News You Can Use

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Sales of bulletproof backpacks soar after Florida shooting | Daily Mail Online

Sales of Bullet Blocker's bags have seen a huge increase in sales since the attack 
Joe Curran, the company's owner, said many of the bags were going to Florida
There are a range of different bulletproof backpacks available from $200-$500
Bullet Blocker also has a range luxury range, which includes Gucci diaper bags

I checked into this a while ago, I think it hit the news that a private school in florida required its students to have a bullet proof back pack.

If I recall, the packs are only expected to stop handgun rounds up to 40-calibler, they are not expected to stop rifle rounds. They are also small, and only able to cover a small area even on a child. But parents are freaked out about shootings and want to protect their kids so I see why the packs are selling quickly.

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FEC war on Drudge, internet, goes 'underground'

Democratic efforts on the Federal Election Commission to punish media and stifle voices like the Drudge Report and Fox are going “underground” after failing in public, according to the agency’s outgoing defender of media and digital outlets.

“The debate has gone underground, it has not ceased,” said Lee Goodman, who fought off several attempts to stifle outlets like Fox, Drudge and conservative media including film makers.

“The desire to regulate Americans' political speech on the internet remains alive and well here at the commission and now even in Congress,” added Goodman, whose last day on the FEC is Friday.

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In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a lobster

A law goes into effect March 1 that bans the common cooking method of tossing a live lobster into a big pot of boiling water, quickly killing the tasty crustacean. That practice is being outlawed because the Swiss say it's cruel and lobsters can sense pain.

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Maxine Waters Attended Farrakhan Speech | The Daily Caller

Waters attended a Nation of Islam Convention where Louis Farrakhan defended Palestinian suicide bombers
The Nation of Islam believes white people are inherently inferior to black people
Farrakhan is an anti-Semite who called Jews “Satanic” and said Hitler was “a very great man” 
Waters’ convention appearance is just the latest tie to emerge between Democrats and the Nation of Islam.

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Georgia school to drug-test students by using hair samples

COLUMBUS, Ga.
A private school in east Georgia intends to start drug-testing its oldest students.

The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer reports that Brookstone School in Columbus recently announced that the drug-testing of students in grades 8-12 will be voluntary next school year - and then mandatory in succeeding years.

Brookstone plans to use students' hair samples which are sent to Psychemedics Corp. to conduct the testing, the newspaper reported. The Massachusetts-based company would then provide test results within a few days.

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Silicon Valley Explores A New Investment: Your Home - WSJ

Some well-funded startups have an unusual pitch for homeowners strapped for cash: Let’s own this house together.

A handful of companies, including those backed by marquee Silicon Valley names such as Andreessen Horowitz and Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropic organization, are ...

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Blackhawks fans ejected for racist taunts at Capitals player | WGN-TV

CHICAGO – Four Blackhawks fans may never be allowed back in the United Center again.

According to the Washington Post, the group of hecklers taunted Capitals winger Devante Smith-Pelly while he was in the penalty box with chants of “basketball, basketball, basketball.”

Smith-Pelly happens to be black.

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America No. 1 enemy at World Government Summit

DeNiro, for his part, launched into an anti-American tirade by saying, “I flew here last night from a backward country, a place where science once reigned and lately has been replaced by ignorance.” He drew applause after predicting that Trump would be voted out in the 2020 election. Last year, at the summit he said that Trump has caused America to lose its position as a global ambassador in the fight against global warming because “we have a leader who’s not leading, that doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

Such comments, apparently, were enough to get him re-invited this year to the fabulous resort that resembles, according to one observer, “a 12th-century Middle Eastern fortress, crisscrossed by picturesque canals and bordered by two kilometers of private Persian Gulf beachfront, it feels almost too opulent to be real.”

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Goldman Sachs warns US spending could push up rates and debt levels

The U.S. economy won't be able to count on the pump-priming from tax cuts for very long, Goldman Sachs said on Sunday.
Federal spending, rising yields and surging debt needs are a growing worry, the firm said.
Deficit spending is approaching 'uncharted territory', Goldman said.

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Inside the world's strangest micronations

The world's newest micronation has half a million prospective citizens, runs on crytocurrency donations, and lays claim to a disputed four-mile sandbank on the Danube.

Liberland, founded by Czech economist turned politician Vít Jedlička in 2015, has low-tax, libertarian ideals (its motto is "live and let live") and is a very much a micronation for the 21st century. All business is conducted by email, 100 key representatives in various countries communicate via Skype, it accepts Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum and is about to start distributing its own digital currency.  

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Fake videos are on the rise. As they become more realistic, seeing shouldn't always be believing

All it takes is a single selfie.

From that static image, an algorithm can quickly create a moving, lifelike avatar: a video not recorded, but fabricated from whole cloth by software.

