[Daily Caller] Duke University admitted Sunday that it used manipulated and completely fabricated data about respiratory illnesses to obtains grants from the Environmental Protection Agency, among other agencies.
Internal investigators at the school believe that former lab technician Erin Potts-Kant falsified or fabricated data for medical research reports, attorneys for Duke said in response to a federal whistleblower lawsuit against the school. Potts-Kant told investigators that she faked data that wound up being "included in various publications and grant applications."
Former analyst Joseph Thomas alleged in a recent lawsuit that the university ignored warning signs about Potts-Kant’s work and tried to cover up the fraud, but the university denies there were warning signs. The lawsuit contends that all the work Potts-Kant did in her eight years at Duke was fabricated, and that the bogus data was done through grants worth $112.8 million to Duke and $120.9 million to other universities in North Carolina.
#2
...As a wise man once said, "Follow the money."
$233,700,000 of our tax dollars would NEVER have been spent unless the labs and the assistants and the Eminent Scientists(TM) kept coming up with the big, splashy, terrifying, we're-all-gonna-die results. And by the same token, the EPA cannot keep its status, influence and most importantly, power, unless it keeps handing out money looking for problems to solve...which, coincidentally, never seem to get solved.
And g(r)omguru speaks wisdom as always - it's always the lab assistant. Which, of course, is bullshiat. The scientists in charge know full well what is going on - you cannot get results that consistent and so precisely 'in the zone' that quickly without some kind of fudging. In a perfect world, someone in DC would immediately ban Duke and Other Universities from any Federal research grants for a few years or so. That would get attention.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
07/04/2017 6:08 Comments ||
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#3
Well, the EPA and Obumble wanted a certain result so they government could leverage more power away from the people and the lab delivered what the government paid for.
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WVEC) -- A case of "dine and dash" in Virginia Beach led to Virginia Beach Police to call in air support.
A police helicopter isn't normally used for catching someone who leaves a restaurant without paying their bill, but this case in different.
After the man left Fish Bones on 12th Street and Atlantic Avenue without paying his bill Sunday night, he jumped into a nearby lake in an effort to get away.
The police aircraft eventually tracked the man down an arrested him.
No word yet on what charges the suspect is facing.
[All Africa] President Bob Muggsy Mugabe Octogenarian President-for-Life of Zim-bob-we who turned the former Breadbasket of Africa into the African Basket Case... , 93, has reportedly engaged the Minister of War Veterans Tshinga Dube over the succession issue, telling him that he had not named his successor "as that was the prerogative of the Congress".
Dube recently urged Mugabe to name or groom his successor in-order to put a stop to the continued factional fights in his ruling Zanu-PF party.
Two distinct camps have emerged in Zim-bob-we's revolutionary party in recent years, as factions seek to outwit each other in the race to succeed the 93 year-old leader. Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa is allegedly leading a faction that is angling to succeed Mugabe calling itself "Team Lacoste", while another grouping made up of young Turks, commonly known as Generation 40 and backing First Lady Grace Mugabe to succeed her ageing husband, wants to torpedo Mnangagwa's presidential ambitions.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2017 00:00 ||
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#1
Everything Smith said would happen has come to pass.
[The Hill] President Trump on Monday offered to help a critically ill British child who has become a flashpoint in the United Kingdom debate over whether the government should have a say in individual matters pertaining to life and death.
Trump tweeted his support for Charlie Gard, a 10-month-old infant on life support due to complications from a mitochondrial disease. The controversy around Gard has engulfed the Vatican, which infuriated some on the right by not immediately siding entirely with the parents, who want to seek experimental medication in the U.S. or bring their child home to die.
"If we can help little #CharlieGard, as per our friends in the U.K. and the Pope, we would be delighted to do so," Trump tweeted.
[DailyCaller] Three Playboy models are still stuck in Mexico after wrongfully being detained by Mexican authorities who believed the three girls were "working" without a visa at a party for Playboy Music Fest on June 30.
Although the three Playboy bunnies have been released from their holding cell, they were forced to remain in Mexico over Independence Day weekend where they are still waiting to meet with immigration officials to get their passports back, according to Fox News.
American model Lauryn Elaine Booking statement: "Like, isn't Mexico a suburb of California or something?"
, French model Marie Brethenoux Booking statement: "We surrender."
and Turkish model Elif Celik Booking statement: "Oh crap. I hope the jails here are a serious upgrade from those at home."
were taken into custody on Thursday because Mexican authorities believed they were "’working’ without a visa." The girls were in Merida, Mexico specifically for the event, but weren’t working and weren’t paid to attend, Elaine told Fox News in an email.
#1
Golly. Hard to believe that Mexico would treat our citizens there on lawful business worse than they expect us to treat their citizens here for unlawful reasons.
