to search computers.

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N.J. trooper threatened to arrest woman unless she gave her phone number, AG says | NJ.com

TRENTON -- For the second time in six months, a New Jersey state trooper has been suspended and criminally charged over claims he improperly pulled over women to ask them out, authorities said.

Trooper Eric Richardson, 31, was charged Wednesday with records tampering after an internal investigation found he had repeatedly pulled over two women, pressured them into engaging in romantic relationships and then lied on official paperwork to cover it up.

The accusations come as another trooper faces similar charges in an unrelated case. A State Police spokesman, Capt. Brian Polite, said the two cases were the result of internal investigations into allegations against troopers. 

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Yeah, right!

Patriotic Russians may have staged cyber attacks on own initiative - Putin

ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that patriotic Russian hackers may have staged cyber attacks against countries that had strained relations with Moscow on their own initiative, but said the Russian state had never been involved in such hacking.

Putin, speaking to international media at an economic forum in St Petersburg, was answering a question about allegations Moscow might try to interfere in this year's German elections.

Moscow's attitude towards cyber crime is under intense scrutiny after U.S. intelligence officials alleged that Russian hackers had tried to help Republican Donald Trump win the White House, something Russia has flatly denied.

"If they (hackers) are patriotically-minded, they start to make their own contribution to what they believe is the good fight against those who speak badly about Russia. Is that possible? Theoretically it is possible," said Putin.

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I believe this.

AI will outperform humans in all tasks in just 45 years | Daily Mail Online

Researchers surveyed 352 machine learning experts to forecast AI progress
They say there’s a 50% chance AI will outperform humans in all tasks in 45 years
And, they they also found a 50% chance machines will take all jobs in 120 years 
AI will outperform humans at translation, truck driving, essay writing in 10 yrs

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College melts down over plan for white people-free day on campus | New York Post

After protesters at a Washington state college called for a day without white people, a biology professor says he no longer feels safe on campus — and student activists complain they’re being vilified by conservative media.

Evergreen State College students said racial tensions have been simmering in recent weeks, but reached a boiling point when a faculty member disagreed with their plans to protest what they say is institutional racism at the Olympia campus, according to The Olympian.

Students were particularly incensed by an email that surfaced on Twitter on May 25 between Professor Bret Weinstein and Rashida Love, director of First Peoples Multicultural Advising Services. Weinstein, who is white, allegedly condemned the “Day of Absence” event that asked white people to leave campus for the day.

He called the day “an act of oppression in and of itself” and said he would visit campus in spite of the demonstration, according to USA Today.