With more time, Pinscreen, the Los Angeles start-up behind the technology, believes its renderings will become so accurate they will defy reality.

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‘No Cash’ Signs Everywhere Has Sweden Worried It's Gone Too Far - Bloomberg

“No cash accepted” signs are becoming an increasingly common sight in shops and eateries across Sweden as payments go digital and mobile.

But the pace at which cash is vanishing has authorities worried. A broad review of central bank legislation that’s under way is now taking a special look at the situation, with an interim report due as early as the summer.

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State election officials across country returning to paper ballots - The Boston Globe

WASHINGTON — Hoping to counter waves of Russian Twitter bots, fake social media accounts, and hacking attacks aimed at undermining American democracy, state election officials around the country are seizing on an old-school strategy: paper ballots.

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The Case for Impeaching Clarence Thomas

It’s time to reexamine the evidence that Clarence Thomas lied to get onto the Supreme Court — and to talk seriously about impeachment.

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After Florida shooting, Michael Ian Black says 'boys are broken'

"I think it means that there is something going on with American men that is giving them the permission and space to commit violence," he said. "And one of the main things we focus on correctly is guns and mental health, but I think deeper than that is a problem, a crisis in masculinity."

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Woman arrested after 'move your van' note on ambulance - BBC News

The woman, from Tunstall, was arrested on suspicion of public order offences and remains in police custody.

Mike Duggan, operational manager from the West Midlands Ambulance Service, said the paramedics also received verbal abuse as well as the note.

"This is not solely about the note," Staffordshire Police said, "the arrest related to matters of verbal abuse."

The note, which was left on the parked ambulance, read: "If this van is for anyone but Number 14 then you have no right to be parked here."

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L.A. County's homeless problem is worsening despite billions from tax measures

The report showed that officials two years ago far underestimated how much new housing would be needed when they asked city and county voters to approve the tax measures.

As a result, a $73-million annual shortfall in funding for the county's comprehensive homelessness program could more than triple, a Times analysis of the report found.

Providing permanent housing for the county's chronically homeless population would require more than 20,000 new units, about 5,000 more than projected two years ago, the report said.

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Hiding in the rocks.

From Kansas to New Zealand to Hawaii: Where billionaires are buying homes to escape the apocalypse - Mirror Online

Peter Thiel, the billionaire behind PayPal, is among the tech titans looking for a good place to go in the event of an apocalypse

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Yale University teaches students ‘counternarratives around whiteness’ - The College Fix

Yale University is offering a course this semester which aims to help students understand and counteract “whiteness,” exploring such topics as “white imagination,” “white property” and “white speech.”

According to the syllabus for “Constructions of Whiteness” obtained by The College Fix, the English course is an “interdisciplinary approach to examining our understanding of whiteness.”

The class, which is apparently being offered for the first time this semester, discusses “whiteness as a culturally constructed and economically incorporated entity, which touches upon and assigns value to nearly every aspect of American life and culture.”

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This is old, from 2014, but I don't remember hearing about it back then.

33 Dead, 130 Injured in China Knife-Wielding Spree - NBC News

A group of knife-wielding men attacked a train station in southwestern China on Saturday, killing at least 29 people and injuring more than 130 others in what Chinese officials called a terrorist strike, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Four of the attackers were also shot dead and only one was captured alive after the mayhem, which broke out about 9 p.m. (8 a.m. ET) at the Kunming Railway Station in the capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province.

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Delingpole: NOAA Caught Adjusting Big Freeze out of Existence

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has yet again been caught exaggerating  ‘global warming’ by fiddling with the raw temperature data.
This time, that data concerns the recent record-breaking cold across the northeastern U.S. which NOAA is trying to erase from history.

If you believe NOAA’s charts, there was nothing particularly unusual about this winter’s cold weather which caused sharks to freeze in the ocean and iguanas to drop out of trees.

Here is NOAA’s January 2018 chart for Northeast U.S. – an area which includes New England along with NY, PA, NJ, DE and MD.

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"Kill the NRA" Sign Appears on Billboard in Louisville » Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!

sign.jpg (55.04 KiB) Viewed 1826 times

A message that reads “kill the NRA” has appeared on a billboard in Louisville in response to last week’s school shooting.

The billboard, which appears on Interstate 65 in Louisville, was an act of vandalism, according to Outfront Media, the business that owns the sign.

The words “Resist 45” also appear on the sign, a reference to the “resistance” movement against the presidency of Donald Trump.

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Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes wants $500 per month in basic income

U.S. workers who make less than $50,000 per year should get a government stipend of $500 per month, says Chris Hughes.
As long as you're working for your country, your country takes care of you," says Hughes, an advocate for a basic income.
The wealthy one-percent should pay for the program, he says.