#3
Although the three Playboy bunnies have been released from their holding cell, they were forced to remain in Mexico over Independence Day weekend where they are still waiting to meet with immigration officials to get their passports back
#4
My favorite story of the old days of a liberty weekend in TJ was a young group of Americans being stopped by the police at an intersection and being told they failed to stop for the stop sign. When told that the fine was $50 the driver noted that the was no sign anywhere. The officer responded that it used to be there but was being repainted. Cash onsite was preferable to the "delays waiting at court". All cordial and with a hint of humor. I was later told by a senior police official that in those days police officers gave most of their salaries to their commanders and enforcement was a commission business.
#5
#4 - True. As a teen growing up on San Diego, we would go south for partying. One never kept all their cash in the wallet so that you could give the cop: "It's all I got"
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/04/2017 12:51 Comments ||
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[TheJapanNews] Amid North Korea’s repeated missile launches, evacuation drills conducted with the participation of local residents and based on the scenario that a missile strike is imminent are being held in many places across the nation.
Such drills have already been conducted in nine prefectures, and there are more scheduled to be carried out in at least 11 prefectures.
This month, the nation’s first drill in which people will evacuate to an underground mall is scheduled to occur in Takaoka, Toyama Prefecture.
People who might face such an emergency are required to evacuate in a different way than in the event of an earthquake.
Since the start of this year, North Korea has fired ballistic missiles that left and reentered the atmosphere nine times.
In March, North Korean missiles fell into sea near Japan, including inside the exclusive economic zone off the Oga Peninsula, Akita Prefecture. In the wake of the launches, the Akita prefectural government conducted an evacuation drill that month.
In April, the central government asked other prefectural governments to carry out evacuation drills.
Since then, local governments facing the Sea of Japan and in the Kyushu and other regions that are close to North Korea have conducted evacuation drills one after another.
If the possibility of a missile falling onto the nation arises, the central government will notify the public via the J-Alert early warning system. Via J-Alert, residents at risk will be notified by the community wireless systems of local governments or via emergency warning emails.
The central government has called on people to evacuate into well-built buildings or underground spaces when outdoors so that they will be able to protect themselves from blasts and debris.
But how should people act if there are no well-built buildings or underground spaces nearby?
Consult with the Israelis, who built small bomb shelters every few hundred meters throughout the area covered by Hamas rockets, so that no one was more than 10-15 seconds from safety when the sirens went off.
In a drill on June 12 in Tsubame, Niigata Prefecture, people doing farming work evacuated into clay pipes and the tunnels of agricultural water canals.
In a drill conducted June 9 in Sakata, Yamagata Prefecture, residents in farming fields and other places took shelter under a raised road intersection.
A Niigata prefectural government official in charge said, "It is important to make judgments depending on each situation."
On the other hand, some local governments in regions facing the Pacific Ocean have said there is a perception gap, because their sense of urgency is weaker than in regions facing the Sea of Japan.
The Osaka prefectural government said it will be necessary to take into account tourists and foreigners if it holds an evacuation drill.
A drill is planned to be held in an urban area near Takaoka Station in Toyama Prefecture on July 14. Announcements inside the station building will tell people to evacuate, and station clerks and police officers will guide people to an underground mall of about 4,100 square meters in front of the station.
Takaoka Station has JR lines and is a starting point for tram and bus routes. The central government aims to use the drill as a reference point for other drills held by other local governments.
A Cabinet Secretariat official in charge of crisis management said, "We want people to know they should evacuate from buildings to outdoor spaces in an earthquake, but that they should evacuate to underground malls, buildings or concealed places if a missile approaches."
[Reuters] North Korea test-fired a ballistic missile into the sea off its east coast on Wednesday, South Korea's military said, ahead of a summit between U.S. and Chinese leaders who are set to discuss Pyongyang's increasingly defiant arms program.
The missile flew about 60 km (40 miles) from its launch site at Sinpo, a port city on North Korea's east coast, the South Korean Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. Sinpo is home to a North Korean submarine base.
The launch comes just a day before the start of a summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, where talks about adding pressure on the North to drop its arms development will take center stage.
"The launch took place possibly in consideration of the U.S. -China summit, while at the same time it was to check its missile capability," a South Korean official told Reuters about the military's initial assessment of the launch.
The missile was fired at a high angle and reached an altitude of 189 km (117 miles), the official said.
U.S. officials said on Wednesday that the missile appeared to be a liquid-fueled, extended-range Scud missile which only traveled a fraction of its range.
[Bloomberg] American factories powered up in June at the fastest pace in nearly three years, with robust advances in production, orders and employment that indicate a firming in the economy, data from the Institute for Supply Management showed Monday.
Faster growth in orders and production in the final month of the quarter indicates solid demand that, together with rising exports, shows manufacturing is on solid footing. The ISM’s pulse of employment in the industry also indicates the government’s measure of factory payrolls, released as part of the Labor Department’s jobs report on Friday, will rebound in June after declining a month earlier.
The expansion was broad based, with 15 of 18 industries surveyed by the purchasing managers’ group posting growth in June. They included machinery, transportation equipment, computer and electronic products, and petroleum and coal products. The three reporting contractions were apparel, textile mills and primary metals.
Just a plain vanilla political assassination plot.
[AnNahar] A man has been charged with plotting to assassinate President Emmanuel Macron at La Belle France's Bastille Day military parade which the French leader is set to attend with U.S. President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... , a judicial source said Monday.
The 23-year-old is a suspected far-right bully boy who told Sherlocks he wanted to kill Macron at the July 14 national day parade in Gay Paree, a source close to the investigation said.
He said he also wanted to attack "Moslems, Jews, blacks, homosexuals," the source added.
The 23 year old said he also wanted to attack "Muslims, Jews, blacks, homosexuals."
Police tossed in the calaboose Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up! the man at his home on Wednesday in the northwest Gay Paree suburb of Argenteuil after being alerted by users of an internet chatroom where the suspect allegedly said he wanted to buy a firearm.
Three kitchen knives were found in his vehicle and analysis of his computer found that he had conducted internet searches as part of his plot, the source said.
Macron, La Belle France's youngest president at 39, invited Trump as his guest of honor for the July 14 parade which commemorates the storming of the Bastille prison in 1789 -- the start of the French Revolution and a turning point in world history.
The two men have radically different political views and interests, but Macron appears intent on trying to build a relationship with the U.S. president and has warned against efforts to isolate him at a meeting of G20 nations this weekend.
The July 14 liquidation plot recalls the plot of "The Day of the Jackal", a book by spy writer Frederick Forsyth in which a hitman attempts to kill former French president Charles de Gaulle, the target of numerous real-life plots.
- Terror on Champs-Elysees -
Macron has frequently greeted crowds and discussed with protesters, but La Belle France remains in a state of emergency after a string of attacks since 2015.
The July 14 parade takes place on the Champs-Elysees, which has been the site of two recent attacks targeting police.
Late last month a man drove a car laden with weapons and gas canisters into a police van on the world-famous avenue.
In April, a known bully boyrubbed out a policeman on the Champs-Elysees just days before the first round of the presidential election.
The man arrested outside Gay Paree last week was charged on Saturday with plotting to commit a terrorist act, the judicial source said.
He had already been convicted in 2016 for condoning terrorism and sentenced to three years in prison, of which 18 months were suspended. He had applauded neo-Nazi mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in a bomb and gun rampage in 2011 in Norway.
[AA.TR] Greek coastal guard boats Monday allegedly opened fire on a Turkish commercial ship at international waters in the Aegean Sea off the coast of Rhodes, according to Turkish Interior Ministry sources.
The sources, who gave information on the condition of anonymity due to restrictions on talking to the media, said two Turkish coastal guard boats and a Turkish assault boat were sent to the area, where the incident happened.
The ship named "ACT" was brought to Turkish waters by coastal guards, the sources said, adding that statements of the ship's crew will be recorded.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2017 00:00 ||
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[The Hill] President Trump on Thursday nominated former Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, (R-Tx), to be America's next ambassador to NATO, according to Fox News reports.
The White House made the announcement Thursday evening, which was first reported on Twitter by Fox News's John Roberts and Mike Emanuel.
[DAWN] At least 12 people, including a minor girl, were killed when two rival groups attacked each other with rocket launchers and automatic weapons in Shikarpur on Monday.
The incident occurred in Katcha area of Shikarpur district's Khanpur town over an ongoing dispute early on Monday. The clashes took place between Saad Khanani Jatoi and Badani Jatoi groups, ending in a dozen casualties and wounding many others including women and children.
The area presented the view of a battlefield as both parties freely used automatic weapons and rocket launchers while police failed to even enter the area.
The enmity between the two groups supposedly began when two persons belonging to Saad Khanani Jatoi's group were killed in a police shootout and afflicted clan accused the Badani Jatoi group of sharing information with the police.
At least 25 people have been killed over the years in the deadly clashes between the groups.
Only two bodies were brought to the nearby hospital for postmortem while the other bodies still remained at the place of the incident as the warring tribesmen restricted police officials from entering the area.
According to sources, police tried to enter the area but armed tribesmen attacked an Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC) vehicle with a rocket launcher, forcing the police to remain out of the area.
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07/04/2017 00:00 ||
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[Ynet] Nine years ago, Teklit Michael fled Eritrea to avoid military conscription, survived a perilous journey across the Sinai peninsula entered Israel illegally
and sought asylum in Israel.
The 29-year-old Eritrean community organizer now works as a cook at a restaurant in south Tel Aviv--alone, without family and in legal limbo, awaiting a response to his asylum request.
Since May, Michael's life has faced another challenge with new tax rules that force his employer to put part of his salary in a fund he can access only if he leaves Israel.
He believes the aim of the new legislation, which applies only to African migrants who entered the country illegally and asylum seekers, is clear. mistranslation: it should be African migrants who entered the country illegally and seek asylum
#1
Migrant and failed community organizer flees from one of the oldest civilizations on the planet to one of the newest. Obviously military conscription and taxes were not the primary causes of his relocation. There must be more.
[IsraelTimes] Yinon Reuveni, 22, found guilty of setting fire to Church of the Multiplication of Loaves and Fishes; suspected accomplice found not guilty.
The Nazareth District Court on Monday convicted 22-year-old Yinon Reuveni for a 2015 arson attack by Jewish Death Eaters that heavily damaged a church in northern Israel where Christians believe Jesus performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes.
During the hearing, Judge George Azulay acquitted 21-year-old Yehuda Asraf, who was accused of assisting Reuveni in setting fire to the church building.
In their 2015 indictment, the Shin Bet said that Reuveni, currently a resident of the southern town of Ofakim, had been banished from the West Bank on several occasions and is a suspect in a series of hate crimes, including the February 2015 arson attack at Jerusalem’s Dormition Abbey.
Asraf, the Shin Bet said, had been living on an illegal outpost and is active in hard boy Jewish circles.
Two rooms of the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes in Tabgha on the Sea of Galilee were vandalized and badly damaged in the fire two years ago.
The arson attack, at the site where many Christians believe Jesus fed 5,000 in the miracle of the five loaves and two fish, completely destroyed a building in the compound. The church itself was not damaged.
Hebrew graffiti was found on another building within the complex, reading: "Idols will be cast out or destroyed."
The complex reopened to pilgrims in February this year following eight months of renovation work at a cost of around $1 million dollars, of which the State of Israel contributed almost $400,000.
President Reuven Rivlin and his wife attended an interfaith meeting to mark the reopening along with Christian dignitaries, including Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, Ambassador of Germany Dr. Clemens von Goetze, Sheikh Muafak Tarīf, and Rabbi Alon Goshen-Gottstein, as well as Jordan Valley Local Council leader Idan Greenbaum and donors in the Roman Catholic church.
Itamar Ben Gvir, the attorney who represented Reuveni and Asraf, told The Times of Israel after the ruling that he planned to challenge the decision.
"The judgment ignored most of the claims that we made during the trial," Ben Gvir said. "The judge did not give fair treatment to the defense that we presented."
A third suspect, Moshe Orbach, was charged with writing and distributing a document detailing the "necessity" of attacking non-Jewish property and people as well as laying out practical advice on how to do so. He is still awaiting trial.
The attack on the church sparked widespread condemnation and concern from Christians globally, with the site visited by some 5,000 people daily, while also drawing renewed attention to religiously linked hate crimes in Israel.
It is not the first time that Reuveni's extremist transgressions have landed him on the wrong side of the law. In 2016, he was charged for committing violent acts against Paleostinians.
According to the conviction statement regarding the fire, Reuveni established contact with other unknown individuals prior to his assault on the church due to hostile views he harbored against Christianity in an attempt to damage the holy sites of the religion.
So many fault lines, so many potential wars that have nothing to do with Israel.
[AnNahar] Iran's president has assailed a major dam project by The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... involving the Euphrates and the Tigris River, demanding a halt in the construction.
Hassan Rouhani says the dams would be "dangerous" for the entire Middle East.
His remarks came during a conference on sandstorms hosted by Tehran on Monday and marked the Iranian president's first public criticism of the dam project, seen as controversial in the Mideast.
He did not name Turkey but said that multiple dams planned on the two major rivers that flow into Syria and Iraq will have "destructive consequences" and affect many, including Iran and "should be stopped."
Iran and Turkey support opposing sides in Syria's civil war.
Rouhani added that "it is not possible to remain indifferent" toward the issue of the dams.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
07/04/2017 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Daily Caller] Duke University admitted Sunday that it used manipulated and completely fabricated data about respiratory illnesses to obtains grants from the Environmental Protection Agency, among other agencies.
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WVEC) -- A case of "dine and dash" in Virginia Beach led to Virginia Beach Police to call in air support.
North Korea
[Bloomberg] American factories powered up in June at the fastest pace in nearly three years, with robust advances in production, orders and employment that indicate a firming in the economy, data from the Institute for Supply Management showed Monday.
[DAWN] At least 12 people, including a minor girl, were killed when two rival groups attacked each other with rocket launchers and automatic weapons in Shikarpur on Monday.
